What is an Agentic Enterprise and How to Become One

Hey there, business leaders. Ever feel like you're trying to solve an impossible equation? Keep your business growing with the same budget beat? Competitors who move faster and faster every year, exceed customer expectations that reset higher every day. It's like you're juggling flaming torches while riding a unicycle on a tightrope in a hurricane. Sound familiar? Now what if I could change that equation? What if you could not just work harder, but work differently? And that's the promise of the agentic enterprise and a whole new way work gets done. Now you've probably heard a little bit or a whole lot of bits about agentic AI. You've seen all sorts of AI agents that can reason, adapt and get stuff done while you focus on the work that makes you feel like a genius. Think of it like hiring the world's smartest and most efficient intern who never needs coffee breaks. I need one of those. So what exactly is an agentic enterprise? No, it is not a robot takeover. Terminator is not coming to take your business. Although that might be pretty cool. As long as they don't do the whole take over the world thing. Yeah, we don't like that. But it's a whole new way of working where people and AI work together, unlocking more productivity and innovation than ever before. Where supercharged humans and always on AI agents collaborate conversationally, just like any other team members to tackle your organization's most pressing challenges. Imagine every employee with the time to focus on the most impactful work, working alongside AI agents as their trusted colleagues. See, that's the agentic enterprise. And why is this important? Well, we know that better relationships build better companies. Agents can handle the things your people might not have time to do at scale. Qualifying leads, answering questions, surfacing insights. And this frees your people to focus on what truly matters. Solving problems, being creative, building trust, and growing relationships. Because what makes a business great isn't just intelligence. It's judgment. It's empathy, heart and purpose. It's all the human stuff, people. And the amazing thing is when you get agentic AI, right, you don't just get efficiency. You get what we call the the dual dividend. This means you're helping every employee reach their max potential and you're improving your customers experiences. Think of it like this. An outstanding symphony doesn't replace musicians with technology. It gives them better instruments. Your employees are still the artists, but now they're playing Estradivarius like prodigies. So how do you navigate this exciting new era without getting lost at Salesforce? We are on this journey ourselves and we've been guiding our customers on their paths to becoming agentic enterprises. We put all our hard earned wisdom into a practical roadmap that covers the basics for getting started. Think of this as your ultimate playbook for becoming an agentic enterprise. Now it covers seven core steps complete with activities and worksheets that you can take back to your teams to get the dialogue moving. Now let's dive into the first three steps here to help you get started. Step 1 Envision your AI powered future now many people think AI is about cutting costs. But agentic AI is a growth multiplier and not just a cost cutting tool. It's about scaling capabilities, not reducing headcount. But you'll need to craft the right vision and develop a plan for getting there. Let's say we use the phrase what if to start imagining the future of your business. Then this is a great place to start when crafting a vision. What if we solve problems so fast customers said wait, that's it. Or what if it service tickets fix themselves before Steve from accounting even remembered his password was password123. Come on Steve. What if thoughtful sales follow ups happened so fast customers thought we had psychic powers, but the nice kind. Now you can read more about AI visioning and download your own AI Vision worksheet at at the link here. Now for step two Prepare and inspire your people for the future. Here's a big one. Recent research found that the top barrier to AI success is leadership alignment and not employee readiness. Employees are more ahead of the game with AI than leaders imagine and report being 64% more productive and 81% more satisfied when using AI daily. So the goal elevate human work and and not replace it. Salesforce prepared its own employees using the four Rs. Number 1 redesigning jobs around human to agent collaboration 2 reskilling through programs like quarterly learning days, 3. Redeploying talent to high growth areas and 4 rebalancing the workforce by optimizing the mix of human and digital labor. Now you can learn more about preparing your people for change and and building your own alignment plan by clicking Here and Now. Step three we begin with the right agent use case. Picking the right use cases for agents is like planning a dinner party. You start with the easy crowd pleasers that get people fed then happy fast. But make sure you're laying the table for that fancy multi course meal to come now. In other words, start small, focused and where you'll see fast value as you build confidence. Now when landing on the right use cases, you'll want to do a few things. One bring together a cross functional team to brainstorm agent uses. These could be pain points or routine tasks that prevent your teams from focusing on strategic work. Two plot each opportunity on a scale of complexity versus impact to pinpoint the priorities, and three create a roadmap to show how you'll move forward. Now, we provide all the tools you'll need to brainstorm and and prioritize your use cases. So just visit the link here and hey, I know this all sounds like a lot, because it is. But you're much closer than you think to realizing the benefits that AI agents will bring to your business. The future of work isn't about replacing humans, it's about amplifying human potential. You can get there with some achievable steps that you can start taking today. So dig into all seven steps and learn more about becoming an agentic enterprise. Right here.