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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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AddAI.Life: Simplifying Customer Interactions with Contextual AI Assistants

AddAI.Life is bringing AI to the forefront of customer service. Their AI assistants can be integrated into a wide range of channels, from websites to messaging apps. By providing consistent and personalized support across multiple touchpoints, AddAI.Life is helping businesses build stronger customer relationships.

 
Deploying generative AI
 

AddAI.Life (AddAI) (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a Czech-based startup, and an IBM Business Partner, established in 2019 with a vision to help companies improve their customer experience and efficiency by implementing AI assistants that are available 24x7 to answer a wide range of questions promptly and accurately. “When developing virtual assistants for our customers, our goal is to ensure each assistant sounds very natural and brings the customer and its end-users an amazing experience,” explains Jindrich Chromy, CEO and co-founder of AddAI.Life.

When it comes to generative AI, trust and transparency, as well as accuracy, are critical for AddAI and its customers. Each assistant needs to be specifically tailored to each customer and its unique use-cases: whether it will be answering billing questions for a user in telecommunications or resetting a digital account password for a banking customer. “Our customers include some of the top Czech companies as well as telecommunication corporations and banks. It’s important for our assistants to be able to deliver accurate and consistent answers. Moreover, the answers need to be curated or generated automatically on verified data. We also need to comply with bank-level security, which includes granted data exclusivity for the customer. We also need to be able to opt-out the training of the AI model on our user’s conversations,” adds Chromy.

In order to continue delivering an exceptional customer experience while also shortening the time it takes to implement a new AI assistant, AddAI has begun using the IBM® watsonx.ai, IBM watsonx Assistant and IBM Watson® Discovery solutions.

 
 
Watsonx.ai proved to be very useful. In our research, we liked how it helped our customers (and our development team) to simplify tasks and extend the assistant knowledge without the need to pre-set the whole dialog in advance. It is a next level for us and our customers. 
Jindrich ChromyCEO and co-founderAddAI.Life
 
 
 Implementing watsonx.ai
 

In collaboration with the IBM Client Engineering and Technical Sales teams from the Czech Republic, AddAI built an AI assistant for a customer in the banking sector that they then piloted. The assistant utilized the retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) methodology, coupled with watsonx.ai, to deliver relevant and precise responses in the Czech language for frequently asked questions (FAQs) on topics ranging from account access to payments, pricing and account services. Through intensive optimization efforts, the implementation team ensured that the answers generated by large language models (LLMs) met a high standard of accuracy and language fluency. To optimize end-user experience, the team integrated watsonx.ai with watsonx Assistant, and was able to deliver instant replies on a user-friendly front end.

“We use watsonx.ai to access selected open-source large language models like Llama 2 to enhance and contextualize information from our databases and present it to the end customer through the watsonx Assistant chatbot in an accurate and conversational manner. In our case watsonx.ai generates its answers to users’ questions through RAG,” explains Klaudia Miezgova, watsonx developer at AddAI.Life.

Additionally, Add.AI included IBM Watson Discovery in this pilot for its banking customer. The team used publicly available bank documents such as contracts, terms and conditions and price lists and tuned Watson Discovery to understand domain-specific questions and expressions. “We were able to obtain very accurate answers, including snippets from the document used as a reference or basis of the answer. This happened automatically, without the need to build and set the dialog manually,” notes Chromy.

 
85%

accuracy rate for answers generated via AI

 
50%

reduction in unanswered queries

 
 
 Achieving 85% accuracy rate
  

“We always track, measure and test new ideas to see how they work in real-life situations. That way, we can improve them quickly,” explains Chromy. “In this case, we took a set of testing queries, for which we had the correct answers pre-defined in our hand-built AI assistant which was powered by watsonx Assistant. We then fed those queries to the new assistant which was powered by both watsonx Assistant and watsonx.ai. That one had no pre-built dialogues and had to come up with the answers by itself, using the provided documentation and skill it had as a large language model. It responded with 85% accuracy compared with the pre-defined answers of the former version. With much less work input. So now we know that it is on a good track.”

Through this new assistant, AddAI also helped its customer achieve a 50% reduction in unanswered customer queries. Moreover, when answering customer questions, an AI assistant powered by watsonx.ai is designed to provide a more detailed and actionable answer than was previously possible.

“We have been able to tune the model to query complex data sets and then summarize the data it collected in a much more effective way. For example, the previously mentioned banking customer uses the assistant to deliver fee information to its customers. Rather than serving up raw data that requires the user to analyze the output and infer the next step, the assistant can deliver a clearly summarized answer with helpful next steps for the user to consider. This was not possible before watsonx.ai,” explains Miezgova.

This is just the beginning. Going forward, AddAI is confident it can reduce the implementation time on any new AI assistant by up to 30% given they can now use generative AI to help prepare the assistant to be questioned by end-users. The team expects this to significantly shorten the amount of time it takes to test and optimize an assistant before it is ready to be shared with end-users. AddAI also expects it can provide next-level, more knowledgeable assistants, even without the need of developing each dialogue (response) manually, using this new approach with watsonx.ai and watsonx Assistant.

 
About AddAI
 

AddAI.Life (AddAI) (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a Czech-based startup, and an IBM Business Partner, established in 2019 and headquartered in the natural surroundings of Řevnice, a town close to the capital, Prague. The firm focuses on the development of AI Virtual assistants that have natural-sounding dialogues and work with context of the conversation. They can integrate into various channels (web, mobile app with voice, customer support line, Messenger, WhatsApp, Google Assistant, and others).

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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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:-) ”
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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.”
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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.

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

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stories, experiences, and ideas around our shared mission.

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

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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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