Generative AI (GenAI) has fast become a household name that both consumers and business users have adopted at an unprecedented rate. Total Experience (TX), a strategy that creates a better, more holistic experience for everyone who engages with a brand, is a less well-known, albeit equally important trend that is redefining industries. Together, they have the potential to deliver tangible and long-lasting change.

At a high-energy Dreamforce 2024, HCLTech Trends and Insights sat down with Sadagopan S, EVP, Global Head of SaaS and Commercial Applications at HCLTech, to discuss these key trends in the context of the 15-year strategic partnership between HCLTech and Salesforce.

Reshaping enterprise solutions with GenAI

From a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) perspective, the immense potential of GenAI lies – beyond the at-times-unbelievable productivity and efficiency gains – in front-office solutions, according to Sada. “This is where the best-in-class value to enterprises is delivered,” he said. 

From creating personalized user experiences in real-time to enabling natural language interfaces like chatbots, GenAI is transforming how enterprise solutions engage users. Sada emphasized that this is where Salesforce and HCLTech’s SaaS solutions are primarily focused.

“We are looking to the entire spectrum of solutions on SaaS and how we can create differentiated value by leveraging GenAI. And that has been a journey that we have been on for the last several years. We have noticed several solutions are resonating with our customers and partners, and we will continue pursuing them aggressively,” he said.

“We're working on multiple fronts. Our core offering, AI Force, drives service transformation by integrating AI and generative AI to enhance efficiencies in software engineering, infrastructure and business operations. Additionally, AI Foundry tackles AI scaling with prebuilt AI, data assets and infrastructure, delivering faster time to value and reduced costs. An AI lab supports customers' AI journeys,” he added.

Addressing GenAI challenges and driving responsible implementation

While the potential of GenAI is undeniable, there are several hesitations in implementing GenAI, including concerns around security, data availability and quality and regulatory compliance. How can organizations mitigate these concerns to drive responsible GenAI throughout the enterprise?

While Sada acknowledged these are valid challenges, he suggested that leveraging Salesforce's robust platform capabilities represents a solution.

The platform has the “ability to integrate with any LLMs, because the data models inside Salesforce have a sanity filter, which enables the creation of innovative solutions based on zero data copy. We’re able to know the sources of the data even from outside the Salesforce platform, which means GenAI solutions can be safely trained on a variety of data that will generate the right types of options for customers,” said Sada.

He also highlighted that the correct business processes can serve as the “biggest differentiator” when driving responsible AI integration, stating: “When you work with an industry-grade platform like Salesforce, the regulations are something that are built inside, both from a general set of regulations and AI-centric regulations perspective.”

Enhancing Total Experience (TX) with GenAI

The COVID-19 pandemic caused enterprises to look at experience in a different way. With everyone suddenly thrust into a virtual world, experience streams — whether for employees or customers — rapidly converged. This accelerated the rise of TX.

Today, organizations are fully embracing TX to redefine how they engage with different users across the value chain. According to another report from HCLTech, The Blueprint to Total Experience, two-thirds of experience leaders are now using or starting to implement GenAI solutions to help them gain real-time insights from knowledge databases, including large volumes of unstructured data. 

GenAI serves as a “double engine” that amplifies the power of TX and creates a new way to gather insights, which “multiplies the value enterprises can deliver to their customers.”

“Salesforce is the number one SaaS platform in the world, which possibly has the maximum amount of data about what end user organizations do for their customers. When that data becomes so critical for an organization’s success, whatever they want to drive toward success will have to leverage that data and create experiences from it,” said Sada.

AI Force, AI Foundry and now Agentforce

Ahead of Dreamforce, Salesforce announced the launch of Agentforce, a suite of autonomous AI agents that augment employees and handle tasks across various functions. In short, the solution creates AI that’s actionable. 

“Agentforce is the culmination of effort from a variety of partners. Salesforce has called it the third wave of AI and it is our pleasure that we have been able to collaborate very closely [on this solution] as part of their partner advisory boards, working with our engineering teams on early test pilots with our customers,” said Sada.

He added: “With Agentforce, we’ve been able to create solutions for financial services customers that have never existed before at scale. For example, customers who have a healthy bank balance in their account for more than six months can be automatically converted to a CD (certificate of deposit). 

“What would have taken multiple hands to come together is now automatically actioned in a seamless experience, which becomes a great differentiator when it comes to experience and productivity.”

Success is defined by partnerships

In today’s interconnected, digital world, everyone is chasing the “state of the art.” But, in reality, no single organization can take on the challenge of innovation alone. It requires a concerted and collaborative ecosystem-driven approach that brings together OEMs, hyperscalers and system integrators.

For HCLTech, it’s crucial to continue to align and expand on initiatives with partners like Salesforce. Participating early in pilots, as with Agentforce, is an example of this shared ambition to advance the state of the art at blistering pace.

“By bringing customer challenges and opportunities into this process, we can deliver a competitive edge in real-time. These strategic alliances and collaboration are key to driving innovation, and we are committed to deepening our involvement with partners like Salesforce,” concluded Sada.