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Technology leaders report that attempts to scale AI is not meeting expectations. Key barriers include governance, legacy systems, talent, and cultural anxiety. Companies must prioritise reinvention and execution over mere adoption to thrive in the evolving tech landscape.
“Not really … Not to the mark.”
Those are the words from technology leaders when asked if their AI is scaling as fast as leadership expects. An estimated 70 to 80 per cent of organisations represented in the discussion have at least one pilot running.
That gap defines the Strategic Leadership Dialogue on Building the Agentic High-Tech Enterprise, hosted by Salesforce and Mint. The core issue is no longer technology. It is decision-making.
The Internet Did Not Wait, Neither Will This
The past two and a half decades have witnessed three disruptions, according to Amit Kumar, Partner for Data and Analytics at PwC India. The internet arrived, and businesses had to rebuild their models from scratch. Cloud computing emerged around 2010, giving companies on-demand capability and faster innovation. SaaS delivered the freedom to work from any device, anywhere, at any time.
Every wave asks the same thing: reinvention, not just adoption.
Agentic AI follows the same logic. This time, waiting is not an option. “Agents are going to use a multiplicity of such services to give you an integrated autonomous capability,” Kumar says. “It drives productivity and efficiency and allows you to serve customers much faster than you could have ever done before.”
A Pilot Is Not a Plan
Pablo Tachil, Regional Vice President and Industry Leader at Salesforce, observes a common pattern across organisations. In his view, organisations layering AI onto existing processes are moving in the wrong direction. He cautions that one could encounter some headwinds over the next few months.
The internet offered this lesson once before. Companies that put up a webpage and stopped there went nowhere. Those who changed how their entire business worked pulled ahead. The same decision sits on every boardroom table today.
People must stay at the centre of transformation. Jobs will change. That is a very different thing from disappearing, Kumar concurs. Every major disruption, he says, has moved people and organisations forward, not pushed them out.
Four Problems That Keep Showing Up
Kumar outlines four barriers that organisations face. Governance and risk come first, especially in banking, insurance and pharmaceuticals, where compliance must be settled before anything goes live. Legacy technology follows. Decades-old systems cannot simply be switched off and need careful integration. Talent surfaces third, almost always after organisations have already committed to a timeline. Cultural anxiety is the fourth. People worry about their jobs. Kumar says, “every disruption before this one proved those fears wrong.”
Lose the Data, Lose Everything
Tachil is clear. Salesforce has held trust as its core value for 25 years because it carries customer data. “It cannot be leaked. It cannot be used for purposes which you have not authorised.” When Salesforce builds AI, that principle comes first. Not as a feature. As the starting point.
Models Alone Cannot Run a Business
Aabha Lalwani, Director of Solution Engineering at Salesforce, raises a point most leaders walk past. Four connected systems make an agentic enterprise work.
Data 360 brings together structured and unstructured data from across the organisation. A system of work ties together workflows across sales, service and revenue operations. Agentforce lets companies build and deploy autonomous agents at scale. Slack puts humans and AI agents in the same workspace. Every layer is open, and nothing needs replacing.
The Race Has No Leader Yet
Lalwani lays out where things stand. Competition is growing, and leaders are pushing harder on innovation to stay ahead. New revenue models are emerging. Customer service is becoming a revenue stream in its own right. Doing both at once is where most companies stumble.
Nearly 90 per cent of technology leaders at the dialogue believe AI will drive the future of tech, lifting productivity, revenue and retention. Yet more than half expect to miss revenue targets this year.
Pilots are everywhere. Scale is not
“Leadership in agentic AI is very much up for grabs,” Lalwani says.
The race will not be won by who starts first, but by those who scale first.
Ambition alone will not win it. Execution will.
Note to Readers: This article was produced as part of Salesforce's Strategic Leadership Dialogue. Mint is a media partner.
About the Author
Livemint
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