“Think Big – Start Small – Iterate Often”
Salesforce released Agentforce in October 2024, and with that release, thousands of companies will begin rolling out Agentforce Agents to their businesses to drive value. The potential business value of Agentforce is undeniable, but what a lot of businesses are asking themselves right now is “How do I roll out these capabilities successfully to my business?” By 2026, it is expected that over 80% of businesses will leverage AI in significant ways throughout their organization (Gartner). Even so, however, the realities of rolling out AI have posed significant challenges to businesses, with a recent survey stating that 80% of AI projects are failing to achieve their original benchmarks (Rand). As an AI tool, Salesforce Agentforce will likely be no different unless a different approach is taken to tackle Agentforce projects.
A major reason that so many AI projects are failing is that businesses are trying to tackle AI the same way they execute other technology projects. Usually, this type of approach involves setting project goals, building a team, and then tackling the project in one major effort. But AI poses specific opportunities and challenges that warrant a different and revolutionary approach to managing AI projects. AI as a capability is less understood than other technologies right now and expecting business stakeholders on a project to know exactly how to apply AI capabilities to their full potential is fraught with risk. This is why a new and different approach for AI projects is needed that allows for iterative rollouts, consistent feedback loops, and minimized risk.
To meet these challenges, our AI and industry experts at Cirrius Solutions have developed an 11-step approach to tackle AI projects that has consistently led to success and realization of AI project and business goals. Our approach balances the need to deliver value quickly to businesses, without sacrificing the potential to get businesses to realize their lofty AI goals. Core to our approach is to pilot first to a sub-group first, then implement consistent iterative improvement to drive both short- and long-term results, all hyper-focused on business value targets.
11 Critical Steps to Implement Salesforce Agentforce Across Your Business to Maximize Business Value
- Educate: Educate your leadership team on Salesforce AI and know the available capabilities of Salesforce Agentforce so you can make informed decisions.
- Ideate: Identify Business Agentforce Use Cases (Problems or Opportunities)
- Define: Associate Measurable Business Value Metrics to Selected Use Cases And Assess Potential Value
- Audit: Determine Critical Sources of Data and Complexity of Automated Actions
- Prioritize: Evaluate and Prioritize Agentforce Use Cases (Matrix and Radar)
- Recruit: Determine Pilot Business Group, Key Stakeholders, Sponsors, and Implementation Team
- Pilot: Implement a Pilot Agentforce Solution
- Evaluate: Gather Feedback and Measure Value Towards Initial Goal
- Rollout or Re-Attack: Rollout Pilot to Remainder of Business or Scrap and Re-attack another use case
- Iteratively Improve: Continuously Optimize and Refine Solution Through Iterative and Incremental Development
- Rinse and Repeat: Prioritize Next Business Use Case for Application
Step 1: Educate – Educate your leadership team on Salesforce Agentforce and know the available capabilities of Salesforce Agentforce so they can make informed decisions.
The first critical step that needs to be done is to educate business stakeholders and executives on the Agentforce capabilities looking to be used for the project effort. AI is less understood than most other technologies right now, so the need to educate upfront is critical to ensure that key decision-makers are empowered with the knowledge they need to make timely and effective decisions. We recommend focusing on the key capabilities, limitations, and implementation considerations of Agentforce features looking to be used. By educating upfront, business stakeholders will be in a much better position to drive a successful project, and expectations will be better kept in line with reality as all relevant stakeholders to the project will have a general understanding of the technologies being used.
Step 2: Ideate – Identify Business Agentforce Use Cases (Problems or Opportunities)
Unlike other technology projects where specific use cases and requirements are likely already going to be defined and known by the business, AI and Agentforce projects will be quite different. Most businesses know they want to implement generative AI across their business, but they do not know how. This is why it is key to start with ideating. Once the business and key stakeholders have been educated on Salesforce AI and Agentforce, take the time now to ideate on relevant use cases across the business where Agentforce Agents could drive significant value. Ensure these workshops are open conversational environments, where leaders from across different areas of the business are able to share where they think value could be achieved. Document good use cases that are brought up and discussed; this list can serve as the beginning of your “Agentforce Agent backlog.” Use cases should identify the actors involved, the goal of the use case, preconditions (what should be in place before the use case starts), post-conditions (what outcome is to be expected), a description of the typical flow of the use case, alternative flows, and any relevant details about the system or process being described. Ensuring that your use cases are cogent and thorough will help you to better align use cases to business value objectives later in the process.
Step 3: Define – Associate Measurable Business Value Metrics to Selected Use Cases
So, you have business use cases defined? Great, but how are you going to be able to determine what use cases to tackle first, or how much resources you should be willing to invest into those use cases? A lot of business skip from ideating all the way to executing but fail to conduct steps 3 and 4 on the process, which is a critical mistake. For step 3, work through your use cases from step 2 and assign business value and measurable KPIs to each. Ensure that these business value metrics are agreed as viable and well understood by all relevant stakeholders. Value metrics should also be easily captured, identify the sources of truth of those metrics and ideally add these information points to your business use case cards.
Step 4: Audit – Determine Critical Sources of Data and Complexity of Automated Actions
To drive prioritization decisions down the road in the Agentforce implementation process, you not only need to know the potential business value of each business use case, but also the level of effort that is expected to be required for each one. Start this process by looking at the sources of data Agentforce is going to need to successfully run its assigned role/ use case. Is this data accessible from Agentforce today? If not, what is it going to take to get it accessible? Should Data Cloud be implemented to make data from other systems referenceable to your Agenforce agents?
Additionally, the complexity of the actions that your Agentforce Agent will need to accomplish should also be assessed. Do versions of these automations already exist today but are triggered by human intervention? Is the business logic and requirements for any potential actions mapped out and documented? How many variations could there be to potential automated actions? These types of required steps would add to the assessed level of effort for each use case.
Step 5: Prioritize – Evaluate and Prioritize Agentforce Use Cases (Use Case Matrix)
Step five is now where choices need to start being made. Coming out of steps 2-4 you should have a good list of Agentforce use cases that are thought from a high-level, including an understanding of the potential business value, and the state of potential data sources. Now it is critical to work with the business to prioritize those use cases so that impactful but realistic use cases are getting tackled early, also ensuring that resources are not being spread too thin by trying to rollout multiple use cases at once. Tackling too much too quickly can also increase project risk, and also poses larger change management hurdles when it comes to educating end users and encouraging adoption of new Agentforce features. Instead, start by prioritizing your list by creating a Agentforce Use Case Matrix. Your use case matrix should represent “Anticipated Potential Business Value” vertically and “Anticipated Effort of Implementation” horizontally. Lay out your options across the quadrant with business stakeholder input. Items in the top left quadrant (High Value-Low Complexity) should be prioritized earlier on in your implementation strategy to drive early and impactful successes with Agentforce.
Step 6: Recruit – Determine Pilot Business Group, Key Stakeholders, Sponsors, and Implementation Team
Now that you have a prioritized list of use cases, with one use case identified for build and pilot, now is time to start building the rest of the team! Rolling out AI successfully requires a joint team with knowledge across 5 domain areas that all work together for a successfully Agentforce rollout. These five areas are industry expertise, business acumen, SF platform expertise, knowledge of your businesses data, AI & LLM expertise. Typically, your joint team will have a project/ program manager, business analyst, build team, executive sponsor, business stakeholders for each applicable department, change manager, and training team. These resources can come from inside your business, but supplement skill gaps in your business with vendor support from a consultative partner that is an expert in your industry area and with Agentforce.
Step 7: Pilot – Implement a Pilot Agentforce Solution
With step 7 the build and execution of your Agentforce effort begins! Work on piloting your business use case with a specific part of your business as a pilot phase. This will help you maximize feedback to improve the overall solution long term, but also minimizes risk to your business. Your pilot group could be a region, could be an office, or could be a department. Ensure that your pilot business group understand that they are in fact part of a pilot group, what is expected of the pilot group, and how their role will drive long term success for the business as well as mitigate risk.
Step 8: Evaluate – Gather Feedback and Measure Value Towards Initial Goal
Congratulations, you have now implemented Agentforce to a portion of your business, but do you really know if it was successful or not, and how do you drive decisions on next steps in the larger goal of leveraging AI across your entire business. At this point you need get feedback from the pilot business group on what they like, what they don’t like, and general feedback on your Agentforce solution. You also should take a snapshot of the business use case value KPIs and determine whether your solution is tracking on your targets, or behind. Add an assessment card to your business use case card to help drive decisions in the next few steps.
Step 9: Rollout or Re-Attack – Rollout Pilot to Remainder of Business or Scrap and Re-attack another use case
Based on the success of your pilot, work with the executive sponsors of your team to determine what direction to go with this key decision point. If your use case assessment from step 8 deems the pilot successful, work with your project team to plan out the rollout of this business use case to the rest of your business (or in phases). If deemed unsuccessful against your business value KPIs then create a plan to re-attack the pilot (if the potential value outweighs the anticipated costs). You have several options in how you could re-attack the original use case. This could be with a slightly different technical solution, adjust known gaps based on pilot user feedback, change the pilot user group (maybe that piece of the business was too busy to support for example).
Step 10: Iteratively Improve – Continuously Optimize and Refine Solution Through Iterative and Incremental Development
For step 10, ensure that you put a portion of your resources and efforts to iteratively and consistently improve your first Agentforce use case even after it is rolled out. Ensure that you use a conceptually sound approach such as Kanban or Scrum to ensure success. Even as you move forward to other business use cases, dedicating effort to improving solutions already rolled out will help assure their long-term adoption and long term success.
Step 11: Rinse and Repeat – Prioritize Next Business Use Case for Application
The final step in the process is to rinse and repeat! Be sure to go back to step 1. Although the next time around will no longer be your first rodeo, each step should still be touched on. With step 1 for example, the business will likely have some new faces, and potentially you will be working with a different portion of the business, so starting first with education will be critical. Although you have a business use case backlog, still conduct steps 2-5 to revalidate your original business use case cards. These steps may not be nearly as long as the first go around you did, but revisiting these again will ensure your use cases stay relevant to the businesses needs.
Conclusion: In summary, incorporating these 11-steps into your strategic approach to implementing Agentforce and AI into your business will help you mitigate risk and drive success. Driving Agentforce AI projects the same way as other technology projects of the past can be a sure recipe for increased risk and potential failure. Taking a new approach that leverages pilot groups, careful use case development, value measurement, and iterative improvement can help mitigate that risk significantly, while ensuring long-term alignment of your Agentforce efforts to business goals and needs.
Need a Partner to help you along your Salesforce Agentforce journey? Cirrius Solutions can help meet you at step 1 of the 11-step AI implementation process by providing a complimentary AI education session or AI workshop ran by our team of experts to start educating your business on all things Salesforce Agentforce.
