As Sri Lanka continues its economic recovery, businesses and policymakers are increasingly turning towards digital transformation as a key driver of sustainable growth. Against this backdrop, global customer relationship management software company Salesforce held its first-ever Innovation Day in Colombo on August 31, highlighting its growing focus on the Sri Lankan market.
The event went beyond the growing excitement surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), placing greater emphasis on how businesses can use emerging technologies to address practical challenges and deliver measurable financial and operational results.
Salesforce Managing Director for India and Sri Lanka Mankiran Chowhan spoke to Mirror Business on the sidelines of the event, sharing her views on how Sri Lankan enterprises can connect fragmented data, modernise legacy systems and use technology to support sustainable growth.
AI moves beyond experimentation
For the past two years, businesses worldwide have been exploring the possibilities of generative AI. However, Chowhan said organisations are now moving beyond experimentation and increasingly demanding measurable returns from their AI investments.
“Today, we live in a world where AI is no longer an experiment,” Chowhan said.
She noted that when ChatGPT first emerged 18 to 24 months ago, businesses and individuals were largely experimenting with the technology to understand its potential. Organisations tested different applications and use cases before determining where AI could create genuine value.
“But now we are at a point where we know that AI is here to stay and AI is valuable,” she said. “The question is: how do you use AI in the context of your business to get some value? And you are going to get value when you work on real problems, when you work on a bottom-line or a top-line problem.”
According to Chowhan, businesses need to move away from using AI simply for cosmetic improvements and instead identify areas where the technology can have a direct impact on revenue, costs, productivity or customer experience.
“Just doing fancy emails or making things look pretty is not the real value of AI in the corporate world. How do you leverage AI for meaningful top-line and bottom-line impact? That is why we are seeing a lot of customers no longer do just the pilots but ask: how do I attack a real problem with AI?” she said.
Salesforce has also applied this approach within its own operations. By deploying autonomous service agents to handle repetitive customer enquiries, the company has achieved an 86 percent first-call resolution rate. The resulting efficiency has reduced customer waiting times while allowing employees to focus on higher-value strategic responsibilities.
The company has also deployed intelligent agents to qualify inbound sales leads, helping ensure potential opportunities are not lost because of limitations in human capacity. The model combines human expertise with machine-driven productivity to expand operational capabilities.
Connected data at the heart of customer value
For Sri Lankan companies seeking to scale, Chowhan identified fragmented digital infrastructure as one of the major barriers to achieving greater agility.
Businesses often adopt specialised software systems for different functions, but when these applications operate independently, valuable information becomes trapped in data silos. This can make it difficult for management to develop a complete and accurate understanding of business operations and customer behaviour.
“When you have scale ambition, agility becomes very important and agility cannot sit on disparate, siloed systems. The systems need to be interconnected,” Chowhan said.
“You are able to unlock the power of data and technology when the data speaks to itself.”
She highlighted the importance of connected data in creating stronger customer relationships, using Sri Lanka’s retail sector as an example.
Referring to Keells Supermarket, Chowhan explained that customers can potentially appear under different identities across separate systems and transaction points. A single customer could be recorded as Nishel Fernando, N. Fernando or Nishel F, making it difficult for a business to recognise that the different profiles belong to the same individual.
“You could be Nishel Fernando, you could be N. Fernando or you could be Nishel F. You could have different identities across channels but the ability for the data to be connected allows the brand to understand that you are the same consumer,” she explained.
A connected view allows businesses to better understand purchasing patterns, loyalty requirements and individual customer needs.
“Therefore, your buying patterns, your loyalty requirements and what you need as a consumer are understood at a connected level. If the brand knows who you are, their ability to serve you becomes vastly superior,” Chowhan said.
She warned that disconnected systems can also lead to poorly timed or irrelevant customer interactions. For example, a customer who has just raised a complaint could simultaneously receive marketing for another product from the same company, creating an even more frustrating experience.
“If you are unhappy with something and I am marketing another product to you from the same brand at the exact same time, you are not going to be happy,” she said.
Ultimately, Chowhan said businesses need to establish a single, connected view of the customer.
“Very simply put, the data has to connect so that there is one single version of truth about the story of the customer and the reality of what is happening today. That is the foundational power of connected data,” she said.
Salesforce’s four-pillar approach to Sri Lanka
To help Sri Lankan businesses navigate this transition, Salesforce has adopted a four-pillar approach focused on workforce skills development, start-up incubation, developer community engagement and customer success.
The first three areas are designed to strengthen the country’s growing AI and technology talent base. Salesforce introduced its dedicated start-up incubation initiative to Sri Lanka in January 2026, while grassroots engagement continues through its Trailblazer community.
The company is also supporting the developer ecosystem through initiatives such as the Yal Dreamin conference, which is scheduled to take place in Jaffna this November.
The fourth pillar, customer success, focuses on how businesses are applying these technologies to real commercial challenges. Chowhan pointed to Salesforce’s local relationships with John Keells Holdings and its subsidiaries, including Keells Supermarket and JKCG Auto, as examples of organisations using connected technology to strengthen customer engagement.
This, she noted, shifts the discussion away from the capabilities of a technology platform alone and towards the actual service and business outcomes it can deliver.
Rethinking ROI for technology investments
Chowhan also argued that businesses should reconsider how they evaluate returns on enterprise technology investments.
Rather than applying a uniform definition of return on investment (ROI), she said companies should measure technology against their own strategic and operational priorities.
“ROI is like beauty; it is in the eye of the beholder,” Chowhan remarked.
“There is no single uniform source of truth for ROI; every company will measure it differently based on their operational priorities. What matters is the business outcomes you drive using the technology.”
These outcomes could include faster decision-making, improved customer satisfaction, more effective marketing campaigns or shorter service turnaround times.
“Whether that is making decisions faster, achieving higher customer satisfaction scores, executing sharper marketing campaigns or reducing average service turnaround times, achieving better results for your customers is the true measure of ROI,” she added.
For mid-sized and growing businesses, Salesforce offers different commercial structures, including traditional user licences, consumption-based pricing and scalable enterprise packages.
Chowhan stressed that businesses should first identify the specific problems they want technology to solve rather than investing simply because a particular technology is gaining popularity.
Technology, inclusion and economic resilience
Chowhan’s vision for digital transformation also extends beyond corporate productivity. She is a strong advocate for inclusive leadership and views businesses as an important platform for creating broader social change.
Her perspective has been shaped in part by her six-year tenure on the board of the Latika Roy Foundation in Dehradun, India, which supports children with severe disabilities.
“I am a big believer that we are all responsible for making the world better. Businesses are the greatest platform for change,” she said.
“For me, inclusion is very broad. Inclusion means making sure that everybody has a seat at the table. Working with children with severe disabilities exposes you to a very different reality than what we are accustomed to in the corporate world and building empathy for that reality is essential.”
She believes this approach to inclusion also has relevance to workplace diversity and the modernisation of the workforce.
With female participation in Sri Lanka’s formal labour force remaining around 30 percent, Chowhan suggested that flexible cloud-based technologies could help create more opportunities for women and working mothers to participate in the economy.
She also expressed an interest in engaging more closely with female executives and professionals in Sri Lanka through future engagements, with the aim of supporting mentorship and leadership development.
Looking ahead, Chowhan said she remains optimistic about Sri Lanka’s economic prospects and its national digital economy ambitions. The country’s digital economy blueprint targets annual economic growth of 5 percent, a US$15 billion digital economy and the development of 200,000 digital workers.
“Sri Lanka is at a very good, pivotal time in the market,” Chowhan said.
“Between the projected economic growth and the ambitious digital blueprint, the targets demonstrate immense promise. This is a very resilient market. We are here to support enterprises and help them serve their customers by unlocking the full power of technology.”
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