As enterprises move from speculation about artificial intelligence to implementation, they must identify the combination of complementary technologies that can be strategically paired with AI to drive the right use cases and business outcomes.
Salesforce Inc. is leveraging three powerful elements to deliver cutting-edge, transformative outcomes for organizations: data cloud, automation, and AI.
“AI today has incredible capabilities, from predictive to generative. [but] “This is nothing new for Salesforce,” said Param Kahlon, executive vice president and general manager at Salesforce. “Salesforce has been working on predictive AI for nearly a decade now. But the beauty of generative AI is that it now allows large language models to run through large amounts of unstructured and semi-structured content to generate better content for salespeople to send relevant emails and marketers to create personalized landing pages.”
Kahlon recently sat down with George Gilbert, Senior Analyst at theCUBE Research, for the “Path to Intelligent Data Apps” podcast series. The two discussed how Salesforce is revolutionizing the way businesses operate in the digital age by leveraging AI-driven insights, contextualizing data in its data cloud, and enabling real-time action.
Gen AI and the Data Cloud for Contextualization
In today's business environment, intelligence is the foundation for success. Salesforce's AI platform empowers businesses with predictive and generative AI capabilities to make insightful decisions and create personalized experiences for their customers. The playing field has expanded, enabling businesses to process vast amounts of unstructured data and generate engaging content.
“For this AI to be meaningful, and for companies to fully leverage its value, they need to ensure that the data being used to generate predictions is relevant to the current business processes, current transactions, and current context of customer interactions,” Kahlon said.
To enable contextualization, you need a data cloud. Serving as the AI foundation, Salesforce's Data Cloud platform takes existing data models and enriches them with relevant contextual data tailored to each company's specific needs and ongoing customer interactions.
“When we talk to our largest customers, they all say AI is really important to them,” Kahlon says. “It's something they want to drive, but at the same time, they say their data is scattered across their enterprise. Some of our customers have data stored in over 900 different business systems, and they want to seamlessly integrate that data so it can be processed by AI through Data Cloud.”
Automation and integration for real-time action
Combining AI and the data cloud can provide actionable insights, but it's not enough: Companies need to act quickly on these predictions to drive real-time actions and capitalize on opportunities. This is where integration and automation can help, according to Kahlon.
“[Customers are] “Fundamentally, data is scattered across the enterprise, and you want to provide that data to your customers in real time,” he says. “With the integration capabilities of MuleSoft and Salesforce, we've been able to focus on the real-time nature and enable real-time business transactions in the context of ongoing processes. That's what differentiates our approach: collecting data in real time and being able to take action in real time.”
Integration is like the glue that brings together data from different sources and allows AI to derive meaningful insights. Salesforce's integration capabilities, powered by MuleSoft, focus on real-time data processing, allowing businesses to act on insights as they arise. This low-latency approach allows not only Salesforce applications but also other third-party applications to contribute to the data ecosystem, Kahlon explained.
“We work with major airlines in North America and we're building the entire customer experience on an API-based platform, from booking a ticket to checking in for the flight to ordering special meals for the flight. We can handle transactions at that scale,” he said. “When you bring in AI, all of this becomes critical to driving real-time throughput. That's where our customers are seeing value in our technology.”
Below is theCUBE's full video interview with Param Kahlon.
Image: NanoStockk/Getty Images
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