May 6, 2026 · Scheman Building, Ames, IA

Stop Automating Broken Processes: How to Redesign Your Business Operations for the Age of AI Agents

AI Demo

TRACK AI Demo
FORMAT AI Demo
ROOM 250-252

Most businesses are making the same mistake with AI: they’re bolting intelligent tools onto workflows that were designed for humans decades ago. The result? Marginal gains, frustrated teams, and a growing gap between companies that “use AI” and companies that are actually transformed by it.

In this hands-on session, Adam Engel—owner of Running Robots Inc., an Iowa City digital marketing agency serving 100+ organizations—will show you why the technology is only 20% of the value, and how to unlock the other 80% by fundamentally rethinking how work gets done.

Drawing from real client engagements across manufacturing, professional services, and e-commerce, Adam will walk through before-and-after case studies where businesses stopped layering AI onto old processes and instead redesigned operations from scratch—deploying specialized AI agents that handle quoting, order processing, customer follow-up, and reporting as persistent “digital employees,” not one-off chatbots.

Building on his 2025 Summit session on ERP/CRM pipeline automation, Adam will demonstrate a live multi-agent workflow where several small, purpose-built AI agents collaborate to handle an end-to-end business operation—from intake to decision to output—with human oversight only where it matters most. Attendees will see exactly how these agents are configured, how they communicate, and how even small Iowa businesses can deploy them today without enterprise-scale budgets.

This session is designed for operations leaders, business owners, and IT decision-makers who have experimented with AI but haven’t yet seen the transformational results they were promised. You’ll leave with a practical framework for identifying which processes to redesign first, a live-demonstrated tech stack you can replicate, and the confidence to move from “we’re exploring AI” to “our AI agents run this.”

Key Takeaways

  • The Redesign-First Framework: A step-by-step method for identifying which business operations to redesign for AI agents (not just automate), so you capture the 80% of value most companies leave on the table.
  • From Chatbots to Digital Employees: How to deploy small, specialized AI agents that handle ongoing business tasks—quoting, follow-ups, order processing—as persistent team members, not one-time question-answerers.
  • A Replicable Multi-Agent Tech Stack: A live-demonstrated, budget-friendly architecture for orchestrating multiple AI agents that collaborate on end-to-end workflows—proven in real Iowa businesses you can model today.
Continue the conversation with Meegan Campbell at the Marketing & Sales Facilitated Discussion — 1:20 PM - 2:05 PM, Room 220-230-240
Continue the conversation with Adam Engel at the Marketing & Sales Facilitated Discussion — 1:20 PM - 2:05 PM, Room 220-230-240

Transcript from Summit:

Session Transcript