Building an Agentic Enterprise with Salesforce: What Business Leaders Need to Know
What It Means to Be an Agentic Enterprise
Becoming an Agentic Enterprise means integrating AI into the core of how work gets done. Salesforce provides the platform to start small and scale fast. Begin with one high-value use case – define it, test it, refine it – and use that momentum to shape your broader architecture.
This evolution depends on more than just speed. Companies need to move fast but start small, while ensuring AI is embedded across their architecture, data, and workflows. The goal is simple: get the right information to the right agent – human or digital – at the right time.
Shifting Architecture to Support Agents
Supporting AI at scale requires changes to your technical foundation. Salesforce’s new 11-layer architecture expands on the traditional seven-layer IT model. These added four layers are designed to help agents sense, reason, and act with increasing autonomy.
Semantic Layer: Shared Understanding of Data
The semantic layer gives AI agents the ability to understand and apply context across the enterprise. It unifies data into a common language, enabling agents to reason effectively and act in ways that align with business goals. Without this layer, AI systems operate in isolation, missing the nuance needed for more intelligent decision making.
AI/ML Layer: Central Intelligence Hub
This layer manages the full lifecycle of AI and machine learning models, from training to deployment. It supports internally developed models and external ones, making it easier to adapt and scale as business needs evolve. The AI/ML layer ensures agents stay current, accurate, and aligned with enterprise logic.
Agentic Layer: Building and Running Agents
The agentic layer is the operational core that supports agent creation and execution. It provides the frameworks, runtimes, and components needed to build agents that can reason, act, and improve over time. This layer enables consistency and scalability, making it easier to manage agents across departments or domains.
Enterprise Orchestration Layer: Coordinating People and Systems
The enterprise orchestration layer connects the dots between agents, human users, and traditional systems. It manages how work flows across all participants, ensuring the right tasks happen in the right order, with the necessary oversight. This layer is key to scaling AI from isolated use cases to enterprise-wide impact.
Companies move through this transformation in phases. In early stages, agents retrieve information using a trusted data foundation. As your organization matures, agents begin to complete tasks, automate workflows, and eventually coordinate actions across domains and departments. Each phase should deliver measurable value and enable you to define a strategic roadmap. Success depends on aligning AI capabilities to real business outcomes at every step.
The Role of Agentforce 360
Now in its fourth edition, Agentforce 360 brings Salesforce’s vision of the Agentic Enterprise to life – agents learn, adapt, and operate across systems rather than as isolated AI tools. It connects data, systems, and teams through four core capabilities: Agentforce 360, Data 360, Customer 360 Apps, and Slack.
A Foundation for Enterprise AI Agents
Agentforce 360 is the core platform for building and managing enterprise-grade AI agents. With features like a conversational builder, hybrid reasoning, and voice capabilities, it enables teams to create intelligent agents that can act with accuracy, control, and speed. This foundation helps organizations scale AI across departments without starting from scratch each time.
Unified Context for Smarter Agents
At the heart of every effective agent is access to high-quality, contextual data. Data 360 provides a trusted, unified layer that allows agents to understand now just what the data is, but what it means. This is critical for making decisions, personalizing experiences, and driving reliable outcomes across the business.
Business Logic and Institutional Memory
Customer 360 Apps captures how a business sells, serves, markets, and operates. This provides the logic and history needed for agents to align with existing processes. Instead of reinventing workflows, agents built on Customer 360 Apps act with the knowledge of how the business already works, ensuring relevance and continuity.
A Conversational Interface for Agents and Teams
Slack serves as the human interface for the Agentic Enterprise. It's where employees and agents collaborate in real time, using natural language to surface insights, take action, and connect systems. With Slack, teams can interact with their organization’s intelligence directly in the flow of work – no switching tabs, no extra training.
For enterprises, this platform represents a shift from siloed AI tools to a coordinated, scalable approach. Rather than building custom solutions in isolation, companies can rely on a shared foundation that accelerates delivery and reduces complexity.
Agentforce 360 is changing how teams engage with AI. By embedding intelligence directly into tools employees already use – like Slack – it lowers barriers to entry and speeds up adoption. Teams don’t need to be deeply technical to build or manage agents. They can focus on outcomes, not infrastructure.
Features like Agent Script, a visual scripting canvas, give businesses control over agent behavior without sacrificing flexibility. Agent Observability adds transparency, helping teams monitor performance, find issues, and adjust quickly. Voice capabilities via Agentforce Voice expand the ways agents can support customers, particularly in high-touch, service-heavy environments.
Together, these tools create an AI foundation that’s easier to use, govern, and scale. For organizations looking to move fast while maintaining control, Agentforce 360 provides a path to do both, bridging the gap between innovation and execution.
Organizing for Speed and Value
The foundation of any AI strategy is data. But instead of trying to clean and organize everything up front, companies can work in reverse. You can start by building an app or agent, then let that pull your data architecture forward. This allows you to move quickly, prove value, and continuously improve.
The path to becoming an Agentic Enterprise doesn’t have to be reserved for large companies. In fact, smaller and midsize businesses may have an edge. With fewer silos and less red tape, they can move faster and adopt new tools without the friction that slows down larger organizations.
Salesforce’s growing partnership with Google reinforces the push toward flexibility and reach. By integrating Google’s Gemini models into the Agentforce 360 platform, enterprises can combine AI creativity with the reliability of business processes. The partnership also brings Agentforce capabilities into everyday tools like Gmail, Sheets, and Meet, giving users more access to context and automation where they already work.
Where This is All Going
AI isn’t here to replace people, but to elevate them. As expectations rise and teams are stretched thin, Agentic Enterprises offer a way to operate with more speed, context, and coordination.
By starting small and scaling thoughtfully, companies can adopt AI in a way that delivers real outcomes. Platforms like Agentforce 360 show what’s possible when data, tools, and people are connected by design. Your focus isn’t on adding more tools, but building smarter systems that help people do their best work.
At Bounteous, we help clients adopt AI capabilities in ways that align with their unique data, team structure, and business goals. From defining the first use case to architecting full agent ecosystems, we guide organizations through each phase of transformation in just 10 weeks with a focus on speed, value, and sustainability.
Want to learn how you can begin building toward an Agent Enterprise? Connect with our team to explore where AI agents can deliver the most impact in your business today.
