Tag: Salesforce

What is Agentforce Vibes? And what does it mean for Salesforce users?
TL;DR Agentforce Vibes – Salesforce’s Latest Solution to Buying Time
Agentforce Vibes is the personalisation intelligence powering Salesforce’s new and improved Agentforce platform – helping AI understand how you work so it can deliver the most relevant actions, recommendations, and automation in the flow of your day. It uses generative AI to transform natural language into code – so users can describe a feature and watch it come to life via a new autonomous AI coding agent, accelerating development at all stages.
And importantly, advancements like Agentforce Vibes do not make the Admin/Developer role redundant. They remain essential in establishing the data, rules, and governance that allow AI to operate safely and successfully. These tools are designed to remove the repetitive tasks – not replace the human expertise that keeps Salesforce aligned to business strategy.
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Salesforce continues to evolve its platform with innovations designed to streamline processes and maximise productivity, and Agentforce Vibes is the latest addition to that mission. Vibes uses generative AI to transform natural language into code – so users can describe a feature and watch it come to life via a new autonomous AI coding agent, accelerating development at all stages.
As AI becomes more embedded in how organisations operate, businesses are understandably excited – and sometimes a bit concerned – about what that means for the people who manage and use these systems every day. The reassuring truth: Agentforce Vibes is not here to replace Admins, Developers, or users. On the contrary, it empowers them by making Salesforce more intuitive, more personalised, and more efficient.
Understanding Agentforce Vibes
Agentforce Vibes is the engine behind Salesforce’s Agentforce platform – the AI-agent-powered system enabling smarter, more conversational experiences within Salesforce – all with ‘vibe coding’. Vibes acts as the connective tissue between user context, organisational data, and AI capabilities, helping to build, debug, test, and deploy Salesforce apps and agents.
In a simplified sense, Vibes turns plans and concepts into fully functional applications faster than ever before.
Rather than offering generic prompts or one-size-fits-all automation, Vibes allows AI agents to:
- Understand the preferences of individual users and teams
- Create features that leverage the organisation’s unique tone and governance
- Provide recommendations aligned with specific business processes
- Speed up development and automation
- Learn continually from feedback to improve accuracy and usability
How Agentforce Vibes Supports AI in Salesforce
Salesforce’s approach to AI has always centred around trust, transparency, and the belief that AI must augment – not override – human strategy. Vibes reflects that philosophy with several core features:
Capability
What It Means for Users
Contextual personalisation
AI agents make decisions based on specific departmental workflows and data usage.
Governance-aware intelligence
Admins set boundaries, and AI operates within those business controls.
Continuous learning
Feedback improves the relevance and quality of actions over time.
Human-in-the-loop design
Employees review and approve key decisions – AI doesn’t run unchecked.
The goal is simple: AI that adjusts to business realities and human expertise, not the other way around.
What Does This Mean for Salesforce Teams?
For Salesforce professionals, Agentforce Vibes is not something to fear. It’s an opportunity.
Admins and Developers remain the core of Salesforce ecosystems – the people who:
- Ensure AI aligns to the company’s data model
- Create the guardrails that protect compliance and security
- Translate business requirements into Salesforce functionality
- Shape the workflows AI will help enhance
- Connect teams with the right tools to succeed, keeping humans at the heart of each decision
Agentforce Vibes doesn’t eliminate that responsibility. It makes the work smoother and more impactful by reducing repetitive labour and boosting insight quality.
For example, instead of manually configuring dozens of preferences or adjusting prompts repeatedly, Admins will have a centralised way to manage personalisation at scale. They will spend less energy on micromanagement and more time driving strategy and innovation.
In many ways, Vibes reinforces the Admin role – ensuring organisations still need skilled experts to maintain sustainable growth and successful adoption.
What Benefits Can Salesforce Teams Expect?
Agentforce Vibes introduces a new layer of intelligence that improves productivity from day one. Here’s a glimpse of what users can look forward to:
1. Less time navigating, more time doing
Agentforce builds with no code or complex prompts, just a description from the user. Custom objects, relationships, and page layouts can all be constructed in minutes.
2. Continuous Improvement
AI proactively auto-suggests actions relevant to the user’s current task.
2. Reduced training friction
New employees onboard faster because the system guides them proactively.
3. Better data quality
Context-based prompts facilitate the capture of accurate and complete data.
4. Personalised automation
Recommendations feel like helpful coaching – not generic system prompts.
5. Higher engagement and adoption
When Salesforce feels more intuitive, users naturally rely on it more.
Each of these improvements strengthens the platform’s long-term value.
At Performa, we see the most significant initial use case for Vibes as prototyping. For example, you are a business analyst tasked with presenting new components for the customer service page layout. You use Agentforce Vibes to quickly mock up a lightning web component for feedback from stakeholders. This will allow you to present a more detailed set of requirements, along with an example component, to your development team before they embark on the project.
Human Expertise Still Drives Success
It’s important to highlight that the Salesforce platform is vast and nuanced. Even with advanced AI capabilities, there is no “set it and forget it” scenario. Automations need oversight. Data governance needs guardians. Business processes need translation.
Agentforce Vibes enables AI to support users more intelligently, but:
- It does not understand business logic without correct configuration.
- It cannot decide or dictate business strategy.
- It cannot replace the empathy and judgment of human decision-making.
Like every tool in the Salesforce suite, Vibes is designed to enhance human capability – not erase it. Admins and Developers remain essential because technology only delivers value when it is correctly implemented and continuously optimised.
As a marketeer, I could probably put together an out-of-the-box shelving system with some good instructions, albeit with a lot of stress involved and likely some expletives, that would bear a small amount of weight. But would it be practical, durable, fit-for-purpose, and tailored to my space, routines and aesthetic? It certainly would not. And would I have the time to learn the skills necessary to do so in a timely manner? No! I’m not talking about my personal DIY conquests totally out of context here; this is one of the metaphors we use to assure our clients that although the technology is designed to save our most precious resource, time, and make our working lives easier, you still need skilled Admins, Developers, Architects (and carpenters!) to get the jobs done reliably, scalably and to a high standard.
Good Vibes: Future Expectations
As Agentforce Vibes rolls into more organisations, we can expect:
- Stronger collaboration between business users and Salesforce/IT teams
- Smoother user experiences that increase productivity
- AI that feels less like “tech” and more like a helpful teammate
What doesn’t change?
The need for skilled Salesforce professionals.
AI can automate tasks, but people build relationships. People drive change. People ensure that business systems reflect real-world needs.
Agentforce Vibes represents the next step in Salesforce’s AI evolution. It is exciting, transformative, and undeniably powerful – but it is not a replacement for the Admin role. If anything, it highlights the continued importance of human guidance.
With Vibes, Salesforce professionals are empowered to:
- Provide a smarter, more intuitive experience
- Reduce tedious maintenance
- Focus on strategic contributions that elevate the business
As always, Salesforce is building automation not to replace jobs, but to support sustainable growth and stronger outcomes for everyone involved. As I mentioned earlier in the article, the Salesforce 360 and its AI capabilities give us more of our most valuable resource: time. Time to innovate, time to reimagine, time to overcome what’s holding us back from growth.
The future of Salesforce remains, as it always has been, a partnership between innovative technology and the talented people who make that technology effective.
Want to learn more about how you can use Salesforce to automate the time-consuming tasks in your organisation and break down the bottlenecks? Reach out to us today!
More on Agentforce Vibes from Salesforce.
18/11/2025
Our Predictions for Dreamforce 2025: Salesforce’s Vision for the Agentic Enterprise
Dreamforce 2025, as always, is set to be a transformative event, showcasing Salesforce’s commitment to an AI-first, agentic future. From advancements in Agentforce to strategic acquisitions, the conference promises to unveil innovations that will redefine user operations. Here are our predictions on key themes at this year’s pinnacle ecosystem event as the crowds start to check in in San Francisco!
Evolving Agentforce: The Agentic Enterprise
At the heart of Salesforce’s transformative vision is Agentforce, the AI-powered platform designed to automate complex workflows and enhance human productivity. The latest iteration, Agentforce 4, introduces several key features:
- Multi-Agent Orchestration: Agentforce now supports seamless interaction between multiple AI agents, enabling them to collaborate on tasks and share insights. This advancement is particularly beneficial for large organisations requiring coordinated, Agent-to-Agent efforts across various departments.
- Enhanced Observability: The Agentforce Command Centre provides administrators with real-time visibility into agent activities, allowing for better monitoring and optimisation of AI workflows. Command Centre gives admins this omniscient view via intuitive dashboards and visual workflow maps. It highlights task progress, handoffs, and potential bottlenecks, while logs and alerts allow quick diagnosis, helping teams ensure AI runs smoothly and efficiently.
- Unified Workspace: The addition of a new unified workspace for admins and developers also streamlines the process of designing, testing, and deploying AI agents, reducing time-to-value for organisations.
Flexible Pricing Models
Salesforce has expanded Agentforce’s pricing options to include new models that provide organisations with the flexibility to choose the payment structure that best aligns with their operational needs and budget constraints. These are:
- Pay-as-You-Go: Ideal for businesses with variable usage, this model allows companies to pay monthly based on the number of Flex Credits used, with no upfront commitment.
- Pre-Commit: This option offers discounted rates in exchange for an upfront commitment, making it suitable for companies with predictable AI usage.
- Pre-Purchase: For businesses with consistent demand, this model allows organisations to buy credits in bulk and use them over time, ensuring cost-effectiveness.
Agentforce’s updated pricing also includes industry-specific add-ons. These cater to specialised needs across various sectors, ensuring that businesses can leverage AI capabilities tailored to their industry requirements without heavy customisation.
For example:
- Financial Services: Automated fraud detection, loan processing assistance, and compliance monitoring.
- Healthcare: Patient intake automation, appointment scheduling, and secure data handling.
- Retail & E-Commerce: Personalised recommendation engines, inventory alerts, and customer support automation.
- Manufacturing: Predictive maintenance, supply chain monitoring, and quality control insights.
To cater to user needs, it’s possible that Salesforce may make even more improvements or tweaks to their Agentforce pricing model, so this is certainly something to keep in mind as we head into Dreamforce.
SMB-Specific Accelerators: Bridging the AI Gap
Recognising the challenges faced by SMBs in adopting advanced technologies, we predict that Salesforce may introduce accelerators designed to facilitate smoother transitions into AI-driven operations.
Zero-Cost Trial Periods
To lower the entry barrier, Salesforce could offer a limited, zero-cost, production-ready trial of the Agentforce Accelerator for enterprises with low numbers of employees. This initiative would enable businesses to experience the benefits of AI automation without incurring initial financial commitments, providing a risk-free opportunity to assess the platform’s impact. We have seen a number of ISV partners, such as Breadwinner, offer similar activation trials of their integrated agents, so this could be in the pipeline for Salesforce, too.
We know that Salesforce is enhancing its support for SMBs by offering tailored implementation services. These include personalised onboarding, training sessions, and dedicated account management to ensure that SMBs can effectively integrate Agentforce into their operations and maximise its potential. We certainly expect to see more dedicated spaces and sessions at Dreamforce and World Tour. If you are a small business looking to invest in your agentic future, we encourage you to keep an eye out for these focused opportunities.
Service Cloud Voice: Elevating Customer Interactions
This will certainly be a significant talking point at Dreamforce this year. Service Cloud Voice integrates telephony directly into Salesforce, unifying calls, AI insights, and CRM data in a single interface. By providing real-time AI assistance, suggested responses, and automated call logging, it enables agents to resolve customer issues more quickly and accurately. This seamless blend of voice and AI not only boosts agent productivity but also ensures a consistent, personalised experience for every customer.
Salesforce continues to enhance this groundbreaking feature, integrating AI capabilities to improve customer service operations:
- AI-Powered Interactions: Service Cloud Voice now leverages AI to assist agents in real-time, providing suggestions and automating routine tasks to improve efficiency.
- Omnichannel Support: The platform offers seamless support across various channels, ensuring consistent and personalised customer experiences.
- Integration with Agentforce: Service Cloud Voice integrates with Agentforce, enabling AI agents to handle specific tasks and further enhance the support process.
Here at Performa, we are very excited to learn more about the roadmap for Voice. We believe that this technology, announced at last year’s event, even has the potential to make more waves market-wide than Agentforce itself. A new horizon of customer experience.
Strategic Acquisitions: Strengthening the AI Ecosystem
It’s worth mentioning that Salesforce has recently made significant acquisitions to bolster its AI capabilities, especially when it comes to trust and data security:
- Informatica: Acquiring Informatica for approximately $8 billion enhances Salesforce’s data management and integration capabilities, critical for AI-driven operations (Salesforce Investor Relations, May 2025).
- Own Co.: The acquisition of data-security startup Own Co. for $1.9 billion strengthens Salesforce’s data protection and compliance offerings, ensuring secure AI operations (Salesforce, 2024).
Something Salesforce does exceptionally well is understanding and leveraging its core strengths – like CRM, AI automation, and workflow orchestration – so it can focus on areas where it already excels. At the same time, strategic acquisitions allow Salesforce to quickly fill gaps in capabilities, particularly around user and customer data. This ensures robust data management, compliance, and security while enabling richer AI-driven insights. By combining internal expertise with acquired technology, Salesforce can offer a more complete, reliable, and innovative platform without reinventing the wheel, and the benefits are passed on to us as users. We imagine that data protection, security and the Einstein Trust Layer will be heavily featured in the keynotes and sessions.
Core Suite Enhancements: A Unified Platform
As we all know, Salesforce is continuing to integrate AI across its core suite at a rapid rate, providing a unified platform and an enhanced user experience.
- Unified Workspace: The new unified workspace for admins and developers facilitates the design, testing, and deployment of AI agents across various Salesforce applications. This makes it much easier to deploy and iterate with Agentforce.
- AI Integration: AI capabilities are now naturally embedded across the core suite, enabling intelligent automation and insights within applications like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud.
Looking Ahead
Dreamforce 2025 marks a pivotal moment in Salesforce’s journey towards an agentic enterprise. With advancements in Agentforce, enhancements to Service Cloud Voice, strategic acquisitions, and a unified AI-powered core suite, Salesforce is poised to lead the next wave of market transformation.
Attendees can expect in-depth sessions, hands-on demonstrations, and insights from industry leaders, providing a comprehensive view of the future of AI in business. For those unable to attend in person, Dreamforce 2025 will be streamed live on Salesforce+.
As we approach the event, the anticipation builds for what promises to be a groundbreaking showcase of innovation, collaboration, and the future of AI. Stay tuned to hear the announcements and get the Dreamforce recap. If you’re in San Fran attending the event, come and say hi!
18/11/2025
Salesforce & Spreadsheets: Turn these adversaries into an advantage
Salesforce & Spreadsheets: Turn these adversaries into an advantage
Salesforce Admins debate the superiority of Salesforce vs the use of spreadsheets. Whilst Salesforce admittedly excels in the reporting function, protects intellectual property, adds layers of security and prevents data silos, it is worth acknowledging that many of us grew up using spreadsheets, and have been leveraging their functionality and design in our careers for many years. The result of this ingrained usage is disparate data, even throughout organisations using Salesforce CRM.
Salesforce advocates may not be able to ban their colleagues from using spreadsheets (those in roles relating to Finance may be horrified at the thought!), but we can recommend a way to reduce the admin burden derived from relaying data between sheets and your CRM.
XL Connector and G Connector are products offered by Xappex to enhance user productivity by providing a more user-friendly solution than the standard data manipulation tools, such as Import Wizard and Dataloader. They allow users to manipulate data in Salesforce (or other CRMs and databases) directly from Excel or Google Sheets.
G-Connector enables the configuration of snapshots, allowing data to be pulled from Salesforce into Google Sheets as regularly as every hour. Alternatively a shared spreadsheet can be set up which will sync data both ways, providing a means for users without Salesforce licences to view and update Salesforce data in real time.
XL-Connector provides its own useful functionality, coming equipped with a suite of tools to improve the lives of Salesforce Administrators. Salesforce reports can be accessed directly from Excel, data can be pulled into sheets from connected orgs at the click of a button to be updated and pushed back into Salesforce, and time consuming tasks such as mass updating description/help fields can be completed much faster.
The tips above will hopefully make an array of spreadsheets easier to handle and translate into Salesforce. If you are looking for more ways to supercharge your organisation’s productivity, reach out to hello@performa-it.co.uk or give us a call on 0117 230 2390!
When it comes to business technology, few names spark as much recognition – and sometimes confusion – as Salesforce. Depending on who you ask, it’s either the world’s most famous CRM, a fully-fledged ERP, or, according to Salesforce itself, something far more futuristic. So which is it? Let’s clear the air.
CRM: The Basics
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and it does exactly what it says on the tin: it helps businesses manage interactions with customers and prospects. Think of it as a structured Rolodex with superpowers – tracking leads, sales activities, conversations, and marketing campaigns. Salesforce became synonymous with CRM because it pioneered the model of delivering this software via the cloud (way back in 1999, when the cloud was still just “other people’s computers”).
Common CRM features include:
- Lead and contact management
- Sales pipeline tracking
- Customer support and service tools
- Marketing campaign automation
Examples of CRMs beyond Salesforce include HubSpot, Zoho CRM, and Microsoft Dynamics 365.
ERP: The Other Business Titan
ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning, is a different beast. While CRMs focus on customers, ERPs aim to run the business as a whole. They unify and manage core processes such as finance, supply chain, HR, procurement, and inventory. In short, if a CRM knows who your customers are, an ERP knows how many widgets are left in the warehouse and whether payroll has cleared.
The heavyweight in this category is SAP, alongside contenders like Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, and Infor. ERP is more about operational backbone; CRM is about customer-facing strategy. They complement rather than replace each other.
Is Salesforce an ERP?
No – but it’s trying to edge closer. Salesforce is still, at its heart, a CRM platform. Its bread and butter is sales, service, and marketing. However, with acquisitions like MuleSoft (integration), Slack (comms & collaboration), and Tableau (analytics), Salesforce has been steadily adding muscle in directions that brush against ERP territory.
But does Salesforce handle things like accounting, supply chain logistics, or manufacturing planning? Not out of the box. For those, businesses still turn to ERP vendors like SAP or Oracle. That said, Salesforce has made itself very good at integrating with ERP systems, so it often sits as the customer-facing layer on top of them. It is also known for being highly customisable, meaning that skilled developers and partners can create custom objects, workflows, and applications that perform ERP-style tasks. While it may not ship with ERP modules out of the box, its flexibility allows organisations to extend the platform in ways that blur the line between CRM and ERP.
CRM vs. SAP: Clearing Up a Common Mix-Up
This is where many business conversations get tangled. SAP is not a type of software; it’s a company. More precisely, SAP is the German giant that makes ERP software (and, yes, they also make CRM solutions). Saying “CRM and SAP are the same” is a bit like saying “coffee and Starbucks are the same.” Starbucks is a company that sells coffee, but coffee itself is an entire category.
SAP’s ERP solutions dominate global enterprises, while its CRM tools compete with Salesforce – though Salesforce still leads in market share for ‘customer relationship management’.
The Salesforce Identity Shift
Here’s where things get interesting. Salesforce, despite being the face of CRM for decades, has been gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) distancing itself from the term. In much the same way the tech world in the early 2000s tried to rebrand “software” into something bigger, shinier, and more visionary, Salesforce is recasting itself as a “digital workforce” or “digital labour platform.”
That sounds a little sci-fi – perhaps conjuring images of robotic colleagues stealing your desk space – but what it really means is this: Salesforce wants to be seen less as “that CRM you use for sales calls” and more as the platform where your business automation lives. The company envisions its tools as the digital hands that carry out repetitive tasks, solve simple customer requests, crunch analytics, and send nudges to employees so humans can focus on higher-value work. In practice, this means automating sales follow-ups, predicting churn risk with AI, or orchestrating marketing journeys at scale.
The strategy makes sense: the CRM market is crowded, while “digital labour” suggests a broader, almost indispensable category of enterprise software. Salesforce isn’t just your customer Rolodex – it’s positioning itself as the nervous system for modern organisations.
So… Is Salesforce a CRM or Not?
Yes. Absolutely. Salesforce is a CRM – arguably the CRM. But it’s also more than that. Its platform has grown into an ecosystem for analytics, AI-driven automation, and integrations with countless other enterprise tools. What it isn’t (yet) is a full-blown ERP. For businesses that need to run finance, supply chain, or HR alongside customer relationships, Salesforce usually partners with or integrates into ERP giants rather than replacing them. Salesforce knows what they do best, and they tend to partner with, or sometimes acquire, the companies that
Why It Matters
For decision-makers, the distinction matters. If you’re trying to streamline payroll or optimise your factory floor, Salesforce won’t automatically do that out of the box. If you’re trying to understand, win, and keep customers, it will. And if you’re looking for a platform to help automate workflows and make your team feel like they have a few extra pairs of digital hands, Salesforce is increasingly the go-to.
The takeaway? Salesforce may be moving away from the tidy CRM label, but at its core, that’s still what it is. The rebranding into “digital workforce” isn’t about abandoning CRM – it’s about staking a claim to a bigger future. A future where CRMs aren’t just about customers, but about orchestrating entire digital experiences across the business landscape.
Final Thought
So, is Salesforce a CRM? Yes. Is it also trying to be more than a CRM? Also yes. Is it an ERP? Not yet, and maybe not ever in the traditional sense. Salesforce is carving out a hybrid space – a CRM at heart, a digital labour platform by ambition. Whether that sounds inspiring or a little intimidating depends on how ready you are to let software take on more of your business’s day-to-day work. Either way, one thing’s clear: the debate over Salesforce’s identity isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
18/11/2025
Is Salesforce a CRM or Not?
When it comes to business technology, few names spark as much recognition – and sometimes confusion – as Salesforce. Depending on who you ask, it’s either the world’s most famous CRM, a fully-fledged ERP, or, according to Salesforce itself, something far more futuristic. So which is it? Let’s clear the air.
CRM: The Basics
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and it does exactly what it says on the tin: it helps businesses manage interactions with customers and prospects. Think of it as a structured Rolodex with superpowers – tracking leads, sales activities, conversations, and marketing campaigns. Salesforce became synonymous with CRM because it pioneered the model of delivering this software via the cloud (way back in 1999, when the cloud was still just “other people’s computers”).
Common CRM features include:
- Lead and contact management
- Sales pipeline tracking
- Customer support and service tools
- Marketing campaign automation
Examples of CRMs beyond Salesforce include HubSpot, Zoho CRM, and Microsoft Dynamics 365.
ERP: The Other Business Titan
ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning, is a different beast. While CRMs focus on customers, ERPs aim to run the business as a whole. They unify and manage core processes such as finance, supply chain, HR, procurement, and inventory. In short, if a CRM knows who your customers are, an ERP knows how many widgets are left in the warehouse and whether payroll has cleared.
The heavyweight in this category is SAP, alongside contenders like Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, and Infor. ERP is more about operational backbone; CRM is about customer-facing strategy. They complement rather than replace each other.
Is Salesforce an ERP?
No – but it’s trying to edge closer. Salesforce is still, at its heart, a CRM platform. Its bread and butter is sales, service, and marketing. However, with acquisitions like MuleSoft (integration), Slack (comms & collaboration), and Tableau (analytics), Salesforce has been steadily adding muscle in directions that brush against ERP territory.
But does Salesforce handle things like accounting, supply chain logistics, or manufacturing planning? Not out of the box. For those, businesses still turn to ERP vendors like SAP or Oracle. That said, Salesforce has made itself very good at integrating with ERP systems, so it often sits as the customer-facing layer on top of them. It is also known for being highly customisable, meaning that skilled developers and partners can create custom objects, workflows, and applications that perform ERP-style tasks. While it may not ship with ERP modules out of the box, its flexibility allows organisations to extend the platform in ways that blur the line between CRM and ERP.
CRM vs. SAP: Clearing Up a Common Mix-Up
This is where many business conversations get tangled. SAP is not a type of software; it’s a company. More precisely, SAP is the German giant that makes ERP software (and, yes, they also make CRM solutions). Saying “CRM and SAP are the same” is a bit like saying “coffee and Starbucks are the same.” Starbucks is a company that sells coffee, but coffee itself is an entire category.
SAP’s ERP solutions dominate global enterprises, while its CRM tools compete with Salesforce – though Salesforce still leads in market share for ‘customer relationship management’.
The Salesforce Identity Shift
Here’s where things get interesting. Salesforce, despite being the face of CRM for decades, has been gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) distancing itself from the term. In much the same way the tech world in the early 2000s tried to rebrand “software” into something bigger, shinier, and more visionary, Salesforce is recasting itself as a “digital workforce” or “digital labour platform.”
That sounds a little sci-fi – perhaps conjuring images of robotic colleagues stealing your desk space – but what it really means is this: Salesforce wants to be seen less as “that CRM you use for sales calls” and more as the platform where your business automation lives. The company envisions its tools as the digital hands that carry out repetitive tasks, solve simple customer requests, crunch analytics, and send nudges to employees so humans can focus on higher-value work. In practice, this means automating sales follow-ups, predicting churn risk with AI, or orchestrating marketing journeys at scale.
The strategy makes sense: the CRM market is crowded, while “digital labour” suggests a broader, almost indispensable category of enterprise software. Salesforce isn’t just your customer Rolodex – it’s positioning itself as the nervous system for modern organisations.
So… Is Salesforce a CRM or Not?
Yes. Absolutely. Salesforce is a CRM – arguably the CRM. But it’s also more than that. Its platform has grown into an ecosystem for analytics, AI-driven automation, and integrations with countless other enterprise tools. What it isn’t (yet) is a full-blown ERP. For businesses that need to run finance, supply chain, or HR alongside customer relationships, Salesforce usually partners with or integrates into ERP giants rather than replacing them. Salesforce knows what they do best, and they tend to partner with, or sometimes acquire, the companies that
Why It Matters
For decision-makers, the distinction matters. If you’re trying to streamline payroll or optimise your factory floor, Salesforce won’t automatically do that out of the box. If you’re trying to understand, win, and keep customers, it will. And if you’re looking for a platform to help automate workflows and make your team feel like they have a few extra pairs of digital hands, Salesforce is increasingly the go-to.
The takeaway? Salesforce may be moving away from the tidy CRM label, but at its core, that’s still what it is. The rebranding into “digital workforce” isn’t about abandoning CRM – it’s about staking a claim to a bigger future. A future where CRMs aren’t just about customers, but about orchestrating entire digital experiences across the business landscape.
Final Thought
So, is Salesforce a CRM? Yes. Is it also trying to be more than a CRM? Also yes. Is it an ERP? Not yet, and maybe not ever in the traditional sense. Salesforce is carving out a hybrid space – a CRM at heart, a digital labour platform by ambition. Whether that sounds inspiring or a little intimidating depends on how ready you are to let software take on more of your business’s day-to-day work. Either way, one thing’s clear: the debate over Salesforce’s identity isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
22/09/2025
“What If I’m Not Ready for Agentforce?” – A question from the World Tour Floor
At this year’s Salesforce World Tour, one thing was clear: Agentforce is here for the long-run, and it’s capturing imaginations across industries. Conversations buzzed with possibilities – eliminated barriers, real-time insights, reduced workloads, and faster resolutions.
But amid the excitement, we kept hearing an important question from thoughtful, strategic customers:
“What about me? What if I’m not ready for Agentforce?”
It’s a fair question – and one we believe needs a clear answer.
As a consulting partner, our job isn’t just to deliver solutions – it’s to future-proof our clients. That means not rushing headfirst into implementations that aren’t set up for success.
Agentforce is powerful. It’s shiny. It’s purple. But underneath the surface of the keynote demos, use case selection strategies and slick user interfaces, sustained success comes down to five things:
1. Data Readiness
AI is only as smart as the data it’s fed. If your service data is fragmented, unstructured, or incomplete, your Agentforce deployment won’t have the clarity it needs to function effectively. Think of it like giving a driver a map with missing roads. Before launching, it’s critical to:
- Audit and clean historical data
- Standardise fields and categories
- Ensure visibility of relevant data across systems
You need to draw the map. Without this step, AI simply can’t make informed decisions – and your users will quickly lose trust in its recommendations.
2. User Adoption
Even the most capable AI tool will fall flat if no one uses it. Success with Agentforce hinges on how well it fits into your team’s daily workflows – and whether they believe it can help. That means:
- Designing experiences that feel helpful, not intrusive
- Prioritising ease of use and low-friction interfaces
- Including your team in the rollout process, early and often
Adoption doesn’t happen by accident. It’s planned, tested, and earned.
3. User Education
It’s not enough for AI to work – your users need, and most likely want, to understand how it works. This builds confidence, encourages experimentation, and ensures responsible usage. We’ve seen firsthand how training transforms outcomes:
- Provide context-specific learning tailored to roles
- Explain the reasoning behind AI outputs
- Build literacy on prompt writing and evaluating AI responses
When people understand how the machine thinks, they stop fearing it – and start collaborating with it.
4. Cultural Buy-In
AI isn’t just a technology shift – it’s a mindset shift. For Agentforce to succeed, there needs to be strong, ideally company or department-wide, alignment on the “why”:
- Why are we introducing digital agents?
- What outcomes are we aiming for?
- How will roles and responsibilities evolve?
From leadership through to the service desk, everyone needs to see the bigger picture. That cultural readiness is a major player in the most successful implementations to date.
5. Contextual Testing
Agentforce isn’t plug-and-play. Success depends on training your digital agents in the context of your business – not just Salesforce’s demos. That includes:
- Piloting on low-risk but high-impact use cases
- Iterating based on real interactions and feedback
- Creating testing environments that simulate real-world scenarios
By the time you go live, your team should already know what to expect – and trust that the system’s been battle-tested for your unique needs.
It’s Okay to Be Focused Elsewhere
On the day, we had many conversations with businesses who said things along the lines of, “Agentforce looks great, but we’re still rolling out Marketing Cloud,” or “We’re focused on enhancing our current service processes first.”
That’s okay. In fact, it’s the right thing to do.
AI shouldn’t derail strategic roadmaps – it should complement them. As an end-to-end Salesforce partner, our job isn’t to push Agentforce prematurely. It’s to help you adopt AI when the time is right, on your terms and in line with your wider transformation plans.
If your focus right now is optimisation, integration, or foundational improvements – lean into that. You’re already laying the groundwork and it will ultimately be easier to implement AI when the time comes.
The Real Message Behind the Demos
If you spoke to the experts at World Tour, you’d start to hear this theme again and again: readiness comes before results.
Yes, Agentforce is designed to be intuitive. But implementation is a journey. You’re not just plugging in a chatbot – you’re introducing a new kind of digital coworker. That means asking smart questions like:
- What repeatable tasks do we want to automate?
- Is our case data structured and accurate?
- What flows can we take advantage of that are already in place?
- Do our agents trust and understand what AI can do for them?
- Are we prepared for the change management that comes with automation?
The truth is, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to adopting Agentforce. And there shouldn’t be.
Some of the most valuable conversations we had at World Tour were with businesses still laying the groundwork with the standard Salesforce product suite. And that’s okay. In fact, it’s wise.
At Performa, we believe readiness isn’t a barrier – it’s the first and most critical step in any successful AI journey. That’s why we offer complimentary readiness consultations to help you evaluate where you are today and what needs to happen next.
You don’t need to sprint to catch up. You need a clear, tailored path – and a partner who knows how to guide you.
Ready When You Are
Agentforce has incredible potential to transform customer service and empower your teams. But to unlock that value, the foundation has to be right.
So if you’re asking, “Am I ready?” – know that you’re not alone, and the answer might be “not yet”. And that’s perfectly fine.
When you’re ready, we’ll be here – to support, educate, and help you build the future of your business, one step at a time. You can book your complimentary readiness consultation today if you’re ready to set out on that Agentforce journey. Got another priority in mind? Get in touch to see how we can help you cut costs, boost productivity and win customers across the Salesforce 360!
16/06/2025
Pip Tip #54 – Supercharge your Salesforce flows with reactive screens!
Supercharge Your Salesforce Flows with Reactive Screens!
Gone are the days of clunky, static flows. With Reactive Screens, your flow components can now interact in real-time – updating fields, calculations, and UI elements instantly as users input data.
Why does this matter? It means more dynamic, responsive, and efficient processes, ultimately leading to increased productivity and smoother user interactions.
Whether you’re a Salesforce admin, developer, or business analyst, embracing this feature can significantly streamline your workflows. Ready to make your flows smarter and more responsive?
Learn more about Reactive Flows here:
Read more
19/05/2025
Pip Tip #47 – Best practice with apex code coverage visualiser
Best Practice with Apex Code Coverage Visualiser
Apex Code Coverage Visualiser for VS Code empowers Salesforce developers to write high-quality, well-tested code by providing a clear and interactive overview of test coverage directly within the familiar VS Code environment.
With this tool, developers can ensure the reliability and robustness of their Apex code while optimising their testing processes.
This extension allows you to see class coverage metrics, visualise a coverage report, interactive exploration and filtering, and provide seamless integration.
Read more
19/05/2025
Pip Tip #41 – Optimising lwc development workflow using Salesforce plugins
Optimising LWC Development Workflow using Salesforce Plugins
Enhancing the workflow for Lightning Web Components (LWC) in Salesforce is crucial for efficient and high-quality application development.
Two tools we recommend facilitating this process are the Salesforce Scanner and the LWC Local Development plugin.
Salesforce Scanner is dedicated to ensuring code quality and adherence to best practices, while the LWC Local Development Plugin focuses on streamlining the development and testing phases.
Integrating these plugins results in improved efficiency, reliability, and quality in Salesforce LWC application development!
19/05/2025
Pip Tip #35 – Starting off with flows in Salesforce
Starting Off with Flows in Salesforce
Want to update a field when something changes? Use a Record-Triggered Flow.
Example: Auto-update a “Status” field when a case is closed.No code needed. Just logic.
Flows > New > Record-Triggered → Choose Object → Add Update Element
19/05/2025
Pip Tip #34 – Eliminate manual lead assignment
Eliminate Manual Lead Assignment
Tired of manually assigning leads? Use Lead Assignment Rules to route new leads based on criteria like region, industry, or product interest.
Go to:Setup → Lead Assignment Rules → Create Rule → Add Rule Entries
Save time and make sure the right rep gets the right lead, every time.
19/05/2025