Juan Perez, CIO, Salesforce
5 Agentic Lessons – Salesforce-on-Salesforce Keynote, Dreamforce 2025
Salesforce provides a compelling argument against building from scratch. Operating as customer zero, the company deploys its own commercial products internally, proving that using an established platform outpaces custom engineering.
Its CIO Juan Perez exemplifies this. Joining the cloud-based software company after 30 years at UPS, he argues that the most effective strategy for a modern enterprise is to resist the urge to build ad-hoc solutions and instead“ push for the Salesforce platform”, as he told Boldstart. From where he sits, the alternative – building custom fixes“ any way we can”
– leads to a sprawl of disconnected data repositories and technical debt.“ What I’ ve come to learn is that every company has its own sets of data issues... because of the speed that business is moving,” he says.
By using Salesforce’ s own Data Cloud and AI products to run the business, Juan’ s approach forces his IT team to have a“ direct line of engagement” with product developers, ensuring that the software is battletested. By prioritising the platform over custom builds, Juan ensures that Salesforce does not just sell the future of IT – it lives it.
110 March 2026