<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=2528533714139722&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
New call-to-action
be-page-banner (1)

Welcome to CIONET Belgium

Realise your ambition! Connect with your local community of digital leaders.

See what's next

Upcoming Events

 
Banner

Belgium 23-6-26 All Members Physical english

The Sovereignty Play : Sourcing for Autonomy, Resilience and Competitive Advantage

Sourcing for Autonomy, Resilience and Competitive Advantage. Global platforms offer incredible speed and innovation, but they also create deep dependencies that can expose your business to vendor lock-in, supply chain disruptions, and regulatory shifts. For today's CIO, the central challenge is no longer just about technology adoption; it's about building a digital foundation that is both agile and resilient. Strategic sourcing is the key. It has evolved from a procurement function into the primary tool for CIOs to navigate uncertainty, mitigate risk, and achieve digital autonomy. This session provides a practical playbook for using strategic sourcing to build a future-proof enterprise.

Read More
Banner

Belgium 30-6-26 Public Physical french

L'IT Public au point de rupture

L'IT Public au point de rupture : Vers un modèle à l'usage ? Transformer l'inertie en agilité : le défi du service public. Le constat : L’ère de la possession touche à sa fin Le citoyen n'attend pas que vous gériez des serveurs ; il attend des services. Pourtant, le modèle IT public reste prisonnier du « faire » plutôt que du « résultat ». Entre des budgets CAPEX verrouillés sur 5 ans et des cycles de procurement qui naissent périmés, l'écart se creuse. Le dilemme est stratégique : Comment passer d'une infrastructure que l'on subit à une informatique pilotée par le résultat (Outcome-based IT) ? Est-il possible d'adopter la souplesse du Cloud sans abandonner les clés de notre souveraineté ? L'objet du débat : Le "As-a-Service" au-delà du concept Nous vous invitons à remettre en question les promesses des modèles orientés vers la consommation. L'objectif est de débattre, sans tabou, du potentiel réel de ces approches pour le secteur public : Inverser la responsabilité : Passer de l'achat de matériel à l'achat de niveaux de service (SLA). Est-ce le secret pour libérer vos équipes de la maintenance ? Aligner le coût sur l'usage : En finir avec le surprovisionnement pour ne payer que ce qui est réellement consommé. Agilité "Procurement-proof" : Comment le modèle à l'usage permet-il de scaler en quelques jours ce qui prenait des mois d'appels d'offres ? La souveraineté par le contrat : Le "As-a-Service" sur site est-il le compromis idéal entre contrôle privé et flexibilité publique ? Le Format : "Zero Slides, Full Insight" Pas de présentation ni de marketing, uniquement une confrontation de visions entre pairs : Cercle restreint : Décideurs du secteur public francophone. Règle de Chatham House : Ce qui se dit à table reste à table. Débat pur : Une discussion structurée autour de vos doutes et de vos ambitions numériques.

Read More
Banner

Belgium 30-6-26 All Members Physical english

AI at Home

As AI becomes critical to business success, organisations in highly regulated sectors such as Financial Services, Critical Infrastructures and Defence, face strict data privacy, security, and compliance mandates that make public cloud AI a non-starter. This interactive session will explore the practical realities, both the benefits and limitations, of bringing enterprise-grade AI capabilities directly onto your own premises. Join CIONET, Kyndryl, and Dell Technologies for an exclusive, hands-on roundtable and live workshop on navigating the crucial intersection of artificial intelligence, data sovereignty, and autonomous operations. We will move beyond the theory by bringing the physical machine into the room for a live, air-gapped demonstration of cutting-edge workloads running entirely on-site. This interactive workshop will bring together Digital Leaders to: Demystify Sovereign AI at the C-Level: Review the strategic trade-offs, architecture, and compliance advantages of running localised AI models. See Zero-Leak Secure Code Review in Action: Watch a live demo of an on-premise LLM scanning software for vulnerabilities, ensuring your codebase never leaves your secure infrastructure. Experience On-Premise Agentic AI: Witness a local, autonomous monitoring agent, utilising advanced, Claude-level reasoning capabilities, managing critical IT Operations tasks completely offline. Collaborate on Best Practices: Engage with peers to discuss deployment timelines, security frameworks, and infrastructure requirements for true data control. Don't miss this opportunity to interact with live hardware, engage with industry peers, and gain actionable insights into unleashing the power of sovereign and agentic AI.  

Read More

Upcoming TRIBE Events

 

CIONET Partner Updates

CIONET Partner Updates

Recent Cases

Please Log In with your CIONET account first

Banco Santander Consumer Portugal Adopts the OutSystems Platform

Banco Santander Consumer Portugal selected OutSystems to power its ambitious digital transformation program in 2017. Working with OutSystems partner KPMG, the bank had replaced 70% of its core systems by the beginning of 2020. With a new agile IT architecture, the bank is now able to innovate at speed, to launch new channels and solutions.

offgrid image
 

“The OutSystems development approach has greatly contributed to the success of the program. It has improved our agile practices and helped us involve business users in a much more responsive way.” - Domingos FerreiraIT & Operations Director, Banco Santander Consumer Portugal

 
Challenge

Struggling to Adapt to a Rapidly Changing Market

Banco Santander Consumer Portugal, part of Santander Group, a top-10 global financial services group, provides credit solutions to consumers both directly and via leading consumer goods and automotive partners. In Portugal, Santander Consumer financed loans totaling 465 million Euros in 2018.

Santander Consumer was struggling to adapt to a fast-changing market. Successive mergers and acquisitions had led to a complex IT architecture, which added cost and delays to every IT related improvement or innovation.

Santander Consumer faced increasing competition, and the bank's business strategy was to diversify and become a major player in the consumer loan and insurance markets.

The bank's leadership realized that it needed to escape the inertia imposed by its hard-to-change legacy IT, to speed-up the launch of new products, services, and digital experiences.

"Working with OutSystems and KPMG, we have built a new IT architecture, replaced 70% of our core systems, and streamlined our operations. We are now executing the business vision and delivering new digital channels and solutions to lead in the consumer finance market.” - Domingos FerreiraIT & Operations Director, Banco Santander Consumer Portugal

 
offgrid image
 
Why Santander Consumer chose OutSystems:
  • Speed-up development and improve agility
  • no vendor lock in iconNo lock-in, open standards-based platform
  • platform integration iconPowerful integration

Solution

An OutSystems Powered Digital Transformation

In 2016, Santander Consumer put together a company-wide task-force to digitally transform every aspect of the business, including products, processes, channels, compliance, and IT. KPMG were appointed to help deliver the transformation program between 2017 to 2019.

Following an extensive evaluation, OutSystems was selected as the low-code application development platform to refresh the bank’s technology. Key selection criteria included:

  • Fit for agile development practices
  • Support for API integration and microservices
  • Ease and speed of development
  • No lock-in, or development limits

Santander Consumer’s Management was also impressed that the OutSystems team quickly grasped the full extent of the proposed wide-ranging transformation program.

The digital transformation required a new, agile IT architecture to replace many of Santander Consumer’s 20-year old systems. Fundamental to this was the creation of an enterprise service bus, a new business process management layer, and new channels for all product stakeholders. All of these were to be developed on the OutSystems platform.

The new architecture enables fast and flexible development and maximizes the reuse of code across multiple products and channels. The bank is now able to quickly digitalize processes and streamline operations so that it can launch new products and channels in a much more efficient way.

These improvements and innovations are transforming the way that the bank operates and engages with partners and customers.

The “NeXt Future” program includes 47 distinct initiatives and 14 new solutions, developed in three years by an internal team of around 20 people, from IT, operations, and various business departments, and up to 40 people from KPMG.

 

image
 

Many reusable components have already transitioned to the new architecture, including:

  • A new end-to-end digital process for the onboarding of all products
  • User and access authentication
  • Communications and services gateway
  • Workflow services (for processes such as collections and fraud prevention)

In late 2018, the first solutions went live for consumer credit and personal loans, which are high priority growth targets for Santander Consumer. Other solutions built with OutSystems that are already in production include:

  • eCommerce – offering consumer credit products as a payment option in partner’s eCommerce portals
  • Digital cash loans – a consumer credit solution to provide personal credit
  • Complaint management solution
  • New durables dealer’s portal – a B2B digital solution that supports business acquisition through dealer networks (from simulation to payment).
  • New used car portal - A B2B solution that is helping the bank grow rapidly in this increasingly important business sector.

Santander Consumer has also built a new portal for auto dealers that, at the time of writing, is about to go live. This comprehensive solution will significantly simplify and improve the onboarding experience for auto dealers and their customers by enabling document upload and real-time status updates throughout the process.

The bank is also about to launch new fully-integrated solutions for credit recovery and associated litigation.

 
 
offgrid image
 
 
Partner

KPMG Advisory - Consultores de Gestão, S.A.

KPMG is one of the world's leading professional services firms. We are proud of our firm's strong and established reputation, a reputation that is built on a long history of independence, integrity...

Learn more about KPMG Advisory - Consultores de Gestão, S.A.
 
Results

Streamlined Operations That Improve the Customer Experience

By the beginning of 2020, Santander had replaced 70% of the processes that were in its legacy core systems. As Domingos Ferreira, IT & Operations Director, puts it, “In just three years, we have replaced and improved a technology architecture that took us 20 years to develop.”

However, technology change is not, in itself, the end-goal. The real achievement is the new-found agility that allows the bank to quickly launch new propositions to market, with streamlined, digitally-optimized processes, and significantly improved customer experience.

Moreover, higher customer satisfaction scores confirm that improved customer experiences are making a difference.

“The OutSystems development approach has greatly contributed to the success of the program,” says Domingos. “It has improved our agile practices and helped us involve business users in a much more responsive way.”

Cultural change goes hand-in-hand with Santander Consumer’s digital transformation, as the bank adopts a more customer-centric, agile approach to develop and deliver the products and experiences its partners and users need.

In summary, here are just a few of the achievements delivered over the three-year program:

  • Omnichannel solutions from simulation to payment
  • Front-end mobile-first and fully responsive digital experiences
  • Digital “Know Your Customer,” authentication and document signature
  • Integration with business partners via APIs
  • Single end-customer home banking
  • Digital assets shared across all products, channels, and partners
  • Established a modern, agile architecture that supports rapid innovation and lower cost of maintenance.

Technologies

Outsystems

Partners

CIONET Circles

CIONET Business Circles

Banner
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.

Read More
Banner
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.

Read More
Banner
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 !

Read More
Banner
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.

Read More

Check out our latest news

Testimonials

Geert Goethals
Geert Goethals
CIO
Sibelga
Bahadir Samli
Bahadir Samli
CIO
ING Belgique
2-Feb-29-2024-11-35-00-9309-AM
Bart Kerkhofs
Director Digital Technology
Tata Steel Nederland
Untitled design (1)-Apr-01-2022-10-58-34-57-AM
Michał Paprocki
Group CIO
Euroclear
1-Feb-29-2024-11-34-59-8990-AM
Manfred Boudreaux-Dehmer
Chief Information Officer
NATO
Untitled design-Nov-22-2023-08-42-05-3178-AM
Annick Faes
Vice President IT and CIO Medical Devices EMEA
Johnson & Johnson
Piet_De_Ceuleners
Piet De Ceuleners
Global IT Director
Melexis
Untitled design-7
Stef Schampaert
Country Managing Director BeLux
Red Hat
Kevin_Ledegen
Kevin Ledegen
Group IT director
SDWorx
Gunter-Van-Craen_Small
Gunter Van Craen
Chief Digital & Information Officer
Bekaert
Thomas Kessler
Thomas Kessler
Partner | CIO Programme Leader
Deloitte
Emmanuel Gob
Emmanuel Gob
CIO
DPD
pascal pauwels
Pascal Pauwels
CIO
Colruyt
Untitled design (4)-Dec-13-2023-10-53-15-5032-AM
Koen Segers
Managing Director Belgium and Luxembourg
Dell Technologies
benoit dewaele
Benoît Dewaele
Group IT Director
Vandemoortele
Dirk Deridder-1
Dirk Deridder
CTO - Technology Services & Practices
SMALS
Untitled design-Sep-18-2023-11-59-29-7866-AM
Koen Vandaele
CIO
Delen Private Bank
Untitled design (4)-Jun-12-2023-01-23-11-7540-PM
Liesbet D'hoker
Managing Director
Kyndryl BeLux
steven-vermeulen
Steven Vermeulen
CIO
Digitaal Vlaanderen
Jack Hamande
Jack Hamande
Director General Digital Transformation
Federale Overheidsdienst Beleid en Ondersteuning
Tom Tomczak
Tom Tomczak
Chief Commercial Officer (CCO)
NRB
an swalens
An Swalens
Head Of IT (CIO)
National Bank of Belgium
Untitled design (2)-Apr-01-2022-10-58-34-68-AM
Elke Laeremans
Chief Technology & Transformation Officer
Krëfel
CIONET Belgium - Advisory Board Member - Koen Van Loo
Koen Van Loo
CIO
Group S.
CIONET Belgium - Advisory Board Member - Steven De Haes
Steven De Haes
Dean
Antwerp Management School
Loic Wydouw BW
Loïc Wydouw
CIO
Carrefour
christel-plessers
Christel Plessers
Head of IT European Markets
Mercedes-Benz Europe
bauduin cor
Baudouin Corlùy
Chief Market Development Officer
LCL Data Centers
Steven Soers b&w
Steven Soers
VP Marketing
Telenet Business
CIONET-Belgium-Advisory-Board-Member-Carl-Tilkin-Franssens
Carl Tilkin-Franssens
Expert Consultant
BDO Belgium
Leen Van Rentergem (1)
Leen Van Rentergem
CIO
KU Leuven
bart van de walle b&w
Bart Van de Walle
CIO Belux
DHL
Jeroen Verbruggen
Jeroen Verbruggen
CIO
Proximus
An Swalens
An Swalens
CIO
National Bank of Belgium

Team

Luc Hendrikx
Luc Hendrikx
Partner - CEO
Inès De Bien
Inès De Bien
Partner - CCO
1-Feb-08-2022-10-22-08-68-AM
Daniel Eycken
Partner - COO
Hendrik Deckers
Hendrik Deckers
Partner - Founder
foto Herman
Herman Roelandts
Tribe Master
Joseph Antoun
Joseph Antoun
Senior Programme Director
1-Dec-16-2021-02-15-57-02-PM
Eman De Sutter
Programme Manager
4-Feb-08-2022-10-22-09-03-AM
Shelly Deracourt
Programme Manager
Untitled design (5)-Sep-01-2022-02-47-55-60-PM
Charlotte Coen
Partner Success Manager
Untitled design (1)-Nov-22-2023-08-56-42-6802-AM
Ivana Bradvica
Programme Manager
Vlera Berishaa (1)
Vlera Berisha
Community Manager
Stanislav Mosan
Stanislav Mosan
Financial Director

Contact us

Would you like to know more about CIONET Belgium, membership or partnership opportunities? Do you have feedback or any other question? Send us a message!