Gunter Van Craen - CDIO at Bekaert - Embracing Digital Transformation

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Belgium 11-12-25 Country Members Physical english
Imagine being able to monitor, simulate, and optimise an entire city, factory, or supply chain in real time. Next-generation digital twins are making this vision a reality, transforming how we manage and understand complex systems. By creating dynamic virtual replicas of physical assets and processes, digital twins allow organisations to predict issues, optimize performance, and make data-driven decisions with unprecedented accuracy.This event will explore how digital twins are being used across industries to revolutionize the way we operate and maintain large-scale, intricate systems—whether it’s the infrastructure of a smart city, the efficiency of a factory floor, or the resilience of global supply chains.Examples of Digital Twins in Action:Smart Cities: Urban planners can use digital twins to simulate traffic flow, monitor energy usage, or predict the impact of weather events on infrastructure. This enables cities to optimize resources and improve the quality of life for their citizens.Factories of the Future: Manufacturing plants are leveraging digital twins to monitor equipment in real time, prevent downtime, and optimize production lines. With predictive analytics, factories can avoid costly breakdowns and improve overall efficiency.Supply Chain Management: Complex supply chains, spanning continents and industries, can be modeled as digital twins to track shipments, simulate disruptions, and optimize logistics. Businesses can reduce inefficiencies and respond faster to market demands.Key Themes:Real-Time Monitoring and Simulation: How digital twins provide real-time insights into complex systems, allowing for dynamic response and optimization.Predictive Power: Leveraging AI and data analytics, digital twins help organisations predict and mitigate issues before they happen, from equipment failures to supply chain bottlenecks.Scalability Across Ecosystems: Digital twins aren’t limited to individual assets—learn how they can be scaled across entire ecosystems like smart cities or global supply chains for maximum impact.Building Trust and Security: With digital twins handling critical infrastructure and sensitive data, what are the security and governance frameworks needed to ensure trust in these virtual systems?Why You Should Attend:Next-generation digital twins are no longer just a concept—they are revolutionizing industries by offering a new way to manage complexity. Whether you’re looking to optimize a city, factory, or supply chain, this event will provide practical insights into how digital twins can transform your organisation’s operations and drive future innovation.
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Spain 11-12-25 Invitation Only Physical spanish
Poland 11-12-25 Invitation Only Physical english
Zero Trust isn't a project, it's a philosophy. Verify every connection, trust nothing implicitly, segment everything. When you build systems this way, something remarkable happens: security becomes resilience. A breach doesn't cascade. An outage doesn't take down the business. You gain visibility into every user, device, and workload, turning security from a perimeter problem into a data problem you can actually measure and control. During the CIONET Executive Roundtable, we will tackle three key questions: How do you design systems that survive breach? When you assume compromise and verify everything, incidents stay contained. We'll show how Zero Trust architecture prevents one failure from cascading into total collapse. What's your plan when critical infrastructure fails? Identity providers go down. Cloud regions fail. Vendors get breached. We'll discuss how to build resilience when you can't eliminate dependency risk. How do you make Zero Trust work without ripping everything out? Legacy systems, existing infrastructure, business constraints. We'll explore where leaders are actually succeeding and where they're stuck. Zscaler is our partner in organizing the event. James Tucker, Head of CISOs in Residence EMEA, will be representing the company. He will share insights from real-world implementations and show how organizations are evolving their architectures to embed Zero Trust and resilience in a cloud first world.
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Poland 11-12-25 Virtual Polish
W trakcie wystąpienia przedstawione zostaną konkretne przykłady programów resklilingowych i upskillingowych, które przyniosły mierzalne efekty. Dowiesz się jak wygląda proces przygotowania – od koncepcji, przez realizację, po mierzalne efekty. Emilia Pedrycz z BNP Paribas Bank Polska opowiem, co zadziałało, co zaskoczyło i jakie wnioski warto wyciągnąć, planując podobne inicjatywy. Podczas prelekcji zostaną omówione sprawdzone praktyki budowania środowiska wspierającego innowację, autonomię i rozwój kompetencji w zakresie nowych technologii.
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Spain 11-12-25 Country Members Physical spanish
Despedimos el 2025 con la comunidad de CIONET Sur hablando de Ciberseguridad y cómo protegernos ante amenazas híbridas
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Belgium 12-12-25 Squad Only Physical english
Everyone wants value for money. But in IT, that value is spread across infrastructure, software, services, and people. Your infra spend is creeping up. App maintenance is eating your budget. New development is exciting but comes with hidden overhead. And people costs, from operations to engineering, remain the largest, most overlooked slice. If you’re under pressure to optimise without compromise, this session brings the right questions, trade-offs, and shared lessons to the table.
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Belgium Dec 11, 2025 Country Members Physical english
Imagine being able to monitor, simulate, and optimise an entire city, factory, or supply chain in real time. Next-generation digital twins are making this vision a reality, transforming how we manage and understand complex systems. By creating dynamic virtual replicas of physical assets and processes, digital twins allow organisations to predict issues, optimize performance, and make data-driven decisions with unprecedented accuracy.This event will explore how digital twins are being used across industries to revolutionize the way we operate and maintain large-scale, intricate systems—whether it’s the infrastructure of a smart city, the efficiency of a factory floor, or the resilience of global supply chains.Examples of Digital Twins in Action:Smart Cities: Urban planners can use digital twins to simulate traffic flow, monitor energy usage, or predict the impact of weather events on infrastructure. This enables cities to optimize resources and improve the quality of life for their citizens.Factories of the Future: Manufacturing plants are leveraging digital twins to monitor equipment in real time, prevent downtime, and optimize production lines. With predictive analytics, factories can avoid costly breakdowns and improve overall efficiency.Supply Chain Management: Complex supply chains, spanning continents and industries, can be modeled as digital twins to track shipments, simulate disruptions, and optimize logistics. Businesses can reduce inefficiencies and respond faster to market demands.Key Themes:Real-Time Monitoring and Simulation: How digital twins provide real-time insights into complex systems, allowing for dynamic response and optimization.Predictive Power: Leveraging AI and data analytics, digital twins help organisations predict and mitigate issues before they happen, from equipment failures to supply chain bottlenecks.Scalability Across Ecosystems: Digital twins aren’t limited to individual assets—learn how they can be scaled across entire ecosystems like smart cities or global supply chains for maximum impact.Building Trust and Security: With digital twins handling critical infrastructure and sensitive data, what are the security and governance frameworks needed to ensure trust in these virtual systems?Why You Should Attend:Next-generation digital twins are no longer just a concept—they are revolutionizing industries by offering a new way to manage complexity. Whether you’re looking to optimize a city, factory, or supply chain, this event will provide practical insights into how digital twins can transform your organisation’s operations and drive future innovation.
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Germany Dec 15, 2025 Public Virtual german
Angesichts wachsender Cyberbedrohungen und der zunehmenden Automatisierung von Geschäftsprozessen blicken CIOs auf eine ereignisreiche Zeit zurück. Umso spannender ist die Frage, welche Herausforderungen und Chancen die IT-Welt künftig erwarten. ngesichts wachsender Cyberbedrohungen und der zunehmenden Automatisierung von Geschäftsprozessen blicken CIOs auf ein ereignisreiches Jahr 2024 zurück. Umso spannender ist die Frage, welche neuen Herausforderungen und Chancen die IT-Welt im Jahr 2025 erwarten.AA
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Belgium Dec 16, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
This CIONET Round Table will focus on how the IT department can be the enabler that unlocks organisational efficiencies and helps to improve the employee experience. We will explore how CIOs and Digital Leaders can fundamentally transform the internal service experience by breaking down organizational silos, orchestrating complex cross-functional workflows, and leveraging a unified platform to deliver a truly frictionless experience for every employee.
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UK Dec 16, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
At this CIONET executive roundtable – brought to you in association with UiPath – we’ll explore this question and more. Bringing together senior IT professionals from across multiple vertical markets, we will focus on the benefits of agentic AI as applied to end-to-end processes. And we’ll seek to understand how organisations might overcome automation barriers to drive greater value creation.
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Belgium Dec 18, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
We look forward to brainstorming with you on how we can strengthen meaningful engagement among our participants, create valuable opportunities for visibility, foster peer-to-peer networking, and deliver impactful content. Your expertise and guidance will help shape our strategy for the coming year and ensure that we continue to provide the best possible value to our entire community. Together, we can build a stronger, more connected community that benefits us all.
Read More
Germany Jan 19, 2026 Country Members Virtual german
Bei diesem „Spotlight“-Online-Event wird diskutiert, wie moderne Identity Security im Zeitalter autonomer KI-Agenten gestaltet werden kann. Teilnehmende erfahren, wie KI-Agenten als eigene Identitäten verwaltet werden, wie korrekte Zugriffsrechte für Mensch und Maschine sichergestellt werden und wie Zero-Standing-Risk-Ansätze vor modernen Bedrohungen schützen. Praxisnahe Einblicke unterstützen Unternehmen dabei, ihre Identity-Programme zukunftssicher auszurichten.
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Belgium Dec 11, 2025 Country Members Physical english
Imagine being able to monitor, simulate, and optimise an entire city, factory, or supply chain in real time. Next-generation digital twins are making this vision a reality, transforming how we manage and understand complex systems. By creating dynamic virtual replicas of physical assets and processes, digital twins allow organisations to predict issues, optimize performance, and make data-driven decisions with unprecedented accuracy.This event will explore how digital twins are being used across industries to revolutionize the way we operate and maintain large-scale, intricate systems—whether it’s the infrastructure of a smart city, the efficiency of a factory floor, or the resilience of global supply chains.Examples of Digital Twins in Action:Smart Cities: Urban planners can use digital twins to simulate traffic flow, monitor energy usage, or predict the impact of weather events on infrastructure. This enables cities to optimize resources and improve the quality of life for their citizens.Factories of the Future: Manufacturing plants are leveraging digital twins to monitor equipment in real time, prevent downtime, and optimize production lines. With predictive analytics, factories can avoid costly breakdowns and improve overall efficiency.Supply Chain Management: Complex supply chains, spanning continents and industries, can be modeled as digital twins to track shipments, simulate disruptions, and optimize logistics. Businesses can reduce inefficiencies and respond faster to market demands.Key Themes:Real-Time Monitoring and Simulation: How digital twins provide real-time insights into complex systems, allowing for dynamic response and optimization.Predictive Power: Leveraging AI and data analytics, digital twins help organisations predict and mitigate issues before they happen, from equipment failures to supply chain bottlenecks.Scalability Across Ecosystems: Digital twins aren’t limited to individual assets—learn how they can be scaled across entire ecosystems like smart cities or global supply chains for maximum impact.Building Trust and Security: With digital twins handling critical infrastructure and sensitive data, what are the security and governance frameworks needed to ensure trust in these virtual systems?Why You Should Attend:Next-generation digital twins are no longer just a concept—they are revolutionizing industries by offering a new way to manage complexity. Whether you’re looking to optimize a city, factory, or supply chain, this event will provide practical insights into how digital twins can transform your organisation’s operations and drive future innovation.
Read More
Germany Dec 15, 2025 Public Virtual german
Angesichts wachsender Cyberbedrohungen und der zunehmenden Automatisierung von Geschäftsprozessen blicken CIOs auf eine ereignisreiche Zeit zurück. Umso spannender ist die Frage, welche Herausforderungen und Chancen die IT-Welt künftig erwarten. ngesichts wachsender Cyberbedrohungen und der zunehmenden Automatisierung von Geschäftsprozessen blicken CIOs auf ein ereignisreiches Jahr 2024 zurück. Umso spannender ist die Frage, welche neuen Herausforderungen und Chancen die IT-Welt im Jahr 2025 erwarten.AA
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Belgium Dec 16, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
This CIONET Round Table will focus on how the IT department can be the enabler that unlocks organisational efficiencies and helps to improve the employee experience. We will explore how CIOs and Digital Leaders can fundamentally transform the internal service experience by breaking down organizational silos, orchestrating complex cross-functional workflows, and leveraging a unified platform to deliver a truly frictionless experience for every employee.
Read More
UK Dec 16, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
At this CIONET executive roundtable – brought to you in association with UiPath – we’ll explore this question and more. Bringing together senior IT professionals from across multiple vertical markets, we will focus on the benefits of agentic AI as applied to end-to-end processes. And we’ll seek to understand how organisations might overcome automation barriers to drive greater value creation.
Read More
Belgium Dec 18, 2025 Invitation Only Physical english
We look forward to brainstorming with you on how we can strengthen meaningful engagement among our participants, create valuable opportunities for visibility, foster peer-to-peer networking, and deliver impactful content. Your expertise and guidance will help shape our strategy for the coming year and ensure that we continue to provide the best possible value to our entire community. Together, we can build a stronger, more connected community that benefits us all.
Read More
Germany Jan 19, 2026 Country Members Virtual german
Bei diesem „Spotlight“-Online-Event wird diskutiert, wie moderne Identity Security im Zeitalter autonomer KI-Agenten gestaltet werden kann. Teilnehmende erfahren, wie KI-Agenten als eigene Identitäten verwaltet werden, wie korrekte Zugriffsrechte für Mensch und Maschine sichergestellt werden und wie Zero-Standing-Risk-Ansätze vor modernen Bedrohungen schützen. Praxisnahe Einblicke unterstützen Unternehmen dabei, ihre Identity-Programme zukunftssicher auszurichten.
Read MoreDiscovering Nordzucker: The Beginning Of An Exciting Partnership With Stefanini
Recognizing the need for a fresh approach to fuel innovation and efficiency, Nordzucker partnered with Stefanini to reimagine their IT landscape. After nearly two decades of working within the ITIL framework without achieving desired performance metrics, the company embraced a bold "greenfield" strategy.
Nordzucker is a name that resonates with history and progress. With roots dating back over 185 years, this international sugar company has grown from its humble beginnings in a single German sugar factory to become a significant player across Europe and Australia. Today, it boasts 21 sugar factories staffed by around 3,900 employees, collectively producing more than 200 products.
In the dynamic world of business, transformation is more than a necessity—it’s an opportunity to redefine what’s possible. For Nordzucker, one of Europe’s leading sugar producers, the turning point sparked a bold quest for improvement. That’s where we, Stefanini, came in—a global technology solutions provider ready to take on the challenge, whose collaborative spirit and expertise aligned seamlessly with Nordzucker’s goals.
Nordzucker relied on the ITIL framework to manage their IT operations. However, performance reviews revealed that their systems and processes needed a reinvention, not just an update. Adopting a greenfield approach, the team started with a clean slate—rethinking their process. It was about fostering collaboration and co-creation between the two teams.
Oana Chetves, Business Development Manager at Stefanini, reflected on this pivotal phase: “I remember that throughout all the meetings we highly appreciated the transparency from all the Nordzucker team which helped us put together the proper solutioning in place.”
Nordzucker faced operational challenges as low resolution rates at the first support level led to increased workloads, backlogs, and longer ticket resolution times—a frustrating experience for end-users. Nordzucker implemented ServiceNow as their new IT Service Management (ITSM) tool. This strategic decision enabled them to establish a 24/7 team for comprehensive incident management. They also introduced SophieX, an advanced voice translation service available in multiple languages, including Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Lithuanian, Polish, and Slovak.
This innovative solution made support more accessible, bridging language gaps and elevating user satisfaction.
What stood out was not just Stefanini’s technical expertise but also their speed, responsiveness, and preparedness during global engagements. Michael Riepshoff, Head of IT Operations at Nordzucker, shared his appreciation: “We were looking for someone to guide us on this journey, with broad experience, that has the ability to co-innovate with us. The speed delivered in getting back to our requests and also the level of preparedness for all the colleagues in Stefanini that were involved was quite outstanding. “
This partnership was built on mutual trust and a shared commitment to excellence. By aligning their visions and focusing on seamless execution, Nordzucker and Stefanini created a foundation for sustainable growth and long-term success.
With these transformative steps, Nordzucker has not only streamlined their operations but also taken steps into enhancing the experience for their end-users. As they continue on this path, the future holds endless possibilities for growth and innovation.
Together with Stefanini, Nordzucker is embracing challenges with confidence, turning them into opportunities to innovate and excel. This journey is far from over. As they carve out new milestones and redefine success, Nordzucker’s transformation story stands as a testament to the power of vision, partnership, and resilience.
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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.
The role of the CIO has evolved from managing systems to shaping outcomes: growth, resilience, and competitive edge are now won or lost in the technology arena. Today ’ s CIOs must balance stability with innovation, control costs while attracting scarce talent, and modernise legacy infrastructure while adopting emerging technologies.
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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