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Welcome to CIONET Belgium

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

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Upcoming Events

 
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Belgium 25-9-25 Invitation Only Physical english

Women of CIONET - Female Leadership Circle 2

As AI shapes our future, the time is now to address and correct its inherent biases. Join leading female voices in tech as we explore how to undo past mistakes, champion neutrality, and feed AI systems with inclusive, unbiased data. This conference is a call to action for female leaders in AI and tech to ensure the next generation of intelligent systems reflects fairness, diversity, and equity. Together, let’s set things right and redefine the future of AI.

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Belgium 25-9-25 Invitation Only Physical english

Red Hat Round Table: THE POWER OF HYBRID

On 25th September, during the Red Hat Summit: Connect 2025 in Brussels, CIONET is hosting an exclusive, invitation-only round table for leading CIOs, CTOs, and digital leaders. While the Summit offers a broad programme, this CIONET session is a separate, distinct event, conducted in its own dedicated room with private catering, ensuring a focused and confidential peer-to-peer discussion. This round table will delve into why certain cloud-native techniques offer undeniable benefits, irrespective of where your applications are deployed, be it on-premise, in a hyperscale cloud, or a hybrid environment. Even outside public clouds, these modern, modular architectures consistently deliver increased agility, enhanced scalability, and quicker time-to-market. The real power behind these advantages lies in automation. When done properly, automation significantly boosts team efficiency, improves system quality, and drastically cuts risks from slow systems or downtime. However, achieving truly effective automation comes with its own set of challenges, which we'll address head-on. Key Discussion Points Include: "No-Regret" Cloud-Native Pillars: We'll try to pinpoint essential techniques every organisation should adopt, such as microservices architecture, containerisation (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes), API-first design, stateless application design, and immutable infrastructure. Why are these crucial for modern applications, no matter the deployment location? Strategic Vendor Lock-in: How to judiciously manage vendor lock-in. For new innovations and applications with a relatively short life expectancy, leveraging the latest unique features of a hyperscale cloud might be beneficial. For long-lived applications (expected to be live for decades), the focus might shift to limiting exposure by utilising generally available technologies. Automation Anywhere: How can organisations effectively implement automation strategies to unlock the full potential of cloud-native initiatives across diverse infrastructures? What are the biggest hurdles, and how are leaders overcoming them? This CIONET round table offers a unique and intimate setting for digital leaders to gain critical insights, exchange perspectives, and shape the strategic path towards application modernisation that truly offers no regrets.

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Belgium 30-9-25 Squad Only Virtual english

Technical Debt: When to Pay It and When to Walk Away ; Making smart trade-offs between progress, maintenance, and risk

Everyone has technical debt. The question is what to do with it. Refactor now? Wait for the next feature? Build on it and hope it holds? If you’re tired of debating whether to clean up or move on, this session helps you frame the debt conversation in a way that supports both speed and stability.

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Upcoming TRIBE Events

 
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September 30, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english

Technical Debt: When to Pay It and When to Walk Away ; Making smart trade-offs between progress, maintenance, and risk

Everyone has technical debt. The question is what to do with it. Refactor now? Wait for the next feature? Build on it and hope it holds? If you’re tired of debating whether to clean up or move on, this session helps you frame the debt conversation in a way that supports both speed and stability.

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October 2, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english

The Career Path of the Architect ;Great architecture begins with great architects

Architecture doesn’t happen in diagrams. It happens in minds, seasoned, curious, sharp minds that understand how the pieces fit. But who’s shaping these minds? Who’s growing the next generation of digital architects? If you’re responsible for complex systems, and for the people designing them, this session is for you.

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October 14, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english

Agile Infrastructure ; How to build technical foundations that don’t slow you down

Agile delivery often collides with inflexible infrastructures. One team wants to release weekly. Another is waiting six months for a new test environment. Sounds familiar? If your infra team is tired of being the bottleneck, and your devs are tired of waiting, this session opens a path forward.

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CIONET Partner Updates

CIONET Partner Updates

Recent Cases

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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.

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“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

 
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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.

 

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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.

 
 
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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

CIONET Circles

CIONET Business Circles

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Healthcare Circle

Digital Transformation is redefining the future of health care and health delivery. All stakeholders are convinced that these innovations will create value for patients, healthcare practitioners, hospitals, and governments along the patient pathway. The benefits are starting from prevention and awareness to diagnosis, treatment, short- and long-term follow-up, and ultimately survival. But how do you make sure that your working towards an architecturally sound, secure and interoperable health IT ecosystem for your hospital and avoid implementing a hodgepodge of spot solutions? How does your IT department work together with the other stakeholders, such as the doctors and other healthcare practitioners, Life Sciences companies, Tech companies, regulators and your internal governance and administrative bodies?

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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.

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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 !

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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.

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Check out our latest news

Testimonials

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Managing Director
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Director General Digital Transformation
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Chief Commercial Officer (CCO)
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Directeur général
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Head Of IT (CIO)
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Baudouin Corlùy
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Team

Luc Hendrikx
Luc Hendrikx
Partner - CEO
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Partner - CCO
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Daniel Eycken
Partner - COO
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Partner - Founder
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Jelte Scheys
Tribes Sales Director Belgium
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Herman Roelandts
Tribe Master
Joseph Antoun
Joseph Antoun
Senior Programme Director
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Eman De Sutter
Programme Manager
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Programme Manager
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Charlotte Coen
Partner Success Manager
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Ivana Bradvica
Programme Manager
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Martine Lefevre
Financial Controller
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Community Manager
Phaedra Vanhaeren
Phaedra Vanhaeren
Programme Manager

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!