The B2B Online Atlanta Debrief

November 26, 2025

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5 mins read

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The B2B Online Atlanta Debrief

You know a conference has hit a nerve when the best conversations are happening in the hallways. On the main stage at B2B Online Atlanta, the narrative was clear: a seamless, elegant AI future of unprecedented growth. It was all clean code and frictionless transformation. But in the corridors, a different, more grounded conference was taking place.

It was a low hum of candid conversations among the VPs and Directors tasked with making this all work. They talked about their messy data, their aging systems, and the immense responsibility of ensuring a multi-million-dollar AI pilot delivers an actual return. One conference was selling the dream. The other was navigating the messy complexities of reality.

The true story is the massive opportunity that exists in the space between them.

A Dose of Reality, Courtesy of a Bot

A moment of grounding clarity came from Michael Sinoway, the CEO of Lucidworks. His team had done something fascinating: they built an AI agent and sent it out to interview 10,000 real B2B stakeholders across the globe. The bot was so effective, most people didn't know they were talking to a machine.

The findings provided a necessary dose of pragmatism. While 37% of firms reported seeing real benefits from AI—a figure rightly presented as a win—it also highlighted that nearly two-thirds of companies are still working to find tangible benefits.

The most telling detail was in the fine print. The study revealed an 18-fold spike in "extreme" concerns about deployment cost and an 8-fold increase in anxiety around accuracy. You could feel the air shift with collective nods in the room. It was the sound of the B2B industry getting serious, its focus maturing from the theoretical "what if" to the practical "how-to."

The Promise and Pressure of "The Prompting Life"

The perfect response to this challenge arrived the next morning. In a presentation called "The Prompting Life," Rudy Abitbol showed a different vision. He demonstrated, live, how workflows that once took teams months could now be done in minutes using simple, natural language. His method was enticing because it was practical. It positioned AI as a powerful tool that could finally be put directly into the hands of business users.

But even this incredible promise introduces a new dynamic. A "prompting life" implies a new discipline of immediacy, where the expectation of speed creates its own form of pressure. The power to "transform workflows from months to minutes" is also a challenge to manage that newfound velocity. It’s no wonder "human touch" was a constant refrain throughout the week. When an industry speaks that much about its humanity, it's a sign that it is actively searching for the right balance between automation and authentic connection.

So, How Do We Actually Get Started With AI?

This brings us to the real question. If you’re a B2B leader living in that messy middle, how do you actually move forward?

Here’s a practical framework based on what we learned at B2B Online:

Treat Your AI Like a New Hire. The biggest mistake is thinking of AI as a magic box you just plug in. It’s not. It’s more like the smartest, most literal-minded new employee you’ve ever had. It needs to be trained, corrected, and given crystal-clear instructions. Success comes from a continuous practice of refinement, not a one-time setup.
Fix Your Own House First. AI is an amplifier. If your data is chaotic and your internal processes are a mystery, an AI will only make a bigger mess, but faster. The essential work, before you invest in a platform, is to get your own operational point of view solid. What are your actual rules? What is your real language for value? This document becomes the AI’s bible.
Find Your Most Boring, Expensive Problem. Don't start by asking, "How can we use AI?" Start by asking, "What's the most repetitive, time-consuming, and expensive process we have?" Find that single, resonant bottleneck—in order processing, in customer data analysis, wherever—and make that your pilot program. It gives you a focused, measurable, and defensible first mission.

This blueprinting stage—defining your principles and finding that first real problem—is the core of what we do in our AI readiness consultations.

The Real Endgame: An AI Command Center That Drives Revenue

The conversation around AI is maturing beyond efficiency and cost-cutting. Its true potential is realized in the creation of new revenue. Businesses unlock this value by building their own proprietary intelligence, moving from procuring software to developing a strategic capability.

We call this an "AI Command Center"—a network of custom agents that turn your company's most valuable asset, its institutional knowledge, into an active, operational tool. This is the focus of our work in applied AI for commerce.

For leaders trying to get their heads around this strategic shift, we believe a clear mental model is the best place to start. We've detailed that foundation for B2B leaders in this free guide.

Constante Quirino is the Director of Marketing for IM Digital. Having worked with leading brands and retailers across CPG, wellness, fashion, furniture, and interior design, Constante brings a diverse background in branding, merchandising, and search engine optimization (SEO) to every project.