smzh is a comprehensive financial services company that aims to provide holistic advice for everyone, regardless of age or income, at every stage of life – from getting a first job and buying a home to getting married, welcoming a first child, and planning retirement. smzh’s 360-degree advisory model is built around these moments, spanning insurance, mortgages, taxes, and financial planning.
The company’s motto is ‘focus, scale, lead’. This applies to both its advisory services and its approach to digital transformation. In 2024, smzh embarked on a journey to put Salesforce at the center of its operations. “Salesforce now connects all our data and AI agents, helping us advise our clients on key decisions at each magic moment,” explains Patrick Cancedda, Director, Technology & CRM at smzh.
Our Trailblazer Patrick Cancedda on how…
…AI is helping deliver smarter advice and faster service
“Our goal is to set the pace in the industry, and this means not just experimenting with AI, but using it in our day-to-day work to provide smarter advice to clients and help our advisors be more efficient. Our approach has two pillars – firstly, giving clients greater clarity and more personalized experiences. For example, our Agentforce-powered website chatbot Sophie is already changing how we engage with potential clients. Sophie requests contact details, books appointments, and escalates to a human when needed. Using standard Salesforce omnichannel capabilities and the Salesforce Accelerator, it was very quick to launch.
“The second pillar is focused on helping our internal teams. We are the interface between the client and providers, such as insurers and banks, and we need to move quickly to compete with comparison sites. Now, for every potential insurance client, an advisor can generate three tailored offers in less than 90 seconds, compared to our previous approach, which took more than five minutes. Contracts are generated faster too, taking just 30 seconds to pull together from the data. We’re also using Sales Cloud Einstein for lead scoring, so advisors are no longer overwhelmed by long lists of leads. They know exactly who to call first, which means we can secure more appointments sooner and boost motivation. These AI-powered capabilities don’t just improve experiences for clients and efficiency for advisors, but also increase data quality, minimize errors, and reduce repetitive tasks for teams.”
…smzh has made the journey from 2% adoption to AI-powered capabilities
“Before we could make the leap into AI, we had to focus and scale, and without those stages, none of what we’re doing today would have been possible. When our transformation began in 2024, Salesforce was used by just 2% of the company, without clear processes or automation. The focus stage was about building the foundations and creating a single source of truth with every client unified in Salesforce. From there, the scale stage was about growing the capacity of the system while keeping it simple for users. We’ve added more clients and more data, but without adding to the manual overhead.
“We started with Sales Cloud, then added Sales Cloud Einstein for AI-powered lead scoring, advanced analytics, and intuitive dashboards. Then came Agentforce, and now we’re adding Data 360 and migrating to the latest Marketing Cloud platform to establish a completely connected ecosystem. Today, we have more than 18,000 clients, 11,000-plus opportunities in the pipeline, and over 200,000 leads.”
…smzh is planning fully personalized client experiences
“Everything we’re building with AI is designed as an accelerator, to make our consultants and advisors more efficient and our client relationships more meaningful. We’re currently rolling out a new client portal, smzh prisma, which will not only support faster processes but also provide AI-powered suggestions so clients know what they need to do next. We’re also building on Sophie with an agent sales development rep that will automatically confirm appointments, so our advisors no longer have to.
“With Data 360, we’re taking our unified client view one step further by bringing together touchpoints from outside Salesforce too. We’ll bring in data from Google Analytics so we can tailor conversations based on the articles they’ve been reading on our website. It’s not just about selling but making the whole relationship more personalized.
“I’m proud of how far we’ve come. When I joined, people were barely using Salesforce, but now they’re providing feedback and making requests as they’re more engaged and realize the benefits. Events like Salesforce World Tour Zurich are a reminder of why I love this technology. I’m part of an active community where I can grow my skills while helping the business stay ahead of the industry with AI.”
