When it comes to companies heavily investing in the capabilities and advantages of generative AI, Salesforce undoubtedly takes the lead. Marc Benioff, co-founder and CEO of Salesforce even said that generative AI could possibly be the most important technology of any lifetime. In March, the San Francisco-based CRM leader became the first company to announce the world’s first generative AI for CRM, called EinsteinGPT.

Since then, Salesforce has unveiled an array of generative AI capabilities, such as SlackGPT and TableauGPT. Through its venture wing and with a USD 500 million budget, Salesforce is also investing in a host of AI startups. Furthermore, the CRM leader also introduced its own Large Language Models (LLMs) known as XGen-7B.

“Earlier this year, we began infusing generative AI across our entire platform with Einstein GPT, which brings generative AI across every part of Salesforce. In June, we announced AI Cloud, a suite of capabilities optimised for delivering real-time generative experiences across all applications and workflows,” Deepak Pargaonkar, vice president, solution engineering, Salesforce India, told AIM.

“We have a robust roadmap for lighting up generative AI capabilities across every Salesforce product, as well as delivering low-code generative app builders that make it easy to extend what AI Cloud provides out of the box with custom AI – built by yourself or, by bringing your own model from a partnering ML platform – to further enhance the productivity of your teams,” he added.

AI cloud 

To bring generative AI capabilities to its customers, salesforce announced AI Cloud- a suite of products built for CRM in enterprises where they can boost their productivity through all the Salesforce AI applications. “AI Cloud is enterprise-ready. We’re using it to deliver AI-generated content across every line of business. Think of any contact centre agent – they can now use AI Cloud to generate relevant replies to chat conversations, grounded on sensitive data, integrated into an end-to-end workflow, and do all of this without fear of that case data leaving Salesforce’s trust boundary.”

AI Cloud empowers sales reps to auto-generate personalised emails for customers, while service teams produce customised agent chat replies and case summaries. Marketers utilise auto-generated personalised content to engage customers through various channels. Commerce teams access auto-generated insights and recommendations for tailored commerce experiences. Additionally, developers leverage AI to auto-generate code, predict potential bugs, and suggest fixes.

“Moreover, LLMs can assist developers in writing code more efficiently and allowing them to focus on creativity and other business aspects, ultimately enhancing the organisation’s time to deploy. This improvement in technology’s time to deployment leads to enhanced customer experience and business value, addressing key areas of focus,” Pargaonkar said.

Bring your own models

Another important feature that Salesforce provides is letting its customers leverage any generative AI models they prefer. Salesforce lets customers leverage LLMs developed by Salesforce AI Research, and LLMs from AI firms such as Anthropic, Cohere AI through AWS.

Moreover, customers can also bring in their own domain-specific models, according to Pargaonkar. These models, whether deployed on Amazon SageMaker or Google’s Vertex AI, will directly connect to AI Cloud through the Einstein GPT Trust Layer. 

However, according to recent Salesforce research, 73% of employees are concerned about the new security risks introduced by generative AI. Moreover, almost 60% of those who intend to use generative AI are unsure about how to ensure data security. 

Pargaonkar says the ‘EinsteinGPT Trust Layer’ helps tackle this apprehension from the customers as it prevents LLMs from retaining sensitive customer data. “We’ve built a new Einstein GPT Trust Layer that will become the industry standard for trusted AI in the enterprise, enabling teams to LLMs with their customer data, but without compromising on data privacy and security.

“Moreover, Salesforce is used by numerous customers globally, including several in India, to effectively manage their customer data. We prioritise maintaining the utmost sincerity in keeping this data secure and not sharing it externally. Since we operate with data from your CRM, it is crucial to respect customer preferences and regulatory requirements regarding Personally Identifiable Information (PII). If customers or policies prohibit sharing or leveraging such data, we strictly adhere to those guidelines.”

Salesforce in India 

Salesforce has been in India for many years, catering to CRM needs of many enterprises in the country. However, now, Salesforce has its eyes set on the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), which has been growing significantly in the last few years and are adopting technologies at a much rapid pace. 

“The MSME market in India is extremely important to Salesforce because these are high-growth organisations with global ambitions and they seek technological transformation, as it is through technology that they can effectively scale and navigate the challenges of large-scale operations,” Pargaonkar said.

To tap into this segment, Salesforce recently introduced ‘Salesforce Starter’, a user-friendly CRM solution that combines sales, service, and email outreach tools in a single suite. This offering empowers companies to kickstart their operations, enhance customer experiences, cut costs, and boost revenue.