S04E10 - Some thoughts on Salesforce and research update

The thirty-second episode of the podcast that you know and love as "We Love Ugly Data!" is out; available in audio form everywhere you get your podcasts from and additionally in video form via YouTube (which we've embedded below). As usual, it’s three topics in (just a touch over) 30 minutes, and the show notes are included just below the embedded video. It's Matt and Alan this month for a Salesforce-heavy episode, discussing their acquisition of Apromore, some of the thoughts from the pair sparked by the recent 2025 edition of the Dreamforce conference, and wrapping up some of the fall tech conference trends.

In this month’s episode:

Topic 1: That’s Apromore!

First up, Matt and Alan discuss Salesforce's recent acquisition of process analysis vendor Apromore, reminding themselves that Salesforce was an investor in the company (as well as there being a co-selling partnership). As is pointed out, our pair had both thought that there was a good fit for an acquisition (and had said so), but also got into the details of what using such a platform means practically (hint, it's not magic and needs process skills to operate if effectively, but it's a potentially huge on-ramp for Agentforce). They then go on to point to other business application ecosystems where similar investments have been made (and Matt acknowledges that he'd forgotten about SAP somehow when writing the analysis of the deal). Finally, there is some pointing at Deep Analysis's "Work Intelligence" research as a way of better understanding how all this might fit together.

Topic 2: Agents of Dreamforce

The big annual Salesforce Dreamforce conference took place recently, and whilst Matt watched from home in the UK, Alan was on the ground in San Francisco. They discuss how Salesforce is a bellwether vendor in the business application market, and whilst there was a host of product announcements, it was the changing messaging around Agentforce that got them most intrigued. Matt's product and adoption-focused blog post and Alan's one from the conference floor are discussed, with the general opinion being that it's much harder to deploy agents that were being made apparent 12 months ago, and the messaging is starting to reflect the steps required to get on track.

Topic 3: Fall Trends

Finally, Alan's got a couple of thematic trends to discuss from his travels at a bunch of business application conferences this fall/autumn and briefly discusses them; firstly, the underwhelming response from attendees to announcements and - if you ask them - the audience is hot for IDP. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEd5UHaeNCs 

Related Links for Series 4 Episode 10

Work Intelligence Market Analysis 2025-2030 - our full market analysis of the Work Intelligence marketplace, including process analysis.
Work Intelligence: Improving Processes by Balancing Human Intelligence and AI - our initial 2022 report on Work Intelligence as a concept, which you can download for free.
Salesforce acquires Apromore to give Agentforce a process analysis on-ramp - deal anal