Salesforce Agentforce

In collaboration with Salesforce, our project explored how Agentic AI can help small business owners in Bloomington, Indiana manage unpredictability such as seasonal demand shifts, local events, and inventory challenges.

Bloomington, Indiana is a small college town where many local businesses rely on Indiana University's student population for foot traffic and sales. These businesses face sharp fluctuations during school breaks and lack tools to adapt quickly.

Business owners deal with a lot of complexities on a daily basis. And that is not all. Bigger problems can hit them at any time. Many small business owners in Bloomington are older and prefer simple, familiar tools over complex technology. How we can address unpredictability for small business owners, allowing them to focus on what they love while getting intuitive and accessible information and analysis supported by Agentic AI?

While these unpredictable events don't happen all the time, they still deal with unpredictability in their business. Meet Debbie, a small business owner in Bloomington. From fluctuating foot traffic to managing inventory and marketing, she must stay ahead of local events and weather while juggling daily operations.

We want to give Debbie her time back. Instead of asking for smarter dashboards or automation, business owners like her told us they trust their instincts—built over years of experience. What takes up most of their time isn't managing sales or inventory, but keeping up with unpredictable local events, and they want that information delivered in a simple, familiar way.

Agentforce quietly handles mundane and repetitive tasks, delivering timely insights so owners can focus on what truly matters—serving their customers and merchandising.

Our solution is a weekly AI-generated report that integrates POS data, event calendars, and local news into a clear, actionable summary. It can be delivered as a visual brief, a voice message, or a phone call—based on the owner's preferences.

The agentic report generate simple, customizable summaries that feel familiar—like a Google Doc, newspaper, or magazine—rather than like software.

This project empowers small business owners to stay informed and make timely decisions without relying on complex tools or constant monitoring. By turning unpredictable factors like local events, weather, and university activity into clear, personalized summaries, our solution gives owners back valuable time—allowing them to focus on what matters most: their customers and merchandising.

This project taught me that effective design isn't always about adding more features—it's about listening closely and designing with empathy. Working with small business owners reminded me that simplicity, trust, and familiarity are often more valuable than innovation alone, especially when designing with AI for non-technical users.

Throughout the project, we explored several directions before arriving at our final solution:

• Store Heatmaps: Explored for midterm, but dismissed due to cost, privacy concerns, and limited benefit for small businesses.
• Inventory Management Dashboard: Initially considered to support restocking decisions, but most businesses already use Square, making another analytics tool redundant.
• Proactive AI Assistant (Voice/Call Interaction): Envisioned as a real-time consultant, but scaled back after learning SBOs in Bloomington are hesitant about AI and prefer familiar tools.

These explorations shaped our final solution by clarifying what small business owners truly needed—a simple, proactive summary that saves time and minimizes digital complexity.