Kalman Tiboldi - CTO & Founder at GemOne-TVH - Simplify or Die: Why Complexity Is the Real IT Challenge
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Belgium 30-9-25 Squad Only Virtual english
Everyone has technical debt. The question is what to do with it. Refactor now? Wait for the next feature? Build on it and hope it holds? If you’re tired of debating whether to clean up or move on, this session helps you frame the debt conversation in a way that supports both speed and stability.
Read MorePoland 30-9-25 Physical
Zespoły i ludzie w dobie zmiany w sposobie dostarczania usług. Jak przechodzimy przez złożone zmiany technologiczne i organizacyjne? Czy transformacje w obszarach infrastruktury zmieniają wymagania na przywództwo i kompetencje zespołów.
Read MoreUK 30-9-25 Invitation Only Physical english
This exclusive Jefferson dinner, hosted by Mendix and CIONET, brings together a hand-picked group of senior executives and digital leaders from across the UK financial sector.
Read MoreBelgium 1-10-25 Invitation Only Physical english
In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, organisations face a critical challenge: how to modernise their legacy systems while managing costs, maintaining security, and ensuring operational continuity. This exclusive round table discussion brings together CIOs, CTOs, and Digital Leaders to explore best practices for legacy and lifecycle management. Key topics include extending the lifespan of existing systems, mitigating cyber security risks, optimising costs, and integrating legacy platforms with modern technologies. We’ll also delve into sustainability, workforce challenges, and future-proofing IT infrastructures to navigate technological obsolescence.
Read MoreBelgium 2-10-25 Squad Only Virtual english
Architecture doesn’t happen in diagrams. It happens in minds, seasoned, curious, sharp minds that understand how the pieces fit. But who’s shaping these minds? Who’s growing the next generation of digital architects? If you’re responsible for complex systems, and for the people designing them, this session is for you.
Read MoreGermany Sep 29, 2025 Country Members Virtual german
Unsere Wissensaustausch-Briefings "AI & Data Knowledge Transfer" zielen darauf ab, CIDOs und Senior Digital Leaders mit praktischen Anwendungen und umsetzbaren Erkenntnissen von Fachexperten zu vermitteln, die den Weg für transformative digitale Reisen ebnen.
Read MoreGermany Sep 30, 2025 Country Members Physical german
Von der Theorie in die Praxis: Erst Business, dann Bier.Unstrukturierte Daten sind das verborgene Kapital vieler Unternehmen – und zugleich eine der größten Herausforderungen moderner IT. Gemeinsam mit CIOs, CDOs und CTOs der CIONET-Community sprechen wir zuerst bei WeWork München über Strategien, Technologien und echte Use Cases, um dieses Potenzial zu heben. Danach geht's weiter auf die Wiesn – für den offenen Austausch in bayerischer Atmosphäre.
Read MoreUK Sep 30, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
This exclusive Jefferson dinner, hosted by Mendix and CIONET, brings together a hand-picked group of senior executives and digital leaders from across the UK financial sector.
Read MoreNetherlands Sep 30, 2025 Invitation Only Physical dutch
Alleen op uitnodiging. Mastering Digital Sovereignty Control, trust and resilience in an era of geopolitical and regulatory shifts. From the Network to the Data.
Read MoreBelgium Oct 1, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, organisations face a critical challenge: how to modernise their legacy systems while managing costs, maintaining security, and ensuring operational continuity. This exclusive round table discussion brings together CIOs, CTOs, and Digital Leaders to explore best practices for legacy and lifecycle management. Key topics include extending the lifespan of existing systems, mitigating cyber security risks, optimising costs, and integrating legacy platforms with modern technologies. We’ll also delve into sustainability, workforce challenges, and future-proofing IT infrastructures to navigate technological obsolescence.
Read MoreGermany Oct 7, 2025 Country Members Virtual german
Alle nutzen KI, aber keiner weiß wie effektiv! Im Jahr 2025 sind wir als IT-EntscheiderInnen gefordert die Wünsche der Fachbereiche an Künstliche Intelligenz zu managen. Welche KI dient als Copilot für unsere Mitarbeitenden, inwieweit hat diese Zugang zu Firmenwissen und könnten wir heute bereits sinnvoll einen KI Agenten in die IT Systemlandschaft einbinden? Unser Business Partner Scheer PAS spricht als Anbieter einer Process iPaaS Plattform mit hunderten Unternehmen jedes Jahr über IT-Integration. In dieser Online-Session besprechen wir erste Reifegradmodelle zu KI, wo der deutsche Mittelstand sich befindet und wie wir die nächste Innovationsstufe erreichen. Wir teilen praktische Erfahrungen aus dem Marktumfeld und planen unsere nächsten Schritte in der Adaption von KI.
Read MoreGermany Sep 29, 2025 Country Members Virtual german
Unsere Wissensaustausch-Briefings "AI & Data Knowledge Transfer" zielen darauf ab, CIDOs und Senior Digital Leaders mit praktischen Anwendungen und umsetzbaren Erkenntnissen von Fachexperten zu vermitteln, die den Weg für transformative digitale Reisen ebnen.
Read MoreGermany Sep 30, 2025 Country Members Physical german
Von der Theorie in die Praxis: Erst Business, dann Bier.Unstrukturierte Daten sind das verborgene Kapital vieler Unternehmen – und zugleich eine der größten Herausforderungen moderner IT. Gemeinsam mit CIOs, CDOs und CTOs der CIONET-Community sprechen wir zuerst bei WeWork München über Strategien, Technologien und echte Use Cases, um dieses Potenzial zu heben. Danach geht's weiter auf die Wiesn – für den offenen Austausch in bayerischer Atmosphäre.
Read MoreUK Sep 30, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
This exclusive Jefferson dinner, hosted by Mendix and CIONET, brings together a hand-picked group of senior executives and digital leaders from across the UK financial sector.
Read MoreNetherlands Sep 30, 2025 Invitation Only Physical dutch
Alleen op uitnodiging. Mastering Digital Sovereignty Control, trust and resilience in an era of geopolitical and regulatory shifts. From the Network to the Data.
Read MoreBelgium Oct 1, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, organisations face a critical challenge: how to modernise their legacy systems while managing costs, maintaining security, and ensuring operational continuity. This exclusive round table discussion brings together CIOs, CTOs, and Digital Leaders to explore best practices for legacy and lifecycle management. Key topics include extending the lifespan of existing systems, mitigating cyber security risks, optimising costs, and integrating legacy platforms with modern technologies. We’ll also delve into sustainability, workforce challenges, and future-proofing IT infrastructures to navigate technological obsolescence.
Read MoreGermany Oct 7, 2025 Country Members Virtual german
Alle nutzen KI, aber keiner weiß wie effektiv! Im Jahr 2025 sind wir als IT-EntscheiderInnen gefordert die Wünsche der Fachbereiche an Künstliche Intelligenz zu managen. Welche KI dient als Copilot für unsere Mitarbeitenden, inwieweit hat diese Zugang zu Firmenwissen und könnten wir heute bereits sinnvoll einen KI Agenten in die IT Systemlandschaft einbinden? Unser Business Partner Scheer PAS spricht als Anbieter einer Process iPaaS Plattform mit hunderten Unternehmen jedes Jahr über IT-Integration. In dieser Online-Session besprechen wir erste Reifegradmodelle zu KI, wo der deutsche Mittelstand sich befindet und wie wir die nächste Innovationsstufe erreichen. Wir teilen praktische Erfahrungen aus dem Marktumfeld und planen unsere nächsten Schritte in der Adaption von KI.
Read MoreUnilever leverages GPT API to deliver business value
The CPG titan has created AI tools using neural networks to help it respond to messages from customers, generate product listings, and even minimize food waste.
The past several years have thrown numerous challenges at consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. The pandemic has led to shifting consumer channel preferences, a supply chain crunch, and cost pressure, to name just a few. CPG titan Unilever has been answering the challenge with analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).
The 93-year-old, London-based CPG company is the world’s largest soap producer. Its products include food and condiments, toothpaste, beauty products and much more, including brands like Dove, Hellmann’s, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
Alessandro Ventura, CIO and vice president of analytics and business services for North America at Unilever, has been at the forefront of helping the company apply AI to its businesses for years. While originally in the role of IT director, he has since added analytics and people services to his portfolio.
“That’s everything from facility management, fleet management, employee and facilities
Unilever believes AI is not a technology of tomorrow. It’s already being widely used, and Ventura feels all industries will need to adapt to it.
In recent months, Unilever has developed a number of new technology applications to help its lines of business in the markets of tomorrow. One of the most important is “Alex,” short for Alexander the Great. Alex, powered by GPT API, filters emails in Unilever’s Consumer Engagement Center, sorting spam from real consumer messages. For the legitimate messages, it then recommends responses to Unilever’s human agents.
“Although Alex is good at what it does, it may lack a bit of a personal touch that instead our consumer engagement center agents have in big quantities,” Ventura says. “So, we let them decide whether they want to respond to our consumer as Alex suggested, or they want to add some personal recommendation; if the answer suggested by Alex is wrong or doesn’t have an answer, they can flag it so Alex can learn it the following time.”
Alex was created using a system of neural networks, with GPT API for content generation. Ventura says the tool can understand what a consumer is asking and even capture the tone. It can then store the answer and sentiment in Salesforce. Importantly, he says, the tool does the heavy lifting on those tasks, giving the human agents more time to dedicate to what they do best. To date, Ventura says Alex has helped Unilever reduce the amount of time agents spend drafting an answer by more than 90%.
Another Unilever tool, called Homer, leverages GPT API to generate content. It’s a neural network that takes a few details about a product and generates an Amazon product listing, with a short description and long description that matches the brand tone.
“We want to ensure we captured the voice of the brand so, for example, that we differentiate between a TRESemmé and a Dove shampoo, and the system got it absolutely nailed,” Ventura says.
Another AI-based tool that Unilever launched on the week of US Thanksgiving supports the Hellmann’s mayonnaise brand. Its purpose is to reduce food waste.
“It links up with the recipe management system that we have at Hellmann’s, so somebody can go in and select two or three ingredients that they have in the fridge and get in exchange recipes for what they can do with those ingredients,” Ventura says.
In the first week, the tool got 80,000 users who reported loving it.
For Ventura, that’s the magic of analytics and AI in the CPG space: It enables personalization at scale.
“In CPG, we rely more and more on analytics and AI for different things,” he says. “Consumers are more and more specific about what they want. It’s a bit of a cliché, but they really do want personalized products and experiences. Analytics helps CPG to understand the context they’re navigating through and what the consumer wants, and then, with AI, we can scale that one-to-one relationship across all the multitude of consumers that we have.”
Beyond the consumer relationship, analytics and AI are also key to making CPG companies more sustainable. Ventura points to examples like ingredient traceability and usin
g machine learning (ML) to automate forecasting, which in turn helps the company minimize waste. Unilever is also applying analytics and AI to logistics, including tracking inventory and optimizing routes.
“The old interpretation of elasticity, we threw it out the window,” Ventura says of operations in the wake of the inflation crisis. “We had to come up with new calculations because the traditional ones were giving us very different scenarios from what we were seeing happening at the shelves. Going forward, we will continue to see that pressure from all the different challenges coming from the geopolitical situation around the world.”
To support its innovation around analytics and AI, Unilever has adopted a hybrid model. It has a global center of excellence, but also keeps some data scientists embedded with business units.
“It’s basically a two-gear system,” Ventura says. “The local team can be activated very quickly, ingest the data very quickly, and then create a statistical model and analytics model together with the business, sitting next to each other. Then, if that model can be leveraged across and scaled, we pass it on to the global team so they can move data sets in the global data lake that we have and can start creating and maintaining that model at a global level.”
Ventura believes co-creation and co-ownership of analytics and AI capabilities with the business function is essential to success.
“Whether it is machine learning for automating the forecast or Alex with the Consumer Engagement Center, if we show up with a black box and say, ‘Hey, follow whatever the machine tells you,’ it will take a long time and probably will never get to 100% trust in the machine,” Ventura says. “With co-creation and co-ownership, I feel like we get to start with the right foot, with the human and the machine working alongside each other in partnership, almost as colleagues. Also, you get a much less biased system in the end because you’re able to introduce a much more diverse angle in your algorithms, both from a business perspective and a technology perspective.”
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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.
As AI transitions from a specialised tool to an all-pervasive force, understanding its profound implications for our human lives is no longer merely academic but an urgent imperative for social well-being and strategic preparedness.
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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Head of IT Germany and Regional Office Lead Munich, Microsoft
IT Director, IT Thinker
Vice president IT & Compliance, VisionaryRCM (A Carlyle Grp Company)
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