Salesforce: Small & Medium Business Trends Report

Salesforce surveyed 3,350 SMB leaders globally (200 employees or fewer), including 150 from Australia and 50 from New Zealand, to understand how small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are navigating challenges and opportunities in an AI-driven economy.

Key takeaways:

• 81% of SMB leaders are optimistic about the future.

• 76% increased tech investment in the past year.

• 75% are investing in AI, with 90% of those already seeing productivity gains.

• 66% plan to increase data management investment in the coming year.

🧠 1. AI Takes Center Stage

Global Trends:

• 90% of SMBs using AI report more efficient operations.

• 85% expect a positive ROI from their AI investments.

• Top use cases: marketing campaign optimization, content generation, and automated customer recommendations.

• Only 4% plan to reduce AI investment next year.

ANZ Context:

While the report doesn’t break out ANZ-specific AI adoption rates, it does note that SMBs in tech-forward markets like Australia and New Zealand are more likely to experiment early with AI and are generally optimistic about AI’s impact.

Notably:

• Security is the top concern globally and equally high in mature markets like ANZ.

• SMBs in Financial Services and Technology — both key industries in ANZ — are especially focused on:

  • Integrating AI with legacy systems

  • Ensuring accurate outputs

  • Managing compliance and customer trust .

💻 2. Tech Investment Rises – But So Do Tech Pains

Global Stats:

• 76% of SMBs globally increased tech investment YoY.

• Growing SMBs are 1.8x more likely to invest in AI.

• Top challenges: data inconsistencies, too many standalone apps, and security concerns.

• Most SMBs use an average of 7 business apps.

ANZ Relevance:

• ANZ SMBs face similar challenges around tool fragmentation, with many opting for integrated suites to reduce inefficiencies.

• Security and performance are higher concerns for growth-oriented SMBs, which describes many Australian and New Zealand startups and scaling firms.

• ANZ leaders are likely to echo global sentiments: 46% of all SMB leaders feel overwhelmed by the number of tools they use, and 51% worry about falling behind on tech .

📊 3. Data Quality: The Hidden Growth Lever

Global Trends:

• 66% of SMBs plan to increase investment in data management.

• Only 47% say they’re “very data-driven”.

• 80% believe better data would increase revenue.

• SMBs using AI are even more likely to focus on data quality improvements.

ANZ Insight:

Data-savvy regions like ANZ often prioritize data governance, but smaller firms may still face limitations in resources and expertise. The report notes:

• Only half of SMB leaders use even basic security measures like 2FA or password managers.

• This presents an opportunity for MSPs and tech consultants in ANZ to step in with practical data and cybersecurity support.

📊 4. Operational Differences Between Growing vs. Stagnant SMBs

Growing SMBs:

• Focus on customer experience, upgrading tech, and implementing AI.

• See themselves as more agile than larger competitors.

• Invest more confidently in tech — especially AI capabilities.

Stagnant/Declining SMBs:

• Focus on customer acquisition and cost-cutting.

• Less likely to view AI as critical, and more price-sensitive.

• Often overwhelmed or delayed in acting on data insights.

In Australia and New Zealand — where digital transformation funding and startup support is strong — many SMBs fall into the “growth-oriented” bucket and may benefit from these insights to stay ahead.

🧩 5. ANZ-Specific Demographics

• Australia (4% of global sample): 150 respondents

• New Zealand (1% of global sample): 50 respondents

While the report doesn’t break out ANZ numbers in each chart, the combined ANZ sample (200 respondents) provides enough directional data for local reflection — especially given the region’s tech adoption maturity.

🔮 The Future: Trust and Autonomous Agents

• SMBs increasingly value AI capabilities, scalability, and vendor trust when choosing tools.

• 81% say they’d spend more on trusted vendors.

• Autonomous agents (e.g., Salesforce Agentforce) are the next frontier, with AI acting independently to handle tasks like booking, customer support, and data management.

What Is a Salesforce Partner?

Our large network of apps and experts is incredibly popular with Salesforce customers. Learn more about our partners and how they can help you reach your goals faster and find the right partner to fit your business needs

• Salesforce Partners help you get the most value out of Salesforce, whether it be through a one-time download or ongoing strategic support. With proven productivity apps and expert partners, businesses can make work easier and faster. Extend Salesforce with pre-built, data-driven apps that help you streamline workflows, harmonize data, and increase cost savings.

  • 91% of Salesforce customers use at least one AppExchange app.
  • 70% of customer implementations are led by our consulting partners.

  Introducing the Salesforce partner types

  With AppExchange, the Salesforce partner marketplace, you’ll find partners for every business and pre-built solutions to extend your Salesforce instance further. The AppExchange lists over 9,000 prebuilt applications, 67,000 credentialed AI partners, and 220,000 certified experts to extend every product and industry. Find the right partner on AppExchange through our curated app collections or filter through our consultants.

  ISV Partners aid Salesforce users in the creation and deployment of applications. They create industry-specific software applications and list their applications on the Salesforce AppExchange. ISV applications are built on the Salesforce platform and seamlessly integrate into your Salesforce instance. ISV Partners can help you build custom solutions for your exact needs. They can help set up architecture, create components, and design custom AI actions and prompts.

  System Integrators (SI) or Consulting Partners do consultative work to help you build, configure, implement, or optimize your Salesforce environment. Typical projects SI partners might help you with include data migration, customizations, or a technology strategy for your organization.

  SI Partners have certified industry and Salesforce expertise to effectively and efficiently implement solutions and offer specialized guidance by business need, industry, and region. They offer the strategy and guidance to expand your vision. They can also help manage your solutions through outsourced services.

  Technology Partners work with Salesforce to develop and integrate complementary technologies and solutions that enhance the functionality and value of the Salesforce platform. These partnerships offer products or services that integrate seamlessly with Salesforce and involve collaborations with leading technology companies to enhance the Salesforce ecosystem. These partnerships aim to integrate complementary technologies, expand capabilities, and deliver innovative solutions to customers.

  Cloud Resellers are companies authorized by Salesforce to sell its cloud-based products and services. These resellers help businesses select, implement, and optimize Salesforce solutions tailored to the company’s goals and needs. Resellers support the entire customer lifecycle and can assist with training, customization, and more.

  Digital Agencies provide comprehensive advertising and marketing services to clients across all B2C industries. They generally handle creative services like graphic design or branding, technology, like marketing analytics, and media strategy, planning, and buying.

  Outsourcing Service Providers (OSPs) are Salesforce customers and partners who purchase, manage, and own Salesforce technology on behalf of their clients as part of a broader managed service. Their go-to-market motion involves offering clients bundled, turnkey solutions encompassing implementation, technology, support, and administration, often with an outcomes-based commercial model.

  Identifying an Agentforce partner

  “[Working with a partner provided] us with the necessary expertise and engineering capabilities to develop our Salesforce platform and roll it out across many countries.”

  –István Mag, Head of Digital Factory at MOL Group

  Getting started on your Agentforce journey with partners is easy. Partners help you extend Agentforce, Salesforce’s digital labor platform, and AI to elevate customer service and increase sales productivity.

  AgentExchange is the trusted Agentforce marketplace for ready-to-use agent actions and templates, built right into Salesforce Agentforce. It’s where our partners, Agentblazers, and community members can easily buy and sell agentic AI components in order to deploy AI agents. Deploy easily customizable, partner-built agents for specialized industries and use cases, such as:

  • Responding to customer service inquiries
  • Qualifying sales leads
  • Optimizing marketing campaigns
  • Technical troubleshooting
  • Content creation

  ISV partners build autonomous agents and actions on the Agentforce platform for a wide range of use cases. As these partners are skilled in Salesforce and app integrations, they can work with you to build custom strategies and deploy agents tailored to your business needs.

  Consulting partners help businesses create and deploy AI agents to help you strategize, customize, and implement agents that work for your business. These experts build custom strategies and deploy agents tailored to your business needs using Agentforce.

  Zero Copy Data partnerships let you unify, access, and activate data from any platform — without copying or moving it. That means you can use live data from your existing data lakes directly inside Salesforce to power AI, workflows, and real-time insights — while activating that same data across any customer experience. It’s faster, more secure, and makes the most of your existing data investments.

  Work better together

  “As an industry-focused partner, we find that ‘better together’ really exists. We’re working together from the very beginning with customers to find solutions and when there are challenges with products or gaps in products, we’re able to bring in our own IP, perspective, and industry ideas to help get the customer to success.” 

  –Jill Dignan, Chief Growth Officer, V2 Strategic Advisors

  Salesforce partners play a crucial role in enhancing the Salesforce ecosystem, offering tailored solutions to meet specific business needs across various industries. With the expertise of these partners, companies can streamline operations, boost productivity, and achieve significant cost savings.

  More resources:

  • Find a partner
  • AgentExchange
  • AppExchange
  • Partner Program FAQ
  • Xero transforms to streamline customer experience
  • Turtle Bay Resort elevates hospitality with AI-driven personalization
  • What Fuel, Coffee, and Hot Dogs Have to Do with Generative AI