Running AI as part of the business.
The difficult part of a promising AI pilot often begins after the demonstration. Who maintains its knowledge? Who investigates a failed action? Which team owns the customer outcome when the workflow crosses marketing, sales and service?
As 2026 begins, I would make those operating questions the priority. Salesforce's October 2025 Agentforce 360 announcement places connected people, agents and business systems at the centre of its platform direction. Making that connection useful still requires deliberate choices inside each organisation.
Connect a complete customer experience
Consider a person who responds to a campaign, asks a question and needs a conversation with sales. The business should recognise the same relationship throughout. Their preferences should remain available, the question should reach the right team and the next interaction should carry the context already collected.
An agent can help within that sequence. Its contribution needs to fit the surrounding records, permissions and handovers. If the next team cannot see the outcome, a successful individual interaction can still leave the overall experience broken.
Start by mapping one such sequence. Name an owner for the end result and identify the points where systems or teams exchange responsibility. Those points deserve as much testing as the agent's answers.
Build an operating routine
Keep a set of representative cases, including refusals, missing information and failed actions. Run them before changing instructions or connected tools. Review real outcomes regularly and give staff a simple way to flag problems.
The owner should know how to pause the workflow, route work to a person and restore the last acceptable configuration. A system that is easy to launch but difficult to correct is an expensive way to learn.
Make the economics visible
Measure the cost of a completed, acceptable outcome. Include usage, human review, escalations and repair work. Compare that with the value of faster resolution or work the team can now complete. Activity alone is an unhelpful target.
Use that evidence to expand the useful parts and retire the weak ones. The aim is a process customers and employees can rely on, with responsibilities that remain clear as more work becomes automated.
In 2019, the argument was that leadership had to create the conditions for change. In 2026, the tools can do more, but the obligation is familiar: choose the work, assign responsibility and follow through on the result.
Context: Salesforce's October 2025 Agentic Enterprise announcement.
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Annual series edition: 5 January. This edition was prepared or revised on 8 September 2026.
