Unlocking AI’s Promise: Implementation Strategies for Business Leaders from Agentforce World Tour NYC

Salesforce customers and partners convened at Agentforce World Tour NYC this week to discuss how tech leaders are using agentic AI to move beyond simple automation and drive substantial ROI.

Why it matters: While only 11% of IT leaders say they’ve fully implemented AI, agentic AI adoption is expected to jump 327% over the next two years, signaling rapid growth.

Driving the news: The conversations at Agentforce World Tour NYC centered around how leaders can create a strategic approach to AI implementation.

• The panel featured key thought leaders from Salesforce, along with executives from Indeed — a company using Agentforce to more quickly connect job seekers with employers; and Neuraflash — a partner working with customers on Agentforce deployments. 
• Together, they discussed strategies for effective agentic AI implementation, focusing on experimentation, external-facing use cases with high ROI, and robust security guardrails to unlock the technology’s full potential across diverse enterprise workflows. 

What they’re saying:

• “The companies that are going to win are not the ones that adopt technology as fast as possible. They’re the ones who are going to create the culture of learning, experimentation, and going after value… At Indeed, we want to reduce the time to hire by 50%.” – Anthony Moisant, CIO & CISO, Indeed 
• “The companies that are getting it right are choosing external-facing, high volume use cases where you can see the power of the technology right away and not get trapped.” – Tom Hebner, VP of Salesforce Agentforce Practice, NeuraFlash 
• “Companies moving into [agentic AI] need a fundamental investment in security and compliance so they can enable their teams to move fast… With capabilities like data masking, Agentforce gives companies the foundation so that they can take the fear out of running with agentic AI, and empower their employees to move fast.” – Alice Steinglass, EVP, Platform, Salesforce
• “The ability to iterate and make the agent faster in a predictable and scalable way is a new rate at which customer experiences can now improve. Because you’re not writing new code to make the agent better, you’re just giving it another natural language instruction. And I think that’s a bit of an underestimated part of this experience.” – Madhav Thattai, CIO, Salesforce AI 

The companies that are going to win are not the ones that adopt technology as fast as possible. They’re the ones who are going to create the culture of learning, experimentation, and going after value.

Anthony Moisant, CIO & CISO, Indeed 

Between the lines: Salesforce’s unified platform provides the crucial underlying infrastructure, including robust security, compliance, and data resiliency, that can help address fears around sensitive data and allow teams to move fast without compromising security. This includes features like anonymized data for pre-production environments and automated data masking. 

What’s next: 

• Salesforce envisions a future where agents are capable of automating complex, variable tasks across the enterprise, such as spinning up demo organizations, a historically difficult-to-automate process. MuleSoft will help enable seamless integration across diverse enterprise systems. 
• A new, flexible pricing model, at .10 cents per action, and flex agreements aim to provide customers with greater choice and fluidity for deploying AI agents across various use cases.

Go deeper: 

• Read the key news from Agentforce World Tour NYC
• Learn more about Salesforce’s approach to data governance in the agentic AI era
• Check out the Agentforce Flexible Pricing news