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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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How Vandebron scaled their chat support by 150% without scaling their team

Green energy provider Vandebron needed to manage a surge in volumes, while ensuring customers received the instant support they expect — all without hiring a single extra agent.

Vandebron at a glance

The customer

Vandebron is a green energy company providing households across the country with solar, wind, and bio energy.

The market

Vandebron serves 200,000 energy consumers with customer support in Dutch.

The support team

45 full-time employees receive an average of 5,000 chat requests per month.

The channels

Vandebron agents work across phone, email, and chat, with self-service available to logged-in customers.

The situation

Vandebron wanted to empower its customer support team to meet a surge in requests during the 2022 energy crisis.

The solution

Chat automation that fully resolves 50% of requests and proactively guides customers to self-serve and seamlessly integrates with its CRM platform: Salesforce.

Getting started with Ultimate

Vandebron wanted to make their CX as smooth as possible in the midst of a 2022 surge in energy prices. This included training their customers to self-serve, so they would get what they were urgently looking for faster. Vandebron found Ultimate through their CRM Salesforce's marketplace “Appexchange”, choosing it over the competition thanks to its seamless Salesforce CRM integration.

Automation helped Vandebron and their customers power through the energy crisis, letting them manage 150% higher volumes without needing to scale their team or tech resources. Now, their bot is doing the work of one entire support team.

Start scaling your support with AI

"Changing monthly payments, updating an address: We analyzed our data and found 70% of all customer questions could be grouped into 5-6 topics. These turned into the intents we began automating first."

Bob Molenaar
Digital Experience Manager, Vandebron

AI use case spotlight: training customers to “go digital”

Vandebron customers’ top FAQs revolved around monthly payments, energy usage, meter readings, and changing personal information. Answers to all of them were available on the website, so Bob's team only needed to efficiently triage requests and direct users to the right place to get started.
Their virtual agent, or bot, identified intents based on natural language processing (NLP), a branch of artificial intelligence. It would then handle simple requests fully, or collect information and create a case in Salesforce to reduce average handling time (AHT) for requests that ended up being escalated to a human.
Due to the energy crisis, monthly requests increased from 2,000 to 5,000 requests a month, but a 50% automation rate helped the team easily handle more volumes in less time.

See why our AI is a step above the rest

AI use case spotlight: monitoring customer satisfaction by measuring NPS

Vandebron has two ways of asking for customer feedback: random surveys throughout the year and regular feedback check-ins after every conversation, including post-chat.
Customers can give a star rating following a chat conversation. And the majority responds favorably to it: 50% give the bot 4 or 5 stars on average.

Start saving without sacrificing CSAT

The success story

Scalable

Currently, every season is busy season for Vandebron, so the fact that automation handles the work of an entire additional team is a life saver for them.

Headless

Vandebron chose Ultimate because it was recommended on the Salesforce marketplace, meaning they were able to integrate into Salesforce without creating silos or any interruptions to their existing tech stack.

Customer-friendly

Vandebron carefully tracks their NPS and have seen that customers are taking exceptionally well to automated, 24/7 chat.

Cost-effective

A 50% automation rate is driving down Vandebron's cost per interaction, enabling Vandebron to handle more overall volumes at a lower cost.

Technologies

Ultimate: Chat automation

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.