ORLANDO, Fla. — AI providers are pushing enterprise customers to invest in the latest agentic tools and platforms as fast as they can. But vendors still haven’t figured out how enterprises will capture AI’s elusive returns, according to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
“If you think anybody has the complete answer, or any vendor that’s on this stage says, ‘I know exactly what to do here in the world of this new agentic enterprise,’ they’ve made a mistake,” Benioff said during the day two keynote at Gartner’s IT Symposium/Xpo Tuesday.
Enterprises contend with several roadblocks to achieving ROI for agentic AI, from security and governance gaps to change management challenges. Fewer than 20% of IT application leaders believe vendors can provide adequate protection against AI-generated inaccuracies, according to Gartner research published last month.
Businesses are also struggling to build a business case for investment and allocate funds so that they can try out agents, according to Gartner.
“One of the things they’ve told us they’re struggling with is that they don’t know how to pay for this thing that you’re talking about,” Yvonne Genovese, EVP of business and technology insights at Gartner, said during the guest keynote. “Productivity alone, and this is coming from them, is not going to be able to pay for it.”
Salesforce wrapped up its annual Dreamforce conference earlier this month, unveiling its latest agentic AI offering – Agentforce 360. The unified platform was designed to more easily enable enterprises to use all the related AI tools and agentic services released over the last year.
But Agentforce 360 is not a plug-and-play offering, to Genovese’s point. Enterprises would need to buy access, implement the technology, train employees and work through the other hiccups that have been surfaced by the new era of AI.
“This is not off the shelf,” Genovese said. “You’re not going to take your agent and point it at your data and say, ‘Go forth and prosper.’”
Most enterprises are still hesitant to fully jump into agentic AI adoption.
“We don’t have the answers,” Benioff said. “We are in a super fluid and exciting time. The technology and the rate of technology innovation far exceeds customer adoption right now. There is no way customers can keep up with us.”
Benioff pointed to flexible pricing options as a way Salesforce has tried to engage with enterprise adopters. He also characterized customer success stories, such as Williams-Sonoma and PepsiCo, as bellwethers.
“We are not at a moment where we can dictate pricing,” Benioff said. “We’re at a moment where we have to let customers have ultimate flexibility on pricing. In fact, for each of the customers that presented in the Dreamforce keynote, we had written them a custom agreement.”
Close working relationships between vendors and enterprise customers will also bolster success, according to Benioff.
“This is going to take extreme partnership,” he said. “We all have a role, but we have to come together.”
