null

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.

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.

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.

Please Log In with your CIONET account first

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

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.