How UEM Sunrise is driving transformation with Salesforce and AI

Malaysian property developer UEM Sunrise has been transforming its operations using Salesforce, leveraging cloud technology to boost sales conversions and enhance customer experience.

Speaking to Computer Weekly on the sidelines of Dreamforce 2024 in San Francisco, Hasniza Mohamed, director of digital and technology innovation at UEM Sunrise, said the company embarked on its Salesforce implementation journey in 2019 after a planning phase involving design thinking, focus groups and extensive customer feedback.

The company adopted Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud, and also engaged Salesforce professional services from the outset “to ensure the foundation was right with less customisation”.

This proactive approach paid off, yielding significant improvements in sales conversion. “Previously, it was less than 15%, and now we are seeing between 23% to 30%. We’re also seeing productivity improvements with everything being automated, and we have a 360-degree view of the customer,” Hasniza said.

Central to UEM Sunrise’s success is the integration of a customer data platform (CDP). While initially using a third-party CDP, the company recently became the first in Malaysia to adopt the Salesforce Data Cloud.

“This will enable us to move from descriptive to predictive analytics, leveraging the power of AI for propensity-to-sell insights,” Hasniza said, adding that the company is participating in an artificial intelligence (AI) incubation pilot with Salesforce.

Depending on the outcome of the pilot, Hasniza said there’s a possibility of moving the current CDP to Salesforce, reflecting a shift towards consolidating data within the Salesforce ecosystem to minimise integration.

Data sovereignty is a paramount concern, and UEM Sunrise is proactively addressing it. “We are not regulated, but that doesn’t mean we don’t take care of our customer information,” Hasniza said.

In Asia-Pacific, Salesforce instances are served out of Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, India, Singapore and Australia. Computer Weekly understands that Salesforce’s future expansion could leverage Amazon Web Services’ (AWS’) new cloud infrastructure in Malaysia. “Once they are on AWS, we’re going to move all the data back to Malaysia”.

Meanwhile, Hasniza is confident that UEM Sunrise’s data will remain secure in its own instance. “Salesforce continues to update us on security measures, and we are good with that for now,” she said. The company also maintains its own backup and disaster recovery plans, complying with upcoming amendments to the country’s Personal Data Protection Act.

UEM Sunrise’s digital transformation extends beyond sales and customer service. The company is actively pursuing AI initiatives, starting with quick wins such as upgrading its rule-based customer-facing chatbot to a generative AI-powered version. “The project kicked off about a month ago, and we are going to relaunch it sometime in November this year,” Hasniza revealed.

The company is also testing AI assistants from another vendor to assess their impact on productivity across various departments, while concurrently building its internal data science capabilities. “We are developing talent and, at the same time, getting partners to help,” Hasniza said.

When implementing Salesforce, Hasniza said UEM Sunrise took a top-down approach to change management, underscoring the support from the company’s technology-savvy CEO and chief marketing officer.

Still, adoption did not happen overnight. It took a year for users to fully embrace the new platform and ways of working. Early resistance was expected from those not used to digital tools.

To gradually onboard users, the company focused on automated dashboards to showcase Salesforce’s value. “Once the managers saw how they could track sales at their fingertips, they started to believe in it and now they cannot live without it.”

UEM Sunrise’s broader cloud strategy centres on three pillars: data-driven transformation for growth, enhancing customer experience, and improving productivity.

The company maintains a multicloud stance, using Salesforce for customer relationship management, Microsoft for enterprise applications, and AWS for front-end applications to avoid vendor lock-in and ensure business continuity during outages. It still runs some applications on-premise, as certain technologies used in the construction industry are not available on cloud.

While exploring other emerging technologies such as serverless computing, Hasniza emphasised a pragmatic approach: “Technology is good, but most important is understanding your business problem and using technology to resolve it. We don’t jump into every new technology; we assess its relevance and return-on-investment.”