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Belgium 27-8-26 AB Members Physical english

Summer Festival: Advisory Board

CIO agendas are crowded: cost pressure, cyber, regulation, talent, data, AI, vendor dependency, business expectations. Most organisations are trying to do too much at once, and the “must-do” work often blocks the strategic work. CIONET only creates value if its agenda matches what CIOs truly need, in the right format, at the right time. The challenge Pick the few priorities that matter most for 2027, then translate them into a clear CIONET agenda. Outcome we leave with A ranked CIO agenda for 2027, and a directly aligned CIONET programme outline (themes, formats, cadence), with a shortlist of speaker and case targets.

Belgium 27-8-26 Country Members Physical english

Summerfest: From Story to Habit

How to align people, shift routines, and prove value Technology transformations often fail not because the tools don’t work, but because people don’t change their work habits. Boards want proof of value, executives want business outcomes, IT wants clarity, and employees want ease. Between these expectations, the CIO’s role is no longer just to deliver platforms; it is to tell the story that motivates people and turn that story into daily habits. This session will explore: The narrative: how to craft a simple, repeatable story that explains the “why” behind change for every stakeholder. From story to routine: practical ways to embed new behaviours through manager rituals, team incentives, and visible leadership. Reskilling and new expectations: preparing teams for evolving roles, from cross-department collaboration to AI-enhanced workflows. Measuring what matters: showing progress in speed, quality, and resilience — not just in licences bought or trainings completed. The aim is to equip CIOs with a leadership toolkit: a story that unites, habits that endure, and proof that convinces even the toughest boardroom.

Belgium 8-9-26 Invitation Only Virtual english

What an AI Architect Actually Does in Practice; Skills, responsibilities, interfaces, and career moves behind one of the most misunderstood emerging roles.

The AI architect role is becoming more visible, and the scope varies across organisations. The challenge is defining what the role owns, where it sits, and how it works with existing architecture, data, security, risk, and business teams. Three pressure points need clarity. - Role definition matters because the position can span solution architecture, data architecture, governance, integration, security, vendor selection, and business process design. - Interfaces matter because the role must connect teams while respecting existing responsibilities. - Skills matter because technical depth needs to be combined with judgement around controls, delivery choices, and operational boundaries. The working question is simple: how do we define the AI architect role so it becomes useful, credible, and connected to delivery? If this role is emerging in your organisation, let’s compare how others are defining it and where they are placing it.

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Adoption success. New contact centre solution for an insurance company

Transforming user experience and bringing faster business results with our trusted user adoption services.

Overview
To fully launch and embrace their new technology, a large multinational bank needed our help with the rollout of a new cloud contact centre solution. They needed someone who understood their business, as well as their people, to deliver a highly tailored programme globally– which is easier said than done.

The challenge
The customer needed to upgrade their voice contact centre solution globally, while also looking for significant cost savings. But against the backdrop of the pandemic, they also needed to foster a culture shift towards hybrid working. The scale and scope of this task posed quite a significant challenge.
To ensure a smooth migration process, we needed to dedicate time and resources to our planning and discovery stages. This enabled us to understand the impact of the new solution on the company’s people and carefully plan how we’d deliver a programme with centralised IT whilst meeting the requirements of the local countries – all with different needs. The priority was to deliver an education and training programme which would drive the change and rapid adoption needed of the new service.

Due to their sheer global scale, the biggest challenge for this customer was managing the migration and user experience globally. They operate with local, regional IT and office leads who had the influence and power to drive the progress of the rollout. But you can’t just go to the end-user as every local site has its own power capabilities. We needed to identify the end-user changes across all global and regional business units and provide recommendations based on the volume of the sites to ensure efficiency.

Like any new enterprise cloud service, the user adoption programme also needed to drive the right behaviour change amongst end-users by educating them on the ‘why to use’ and ‘how to use’. This also needed to extend beyond end-users - building the value proposition for the country leads was equally as important as they influenced the end-users within their region.

BT’s user adoption team were a pleasure to work with. I appreciated their responsiveness and thoroughness with our end user communications… I also appreciated the support the user adoption team provided me in sorting out technical questions and issues that impacted our end user communications.”

Head of change integration management

The solution
Providing sound advice through experience and expertise
A successful transformation isn’t just about the technology readiness; people readiness is equally important. We outlined the right user adoption support approach to optimise the onboarding process. There was a constant pipeline of consultancy support and advice, something that’s second nature to our dedicated user adoption team.

Firstly, our specialist ran a two-day workshop with all the relevant stakeholders. We needed to understand and recommend the right user adoption programme. This included understanding where people were based, how many users there would be and how this would be adopted. It was key that decisions were carefully made in each of the business units across many different countries, and whether to ‘train the trainer’ or adopt a ‘train-all’ approach, as well as determining whether to run face-to-face or remote training – so we provided a range of options for the customer and recommended on a site-by-site basis. With a central IT team, adapting to their various needs and views was critical to the outcome

The preference was to use a ‘train the trainer’ approach and on-site in some regions. However, with the global pandemic onsite training plans had to be delivered remotely at short notice. With our depth and breadth of experience allowing us to accommodate the changes to the new approach successfully.

We managed to deliver an extensive virtual training programme to onboard users, with a bespoke approach for each business unit. This included live virtual training sessions and recorded sessions for agents, supervisors and administrators. This enabled smooth migration to the sites. Once users had a chance to use the features, we also delivered refresher training sessions and extra sessions on reporting for supervisors.

On-demand learning was key and therefore we built an e-learning site with tailored user guides and short videos based on their configuration and use cases. Our experts had access to the client’s platform to allow them to be fully tailored for example with the correct screenshots.

But it didn’t stop there. We continuously captured feedback to improve the programme delivery and ensure each region received a high quality of training and support. To provide additional language help, we translated our guides into French, German and Italian which was key to success.

The result
We successfully delivered a user adoption programme to onboard users, seamlessly integrating new solutions which improved the working lives of employees. Our extensive training programme had a bespoke approach for each business unit which was committed to creating a continuous learning culture and improving the user’s skillset.

Critically, we supported the customer through the unexpected – a workforce shifting to homeworking, with no disruption to business operations. We delivered the support according to our plan, deadlines, and the overall business strategy and the customer is on track to achieving their aspired cost savings. We also received very positive feedback from both decision makers and users.

As a result of the successful migration to the new platform, the organisation is working with us on other cloud collaboration and communications rollouts. As a trusted partner we have demonstrated we not only provide the technology but also the right support for people readiness with our user adoption service.

Partners

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.