Salesforce & IBM Collaborate on AI for Better Decision-Making

Salesforce and IBM plan to deliver advanced agents to support sales and services process that customers, including those in highly regulated industries, can deploy 24/7 to get work done

Salesforce and IBM are taking their longstanding partnership to the next level by focusing on the needs of organizations that want to transform sales and services processes with AI, and customers in regulated industries who wish to use untapped enterprise data to automate actions. Together, Salesforce and IBM plan to provide pre-built AI agents and tools that organizations can use within their own IT environments, using their unique data and maintaining strict control over their systems.

By combining Agentforce, Salesforce’s suite of autonomous agents, with capabilities from IBM’s watsonx, the companies will help customers harness the power of agents within the applications they use every day. Leveraging watsonx Orchestrate, IBM will create autonomous agents for Agentforce to help businesses improve productivity, maintain security, and adhere to regulations. IBM customers also will be able to use Slack to engage in conversational experiences with their agents.

Integrations planned between Salesforce Data Cloud and IBM Data Gate for watsonx can enable customers to access their business data in IBM Z mainframes and Db2 databases to fuel agents, combined data analysis, and AI workflows across the Agentforce platform.

Additionally, customers will be able to access a wider variety of AI model and deployment options through an integration with IBM watsonx.ai, and will be able to power their new agents using Granite, IBM’s family of foundation models built for business.

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Enhancing business automation with tailored autonomous agents

Through the Agentforce Partner Network, businesses will be able to build and customize AI agents that independently interact with various enterprise tools and platforms. Agentforce Agents can reason, understand, and make decisions to help their users perform multi-step tasks based on triggers or chats. They can also interact with users when needed, to request approval to perform tasks that exceed their assigned scope or authority.

Agents will enable customers to automate routine or time-consuming tasks and be able to free up internal resources to focus on more strategic work. Additionally, the Agents will drive greater efficiency, help streamline operations, and improve customer service.

IBM will integrate watsonx Orchestrate, its generative AI product that automates business processes, with Salesforce Agentforce. Watsonx Orchestrate leverages IBM’s Granite models, optimized for enterprise-grade, targeted business domains and use cases.

Using watsonx Orchestrate, IBM plans to develop new pre-built agents for specific business challenges. These agents will be designed to bring unique value as they will be powered by both Salesforce and IBM’s data and AI. The companies are leveraging the power of Agentforce and IBM watsonx and Granite models with support from IBM Consulting’s expertise to deliver agents that help customers in new ways:

• Identify new sales leads by orchestrating insights across various applications and custom data sources. The agents will also deliver the right leads in Sales Cloud to other autonomous agents or refer leads to sales representatives.
• Fast-track sales training by providing learning journeys, certifications, and personalized support to help close deals faster and ramp up new sales programs.
• Improve banking onboarding experiences by collecting and reconciling data for new applications, streamlining approvals, and overcoming system data challenges, while engaging directly with customers.
• Enhance manufacturing customer experiences with a fluid integration between Salesforce and enterprise systems to improve business operations and customer engagement.
• Speed telecom billing processes by reducing the time and manual effort needed to resolve simple and complex billing cases for telecom companies.

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Extending data integration to power AI with mainframe datasets

Salesforce and IBM are also helping customers further enhance their data integration strategy, expanding upon their previously announced Zero Copy integration between Salesforce Data Cloud and watsonx.data. Salesforce Zero Copy provides secure, bidirectional integrations with Salesforce Data Cloud so data can be used while remaining in place, without being copied.

Joint customers, beginning with the financial services, insurance, manufacturing, and telecommunications industries, will now be able to use wasonx.data to harness mainframe datasets to power AI use cases on the Salesforce platform — including from IBM Z mainframe databases and files, as well as data from Db2 databases on distributed platforms. This data is synchronized in watsonx.data using IBM Data Gate for watsonx and IBM Data Virtualization Manager for z/OS.

IBM will be the first Zero Copy partner to provide data flow between IBM Z and the Salesforce Cloud architecture, which represents a significant opportunity to open up access to business-critical enterprise data to fuel AI agents. More than 70% of global transactions by value run on IBM Z*, offering high standards of security, privacy, data protection, and compliance.

Salesforce perspective: “By deepening our partnership with IBM, we are setting a new standard for enterprise innovation in highly regulated industries. With these new expanded data integration capabilities, we’re transforming how businesses interact with their core systems, while also tapping the power of AI. Together, we are empowering our customers to exceed their strategic objectives by making their data and agents work harder and smarter for them.” – Brian Landsman, Executive Vice President, Global Technology Partners, Salesforce

Improving efficiency in the flow of work with Slack and IBM watsonx Orchestrate

IBM customers will be able to engage in dynamic conversational experiences directly within Slack’s platform, which will support AI app experiences with a new user interface. Customers will be able to interact seamlessly with their watsonx Orchestrate agents, enhancing productivity and streamlining communications without having to leave the Slack environment.

With AI agents embedded in Slack, businesses can automate routine tasks, make requests of agents in natural language, provide instant responses to Agent inquiries, and enhance collaboration across teams and Agents that can span multiple systems without having to leave Slack.

Expanding model selection and deployment options with watsonx.ai

Customers will soon be able to leverage a new integration with watsonx.ai to power their AI use-cases within Salesforce Model Builder. This integration will allow customers to access and deploy customized LLMs via watsonx.ai, including a wide set of third-party models as well as IBM’s Granite family of foundation models built for the enterprise.

Granite’s transparency helps businesses get results they can trust and helps them comply with their industry’s regulatory requirements. IBM offers IP indemnification for Granite models, training, explanations, and insight into the data used to train them. IBM Granite models are planned to be available in October within the Salesforce ecosystem.

Partnering with IBM Consulting to create Agents for all business challenges

IBM Consulting provides deep expertise in Salesforce and data and AI, and will help joint customers accelerate the value of Agentforce. Together with IBM Consulting Advantage, its AI-powered delivery platform, IBM Consulting will help enterprises select, customize, deploy, and scale AI agents to address specific industry challenges faster and at scale.

IBM perspective: “Our partnership with Salesforce is about providing customers with unparalleled choice and flexibility in how they leverage AI, beginning with sales and services use cases. By providing joint customers the automation and data integration capabilities they need to build their own agents within the Salesforce Platform, along with access to our trusted Granite models, we are empowering them to deliver meaningful, AI-driven transformation across their organizations.” – Nick Otto, Head of Global Strategic Partnerships, IBM

Customer perspective: At MOL Group, we’re transforming service stations into preferred journey stops, not just refueling points. Working with Salesforce and IBM gives us unprecedented choice and flexibility in AI utilization as we look to the future of autonomous agents. Moving forward, we anticipate technology such as Agentforce will help us to deliver hyperpersonalized services through the innovative use of Agentforce and IBM’s watsonx AI, fueling meaningful, AI-driven transformation and enhancing customer engagement and satisfaction with every service station visit.” – István Mag, Head of Digital Factory, MOL Group