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The growing demand for the world's leading CRM platform drives up demand for its associated skills. Salesforce implementation entails significant investment and its customization requires an investment in the right set of Salesforce developers The key question is – How to find and recruit them? In this blog we explain how to discover talent, what abilities to look for when recruiting a Salesforce developer, and more. Growing Demand for Salesforce Developers Factors Driving the Growing Demand for Salesforce Developers. Digitalization Post-Pandemic The Salesforce ecosystem expanded dramatically following the outbreak. This is owing to the complete digitization of most processes, including the use of cloud-based platforms like Salesforce. As a result, the demand for Salesforce developers as key members of a company's CRM department has skyrocketed. Compensation Attractive salaries offered to Salesforce developers attract more people to this role, increasing the number of people interested in entering this sector. Innovation and Skill Upgradation Salesforce upgrades its platform 3 times a year and in order to keep up, Salesforce developers must be abreast of the latest innovations. Shortage of Skilled Professionals While there may be a large number of individuals entering this sector, all of them may not have the requisite skills to succeed. Only people who hold relevant Salesforce credentials can be deemed as experts. With only a handful falling into this group, there is a scarcity of experienced Salesforce development specialists. This resulted in an increase in demand for Salesforce developers. Role of Salesforce Developers Salesforce developers are specialists who leverage Salesforce technology to solve business problems. They are familiar with the Salesforce platform and can design tailored solutions based on the client's needs. They first identify the gaps and issues in the current system and devise the best solutions to address them. After thoroughly understanding the business objectives, developers select the most effective low-code solutions offered by Salesforce technology. Let's take a look at their responsibilities. Responsibilities of Salesforce Developers A Salesforce developer generally handles numerous tasks inside an organization. Designing, Developing, and Maintaining Apps The primary responsibility of Salesforce developers building and managing apps on the Salesforce platform tailored to the business needs of the organization. Understanding Business Requirements Salesforce developers collaborate closely with project stakeholders and users to better understand their needs and pain points. They tailor solutions to each customer's specific requirements. Coding They build solutions using multiple programming languages such as Apex, Lightning Components, and VisualForce on the Force.com platform. Furthermore, they work with web development languages such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Problem-Solving Skills They have great problem-solving skills and can understand complex business problems to discover areas for improvement. Communication They work with technical or non-technical teams to provide on-call help for app concerns, such as debugging or augmented functionality. Assist users in clarifying their needs, providing information about alternate techniques, and outlining the potential consequences of process changes. Quality Assurance They are responsible for ensuring the quality of the solutions they develop. They ensure that any issues are fixed as soon as possible by performing various testing and debugging operations. Salesforce developers create, codify, and enforce app standards and practices to ensure consistency and efficiency. Seamless Integration They integrate multiple systems with Salesforce, including in-house as well as third-party apps and systems. Salesforce Developer Hiring Options Choosing the appropriate Salesforce developer is critical. However, to make an informed decision, it is vital to evaluate the various employment engagement options available: Full-Time Salesforce Developers As the name suggests, they are regular employees and work for your organization just like any other full-time employee. Full-time employees are dedicated to your company, embrace its culture, and blend in. This provides them with the benefits of regular salary, paid time off, healthcare, insurance, and retirement benefits. Furthermore, depending on the requirements, they operate either in the office or remotely. They are always available to address urgent issues and contribute to ongoing system enhancements. When Should You Hire Full-Time Developers? This depends on your business needs and the individual's skill set and experience. Hiring full-time developers allows you to collaborate with them whenever necessary, and make any necessary project updates quickly. In-House Developers They are the ones who are already an integral part of the organization. They work on projects in the same way that full-time developers do, except that they work from your office and not remotely. They receive all of the benefits of a full-time developer. Hiring in-house developers improves team collaboration because they are available on-premise. When Should You Hire An In-House Developer? Hiring an in-house developer has several benefits. You can use their experience and expertise. You can connect with them anytime during office hours. You have full control over the team and the project. Remote Developers They typically work from home or another location other than the office. Depending on project needs, they can be hired as contractual, full-time, or part-time developers. When Should You Hire A Remote Developer? Free up the internal team's time and resources. Saves on hiring costs. When specific capabilities are unavailable locally. Part-Time Developers They are an excellent choice for firms with variable project demands or budget constraints. You can use their skills for certain tasks while optimizing resource allocation. They save both internal resources and the cost of employee benefits. When Should You Hire A Part-Time Developer? When you require a developer quickly for a short period. When you don't want to incur costs on employee benefits When you don’t want to block coworking space Contractual Developers Contractual developers (sometimes also referred to as project-based developers) are engaged to work on specific projects or tasks. They are given specific deliverables and, on occasion, a time limit. This technique allows firms to gain access to specialist abilities without making a long-term commitment. It is an effective way to scale up your team based on project requirements. They might work full-time or part-time, depending on your business needs. Furthermore, they are appropriate for meeting short-term demands or completing specific projects or tasks. When Should You Hire A Contractual Developer? If you have short-term project needs When you have clearly defined project objectives and schedules When you need additional skills for a project or task. Hourly Developers These developers are only compensated for the hours they work, making it an affordable choice for enterprises. They can be employed for brief periods of time and work on your tasks as needed without committing to a long-term contract. When Should You Hire Hourly-Based Developers? When you have projects with varying workloads. When you need to scale up or downsize your teams at short notice. The most suitable engagement is determined by your company's needs, project requirements, and budgetary constraints. Each option has its own advantages, allowing you to personalize your hiring strategy to meet your specific Salesforce development objectives. Skills Required for Salesforce Developers Look for developers with expertise in: Apex programming (including DML, batch processes, triggers, and test classes) Object-oriented programming (OOP) Salesforce Object Query Language (SOQL) Salesforce Object Search Language (SOSL) Lightning Web Components Lightning App Builder Salesforce DX Aura Framework Fuel API, REST, and SOAP APIs JavaScript, CSS, HTML Salesforce Flow Visualforce development Roles, profiles, sharing, and security configuration Salesforce data modeling Process Builder and Workflows Migration Tools Apex test case writing and execution Version control systems (Git) AMPscript (for Marketing Cloud integration) Salesforce Analytics Query Language (SAQL) SQL for Data Cloud Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, Scala Many Salesforce developers obtain Salesforce certifications to demonstrate their abilities. It is always a positive sign if a candidate has one. Consider looking for these credentials: JavaScript Developer 1 Certification Platform App Builder Certification Platform Developer 1 Certification Platform Developer 2 Certification While these are 4 primary areas of Salesforce expertise, you can also engage a Salesforce developer with certifications in other products. B2C Commerce Developer Skills in eCommerce development with expertise on the Salesforce B2C Commerce platform. Marketing Cloud Developer Skills in Marketing Cloud data modeling, data management, and automation. Industries CPQ Developer Expertise in CPQ (configure, price, quote) solutions for Communications, Media, and Energy & Utilities Cloud products. OmniStudio Developer Expertise in OmniStudio design, workflows, and dynamic UIs. In addition, a Salesforce developer's resume can also be scanned for assessing basic soft skills. For example, you can look at how applicants characterize their previous projects, accomplishments, and roles. Contributions to Salesforce communities and events may demonstrate effective teamwork and learning skills. Mentoring experience is important if you wish to hire a Salesforce developer as a Team Lead or Tech Lead. Thus, you can determine whether the developer is motivated to learn, possesses leadership abilities, and more. And lastly, when hiring Salesforce developers, make sure their language capabilities and time zone meet your team's requirements. Conclusion It is critical to remember that the success of your initiatives is greatly dependent on the kind of talent you bring to your team. Salesforce developers, with their knowledge in customer relationship management, have the potential to be the major driver of your company's success. So, take action immediately, use these techniques, and start building your crack Salesforce team with a trusted Salesforce implementation partner. Collaborating with a team of certified Salesforce consultants will propel your company forward while providing exceptional customer-client experiences.

Businesses have a never-seen-before opportunity to learn more about their operations, markets, and customers by leveraging the humongous amounts of data aggregated from a variety of sources – apps, software, websites, and social media. The need to dive deeper into and derive insights from this data has never been greater. Legacy business intelligence and analytics products use structured, relational databases as their underlying technology. Relational databases lack the agility, speed, and deep insights required to turn data into value. Salesforce has transformed business intelligence technology by taking a novel approach to analytics, combining a non-relational approach to diverse data forms and types with advanced search capability, an engaging interface, and an intuitive mobile-friendly experience. Salesforce's Einstein Analytics Platform enables businesses to explore their data quickly without relying on data scientists, complex data warehouse schemas, or monolithic resource-intensive IT infrastructures. Legacy Business Intelligence (BI) tools restrict an organization's agility, and their application is limited to IT and analysts. Interestingly, while Business Intelligence tools have become more sophisticated over time, the core architectural approach to BI and analytics has largely remained unchanged. When an organization sets out to investigate an issue or question, the BI team responds by creating a relational database or data warehouse. Data warehouses comprise relational databases that add and store data in rows and columns, with each piece of information stored as a value in the table. Relationships across tables develop into schemas. Every fresh infusion of data expands the schema by adding new rows and dimensions. Once the structure is established, it is sacrosanct and cannot accommodate new data; adding new data necessitates the creation of a new schema from the ground up. The relational database paradigm remains effective for a wide range of applications, particularly transactional activities involving highly organized data. However, during the last decade, developments in technology, data volume and diversity, and dynamic markets have created a chasm between historical business intelligence and analytics capabilities based on classic relational database design and today's business requirements. The relational database model poses a number of issues in today's corporate landscape: User  Challenges The model limits agility. The waterfall nature of traditional Business Intelligence acts as a deterrent for discovering new ways of doing business, restricts team members' ability to challenge existing processes, and prevents teams with the most access to customers and the market from invoking their curiosity and asking their own questions for exploring innovative modeling techniques to improve the business. It is not representative of the way in which users explore information. Traditional Business Intelligence projects do not have the flexibility to refine the user query or add new data for context. Users ask a question and then wait weeks or even months for an answer; if they learn that the initial question was incorrect, the schema build-out must begin all over again. Another limitation of traditional BI is that it pre-aggregates the data which limits insights. It forces compromise. A typical BI setup balances expected queries and performance. Compromise leads to discontent. For instance, data is rolled up to a higher granularity to improve query efficiency, but this precludes users from answering second or third-order queries. They must then return to IT to figure out the solution or utilize an alternative tool to solve their questions. Business  Challenges The model slows down the business. Creating a BI schema can take weeks or even months depending on its size and complexity. On top of that, this does not include the time internal users must wait in line for BI or IT resources to become available. This delay indicates a poor time to value for BI investments; and imposes severe constraints on the business, which frequently relies on BI insights to move forward proactively which can hamper its ability to act quickly. It is resource-intensive. The current setup of designing BI solutions necessitates an army of professionals from architects and business analysts to data scientists and project managers to manage an organization's BI requirements. Because businesses rely heavily on BI, these teams are frequently well rewarded and in high demand. Pivot business intelligence on its head for agile, end-user discovery. In recent years, a number of new solutions have attempted to address the issues raised above. Many of them, however, have continued to rely, at least partially, on the same design and technological approaches that created the problems in the first place. One example of an emerging innovation is the usage of columnar or in-memory databases, which BI companies have implemented during the last decade. While they made progress, the relational model and its limitations remained a hindrance. Salesforce, on the other hand, has created and launched an analytics platform that challenges traditional business intelligence. The Einstein Analytics Platform rejects most of the preconceived concepts of data warehousing and database design, instead adopting a "Google-inspired" approach to business analytics. It includes a proprietary, non-relational data store, a search-based query engine, powerful compression methods, columnar in-memory computation, and a fast visualization engine. The  Einstein Analytics Platform combines the complexity of heterogeneous data, the fluidity of questions and problems users are trying to solve, and the end user’s need for exploring data with agility, all without any restrictions on time and information. Einstein Analytics was architected from the ground up to allow enterprises to quickly find value in data. The platform was built first for a native mobile app, allowing users to rapidly find answers and take action using their smartphones. Technology principles underlying the Einstein Analytics Platform. Agility Einstein Analytics does not differentiate between data types. It onboards data by embracing any data structure, kind, or source and making it available quickly, eliminating the need for a lengthy ETL procedure. Speed Heavy compression, optimization methods, multi-threading, and other techniques enable extremely fast and highly efficient queries on massive datasets. Search-based exploration It uses an inverted index to search data similar to Google search which provides query results in seconds. Actionability When a user gains insight or makes a key decision, they may immediately take the next best action straight from within Einstein Analytics. Columnar, in-memory aggregation In Einstein Analytics, quantitative data is stacked up in a columnar store in RAM in the Salesforce Cloud rather than the row structure of a relational database on disk. Interactivity Fast, intuitive visualization encourages user adoption and contextual understanding, offering genuine self-service analytics to all business users. Open, scalable cloud platform Einstein Analytics is an extensible platform with easy-to-use APIs and its scalable architecture compliments existing BI systems and allows businesses to have deep relationships with third-party tools and systems. It is also deeply integrated with Salesforce so you can see your Sales Cloud and Service Cloud data like never before, collaborate, and take action from within Salesforce. Mobile-first design Einstein Analytics is an open, scalable, and extendable platform. Einstein Analytics' architecture, which includes simple APIs, allows for extensive integration with third-party applications and complements existing BI systems. It is also deeply linked with Salesforce, allowing you to see your Sales Cloud and Service Cloud data like never before, collaborate, and take action directly from Salesforce. Security The Einstein Analytics Platform is built on Salesforce's tried-and-true, multilayered approach to data availability, privacy, and security, with the added benefit that data on the Salesforce platform does not need to leave Salesforce servers to be available for analytics. A unique approach to Business Intelligence that offers faster time to value. In order to provide an open, agile, self-service solution for enterprise business intelligence, Salesforce has brought together a number of unique approaches, including a non-relational inverted index data store, a quick and potent query engine, an intuitive and compelling visualization, mobile-first technology, and the trusted, scalable, high-performance power of the cloud. Given that numerous companies have made significant investments in business intelligence technology, Salesforce developed Einstein Analytics to enhance current offerings, facilitate seamless integration with external data tools, and allow businesses to easily tailor their analytics programs. The goal of enterprises using BI solutions to accelerate time to value is supported by this new BI analytics platform. Additionally, Einstein Analytics facilitates enterprise-wide adoption, supports a unified data governance strategy, and frees IT teams from labor-intensive and low-value data retrieval and preparation tasks so they can concentrate on more strategic endeavors. The open Einstein Analytics Platform positions Salesforce and its partners to continuously innovate and add layers of intelligence to help business users gain insights even faster, through automated analytics, as the world enters the third phase of computing — from today's systems of engagement to tomorrow's systems of intelligence. The basis for true business intelligence in the future is Einstein Analytics, which is quick, flexible, perceptive, and capable of not just capturing past customer and business behavior but also anticipating future trends. If you want to harness the true power of business intelligence for sales, marketing, and customer service, connect with a trusted Salesforce Consulting partner. Our certified Salesforce consultants can empower you with the tools and insights aligned with your business needs and help you get started. To find out more, schedule a free Salesforce Einstein Analytics demo today.

In June 2023, the world’s foremost Customer Relationship Management (CRM) product company announced the launch of AI Cloud, a path-breaking enterprise AI solution. This dependable, open, and business-ready platform is intended to boost organizational productivity by embedding generative AI experiences into all Salesforce apps. This significant achievement demonstrates Salesforce's continued commitment to trusted AI, as well as its ambition to enable businesses regardless of size and industry to digitally transform and provide a 360-degree view of their customers. AI Cloud includes purpose-built tools and functionality to deliver enterprise-grade AI and is Salesforce's latest multidisciplinary endeavor to add AI capabilities to its product line. In many respects, it is a continuation of the company's generative AI program, which was introduced in March 2023 and endeavors to integrate generative AI throughout the Salesforce technology stack. AI Cloud hosts and serves text-generating AI models from a variety of partners, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cohere, Anthropic, and OpenAI, on Salesforce's cloud platform. Salesforce's AI research group offers first-party models, which support services such as code creation and business process automation. Customers can also introduce a custom-trained model to the platform, storing data on their own infrastructure. Generative AI Across Salesforce Products Salesforce-built models in AI Cloud enable new capabilities in Salesforce's marquee products – Salesforce Data Cloud, Mulesoft, Tableau, and Salesforce Flow. Einstein GPT in CRM Einstein GPT is the next generation of Einstein, Salesforce's AI engine, which now makes over 210 billion AI-powered predictions per day. By merging proprietary Einstein AI models with ChatGPT or other leading large language models, customers may use natural-language prompts on CRM data to trigger powerful, real-time, tailored, AI-generated content.  Here’s a look at how Einstein GPT helps teams to boost productivity. Einstein GPT for Sales: Automate routine sales tasks such as drafting emails, scheduling meetings, and preparing for follow-ups. Einstein GPT for Service: Automatically generate knowledge articles from past case notes. Auto-generate tailored agent chat responses to boost customer satisfaction through personalized and faster service engagements. Einstein GPT for Marketing: Generate tailored and targeted content in real-time to engage customers and prospects via email, mobile, social media, and advertising. Einstein GPT for Slack: Get AI-powered customer insights such as smart sales summaries via Slack and reveal user behaviors such as knowledge article updates. Einstein GPT for Developers: Leverage Salesforce’s proprietary LLM to boost developer productivity by using an AI-powered chat assistant to generate code for languages such as Apex. Einstein Trust layer What is the key differentiator of AI Cloud? Salesforce is promoting Einstein Trust Layer, a cutting-edge moderation solution that prevents text-generating algorithms from storing sensitive data such as consumer orders and contact information. The Einstein Trust Layer is a powerful set of features and safeguards that protect your data's privacy and security, increase the safety and accuracy of your AI output, and encourage responsible AI use throughout the Salesforce ecosystem. The Einstein Trust Layer, which includes capabilities such as dynamic grounding, zero data retention, and toxicity detection, is intended to let you harness the power of generative AI while maintaining your safety and security standards. A rising number of global corporations have prohibited or restricted the usage of generative AI, such as ChatGPT, citing privacy concerns. Einstein Trust Layer is tailor-made for such enterprises that have stringent compliance and governance constraints that prevent them from adopting generative AI tools. The first question that arises in everyone's mind is how much can we trust generative AI. The Einstein Trust Layer is purpose-built around trust and security and designed to enable these enterprises to approach these new technologies safely and securely. The Einstein Trust Layer acts as a bridge between an app or service and a text-generating model. It detects when a prompt may include sensitive information and automatically deletes it before it reaches the model. This layer can also screen for toxicity (eg. racism or other types of discrimination), whether in a prompt or the model's response. Users who link third-party models to AI Cloud such as Google's Vertex AI can use Einstein Trust Layer. Salesforce's partnership with OpenAI ensures cooperative content moderation by leveraging OpenAI's safety tools and the Einstein Trust Layer. Salesforce is providing a set of prompt templates and prompt template building tools to set AI Cloud apart from other managed AI service offerings available today. The Einstein Trust Layer’s optimized AI prompt templates leverage harmonized data to contextualize outputs generated by the models in alignment with the organization’s needs, improving the quality and relevance of the created content. The Einstein Trust Layer reduces the time and cost to adapt a generative AI model for a particular use case. For instance, a customer could design a template that instructs a model to draft emails in accordance with a particular style, or one that retrieves specific information from a Salesforce record. AI Cloud marks a fundamental shift in the automatic creation of email content – one that is grounded in CRM data. AI Cloud represents the powerful combination of data, customer relationship management, and AI. As prompts become smarter and better, AI Cloud is poised to become an invaluable tool for businesses delivering greater value to customers across the Salesforce technology stack. Trusted AI begins with secure prompts. A prompt is a series of instructions that guides a large language model (LLM) to produce relevant results. The more contextual the prompt, the better will be the outcome. The Einstein Trust Layer allows you to safely enter AI prompts with context about your business while its data masking and zero data retention capabilities ensure the data's privacy and security when delivered to a third-party LLM. Seamless privacy and data controls. Utilize the scale and cost-effectiveness of third-party LLMs while ensuring your data's privacy and security at every stage of the generating process. Data Masking Before providing AI prompts to third-party LLMs, automatically mask sensitive data such as personally identifiable information and payment information and customize the masking settings as per your company's requirements. The availability of the Data masking capabilities of EinsteinGPT varies by feature, language, and geography. Dynamic Grounding Generate AI prompts with business context securely from structured or unstructured data by taking advantage of multiple grounding methodologies and prompt templates that can be scaled across your organization. Secure Data Retrieval Allow secure data access and contextualize every generative AI prompt while retaining permissions and data access limits. Your data is the real product. Salesforce allows customers complete control over the use of their data for AI. Whether you use Salesforce-hosted models or third-party models such as OpenAI, AI Cloud does not retain any context. Once the output is generated, the LLM forgets both the prompt as well as the output. Eliminate toxic and harmful outputs. Scan and evaluate each prompt and output for toxicity and empower employees to share only suitable content. Ensure that no output is shared unless a moderator or designated content approver accepts or rejects it, and save every step as metadata to leave an audit trail to promote compliance at scale. Securely Unlock Enterprise-Grade Generative AI with AI Cloud Einstein, Data Cloud, Flow, Tableau, and Mulesoft all benefit from AI Cloud's capabilities. Salesforce AI Cloud empowers organizations to unlock the future of their AI journey with a solution that is trustworthy, open, and intelligent. Developing trust and embracing openness The Einstein GPT Trust Layer enables businesses to employ generative AI with confidence by facilitating the deployment of relevant models for a range of tasks. This trust layer allows enterprises to use a variety of large-language models (LLMs) while adhering to their trust and openness standards, which prioritize data privacy, security, and compliance. Leveraging capabilities of Third-party Large Language Models (LLMs) Salesforce's AI Cloud promotes open development by integrating third-party LLMs such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cohere, and others. These LLMs are hosted within Salesforce's secure infrastructure, so user prompts and responses stay within the Salesforce environment. Salesforce has also formed a trusted partnership with OpenAI, utilizing their Enterprise API and security capabilities, as well as the Einstein GPT Trust Layer, to secure data retention within Salesforce. Salesforce's own large language models such as CodeTF, CodeGen, and CodeT5+, assist companies in reducing talent gaps, lowering implementation costs, improving team efficiency, and detecting incidents that require immediate attention. Bring Your Own Model With AI Cloud, companies that have trained their unique models elsewhere to integrate seamlessly with their desired infrastructure. These custom models, whether built with Google's Vertex AI, Amazon's SageMaker, or any other platform, can connect directly to AI Cloud over the secure Einstein GPT Trust Layer. Organizations can maintain control and privacy over their information by storing it within their trusted perimeter. Enterprise Ready Solution Salesforce predicts that by the end of 2030, Generative AI will drive $15 trillion in global economic growth and increase GDP by over 25%. These are remarkable numbers and Salesforce believes that AI Cloud will propel businesses to new heights, with efficiency and productivity being the key differentiators. Prompt Template and Builders With AI Cloud, Salesforce has created a user-friendly solution that generates AI prompts that rationalize data and ensure that the content provided is in complete alignment with an organization's unique context. As a young company (we are only a decade old!), we are driven by the immense potential of emerging technologies such as Generative AI to deliver value to our clients and help them bring their ideas to fruition. To fully explore the potential of AI Cloud, connect with a trusted and certified Salesforce implementation partner. Our Salesforce AI services help marketing, sales, service, commerce, engineering, and IT teams work seamlessly with generative AI.  To know more about how we can tailor unique scalable solutions for you by leveraging the power of generative AI to enhance the customer experience, connect with an  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxyQDcap4Ic – video

Generative Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI) is opening up opportunities to develop a new breed of apps: smart, intelligent workhorses that can do the work of hundreds of individual apps – all from a simple natural language prompt. When you think of a copilot, the first thing that comes to mind is someone assisting a captain fly an airplane. But by the end of 2023, the word “copilot” was trending in a big way in the AI world. Take generative AI technology that we’ve come to know of recently via apps like ChatGPT and Bard and put that power right into your workflow, that is what an AI copilot is. At a fundamental level, an AI copilot is an AI-powered assistant that can help you execute simple tasks faster than ever. Imagine you’re about to book a business dinner with a customer in another city. Before AI copilots came along, you’d first go through the customer’s customer relationship management (CRM) data to check for any food preferences. Next, you’d open one of the table booking apps to look for a suitable restaurant to check for availability. Then, you’ll open one of the travel apps to book your travel itinerary, and, finally, you’ll open your email app to send a personalized confirmation to your customer with all the details. You’re looking at a minimum of four separate apps and at least a half hour of toil. Now imagine this. You open one app, your AI copilot app. Instead of navigating through 4 different apps which might take several minutes or even hours, you simply type in your AI copilot app, “Book dinner with Jonathan next Monday.” Your AI copilot will work in the background and execute all of the above steps. Once done, it will send you confirmations by email and/or text, all of this with minimal intervention from you. Beyond the evident savings in time and the obvious novelty of cutting-edge technology, it’s hard to fully convey in words the true value of this digital transformation using conventional methods. These AI copilots can do the work of dozens of apps concurrently – generate draft reports, author relevant and accurate customer service responses, compose sales emails, renew product subscriptions, pay our bills, and more. But first things first, how exactly do they get the job done? How does an AI copilot work? At the heart of AI copilots are building blocks referred to as copilot actions. A copilot action can refer to a single task or can include a collection of tasks required for a specific job. These may include: Updating a CRM record. Generating product descriptions from CRM data. Composing customer email replies. Handling a range of customer service use cases. Summarizing transcripts from chat sessions. Highlighting action items from meeting notes. These tasks can be triggered via automation or on-demand in any pre-defined sequence or can be autonomously executed by the AI assistant. A copilot’s ability to understand natural language requests, work out a logical plan of action, and execute the tasks is what makes it unique. An AI assistant can handle multiple instructions (we literally mean thousands) and learn from those actions. So, the more they act, the better they get. When multiple tasks are required to be accomplished, actions allow your AI assistant to perform a wide range of business tasks. For example, an AI copilot can help a service rep quickly resolve a case in which a customer was overbilled for a service. Or it can help a sales rep close a deal by recommending the next best actions. Want to understand in depth? Let’s get our AI copilot into action. Take the earlier example of setting up dinner with your customer, Jonathan. If you use Einstein Copilot in Salesforce, it would know Jonathan’s initial context, like his name and CRM interaction history, but it would need a little more information from you, like date, time, and location. It could then execute actions based on your earlier one-liner instruction and respond with any other questions relevant to the associated actions: It might ask you which Jonathan you want to set up the dinner meeting with (in case of multiple contacts with the name Jonathan) and what type of cuisine Jonathan prefers if those preferences are not already there in the CRM. What’s interesting about Einstein and other AI copilots is that they make you feel you are having a conversation with a fellow employee just like you would do over SMS or WhatsApp. But in reality, you’re just chatting with a highly sophisticated computer program. The native Salesforce SMS app serves as the conversational interface acting as a bridge between your CRM data and you and serves up information over a text conversation. The AI copilot determines what actions to execute and then generates dialogs in runtime, summarizes the output data, and paraphrases it in common human language. To you, it feels like you’re having a reasonably sophisticated chat conversation with your AI assistant. It lasts only a few seconds and then your travel itinerary is done, and your dinner is set up with minimal effort on your part. You just tell an AI copilot – “Do so and so task” and it diligently works in the background choreographing a complex workflow of processes and rummaging through data to deliver a result that would otherwise have taken a human far more time and much more actions. What are the different types of AI copilots? Although the technology of artificial intelligence has been around for a while, the concept of AI copilots is fairly new. Ever chatted with a customer service rep on an app or website only to realize it was actually a bot? That’s a type of copilot. It helps customers with basic service questions but often fails to get to the deeper details of your issue. And when you get frustrated with a back-and-forth conversation that’s going nowhere, you turn to an actual human for assistance. Chatbot technology got a shot in the arm with the launch of recent AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Bard, Google's Gemini, etc. These generative AI platforms can compose emails, write code, generate reports, and even analyze data. With AI copilots, the interaction becomes even more sophisticated, with your own AI copilot working in the background to help you improve everything you do. The AI chatbot for Salesforce called Einstein bot is one of the several new copilot entrants in the market along with similar solutions from Microsoft and GitHub. Here’s the key takeaway: When you are doing your research to identify an AI copilot for your business, establish one key decision parameter. Will it only use external sources for information like ChatGPT, or whether you will be able to securely connect it with all your organizational data – structured and unstructured? Why you should use an AI Copilot If you are reasonably well-read about the recent developments in the AI space, you would be familiar with popular large language models (LLMs) such as Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s GPT-4. These LLMs power chatbots such as ChatGPT and are great for specific tasks. Their responses can be limited though since some of them have access to data only till 2022. And models like the ones used by ChatGPT only have access to public information about your business, they obviously don’t have access to your trusted CRM data.  Which means they can’t help you create relevant and accurate customer service replies or tell you about promising sales opportunities, nor can they act on your behalf to reply to an email or make a dinner reservation. But an AI copilot changes everything. Let’s go back to dinner with Jonathan. Your trip was successful. Now, you may wish to thank him with a bottle of his favorite wine. Because your AI assistant already has the necessary actions to look up Jonathan’s CRM record to find his favorite brand and to charge your card on record, all you need to do is type, “Send Jonathan a bottle of his favorite wine.” And this example is akin to the first chapter in a beginner's course on AI copilots. Imagine executing thousands of actions in virtually limitless combinations. With an AI copilot, retail marketers can create product descriptions in multiple languages in minutes, path lab clinicians can review lab results and help doctors make diagnoses, and finance professionals can analyze mountains of data in no time to propose multiple investment opportunities. The use cases are virtually endless. With an AI copilot, you can quickly transform your business to be more efficient and productive, regardless of the industry you work in. A conversational, generative AI-based digital assistant will do all those routine tasks that are limiting your bandwidth to scale by helping you to engage with your data like never before. Does it seem that development around AI is happening at a breakneck pace and the very idea of wanting to figure out what you should do around AI to help your business is giving you a headache? Well, you’re not alone. As a trusted Salesforce Implementation partner for over a decade, our experts can guide you on how to combine the power of CRM, Data, and AI to propel your business into the next phase of growth.