iMMERSIVE returned to host another annual Built Environment Summit alongside Salesforce, bringing together over 120 customers, Salesforce leaders, and partners for a day showcasing the latest innovations helping businesses evolve faster than ever. Digital transformation is no longer a nice-to-have for the sector, it’s the baseline for staying competitive, and this year’s Summit made that clear from every angle: AI, agents and the latest Salesforce innovations are no longer future-state conversations, they’re already reshaping how Built Environment businesses operate today. Together, we explored what that shift actually looks like in practice, from the boardroom to the field.
AI Agents Insights
After a warm welcome from our CEO, David Kurtanjek, setting the landscape for the day ahead, the Summit kicked off with Ed Thompson, Marketing Strategist, Salesforce, sharing his AI Agent insights, unpacking how businesses are thinking about and responding to AI to drive cost savings and revenue growth. His central argument: so many transformation efforts stall because businesses either take on too much at once, or make changes too small to have any real impact.
He outlined the key shifts happening in AI adoption right now:
- Agents are moving from cutting costs to driving growth.
- Real value comes from rethinking whole processes, not patching agents onto old ones.
- Buying ready-made agents is overtaking building from scratch, a clear signal that the winners in this space will be buying proven agentic capability on platforms like Salesforce, not building it themselves.
- The next frontier isn’t automation, it’s rethinking the operating model itself.
He ended on a candid note: even as adoption accelerates, the savings aren’t yet showing up where it counts, on the bottom line. Closing that gap is the real challenge ahead.
Salesforce Innovation Showcase
William Harrison, Lead Solution Engineer, Salesforce, showcased three of Salesforce’s newest tools, Agentforce Operations, Headless360, Slackbot, and Qualified, each built to move AI agents from clever demos to everyday work.
The overview first covered Agentforce Operations, aimed at the manual, error-prone back-office processes still running on spreadsheets and tribal knowledge, starting with the highest-value areas for fastest ROI.
Next, Slackbot, a personal AI agent built into Slack that understands your data, your tone, and your priorities, becoming a single front door to every other agent in the business under Salesforce’s Headless 360 vision.
Finally, Piper, Qualified’s AI SDR agent was showcased, which understands your business and your buyers in real time, working every inbound channel from one brain to generate pipeline at scale.
Taken together, they mark a shift from isolated AI tools to a connected system of agents working side by side across the business, each one making the others smarter.
Customer Insight Panel
The customer insight panel was, without question, the standout session of the day. Angela Turner, Customer Director, Sunbelt Rentals, Sonia da Costa, Chief Customer Experience Officer, Persimmon Homes along with our own Marcelle Brathwaite, Chief Revenue Officer, held a packed room’s attention for a conversation that moved well beyond the usual case study script.
The panel explored where they’re seeing genuine, practical impact from AI in their businesses today, moving past the hype, weighing efficiency against the moments where a human still needs to be in the loop, and being honest about what’s harder than expected once transformation moves from plan to practice. It also looked ahead at where Salesforce and AI fit into the next 12 to 24 months, and what success actually looks like when you get past the buzzwords.
It was the kind of honest, unfiltered conversation you don’t get from a polished case study, and there’s more to come. Watch this space for a dedicated interview with Sonia da Costa going deeper into Persimmon Homes’ journey, coming soon.
Innovation Booths
Between sessions, attendees made their way around the innovation booths, each one with a product specialist on hand for one-to-one conversations and to answer any questions. It was a chance to swap the big-picture thinking for a more hands-on look at what these solutions could mean in practice.
Products on display included:
- iMMERSIVE Catalyst™
- Data Foundations
- Marketing Cloud
- Service & Experience Cloud
- Slack
- Analytics & Tableau
Wherever attendees were in their Salesforce journey, there was a booth with something relevant to show them. A standout was the iMMERSIVE Catalyst™ booth, where live, on-screen demos brought our suite of AI-ready, industry-specific accelerators to life, built to make Salesforce adoption faster, easier and future-proofed.
Our event sponsors, GoMeddo, Unaric, Introhive and Nintex, were also on hand with their own booths to discuss their supporting solutions with customers. A huge thank you to them for their support in bringing this event to life.
Breakout sessions
Work Reinvented: What AI Makes Possible
Simon Clarke, Director of AI and Innovation at iMMERSIVE, joined Andy Butterfield, Agentic AI GTM at Salesforce, to cut through the AI noise, exploring how AI is shifting from answering questions to actually acting on them, changing how we interact with our systems and each other’s agents. The key message: this isn’t a future state, it’s already working today, with practical use cases showing exactly where to start.
Every Mile Counts: Engineering the Future of Field Service
Marcelle Braithwaite, Chief Revenue Officer, iMMERSIVE, and Adit Paul Chittilappilly, Agentforce Field Service Specialist, Salesforce, showed how AI puts the right engineer on the right job, eliminating dead miles and surfacing upsell and compliance opportunities the moment an engineer is on site, turning field engineers from a cost on wheels into a revenue-generating touchpoint. The key message: field service shouldn’t be minimised as a cost, it should be maximised as a capability.
Mind The Margins: Optimising Complex Supply Chains
Amy Carlton, Customer Solutions Director, iMMERSIVE, and Sam Fenn, Customer Solutions Director, iMMERSIVE, walked the audience through turning insight into action across the supplier lifecycle, from compliance and Procure-to-Pay to work assignment and customer satisfaction, showing how unifying supply chain and property management data on Salesforce turns reactive firefighting into proactive, margin-protecting service delivery. The key message: visibility alone isn’t enough, it’s what you do with it that protects the margin.
Building Connections
As the sessions wrapped up, attendees had the chance to unwind with delicious canapés and refreshments while networking with peers from across the built environment sector. Adding a personal touch to the afternoon, our live sketch artist was on hand, turning photos of attendees’ favourite buildings into unique, one of a kind sketches to take home.
A huge thank you to all of our speakers, our partners at Salesforce, our partners, and everyone who joined us, we couldn’t have done it without you.
Ready to see where AI fits your business?
If there was one consensus across every session, panel and conversation on the day, it’s this: the time for AI is now. Not as a distant roadmap item, but as something Built Environment businesses are already acting on, whether that’s cutting dead miles in field service, protecting margins across the supply chain, or rethinking the operating model entirely.
Free AI Scoping Workshop with iMMERSIVE will identify where AI can add value in your business, size up the value versus effort and scope out what the solution would look like. Find out more and book yours here.
