Salesforce SVP: Inside the Agentforce Revolution

So far, the summer of 2025 has belonged to Salesforce. 

Since the launch of its flagship AI product Agentforce last year, the cloud-based software giant has embarked on one of the most ambitious corporate marketing campaigns in recent memory.

The Agentforce World Tour – a roadshow so vast that even Taylor Swift wouldn’t turn her nose up at it – has helped to familiarise people across the globe with Salesforce’s new landmark offering, a platform that deploys AI agents to automate tasks, assist employees and manage customer relationships.

The tour has already made stops in all five continents, with a whole host of dates still to come later in the year. Clearly, Salesforce believes it is sitting on a goldmine, and Marc Benioff and co. want to shout it from the rooftops.

“This isn’t just hype,” Salesforce’s long-term CEO said recently. “This is real technology that can lower your costs, make things easier and deliver the vision of digital labour to you and your company – now.”

If the live event at London’s ExCel was anything to go by, then the business world is cottoning on very quickly. 

The opening keynotes, delivered by UK&I CEO Zahra Bahrololoumi and SVP of Solutions Engineering Paul O’Sullivan, included live demonstrations of the technology, showing the 12,000-strong audience the transformative power of Agentforce in action.

After the presentation, we spoke with Paul to discuss all things Agentforce and why it is the driving force behind “the most exciting time” in his career.

From prediction to action

Paul’s enthusiasm for Agentforce is palpable, but it's rooted in years of methodical development. Salesforce's AI journey began far earlier than many might expect – back in 2014, when the company established an ethics council to ensure responsible AI deployment. 

“We kind of saw this was coming,” he says, "and the real focus to start with was actually let's reflect on our core values and our number one core value is trust."

This foundation led to Einstein in 2016, Salesforce's predictive AI model that was able to forecast probabilities and outcomes. But the real breakthrough came in September 2023, when Salesforce recognised that their R&D team might have come up with something far more powerful than text generation.

“We're sitting on a platform that has a tonne of capability that enables our customers to manage their workflows," Paul reflects.

By combining their existing platform with AI, Salesforce created what Paul describes as "this ability to trigger actions" – the company’s first truly agentic AI.

When compared to Gen AI LLMs like ChatGPT, agentic AI is in its own league altogether. "Generating text is great, but you need it to do something for you," Paul suggests. "It needs to fulfil something."

A limitless workforce

But what is the limit for Agentforce? How high can it fly? Paul believes that it moves far beyond automation. 

He paints a picture of businesses stepping into “a world of a limitless workforce”, one that can mirror the knowledge and skills of a company’s best performers and scale it across AI agents that work round the clock.

"When you find one of these fantastic people, you tend to gravitate towards them," Paul says of traditional workplace dynamics. 

Agentforce is changing this equation entirely, allowing businesses to extend the expertise of those talented individuals across countless AI bots.

The real-world applications are already proving transformative: the Agentforce World Tour event is geared around showing people that.

Speaking on panels are execs from companies like Heathrow and Capita, all of whom regale audiences with the applications they have found for Agentforce, as well as the ones they’re still exploring. 

"If you are employing people and you have a workforce, you can benefit from it,” Paul says, referring to the versatility of the software.

How businesses can get involved

For businesses looking to join the thousands already using Agentforce, Paul advocates a hands-on approach. 

"The biggest thing in all of this is just give it a go," he insists. "Break that barrier of, 'I'm not sure, I feel a bit uneasy, it's something new.'" 

He emphasises the importance of celebrating both successes and failures during the learning process, noting that agents can be operational in as little as two weeks, though continuous iteration is essential.

The technology's rapid deployment means that perfection is a promise. Instead, Paul stresses the importance of ongoing refinement.

"We need to iterate on our agents because we'll always be going through a fine tuning process of making sure that we've got the right guardrails, the right controls."

Freeing people up to be more creative

Addressing concerns about AI replacing human creativity, Paul offers a different perspective. Rather than viewing AI as a threat to creative industries, he sees it as a liberation tool. 

"I actually think script writers and journalists will be the best prompt writers of the future," he suggests, arguing that their descriptive abilities make them naturally suited to working with AI systems.

The broader vision is one of enhanced human potential rather than replacement. By handling repetitive and time-consuming tasks, Agentforce promises to free workers for more creative and personally fulfilling activities. 

"I think we all are looking for more time in our day to do some of these creative recreational types of activities," he says.

What does the future hold for Agentforce?

As for what lies ahead, Paul’s optimism is infectious, even if his predictions remain deliberately broad. "I think the possibilities are only limited by our lack of creative thinking," he reflects, envisioning applications ranging from healthcare breakthroughs to space exploration.

The convergence of AI with emerging technologies like quantum computing promises to accelerate progress even further. 

"This whole next thing is going to be a rocket ship with a combination of quantum plus what we've seen with large language models," he predicts.

“We can absolutely redefine and reimagine the world that we live in with this technology right now.

"This next five years will not slow down. The train is about to depart and we need to be on it together."

*******************************************************************************************

You can read this story in the August edition of Technology Magazine now.