Episode 37: Unlocking the business value of sustainability with Salesforce Agentforce Net Zero

The transcript highlights below have been edited for clarity

Mark Lee

Welcome to this next episode of the Sustainable Connections Podcast. I'm Mark Lee, Global Director of Thought Leadership at ERM.

Today we're going to stray into the digital realm and we're going to look at technological innovation and digital solutions that are driving change in the sustainability field and how they create value for business, partly time value in terms of resource, but also commercial value in terms of the outcomes that you can realize. We're going to zoom in specifically on a product from Salesforce that many of you will probably know as Net Zero Cloud, but which has just been renamed to Agentforce Net Zero. And we're going to look at how that technology and other similar digital technologies can help organizations reach both their sustainability and their business goals.

I have a couple of guests here that are going to help me unpick this learning and go on this journey with me. One of those is Prashanthi Sudhakar, who is the Head of Product for Agentforce Net Zero at Salesforce.

Prashanthi Sudhakar

Hi there, Mark. Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate the time.

Mark Lee

Terrific. It is great to have you here. Also with us is Meera Krishnan, who is a Managing Consultant for Net Zero Cloud Solutions. You're obviously going to need a new title, Meera, that reflects the new naming of Net Zero here at ERM.

Meera Krishnan

Hi, Mark. It's great to meet you and happy to be on the podcast.

Mark Lee

Awesome. Before we go into the detail of all this, I want to know a little bit more about each of you. Please tell me what's behind your title. But also, sustainability technology is on the newer edge of this field. How's your career put you in the role that you're in today?

Prashanthi Sudhakar

I joined Salesforce almost a year ago as the Head of Product for Agentforce Net Zero or Net Zero Cloud. As the Head of Product, a big part of my role is around figuring out the vision and what the product should evolve into, and how does it cater the different needs of our existing customers, as well as our new customers, given that the whole sustainability landscape is constantly evolving. The other part of it is, as a product person, you're constantly looking at ensuring that the product is sticky, so that people feel good about using it. The experience is seamless. So that's a big, big part of my job.

Now, more around how did my career with sustainability start. So as someone who was born and raised in India, I was raised in Bangalore, but during my vacations, I would often go to rural parts of India. It was baffling for me at a young age to see that dichotomy in the energy access aspect of it. So in some places, there would be power outages for almost 10 hours, which is not something that we experienced in a city. That was very baffling. That was the first point where my interest peaked and then eventually that led to me becoming an electrical engineer. Then I wanted to stay true to it so I joined Schneider Electric. I was at Schneider Electric for 15 years and I was always at the cusp of product, strategy, and business development, predominantly the energy management, energy transition and sustainability space. I was then at Johnson Controls for a couple of years, and then had a minor stint of creating my own companies. Eventually, since I've always been in the product space, when I was approached for this role, given sustainability is all about data, and that has been a big recurring theme in my career, I really jumped on the opportunity and that’s how I landed here.

Mark Lee

Fantastic. I find asking that question, those personal early experiences have often shaped careers in our field. Not dissimilar to you, I went on a high school exchange from Canada to Brazil when I was 15 or 16 years old. At that point, Brazil, I think, had the highest Gini coefficient in the world, the measure of inequity. I was just stunned in that same way that you were going to rural areas and realizing how big some of the gaps were. That set me on a path where I wanted to do development work, which turned into sustainable development work. It all makes sense when you look backwards, right? Meera, what about for you? How did you end up here with us today?

Meera Krishnan

Yeah, so I think for me, I did have some early childhood memories that are quite similar to what Prasanthi is describing. I'm also of Indian origin and growing up, we would go to India fairly often. I too was just completely struck by the level of inequity that you see in places like India, where you have limited access to natural resources and energy that we take for granted in our lives here. So that always stuck with me and then I think as I got older, I found that sustainability really spoke to me because it's so interconnected with other parts of society in general, right? So sustainability is something that impacts health when you think about environmental health and health disparities between different groups. There's many studies that show that children who grow up in low-income neighborhoods are more likely to be exposed to poor air quality when they're younger, and that can influence their later health outcomes as they grow older. And so, there's all sorts of intersections between sustainability and other almost like metrics or areas of well-being in our society. I think at the end of the day, the world is a very, very complicated place, but sustainability is to me, one of the few things that is like unequivocally something that you can get behind and so I think that's what draws me to it the most.

Mark Lee

Sustainability is maybe one of the ways to make sense of some of that complexity if we do it well. And I love the health metaphor. I find it's really powerful with so many folks that sustainability starts to make sense to them when it's filtered through a lens of better air, better water, better food, better for my family, better for my community, instead of the really large and sometimes slightly esoteric ways we can approach some of it as well.

Prashanthi, first of all, I don't think we can assume everybody listening will know what Agentforce Net Zero Cloud is. Can you explain the product itself, how it came into the Salesforce wider ecosystem, and what its application looks like?

Prashanthi Sudhakar

Agentforce Net Zero is a sustainability data management platform. So firstly, we help large and mid-size enterprises and organizations in managing that complete end-to-end need on their sustainability side. What does this entail? It's all the way from aggregating data from disparate sources, which is where often the biggest challenge lies with many customers. So, we really simplify that process. And then once you bring that data, how do you unify the data? How do you contextualize the data? Often this data is not of high quality. We have lots of issues with a lot of this data that comes across the enterprise. So, we help in improving the quality of data with a big feature that we have called data gap filling. And then afterwards, once this comes in, it is leveraged for many purposes, all the way from, accounting that is for environmental, social governance aspect of accounting, then reporting, which could be for voluntary or compliance reasons. Number three is help in the visualization of this data so that you can have a very compelling conversation with your internal stakeholders and external stakeholders on what that data looks like or where are you in your journey?

And then the last bit, which is why we're all here, which is really bringing a change. How do you reduce your emissions for the organization? How do you unlock some business value, which could be, improving, bringing in operational efficiencies or bringing in cost efficiencies within the organization? So that's the piece that Agentforce really brings to the table as an end-to-end platform. Given it's a Salesforce platform, it of course works very closely with the other apps and the 360 suite, as we call it, which brings in all that enterprise level connectivity and integration.

The other part, which I would say is an extension of the offering is, we believe in having an ecosystem. Sustainability is not a solo ride. It's about working with other people. So, we have a vast network of partners, like ERM who are a huge partner of ours from an implementation and from an advisory angle. But also, we have partners who help us from a data standpoint, or we have partners who help us from capability standpoint. So, this is something that we really pride in as a platform in bringing all those capabilities together so that the customer can make it their own. Because no two companies look the same, so they can make the platform their own. So that's AgentForce Net Zero Cloud in a nutshell.

Now, where did this come from? Salesforce has been in its own sustainability journey for quite some time. I think we're one of those few organizations who pride in having sustainability at its organization's core value. Salesforce has been doing lofty commitments and voluntary reporting for quite some time. Like everyone, our sustainability and impact team started off with spreadsheets and planning cloud files.

Mark Lee

Of course they did. It was almost a rule, Prashanthi. You had to do it that way.

Prashanthi Sudhakar

Exactly. That's the start of the journey. And then you soon realized that it's impossible to manage enterprise level data in spreadsheets and Excel files. Our sustainability team at that time was on a lookout for a solution and realized that there isn't one that actually meets their needs. So they decided to build one for ourselves. But then eventually we realized that this can't be a problem just for Salesforce. It's going to be a problem for a lot of enterprises, or there are a lot of organizations out there. That resulted in the birth of Net Zero Cloud, which is of course now called Agentforce Net Zero.

Mark Lee

Yeah, it makes sense how it's evolved and it's so interesting to me that it came really out of trying to solve your own needs and deliver for what your customer zero inside the organization needed in terms of data management.

You also remind me, Prashanti, that last year, Salesforce and ERM, along with GlobeScan and a couple other partners, did a piece of research on “The Sustainability Value Creation Triangle”. In that, we talked to finance, technology, and sustainability teams inside companies and asked them how they work together, where it works, where it doesn't and so many things came back to the mutual sharing of the data management challenge. And you boiled it down to that. We need better information that should enable a clearer vision, and then we can actually take action and improve. And they were all still struggling at the ways to do that better as internal teams inside companies. But clearly, having better data, better data systems, and better access was an incredibly important part of that.

Meera, Prashanthi mentioned partnership and that our organizations do partner. What does our partnership look like on this product and more generally if you've experienced it?

Meera Krishnan

So ultimately, Salesforce is a leading technology platform, it's very deeply incorporated and embedded into businesses all around the world. And similarly, ERM is the world's largest sustainability consultancy. And so there's an incredible amount of knowledge that sits within our organization when it comes to understanding how companies should decarbonize or what is the environmental impact of certain action taken by an organization or a governing body or whatever the case may be, right? So ultimately, I think this partnership is about bringing those capabilities together to drive value for organizations and companies, whether that is, you know, client zero, like Salesforce, or one of the many other organizations that we work with.

I think one of the things that makes our partnership really special is that oftentimes, there are conversations that happen within different areas of ERM's business, as we talk to companies about their sustainability goals and their decarbonization goals, and they're oftentimes looking for something that looks exactly like Net Zero Cloud. And so, the ability to cross pollinate between the work that Prashanthi and team are doing, as well as the work that our clients are trying to do, I think is a really important part of our partnership.

Value creation in action

Mark Lee

So, Salesforce is in effect built a platform, a tool that we can bring to others. They know they're looking for it, but they probably don't know exactly what it is. We can kind of fill a gap. And then ERM, supports the implementation of this into other organizations as well.

Prashanthi, maybe we can go a bit farther into, so there is a tool, there are organizations like ERM that help Salesforce embed it in other organizations. How does it actually create value? Sure, we're managing data that could be used for compliance or storytelling, but how does that sort of unfold in practice? Do you have an example for us that you can share?

Prashanthi Sudhakar

I often say that this is a three-legged stool. One is there is the platform, which basically helps in catering to the needs of the customer, at least common denominator across different customers. And then there is always someone on the advisory side, which is where ERM plays such a big role in the partnership, where you have to advise the customer on what is sustainability? What does it mean for you? And how do you make it your own? And then there's the last piece, which is the actual implementation part of it. Since we are a platform, it's about how do you make the platform bring value to the customer, this is part of the three legs stool.

Now coming back to how is it that customers can derive value in addition to, of course, making it their own so that it is meaningful to their own industry and their own business. I would say some of the big examples that we've seen is, in addition to of course, doing accounting and reporting both for compliance and voluntary purposes. I feel the real value that we've seen with some of the customers is how they have used sustainability data along with the rest of the enterprise data to truly drive some operational changes. We have a customer who's a huge retailer, and they really looked at their sustainability data. And they were able to save five per cent of their overall utility costs because they saw that there's a big difference between their sustainability emissions data versus the number of buildings that they have. And there was something missing there, and then they realized, okay, we've been paying utility bills for buildings whose leases ended quite some time back. So, this is one such example, but we have many examples like this where we've had some customers who've used it for reducing their product cost, other customers who've really brought in like energy efficiency to like reduce their energy bills. So these are genuine examples of people using sustainability data.

In addition to, of course, all the simplifications, it can bring in around, how do you bring in the data? How do you simplify the data? How do you improve the quality of data? Because in reality, sustainability and impacting members, they're not big teams. We believe the biggest role that we play, thanks to the flexibility of the platform along with its agentic and AI capabilities, is to take away that manual effort away from them so that the sustainability team members can focus on higher order strategic tasks. This is where I'm super excited about the partnership that we have because that truly helps in unlocking that value for our customers.

Mark Lee

So, time saving, finding information gaps, that story about paying for energy in buildings that are no longer actually part of your portfolio, so practical cost savings, but also the gap you want to close. And you mentioned flexibility.

Meera, we've got a platform, a tool, but companies are so different, industries and sectors are so different. How, when you're supporting implementation of Net Cero Cloud or Agentforce Net Zero, do we adapt it as we move from client to client, company to company, situation to situation?

Meera Krishnan

Like you said, there's many different ways that Net Zero Cloud can look from customer to customer. One of our leading greenhouse gas protocol experts here at ERM, one thing that he always says is, the greenhouse gas protocol, it is designed to be flexible. So, I think part of our job here at ERM is to essentially look at a customer and figure out, based on your industry and your size and the different organizationally relevant emission sources, what does that flexibility look like for you and what does Net Zero Cloud need to look like for you? So a lot of what we do is get to know our customers very deeply and understand, how do they operate on a day-to-day basis and what does their emissions profile look like? And then after that, we go into the actual how of the process. Like you said, it looks very different for lots of different customers.

Turning data into business advantage  

Mark Lee

And this might take us a step further away from the product or the platform itself, Meera, but once the platform is in place, the data is available, are you seeing examples of how people then can connect the data and or the sustainability insights that come from it to their broader commercial narrative and to shift business outcomes? Is that starting to happen or is that still what we're hoping for down the road?

Meera Krishnan

I think it's starting to happen slowly but surely. I do think that is absolutely where things are going to go in the next 10, 20 years. Lots of times, what we've started to see is companies wanting to be able to quantify, for instance, on the product level, what is the carbon footprint of my specific product that I'm selling to customers? They want to share this information, not just for their own emissions accounting purposes, but also to be able to share that with their customers who might be eco conscious consumers, as well as their stakeholders or their investors, who may also be placing importance on this sort of thing.

And so, I think we're slowly moving towards a place where, for a while sustainability was a very siloed function within the business. But I think that we're slowly moving towards the stage where sustainability is becoming embedded within sales, service, marketing, and at really every part of a business and its operations. We're seeing a lot of really cool crossover use cases where clients are finding that sustainability is not just something that's good because it's good, but it can also be good for business and for your bottom line, which is always a great thing.

Mark Lee

Yeah, it's a little bit like your health example from earlier that I feel overwhelmingly in narrative and in practice that sustainability is most effective when it's actually better, right? That we can't ask people to make a trade-off. We need to offer them something that says, if you do this, your business is going to be more robust, more resilient, more successful over the short and long term. We also can't ask them to wait forever.

Prashanthi Sudhakar:

Can I also add one thing to what Meera said? Meera made a very interesting point, which is sustainability is no longer an afterthought, but it's such an embedded and an integral part of what organizations are doing. I think it's very important to underpin that further because invariably you see people start off with reporting as their first place. And at that point of time, it's about, “help me give me some budget so that I can function and do my compliance reports”, but the moment you start looking at sustainability data, it's basically moving the needle from being a cost center to a revenue center. At that point of time, you're having credible conversations with your stakeholders, not just around, okay, I'm helping you with compliance reporting, but I'm actually truly helping you in changing some of your existing operations so that your operations can be more efficient or you can save more costs. So, at that point of time, you're not the only person pushing for sustainability as an impact team member. The entire organization is going to be rallying around you, which I see is a very important movement or a change that is happening now, and it's more realistic, if I may.

Mark Lee

I'm curious about two things. One, the regulatory environment has been shifting in more than one direction, right? There was a steady march going on for a while, and now we've seen some regulation or legislation that was expected, like with the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) here in the US, which has been put on the shelf indefinitely. Of course, Omnibus in Europe is changing the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive), and yet in other parts of the world, new sustainability-related and especially climate disclosure-related regulations are charging forward. How does Agentforce Net Zero play across the shifting regulatory landscape? Beyond compliance, what can you do once you've met what is required and add value in that way?

Prashanthi Sudhakar

First of all, it comes with a lot of heartburn given the whole volatility that people see in the situation. It definitely causes a lot of heartburn for sustainability practitioners and impacting members.

Mark Lee

I was thinking heartache, heartburn is perfect.

Prashanthi Sudhakar

I think the first thing that we definitely help our customers with is, how do you reduce the manual workload that goes around actually generating reports, building reports? All the way from what data should I be looking after? How do I bring that in? Can I simplify my first draft disclosure? Do I have data traceability? Where is the source of the data? The validity of the data so that you know the data assurance process can be simplified. And given some of the recent investments we've been making with Agentforce around the agentic tech and the AI capabilities, that is further helping customers move more towards the strategic side of things rather than focus on the manual piece.

The other part which we are seeing, which is good, is even though there is a lot of volatility, but there are certain areas where there's a lot of convergence, especially on the environmental side of the reporting piece, there's quite a lot of convergence. One average statistic that we heard was a large enterprise on average has around 30 reports that they file in a year. Of those 30 reports, you are not starting net new for each of those reports. There's probably 40 per cent of the data that is common across those 30 reports, which you have already identified. There's probably a subset that is common between one or two reports, which is there. And then the number of data points that are very unique to a particular report, it starts reducing.

So, we really focus on that piece in terms of, number one, keeping the data models up to date, which is basically where all the data is stored. And then the second part of it is, how do you crystallize it all in? We have this fabulous feature called Information Library, which is to bring that information in and you can store it into different snippets. And then from those snippets, how do you eventually generate it into different reports? That could be a Word document or you can work with any other provider who does like XBRL tagging and that last mile reporting, if I may.

Mark Lee

Assuming there that for many customers, probably meeting the compliance demands is a huge driver to put this in place. But I think at ERM, it's fair to say that we see compliance as a starting point. And that if that's all you do, you've probably left a lot on the table. So, I'm curious what evidence you're seeing of what people do next.

Prashanthi Sudhakar

Yeah, I think the first journey that people always start is how do you use the sustainability data and then start reducing some of the things that are within the control of the impact of the sustainability team, which is reduce energy costs, reduce costs around waste, because those are normally data points that they have access to, and then they're able to like, collaborate very closely with say their real estate team or their utilities team to like to like do it. And then we see customers who are a little more sophisticated, where they have data in their scope 3. No one has pretty data in scope 3, but folks who have a little more or who've been doing it for some time, start marrying this data with the rest of the enterprise data.

So just to give you an example, we have an auto manufacturer, and what they do is they look at their flagship vehicles, and they look at the key components that contribute towards that flagship vehicle. And those key components, they look at the BOM (Bill of Materials), which is something that comes from their procurement system. They look at the quantity that they've procured. All those things come from their other ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems and financial systems. And then they use the emissions data that comes from us to get a holistic view of which supplier is contributing the most. Then they use this data effectively to compare and contrast and see, should I be going with supplier A or should I be going with supplier B? Supplier A, who has a more complicated logistic network compared to supplier B, who maybe has not complied with some of the human rights related aspects or does not have a commitment made with SBTI (Science Based Targets Intitative).

So, I think at that point of time, you start making a more informed decision and these data sets are no longer in silo. Everyone can view it, and you start having a holistic start, getting a holistic point of view, which is not just tied down to the sustainability teams. Any other team member can also see. So I think that's the power of how you can unlock those views. And if I may even use the word democratize some of these insights so that it's not just a push action, but there's also pull action coming in from the rest of the organization.

Mark Lee

So Prashanthi, I was so interested in that, I agree 100 per cent. I see that democratization of data. And then you also hit this other note or point about how this is becoming a competitive factor and it can let organizations either distinguish when competing with one another for business or let an original equipment manufacturer in a value chain look at potential suppliers and make better choices about which of them to do future work with based on their carbon related performance.

Meera, is that one of the reasons people are coming to ERM and saying, please help us implement this tool. We need to position ourselves better in the marketplace.

Meera Krishnan

Absolutely, when it comes especially to scope three and those value chain emissions, there becomes a lot of crossover between the priorities of one organization and the priorities of all of the other organizations that surround it. We've been seeing that a lot, whether it is a company near the top of the value chain where they're supplying to companies that then need to be compliant or vice versa, companies who are, the recipient of certain goods are needing to then quantify what is their scope 3 emissions. Both of those scenarios create conversations of how do we first quantify, what is the impact or the footprint of that organization? And then two, how do we make smarter decisions for our supply chain when it comes to becoming more efficient, becoming more resilient, and ultimately, building relationships with other suppliers who share our priorities for compliance and decarbonization?

And so, it's almost a bit infectious, I think when it comes to sustainability, right? Because you might be a company who might not have enough revenue to be subject to something like the California regulations, but the companies that you're selling to might have enough revenue. And so, they'll be asking for that information. I think like you said before Mark, the regulations are a starting point and they’re creating a lot of cross-pollination between different organizations as they begin to define what are our priorities over the next 5-10 years and how do we accomplish those? A lot of times accomplishing those is not an internal organization task. It's something that requires the cooperation of both you and the people upstream and downstream in your value chain.

AI and the future of sustainability decision-making  

Mark Lee

Great. Two things there stood out for me. One is you neatly took what I said about competition and said, yes, Mark, but it's also an incredible opportunity for value chain collaboration. So point very well made. I think no organization within a value chain can actually track scope 3 in particular without an incredibly cooperative approach up and down that value chain. And then your point about, you might not be regulated, but if your customer is, you may as well be. And that was a point I heard over and over at Climate Week in New York this year, that folks just saying, it doesn't matter if you're now outside the CSRD box or if you're not going to be covered in California in January. If your customers are, you are going to get the same question and you should act like you are and prepare like you are.

Prashanthi, I want to come back to you. We've had this conversation with AI, kind of assumed almost and maybe we should have started here, frankly, but let's make sure we talk about it before we end. I think it's safe to say that Agentforce Net Zero has been working to really integrate AI and AI agents and that's supposed to help. And that's the general message to the world right now about AI, is it's supposed to help and not everybody fully grasps yet how. Can you tell us how it's being built in, what opportunities that creates to accelerate, improve, enhance sustainability reporting and decision making or anything else that comes from this?

Prashanthi Sudhakar

Absolutely, I'm happy to share some of the use cases we already have in the platform today, and also offer a sneak peek into what's coming up as well. Today, a big problem that many customers have is collecting data. Now, yes, you may have data in your data lakes, enterprise systems, which is okay, but there's still always going to be a lot of manual data that's floating around, which many team members, either within the company or outside the company have. We have a mechanism using the data collection agent where you simplify the process. The agent really helps you in tracking whom you should be getting this data from, by when, did you get the data or not? So it takes away all that manual effort, that's one very practical use of an agent.

But the second part of it which we've started exploring and a big part of our roadmap is, how do you help customers identify where the true problem lies? Because today, if you get the data, unless you're a data analyst yourself, it's really hard to figure out where should I be focusing or what should I be doing? So that's the part which we want to really simplify using AgentForce, where you exactly point out the areas you should be focused on. Focus on these suppliers or focus on these particular product categories. That's where most of the problems are, that's where the highest emissions are. From there, it really simplifies further in terms of taking those actions. And then eventually, as Meera mentioned, either managing the reputation risk that comes with it or driving some of those operational gains, it becomes easier. This is where we have a lot of capabilities around scenario modeling, anomaly detection, and hotspot analysis, which is a really big, big part of our roadmap.

The last piece is, yes, these are some capabilities that we offer in the product, but we also have a custom builder mechanism. Customers can build their own agents, make it their own for their own needs. We've seen some very interesting use cases come from our customers where some people are looking at, how do I compare this current framework that we have that's coming versus what data do I have? What gaps are there? How am I faring? How does my quality of data look like? Am I ready for my assurance process? So there's all those kind of use cases that are coming in, and I'm sure there'll be more use cases that'll come as time goes by when people start getting their hands dirty with Agentforce and some of the other capabilities out there.

Mark Lee

Meera, we've broadly been kind of making the case here in the conversation today for cloud solutions as part of people's sustainability approach. I think many organizations are considering this. They might be partway down that path. Are there one, two, three steps or best practices that you recommend to companies generally as they're starting to make decisions on this journey? Where should they start? What should they put in place to make a good decision and then move forward?

Meera Krishnan

I would say the first recommendation that I would have is just start early. Technology and implementing technology is oftentimes a massive headache when it comes to organizations and all of the data on the technologies that organizations today are needing to juggle, right? But the sooner that we can start to manage our sustainability data, the easier it will become in the long term to really wrap our arms around what that data means and begin to make informed decisions on that, whether that is operational decisions or regulatory decisions.

The second thing that I would say is, consider the people aspect of it. Sustainability is a very new function for a lot of companies. By new, I don't mean, maybe it started yesterday, but compared to how long a lot of these companies have been around, it's only within really like the last decade or two that lots of people started talking about sustainability.

And so, I think that would be my next recommendation, to talk to the people in your organization and really figure out what are people's priorities and how can we leverage sustainability to make their day-to-day jobs easier, to make their day-to-day operations better. Because often times sustainability as it applies to operational efficiencies can be one of those levers that you can use. And so, I would just say start early and I think broadly, because sustainability really, when it comes down to the value that your organization will get from it, the broader and earlier you start, the better.

Mark Lee

Yeah, the start early is coupled with there's a cost of inaction. I think lots of folks look out and they're waiting for this landscape to resolve itself. My belief is that it'll probably be too late. You'll wish you would have acted while the landscape was still unsettled and had some first mover advantage. And then really powerful, what you said is that there's a cultural element to this as well.

Prashanthi, different closing question for you. We're recording this episode of Sustainable Connections at the end of October in 2025. Dreamforce just passed. One, can you tell us quickly what Dreamforce is and then can you tell us something really exciting about AgentForce Net Zero that you picked up at this year's Dreamforce and why that's got you excited for maybe the 12 months ahead.

Prashanthi Sudhakar

Firstly, before I get to that, I completely second what Meera said. Super important to start early and use data and people. Dreamforce is Salesforce's flagship event that happens on an annual basis where we have thousands of customers, partners, and system integrators who, basically come in, Salesforce really shows a lot about the investments that it has made on the product front. There's always fun announcements that happens at Dreamforce. And then we have a lot of conversations around how do we use it? How is it that customers are using some of the technologies of Salesforce. The learnings are often big. And for people who are also big into music, there's always a big concert.

Mark Lee

There's always a concert. It is a fun event as well as a serious event has been my experience.

Prashanthi Sudhakar

I would just call it a celebration of technology and people coming in together. I would say at this time, Dreamforce was, for us, amazing on so many levels because we heard the following things from our customers. Number one is we had our customers create a community. Almost for the first time, we saw our customers interact with one another rather than them seeing as, okay, this is that person coming from there. Communities are becoming stronger and they're learning from one another. And everyone feels like we're on this journey together. So that's I think number one.

Number two is data continues to be a problem and a challenge. There's constant focus on how do I improve it, how do I focus further, and so on. The third takeaway I have is, which is something that we spoke earlier, sustainability no longer seems to be an afterthought for many of these customers. They have definitely started using that in credible storytelling. The part that was very powerful for me was, yes, reporting, accounting, and the other hard metrics, but people use data for credible storytelling, both inside the organization as well as outside the organization, so that their stakeholders know how sustainability actually brings in value. And that was powerful on so many levels and helped many of these people pivot from just being a cost center to like a revenue center.

So, I would say those are like my 3 big takeaways and I would be missing on something big if I don't say that people were not, I would say more than curious about AI because everyone wants to get their hands dirty and see how they can leverage AI to like number 1 simplify lives. I can safely say that I know there's a lot of fear around AI taking away jobs, but this is one place where people should not have that fear because we have very few human beings who are actually doing this. So, it's okay that AI takes some of the jobs so that we can focus on some of the strategic side of things. And that seems to be a welcome change across the board.

Mark Lee

Really nice note to end on, that sense of optimism around what the technology can do for us. For everybody who has chosen to listen to us today, I've been talking with Prashanthi Sudhakar from Salesforce, where she is the Head of Product for Agentforce Net Zero and with my colleague Meera Krishnan, who is a managing consultant for Net Zero Cloud Solutions at ERM. I want to say a final thank you to both of you, Prashanthi and Meera, for your time and for your insight.

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