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Belgium 21-10-25 Squad Only Physical english

AI in Practice ; What it really takes to move from pilot to production

Every organisation has a handful of AI pilots. But very few have scaled them. The models are accurate. The vision is clear. But something’s always in the way; lack of infrastructure, unclear ownership, security concerns, or just plain fatigue. This is a conversation for people in the messy middle of the AI journey, those navigating the leap from promising prototypes to operational value.

Belgium 21-10-25 Invitation Only Physical english

CIONET Round Table - From Disconnected Data to Unified Insight ; Building a 360° customer view to unlock commercial growth

In today's competitive landscape, customer expectations have never been higher. They demand a personalised, seamless experience at every touchpoint, from initial marketing contact to post-sale service. Unified data is at the heart of creating engaging customer experiences and is meant to fuel the 360 profile. However, for many organizations, a complete picture of the customer is fragmented, with critical data scattered in disconnected systems and departments. This exclusive roundtable will bring together Digital Leaders active in multiple industries to discuss a critical challenge: breaking down data silos to build a true 360° view of the customer. We will explore how to solve the complex integration challenges that prevent a unified view, and how to transform disparate data into a single source of truth. Join us to: Discover how to overcome the technical hurdles of integrating critical business systems, such as ERP and CRM platforms, to unify customer data. Explore real-world case studies on how organisations have successfully created unified customer insights to enhance personalisation and boost commercial and operational efficiency. Discuss best practices for turning fragmented data into actionable insights that can anticipate customer needs, drive revenue growth, and foster long-term loyalty. This is a unique opportunity for Digital Leaders who are ready to transform their customer engagement strategy and unlock the full potential of their data.

Belgium 22-10-25 Invitation Only Physical english

The End of the Firewall

Enterprises are questioning whether private networks and stacked firewalls are still worthwhile investments. A newer approach operates on the open internet with Zero Trust, eliminates perimeter complexity, and reframes cybersecurity as a business performance metric for boards and audit committees. This is a closed-door, peer discussion, not a lecture. We’ll examine the promise and its pitfalls: Are the promised savings significant, or are they too good to be true? What risks do you introduce? How does this collide with your installed base, legacy OT, entrenched processes and team competencies, and how do you overcome that without breaking operations or credibility with the board? Two senior leaders from global companies will spark the dialogue with lived experience: Kurt De Ruwe, CIO AkzoNobel Frank Bolata, CIO Syensqo

October 21, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Physical english

AI in Practice ; What it really takes to move from pilot to production

November 4, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english

From Backlog to Value ; Prioritising what matters when everything feels urgent

You’ve got a roadmap, a backlog, and a lot of pressure. Every team wants their feature. Every stakeholder claims urgency. And your developers? They just want to deliver something meaningful. But how do you prioritise in a way that serves the business, and keeps the team sane? If your backlog keeps growing and your outcomes stay flat, this session helps you turn intent into value, without losing control.

November 18, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Physical english

Business Process Driven Architecture ; Designing systems that follow how your organisation actually works

Too often, architecture is drawn top-down, neat boxes, elegant flows, and little connection to the way teams really work. But what if we flipped it? What if our systems evolved from the actual processes, pains, and needs that drive the business? If you’re tired of systems that look good on slides but frustrate in practice, this session will ground the conversation where value is created, at the process level.

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How Siemens increased productivity and made CX more human with AI

Europe’s largest manufacturing company needed a way to centralize data and automate high-volume requests. With Zendesk and Ultimate, they were able to free up agents so they had more time for human-to-human interactions while also streamlining productivity.

Siemens at a glance

The customer

Siemens is Europe’s biggest manufacturing company, serving customers from large enterprises to small sole traders in a wide range of industries.

The market

They serve a global customer base in regions including France, Spain, Poland, the US, Germany, Nordics and the UK.

The support team

What started as a small deployment with one support team has now expanded to over 600 Zendesk licences across all their regions.

The channels

Siemens offers automated support through ticket automation and a seamless integration with their CRM, Zendesk.

The situation

For Siemens, CX as a differentiator has always been a core value. But with agents relying on email inboxes, spreadsheets, and other applications to track customer data, delivering on that value was a challenge.

The solution

With Zendesk Enterprise Suite and Ultimate’s ticket automation solution, Siemens found a holistic way to view and manage all customer data and automate support across channels.

Getting started with Zendesk + Ultimate

Following the successful implementation of the Zendesk platform, Siemens wanted to further improve the customer experience through the integration of AI. The company opted to automate with Ultimate because of a few key factors.

The first being that Ultimate could build an AI solution directly into Zendesk. The second reason addresses the challenge of having multiple languages. With Ultimate’s polyglot AI model, responses to customer questions are made directly in the native language, as opposed to translating into English first. The integration of Ultimate also enables the individual regions to implement AI at a pace that works for them.

“When we look across all our customer contacts, about 30% of them are data requests or information requests. We felt that with a good AI solution, we could automate that. So within three years, we want 15% of our responses to be automated. While this may seem conservative, we firstly want to ensure we are providing a really great customer experience, and then gradually push it out,” says Steven Franklin, Head of Global Customer Services at Siemens.

To integrate AI into Zendesk, Steven and the Siemens team worked closely with their Zendesk Customer Success Executive, Peter Eshkeri, together with the team at Ultimate. “We have been on a journey with Zendesk, from the early days of deploying it in a small team. Today we have over 600 licenses and it’s deployed across all our regions. Bringing Ultimate into this partnership, I think we have a really compelling solution for our customers,” says Steven. It’s a partnership grounded in shared values and goals. Together, solutions are developed to streamline the customer journey.

“We don’t operate as three separate companies, we operate as one company working together to find the best means of solving a problem."

Steven Franklin
Head of Global Customer Services, Siemens

CSAT score: 86%

Productivity increase in Nordics: 23%

Languages: 7+

AI use case spotlight #1: Providing proactive support

Steven and his team found that negative customer experiences often happen when a customer has been given an answer, but there’s an obvious follow-up that has been ignored or hasn’t been picked up.
Zendesk, Siemens and Ultimate jointly developed an integration in which the AI would respond to high-volume requests automatically, such as proactively sending a copy of invoices to a customer.
In addition to sending proactive messages, the AI could detect what else the customer was asking and preempt some of those questions with appropriate responses, as well as gathering information and context for the human agents.

AI use case spotlight #2: Freeing up agent time for value-added interactions

Siemens wanted their agents to be able to concentrate on valued human-to-human interactions, rather than focusing on low-value transactions, such as sending invoices or standard information.
By integrating with their back-office systems, their bot could access customer data and provide it to their customers without agent involvement.
Automation has resulted in reduced agent handle times, since the bot can handle basic requests as well as populate the ticket with data to help the agent work more efficiently — resulting in a streamlined customer journey and enabling value-add interactions with customers.

The success story

A holistic solution

The strong partnership between Zendesk, Ultimate and Siemens means that they operate seamlessly as one company, not three — working together to find the best means of solving a problem.

Freeing up agent time

As well as automating responses to common queries, Siemens’ bot uses AI to populate tickets with data. This speeds up handling times and gives their agents more time to focus on value-added customer interactions.

Better data visibility

Instead of using different platforms and applications, all customer data is in one place, so agents can stay within Zendesk. In this omnichannel environment, including phone, email, and WhatsApp, they can efficiently communicate and answer customer queries.

Productivity gains

Since introducing Zendesk and Ultimate, Siemens have been able to resolve tickets faster, exchange tickets between departments more smoothly, and expedite customer onboarding — resulting in 23% increase in productivity in the Nordics and almost 2x the productivity in France.

Next on their automation journey

With the help of Zendesk and Ultimate, Siemens is on track to achieving a holistic global digital customer journey. As AI has been introduced at different speeds across their various markets, some regions are further ahead and are already experiencing productivity gains. This is translating into increased customer satisfaction scores (CSAT). For instance, the Nordics region is hitting an 86% CSAT rating versus an 83% industry benchmark.

Steven says, “Ultimately, we want to get to the point where we have a holistic global digital customer journey. With Zendesk as the foundation and the various apps and integrations such as Ultimate’s AI sitting on top of that, we are getting closer and closer to achieving that.”

Technologies

Ultimate’s polyglot AI model Zendesk platform with AI integration

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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 !

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.