September 27, 2024 - Dreamforce 2024 officially kicked off in San Francisco on September 17, 2024, following a series of high-profile pre-event announcements. Over three days, the event offered a dynamic mix of product reveals, learning sessions, and networking opportunities.

This year’s Dreamforce left a lasting impression by combining cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) innovation with a strong focus on social responsibility in an energetic and immersive environment. The event featured breakthrough announcements, strategic collaborations, and engaging entertainment, all designed to captivate attendees.

Throughout the event, participants forged new connections, completed hands-on training, and gained insights from top leaders in the software industry. Looking back at Dreamforce 2024, the following highlights showcase key moments and insights, underscoring the fusion of AI advancements, community building, and the transformative potential of ethical growth.

Agentforce steps into the spotlight

Agentforce, Salesforce’s platform for building and deploying autonomous AI agents, emphasizes collaboration between humans and AI to drive customer success, according to Salesforce Co-Founder and CEO Marc Benioff, who described these agents as the "third wave of AI."

Agentic AI is rapidly gaining momentum in the enterprise world, and Salesforce is stepping into this space. The platform empowers businesses to deploy AI agents capable of analyzing data, formulating strategies, and taking action independently. Salesforce states that Agents built on the Agentforce platform can autonomously perform tasks, such as “answering customer service inquiries, qualifying sales leads, or optimizing marketing campaigns.”

During his keynote, Benioff announced that Einstein Copilot—developed over the span of a decade—has been “officially upgraded” to Agentforce.

In addition to autonomous agents for commerce, sales, marketing, and service, Salesforce introduced Agent Builder, a low-code tool within Agentforce Studio. This tool integrates with Salesforce’s Model Builder and Prompt Builder, enabling customers to quickly create and customize their AI agents.

Using a luxury department store, Benioff showcased a prime example of how Agentforce Studio can be used, highlighting that the store built and deployed its AI agent in just one week.

Their AI agent not only answers questions like a traditional chatbot but can also take action, such as recognizing when a customer ordered the wrong size and arranging product exchanges without the need for a human service agent. During a demo, Salesforce demonstrated how the AI could be quickly extended to perform additional tasks, like checking product availability and offering customers the option to pick up an item in-store or have it shipped.

Salesforce also introduced the Agentforce Partner Network, an ecosystem that allows third-party products to integrate into the complex action chains agents must perform. It includes Google Cloud, Box, Amazon Web Services, IBM, Zoom, Workday, and others.

Agentforce is expected to be available in October 2024.

Innovations from Data Cloud

Data Cloud, the core of Salesforce’s platform and the foundation of Agentforce, unifies business and customer data to enable personalized, timely customer interactions. It ensures contextual relevance across the entire Salesforce ecosystem, including Customer 360 applications, analytics, Flow, and Salesforce’s innovative collection of autonomous AI agents.

Salesforce introduced the latest Data Cloud innovations at Dreamforce, including enhanced support for unstructured data with native integration of video and audio content—such as calls and webinars—to identify deeper customer insights. A new standardized semantic data model was unveiled, allowing both humans and AI to interpret and utilize data more consistently. Other upgrades included enhanced search functions that consider customer context for faster information discovery, real-time data activations to instantly respond to shifting customer needs, and improved data governance and security elements to protect businesses and avoid accidental data exposure.

Upgrading from “Suite” to “Platform”

Salesforce is best known for its Customer 360 applications. However, in recent years, the customer relationship management (CRM) giant has re-engineered its entire portfolio, including its acquisitions, into a series of interconnected clouds that run natively together on a unified platform.

Salesforce is shifting its focus from cross-selling individual Customer 360 applications to selling its complete, unified platform. As Benioff emphasized in his keynote, “This platform, which we’re all familiar with and that gets three releases a year, is the key strategic focus of Salesforce.”

Now that the platform is fully integrated, Salesforce can scale offerings across its entire CRM suite, including Tableau and Slack. Innovations like Agentforce are only possible because of this strong platform foundation. The unified platform enables seamless cross-functional data sharing and maximizes multi-cloud value while delivering cross-CRM advancements in a single release.

Tackle CRM with the help of Citrin Cooperman

It is nearly impossible to wrap up three days of extensive reveals, learning, and networking in a single article. The points above offer just a glimpse into the full potential Salesforce provides. If you are ready to unlock everything this platform can do for your organization, let someone from Citrin Cooperman’s Digital Services Practice guide you along your journey. Request a free Salesforce Assessment today!