A Look Back at the International Workplace Summit 2026: How AI Agents Are Reinventing Workplace Management

On September 24, 2026, SaaSOffice co-hosted a workshop with MerciYanis at the International Workplace Summit (IWS), held at Campus Cyber in Paris La Défense. Its theme was “From occupant to workplace team: how are AI agents reinventing workplace experience and management?” Four topics dominated the discussions with participants: the speed of AI, MCP, data governance, and multilingual support.

Key takeaways

• Event: International Workplace Summit 2026 (IWS), first edition, organized by Agora Managers Groupe and ANews Workwell.
• Date and venue: Thursday, September 24, 2026, Campus Cyber, Paris La Défense.
• Workshop: “From occupant to workplace team: how are AI agents reinventing workplace experience and management?”, co-hosted by SaaSOffice and MerciYanis.
• Speakers: Eric Fabbri (COO, SaaSOffice), Tristan Fatou (Sales Manager, SaaSOffice), and Guillaume Blanc (co-founder and CEO, MerciYanis).
• The four key topics: keeping pace with AI without losing your bearings; using MCP to connect tools to one another; staying in control of your AI model and your data; letting everyone communicate in their own language.

The International Workplace Summit, a new event for the workplace community

The International Workplace Summit describes itself as an international forum dedicated to the work environment and facility management.

For this first edition, Agora Managers Groupe and ANews Workwell brought together executives, experts, researchers, and public decision-makers at Campus Cyber around one question: how can the workplace become a lever for business transformation?

The day’s program was built around four main themes:

• circular buildings and workplaces;
• AI, robotics, and smart buildings;
• employee experience 2.0;
• universal design and regenerative workplaces.

Keynotes on the future of work and on the role of AI in the division of labor alternated with more hands-on sessions devoted to smart buildings, energy data, or the workstation.

Against this backdrop of forward-looking ideas and field experience, SaaSOffice and MerciYanis offered a very practical session: what AI agents are changing, starting today, for occupants and facility managers alike.

From occupant to workplace team: what we presented

Two perspectives on the same building

The workshop started from a simple observation: in an office building, two experiences coexist.

The occupant wants to enter the building, find a desk or a room, report a problem, or welcome a visitor, without juggling several apps.

The workplace team (led by the director in charge of the work environment) has to orchestrate these flows, manage service providers, and justify space usage to senior management.

Today, these two worlds often communicate poorly. Tools are scattered, data is siloed, and dashboards arrive too late to inform decisions.

The AI agent as an orchestration layer

We showed how an AI agent can become the single entry point for all of these everyday tasks. That is the role of NOVA, SaaSOffice’s intelligent voice assistant. It brings together in a single conversational interface:

• access control for the building and its spaces;
• space booking: desks, meeting rooms, parking spaces;
• incident management, from reporting to follow-up;
• visitor management;
• the everyday services offered to employees.

MerciYanis rounded out the presentation with a focus on running facility management operations. Thanks to new AI connectors, a request made by an occupant becomes structured data. The facility manager can then track it, prioritize it, and analyze it.

Everything is consolidated in real-time reporting and management dashboards.

The common thread of the session: AI agents do not replace the workplace team; they change the way it manages.

Four topics at the heart of the discussions with participants

1. The speed of AI: building a roadmap that holds up

Models, tools, and use cases change almost every quarter. Participants wondered how to build a workplace roadmap under these conditions.

Our answer rests on a simple filter: only keep the advances that genuinely change occupants’ daily lives. A new technology is only worthwhile if it makes it concretely easier to enter the building, book a room, or report an incident.

This filter makes it possible to stay up to date without multiplying projects or losing users along the way.

2. MCP: toward the end of costly integration projects?

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open protocol that lets AI assistants connect to third-party tools and data sources in a standardized way.

For work environments, the stakes are considerable. Access control, CMMS, BMS, booking tools, office suites: the workplace relies on many systems that do not communicate well with each other.

The question was straightforward: will this protocol finally make it possible to connect tools, open up to ecosystems, and reduce the cost of integration projects? That is the bet SaaSOffice is making.

Standardized connections mean less custom development, faster deployments, and a more open ecosystem for real estate departments.

3. Data governance: staying in control of your AI

This was the question that came up most often: “Can your assistant run on our own AI provider?”

The answer is yes. NOVA does not depend on any single model. The company stays in control of its AI model, its contract with the provider, and its data. For large organizations, and especially for IT departments and CISOs, this is often a prerequisite for any deployment.

The topic resonated all the more at Campus Cyber, a flagship venue for cybersecurity in France.

4. Multilingual support: the surprise topic

The last topic, and the one that drew far more reactions than expected: everyone can talk with NOVA in their own language, with no setup required.

In headquarters that host international teams, service providers, and foreign visitors, this capability removes a very real barrier. The experience becomes the same for everyone, whatever language they speak.

It is a direct illustration of how AI unifies the entire office experience.

Why this matters for real estate departments and workplace teams

For those in charge of the work environment, AI is no longer a distant innovation topic: it is an architecture choice to make now. The discussions at IWS point to four criteria to examine when choosing a workplace experience solution.

• Centralized services. Does the tool cover access, booking, incidents, and visitors in a single interface, or do you have to stack several building blocks? For the first link in the chain, see our guide Access Control: How to Manage Office Entry on a Daily Basis.
• Interoperability. Can the AI agent connect easily to the tools already in place, in particular through open standards such as MCP?
• Model sovereignty. Can the company choose its AI provider and keep control of its data?
• Accessibility. Is the experience the same for all occupants, whatever their language?

That is exactly what SaaSOffice promises with NOVA. This French workplace experience platform is designed for offices and headquarters as well as facility management and multi-service operators.

Thank you to the organizers and participants

We would like to thank Agora Managers Groupe and ANews Workwell for organizing this first edition of the International Workplace Summit.

Thanks also to MerciYanis for co-hosting this workshop, and to all the participants who came to talk with us.

These conversations confirm what we believe: tomorrow’s workplace is built collectively, among players who share the same vision.

Want to see how NOVA can simplify the way you manage your workplace?