At the beginning of May, our managing partners joined Jens van Hal, Functional Architect at Fenego, in Berlin for the Intershop Summit 2026. Not your typical event with long keynotes and passive audiences, but a compact gathering where customers, partners, and experts engaged in meaningful discussions about the future of B2B commerce.

What stood out immediately: the conversations were no longer hypothetical. AI has clearly moved beyond the experimental phase. The focus is now on how to effectively bring it into production and turn it into tangible value.

The summit was also a special moment for Fenego. We were once again named BNL Partner of the Year, for the third year in a row.That makes this recognition even more meaningful.

In an ecosystem where the bar is raised every year, this is not just about one strong year, but about consistency. About continuously innovating, consistently delivering, and making real progress together with our customers and Intershop.

If there was one common thread throughout the event, it was this: AI needs to deliver results. Not tomorrow, but today.

Throughout the conversations and sessions, it became clear that companies are evolving from experimentation to operationalization. Proofs of concept remain an essential tool to validate feasibility, but they are no longer the end goal. The real challenge, and focus, today lies in scalable implementation and measurable impact.

What matters is not the technology itself, but how it is integrated into existing processes and how it effectively contributes to better customer interactions and a more efficient organization.

That shift feels familiar. In our own projects, we see organizations looking for control, scalability, and predictability, rather than experiments that fail to translate into real-world results.

During the summit, Jens co-hosted a workshop with Intershop on AI in B2B aftersales and customer portals. One central question guided the session: how do you turn a portal into more than just an ordering tool?

The session focused on concrete use cases and real-world experiences. It explored how AI can support users in finding the right products, how service processes can become smarter and faster, and how organizations can evolve from reactive support to proactive service.

What stood out most was the scale of the opportunity in aftersales. There is often still a lot of manual work in this area, while it is precisely here that AI can deliver quick value, both for customers and for internal teams.

That same focus on practical applicability was also reflected in the presentation of the Intershop Spring 2026 Release.

What stands out is the strong emphasis on simplicity and scalability. Rather than complex transformation programs, the focus is on solutions that can be adopted relatively quickly and expanded step by step. Copilots and AI agents are becoming an increasingly integral part of the platform, allowing companies to move beyond treating them as isolated experiments.

At the same time, specific use cases are becoming more tangible. Think of support for buyers in their day-to-day processes, as well as applications such as visual product recognition, capabilities that can have a significant impact in a B2B context. It makes AI concrete and relevant, especially in environments where complexity is typically high.

What this summit made especially clear is that progress in B2B commerce does not come from technology alone, but from collaboration. By bringing together customers, partners, and product teams, space is created for open conversations and shared insights. For Fenego, that is exactly what it is all about: building solutions together that are not only innovative, but also work in practice.

The combination of our contribution to the event and being recognized as BNL Partner of the Year for the third year in a row therefore feels like two sides of the same coin. It confirms that we are on the right path, together with Intershop and our customers.