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Belgium 21-4-26 Invitation Only Physical english

From Victim to Victor: Cyber resilience is a means, providing Business Continuity the goal

In an era where every outage, audit, and cyberattack is a test of organisational survival, resilience has become the new currency of trust. While traditional perimeter security with: firewalls, intrusion detection, and scanners, remains essential, it is no longer a sufficient guarantee against modern threats that bypass these layers to penetrate your core systems. Today, enterprises require security and continuity that are built-in, not bolted-on. This CIONET roundtable focuses on the shift from reactive disaster recovery to proactive Business Continuity. Together with experts from HPE Zerto, we will explore how organisations can transform their recovery strategies into seamless continuity models.

Belgium 23-4-26 Country Members Physical & Virtual english

CIOFEST BELGIUM: Leadership in the Agentic Era

AI is no longer confined to supporting human tasks. We are entering the agentic era, where autonomous systems act on behalf of people and organisations. These agents can gather information, make decisions, negotiate terms, and even complete transactions. The implications extend well beyond technology; they touch the very foundations of business models, governance, and leadership. For CIOs and their peers, the rise of “machine customers” and autonomous partners poses new questions: Market impact: How do you compete and create value when some customers and suppliers are machines? Governance: What trust, compliance, and accountability structures are needed when AI acts independently in financial, procurement, or customer-facing processes? Leadership: How should CIOs guide their organisations in redefining roles, responsibilities, and decision-making when agents take over parts of the value chain?Business strategy: What opportunities emerge for new revenue models, platforms, and ecosystems shaped by autonomous interaction? This session shifts the focus from the mechanics of AI agents to the decisions that will shape leadership in the next decade. It is a call for CIOs to prepare for a future where relationships, markets, and strategies are no longer limited to human-to-human interactions, but also extend to human-to-machine and machine-to-machine interactions.

Belgium 29-4-26 Invitation Only Physical english

Building Future-Ready Application Ecosystems in the Age of Intelligent Automation

This CIONET workshop is a collaborative deep-dive into the practicalities of"rewiring the building" while it’s still occupied. Drawing onKyndryl’s deep heritage in mission-critical infrastructure and their latestresearch, we will dismantle the "hidden costs" of legacyenvironments. The conversation will focus on the transition from static,monolithic structures to composable architectures that allow intelligent agentsto operate seamlessly across hybrid landscapes.

May 12, 2026 Squad Session Invitation Only Physical english

Product-Centric IT 2.0: Blending product and project thinking

Everyone says they’ve gone product-centric. In reality, most organisations live in a hybrid world where projects, products, and platforms overlap. Teams manage releases while still chasing deadlines, and governance still thinks in milestones rather than outcomes. The shift is underway, but the mindset hasn’t caught up.

May 19, 2026 Squad Session Invitation Only Physical english

AI vs AI in Cybersecurity: When defenders and attackers both use AI

The game has changed, clearly. Attackers have AI, defenders have AI, and both sides are learning faster than anyone expected, or maybe the attackers are just a bit faster. What used to take hours now happens in seconds, and detection windows close before alerts even appear. It’s adaptation beyond automation, and no one gets to sit still.

May 22, 2026 Squad Session Invitation Only Physical english

Managing Vendor Lock-In: Balancing dependence, cost, and control in strategic partnerships

Every vendor swears their platform is open, flexible, and built for freedom. Then comes the renewal date. The price goes up, migration looks painful, and “strategic partnership” starts to feel more like dependency. Most organisations don’t get trapped overnight, they walk into it one contract at a time. Broadcom, anyone?

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Facilitating Better Business Decisions with Azure

Facq is a Belgian provider of sanitation, heating and renewable energy distribution services for the construction sector. The company wanted to make better decisions based on the right data. To do this, they partnered with element61 and built a business intelligence platform based on Microsoft Azure.

As the IT and Quality Director at Facq, Nicolas Van Caster faced an interesting challenge. He wanted to develop a business insights solution that empowered the company’s point-of-sale (POS) team leaders — without removing any of their accountability to make decisions. In short, he wanted to gather more targeted insights from the data available to these leaders and enable the data-driven mindset that Facq has championed throughout its 140-year history.

To meet this goal — and set his company up for future success — Nicolas partnered with element61, a data analytics provider and Microsoft Advanced Specialization Partner based in Belgium. Together, the companies have developed a business insights tool powered by Microsoft Azure.

We needed a solution that could help our point-of-sale leaders make the right decisions at the right time. Azure and PowerBI facilitates that by bringing the data to where it’s needed in real time.

Nicolas Van Caster: IT and Quality Director - Facq

The need for a practical solution

Facq is a Belgium-based provider of sanitary, heating, and renewable energies distribution for professionals in the construction sector. They operate a B2B model, serving installers and plumbers across the country through 46 points of sale, 16 showrooms, and three warehouses.

Across this significant sales network, one of the biggest challenges was managing stock and inventory at each point of sale.

Up until recently, the company’s POS team leaders would receive monthly reports from the head office with various data points around their inventory levels — and it was up to them to review these reports and make decisions from them. However, there were three primary challenges with this model:

There was too much data. POS team leaders would receive over 100 pages of data, and would have to sift through them all to get a clear picture of what was going on.
The data was (often) too late. As the reports came at the end of every month, there were times where POS team leaders would be told about low inventory levels when it was too late to mitigate the impact on consumers.
The data was not targeted enough. In the 100 pages of data, there was no clear indication as to which data point indicated a problem that needed addressing.

Instead of this fairly unstructured approach, Van Caster and his team realised that they needed a cloud-based solution that could help them deliver more actionable insights — and someone that could help them build it. That’s where element61 and Microsoft Azure came in.

Facilitating data-driven decision making

Together with the team at element61, Facq has developed a business insights platform that empowers their POS team leaders. They started by establishing performance and operational indicators, understanding that while the first helps identify problem areas, the second is key for identifying the potential solution to that problem.

They then built the platform using a modern data platform approach, powered by Azure. At the front-end, users engage with a Microsoft Power BI dashboard that’s easy to use and simple to understand. This was not a one-and-done process. For Van Caster and element61, iteration and collaboration with the end users was key. As such, the build process was made up of various two-week sprints, where they requested feedback and inputs from the POS team leaders and other key stakeholders. This level of collaboration gave these employees a sense of ownership of the product before it was even fully deployed.

Today, POS team leaders have access to a simplified dashboard that surfaces the right data at the right time, giving them the information they need to replenish stock in a proactive manner. Not only does it present problems that need addressing, it also automatically provides the suggested steps needed to remedy those problems. For these employees, the change has given them more ownership and accountability for making decisions that improve how the business operates.

In addition, the company is also seeing benefits at the business level. Now, when competitors don’t have enough inventory, installers and plumbers are turning to Facq, driving up sales and revenue as a result. Plus, each POS is able to be more agile in responding to seasonal fluctuations in demand, which are common in the construction sector. It’s a true testament of how connecting the dots between operational performance and business strategies can deliver true value.

Where Facq goes next

The business insights solution has become an important tool for Facq’s POS team leaders — but the team isn’t stopping there. According to Van Caster, Facq and element61 are currently working on expanding the cloud-based solution for their warehouse teams to show them real-time KPIs in a centralised dashboard. Even further ahead, the team plans to find ways to adopt automation and machine learning capabilities to optimise operations, while still empowering their employees with ownership and accountability.

From the very beginning, element61 showed initiative in wanting to know our business. When we discussed performance and operational indicators, they asked us to show them what that looked like in practice — and that’s the kind of partner we needed for this project. - Nicolas Van Caster: IT and Quality Director Facq

Technologies

Microsoft Power BI

CIONET Business Circles

Cyber Circle

CIONET’s Cyber Circle: a new three-event programme exclusively focusing on the most urgent, complex, and high-impact challenges in cybersecurity today. Launched in 2026, this initiative brings together CISOs, CIOs, and senior IT executives with a strong interest in cybersecurity for three curated gatherings each year. As part of CIONET’s trusted executive community, the Cyber Circle provides a confidential, peer-driven environment to exchange insights, share real-world experiences, and address evolving cyber threats. Each session is designed to foster strategic dialogue, strengthen resilience, and elevate cybersecurity as a core driver of business value.

Telenet Business Leadership Circle

The Telenet Business Leadership Circle powered by CIONET, offers a platform where IT executives and thought leaders can meet to inspire each other and share best practices. We want to be a facilitator who helps you optimise the performance of your IT function and your business by embracing the endless opportunities that digital change brings.

Les Rencontres

Découvrez la dynamique du leadership numérique aux Rencontres de CIONET, le programme francophone exclusif de CIONET pour les leaders numériques en Belgique, rendu possible grâce au soutien et à l'engagement de nos partenaires de programme : Deloitte, Denodo et Red Hat. Rejoignez trois événements inspirants par an à Liège, Namur et en Brabant Wallon, où des CIOs et des experts numériques francophones de premier plan partagent leurs perspectives et expériences sur des thèmes d'affaires et de IT actuels. Laissez-vous inspirer et apprenez des meilleurs du secteur lors de sessions captivantes conçues spécialement pour soutenir et enrichir votre rôle en tant que CIO pair. Ne manquez pas cette opportunité de faire partie d'un réseau exceptionnel d'innovateurs numériques !

Female Leadership Circle

CIONET is committed to highlighting and celebrating female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, creating a leadership programme that empowers and elevates women within the tech industry. This initiative is dedicated to showcasing the achievements and successes of leading women, fostering an environment where female role models are recognised, and their contributions can ignite progress and inspire the next generation of women in IT. Our mission is to shine the spotlight a little brighter on female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, and to empower each other through this inner network community.