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Welcome to CIONET Belgium

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Upcoming Events

 
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Belgium 2-9-25 All TRIBERS Virtual english

What Does It Cost to Host an App? ; A practical guide to calculating hosting costs across infra, licenses, and operations

You’ve been asked a simple question: “What does it cost to host this application?” But the answer is anything but simple. The platform sits across multiple data centres. The app spans a few VMs, shares a backup system, uses licensed monitoring, and touches five different teams. Your CMDB should help, but it’s rigid, outdated, or incomplete. And yet, you still need to provide a number, clear, explainable, and grounded in reality.

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Belgium 9-9-25 Squad Only Physical english

Fixing the Data Foundations ; Making data trustworthy, consistent, and ready for action

As Belgium navigates the complexities of GDPR and various data sovereignty regulations, organizations across multiple industries face both challenges and opportunities in managing their data across borders. The quest for compliance often intersects with the need for business growth, raising questions about the balance between protection and progress. How can companies effectively own and safeguard their data while ensuring compliance without stifling innovation and expansion in a multi-industry landscape?

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Belgium 11-9-25 Squad Only Virtual english

Customer Experience at the Frontline ; Designing digital tools that actually work

You’ve built the portal. Added the chatbot. Rolled out self-service. But your support lines are still ringing. And your frontline teams are still improvising. If you want digital services to feel seamless, not just look polished, this session brings you back to where value is felt: at the frontline.

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Upcoming TRIBE Events

 
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September 2, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english

What Does It Cost to Host an App? ; A practical guide to calculating hosting costs across infra, licenses, and operations

The platform sits across multiple data centres. The app spans a few VMs, shares a backup system, uses licensed monitoring, and touches five different teams. Your CMDB should help, but it’s rigid, outdated, or incomplete. And yet, you still need to provide a number, clear, explainable, and grounded in reality.

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September 9, 2025 Squad Session Invitation Only Virtual polish

Talenty w akcji: sekrety pozyskiwania i rozwoju w CIRF

Utrzymanie talentów w organizacji IT ulokowanej na konkurencyjnym rynku pracy to nie lada zadanie. A jeśli do tego mówimy o organizacji z sektora publicznego? O swoich i swojej organizacji doświadczeniach, metodach i programach opowie Anna Wituła z CIRF. Będzie to jak zawsze okazja do dyskusji na temat różnych sposobów na utrzymanie talentów w firmie.

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September 9, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Physical english

Fixing the Data Foundations ; Making data trustworthy, consistent, and ready for action

As Belgium tackles GDPR and data sovereignty rules, organizations face challenges and opportunities in cross-border data management. Balancing compliance with growth raises key questions: How can companies protect and control their data while staying compliant—without blocking innovation and expansion across industries?

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CIONET Partner Updates

CIONET Partner Updates

Recent Cases

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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

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The customer

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

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The market

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

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The support team

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

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The channels

Hello Sugar offers customer support via SMS.

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The situation

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

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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
 
 
HelloSugarStudy_ContentBlock_1-2

 

 

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.
HelloSugarStudy_ContentBlock_2-1

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

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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.

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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.

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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%.

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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.

Partners

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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Bahadir Samli
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2-Feb-29-2024-11-35-00-9309-AM
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Group CIO
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Chief Information Officer
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Annick Faes
Vice President IT and CIO Medical Devices EMEA
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Stef Schampaert
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Chief Digital & Information Officer
Bekaert
Thomas Kessler
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Emmanuel Gob
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pascal pauwels
Pascal Pauwels
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Colruyt
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Koen Segers
Managing Director Belgium and Luxembourg
Dell Technologies
benoit dewaele
Benoît Dewaele
Group IT Directo
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Dirk Deridder-1
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SMALS
Thierry Driesens
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Koen Vandaele
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Liesbet D'hoker
Managing Director
Kyndryl BeLux
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Digitaal Vlaanderen
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Director General Digital Transformation
Federale Overheidsdienst Beleid en Ondersteuning
Tom Tomczak
Tom Tomczak
Chief Commercial Officer (CCO)
NRB
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Cassandre Laurent
Directeur général
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an swalens
An Swalens
Head Of IT (CIO)
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Elke Laeremans
Chief Digital & Supply Chain Officer at Casa International
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Peter Sany
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Executive Advisor
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Dean
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Christel Plessers
Head of IT European Markets
Mercedes-Benz Europe
bauduin cor
Baudouin Corlùy
Chief Market Development Officer
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Team

Luc Hendrikx
Luc Hendrikx
CEO
Inès De Bien
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Partner - CCO
1-Feb-08-2022-10-22-08-68-AM
Daniel Eycken
Partner - COO
Hendrik Deckers
Hendrik Deckers
Founder - MD
Untitled design (1)-2
Jelte Scheys
Tribes Sales Director Belgium
foto Herman
Herman Roelandts
Tribe Master
Joseph Antoun
Joseph Antoun
Senior Program Director
1-Dec-16-2021-02-15-57-02-PM
Eman De Sutter
Program Manager
4-Feb-08-2022-10-22-09-03-AM
Shelly Deracourt
Program 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
Junior Event Manager
ML B-W-1
Martine Lefevre
Financial Controller
Vlera Berishaa (1)
Vlera Berisha
Junior Community Manager
Phaedra Vanhaeren
Phaedra Vanhaeren
Programme & Event 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!