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CIONET - What's next

Connecting ambitious digital leaders and businesses around the globe.

Catch up on the upcoming CIONET Events

             
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Germany Sep 9, 2025 Country Members Physical german

Frankfurt: AI Driven Logistics

Vom ersten Use Case zur strategischen Neuausrichtung CIONET lädt bereits zum vierten Mal zu einem exklusiven Roundtable für CIOs und Digitalverantwortliche aus Logistik und Handel ein. Im Mittelpunkt des Abends steht die Frage, wie Unternehmen ihre KI-Initiativen erfolgreich skalieren und aus ersten Use Cases echten strategischen Mehrwert schaffen. Microsoft 365 für Frontline Worker: Moderne Tools, die Mitarbeitende im Tagesgeschäft entlasten ServiceNow für Prozessintegration: Automatisierte End-to-End-Workflows – vom Schadensfall bis zur Retourenabwicklung KI-gestützte Disposition und Planung: Mit smarten Algorithmen zur optimierten Supply Chain Digitale Lieferketten und letzte Meile: Transparenz, Effizienz und Kundenzentrierung durchgängig gedacht

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Belgium Sep 13, 2025 All Members Physical english

CIONET Cycling Event

Join us for a wonderful ride. The ride is accessible to all levels of riders and doesn't require extensive technical skills. More information will follow soon. Looking forward to ride together!

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Germany Sep 17, 2025 Country Members Physical german

München: Cyber Security Fatigue

Cybersecurity ist längst kein reines IT-Thema mehr – sie betrifft das gesamte Unternehmen. Doch während die Bedrohungslage zunimmt, geraten viele Security-Verantwortliche an ihre Belastungsgrenzen: zwischen 24/7-Verantwortung, wachsenden Anforderungen und dem ständigen Innovationsdruck.

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Germany Sep 17, 2025 Country Members Physical german

Köln: CIO & CISO, das Rezilienz-Power-Duo

IT-Betrieb und Cybersicherheit stehen heute unter extremem Druck: steigende Komplexität, wachsende regulatorische Anforderungen (NIS2, DORA, KRITIS), chronische Ressourcenknappheit – und gleichzeitig eine Bedrohungslage, die keine Verzögerungen duldet. Trotzdem agieren viele IT- und Security-Teams noch immer in Silos. Die Folge: ineffiziente Abläufe, Tool-Wildwuchs, langsame Reaktion auf Vorfälle und unklare Verantwortlichkeiten.

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Germany Sep 18, 2025 Country Members Virtual german

Online: Nachhaltige IT - CIDO Priorität

Nachhaltigkeit ist für CIOs nicht nur ein „Nice-to-have“, sondern eine strategische Priorität – sie beeinflusst direkt die finanzielle Performance, die operative Effizienz und die langfristige Wettbewerbsfähigkeit.

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Belgium Sep 18, 2025 Country Members Physical french

Les Rencontres: La dette technique : Un défi stratégique pour les entreprises

La dette technique est comparable à la négligence des réparations d'une maison. Ignorer un toit qui fuit peut faire gagner du temps aujourd'hui, mais cela pourrait conduire à l'effondrement du plafond plus tard. Pour remédier à la dette technique, il faut trouver et réparer ces fuites dès maintenant et mettre en place un plan d'entretien de la maison afin qu'elle soit prête pour les extensions futures. Pour résoudre ces problèmes, il faut définir des priorités stratégiques, communiquer clairement avec les parties prenantes et établir une feuille de route à long terme pour la modernisation. Cet événement se déroulera entièrement en français.

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Recent Cases

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Helping a leading UK retail bank improve customer experience and fight fraud with Smartnumbers

Providing a safe and secure banking experience at every stage of the customer journey.

Overview
The bank was looking to improve their customer service journey and prevent potential fraud losses.

The customer had security concerns over fraudsters obtaining information through Interactive Voice Response (IVR), as it’s difficult to identify fraudsters through audio monitoring only. 

As one of the UK’s leading banks, millions of customers trust them with their investments, savings and finances.

It’s their responsibility to ensure that customers have a safe and secure process at every stage of their banking journey.

The challenge
The retail bank offers self-service through IVR, helping customers send payments or check balances with ease. But even such a sophisticated IVR can pose fraud risks and vulnerabilities. The bank knew from downstream fraud systems that fraud typically starts in the IVR when calls are linked to customers’ compromised accounts. The opportunity to prevent potential debit card and online banking fraud meant that the bank would be able to further improve its relationship with customers.

To address this, the bank had already established a telephony token system to confirm the caller’s identity - typically a straightforward passcode or security question. However, customers who use other channels, such as online banking, may call infrequently and often struggle to recall answers to these questions. It can be challenging from a security perspective too as these answers can be gathered using computer malware or customers can be tricked into disclosing them. And while the bank had implemented audio monitoring to help detect bad actors, this wasn’t sufficient to identify fraudsters who use the IVR to validate compromised data.

That’s when the bank decided to opt for a Smartnumbers solution from us to address their customer authentication and fraud prevention needs. As the fraud and financial crime manager pointed out, “Fraud detection systems are generally resource heavy and the more friction you put into a journey to protect customers, the worse the customer experience is”. Which is where we came in with Smartnumbers, providing “a great improvement on customer experience on top of fraud benefits alongside it.”

On average, we expect to save between 20 to 30 seconds per call in the contact centre.”

Fraud and financial crime manager


The solution
Our trusted partnership with Smartnumbers helps banks improve their customer service delivery and mitigate fraud losses by establishing better customer relationships and safer fraud prevention processes. Our solution identifies fraudsters by determining a call’s risk before it even arrives in the IVR. It carefully analyses more than 200 features derived from carrier-level call signalling, assigning a risk score for each call.

Our customer can now quickly and accurately identify suspicious calls, even when callers try to hide their phone number. Smartnumbers operates in the background, providing a layer of invisible security to support fraud detection and authentication., The bank has now gained flexibility in how they apply the system and maintain a high-level of security. The implementation process was simple and straight forward. Onboarding a new system like this would typically take two years, but with our Smartnumbers solution, the implementation was six months requiring only internal process changes.

With real-time visibility of the call’s risk level, the bank now offers legitimate customers a broader range of transactions in the IVR, as well as a slicker authentication process if they need to speak with an agent.

Smartnumbers also cuts operational costs. The process of determining the specific reduction in average handling time (AHT) can vary, but the customer expects on average to save between 20 to 30 seconds per call in the contact centre, and for more complex areas, such as fraud and disputes, it can go up to a full minute.

With our Smartnumbers partnership, the bank has been able to benefit from greater improvement to their customer experience delivery alongside enhanced visibility in fraud detection across different channels.

The result 
Our Smartnumbers solution has allowed the bank to reap many benefits, such as improving the caller experience, reducing average handling time, and preventing fraud with established fraud savings. The bank has improved the caller experience for 35 to 40% of available calls due to the increase in the IVR containment and shorter authentication time for agent answered calls. And reducing such friction for customers has proven to be only one of the numerous beneficial outcomes.

Since implementing Smartnumbers, the bank has a complete fraud picture across all channels, including the contact centre. The customer has delivered a fourfold improvement on ROI on fraud savings alone by preventing card, online, telephony and APP fraud.

As the bank continues its efforts in fighting fraud, it views our partnership with Smartnumbers as the solution for not only preventing fraud across the business but delivering exceptional customer service all while reducing operational costs. As an overall result, the bank is building better service delivery experiences and strengthening customer relationships along the way.

Smartnumbers is also helping us prioritise cases highlighted by other fraud systems - and also link together fraud cases those systems may have missed.”

Fraud and financial crime manager

Checkout our CIONET COOKBOOK

cookbook

Embark on a culinary journey through the ever-evolving world of digital leadership with our third edition of the CIONET Cookbook: Recipes for Digital Success. Unveiling the intricate trilemma faced by today’s Master Chefs, our trailblazing European CIOs address a challenge at the nexus of customer interests, digital transformation strategies, and IT modernisation. Their secret? Synchronising the gearing between customer, business, and technology to create a frictionless movement through the digital landscape.

The CIONET Cookbook uses the analogy of a five-star restaurant to explain the importance of optimally integrated technology, with the CIO as Master Chef. In order to provide the best service to its customers, a top restaurant must have the right atmosphere, an inviting menu, a well-equipped kitchen, talented and committed front-of-house and kitchen staff and smooth-running processes that ensure an enjoyable experience for diners.

CIONET TV

 
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Kalman Tiboldi - CTO & Founder at GemOne-TVH - Simplify or Die: Why Complexity Is the Real IT Challenge

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Isabelle Droll - CIO for Airline, Corporate, Hotels & Resorts and Sustainability at TUI - Data, Diversity, and Destinations

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Sharon Prior - CIO in transition - How Great Tech Leadership Begins with Business Thinking

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José Antonio López, Group CIO at TOUS - Jewels, Data & AI: Inside the Digital Transformation of TOUS

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Tom Tanghe - General Manager ITC EMEA at Daikin Europe - Reinventing the CIO Role

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CIOFEST 2025 - From Order Taker to Proactive Disruptor

CIONET Reports

 
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Cybersecurity in critical infrastructure

Geopolitical tensions have dominated the headlines for over two years now. In this context, the cyber threat landscape is also evolving rapidly. The protection and security of critical infrastructure – both physical and digital – is becoming increasingly important.

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HDS - From Hype to Reality Navigating the Challenges of GenAI

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Integration In An Era Of AI: Challenges And Opportunities

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Staying ahead of trends and connecting with other CIOs was never easier.

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Anna Kopp (1)

Anna Kopp

Head of IT Germany and Regional Office Lead Munich, Microsoft

“The CIONET App allows us to learn from eachother and and find the courage to be authentic by hearing stories from others! Thanks to Tobias and the whole team for bringing us together:-) ”
Mauricio Amaro

Mauricio Amaro

IT Director, IT Thinker

“The main things that I would like to get from our community of Digital Leaders are: networking, share experiences, share best practices and successful cases, and comments and recommendations about providers.”
Vijay Anand

Vijay Anand

Vice president IT & Compliance, VisionaryRCM (A Carlyle Grp Company)

“The CIONET app provides a really cool platform to network and share insights.”

About CIONET

CIONET’s mission is to help IT executives become more at ease and above all more successful in their jobs. So they can do more than just keep up with change but ultimately define it. CIONET opens up a whole new universe of opportunities in IT management.

With the largest membership of corporate digital leaders across Europe, Latin America, US and Australia, CIONET has the expertise and pioneering vision to solve or address any IT management challenge.

Why join CIONET?

From our local and global events, from our publications and research to our executive education programmes, everything we do is aimed at making sure digital leaders maximise their potential.

Connect

with digital leaders who share your interests, who face the same challenges, who care about the same topics.

Share

stories, experiences, and ideas around our shared mission.

Learn

from our exclusive events, publications and research.

Find

inspiration, thought-provoking conversations, expert perspectives and exclusive first-hand content each and every day

Grow

and make better, more well-informed decisions on how to lead your digital business.

Maximise

your potential. Realise your ambitions.

About CIONET

Join CIONET

We'd love to welcome you as the newest member of our CIONET community where Digital Leaders unite. 

You can either send us a registered handwritten letter explaining why you'd like to become a member or you can simply talk to us right here!

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Would you like to know more about CIONET, membership or partnership opportunities? Do you have feedback or any other question? Send us a message!