September 25, 2026 — This week, Soliant team members Stephanie Haupt and Derek Vanderby attended The ESOP Association’s Midwest Regional Conference in Des Moines.
The conference brings together Midwestern ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plan organizations) to drive connection, networking, collaboration, and learning. Employee ownership is a significant cornerstone of our culture, and we prioritize these opportunities to learn from other organizations that think about work the way we do. Stephanie and Derek spent the three-day conference celebrating employee-ownership and teaching other employee-owners how to capitalize on AI.
Conversations on “What workflows does your team still do by hand?”
At our sponsored booth, we asked attendees, “What workflows does your team still do by hand?” They wrote down their thoughts on Post-it notes, which we added to a growing board of manual work that could be completed by AI. Ideas included:
- Onboarding and offboarding
- Expense reports
- Daily crew sheets
- Weekly reports rebuilt from scratch
- Data keyed into two systems
- PDFs read and summarized elsewhere
After reading through all of the attendees’ contributions, the takeaway became clear: this by-hand work isn’t hard, but people spend real time on it.
“AI for Employee-Owned Companies” Roundtable
The exercise garnered more than a few conversations and even caught the eyes of Alexa Lott (GRITT Business Coaching) and Bryan Marriott (PL1), who were hosting the “AI for Employee-Owned Companies” roundtable. They ended up using the board in their presentation as an example of how many workflows AI can help automate.
Making AI Accessible
This conference served as the perfect launching point for our new hands-on GenAI assessment service. In a one-hour session, your team walks our AI engineers through screenshots and workflows of the software you use every day. We don’t need integration or system access – just some time to truly understand the work you do. We use these system visuals and what we learn in this session to build a ranked, phased AI roadmap, with each opportunity tied to the specific screen it improves.
Until Next Year
We’re proud to be a member of The ESOP Association and love attending events like these to connect with and empower other employee-owners and like-minded organizations. We’re already looking forward to next year!
