ITTech Pulse Exclusive Interview Khadim Batti, CEO and Co-Founder at Whatfix

Khadim Batti, Co-Founder and CEO of Whatfix, discusses how he is driving UI-first automation, trusted AI execution, and scalable enterprise transformation across complex, real-world application ecosystems.

Why choose UI-first automation when API-first has dominated for years? What shaped your belief in its future?

API-first automation has dominated because it works well when applications expose clean, complete APIs. Inside large enterprises, that condition is rare. Many critical workflows live in systems with limited or fragmented APIs, or the APIs simply cannot support the depth of configuration and exception handling teams need to automate real work. This creates large blind spots where automation cannot reach.

Our belief in UI-first automation came from seeing these gaps firsthand. Most meaningful work happens on the screen. Teams navigate menus, configure objects, validate data, and complete long, cross-application workflows through the UI. These actions are difficult or impossible to capture through APIs, yet they are intuitive for an AI agent that operates on the same interface as a human.

UI-first automation also shifts control back to users. Teams are no longer blocked by complex integrations or dependent on scarce developer resources to build and maintain automations. Solutions like Seek can be deployed quickly, adapt to UI changes, and execute tasks visually, the same way a trained administrator would.

Looking ahead, we believe the future belongs to systems designed to be used by both humans and agents. Since a large share of human work happens through interfaces, agents must be able to see and understand the UI to truly replicate and extend that work. UI-first automation unlocks the majority of workflows that API-first approaches cannot handle and lowers the barrier for organizations to adopt and scale automation across their entire application stack.

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Seek’s self-correcting Trailhead success is an AI first — what does it mean for you and the broader Salesforce landscape?

One of the major challenges in enterprise AI adoption has been building trust. By completing the Trailhead courses, we prove its ability to handle real-world implementations end-to-end. Seek acts like an expert team member, solving real-world challenges and reducing execution timelines by automating frequent, time-consuming tasks in Salesforce such as creating custom objects and fields, building flows, validation rules and page layouts. With a single command, users can eliminate hours of work with the confidence that the processes are properly executed in the same way they would by a knowledgeable Salesforce professional.

We know 70% of digital initiatives stall due to execution complexity. In your view, what’s the root cause of this challenge? And more importantly, what’s your thesis on how Seek changes this narrative?

A large part of why digital initiatives stall is that teams underestimate the execution layer. Even with clear strategies and strong platforms, the actual work of configuring systems, maintaining workflows, and executing changes inside applications is slow and heavily manual. Teams rely on a small number of experts, timelines stretch, and backlog grows. This execution bottleneck is the real barrier, not the strategy. Seek changes that dynamic by giving organizations an AI teammate that can actually do the hands-on configuration work across applications. Instead of stopping at recommendations, Seek completes the tasks by building flows, updating fields, modifying layouts, and validating changes. By automating the long tail of admin and configuration work that previously slowed teams down, seek compresses project timelines and removes the operational drag that causes most initiatives to stall.

In short, digital initiatives fail in the “last mile.” Seek tries to solve that.

Deploying AI in critical systems raises trust challenges. How do you balance automation and oversight, and design governance that still allows innovation?

Trust has been the biggest barrier to bringing AI into core systems like Salesforce. The issue isn’t whether AI can generate an answer; it’s whether it can execute a configuration change safely inside a production environment. Our approach is to design for collaboration, not replacement.

Seek operates within a human-in-the-loop trust model. Users can review actions that Seek proposes and can be approved, or modified by them, before it is executed. Because Seek works on the same UI as humans, its work is fully visible and auditable, which preserves control while still removing execution effort. This gives organizations a clear governance framework: humans define intent and boundaries, Seek handles the repetitive execution, and both operate with shared transparency. The result is a balance that encourages innovation without compromising safety. Teams can accelerate automation because they know every action is traceable and aligned with existing admin workflows, rather than bypassing them.

Seek can also operate on sandboxes, so they have an option to review the change before production.

Designing for the full Salesforce ecosystem is huge—can a single platform support all personas? What were your top aha moments on this journey?

Supporting the full Salesforce ecosystem is only possible when you understand how each persona actually works inside the platform. At Whatfix, we’ve spent years partnering with SI teams and sales leaders to build on-screen experiences for Salesforce. That gave us a deep, practical understanding of how admins, developers, managers, and end users navigate the system, where they struggle, and how their workflows differ. We used this accumulated knowledge to train Seek so it can interpret context correctly and take the right action every time.

Our aha moment came when Seek successfully completed the same Trailhead Admin challenges that Salesforce requires of human admins and developers. It wasn’t just a technical milestone; it demonstrated that Seek could perform work at the standard expected of certified professionals. That validation gave us confidence that a single platform could support multiple personas. The idea that AI can do everything equally well for everyone is a myth, and Seek’s strength lies in mastering the fundamentals of each role. For that reason, we will roll out Seek updates by focusing on one persona at a time, ensuring depth, trust, and real value before expanding to the next.

You’re operating at 700+ enterprises. From that vantage point, what do you genuinely believe is the number one skill or mindset that separates leaders who succeed with AI-native platforms from those who don’t?

From our vantage point across 700+ enterprises in 40+ countries, the number one mindset that separates leaders who succeed with AI-native platforms from those who struggle is their ability to treat AI as an operational discipline, not a technology experiment.

The most effective leaders are focusing on how AI integrates into the flow of work, how it reshapes processes, how employees adopt it, and how outcomes are measured. They build small, empowered teams to experiment quickly, they institutionalize learning, and they scale what delivers impact rather than running endless pilots.

The organizations that fall behind tend to treat AI as an isolated initiative owned by a single function. The ones that move ahead view AI as a cross-functional capability that must be embedded into everyday tasks, decisions, and workflows. They understand that the real unlock will come from the convergence of AI agents, copilots, and human expertise working together inside a unified system of intelligence.

In essence, the defining skill is systems thinking: the ability to connect strategy, process, governance, and human behavior so AI becomes part of how the enterprise operates, learns, and improves, not just another tool it deploys.

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As Seek moves beyond Salesforce and is available for cross application workflows, what’s your vision for it? What’s the biggest AI automation misconception you hear from CIOs, and how do you challenge it?

As Seek moves beyond Salesforce, our vision is to build an app-agnostic AI assistant that can manage cross-application workflows with the same ease as a trained employee. This is where UI-first automation becomes essential. API-based tools lock you into the few systems with mature APIs, and app-specific assistants limit you to a single environment. Seek avoids both constraints by working on the UI, which lets it automate tasks in virtually any application. This creates value for every persona. Admins can set up automation across multiple systems without custom integrations, and end users get a low-friction experience where they don’t even have to open the app or find the right screen.

The misconception we hear most often from CIOs is that they can’t unlock real automation until every application is modernized, every API is exposed, and every workflow is re-engineered. In reality, that level of readiness is rare. Most CIOs are managing fragmented application estates, inconsistent processes, and teams stretched thin by backlogs and change requests. The assumption that automation can only thrive in ideal conditions becomes the very thing that slows progress. We challenge that by showing how UI-first automation bypasses these constraints. Seek doesn’t wait for APIs, refactored workflows, or vendor-specific copilots. It operates directly on the UI, the same surface where employees already get their work done. That allows Seek to automate real tasks today, in the systems CIOs already use, without requiring major integration projects or new technical dependencies.

Thank you, Mr. Khadim, for sharing your valuable insights with IT Tech Insights. We look forward to featuring your perspective and continuing this important conversation on the future of the AI productivity ecosystem.

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