Insights from Atrium’s Dreamforce 2025 Panel with Mitch Zink, Paul Harmon, and Patrick Scherder.
TLDR data & AI takeaways:
- Start small and scale intentionally. Pilot focused use cases to build momentum.
- Leverage what you already have. Unlock dormant value in your existing data assets.
- Start with outcomes, not infrastructure. Define ROI-driven use cases first.
- Unify your data for a single source of truth. Connect Salesforce, EDWs, and external systems effectively and with purpose.
- Activate insights through AI and automation. Make intelligence actionable in real time.
At this year’s Dreamforce, three data and AI leaders took the stage at the Atrium Lounge to unpack one of the most pressing challenges facing modern enterprises: turning data and AI investments into measurable business value.
Their session, Delivering Value from Your Data and AI Investments, explored practical strategies for unifying data, driving actionable intelligence, and unlocking the full potential of AI within the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond.
Starting with the end in mind
As Mitch Zink, Atrium’s Practice Lead for Salesforce Data 360 (Formerly Data Cloud), emphasized, too many organizations fall into the trap of connecting and collecting data without a clear purpose. “There’s no point in doing that if you’re just going to build a big data lake,” he said. “There’s value in your data only if it drives insights and actions that deliver business value.
The Atrium team’s advice: begin with ROI. Identify the outcomes that matter most to your organization (e.g., improved customer retention, more effective cross-sell, faster sales cycles, etc.), then work backward to determine what data is required to achieve them. This approach keeps data strategy grounded in tangible business impact.
Unifying and harmonizing your data
Patrick Scherder, Atrium’s Senior Director of Salesforce Practices & Customer Success, discussed one of the most common challenges customers face: fragmented data across Salesforce, enterprise data warehouses, and homegrown systems. “The first step is unifying and harmonizing your data,” Patrick explained. “You need to bring it together into a single view to surface insights and take meaningful action.”
The panel described an example from the financial services sector where unifying website engagement data with CRM insights unlocked powerful cross-sell opportunities. By connecting the dots between product interest, browsing behavior, and customer profiles, the institution could identify high-value opportunities that were previously invisible.
From insights to action
Paul Harmon, Director of Data Science at Atrium, expanded on how organizations can move beyond traditional dashboards toward true “actionable intelligence.” Reports and visualizations are just the starting point; what matters most is activating those insights through automation and AI.
He shared how Atrium helps clients build predictive models and AI-driven workflows directly into Salesforce, enabling seamless follow-up actions like automated outreach or personalized recommendations. “From the user’s perspective, it’s all one pane of glass,” Paul said. “The goal is a seamless experience where insights naturally lead to action.”
The power (and caution) of AI adoption
As enthusiasm for AI grows, the panelists cautioned against rushing in without a strategic foundation. “It’s a risky time to start too big,” Mitch noted. “The higher the hype, the deeper the trough.” Instead, the team recommended starting small — selecting a focused use case where AI can deliver measurable, low-risk wins. Finding use cases that drive business value while hedging against the risk of tackling too much can lead to much-needed momentum towards AI adoption.
This incremental approach not only reduces risk but also builds trust and organizational alignment. Over time, these smaller wins compound into transformative results.
Leveraging the work you’ve already done
The panelists closed the session with a reminder that many organizations already have valuable data assets waiting to be leveraged. “We had a customer with tons of valuable data sitting in Snowflake,” Mitch said. “It wasn’t about collecting more; it was about unlocking and activating what they already had.”
By reframing existing data as a strategic asset, companies can accelerate time-to-value without major infrastructure overhauls.
Atrium’s panel made it clear: true value from data and AI comes not from technology alone, but from strategic alignment, thoughtful design, and disciplined execution.
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