Dreamforce 2024, the world’s largest software conference, delivered new innovations that are set to transform industries. Highlights include the launch of Agentforce, Salesforce’s autonomous AI suite, and major updates to Data Cloud and the Customer 360 platform. Powerful Retail & Consumer Goods sessions with McKee Foods, Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC), and Dole Fresh Fruit showcased how Consumer Goods Cloud is helping businesses optimize processes, strengthen relationships, and drive growth. Here are the top takeaways from Dreamforce 2024!
Agentforce
The biggest news coming from Dreamforce 2024 was, of course, Agentforce. Salesforce’s new Agentforce suite represents a major leap in the AI landscape, with CEO Marc Benioff claiming, “The Agentforce platform represented the third wave of the AI revolution.” The autonomous AI agents are designed to handle tasks independently across sales, marketing, service, consumer goods, commerce, and more. Unlike traditional chatbots or copilots, Agentforce analyzes data, makes decisions, and takes action autonomously. This significant breakthrough allows organizations to quickly scale their workforce, responding to business demands in real-time without requiring human input.
The true power of Agentforce is its ability to operate accurately and efficiently by integrating deeply with Salesforce’s Data Cloud. Whether resolving customer service inquiries, qualifying sales leads, or optimizing marketing campaigns, these agents can perform tasks that free up human employees to focus on more strategic and high-level activities. This will increase productivity and customer satisfaction, making Agentforce a game changer in AI.
With its bold vision of empowering one billion agents by 2025, Salesforce is not just advancing AI technology but redefining what’s possible in the workplace. As Marc Benioff says, “This is the biggest and most exciting piece of technology we have ever worked on, and we are just starting.” For businesses across industries, Agentforce offers the opportunity to enhance efficiency, improve customer relationships, and drive growth—all with a few clicks and without the complexity of traditional AI implementations.
Consumer Goods Cloud Customer Success Stories
Three leading consumer goods companies took the stage to share how they harness the power of Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud to transform their businesses.
Jack Corrao, Managing Partner of Corrao Group, highlighted McKee Foods’ success in optimizing trade promotions using Salesforce Trade Promotion Management. With trade spending being one of the biggest challenges in the Consumer Package Goods (CPG) industry, McKee Foods has found that the right tools can make a significant difference. By leveraging TPM, they have been able to navigate the complexities of trade promotions, maximize ROI, and enhance their overall business performance.
Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC) showcased how they use Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud and Data Cloud to unify B2B and B2C data on a single platform. The session focused on how integrated planning and new data sources are helping RNDC make smarter, more profitable decisions, ultimately transforming their route-to-market strategy.
Dole Fresh Fruit shared its success story of improving planning and forecasting with Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud Customer Planning & Forecasting (CPF). By utilizing Salesforce’s CPF capabilities, Dole has strengthened their relationships with retailers and boosted revenue through more accurate forecasts. Salesforce CPF has set a new standard for driving business growth and enhancing retailer partnerships.
All three of these sessions highlighted the transformative impact that Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud has across the consumer goods industry, empowering companies to make data-driven decisions, optimize processes, and achieve greater success. Corrao Group has been proud to partner with McKee Foods, RNDC, and Dole Fresh Fruit to ensure a seamless rollout and successful adoption of these cutting-edge solutions.
Data Cloud
Salesforce’s Data Cloud continues to show impressive growth and innovation, with a 130% year-over-year increase in customers and the capacity to process over 2.3 quadrillion records per quarter. Salesforce’s Data Cloud, the foundation of the Salesforce Platform, and Agentforce continue to drive innovation in unifying customer and business data to deliver personalized, contextually relevant experiences across Customer 360 applications, Flows, Analytics, and Agentforce. “In this new era of AI and Agents, customer data and metadata are the new gold for the enterprise,” said Rahul Auradkar, EVP and GM for Data Cloud at Salesforce. At Dreamforce 2024, Salesforce introduced several key innovations that enhance Data Cloud’s capabilities, cementing its role as the heartbeat of Salesforce’s AI ecosystem.
One of the most notable additions is Data Cloud’s support for unstructured data, which can natively process audio and video content such as customer calls or webinars. This opens up new opportunities for deeper customer insights and enhances the accuracy of Agentforce’s agents. Data Cloud also features a standardized semantic data model, allowing AI and human users to interpret and use data consistently. With improved search capabilities, Data Cloud enables a quicker discovery of relevant information. Real-time data activations also enhance the ability to instantly respond to changing customer needs, providing organizations with more dynamic and timely customer interactions.
Finally, Salesforce has strengthened Data Cloud’s data security and governance features. New policy-based governance allows organizations to maintain strict control over how sensitive data is shared with AI agents. These innovations, combined with Data Cloud’s role as the foundation for Agentforce, enable businesses to harness the power of AI while safeguarding their crucial data and operations.
Customer 360 Platform Innovations
Salesforce unveiled a range of exciting new innovations within its Customer 360 platform, further enhancing AI-powered, personalized experiences across sales, service, marketing, and commerce. These innovations leverage shared data and services to deliver a seamless customer experience while integrating powerful analytics and collaboration tools such as Tableau and Slack. Built on the Salesforce Platform, Customer 360 ensures that every touchpoint is connected, enabling businesses to deliver customer interactions that are both efficient and impactful.
Among the standout innovations announced is Tableau Einstein, which opens up the power of business intelligence (BI) and analytics to everyone who wants to make data-driven work scalable, efficient, and more valuable. By bringing data and insights across workflows in Customer 360 apps, Agentforce, Pulse, and Slack, teams can make data-driven decisions faster and more effectively. Slack has also introduced a new user interface for agents, enabling users to interact directly with data, surface insights, and collaborate in real-time. This includes an integration with Agentforce agents, making it easier for teams to stay aligned and move work forward by connecting Salesforce CRM records with Slack channels. (More updates on Slack are below).
Salesforce has also enhanced its core products with AI innovations. Sales Cloud now features Agentforce SDR and Sales Coach and capabilities like account planning, forecasting, and compensation management. Similarly, Service Cloud’s new features provide service agents with step-by-step resolution plans, sentiment tracking, and AI-based recommendations to improve the customer experience. Agentforce’s Service Agent can autonomously handle customer cases 24/7, seamlessly escalating problematic cases to human representatives when needed. These innovations and the introduction of Agentforce agents tailored for commerce, field service, and marketing demonstrate Salesforce’s commitment to transforming every role and workflow across industries with AI.
Slack Innovations
Salesforce announced a new series of Slack innovations, transforming the platform into an agent-powered work operating system that unifies company knowledge, data, agents, apps, and automation in one seamless interface. Denise Dresser, CEO of Slack, mentioned, “We’ve moved beyond collaboration; every day, millions of teams are leveraging purpose-built AI, with customer data, automation, and now agents seamlessly integrated into the flow of work. This isn’t just about getting work done. It’s about unlocking new productivity levels to drive results and move business forward for every team and department.”
With an Agentforce integration, teams can now collaborate with AI-powered agents directly in Slack to surface insights, automate tasks, and access customer data from Salesforce. Additionally, third-party AI agents from partners like Adobe and Anthropic can be deployed securely within Slack, allowing users to work smarter and faster. New features like Slack AI huddle notes, automated workflows, and enhanced search capabilities further streamline productivity, while Salesforce channels bridge CRM data and Slack conversations to keep teams aligned. These innovations position Slack as a central hub for boosting department efficiency and collaboration.
Free AI-Training
Salesforce has announced a major initiative to offer free hands-on AI courses and certifications through 2025, investing over $50 million to help bridge the growing AI skills gap. Salesforce will provide premium AI training through Trailhead, making AI education accessible to everyone. Additionally, Salesforce plans to open AI centers at its San Francisco headquarters and global offices, providing community and employee training spaces. This initiative reflects Salesforce’s commitment to preparing the workforce for the future of AI, equipping individuals with the tools and skills needed to succeed in an AI-driven world.
Dreamforce 2024 Conclusion
Mark it down as another successful Dreamforce event by Salesforce. We want to give a big shout and thank you to Salesforce as they put on an extraordinary event that featured some incredible guest speakers. The energy around San Francisco was electric as attendees gathered to witness and learn what new features Salesforce would release next. We are already getting excited for Dreamforce 2025!
If you would like to learn more about any of the new features from Dreamforce 2024 and how it can relate to your business, please contact us.
About Corrao Group
Corrao Group is a top Salesforce consulting partner in the retail, consumer goods, and professional service industries. Since 2002, we have helped organizations of all sizes and industries optimize and streamline their business processes with Salesforce. Our mission is to flawlessly translate your business processes into Salesforce, promoting successful integration and widespread user adoption.
