Agentforce and Data Cloud Integration for Better Results

Nikita M.

Media-savvy content creator, with a curiosity for all Salesforce experiences.

Updated: Feb 7th, 2025

Gone are the days of manually processing data. No one gets excited about cleaning, verifying, and cross-checking that customer details are correct across multiple systems. It’s a time-consuming activity that wastes employee creativity. 

Thankfully, we have access to software solutions, like Data Cloud. It’s a Salesforce platform collecting and unifying customer data for the most trusted information that a company can work with. 

Additionally, if you want an AI solution like Agentforce integrated into your system, you need accurate and consistent data for it to work well. Your AI-driven tools can only perform at their best with trusted data they can access and act upon. 

So, read the article below to learn more about Agentforce and Data Cloud. We will cover how they seamlessly work together to ensure your business organizes and manages data well for the most elevated customer experiences.

Let’s get started!

Do You Need “Data Cloud” for Agentforce?

This is a popular question for developers using Agentforce. Technically, you do not need Salesforce Data Cloud to use Agentforce. However, linking your Data Cloud to Agentforce can tremendously help your Salesforce processes. 

Understanding Agentforce

It’s important to keep in mind that Agentforce was created to work with tasks related to:

Supporting Agents

Managing Leads

Handling Policies

Engaging in Customer Interactions

These tasks are commonly found in teams that manage sales pipelines. To learn more about this topic, check out our Sales with Agentforce article. 

Generally, for any business process to run smoothly and efficiently, Agentforce works with:

Standard Salesforce Objects

Custom Salesforce Objects

Flows

Omnistudio

Apex

We recommend reading our “What is Agentforce?” article to know more about this versatile AI solution.

Agentforce Without Data Cloud

If you are not planning to use Data Cloud with Salesforce, you must integrate your AI solution with external data sources. Businesses can accomplish this by using the following software solutions:

APIs

MuleSoft

Native Salesforce Connectors

There may be many reasons why you do not want to use Data Cloud. However, before you decide to commit to this business decision, make sure to read this Brief Guide to Agentforce.

Now, let’s examine some of the risks associated with not using Salesforce Data Cloud with Agentforce. 

Lack of Trusted Data

Without Data Cloud in your system, you might feed Agentforce incorrect data. 

Data Cloud is designed to collect data and records from multiple sources and combine them to make unified customer profiles. This digital process is an excellent solution that marketing teams can use from Agentforce to reduce duplicate information and inconsistent data in their systems.

Operating without Data Cloud means that Agentforce could work with conflicting data or, in the worst cases, be unable to find information. So, when your digital workforce responds to customers, they may provide incorrect answers. 

Data Silos

As we explained earlier, one of the elements Agentforce works with are standard Salesforce objects. Salesforce makes collecting customer data from multiple sources, such as the below super easy:

Marketing Campaigns

Policies

External Customer Relationship Management Platforms

If your company does not have a data silo, like Data Cloud, your data will not live in a single location. This makes finding disconnected information challenging for Agentforce.

Difficult to Action

Without Data Cloud, digital agents from Agentforce will have untrustworthy and fragmented data. For this reason, they will need to navigate between different data sources to gather the information needed to respond to customers. This, in turn, makes Agentforce slower at responding to customers as it has to track down relevant information from multiple systems.

Additionally, Agentforce will miss out on Data Cloud’s cool AI-powered features. For example, by connecting Agentforce to Data Cloud, teams get Next Best actions to support customer interactions. Without this Salesforce AI feature, agents are unable to take advantage of personalizing customer interactions to the best of their ability. 

How Data Cloud and Agentforce Work Together for Better Results

As we learned, using Agentforce without Salesforce Data Cloud is possible, but your processes will not be optimized, and your AI features aren’t utilized well. Additionally, if you handle large volumes of data from multiple sources, you will need to support Agentforce with additional systems to make it more powerful in operations. 

So, what can Data Cloud do to ensure Agentforce is running at optimal performance? 

1. Data Cloud collects data from many sources, unifies it, and creates customer profiles that Agentforce can quickly access.
2. Data Cloud provides AI-powered insights that recommend solutions to agents.
3. Data Cloud and Agentforce can be used for real-time segmentation strategies. This categorization of data helps with personalizing customer engagement strategies.  

If you like how these two AI solutions work together, check out our Agentforce Costing article. It will provide you with information to support your software budgeting goals. You might also be interested in reading our Agentforce Vs. Einstein article to determine which Salesforce AI solution is more beneficial for your teams.

Wrapping Up Agentforce and Data Cloud

Thanks for reading our article on how Agentforce and Data Cloud work together. We tackled the burning question: Does Agentforce require Data Cloud? Through our exploration of this topic, we discovered that you can use Agentforce without Data Cloud. However, we learned that connecting these two Salesforce solutions is crucial for businesses using real-time data spanning many sources.

See you soon!

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Disclaimer: The comparisons listed in this article are based on information provided by the companies online and online reviews from users. If you found a mistake, please contact us