Salesforce accelerates GCC expansion as demand for AI, digital labour surges

Gulf Business

2 days ago

Mohammed Alkhotani at Agentforce World Tour. (Image: Supplied)
Business software giant Salesforce is stepping up its operations in the Middle East.
The global CRM and AI powerhouse has more than doubled its regional team in the past three months, expanded technical operations, and is investing heavily across the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
This is according to Mohammed Alkhotani, Salesforce's senior vice president and general manager for the Middle East, who spoke to
Gulf Business
on the sidelines of the company's Agentforce World Tour Dubai event.
'Our expectation is to grow the business three times over the coming four to five years,' Alkhotani said. 'This isn't just a commercial office: we've tripled down on solution engineers and technical capacity.'
The company has opened a new UAE office, committed to a $500m investment in Saudi Arabia, and is establishing local data centres in both countries in collaboration with AWS. It is also launching an AI Innovation Centre with IBM and working with regional universities to embed Salesforce certifications into curricula to meet surging demand for talent.
Flagship event
That ambition was on full display last week at Agentforce World Tour Dubai, Salesforce's flagship regional event held at Madinat Jumeirah. More than 3,000 customers, partners and associates gathered to explore AI's transformative role in sectors ranging from retail and real estate to education and energy.
The event featured a powerhouse line-up of keynote speakers, including Alkhotani; Marco Hernansanz, Salesforce's executive vice president and CEO for Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa; Maha Alaoui, head of solution engineering for MEA; Polly Summer, chief adoption officer; and Olfa Kharrat, director of product management for AI and Agentforce. Each brought insights into how Salesforce is fusing AI, data and CRM to help organisations transform at scale.
Mohammed Alkhotani speaking on stage at Agentforce World Tour. (Image: Supplied)
Customers such as the National Bank of Kuwait, Aldar Education, and Engie took the stage to showcase how they've used Salesforce tools — Agentforce, Data Cloud, and Customer 360 — to digitise operations and deliver better customer experiences.
'This event has offered the ideal opportunity to showcase the power of Agentforce to transform organisations with autonomous AI agents that complement human employees,' said Alkhotani. 'It's about delivering new levels of efficiency and customer experience.'
A central theme of the day was AI, and specifically, the rise of digital labour.
With sales reps in the UAE spending just 27 per cent of their week engaging with customers, businesses are increasingly looking to automate repetitive, low-value tasks. According to Salesforce's own research, 75 per cent of UAE sales teams have either implemented or are experimenting with AI.
'41 per cent of the workforce face low-value tasks daily,' Alkhotani said. 'Digital labour supports your team, or acts by itself, to do those tasks for you and achieve better customer service.'
Salesforce's own deployment of Agentforce internally has shown the value of this approach.
'We implemented Agentforce for our service employees, and we were able to reduce escalations by 50 per cent,' he said. 'It now handles more than 50,000 conversations a week and analyses over 850,000 articles weekly.'
Making AI work
So how should organisations start preparing themselves to deploy AI effectively?
'Start with the business,' said Alkhotani. 'See what the needs are. How do you dream your business would interact with clients in a year or two? Then work backward. Which AI? How many agents? Which data and interactions? What architecture?'
On whether companies in the region are adapting to the current AI wave, Alkhotani had this insight to offer.
'Many are understandably perplexed by AI and how to deploy it effectively,' he said. 'Some approach it as a tech project, building infrastructure without tying it to real use cases. But the key is to focus on the business impact: on what application sits on top and supports which function.'
Alkhotani's message was clear: in a region racing to embrace digital transformation, AI is no longer optional. Businesses that wait risk falling behind.
'The performance will be better, faster, more accurate,' he said. 'Investing in digital labour is not an option. It's a necessity.'