Tech giants IBM and Salesforce have announced a new collaboration aimed at helping businesses worldwide accelerate their adoption of generative AI for customer relationship management. Together, the two technology leaders will support clients across industries to revolutionize customer, partner, and employee experiences through AI, while also helping safeguard their data.
IBM Consulting and Salesforce will work jointly with shared clients to accelerate AI-driven business transformations. Clients will now have access to IBM's industry expertise and innovative delivery models, including its IBM Garage methodology, to guide implementation of Salesforce's AI technologies like Einstein, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Slack. This approach can enable efficient integration across Salesforce's suite of AI tools.
Additionally, IBM Consulting can complement Salesforce's generative AI solutions with its own enterprise-ready AI platform, IBM Watson. Watson can help uncover insights from backend systems and create more dynamic user experiences.
Through IBM Consulting Managed Services for Salesforce, clients will also have access to AI accelerators designed for quicker deployment, scaling, and enhancement of Salesforce tools. For example, IBM Data Classifier leverages industry-specific data models to reduce the data mapping process when onboarding AI.
"We see how the need to increase employee productivity while simultaneously elevating the customer experience with speed, personalization, and convenience has surged exponentially," said Matt Candy, Global Managing Partner for Generative AI at IBM Consulting. "Through our collaboration with Salesforce, we can help empower enterprise clients to scale and accelerate the adoption of generative AI that will support them to meet their business needs."
The partnership also enables an open, collaborative approach to building AI solutions that embrace diverse models and multiple cloud platforms. This provides clients flexibility to choose the right models and architecture for their desired outcomes.
Notably, IBM says it leveraged generative AI through Salesforce and Slack as part of its own digital transformation. By unifying data across sales, service and marketing functions, IBM gained a 360-degree view of customer journeys enterprise-wide.
The announcement builds on an longstanding alliance between the two tech leaders. Most recently, they collaborated with the Recording Academy to transform experiences for both music fans and industry professionals at the GRAMMY Awards.
The partnership between IBM and Salesforce comes as the new era of enterprise adoption for generative AI starts to take shape. As two proven leaders in AI, cloud computing, and digital transformation, their collaboration carries immense weight. Their combined expertise and technologies lower the barriers for businesses worldwide to deploy generative AI, whether for customer service, marketing, sales or beyond.