The Rubber Hits the Road for AI in Business

At the Cloudwerx Werxfest 2025 festival viewers and attendees were treated to over 16 hours of content across 4 face-to-face events and several online sessions. For businesses it included a balance of theoretical and practical knowledge about digital transformation and the role of agentic AI in that transformation. In this blog Cloudwerx reflects on what was learnt and what is yet to be understood by those looking to deploy AI in their sector.

What you will learn (and why you should read to the end)

This blog is lengthy but for good reason. We have been privileged to have so many great customers and thought leaders join us for Werxfest and post-event, we feel that the content needs to be shared widely and in full. Before you launch in, here are some key discoveries you will find within this blog:

1. Why you need to treat data as strategic infrastructure, and get it right before you launch into AI.
2. Why you should design AI around customer and human needs first - yes that includes productivity needs but that shouldn't be a starting point.
3. Why you need to lead with trust to ensure you are best positioned and protected to thrive in the AI era.
4. Why you need to get the fundamentals right early so you can scale AI quickly and responsibly.

Ok, grab your favourite beverage and let’s dive in.

From theory to practice

The keynote addresses at Werxfest that we covered in our first blog were a wild ride through the current and potential capabilities of AI. Toby and JC were clear that while AI has much promise, we all need to be setting strong foundations of data integration, governance and be seriously considering the ethical and human aspects of this transformational technology.

For our industry and data and AI sessions we aimed to be more targeted in terms of how business can move forward and not be left behind.

Data not Models

In the ‘Ready for AI? Start with your Data’ session, moderated by Alyssia Tennant, with input from Jacqueline Sprott, the conversation emphasised how businesses can move past hype and focus on building sustainable, effective AI strategies.

They focused on the practical realities of AI adoption and highlighted that data - not models - is the true foundation of success. The core theme was that AI is only as effective as the data it consumes. If organisations feed their systems noisy, duplicated, outdated, or inconsistent data, performance will inevitably suffer.

They beautifully illustrated this with Jacqui’s fish tank metaphor: the AI model (nicknamed “Gilly Eilish”) thrives only in a clean, structured environment. Noisy data is like murky water—clouded, confusing, and limiting AI’s effectiveness. Businesses must focus on cleaning, classifying, and structuring data to give AI a healthy “tank” to operate in.

But this does not mean a time consuming and expensive exercise and noted that AI can be used to clean and standardise its own data in real time. For example, in high-pressure call centres, AI can summarise and format notes consistently, reducing admin burdens and improving customer experience. However, Jacqui stressed the need for human oversight in this hybrid approach, ensuring quality, validation and trust in early deployments.

Another key concept was Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) - positioned to “treat the water” before it enters the tank. By sourcing data from the right places, applying metadata tagging and structuring retrieval pipelines, businesses can scale AI more effectively and deploy multiple specialised agents that share the same robust data architecture.

The upside is scalability and speed. A strong data foundation enables you to quickly expand AI use cases across teams and functions, while avoiding costly rework later.

They concluded with a reminder that AI is only as smart as the signals we give it. Clean, well-structured data is “premium real estate,” and treating it as such is the most important step in building reliable, sustainable AI systems.

Certainty with Certinia

Cloudwerx customer and partner Certinia showed us what success looks like. Their ‘Professional Services Excellence with Certinia’ session by Matthew Denton, Principal Solution Engineer, outlined how they had developed a leading professional services solution, built natively on the Salesforce platform to enhance services business from opportunity to renewal and deliver proven results.

Their agile, data-driven platform optimises operations, enhances resource utilisation, and drives profitable project delivery. The results include lifting revenue and increased billable utilisation and a much clearer view on project profitability. The demo showed how they can forecast revenue, highlight your best opportunities and forecast gaps in resources projected forward overlaying your opportunities.

Powering the journey to AI

Our own John (JC) Cosgrove delivered a powerful (intended) session with Tim Stone, the Director of Integrated Solution at TransGrid business unit Lumea. Cloudwerx have been helping Lumea build a customer portal to manage their customer relationships. As a business that builds, owns, operates and maintains the essential energy infrastructure that connects large load customers to connect to the grid, the know power and the power of technology.

John and Tim were very clear in stressing the importance of aligning technology with real-world needs rather than chasing trends. With many companies still in the early stages of adoption, often experimenting without a clear strategy they highlighted the need to focus on solving actual business problems rather than deploying AI for its own sake. Looking at smaller, targeted applications that delivered measurable value, can help build trust and buy-in for bigger projects ahead.

JC was always going to talk ethics – and they did, but a big takeout was the role of leadership and culture in AI transformation and how cross-functional collaboration, education and change management will deliver success.

The overarching message was that AI is a journey requiring patience, humility and adaptability, rather than a one-off technology purchase.

The nuts and bolts of healthcare

We were privileged to have Brett Isaac, GM for Information Technology at EBOS MedTech join Jarrod Myers, Strategic Accounts Director and Cloudwerx CTO and HLS Advisory Lead Chris Baldock. 

This 103-year-old company comprises four businesses across medical technology and devices and biotech, offering life-changing medical solutions for people across Australia, New Zealand and South-East Asia.

For context, Brett and EBOS MedTech engaged Cloudwerx 12 months ago to implement Salesforce Health Cloud platform, integrated with their new ERP as part of the broader digital transformation roadmap. With these foundations in place, they are now working alongside Salesforce and Cloudwerx to explore how AI can further enhance their processes and service delivery.

Like many leaders balancing business and technology, Brett must divide his energy between “keeping the lights on” and building an innovation pipeline. While the lure of the “new shiny thing” is strong, he emphasises making the most of existing technology assets first. Trusted partners like Salesforce and Cloudwerx help him keep an eye on the horizon and bring forward real-world innovations from across industries.

In Healthcare, a mix of cyber security, legacy systems, stakeholder alignment and internal change management are big friction points. 

“Becoming technology ready is a real challenge” said Brett, referring to the idea that an organisations data estate is the backbone of AI. With these innovations moving so fast, it can be paralysing for organisations, but the EBOS Medtech team knows what hard work needs to be done to set them up for success.

Chris brought up scenarios from other Cloudwerx engagements where similar business issues were involved. "You have to be intentional and think about how I am going to use this. What is the use case and how can AI be embedded in the workflow? It needs to be contextual and measurable.”

This is where the Salesforce platform and suite of technology serves EBOS MedTech so well. Having the foundational layer of Salesforce, with its connections across business units and functions, along with tight data governance and security protection, they are well set up for future agentic adoption.

The trio discussed a great point around the concept of ownership, the need to have someone to work across teams and verticals to oversee the whole AI strategy and technology suite - an SME who can help guide the business, leadership and the board. “You must be building the knowledge at the executive level along with the capability to execute.” Jarrod chimed in with an old analogy about ‘having the right seats on the bus and the right people in those seats - a team that is able, willing and empowered’.

In closing Brett talked about trusted partners and was gracious in his praise for Cloudwerx, we have enabled the organisation to take great strides forward. Yes, a good partner must bring skill, experience and trust to a relationship, but what he really enjoyed was the genuine curiosity, always wanting to learn how their business works today and how it could work tomorrow.

Designing for Digital, The Bank of Sydney Story

In our financial service sector session Alaina Favretto our Cloudwerx Account Manager for the Financial Sector hosted customer Geoff Wenborn the COO from Bank of Sydney and Lindsey Duff, Account Executive Commercial Financial Sector at Salesforce.

Bank of Sydney are a community based bank, with a long heritage but also a legacy of manual systems and limited investment in connected digital technology. Geoff was balancing two pressing needs: the need to modernise their core banking systems to be cloud based and mobile friendly, and the desire to remove manual processes and help them digitise the customer experience. As a bank who prides itself on their mission to deliver personal service, these needs seem to conflict with that mission. A big part of his role is to ensure they continue that emotional connection with customers and build loyal relationships but do it in a sustainable way that relies less on ‘face-time’ and more on a personalised, digital, customer experience.

One year into a three-year roadmap Geoff is starting to see the results. Both Salesforce and Cloudwerx were made aware early on that any changes to customer experience technology could not interfere with or hinder their core banking system transformation. But he also understood that rebuilding the core banking system without a central view of customer would be a mistake and they must get the foundations right for a digital world. They had to ‘catch up then keep up’.

The answer to punching above their weight as a smaller bank was to find a pathway within their financial constraints of their smaller budget as they could not afford to fail on such a strategic change  project.

The key to success was collaboration between all parties and the use of technology showcases to help the executive team understand both the possibilities of the technology and what is possible working within these constraints.

With an overview of the vision of where the bank wants to be, it was clear the need for clean and structured data as a foundation was mandatory. Geoff also wanted the conversation to be around business strategy, using business language and not a technology conversation at first. This collaboration bred an open and honest dialogue to ensure no one was overstepping, that they could deliver the basics in terms of lead and campaign management before they looked to more agentic, digital tools.

The agile way of working that Cloudwerx brought was a bit of a shock  at first but as the executive team grew to understand what was possible, they all saw a switch – the technology showcases drove a change from a fixed to a growth mindset. The showcases “moved from a push to a pull” with the executive team able to see and ask for what may be possible.

Again, we heard how alignment and sponsorship build success. With the board and management aligned on the goals they were able to deliver strong project and financial sponsorship across the journey. With more yet to do, they are well set-up for continued success.

Summary please!

Some fantastic conversations were had and what has stood out to us is the alignment across sectors. By putting the transcripts into our LLM, we can see what the central messages were:

Topline Summary Across All Webinars

Across the sessions a clear narrative emerges: AI and digital transformation are no longer about hype or tools, but about foundations, strategy, and trust.

1. Start with Data, Not Models
   • All stressed that AI is only as effective as the data it’s built on. Messy, duplicated, or siloed data weakens outcomes and erodes trust.
   • Businesses must treat data as “premium real estate”—investing in governance, cleaning, classification, and architecture before chasing flashy AI models or apps.
2. Customer-Centricity is Key
   • Whether in financial services or general enterprise AI, success comes from designing with the customer (or end user) in mind.
   • An “outside-in” mindset—understanding journeys, context, and human needs—ensures AI augments rather than alienates.
3. Balance Automation with Human Oversight
   • AI can streamline admin-heavy tasks, improve efficiency, and personalise experiences, but human validation and empathy remain critical.
   • The consensus: AI should empower people, not replace them. Hybrid models—AI plus human checks—are the most effective.
4. Education, Transparency, and Trust
   • Many barriers to adoption stem from misunderstanding how AI works or mistrust of data use.
   • Businesses must invest in education, transparency, and ethical frameworks to demystify AI, address bias, and build confidence internally and externally.
5. Scalability Requires Strategy
   • Rushing into AI without strong data and governance foundations leads to rework and poor performance.
   • Getting the fundamentals right early allows organisations to scale AI solutions quickly and responsibly, creating ecosystems of tools and agents that share the same trusted data.

The one-line summary:

Businesses that treat data as strategic infrastructure, design AI around customer and human needs and lead with trust will be best positioned to thrive in the AI era.