Helping businesses manage their customers more effectively and efficiently – that is the work of our guest for today, Salesforce.

Founded in 1999, Salesforce pioneered a Software as a Service or SaaS model by bringing Customer Relationship Management or CRM software to the cloud.

You might have heard of the term CRM for quite some time, but while CRM might seem like a buzzword that came about towards the end of the twentieth century, the concept is fairly easy to understand, and has been practised for thousands of years by traders.

To a company selling goods or services, CRM basically means keeping a record of a customer’s profile and transaction history, and analysing that information to help it better sell to the customer again.

Take for instance, how you might receive a voucher in your email inbox during your birthday month to buy your favourite cake from the neighbourhood grocery store.

But these days, Customer Relationship Management goes beyond just promotions, it includes managing a firm’s internal resources against demand, its marketing and channel strategies, its data storage processes, its customer service platforms and even more.

Salesforce’s software is enabling over 150,000 companies, including notable names like FairPrice Group, Panasonic, Schneider Electric and Singapore Airlines to do all of that.

The firm is also helping its customers around the world deploy its digital labour platform Agentforce. Companies can use Agentforce to build and deploy autonomous agents that can reason, decide, act and drive meaningful outcomes 24/7 – think service agents, sales development representatives, sales coaches and marketing campaign assistants.

So what should we know about Salesforce’s Agentforce platform and how will the solution augment its growth trajectory right here in ASEAN?

Meanwhile, Salesforce had in March 2025 pledged to invest over US$1 billion in Singapore over 5 years – but what was the rationale behind the move and how far is Singapore a bright spot for the firm?

On Under the Radar, Money Matters’ finance presenter Chua Tian Tian posed these questions to Sujith Abraham, Senior Vice President and General Manager, ASEAN, Salesforce.

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