Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Rebecca Saar, Senior Director of Admin Relations at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about governance, productivity, and why Salesforce Admins are more essential than ever in the Agentic Enterprise.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Rebecca Saar.
As AI becomes an ever bigger part of our day-to-day lives, I wanted to bring Rebecca Saar on the pod to talk about what changes and what stays the same.
One thing she emphasizes is that admins are here to look at the big picture for their organizations. While it might be easier to build the solution, you still need to figure out what to build in the first place.
“It’s a shift in mindset and understanding where the work is happening,” Rebecca says, “because we now can leverage these super powerful tools.” Skills like gathering requirements, talking with stakeholders, and bridging the gap between departments are only going to be amplified by AI—not replaced.
Admins are a crucial intermediary for their organization, connecting the dots between multiple departments to understand what’s really going on with a business process. In other words, admins are the ones who understand who to talk to in order to get something done.
In my experience as an admin, each business unit only knows their own siloed data. They know where it comes from and who they ship it off to, but they don’t know if there are better options, or where there might be a snag in the process. That’s where admins need to step in and find a solution that individual business units might not be able to figure out on their own.
Despite new tools, core admin skills remain essential. In a way, we’ve moved from problem solver to sense maker. You might not have to spend as much time figuring out who has what permissions, but you’ll still be called on to have a conversation about how it should be handled.
Just like with everything else, AI can save time on the busywork so you can focus on what matters. At the end of the day, it’s even more important to lean into the foundational admin skills to find solutions that work for everyone in your organization.
Make sure to listen to the full episode for more from Rebecca Saar about what’s coming at TDX, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Salesforce Admins Podcast so you never miss an episode.
Mike:
This week on the Salesforce Admins podcast, I sit down with Rebecca Saar, the Senior Director of Admin Relations for Salesforce, to talk about how the admin role is changing as AI and agents become really part of our everyday life. Now, we’re going to dig into why Salesforce admins are becoming the guardians of trust, how strong fundamentals still matter, and where human judgment fits in when automation gets smarter. I like to think this is a very thoughtful conversation about governance, productivity, and why Salesforce admins are more essential than ever. So with that, let’s get Rebecca on the podcast.
So Rebecca, welcome to the podcast.
Rebecca:
Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me.
Mike:
It’s been a while. Last time you were on, we did an entire episode in German because international podcasts are fun.
Rebecca:
Yeah. What a ride. How many years ago was that?
Mike:
Just a few. It’s like one or two in Salesforce admin years, which translate differently to the rest of the world.
Rebecca:
Right. And then I also say we’ve had a pandemic in between, so that has made time fly.
Mike:
Yep.
Rebecca:
And I think that was a pre-pandemic thing.
Mike:
It was. 100% pre-pandemic. Yep, absolutely. And then since then, you’ve been on stage quite a few times for the admin keynote. And doing a whole bunch of stuff with the admin relations team. You and I have both been on stage too.
Rebecca:
I know. Yes, we have been championing admins since 2014?
Mike:
Since forever.
Rebecca:
Yes. Dedicating over a decade and celebrating that big decade 10-year anniversary was a couple of years ago. And that was a big highlight for me, being able to share that with everyone on stage at Dreamforce. But yeah, since last time I was on the pod, I have now become the lead of admin relations and kind of leading this amazing team of evangelists and marketers on our mission to enable and empower and inspire all of our Salesforce admins out there.
Mike:
And we’re doing that as a transition to talk about… Literally right before I pressed record on this podcast, I was listening to NPR talk through AI and how AI is affecting something. They quoted 60 to 80% of the people in the workplace now use AI for some sort of task. And it kind of flashed back to me because it was interesting listening to them talk. They were describing, so when you tell AI to do something, that’s a prompt. And listening to people walk through the understanding that I think a lot of Salesforce admins went through two or three years ago, I remember having people on the podcast to talk about prompt engineering, and I’m listening to them now, I’m like, “How do you not know this already? What world are you living in? You should already know about prompts and prompt engineering.”
But leading admins now as we’re not just working with AI, but AI’s working with us, right?
Rebecca:
Yeah. AI is everywhere. I think just in the last few years, it’s accelerated so, so much. Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this a lot because not only are our admins and our whole Trailblazer community thinking about the impact of AI. But it really is across at least tech industry, but corporate world where everyone is kind of thinking about how are we incorporating AI into our workplace.
Mike:
So I was thinking of the article that you published, How the Salesforce Administrator Role is Evolving in the Agentic Era. And the first kind of big bullet point or the first subhead under there is The New Mandate, The Guardian of Trust. And working on that article with you, I happened to think of the very first thing that I did when I was a Salesforce administrator. Well, the second thing I did. The first thing I did was I updated my profile. The second thing I did was I got certified and I was one of the first 500 Salesforce admins certified. And I remember posting that to… We had a local kind of intranet at the company that I was at. And I remember posting that just out of pride for myself that I had passed, but also really wanting my users and my executives to know like, “Hey, when I suggest something, it’s because I’m knowledgeable about it, so you should trust me.”
And I think it’s interesting that almost 15 years later, when AI comes around, this is the very first thing that we’re talking about with admins as being the guardians of trust.
Rebecca:
Yeah. Trust, it’s our number one value. And it’s, I think, the most important thing our admins can do for their company and their users. You manage the data, you manage security, you manage automation. And these are the pieces of the system that need to come together in a trusted way. It makes the admin critical to the success.
Mike:
A lot of it is also helping our users and ensuring that when we implement Agentforce for a specific process like in sales or in service, that it’s really something to aid them. I think of a lot of people, the discussion on NPR was, “Well, I don’t know what to ask or I don’t know what to do.” And of course, as an admin, when you’re demoing something for Agentforce, you want to show, here’s the words you type in. And you’d like to think in a perfect world, all of your users are going to use that exact perfect prompt when in reality they’re not. People forget prompts, people forget what they’re trying to do, and then they can easily get frustrated. I think part of that guardian of trust that we’re doing is, let’s put it in places where it can benefit our users the most in terms of productivity that might be easy to just farm out so that really we’re bringing the best out of that person.
I think of now when I was deploying a contract object a long, long time ago, the people that worked in contracts, the value of them wasn’t the fact that they knew how to open an envelope or read through a paper contract or photocopy it. And I say that because at the time we did all of that, it was all physical contracts. That’s not what they were getting paid for. They’re getting paid for their knowledge of being able to digest that information of the contract. And I think of kind of the same value for the admin. It’s not the buttons they click that make it important. It’s how do they implement the agent and then how do they use their judgment to say, “Let’s put this agent here at this point in the process to make all of our users really use the skill that they’re being hired for.”
Rebecca:
Yeah, 100% percent. I really feel that these tools are coming to help us be more productive. We keep kind of hearing this narrative around with AI that we’re replacing roles, we need less people, and does that mean there’s room for my role? And I think that’s really missing the big kind of upside of all of this is that there is so much work to be done. Especially when I talk to admins, they’re wearing multiple hats. They’ve got cues and cases that they’re trying to get through. And think about all the ways that AI can then help you as an admin be more productive and get more work done, which ultimately means you can serve more of your users and the company.
Mike:
Yeah. I think of it as… So I was trying to think of other industries that we’ve seen major shifts in, I think AI is really close to automation. And if you look at how auto manufacturing has evolved from the moving assembly line of the 1930s and ’40s with Henry Ford up until a current day, I want to say, and I’ve watched a couple of YouTube videos because I think it’s fascinating, but realistically a car when it’s being built isn’t touched by a human for the first something like 10 hours of it being built. And it only takes like 30 hours to build a car, which first of all is kind of insane when you consider how much there is that goes into it.
But even if you look at stuff that would be highly profitable to be fully automated, we still haven’t fully automated anything because I think even as humans, it’s that level of control that we need over things to make sure. But the parts that like for the car being built, for example, we’re automating is, okay, well, we can do this repetitiously. And it’s a very low level skill as opposed to really hiring people. There’s still people you think of 100 years later that build cars in a car manufacturing plant, robots never took over. It’s just the part that they get hired to do is the very highly specialized part. And I think of that with AI where it’s not going to replace Salesforce admins. It’s the admins that know how to use it are going to be the hyper productive built out systems because they know when to have AI built for them and when they need to jump in.
Rebecca:
Yeah, exactly. I think the work shifts from the building piece more to the before planning and preparing, and all that work admins do talking with stakeholders, gathering the requirements, really getting precise on the solution. And then the work after the building where we’re monitoring the agents and assessing how they are performing. It’s just a shift in mindset and where the work is happening because we now can leverage these super powerful tools.
Mike:
Right. There’s parts now, and we’ve even seen this. I’ve had Cheryl Feldman on the podcast to talk about how setup is getting better. And if you’re watching any, I think this last… Well, when I recorded this is in March, I just watched Mo do the Agentforce Now tour virtual workshop and walking through agents. And there’s still parts of it where the admin needs to understand what the part of the business is that I need to go to talk to, because a casual user probably doesn’t know that. And then also, how is this stitching all of the data together? Because as I found when I was an admin for eight years, everybody in an organization only knows their own siloed data. And they only know where it comes from and who they ship it off to, but rarely do they know if either of those are exactly the forms of data that they need.
And so for example, like when I was doing a sales implementation, the information that would come in from the opportunity, the finance team was like, “This is of no use to us. Somebody else needs this. Here’s what we need.” And that’s the part where actually sitting down and making those judgment calls as a Salesforce admin is, “Okay, here’s how the agent can help do that.” The two operating divisions might never come to that conclusion on their own.
Rebecca:
Yeah. It’s really the admin running the system. There are different departments, there’s different tools we’re using, there’s data in different places. So how does it all come together and how are we looking at the day-to-day operations of these systems and maintaining them and scaling them?
Mike:
Now, I think what’s interesting, Rebecca, so that article was super fun to help write and get out. This was the beginning of a journey, and I’ll link to it in the show notes. You also spoke with a couple of next gen admins, we’ll call them that, with Tony and Ishrat. I think so looking through those blog posts as well, what were some of the things that kind of stood out to you?
Rebecca:
Yeah. First of all, I’m so grateful to all of the admins I’ve been talking to in the last couple of months. Through those conversations, it really helped define that blog, Mike, that we wrote together, because there’s so many insights that kind of came to light and a lot of grounding and agreeing on areas where it’s important to have focus. I think one thing that really came to light in Ishrat’s was talking around governance. And really kind of thinking about the admin as going from problem solver to sense maker, which I thought was an interesting phrase. But as the admin, you are kind of the translator of your org. You understand or need to understand what all these pieces are and how they work and why an agent is doing what it’s doing, because you kind of helped bring it to life in the beginning. So that was kind of an outstanding insight there.
And then from Tony, I had some great conversations around, I think a highlight for me was just thinking about the importance of the foundations and knowing the kind of foundational skills of an admin. And not losing sight of that as we leverage and use more and more AI. Still knowing what a data model is, knowing how to set up a flow, how these core kind of building blocks work well so that you can be the sense maker and understand eventually what an AI is doing and automating for you.
Mike:
Yeah. I think looking through both those, I love the way they ended. Tony kind of sums up, “I’m going to give you what you need, not just what you want.” And essentially Ishrat says the same thing of the person who connects business intent to data quality. And I think that’s always the thing. There’s always the… And I used to explain this a lot when I would do training, you run the report and you think you know what it’s going to say. And then the data comes back with something different. And nine times out of 10, the user would be like, “Well, the report’s wrong.” Not that you put the data in wrong, the data is telling you something different than what you thought. And I think with both of them, that’s the role that the Salesforce admin plays so critical is, “Well, here’s the intent of what we’re trying to capture and here’s the agent capturing it and spelling it out for us.
Now, here’s actually what the outcome is and maybe the business process that we need to change as a result of it, as opposed to what we were focused on.
Rebecca:
Yeah, love a good reporting situation. How can we change this report? Because it’s not the outcome I was looking for.
Mike:
Right, exactly. I need more pie charts. That’s always the end result is the pie charts. But this is really cool. I think right now all of the roles are really sitting back and trying to understand how they fully utilize this new tool, because I think of it like how Steve Jobs explained the bicycle of humans can move, they can put one foot in front of the other, but the bicycle makes us infinitely so much more productive. And I look at how AI is doing the same thing for Salesforce admins in terms of just allowing us to… Some of the work that Cheryl’s doing was set up, asking query who has the right permissions, as opposed to spending that time trying to run reports or comparative reports, having it do that work for us so that we can sit down and have those really targeted conversations about who should have the right profiles and permission sets, as opposed to spending that time just looking through thousands of reports.
Rebecca:
Exactly. It’s an exciting time. I really think obviously we sit in the bubble here and we see all the innovation firsthand. But it does feel like a very exciting time in our industry and for Salesforce and for the Salesforce ecosystem. There’s so much opportunity for those that are excited and willing to kind of embrace this and bring this to their companies. Mike, I was curious how you’re feeling. We see this incredible opportunity and the value the admin brings having talked to admins out in the community, is that resonating? Are people-
Mike:
I remember sitting down at Florida dreaming not too long ago, and listening to all of the Salesforce admins that were not only paying attention to what Agentforce could do, but what other AIs can do for them. I think you mentioned we live in a bubble and I think in terms of my friends, because I work in tech, I definitely know more about AI than most of them. But I would consider myself medium level intelligence of AI in the tech world. It’s really, this is another tool, how do I be productive with it? And they’re not looking at it as, “Oh, this is something scary.” They’re looking at as, how do I embrace this? And I think it’s the same way that we look at how computers came about. Once upon a time, as I’ve seen on watching Mad Men on AMC, people typed.
There was huge steno pools. If you needed a copy made, somebody literally had to type copies of that. And then the copy machine happened. Well, the copy machine didn’t put people out of work. It just made people more efficient. And so companies were able to move those individuals around into places that could make them more efficient. And admins now have a tool that just kind of, it’s like literally going from walking to riding a bicycle. And of course, there’s lots of different bicycles and everybody has their own preference.
Rebecca:
Exactly. I feel like the admins who lean into this won’t just be staying relevant. They’re going to be the most important people at their company.
Mike:
Well, and as I was having the conversation with Daniel Peters talking about small business, if you think of, “Well, I’m just a Salesforce admin at a small business, what can I do?” He actually brings a point up of, if you built an agent that would literally just help the person answer questions while they’re filling out a form or while they’re creating a record in Salesforce, you would have so much better data. And his example was when they would take orders for cheese over the phone, there was insane amount of information that you had to know. This certain cheese could only be sold in these sizes and this certain cheese could only be sold during these months. And for the person, the on-ramp, you think of that person, “Okay, well, I answer a phone and I write an order form for cheese. How hard could that be?”
Really hard when you have 30 different cheeses and umpteen number of different ways that that cheese could be sold, you think, “Well, I’m a Salesforce admin at a 20 licensed company that sells cheese. What could I do?” Wow. You could create an agent that helps the person who takes phone orders, answer questions super reliably. And that makes your onboarding so much faster for that person, and your orders more correct because a small business is going to live and die by five orders, whereas a really giant company five orders might not be that much. But if you think of the impact just at that level, that’s huge. Just at a 20 license company, now you go up to a 2000 or a 20,000 license company and you think of the same impact.
It’s so much, you can have just that little bit of knowledge that enables the person on the phone to show up at work and feel confident about what they’re doing. That’s usually the end of the day where you go home and give yourself a high five as an admin because you made somebody’s day better.
Rebecca:
Yeah, that’s huge. And I love that we’re talking food again.
Mike:
Right. It always comes back to food. We have an event in San Francisco, speaking of food, in a couple of weeks from this, which is TDX. And I think there’s going to be quite a few Agentforce stuff and flow and set up and holy cow, there’s a lot of things going on, isn’t there?
Rebecca:
Yes. So much going on for TDX. We’re really excited. The whole team’s been working on this and we’re super excited to welcome everyone to San Francisco. Mike, you’ve been working on the admin track, which is going to be stellar. We have also the hackathon coming back in a different form than last TDX. It’s hybrid and we’re going to be showcasing the top three finalists at the hackathon showdown, which is exciting because this time it’s in the main keynote. It’s going to be the big stage. So it’s going to be a really exciting moment. We’re also bringing things like True to the Core Deep Dive to TDX for the first time. So there’s a whole track that we are managing to bring that great experience that we know our admins and the rest of our Trailblazers really love to TDX as well. I know I’m missing things.
There are so many cool things in the zone to get hands-on, to have more opportunities, to talk to product managers, to see roadmap, to get your questions answered. Mike, jump in. What else?
Mike:
Oh, there’s a lot. And I would say, if you haven’t already, go online and start sketching out your schedule now because there’s a lot of great sessions. And there’s also a lot of great opportunities to get what I call fingers on keyboards right at the event and talk with individuals. And there will be some content, a lot of admin content and developer and architect that’ll be available on demand after the event as well. So try and pick and choose where you spend your time wisely, because some of it you can always watch later too.
Rebecca:
Yes. Sound advice. Plan your agenda ahead of time.
Mike:
Exactly. And over plan. I think to wrap up, Rebecca, you’re a San Francisco native with all these people coming to town. Do you have a suggestion on a favorite place to eat?
Rebecca:
Wow. Putting me on the spot.
Mike:
Yep. Not Super Duper because that’s right around the corner from Moscone West and always full.
Rebecca:
[inaudible 00:25:26] all around close by. Well, can I share where a favorite of the admin relations team?
Mike:
Yeah, absolutely.
Rebecca:
Yeah. Ideale? No, I’m not sure.
Mike:
I don’t know. I think it’s… Is it Ideal?
Rebecca:
Ideal?
Mike:
I don’t know.
Rebecca:
So I was trying to go Italiano. The Italian place in North Beach. It’s going to be really yummy.
Mike:
Yeah. So that’s really cool. I’ll put a link in the show notes. We’ve had some really good pasta there and it’s a nice little restaurant, little… Definitely a Waymo if you want to take a Waymo ride from downtown, but nice little street and kind of gets you out of the conference hustle and bustle.
Rebecca:
Yeah. I will say we’ve had really nice weather, so anywhere along the Embarcadero is going to be really nice if this weather holds up.
Mike:
Knock on wood, it does, hopefully. Well, Rebecca, thanks for coming on. I’m sure people will be looking for us at TDX and we are happy to talk about more, or of course look for more admins to interview to get your voices out there about the Next Gen blog series that we’re writing. So thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
Rebecca:
Thank you, Mike.
Mike:
So thanks again to Rebecca for coming on the podcast and sharing why the future of admin work is really less about losing ground to AI and more about gaining leverage with it. I think when admins lead with trust, we understand the business and keep the foundation strong, that puts us in a powerful position to guide how agents are actually going to help make all of our users so much better. So thanks for listening to this episode of the podcast. Be sure to listen, subscribe, share this episode with somebody that is looking to become a Salesforce admin. And until next time, we’ll see you in the cloud.
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