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Belgium 13-11-2026 Squad Only Physical English

Building the Business Case for New IT Capabilities; How to justify investment when value is strategic, shared, or only visible over time.

Many IT capabilities are essential and difficult to fund through a simple project ROI. The challenge is showing why architecture, governance, resilience, cybersecurity maturity, data foundations, and AI readiness deserve investment before the gap becomes expensive. Three pressure points make the case harder. - Shared value means the benefit often sits across several teams, while the budget sits in one place. - Timing creates friction because the cost is immediate while the value appears over time. - Risk translation is needed so business and finance leaders understand the consequence of delaying the investment. The working question is simple: how do we turn foundational IT capabilities into credible investment cases that link cost, risk, business value, and future flexibility? If you are building these cases internally, let’s compare how others are positioning value, risk, and timing.

Belgium 19-11-2026 All Members Physical English

Europe’s Digital Foundations

Public organisations are re-evaluating the digital foundations on which critical services depend. Cloud strategy is increasingly shaped by questions of operational control, legal exposure, supplier dependency, interoperability and long-term resilience. For public-sector leaders, the issue is not only where workloads are hosted, but how much strategic control remains over the technologies that support essential public services. This is where European cloud initiatives, sovereign infrastructure and open-source technologies become strategically important. Together, they can increase transparency, preserve portability and reduce dependency on individual providers. But they also raise practical questions around maturity, procurement, integration, support models and long-term sustainability. Open source brings a specific dimension to this discussion. It claims to better support transparency, interoperability and strategic autonomy, but it is also requiring clear governance, security controls and operational support. The opportunity is to understand where open technologies can strengthen the public-sector technology stack, where commercial platforms remain essential and how both can coexist within a coherent European digital strategy. Three questions shape the discussion: Which parts of the public-sector technology stack require stronger European control? What role should open-source technologies play in reducing dependency and strengthening transparency? Which governance and procurement decisions will determine whether a sovereign cloud strategy succeeds? Bringing these perspectives together can define where sovereign cloud and open technologies create strategic value, identify the decisions that deserve executive attention, and establish practical principles for strengthening Europe’s digital foundations while preserving flexibility and innovation. See you at the table?

Belgium 24-11-2026 Country Members Physical French

Les Rencontres: Innovation de l'Ombre

Créativité vs. Chaos : Quelle est la gouvernance minimale ? Le défi principal est d'équilibrer le risque et le rythme du changement. Les équipes métier adoptent de nouveaux outils d'IA et low-code de leur propre chef, créant une véritable créativité mais aussi un risque massif et non géré. Cette discussion se concentre sur l'établissement de voies simples et sûres pour l'innovation, en débattant de la gouvernance minimale qui protège la réputation de l'entreprise tout en évitant l'erreur d'écraser les initiatives utiles dans l'ombre. Questions clés d'Échange entre pairs : Où l'innovation de l'ombre aide-t-elle plutôt que de nuire, et comment éviter de l'écraser ? Quelle est la gouvernance minimale qui protège la réputation tout en maintenant la vitesse, et à qui appartient-elle réellement ? Comment les pairs ont-ils réussi à transformer les efforts initiaux de l'ombre en services officiels soutenus sans perdre la confiance de l'entreprise ? Comment pouvons-nous rendre plus facile d'innover de manière responsable que de simplement agir en franc-tireur ?

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How Hello Sugar reached a 66% automation rate with our hybrid solution

Hello Sugar wanted to scale their waxing franchise without growing their reception staff – all while offering higher quality CX. With Ultimate’s hybrid automation solution, this process couldn’t have gone more smoothly.

Hello Sugar at a glance

The customer

Hello Sugar is the fastest growing Brazilian wax and sugar salon in the U.S.

The market

Hello Sugar serves beauty-conscious customers across the U.S.

The support team

Their support team consists of 20 receptionists who handle requests via Zendesk.

The channels

Hello Sugar offers customer support via SMS.

The situation

Hello Sugar was looking to double the number of stores – without doubling their receptionists' workload.

The solution

Ultimate's hybrid combination of gen AI and conversation design helped Hello Sugar hit a sweet spot between empathetic, personalized, and scalable support.

Getting started with Ultimate

Trying to double the number of stores in their franchise within the year – without growing their support team – may sound like the makings of a sticky situation. But what sets Hello Sugar apart in the beauty and wellness space is their tendency to be tech savvy. They knew that the best way to scale was to automate. And while a lot of other AI providers sugar coat their automation capabilities, Ultimate’s automation solution proved to be the real deal.

Hello Sugar’s CTO, Austin Towns, was instantly impressed by the generative AI technology behind UltimateGPT and quickly began automating common intents about salon services and pricing. With the help of Ultimate’s hands-on customer success team and a seamless integration with Zendesk - who recently acquired Ultimate to scale the partnership - they enhanced the quality of their support by combining ultra-personalized service with near-instant response times.

With the freedom and flexibility of generative AI, their bot also delivers precise info about the location of salons to lost customers as well as empathetic responses for first time waxers – all in perfect brand tone of voice. Meanwhile, the precision and control of manual conversation design enabled them to automate their entire appointment booking process. Now, Hello Sugar boasts a 66% automation rate thanks to our hybrid automation solution.

"We currently have 81 salons and are going to grow to 160 this year – without growing our reception staff. And with automation, we’re able to do that while offering way better CX and getting higher reviews."

Austin Towns
CTO, Hello Sugar

Automation rate: 66%

Monthly savings$: 14K

Agent hours saved: 200

AI use case spotlight #1: Hello Sugar’s journey to +66% automation

Hello Sugar wanted an AI provider that could go beyond the traditional dialogue builder. Ultimate’s hybrid approach that integrates the precision of conversation design with the freedom and flexibility of generative AI delivered on this promise.
UltimateGPT has enabled them to quickly automate FAQ style questions about services provided and how to prep for an upcoming appointment. And conversation design helped them automate intents like booking appointments, as they can use API integrations to confirm location and generate a booking link for their customers.
Taken together, they have reached a 66% automation rate – with rave reviews about their CX from customers.

AI use case spotlight #2: Knowledge base optimization for better CX

Hello Sugar also succeeded in honing the powers of a well-designed knowledge base to enhance the capabilities of UltimateGPT.
By compiling a knowledge base replete with information on the details of location of each salon around the country, their generative AI-powered bot can provide extremely precise directions. Customers are also left with the feeling that they’re speaking to a human receptionist, thanks to the bot's natural-sounding tone of voice (TOV).
As a result, Hello Sugar harnessed the power of generative AI to deliver ultra-personalized and empathetic support to customers within seconds and at scale.

The success story

Instant Zendesk integration

Ultimate’s hybrid automation solution seamlessly integrated with their existing CRM so they were able to start automating common queries straight away.

Industry beating results

As a tech savvy business within the beauty and wellness space, Hello Sugar has been able to offer improved CX even as they double their number of salons – all while saving $14K in agent costs per month.

Hybrid automation solution

With our hybrid solution, Hello Sugar was able to combine generative AI and conversation design to reach an automation rate of +66%.

Improved customer experience

With the help of AI, Hello Sugar is able to attend to customer queries in a matter of seconds. Thanks to UltimateGPT, they’re able to do so in a way that integrates empathy and on-brand TOV into each interaction.

Next on their automation journey

Hello Sugar plans on continuing to find more use cases for AI to improve CX, such as by expanding their APIs to reduce manual work for receptionists.

For example, they want to harness the capabilities of API integrations for booking and rescheduling appointments to expand the capabilities of what their bot can do when responding to these requests.

They plan to audit all existing intents to find more opportunities to leverage UltimateGPT.

Technologies

Ultimate: Chat automation Zendesk: A CRM Platform

Partners

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