Agentforce can help companies transform their businesses and maximize their RoI. By leveraging the power of Agentforce, companies can make their workforce more efficient and productive and transform their service, sales, marketing, and other functions.

As a Salesforce Summit Partner, we have been leveraging our expertise to help various companies across industries identify various use cases of Agentforce, as well as in their implementation. In this whitepaper we explore several potential use cases where Agentforce can help companies:

• Increase customer interactions
• Improve productivity
• Enhance win rates significantly
• Drive revenue

And do much more.

Explore in-depth. Get your copy today.

For a B2B business, it is essential to understand the importance of physical or virtual events like webinars. These help them achieve various goals, such as lead generation, brand awareness creation, new product or service launch promotion, customer engagement and retention, or simply educating and training customers about their offerings.

The diagram below shows a quick list of objectives an event management platform can address.

End-to-end Event Marketing with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights is an evolution of the MS Dynamics 365 Marketing module. The Event Management sub-module was also present in Dynamics 365 CRM. However, it has now evolved with more comprehensive event-related features, pre-configured dashboards, MS Team integration, etc.

To start with, let us list the key features of event management—be it live events or webinars. The features are divided into six high-level categories that constitute the event process flow—starting from planning, setup, marketing, execution, and analytics.

Setting up and configuring Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Before we go further, it may be worth looking at the OOTB data model available with the MS Dynamics 365 Customer Insights—Data solution. Please note that these are only the key objects and not all objects. The relationships described here are perceived from a specific implementation and could change a bit based on customer requirements. This article lists all entities if anyone wants a comprehensive list. This is part of the Microsoft Common Data Model.

Using the OOTB entities, below is a data model we built, which can be used as a starting point for such event management implementation. Please note how the entities are related, i.e., one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many, etc., for a standard implementation. As mentioned earlier, they may change based on the customer’s requirements, though the basic requirements will remain the same. As an example, an event will always have a venue(one-to-one), but that venue may span across multiple buildings (one-to-many) and potentially multiple rooms (many-to-many with buildings), whereas each room would have only one layout (one-to-one with room) and so on.

After the data model finalization, the next obvious question is what the architecture may look like. It is important to notice that, primarily, the persistence layer required for the module will be supplied by MS Dynamics CRM and its Event module, while various portals like marketing, registrations, speaker nominations, etc. will be built using Power Pages. Marketing communications will be handled primarily through MS Dynamics Customer Insights Journey. Power automation helps automate workflows required for external integration, such as hotel booking, venue management, print service, etc. The diagram below depicts a high-level functional architecture.

Once these initial architectural and design decisions are achieved, the focus is on configuring the initial setup and subsequent regular configuration for specific events.

After the successful implementation of the event management module, it is essential to know its effectiveness in B2B marketing, where a comprehensive event management dashboard can help a lot. Below is a screenshot of such a dashboard focusing on social. (Reference: Event Management for Dynamics 365)

And for a specific user, this is how the dashboard looks like:

Key Benefits

From 360-degree event support to powerful analytics, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Event Management Customer Insights helps B2B marketing teams accelerate their marketing success. Here is a quick look at some of the benefits we have experienced while implementing it.

• Support across formats and teams. It supports virtual, physical, and hybrid events. Both sales and marketing teams can leverage the benefits of D365.
• Powerful analytics. Integrated sales and marketing analytics help generate crucial insights, drive customer interactions, and improve RoI measurement.
• The platform is compliant with various security regulations and regulatory guidelines.
• Seamless connection. It integrates seamlessly with other Dynamics modules.
• Comprehensive data architecture. This provides 80% of all standard business function objects. It further allows the provision to build custom objects and offers significant scalability.

In conclusion

As businesses look to create the next generation digital experiences for their customers, they are increasingly looking for platforms like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Event Management. This trend will likely continue to evolve and I am excited to see how this landscape evolves and how we can keep helping our clients transform their businesses.

Further reading:

Various step by step guides are available for setting up D365. You can check these out here.

• Events In D365 Marketing – Adding Events – Megan V. Walker (meganvwalker.com),
• Dynamics 365 Customer Insights | Microsoft Learn,
• Guide to Create Successful Online Events in Dynamics 365 Marketing (techairgroup.com)

The impact of Generative AI on e-commerce is huge. Global retail e-commerce sales in 2023 reached an estimated 5.8 trillion USD. Projections indicate a 39 percent growth in this figure over the coming years, expecting it to surpass eight trillion dollars by 2027. Generative AI-driven productivity is set to provide substantial lift to the economy, likely delivering a boost worth USD 650 Billion over the next decade and lifting real US GDP by nearly 2.5% by 2033, as per an EY report.

GenAI is an AI technology that is based on deep learning, multi-modal neural and large language models that process data and generate content in the form of natural language, text, code, music, videos. In a typical e-commerce ecosystem, huge amounts of data are generated and exchanged across multiple systems. This data when leveraged in combination with powerful GenAI technology would lead to transformed experiences for the users across the value chain. GenAI is poised to accelerate overall productivity through:

• Automation of tasks like content creation, reporting, for process efficiency
• Enrichment of user experiences through specific solutions that offer personalization, convenience and self-serve capabilities across value chain
• Innovation by providing opportunities to creators, developers, brands.

With both e-commerce and GenAI technology being in a steep growth path, several opportunities are presented across the e-commerce user journey to transform end user experiences. These opportunities in the form of GenAI solutions when employed would impact the following KPIs in an e-commerce business:

• Click through rate, search conversion
• Add to cart rate
• Reduce drop offs from shopping cart
• Average order value/basket size
• Improve customer loyalty through better engagement
• Help customers find relevant offers
• Contextualize customer journey, improve customer lifetime value
• Build credibility with customers
• Provide better self-serve capabilities
• Operational efficiencies for business users in generating variations of content
• Optimize delivery experience through route optimization
• Automation of customer support processes like returns, re-order, cancellations

Let’s identify some of the potential GenAI solutions that could be provide value to the customer and business user (marketers, merchandisers, operations teams, customer support) groups.

Potential Solutions for Customers

Shopping Assistant: Most common version of an assistant is in form of chatbot. This version of GenAI based assistant would contextualize conversation to the user, accept questions in natural language, images, voice and can provide response in multiple forms (product recommendations, order status, respond to image, voice search, create return request, reorder, shipping labels).

Contextual Search: GenAI powered search solution that receives broad search queries from customers and generates contextual product previews and guide terms to help customers navigate from within the search dialog.

Landing Page Content Optimization: Generate backgrounds for campaign banners or product images on the landing page to engage customers based on their personal preferences.

Product Variant Visualizer: Generate preview of product images and details with variations and provide visibility of availability based on personal preferences.

Contextual Reviews: Generate top positive and negative keywords from the customer reviews to provide a snapshot to the customer.

Comparison Assistant: Generate preview of product comparisons based on the shopping and user context, and preferences. This could be embedded into the chatbot interface to provide simpler adoption by customers.

Offer Recommender: Suggest offers relevant to the cart and consumer preferences (delivery incentives, amount off, free products).

Delivery Optimizer: Suggest delivery and shipping options for the consumer based on availability, warehouse location, delivery address, price sensitivity, and such factors.

Cart Visualizer: Solution could be embedded into the chatbot, and on request by customer the chatbot could respond to queries like “shop by a specific look” with a simulation of the cart based on the look contextualized to the customers location, preferences.

Potential GenAI solutions for business users

Marketing Assistant: Chatbot envisioned for the marketing, operations, customer support teams to ask questions in natural language and receive response/recommendations.  Supports product assortment planning, provides reports on store and customer intelligence.

FAQ Generator: Store operations team could generate FAQ section for specific products or to detail policies across the store. This could be reviewed by marketers before publishing it to end customers.

Media mix optimization: Bid for the right keywords and placements on search engine results pages and marketplaces. Reports with recommendations for marketers on mapping products with long tail searches based on keywords history and current business targets.

Asset Tagging: Auto generating tags and labels for digital assets to allow for smoother digital asset management and search within the site.

Marketing Banners: Create marketing banners for US across the site based on offers available in the store.

Cross-channel Product Content: Generate/simulate product detail page based on multiple factors and provide preview for marketer to approve.

Ratings & recommendations optimizer: Automatically apply reviews across variants of same product, generate previews of cross and up-sell recommendations for marketer to approve.

Offer Content Creator: Generate and preview promotional banners to marketers based on available offers on the site to be applied on the shopping cart.

Fraud Reporting: Report daily order summary with potential fraud and recommendations for orders in the manual review queue.

Order Traceability: Visibility of orders flow from across channels, following through to the end of fulfillment to the customer

Returns Creator: Generate shipping label for returns and send to customers, manage refunds, exchange, re-order for customers based on inputs provided over chatbot.

Campaign Recommender: Generate campaign content for review by marketers to re-engage with customers who haven’t purchased during the last few months.

Exploring current e-commerce shopping trends, available GenAI capabilities, and key priorities all lead to these solutions. The detailed methodology and the framework to adopt and apply governance around GenAI technology in e-commerce is further explored in a whitepaper, available for download here.

Connect with Infogain’s Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) team when you are ready to accelerate your organization’s GenAI + Commerce transformation journey.

The e-commerce market presents a plethora of opportunities for businesses to grow and provide value to their customers. In this whitepaper, we examine various opportunities presented by GenAI in e-commerce, identify potential solutions, and provide a methodology for implementation. You will learn:

• Trends in e-commerce and generative AI
• Overview, benefits and capabilities of GenAI
• Key solution priorities based on trends
• Potential GenAI solutions in the e-commerce journey
• Methodology for adoption and governance around GenAI

Now is the time to accelerate your GenAI + Commerce transformation journey.

Read our whitepaper today.

Digital asset management systems are the bloodlines of a martech landscape, and one of the most powerful DAMs is the Acquia DAM. Previously known as Widen, the Acquia DAM platform for managing digital content allows users to upload and share documents as well as various multimedia files like images, videos, and more. Its integration with various CMSs like Adobe, HubSpot, and Drupal ensures easy and seamless access to an organization’s current digital assets.

We recently implemented Acquia DAM on a large scale for a leading global manufacturer of computers, laptops, and accessories. Based on that experience, I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Acquia DAM and explore the key points to consider while implementing it in a digital landscape in this blog.

Advantage Acquia

• Simplicity is at the core of everything that is done in Acquia DAM. Be it the UI, the access controls, or the metadata field management. An enterprise DAM simply cannot get any simpler than this!
• Acquia also offers blazing-fast searches
• It also provides built-in smart tagging powered by ClarifAI, which helps in easy search and automated tagging.
• Its pre-built connectors allow integration with popular CMS, Workflow, and PIM systems.
• The AWS-backed infrastructure offers easy scalability, implementation, and integration.
• Acquia DAM offers unlimited portals, which improves access control and security and reduces licensing costs.
• Its search connector API lets users embed search experience in third-party applications.
• It uses webhooks for automation.

When to choose Acquia DAM?

It’s advisable to use Acquia DAM when looking for a DAM with simple permission management, integrations, and navigation.

Typical Acquia DAM implementation process

It consists of three main processes – configuration, migration, and integration.

Configuration

Depending on how the enterprise managed assets before Acquia DAM is bought into the landscape, there can be two approaches to define DAM configurations:

From a Legacy DAM

If the enterprise has used any DAM before, then there is a good chance that most Acquia DAM configurations can be translated from the earlier DAM configurations. Many configurations, such as Metadata schema, fields, and user groups, can be translated as-is to Acquia DAM. Some other configurations, like asset groups and upload profiles, that are unique to Acquia can be arrived at by looking at the legacy DAM configurations.

No DAM

If the enterprise has never used a DAM before and is bringing assets from a bunch of shared storage locations like SharePoint, Google Drive, etc – then Acquia configurations need to be built from scratch. This may require multiple rounds of conversations with the marketing team, content owners, and other relevant teams.

Irrespective of the above approaches, the following best practices must be considered while configuring Acquia DAM.

• Metadata type defines the metadata fields that an asset can have. A manageable number of metadata types is recommended. In other words, the lesser, the better.
• Asset Groups are the logical segregation of assets that forms the basis of permission assignment. Asset groups should be decided with user roles in mind. Two assets in the same asset group cannot have different access controls. Like metadata type, when it comes to asset groups, the fewer, the better.
• Categories are similar to folders, except that an asset can be part of more than 1 category. Hence, categories are similar to hierarchical tags. There can be as many categories as you like, but Acquia recommends nesting up to 5 levels.
• Upload profiles are mandatory for uploading profiles. A minimum number of uploaded profiles is recommended.

Migration

A typical migration process needs to include the following.

• Defining a mapping between legacy metadata and Acquia metadata.
• Exporting metadata in a CSV from legacy DAM and format the CSV according to Acquia’s metadata fields.
• Uploading the binaries to Acquia. There can be two approaches to this.
  • If the migration size is less (100-500 GB), then FTP can be used to upload the files.
  • If the migration size is large (>500 GB), then an S3-based ingestion will be better. This option requires an additional migration packages to be purchased from Acquia.
• Upload metadata in CSV format.
  • Large-scale and complex migrations include the following:
  • Defining a mapping between legacy metadata and Acquia metadata.
  • Identifying transformations needed for metadata values.
  • Developing custom scripts to automate the transformation of legacy metadata to Acquia.
  • Developing scripts to compare the migrated data with source data to validate the accuracy of migration.
  • Uploading binaries through S3 ingestion.
  • Developing and executing post-ingestion scripts to update asset category, release date, and expiry date of the assets in bulk.

Integrations

Once the assets are migrated to Acquia, it is necessary to integrate Acquia with other systems in the digital ecosystem, such as PIM, content management systems, MRM systems like Workfront, or other custom downstream systems. Integrations can be addressed through two major approaches.

Pre-built connectors & Managed integrations

• Acquia supports integrations with popular digital components like content management systems and other related systems.
• The integrations will be configurable in a limited sense and managed by Acquia.

However, it is not possible to integrate complex custom scenarios through this approach.

Custom integrations

• A custom integration solution based on iPaaS platforms like Mulesoft, AnyPoint, Workato, etc., will need to be developed for complex and custom integration requirements.
• This will be managed by the customer, providing greater flexibility. However, it will result in increased costs.

There are a few scenarios where Acquia DAM doesn’t work the best. For instance, Acquia is not the right fit when there is a requirement for complex and granular control, folder-based navigation, or complex product integrations. This is because Acquia DAM does not allow automatic archival or archival restoration and is not a folder-based system. There are also limitations around metadata import, customization for related assets, and portal log-in limitations.

At Infogain, we have seasoned Acquia DAM experts who can analyze the requirements for your Acquia DAM transformation journey, strategize the right migration approaches, and develop integrations that can connect the DAMs to other digital systems.

Connect with us today to transform your DAM!

References:

https://community.acquia.com/acquiadam/s/article/Can-you-tell-me-more-about-Acquia-DAM-cloud-architecture

https://oauth.net/2/grant-types/

Dreamforce 2024 Recap

We just wrapped up a great Dreamforce 2024 – celebrity presence, a great concert, networking, partying, and so many announcements! As we get ready to re-start our daily routines, I wanted to share some of my learnings and observations.

Agentforce, Agentforce, Agentforce!

On AI front, Salesforce took a massive leap forward with their exciting announcement of the Agentforce. Simply put, Agentforce enables enterprises to create autonomous agents across different functions to drive complex tasks.

The key promise here is rapid deployment. Salesforce conducted numerous sessions, hands-on workshops, and client meetings to ensure that Agentforce stayed on everyone’s mind in every conversation.

Broadly speaking, the Agentforce framework involves

• Atlas, the reasoning engine that provides the intelligent execution to enable the significant decision-making power to execute complex tasks.
• Agent Builder, which enables build-out using existing Salesforce tools, automation, and APIs.
• A stronger Partner Network: Salesforce announced strategic partnerships to extend agent-building capabilities.

Atlas – Powering Agentforce

Atlas, an upgraded AI copilot, is the brain behind Agentforce. The key to executing complex tasks is the ability to understand end-users objectives, then create/execute plans autonomously.

The key is to go beyond recommending action and actually taking that action in ways that are aligned with customer’s preferred channels. This requires high-quality data, with Data Cloud providing the foundation. Net-net? Atlas pushes forward Data Cloud’s real-time data insights to achieve smarter, faster decisions and actions.

A billion-dollar commitment to AI

Salesforce is setting the pace with a huge investment commitment, and is challenging partners, customers, and trailblazers to run with it if they want to capitalize on this opportunity.

• Salesforce has opened their first AI center in London, with many more to follow in Chicago, Tokyo, Sydney, and other major cities. These centers will foster collaboration between experts, partners, and customers.
• Salesforce Ventures has always played a crucial role in aligning the partner ecosystem with Salesforce vision. To complement the $50 million allocated to AI workforce upskilling, Salesforce is also making strategic investments in many companies which share their commitment to trust and ethical AI development.

Strengthening the Data Backbone through Data Cloud

After its stellar launch in Dreamforce 2023, Salesforce’s Data Cloud is now the backbone for its AI-powered solutions. Dreamforce 2024 involved some major updates:

• Now Data Cloud can process unstructured data: ability to support native video and audio processing lets businesses analyze data and find actionable insights in calls, voicemails, and more.
• Many keynotes covered the 50 new pre-built connectors, for a total of over 200 now available. Integration options are expanding rapidly, helping businesses seamlessly connect to more data sources.
• Sub-second real-time capabilities: Data Cloud can now process data—from ingestion to activation—in under a second, enabling faster decision-making and customer engagement.

Taken together, these developments help drive performance and scalability for businesses that need to manage massive amounts of unstructured data.

Takeaways

In Dreamforce 2024, Salesforce clearly demonstrated how they continue to push the boundaries of AI and automation, bringing innovative solutions and pushing everyone in Ohana to be innovative.

Their main message is one of faster time to value. With some years-long AI projects swallowing incredible amounts of budget, Agentforce can utilize what your organization has already built to launch with speed and control. They clearly demonstrated it by building 10,000 agents during Dreamforce 2024.

To learn more about how to leverage this level of momentum for your enterprise, let Impaqtive (An Infogain company) help. DM me to book some time with us.

Infogain and Virgin Australia are reaching new heights as we join forces in this exhilarating digital transformation journey. We collaborated to drive innovative changes that enhance Virgin Australia’s competitive advantage and tackle key business objectives. Infogain spoke with the Project Team about their experience with Infogain — take a look at what they had to say!

“As a business, we’re very dynamic, and sometimes we realize that there might be a further scope for change. What I found the most pleasing about Infogain was their ability to pivot or add value through those discussions and be flexible with what we required as a business to ensure that we were compliant with the rules.”

– Scott Rohweder, Operations Manager

“The relationship I have with the staff members who work on this code is great, and we understand each other’s needs and the boundaries we have to implement this code.”

– Adrian Gregory, Systems and Solutions Manager

“It’s been wonderful that we’ve managed to integrate the teams between Virgin and Infogain from day one, and that’s allowed the work not just to be amazing and the results we get but genuinely achieve a team dynamic that allows us to get stuff done.”

– Christoher David Miles, Project Manager

Our partnership with Virgin Australia is a testament to our shared vision and unwavering commitment. In this exclusive video, Virgin Australia’s Project Manager, Christopher David Miles, Operations Manager, Scott Rohweder, and Systems and Solutions Manager, Adrian Gregory elaborate on the seamless partnership between Infogain and VA.

Watch the video to learn more.