Rapid prototyping in the Benelux region is experiencing unprecedented growth. Yet, for most engineering and product teams, choosing the right process and material still feels confusing. With dozens of 3D printing technologies, overlapping material names, and wildly different supplier capabilities, selecting the wrong option can waste weeks of development time. This guide breaks down the decision-making process so you can confidently choose the right rapid prototyping method, match it to your use case, and avoid costly mistakes. Why rapid prototyping services in Benelux feel so hard to navigate Although Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg are home to some of Europe’s most advanced additive manufacturing hubs, this abundance often overwhelms teams. A design engineer may find themselves comparing a Dutch SLS bureau, a Belgian CNC shop, and a Luxembourgish on-demand platform — only to realize each one uses different terminology, tolerances, and service levels. The challenge isn’t a lack of options; it’s the lack of clarity. For example: The same nylon powder may be labeled PA12, PA2200, or “White Nylon.” Two CNC suppliers may both offer aluminum 6061, but one guarantees ±0.05 mm tolerance while the other only provides ±0.2 mm. A supplier recommending SLA resin might be optimizing for their internal capacity, not your functional needs. This mismatch between what teams need and what suppliers communicate is what makes the Benelux prototyping landscape feel difficult to navigate, especially for fast-moving product companies. The hidden cost of guessing your prototyping process and material Every time a team guesses instead of using a structured selection method, they risk triggering a chain reaction of additional delays. A prototype made in the wrong material may warp under testing, fracture during assembly, or produce misleading results that push the design in the wrong direction. Even small misunderstandings create friction: A “quick and cheap” FDM part may arrive with layer lines too rough for testing a hinge mechanism. An SLA prototype used for functional testing may crack because the resin wasn’t designed for impact loads. A CNC part with the wrong surface finish can offer misleading friction or wear characteristics. These failures aren’t just inconvenient; they introduce compounding project delays, raise costs, and undermine confidence in the development process. Teams often underestimate how many iterations they waste simply because the first prototype wasn’t built using the right specifications. A simple decision framework for rapid prototyping services Benelux buyers The most reliable way to eliminate confusion is to adopt a standardized, team-wide decision framework. The following three-step model helps align engineering, design, and procurement from the start. 1. Clarify the purpose of the prototype Ask: What question does this prototype need to answer? Prototypes fall into four categories: Look – Aesthetic evaluation, colors, textures, ergonomics. Fit – Checking tolerances, assemblies, and mating parts. Function – Assessing strength, stiffness, flexibility, or load. Validation – Near-production testing and compliance checks. When you clearly define the job of the prototype, 60% of your manufacturing decisions become obvious. 2. Map the performance requirements This includes: Mechanical loads Expected stresses Environmental exposure Surface finish expectations Dimensional accuracy Assembly constraints Most mistakes occur because teams prioritize “speed and cost” before considering these requirements. 3. Select the process → then the material Many companies do the opposite. They pick a material first (like ABS) then try to fit it into a process. But every prototyping technology has built-in limits: SLA offers great detail but brittle materials MJF is strong but offers limited color and surface finish CNC is precise but slower and more expensive Choosing the process first narrows the material options and reduces decision fatigue. From SLS to CNC: matching process and material to your real use case Below we present an expanded explanation of the main prototyping technologies used in the Benelux region and when to choose each. SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) SLS has become a favorite among Benelux hardware teams because it delivers robust, support-free parts ideal for snap-fits, housings, fixtures, and functional assemblies. The slightly grainy finish is a tradeoff, but for engineering prototypes it often provides the best balance of strength and cost. Best for: Functional prototypes, assemblies, mechanical testing Consider if: Your part needs durability but surface finish isn’t critical SLA (Stereolithography) SLA is the go-to choice for visual prototypes that require extremely smooth surfaces and fine detail. Designers appreciate SLA for its ability to produce models that almost look injection-molded — ideal for stakeholder presentations or ergonomic evaluations. Best for: High-detail models, fluid-tight components, aesthetic reviews Avoid if: You need impact resistance or significant mechanical performance MJF (Multi Jet Fusion) MJF delivers the mechanical strength of SLS but with noticeably better surface finish and detail definition. Many Benelux teams choose MJF when they need a durable part that also looks more refined. Best for: Strong prototypes, assemblies, small-batch production Ideal for: Parts requiring consistent mechanical properties across batches FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) Despite being the least precise of the major technologies, FDM remains popular for early-stage, cost-sensitive prototyping. It excels in large parts and quick mechanical evaluations. Best for: Draft concepts, budget-limited prototypes, large simple geometries Limitations: Surface roughness, anisotropic strength, limited detail CNC Machining For ultimate performance, CNC machining remains unmatched. When a prototype needs to behave nearly identically to the final product, especially in metals, Benelux manufacturers rely heavily on CNC. Best for: Engineering validation, high-precision components, metal parts Ideal when: You need tolerances tighter than ±0.1 mm Vacuum Casting / Urethane Casting This is the closest you can get to injection-molded aesthetics without the tooling cost. Perfect for user testing, marketing samples, or low-volume pre-series runs. Best for: Consumer product testing, tactile evaluations, small batches Strength: Material variety that mimics PP, ABS, rubber, or silicone How Sigli helps Benelux teams standardise rapid prototyping decisions Sigli works with engineering and product teams across Benelux to replace ad-hoc prototyping with a structured, team-wide methodology. Instead of engineers reinventing the wheel for every prototype, Sigli helps organizations create: Decision matrices for when to use each process Standardized material libraries across suppliers Clear guidelines for tolerances, finish, and critical surfaces Supplier-neutral recommendations so teams always choose based on requirements, not biases Repeatable workflows that reduce ambiguity and accelerate development By removing subjective decision-making, teams reduce prototype failures, shorten development cycles, and ensure every stakeholder speaks the same language. Book a consultation with Sigli: turn prototyping chaos into a clear playbook If your team is struggling with inconsistent prototyping choices, unclear specifications, or unpredictable outcomes, Sigli can help. We work with Benelux companies to build a customized, scalable prototyping playbook that simplifies decision-making and eliminates guesswork. Book a consultation with Sigli today and transform your prototyping process into a clear, reliable, and repeatable system.

Across the Netherlands, whether in Amsterdam’s fintech ecosystem, Utrecht’s public-sector institutions, or Rotterdam’s industrial hubs, organisations are modernising their data platforms at an increasing pace. Cloud adoption, AI readiness, and legacy system retirement all depend on one critical activity: migrating data safely, accurately, and predictably. Yet despite its importance, Dutch organisations frequently report the same problem. A project that begins with a seemingly solid quote soon spirals into something far more expensive. The invoice grows, timelines extend, and trust erodes. This article explores why this pattern happens so often and how a modern, structured, fixed-fee approach to Data Migration Services Netherlands can eliminate cost creep entirely. Data Migration Services Netherlands: “The quote was X, the invoice is X++.” Dutch teams from scaleups to large enterprises regularly share stories of migration projects that expand beyond the original quote. What starts as a straightforward estimate becomes a rolling list of “extra hours,” “unexpected complexity,” or “additional technical effort.” Why does this happen so consistently? 1. Scope assumptions are vague or incomplete. If the vendor doesn’t deeply analyse the source systems, data quality, volume, and transformation logic upfront, the project begins with guesswork. Guesswork always becomes expensive. 2. Vendors rely on open-ended time-and-materials models. Without fixed deliverables, the vendor carries no incentive to control time, reduce inefficiencies, or proactively manage risk. 3. Complexity is discovered late rather than planned for. Hidden tables, undocumented rules, poor-quality fields, and unexpected dependencies create a cascade of unplanned work. 4. No shared reference document defines the path to “done.” Without a clear contract for execution — such as a migration runbook — both sides have different interpretations of what success looks like. “Ambiguity early in a migration becomes expensive later.” When inputs are unclear, outputs become unpredictable. And unpredictable outputs create unpredictable invoices. The Fix: Fixed-Fee Milestones, Volume Caps & A Clear Runbook A growing number of Dutch organisations now insist on a modernised model for Data Migration Services Netherlands — one that prioritises clarity, transparency, and predictability. This model uses three stabilising elements: 1. Fixed-fee deliverables with clear acceptance criteria Each deliverable has an agreed scope, definition of done, and measurable outcome. If the deliverable is not accepted, it is not billed. 2. Volume, quality, and complexity caps Caps prevent silent inflation of scope. They define exactly what is included—and when a change order must be triggered. 3. A shared migration runbook The runbook serves as the project’s “flight plan.” It aligns both client and vendor on sequencing, responsibilities, checkpoints, and quality controls. Together, these mechanisms remove ambiguity long before the first dataset is extracted or loaded. Scope That Sticks: Defining Baselines & Non-Goals Successful migrations depend on sharp scope boundaries. High-performing Dutch teams distinguish between: Baselines (included activities) These define the known, measurable characteristics of the migration, such as: The specific source systems and tables The row counts and expected data volume The transformations that will be applied The required data quality threshold The expected complexity of logic and mapping Non-Goals (excluded activities) These protect the project from scope drift and establish what the migration will not do, such as: Net-new application features Comprehensive data cleansing or remediation Adding entirely new systems mid-project Re-engineering business processes or architecture Baselines vs Non-Goals Baseline (Included) Non-Goal (Excluded) Defined data sources New feature development Agreed transformations Full data-quality cleansing Pre-measured volume Adding systems mid-project This clarity is often the single biggest factor in keeping data migration projects on-budget and on-schedule. Pay for Progress: Milestone Billing for Data Migration Services Netherlands Milestone billing ties payments to delivered value—not to hours spent. Each milestone has acceptance criteria that must be met before the vendor is paid. Common milestones include: Completion of data profiling The team understands the structure, quality, and volume of the source data. Transformation logic confirmed Every rule is documented, reviewed, and approved. Test migration validated A representative subset of data is migrated to validate approach and tooling. Dry-run executed and reconciled End-to-end migration is tested at scale with measurable validation checks. Cutover completed The final migration is executed and business operations resume on the new platform. This structure gives Dutch organisations full control over budget and pace, turning delivery into a predictable sequence — not a moving target. No “Mystery Terabytes”: Volume Caps Prevent Budget Surprises Unexpected data volume is one of the leading causes of cost escalation in migrations. Volume caps eliminate uncertainty by setting measurable thresholds for: Maximum row counts Maximum number of tables Maximum number of transformation rules Expected data quality exceptions These caps act as transparent boundaries. If volumes exceed the caps, the change-order process is triggered—no surprises, no hidden costs. Two successful examples where volume caps protected the project: Migration of a major UK property dataset for AI readiness A full rebuild of a reverse logistics data platform Both projects stayed on budget because the volume was defined upfront—not discovered halfway. Change Without Chaos: A Structured Change-Order Playbook Change is inevitable in data migrations. New fields appear, business rules evolve, and systems shift. What separates mature migrations from chaotic ones is not the avoidance of change — but the process for handling it. A simple, effective workflow: Change Proposed → Impact Assessed → Cost/Time Issued → Approval → Logged in Runbook This ensures every change is transparent, costed, documented, and incorporated into the shared plan. Radical Transparency: Runbooks That De-Risk Data Migration Services Netherlands The migration runbook is the project’s single source of truth. It documents: Data mapping and transformation logic Migration sequence and timing Cutover phases and business readiness steps On-failure rollback protocols Acceptance criteria and reconciliation checks With a shared runbook, every stakeholder—from engineers to business owners—has full visibility into how the migration will unfold. Trust but Verify: Reconciliation Packs Provide Mathematical Proof of Success Reconciliation packs create confidence and auditability. They typically include: Record counts before and after migration Field-level comparisons Exception lists and error logs Data-quality checks Transformation summaries These deliver quantifiable proof that the migration was correct—not just “assumed to be correct.” Keeping Costs in Check: FinOps Guardrails for Cloud Migrations Cloud-based migrations can introduce unexpected consumption costs. FinOps guardrails provide oversight and protect budgets through: Automated spend alerts Shutdown windows for non-production environments Right-sizing recommendations Predefined budget templates These controls ensure the migration remains both technically and financially predictable. Prove Value Fast: Fixed-Fee Pilot for Data Migration Services Netherlands A fixed-fee pilot gives Dutch organisations a low-risk entry point to assess: Data quality issues Source system complexity Performance of migration tooling Validity of the runbook Integration with downstream systems Within a few weeks, the organisation receives evidence-based clarity—before committing to a full-scale migration. “Done” Means Done: Clear Acceptance Criteria Objective acceptance criteria remove the ambiguity that often plagues data migrations. A project is complete only when: Quality thresholds are met Reconciliations pass Cutover succeeds without critical issues Operational teams are fully prepared Formal sign-off is documented When acceptance is measurable, “done” becomes unambiguous.

Cloud-based BI dashboards are becoming the backbone of data-driven organizations across the Benelux, but many still struggle with slow loading times, unreliable integrations, and scattered data logic, especially when connecting SAP, Snowflake, BigQuery, and modern CRM platforms. As companies in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg accelerate their digital transformation, a stable, automated, and scalable BI architecture is no longer optional. It’s the key to faster decisions, aligned KPIs, and predictable performance across every department.Cloud-based BI dashboards Benelux: the integration pain everyone hitsCloud BI in the Benelux region is booming—but so are the challenges that come with it. Organizations using SAP, Snowflake, Google BigQuery, or complex CRM ecosystems (Salesforce, Dynamics 365, HubSpot) often face the same problems: Data pipelines that break after every vendor update Manual exports or brittle custom scripts Latency that makes dashboards feel outdated High maintenance costs from scattered integrations A lack of shared definitions across teamsWhen your BI dashboards depend on a messy web of connections, every new report becomes a project, every audit becomes a fire drill, and every business user loses trust in the numbers.The result? Slow decisions and frustrated teams — exactly what cloud BI is supposed to fix.What’s at stake for Cloud-based BI dashboards Benelux (speed, trust, money)In the Benelux’s increasingly competitive landscape — logistics, manufacturing, fintech, energy, retail, businesses rely on fast, reliable data more than ever.Here’s what’s directly on the line:‍SpeedDashboards that load in seconds, not minutesReal-time or near-real-time analyticsShorter delivery times for new reports or KPIs‍TrustOne definition for revenue, margin, churn, inventoryConsistent logic across Power BI, Tableau, Looker, QlikReliable lineage so auditors and teams know where data comes fromMoneyLower engineering hours spent on fixing pipelinesCloud warehouse costs optimized (no hidden spikes)Fewer delays in operational or strategic decisionsIn Benelux organizations, known for tight operational margins, these factors don’t just influence data teams; they influence profitability.The one-sentence fix for Cloud-based BI dashboards BeneluxStandardize your integrations, automate your data movement (CDC/ELT), and centralize your business logic into a semantic layer that outlives any BI tool.This isn’t theory. It’s the model used by leading Benelux enterprises modernizing their BI stack.‍Examples:Future-Proofing Complex Industrial Software (MES)Manufacturers across the Benelux integrate shop-floor systems with cloud warehouses to unify production KPIs without rewriting 20-year-old MES platforms.Comprehensive Salesforce Implementation for a Large Lighting CompanyA cross-border Benelux lighting group unified CRM, ERP, and e-commerce data into a modern warehouse—delivering consistent customer reporting across three countries.‍Connectors that click for Cloud-based BI dashboards Benelux‍The fastest path to reliable dashboards is simple:Use high-quality, maintenance-free connectors for SAP, Snowflake, BigQuery, Salesforce, Dynamics, and legacy on-prem systems.‍Modern, production-grade connectors offer:Zero-code onboardingAutomatic schema evolutionSupport for on-prem and cloud systemsEU-compliant deployment modelsBuilt-in monitoring, lineage, and recoveryWhen connectors “just work,” your analysts can actually analyze rather than babysit pipelines.CDC/ELT: the engine behind Cloud-based BI dashboards BeneluxBenelux businesses increasingly rely on Change Data Capture (CDC) and ELT patterns to support their BI dashboards.Why?Benefits:Fresh data every few minutesMassive reduction in pipeline failureWarehouse-optimized transformations (using dbt or SQL)Instant replication from SAP, CRM, or SQL ServerScalable performance as data growsCDC/ELT makes your BI dashboards feel real-time — even if your source systems aren’t.The semantic layer that outlives your toolset in the BeneluxWith companies shifting between Power BI, Tableau, Qlik, or Looker, only one thing prevents chaos:A reusable semantic layer.It delivers:Shared KPIs (margin, OTIF, churn, ARR, CLV, inventory turnover)Business-controlled definitionsTool-agnostic modelingPermission management across teamsFaster dashboard buildsFor Benelux organizations with distributed teams (NL, BE, LU), a semantic layer is the difference between aligned insights and dashboard anarchy.‍EU residency & security for Cloud-based BI dashboards BeneluxData sovereignty and compliance are non-negotiable in the Benelux—especially in manufacturing, logistics, public sector, banking, and healthcare.A compliant BI foundation includes:EU-only data residency (Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt)ISO 27001 + SOC 2 Type IIGDPR-by-design connectorsFine-grained access controlsRow-level and column-level securityWhen compliance is built in, audits become smoother and BI teams stop playing gatekeeper.Performance & cost control for Cloud-based BI dashboards BeneluxCloud BI dashboards become expensive when:Queries over-scan Snowflake or BigQueryDashboards run unnecessary refreshesTransformations are duplicated across toolsData models become bloatedA modern BI architecture fixes these pain points:Query pushdown and optimizationCaching layers for heavy dashboardsMaterialized views for consistent high-speed KPIsWarehouse usage monitoringWith predictable spend and lightning-fast dashboards, teams finally get the performance cloud BI promised.‍A 2–6 week pilot for Cloud-based BI dashboards BeneluxMost Benelux organizations can validate their entire BI modernization approach in 2–6 weeks:Typical pilot scope:Integrate one ERP source (SAP, Navision, or custom SQL)Sync one CRM (Salesforce, Dynamics, HubSpot)Load data into BigQuery or SnowflakeBuild a semantic model for core KPIsDeliver 3–5 dashboards (Power BI/Tableau/Looker)Validate governance + securityThis structured pilot produces a ready-to-scale blueprint for your whole organization.Measuring ROI for Cloud-based BI dashboards BeneluxThe ROI of modern cloud BI can be measured in both hard savings and business impact.Operational savings:40–70% fewer hours spent fixing pipelines30–60% reduction in dashboard delivery time20–55% lower warehouse bills through optimized queriesBusiness impact:Faster forecasting and S&OP cyclesImproved sales productivity (CRM-to-BI alignment)Higher OTIF in manufacturing and logisticsBetter customer insights across Benelux marketsWhen dashboards are fast, trusted, and automated, every department, from finance to operations, benefits.

The Innovantage podcast, hosted by Sigli’s CBDO Max Golikov, aims to offer its audience diverse perspectives on business and technology. While most episodes focus on specific themes or sectors, this one takes a broader approach as it explores a variety of interconnected topics through the lens of an exceptional guest.In this episode, Max is joined by a person who uniquely combines academic insight, political experience, and entrepreneurial vision. That’s Professor Rudy Aernoudt, renowned author, speaker, and founder of EBAN.He teaches geopolitics and monetary policy at the University of Ghent in Belgium and at BMI, one of Europe’s leading executive MBA institutes.Professor Aernoudt has also held prominent political roles, serving as Chief Economist at the European Commission and Chief of Staff at multiple levels of government, including European, Belgian, Walloon, and Flemish. This achievement earned him a mention in the Guinness World Records.But his career extends beyond politics and academia. He also managed a non-governmental organization, a spin-off of MIT, dedicated to educational technology. He led projects such as the Hundred-Dollar Laptop initiative that distributed over four million devices across schools in South America and Africa.As founder of the European Business Angel Network (EBAN), Rudy continues to bridge theory and practice. He often describes himself as a “pracademic”. Of course, it is an unofficial term. But it perfectly reflects his dual identity as both a thinker and a doer.Work-life balance: Does it really exist?When asked about the idea of “work-life balance,” Professor Aernoudt is quite skeptical. For him, the very notion of balance suggests a divide between work and life that should not exist.According to him, work should be a passion. It’s not about finishing at five o’clock so life can begin. If you truly enjoy what you do, every hour of the day can be fulfilling.In his latest book titled “Entrepreneurship”, Professor Aernoudt mentioned a provocative idea that “life is too short to work for a boss”. Too many people get stuck in their mid-thirties or forties as they have mortgages, children, and a lot of obligations. All this traps them in work they don’t enjoy. As Rudy highlighted, the solution lies in cultivating a culture of choice and flexibility. These values are reflected in the startup world, where people can pursue what excites them and change direction when it no longer does.Professor Aernoudt defines his main goal in simple terms: to have influence and change lives. That’s what guided his work in European institutions, where he could improve citizens’ quality of life, and shaped his role as a professor. Is AI dangerous for education?According to Rudy, the rise of artificial intelligence presents profound challenges for education and society. Today, young people face constant exposure to screens, including television, smartphones, and computers. This fosters dependency and reshapes how they learn. Just as GPS has eroded people’s ability to navigate without digital assistance, AI can create a generation of individuals who outsource critical thinking to machines.In this context, the role of professors is not to be providers of ready-made answers, but to help students reflect on what knowledge they truly value, how dependent they wish to be on technology, and what direction they want their lives to take.While some educators criticize younger generations for lacking discipline, Rudy disagrees. He views youth activism as proof of strong commitment and potential, even if expressed differently than before. At the same time, he acknowledges the difficulty of growing up in a world where friendship and learning increasingly occur through digital platforms.The deeper issue lies in the way society anthropomorphizes AI. Just as earlier societies turned to religion for answers, people now risk treating machines as partners or substitutes for human judgment. This dependence raises pressing ethical questions. Europe’s unique modelProfessor Aernoudt believes that Europe should resist the temptation to imitate the United States or China in its economic and technological strategies. The European region has the opportunity to define its own path.In his view, Europe’s strength lies in building an ethical framework for growth and innovation that reflects its cultural and social values.At the same time, Professor Aernoudt highlighted that Europe is not lagging behind the United States in startup creation. In the past decade, it accounted for 35% of global startups, compared to America’s 42%. The main challenge is related not to starting companies but to scaling them efficiently.Two main barriers hinder growth in Europe: limited access to capital and a conservative entrepreneurial mindset. Pension funds, for example, allocate less than 0.8% of their assets to venture capital. It is far below what is necessary to drive scale-ups. Culturally, many European entrepreneurs prioritize ownership control over expansion, whereas successful global founders often thrive with smaller stakes in rapidly growing companies.For Rudy, scaling is essential because high-growth firms drive innovation and employment. Europe must cultivate both financial mechanisms and a growth-oriented mindset to compete globally. AI, crisis, and entrepreneurshipProfessor Aernoudt warned that the AI sector may be heading toward a bubble, as reports suggest that up to 95% of AI startups will fail. However, according to him, this situation shouldn’t be viewed as a catastrophe. Instead, a crisis can be perceived as an inherent and even positive element of economic life.If we turn to the Greek root of the word, we will see that crisis also means decision and opportunity. For Rudy, the economy is never flat or permanent. It constantly shifts. This requires businesses and leaders to adapt and rethink models.This perspective also shapes his definition of entrepreneurship. He recalls Machiavelli’s notion that a true entrepreneur is someone who can make a difference between obstacles and opportunities and turn both to their advantage.The role of venture capital in EuropeTraditionally, European entrepreneurs favor bank loans over venture capital. This culture limits the growth of fast-scaling companies.Professor Aernoudt believes in the power of mezzanine financing (such tools sit between loans and equity), which allows firms to access growth capital without excessive dilution. At the same time, he mentioned structural issues in Europe’s venture capital market. In this region, 42% of funds come from public sources. Such dominance risks crowding out private investors who are reluctant to sit alongside government representatives.In this context, smarter public–private collaboration could be a game-changer. These schemes presuppose that public funds absorb more risk in case of failure, while private investors gain stronger returns when ventures succeed. How business angels can drive startup financingProfessor Aernoudt explained that business angels remain the backbone of startup financing. Around 60% of startups in Europe receive initial funding from business angels. Meanwhile, 30% come from seed capital and 10% from crowdfunding. Unlike large venture funds, angel investors typically provide smaller amounts (from €60,000 to €500,000). But they also bring experience, networks, and mentorship.As the founder of the European Business Angel Network, Rudy played a key role in developing this ecosystem. When he launched EBAN 25 years ago, continental Europe had almost no angel networks. Today, there are more than 350. Many global success businesses, from Skype to Spotify, began with angel funding.For startups seeking their first €100,000 to €500,000, angel networks can become the best entry point. Why female founders struggle for fundingMeanwhile, there is a persistent challenge in European venture capital: gender bias. While roughly 30% of European startups are women-led, only 2% of venture capital funding flows to them. One key reason is the reliance on referrals. 87% of VC investments come through personal networks, which remain overwhelmingly male.Nevertheless, female-led startups often outperform their male counterparts in accuracy and execution. Additionally, women’s business plans are generally more realistic and can offer investors potentially better returns. But unconscious bias continues to hinder access to capital.Raising awareness, promoting female angel investors, and actively supporting women-led ventures are essential steps to correcting this imbalance.Regulation and bureaucracy as the key innovation barriers in EuropeExcessive regulation and bureaucracy are Europe’s biggest obstacles to innovation. Instead of numerous new laws, the region should have smart and stable regulations. Laws should provide a predictable framework that encourages investment and business planning. They shouldn’t be frequently changed, as it often happens in Belgium. In contrast, highly competitive economies such as Switzerland and Singapore maintain stable policies that make long-term planning feasible.Rudy is also skeptical of subsidies. Financial engineering tools like venture capital, business angels, and reimbursable loans can be much more efficient. Europe already has abundant capital, but the challenge lies in channeling it effectively into startups and scale-ups. Innovative instruments (like public–private funds) can unlock this potential without printing more money. Why is it vital to invest in defense and dual-use startups?Professor Aernoudt also stressed that defense and dual-use technologies represent a critical and largely untapped market for European startups. While Europe once excluded defense from investment funding, recent shifts recognize its strategic importance. And it is important not only for military applications but also for research and training.There are opportunities for Europe in emerging sectors such as space and defense. The region can’t rely solely on foreign suppliers. It needs startups capable of producing innovative solutions domestically. Programs like the BMI Capstone Project already encourage students to develop entrepreneurial ideas in the defense field.Despite the existing concerns, technologies themselves, including artificial intelligence and military systems, are inherently neutral. Their ethical dimension depends entirely on how humans choose to use them. That’s why, according to Professor Aernoudt, it is important to maintain human oversight and decision-making so that people remain in control,The development of EBANThe European Business Angel Network was launched with just two founders. It was started as a small feasibility study costing €40,000. Its aim was to connect startups with early-stage investors, business angels. Such people often have money and experience but no structured way to invest.EBAN’s early efforts included seminars across Europe to educate potential investors and encourage the formation of local networks. Today, the created networks collectively support nearly 5000 companies per year.One of the main things Rudy learnt from his experience is the fact that the quality of a business angel network depends entirely on the quality of its members.And the second lesson is that if you want to attract genuine, high-quality business angels, you must recognize that joining a serious network shouldn’t be free. Members need to contribute financially because they gain access to curated startup opportunities. A good business angel network should be self-sustaining. When deals are successful, the network should earn a success fee.To improve investor skills, EBAN also established Business Angel Academies, which offer training in company valuation, shareholder agreements, and syndication.Syndication in EuropeThe average business angel can invest around €60,000. It means that startups need to convince multiple angels to meet funding needs. For amounts between €200,000 and €1 million, companies are too large for individual angels but too small for traditional venture capital. That’s a gap that is best addressed through syndication.Syndication allows inexperienced angels to co-invest alongside more experienced investors. This helps them gradually build expertise and share risk. This approach aligns with European entrepreneurial values. Business angels typically seek moderate returns and focus on supporting promising startups.According to Professor Aernoudt, most startups will not deliver blockbuster returns, but they will still bring reasonable gains. Together with strategic support, they can successfully sustain innovation. Overcoming Europe’s venture capital challengesThere are two major challenges in Europe’s venture capital ecosystem: fundraising and exits. While Europe has around 850 VC funds, many struggle with liquidity and raising sufficient capital.Here is where the US Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) model can be a solution. In this approach, government-backed labels allow private funds to access cheap, leveraged financing without subsidies. This can dramatically increase returns and minimize public risk. Public support at the fund level can unlock larger VC funds and create a robust exit market. A similar system could stimulate private investment and enable European startups to grow without depending solely on limited government grants or small-scale funding.ESCALAR (European Scale-up Action for Risk capital) is Europe’s adaptation of the US SBIC model. Under the system, if a fund invests €50 million, Escalar provides an additional €50 million on a non-pari passu basis. It means that public money absorbs first losses, while private investors claim the majority of gains. The Zebra economy: New approach to building long-term valueAnother concept that was discussed in this episode is the Zebra economy. This concept was introduced by Professor Aernoudt. It challenges traditional profit-driven business models. Unlike conventional companies that prioritize short-term gains or purely social enterprises, zebra companies aim to generate profits and deliver meaningful societal impact at the same time. This approach encourages long-term thinking and value-driven decision-making.Rudy believes the venture capital sector must adapt and shift from short-term, 10-year investment cycles toward models aligned with long-term growth.There are some real-world examples of zebra companies, which combine profitability with strong social and environmental commitments. One of them is Ben & Jerry’s. Such businesses employ people with disabilities, prioritize local sourcing, and actively support local economies.This is what defines the zebra economy: businesses should thrive within a community rather than trying to dominate it. Professor Aernoudt believes that Europe should embrace this approach as it strongly aligns with its core values.Want to learn more about the business world and the role of technology and innovation in the future of our society? In the Innovantage podcast, you can find thought-provoking insights and real-world perspectives from the leading experts. Don’t miss the upcoming episodes where its host Max Golikov will discuss trending topics with his new guests!

If you support customers in the Benelux, you already know that “Dutch” and “French” are not single, universal things. A Dutch customer in Rotterdam doesn’t write or complain the same way as a Dutch speaker in Antwerp. A Belgian French speaker has a different tone again. And many B2B relationships still happen in English — with a distinctly European flavour, not US startup-speak.Now add a new ingredient: generative AI.Teams rush to deploy an AI chatbot for customer support Benelux on the website, in WhatsApp, and inside CRMs like Zoho. The tech works surprisingly well out of the box — until it starts answering NL-BE questions in NL-NL tone, mixing FR-BE and FR-FR vocabulary, or switching mid-conversation into generic EN-US because a library prompt was in English.The result: you don’t just have hallucinations to worry about. You have style drift and locale drift that quietly erode trust.This article is a style-guide starter pack to prevent that. It shows how to build an AI chatbot for customer support Benelux that is:Locale-native for NL-NL, NL-BE, FR-BE, and EN-GBGrounded in your own terminology and formatsReady for RAG, routing, GDPR, and the EU AI ActMeasurable, so you can actively improve CSAT, not just “go live”Why Benelux Needs Locale-Native CX (not just translation)Most chatbot projects start with a simple idea: “We’ll do Dutch, French, and English.” On paper, that sounds reasonable. In practice, Benelux is full of nuance:Dutch in the Netherlands (NL-NL) vs Dutch in Belgium (NL-BE)French in Belgium (FR-BE) vs French in France (FR-FR)English that reads like EN-GB business communication, not American marketing copyCustomers feel these differences immediately. An AI chatbot for customer support Benelux that speaks the “wrong kind” of Dutch or French may still be understandable — but it will feel foreign, generic, or slightly off. The same happens when dates, decimals, currency formats, or payment terms follow the wrong convention.At the same time, regulators are raising the bar. The EU’s AI Act introduces risk-based obligations for certain AI systems, including those used in customer-facing contexts, with requirements around transparency, documentation, and risk controls. Combined with GDPR, this pushes organisations towards traceable, controllable AI, not black-box experiments.All of this means you can’t treat “language” as one line in a configuration file anymore. For an AI chatbot for customer support Benelux, you need locale-native CX by design:Clear decisions about tone and formality per localeAgreed terminology and formatting rulesGuardrails that stop the model drifting into mixed-language or off-brand repliesLogging and controls that you can explain to auditors and to annoyed customersThat is exactly what a style guide and termbase give you.Language & Tone Profiles: NL-NL, NL-BE, FR-BE, EN-GBA good style guide starts by treating each locale as a separate “voice profile”, even if the underlying model is the same. For an AI chatbot for customer support Benelux, you will usually begin with four:NL-NL – Dutch for the NetherlandsNL-BE – Flemish / Dutch for BelgiumFR-BE – Belgian FrenchEN-GB – UK-style EnglishEach profile should answer three questions:Register & formalityAre we using je/jij or u in NL-NL?Are we comfortable with je/jij in NL-BE, or do we prefer u in some industries?How formal should FR-BE be compared to standard FR-FR?Does EN-GB copy sound like B2B email or like a cheerful app notification?Tone under pressureHow do we apologise? Brief and factual, or warm and chatty?Do we acknowledge emotions explicitly (“I understand this is frustrating”) or keep it short?How do we phrase “no” or policy limits without sounding robotic?Code-switching rulesWhen a customer mixes languages (very common in Benelux), do we mirror that mix or stick to their primary language?Do we ever switch from NL-BE to EN-GB mid-thread if they add English terms, or do we keep the base language stable?You can capture this in a simple, readable format, and then convert it into system prompts and few-shot examples later. The point is to make deliberate choices, not let the base model improvise.Termbase & Formatting: Payments, VAT, Dates, CurrencyOnce tone is clear, you need to pin down the harder, more boring bits: terminology and formatting. This is where a lot of “small” customer frustrations come from.For an AI chatbot for customer support Benelux, a practical termbase usually covers:Payment terms & statusesHow do you call “outstanding invoice”, “overdue”, “direct debit”, “SEPA transfer” in each locale? Do you use native terms or keep some English technical labels?VAT & tax language“BTW” in Dutch, “TVA” in French, references to 21%, 9%, 0% VAT, intra-community supply, reverse charge, etc. The chatbot should not invent tax advice, but it must talk about invoices and VAT correctly.Dates, numbers, and currencyDD-MM-YYYY vs other variantsDecimal comma vs decimal point“€ 1.250,00” vs “1,250.00 EUR” vs “€1,250”Inconsistent formatting is a fast way to break trust.Product and feature namesInternal shorthand vs external naming. For example, internal “Module X” may be branded as “Risk Monitor” for customers. The chatbot should stick to the customer-facing names unless you deliberately allow both.A termbase CSV works surprisingly well: each row has a concept, and columns for NL-NL, NL-BE, FR-BE, EN-GB, plus notes (e.g., “never use this synonym”, “internal only”). You can feed this to your RAG layer, enforce it in prompt instructions, and even validate responses automatically for forbidden or deprecated terms.Prompt & Few-Shot Patterns for Each LocaleWith tone and terminology nailed, you can turn them into prompt patterns. The idea is simple: your AI chatbot for customer support Benelux should not receive one generic system prompt in English. It should receive locale-specific instructions that reflect your style guide.For each locale, you usually define:A system prompt that describes tone, formality, and formatting expectationsA set of few-shot examples: short, real-looking Q&A pairs that demonstrate how to handle common situations, including difficult ones (delays, refunds, policy limits)For example:NL-NL prompt emphasises clear, direct answers, je/jij or u depending on your brand, short sentences, and Dutch formatting for dates and currency.NL-BE prompt leans slightly more polite, with vocabulary and idioms that feel natural in Belgium.FR-BE prompt avoids overly Parisian expressions and reflects typical Belgian usage.EN-GB prompt focuses on concise, polite business English, not American-style enthusiasm.Few-shot examples are where you teach the model your edge cases:How to respond when documentation is missing or unclearHow to escalate gracefully to a human agentHow to say “I don’t know” in each language without sounding unhelpfulThese examples become part of your “starter pack” and can be adjusted as you see where the chatbot struggles.RAG, Routing & Governance (GDPR + EU AI Act-ready)Under the hood, most serious deployments of an AI chatbot for customer support Benelux use some version of RAG: Retrieval-Augmented Generation. The model doesn’t just invent answers; it retrieves relevant knowledge from your documentation, FAQs, policies, order data, or ticket history and uses that to generate grounded replies.To make this work in Benelux, you need three more pieces.RoutingIncoming messages are detected for language and, where possible, locale. “NL-NL vs NL-BE” might be inferred from channel, customer profile, or country field in your CRM (e.g., Zoho). The router then:Picks the right locale profile (NL-NL, NL-BE, FR-BE, EN-GB)Picks the right knowledge domains (billing, delivery, product, etc.)Decides whether to respond automatically, ask a clarification, or escalateGovernance & loggingEvery answer can be traced: what documents were retrieved, which prompt template was used, what version of the style guide was active.You can flag and review problematic answers, correct the underlying content or prompts, and re-test.This kind of traceability is exactly what EU regulators are pointing towards when they talk about documentation, transparency, and risk management for AI systems.Data protection (GDPR)Limit what personal data is fed into the model context.Define retention rules for conversation logs.Document your legal basis (e.g., legitimate interest or contract) and your sub-processor chain if you use external LLM providers.A good governance setup doesn’t make your chatbot slower; it makes it safer to scale.QA & Metrics: Kill Mixed-Language Replies, Lift CSATOnce your AI chatbot for customer support Benelux is live, the work shifts from building to quality assurance and iteration.Two technical quality issues matter a lot in Benelux:Mixed-language repliesWhen a user writes in NL-BE and the model replies half in English, or switches FR-BE to EN-GB mid-thread, the experience feels sloppy — even if the content is correct. You can:Automatically detect language and flag replies that don’t matchPenalise or block responses where the primary language shifts without clear reasonUse tests that push the model with mixed-language inputs and verify it keeps a stable base languageTerminology driftIf your termbase says “factuur” and the chatbot uses a mix of “factuur” and “invoice”, the message is still clear but the brand feels inconsistent. Automated checks against your termbase CSV can catch this.On the business side, you care about CSAT and efficiency:CSAT or NPS specific to chatbot-handled conversationsContainment rate: how many inquiries are resolved without human escalationHandle time and backlog impact for your human agentsVolume of conversations that still need manual translation or correctionYour goal is not a 100% containment AI wall. It’s a chatbot that confidently and politely handles routine queries, reduces queues, and hands off tricky or sensitive cases well.Implementation in 90 Days (web + WhatsApp + Zoho)You don’t need a full-blown transformation programme to get started. A focused 90-day implementation of an AI chatbot for customer support Benelux can cover web chat, WhatsApp, and a CRM like Zoho in realistic steps.Days 1–30: Style, scope, and plumbingYou define channels (website, WhatsApp Business, Zoho Desk/CRM), main use cases (billing, orders, account access, basic product questions), and draft the four locale profiles (NL-NL, NL-BE, FR-BE, EN-GB). You also create the first version of your termbase CSV and connect basic RAG sources (FAQ, help centre, key policies).Days 31–60: Prompts, RAG, and pilotYou translate the style guide into locale-specific prompts and few-shot examples. The team builds retrieval pipelines, sets up routing by language and country, and runs an internal pilot. This is where you watch carefully for mixed-language replies, hallucinations, and tone issues, and fix them at the prompt/style-guide level.Days 61–90: Go-live, metrics, and trainingYou roll out to a subset of customers on web and WhatsApp, integrate with Zoho for context and escalation, and start tracking CSAT, containment, and error types. Human agents are trained on how to collaborate with the chatbot: when to override it, how to provide feedback, and how to use its summaries or drafts to speed up their own work.By the end of 90 days, you don’t just have a chatbot — you have a living style guide, termbase, and governance loop that you can improve over time.Style-Guide Templates & Termbase CSVTo make this concrete, you can package your work into a starter kit:A style-guide template per locale (NL-NL, NL-BE, FR-BE, EN-GB) with sections for tone, formality, phrasing patterns, escalation rules, and “do/don’t” examples.A termbase CSV with concepts and columns for each locale, plus metadata (preferred term, forbidden synonyms, internal-only labels).A prompt library: ready-to-use system prompts and few-shot examples that reflect the style guide.A QA checklist for regular reviews: language stability, terminology usage, safe handling of edge cases, and escalation behaviour.This is the “style-guide starter pack” that travel with your chatbot across vendors, channels, and models. It’s also what you can show internally to explain why the chatbot sounds the way it does — and how you’re keeping it under control.

If you operate in Belgium, the Netherlands, or Luxembourg, your data landscape probably doesn’t look like the tidy diagrams in vendor brochures. You have SAP or another ERP sitting in a data center, Exact or AFAS running finance for one entity, maybe Odoo for a newer line of business, a patchwork of SQL databases, and GA4 feeding digital traffic into the mix. Some systems are decades old, others were added last year after an acquisition.On paper, this should be a goldmine for analytics. In reality, your BI environment is often the slowest part of the estate. Loads take all night, “daily” dashboards fall behind, and executives quietly rely on their own Excel exports instead of the official KPIs.This is where BI as a service Benelux comes in. Instead of building yet another fragile, in-house BI stack, you treat analytics as a managed service: connectors, warehouse, dbt models, governance, and operations run by a specialist team, with your hybrid estate and EU obligations baked in from day one.Why BI as a Service Fits Benelux Hybrid EstatesBenelux mid-market and upper mid-market groups tend to grow through acquisitions and partnerships. That means multiple ERPs, multiple fiscal calendars, and multiple local solutions that nobody can just “switch off”. Belgian SMEs, for example, often carry layers of legacy tools and “IT islands” that make integration and reporting difficult.At the same time, your leadership wants:One version of revenue, margin, and cashA consolidated view across countries and entitiesReliable, audit-ready numbers that still respect local realities (Belgian fiscal years, Dutch VAT rules, Luxembourg entities, etc.)The old answer was to build a homegrown data warehouse and a big ETL project. That worked for a while, but it’s brittle in a world where systems change quickly, cloud platforms evolve, and GDPR-driven data residency and sovereignty are board-level topics.With BI as a service Benelux, you accept the hybrid reality — some workloads on-prem, some in the cloud — and ask a single, pragmatic question: how do we get trustworthy numbers out of this mess without reinventing the entire stack ourselves?The Problem: Fragmented Systems, Slow Loads, KPI DriftWhen you look closely, the pain points are remarkably consistent across Benelux organisations.Different teams pull data from SAP, Exact/AFAS, Odoo, and GA4 into their own Excel workbooks or self-service BI tools. Each team applies slightly different filters, joins, and fiscal logic. Over time, this leads to KPI drift: marketing, finance, and operations all walk into the same meeting with three versions of “revenue”, each defensible, none aligned.On the technical side, traditional ETL jobs often move full tables every night. As the data volume grows, the job window expands until it collides with business hours. Dashboards slow down, refreshes are delayed, and your BI platform becomes something people use “when it works”, not something they rely on.Meanwhile, compliance expectations tighten. GDPR and evolving EU guidance do not explicitly force all data to stay in the EU, but they do make cross-border data transfers and sub-processor chains more complex and heavily scrutinised. If your analytics stack is spread across random U.S.-hosted tools, every audit becomes an exercise in explaining where personal data might be flowing.The result is a paradox: you invested heavily in systems, yet you still struggle to get a fast, trusted, Benelux-ready view of your business.Reference Architecture for BI as a Service (Benelux)A pragmatic BI as a service Benelux architecture doesn’t start with tools. It starts with two constraints:Your estate will stay hybrid for the foreseeable future.You want EU-friendly governance by design, not a legal clean-up later.Most successful setups converge on a simple pattern:A central cloud data warehouse or lakehouse in an EU region (for example, AWS EU, Azure West Europe, or a similar provider), tuned for analytics rather than transactions. Managed connectors that extract data from SAP, Exact/AFAS, Odoo, SQL sources, and GA4 into curated staging layers.A dbt/SQL transformation layer that cleans, models, and joins everything into business-ready models and data marts.A semantic layer and BI front-end (Power BI, Looker, Tableau, or similar) that provides governed, role-aware access to those models.A light but clear governance layer covering data cataloguing, lineage, access control, and key definitions.The “as a service” part means your partner owns:The connectors and their reliabilityThe dbt project and transformation standardsPerformance tuning, cost control, and SLAsOn-call rotations and incident response for the data platformYou own the business logic — what counts as revenue, how you define a qualified lead, which entity belongs to which BU — and you decide who sees what. But you no longer have to maintain all the plumbing yourself.Connectors That Matter in Benelux (SAP, Exact/AFAS, Odoo, SQL, GA4)In Benelux, systems tend to cluster around a few “usual suspects”.SAP often carries the heaviest load: core ERP, financials, production, or logistics. Its data model, authorisation concept, and fiscal logic need to be respected, not flattened into oblivion.Exact and AFAS are common in SME and mid-market finance. They bring structured accounting data but live in different schemas and naming conventions than SAP.Odoo appears where a team needed flexibility or where a new business line was launched. It can complement or partially overlap with the main ERP.SQL databases underpin custom applications and niche tools: line-of-business systems, manufacturing apps, or bespoke portals.And GA4 injects digital behaviour and campaign performance into the mix, which you want to align with revenue and margin, not analyse in isolation.A good BI as a service Benelux provider treats these systems as first-class citizens. The goal is not to “replace SAP with the data warehouse”, but to tap into each system in a way that preserves its strengths — authorisations, fiscal logic, and document flows — while making combined analytics actually usable.Tip: Serverless & managed where possibleOn the Innovantage podcast, AWS’s Thiago de Faria talks about the shift from managing servers to what he calls “serviceful” computing: using higher-level, managed services so teams can focus on business problems, not infrastructure. The same logic applies here. For 80% of BI workloads, you don’t need to run your own ETL servers or bespoke orchestration stack. Managed connectors, serverless transformation layers, and cloud data warehouses remove a lot of operational risk and let a small data team deliver more. You keep fine-grained control where it matters (access, transformations, compliance), and offload undifferentiated heavy lifting to services that are built and monitored 24/7.ELT with dbt/SQL: Incremental Patterns That ScaleThe technical heart of BI as a service Benelux is an ELT pattern built around dbt and SQL.Instead of extracting data, transforming it on a separate engine, and then loading the finished result, you bring raw or lightly-structured data into the warehouse and let dbt handle the transformations in-place. This matters because your data grows and your questions change, but your core model should stay maintainable.Incremental models are what keep the whole thing fast. For example:Finance tables from Exact/AFAS or SAP are loaded in daily or intraday slices instead of full reloads.GA4 events are appended and only new or late-arriving events are processed.Fact tables are partitioned by date or fiscal period, so dbt only recalculates what changed.In practice, this means you can refresh key dashboards several times a day without hammering source systems or blowing up warehouse costs. You get fresher numbers and shorter feedback loops, while your ERP and finance tools keep doing their job without performance complaints.SAP Authorization Objects, RLS, and Fiscal CalendarsIf you have SAP in the mix, BI quickly becomes political unless you respect its security and logic.SAP’s authorisation objects and roles determine who can see which company codes, profit centres, plants, and documents. If your BI layer simply flattens everything and lets anyone filter all records, you end up “more open” than SAP — and that’s usually a blocker for go-live.A mature BI as a service Benelux setup mirrors SAP’s logic into row-level security (RLS) in the BI layer. Users see the same entities in their dashboards as in SAP, no more and no less. For Exact/AFAS and Odoo, similar principles apply: user- or group-level filters are translated into RLS policies, not left as a gentleman’s agreement.Then there is fiscal time. Benelux groups often run non-calendar fiscal years, 4-4-5 structures, or entity-specific calendars. If your data warehouse quietly assumes “January to December, Monday to Sunday”, your KPIs will drift from finance no matter how good your SQL is. A good BI-as-a-service provider builds shared fiscal calendar tables, aligned with local rules, and uses them consistently across all models and reports.When this is done well, CFOs recognise their world in BI instead of arguing with it.Performance, Cost, and Compliance in the EUAnalytics platforms look deceptively cheap at small scale and surprisingly expensive at medium scale if left untuned. For BI as a service Benelux, you want a partner who treats cost and performance as design constraints, not afterthoughts.On the performance side, that means columnar storage, partitioning, clustering, and query design that minimise scans. On the cost side, it means choosing the right warehouse tiers, scheduling heavy transformations during low-cost windows, and archiving data in cheaper storage once its analytic value declines.Compliance is where the EU context kicks in. GDPR does not literally require you to keep all data physically in the EU, but it places strict conditions on transfers outside the EEA and expects strong safeguards, contracts, and documentation for any such flows. Many Benelux organisations simply prefer to keep their analytics stack in EU regions and choose vendors that are explicit about data residency and sub-processor locations.BI as a service Benelux should reflect that: EU-based warehouses, clear sub-processor lists, regional failover strategies, and a documented approach for pseudonymisation or anonymisation where needed.Mini Case: 90-Day BI as a Service Benelux RolloutConsider a mid-sized Benelux group with SAP for core ERP, Exact for a Dutch subsidiary, a small Odoo instance for a newer business line, several SQL-based line-of-business applications, and GA4 on top of a busy marketing funnel. Until now, each department has run its own reports. Month-end closes are painful because the group controller spends days reconciling SAP extracts, Exact exports, and local spreadsheets.The group decides to pilot BI as a service Benelux with a 90-day scope: revenue, margin, and pipeline for three entities.In the first 30 days, the partner sets up managed connectors into SAP, Exact, Odoo, the key SQL systems, and GA4, landing them into an EU-region warehouse. Staging models in dbt stabilise the raw data structures and start to enforce basic naming and typing rules.Between days 31 and 60, the team builds core models for customers, products, invoices, orders, and campaigns, plus a standardised fiscal calendar. They create the first canonical revenue and margin metrics shared by finance and sales, and wire them into a small set of test dashboards.The last 30 days focus on SAP-aligned RLS, performance tuning, and rollout. SAP authorisation objects and local access rules are mirrored into BI RLS policies. The most important dashboards hit a target of a few seconds load time on cached queries. Training sessions help finance and business teams recognise “their numbers” and retire overlapping Excel reports.This pattern is not theoretical. In a different context, Sigli built dozens of data pipelines for a UK property-data platform, streamlining processing and enabling new features on top of a complex estate.The same discipline — normalising pipelines, building reusable models, and focusing on performance—translates directly into Benelux BI-as-a-service rollouts, where the challenge is less about exotic AI and more about making the basics fast, trusted, and easy to extend.Success KPIs & What to TrackTo know whether BI as a service Benelux is actually working, you need a handful of clear success metrics.One is data freshness: how long after the source system changes do your key dashboards update? Moving from “next day” to “same morning” or even intra-day for critical facts changes how people use BI.Another is time to first consolidated view after period-end. If you can move from weeks of manual consolidation to a few days or hours, you unlock faster decision-making and reduce fatigue in finance and controllers.On the adoption side, you can track how many users regularly access the governed BI environment versus exporting to Excel, and how often they return. A gradual shift from ad-hoc exports to direct BI usage is a strong sign of trust.Finally, you can measure technical KPIs: average dashboard load time, warehouse spend per active user, number of critical data incidents per quarter, and time to resolve. BI as a service should make these numbers boringly stable.Pitfalls to Avoid (and Quick Fixes)Every Benelux BI project has scars. A few mistakes show up again and again.One common pitfall is treating the warehouse as a dumping ground. If you land everything from SAP, Exact, Odoo, and GA4 but don’t follow through with clear models and definitions, you simply move chaos from on-prem to the cloud. The fix is to insist on a slim set of validated, business-friendly models before you scale dashboard development.Another trap is ignoring security and governance because “it’s just analytics”. If BI access is more permissive than SAP or your finance tools, the project will stall at the last mile. Aligning RLS with existing authorisations and documenting who can see what avoids hard pushback at go-live.A third issue is over-optimising for one tool or vendor. Good BI as a service Benelux implementations stay portable: dbt projects, SQL models, documented contracts. If you ever need to change the BI front-end or even the warehouse, you’re not tied to a proprietary black box.Most of these pitfalls are fixable. The key is to treat BI as part of your core architecture, not as a side project for “pretty reports”.Implementation ChecklistEven though every company’s estate is unique, an implementation for BI as a service Benelux tends to follow the same storyline.You start by clarifying the first use cases and the systems in scope, then selecting an EU-region warehouse and agreeing basic governance and access rules. Next, you configure connectors into SAP, Exact/AFAS, Odoo, your SQL sources, and GA4, and build dbt staging and core models that standardise how entities like customers, products, and transactions are represented.From there, you define and validate your core KPIs with finance and business stakeholders, wire them into a small set of dashboards, and align security with existing authorisations and fiscal calendars. Finally, you train users, retire overlapping legacy reports, and put platform monitoring in place so you can track performance, costs, and incidents over time.It’s less about ticking off dozens of tasks and more about making sure each of these phases is genuinely complete before you rush to the next.

If you work in procurement, vendor risk, or security in the Dutch public or private sector, Digital system audit Netherlands probably describes your daily reality more than a single project. Every time you onboard a new SaaS platform or critical IT supplier, you trigger a fresh wave of security documentation: spreadsheets, PDFs, portals, and bespoke questionnaires. You need this proof to satisfy your own auditors and regulators, but the way it arrives —fragmented, inconsistent, and hard to compare — makes your job much harder than it needs to be.Over time this becomes audit sprawl. You may have BIO/ENSIA requirements for municipalities, NEN 7510 expectations in healthcare, and ISAE or SOC-style thinking in financial or enterprise environments. Each supplier responds in their own way, in their own format, and with their own interpretation of what “good” looks like. Instead of a clear overview of supplier security, you end up with a patchwork of documents scattered across drives and inboxes.This article looks at Digital system audit Netherlands entirely from the buyer’s side. It outlines how you can steer vendors towards a One Assurance Pack (OAP) — a reusable, structured assurance product — and how that can help you reduce audit noise while improving visibility of real risk.The market problem: audit sprawl hurts buyers as much as vendorsFrom a buyer’s perspective, audit sprawl is more than just administrative pain. It erodes your ability to see which suppliers are genuinely under control and where your real exposure lies.Each vendor brings a different flavour of assurance. One sends a SOC-style report, another shares a folder with pentest PDFs, a third fills out your Excel questionnaire with free-text answers that don’t quite match the question, and a fourth insists that their internal documents are “equivalent” to what you asked for. The content overlaps — access management, backups, logging, incident response, supplier security, data residency — but the presentation never does.In the Digital system audit Netherlands context, this is amplified by the variety of frameworks you must satisfy. Municipalities have to demonstrate BIO/ENSIA compliance. Healthcare organisations are judged against NEN 7510. Other regulated entities are increasingly influenced by NIS2, ISAE, and SOC-aligned expectations. None of these will disappear, and none have magically converged into one standard way of requesting supplier proof.Internally, this leaves you with a messy archive of vendor assessments: isolated spreadsheets, PDF reports saved under inconsistent names, and email threads that only one or two people remember. When a regulator or internal auditor asks for a clear overview of your critical SaaS suppliers and their security posture, you are forced into a manual reconstruction exercise. Time that should go into risk analysis and improvement is spent on searching, matching, and re-formatting old evidence.Why this peaks now (2025–2026): NIS2 pressure without harmonised proofThe timing makes everything sharper. Over 2025–2026, more organisations fall under NIS2-related obligations or face higher expectations on operational resilience and supply chain security. Boards, regulators, and supervisory bodies want a clearer story: which suppliers are critical, how their security is validated, and how quickly you would detect and handle incidents.At the same time, Digital system audit Netherlands remains fragmented. Municipal BIO/ENSIA, healthcare NEN 7510, enterprise ISAE/SOC frameworks, and sector-specific guidance all continue to coexist. Each regime has its own structure and vocabulary, and suppliers rarely manage to present their assurance in a way that lines up directly with your obligations.As a buyer, you cannot wait for a single, official “harmonised questionnaire” to appear and solve this. What you can do is influence how your key vendors organise and present their security proof — so that, even in a complex regulatory landscape, you receive evidence in a format that makes your work faster and your decisions clearer.The fix: use the One Assurance Pack as your preferred formatThis is where the One Assurance Pack (OAP) comes in. You can think of it as a reusable, versioned “assurance product” that suppliers maintain and share with multiple customers. Instead of sending a different puzzle box of documents to each buyer, a vendor assembles one coherent pack and maps it explicitly to the frameworks that matter in the Netherlands.For you, as the buyer, the value of an OAP is consistency. Even if vendors use different technologies and architectures, you start to see their security posture in a comparable structure. That makes Digital system audit Netherlands less about deciphering formats and more about assessing substance.An OAP designed for Dutch buyers should:Describe the vendor’s key controls in plain language.Provide up-to-date technical proof (pentests, scans, DR tests, architecture).Map those controls and proofs to BIO/ENSIA, NEN 7510, and relevant ISAE/SOC criteria.Indicate how all of this supports NIS2-driven expectations around resilience and incident handling.By encouraging suppliers to build and maintain such a pack, you shift the conversation from “fill in my spreadsheet” to “show me your structured assurance and let’s see how it fits our requirements.”What you should expect from a good OAP as a buyerWhen you ask for an OAP, you’re not asking for more paperwork. You’re asking for a clearer, more reusable way to see how a supplier manages security.First, a useful pack begins with a control catalogue. This is a structured overview of how the vendor runs security in everyday operations — identity and access, network security, application security, data protection, logging, incident response, supplier management, and governance. Each control should have an owner, a short description of what it does, and ideally a metric or KPI that shows how it’s monitored. You should be able to trace any important claim—like “MFA is enforced” or “backups are tested” — to a named owner and a piece of evidence.On top of that, the OAP usually includes an assurance core that looks familiar if you come from an ISAE or SOC background. It explains the system boundaries, what is in scope, which controls are intended to operate, and, if applicable, includes independent auditor opinions. This gives you a narrative of what the supplier is actually promising and which parts of their environment are covered.The next layer is technical proof. For a serious vendor, that means recent penetration tests, vulnerability scan summaries, and records from disaster recovery or failover tests that show real recovery times. Clear architecture diagrams make it easier to understand where your data sits, what regions are used, and how different components connect. In a Digital system audit Netherlands context, these artefacts give you confidence that the vendor’s claims are backed by recent and relevant work.Crucially, a buyer-friendly OAP contains explicit mappings to Dutch and European frameworks. Controls and evidence should be aligned with BIO/ENSIA for municipalities, NEN 7510 for healthcare, and relevant ISAE/SOC criteria for enterprises and financial institutions. If NIS2 has specific implications for your sector, the pack should point out which controls and proofs support those obligations. When this mapping is done well, you no longer have to manually translate a vendor’s generic claims into your own clause numbers.Finally, the OAP should provide operational context. Redacted incident timelines show how the vendor responds when something actually goes wrong: how quickly they detect issues, how they communicate, and how they learn. Supplier assurance models reveal whether they are demanding from their own vendors what you demand from them. Quarterly security KPIs tell you whether controls are stable over time or only looked at during big procurement events.Implementation playbook (8–12 weeks): introducing OAPs into your buying processYou don’t need a huge transformation programme to benefit from OAPs on the buyer side. In roughly two to three months, you can start making Digital system audit Netherlands more manageable by changing how you ask for assurance.In the first weeks, you map the ground you stand on. Which regimes apply to your organisation — BIO/ENSIA, NEN 7510, NIS2, sector-specific guidelines? Which suppliers are truly critical, where a security failure or outage would severely impact your service delivery? You also review how you currently collect and store vendor assurance: who owns the questionnaires, where reports are stored, and how often they are refreshed.Next, you define your OAP expectation in practical terms. You don’t need a 30-page specification. A concise guidance note can be enough: what kind of control overview you want to see, which technical proofs matter most, and how you prefer frameworks like BIO/ENSIA and NEN 7510 to be referenced. Think of it as a “buyer OAP profile” you can share with suppliers.Then you pilot this approach with a handful of key vendors. When you send out your next security assessment, you add a simple line: “If you maintain a structured assurance pack (e.g. One Assurance Pack), please share that as the primary artefact. If not, here is our preferred structure.” Some suppliers will already have something close; others will start building towards it. Either way, the conversation shifts from pure questionnaire-filling to how they organise their own assurance.After a few iterations, you refine your expectations based on what works. You quickly see which OAP elements give you the fastest, clearest view of a vendor’s security posture and which details add noise. From there, you can embed the OAP concept into your procurement policy for new critical suppliers and use it as a negotiation point in renewals — explaining that a well-structured pack will make future audits smoother for both sides.How to evaluate a vendor’s OAP in 5 minutesThe promise of the OAP, for you as a buyer, is speed without losing control. Once a supplier shares a reasonably mature pack, your first pass can genuinely take five minutes.You start with freshness. You look at the dates on the last penetration test, the most recent vulnerability scans, and the latest disaster recovery tests. If everything meaningful is older than 12–18 months and there is no clear refresh plan, that is a sign you need to dig deeper.You move on to coverage of fundamentals. In a Digital system audit Netherlands context, you expect to see strong identity and access controls, pervasive multi-factor authentication, documented and tested backup and restore procedures, and coherent logging and monitoring. The OAP should make it obvious whether these basics are in place and backed by evidence.Then you take a quick view on governance. Are there named owners for key controls? Do you see metrics that someone actually tracks? Is the OAP itself versioned, with a clear “last updated” date? These details tell you whether security is treated as continuous work or as a one-off response to big customers.Finally, you assess alignment with your frameworks and data needs. Do the BIO/ENSIA, NEN 7510, and any NIS2-relevant mappings speak your language, or are they vague references? Are data residency and data flows described clearly, including the regions used and key sub-processors? Combined with incident timelines and KPIs, this should give you enough confidence to decide whether the vendor is “basically in control” or whether you need a more detailed review.If, after those five minutes, you can articulate why you trust or don’t yet trust the supplier’s posture, the OAP is doing its job.Mini case snapshot: AML SaaS vendor that buyers can actually trustA concrete example of how this can look in practice comes from one of Sigli’s fintech projects in the anti-money-laundering (AML) space. The client is a cross-industry AML SaaS provider whose platform covers transaction monitoring, screening, risk assessments, and incident management for banks, fintechs, crypto businesses, and other regulated companies.When Sigli stepped in, the platform had been partly built by a previous team. Functionality was incomplete, bugs were slowing delivery, and the product wasn’t stable enough to onboard new customers confidently. From a buyer’s point of view, this is the kind of supplier that triggers a lot of questions during a Digital system audit Netherlands process: is the environment secure, is development under control, and can they really support our compliance needs?Over the course of the engagement, Sigli expanded the platform’s feature set, stabilised the infrastructure, and upgraded both the security architecture and the user interface. The team introduced GitOps practices to reduce technical debt, moved to a more robust multi-tenant setup, and rolled out a production environment capable of supporting a 99.5% SLA. They also eliminated more than fifty critical vulnerabilities and implemented integrations and dashboards that matter directly for AML operations. From the buyer side, the impact is clear. Instead of evaluating a half-finished platform backed by loosely organised evidence, procurement and risk teams can now look at a supplier that:Runs on a hardened, highly available production environment.Has demonstrably reduced its vulnerability load.Can show concrete proof of how AML-critical features are implemented and monitored.Is able to onboard new clients without relying on “it will be fixed later.”Wrapped in a structured assurance format — such as a One Assurance Pack that links these improvements to controls and mappings — this kind of transformation turns a previously risky, hard-to-assess vendor into one you can evaluate quickly and justify to your own auditors. It’s a practical illustration of how better engineering and a reusable assurance pack can make Digital system audit Netherlands faster, clearer, and more meaningful for buyers.Ready to make Digital system audit Netherlands easier on the buyer side?If you feel that Digital system audit Netherlands has turned into an endless loop of bespoke questionnaires and fragmented vendor evidence, you are not alone. But you are not powerless either. By defining what a good One Assurance Pack looks like for your organisation and asking suppliers to move in that direction, you can gradually replace audit sprawl with a clearer, faster view of real risk.The result is not just less paperwork. You gain a more accurate picture of which suppliers are genuinely in control, you can respond more confidently to NIS2-driven questions from regulators and boards, and you free up your own time to work on actual risk reduction instead of document hunting.If you want support in designing your OAP expectations, you can:Book a short consultation to map your current supplier landscape and shape a buyer-side OAP profile.Use an OAP mapping template (for example, in CSV) to standardise how suppliers align their controls to BIO/ENSIA, NEN 7510, and ISAE/SOC.Explore related materials like an AI Readiness or digital transformation whitepaper to see how supplier assurance fits into a broader resilience strategy.Digital system audits in the Netherlands aren’t going away. But with a clear OAP-based approach, they can become faster, clearer, and far more useful for you as a buyer.

Though the Innovantage podcast is focused on technology and innovation in general, artificial intelligence remains the most widely discussed topic in the episodes. AI is everywhere, and it is impossible not to talk about it while discussing the changes that are happening around us.This episode hasn’t become an exception. The podcast host and Sigli’s CBDO, Max Golikov, together with his guest, Martynas Kairys, discussed the real impact of AI in payments and business operations, as well as the possibility of turning experiments with AI into strong competitive advantages.Today, Martynas is the General Manager at ZEDGE, an AI-driven growth leader, and an international keynote speaker.But as he admitted, he had never expected to work in technology. When he graduated in 2000, computer science was already booming. However, at that time, he was convinced that it wasn’t for him. His academic path led him to the Danish Royal Naval Academy, where he became a naval officer, and later to a degree in economics in Lithuania. Such fields are quite far from tech.Nevertheless, everything changed in 2012, when Martynas decided to launch a startup. The idea was to create an app that would help people build good habits. As Lithuania’s startup scene was just beginning to grow, he found himself at the center of this emerging movement. He began learning how to code in order to understand the needs of his team better. Though he never became a professional developer, this knowledge helped him bridge the gap between leadership and technical teams.After closing the startup, Martynas moved into product and program management roles at Shift4. There, he oversaw developer marketplaces, third-party integrations, and sales systems. Over time, his focus shifted toward automation. Long before generative AI became mainstream, he was already exploring intelligent systems and studying AI at a strategic level.When ChatGPT took off in late 2022, Shift4 created a dedicated AI leadership role, and Martynas stepped in to guide the company’s adoption of this technology. Driving innovation at Shift4Shift4 is a global fintech company specializing in payments. It has its headquarters in the United States and its largest office outside the US is based in Vilnius, Lithuania. When Martynas joined the team, the office in Lithuania had just 40 employees. Today, it has grown to more than 800. The Lithuanian team now contributes across multiple areas, including product development, R&D, and customer support. The company can boast a diverse client base that ranges from restaurants and stadiums to casinos, hotels, and even such giants as Starlink.Within Shift4, Martynas always implemented a proactive approach. Instead of just bringing ideas, he also built prototypes and tested them. He was often the person who started projects, like the developer marketplace and lead management system. They were built from scratch and further scaled into full teams and products.Martynas also supported innovation inside the company. He launched Shift4’s first hackathons in Lithuania and later on a global scale. How AI can change services and internal operationsAt Shift4, artificial intelligence plays a growing role in both customer-facing services and internal operations. The company develops solutions that help clients use its payment services more effectively and also streamline workflows for employees.One of the most widely adopted tools is an AI assistant. It is a chatbot that answers practical questions for merchants, such as how to process a refund, add new employees, or troubleshoot common issues. Traditionally, users had to read lengthy guides or wait in line for support to get answers. Today, the AI assistant can deliver clear, step-by-step instructions instantly, which helps save valuable time.The technology goes beyond simple troubleshooting. Clients can now ask quite complex questions, such as: “What were our latest sales of specific items compared to the same period last year, percentage-wise?” Now people don’t need to find the required data in spreadsheets and then perform calculations manually. AI can provide the analysis on demand.In the internal operations, AI helps people with everyday questions that cover various aspects, from how to request vacation time to why a particular product feature was built. In a company with thousands of employees, automating these queries reduces constant interruptions for teams like HR or engineering and frees them for more strategic work.Developers also benefit from AI-driven tools like GitHub Copilot. Such solutions help accelerate coding by suggesting and refining lines of code.Beyond off-the-shelf tools from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Google, Shift4 encourages employees to create tailored AI solutions. Marketing teams, for instance, can build custom GPTs that generate posts in the company’s brand voice, while developers use AI companions to explain code or review logic.The culture of using AISpeaking about his attitude to artificial intelligence, Martynas explained that, on the one hand, AI brings enormous potential. On the other hand, its application is related to risks that people will use it only as a copilot that delivers results just good enough to pass.But over time, businesses and consumers will demand higher quality and drive expectations for better products and services.For him, the impact of AI depends not only on what the technology can do, but also on who uses it. His grandfather, for example, adopted ChatGPT’s voice mode in Lithuanian to get advice on gardening. Despite being hesitant to pay for other services, he agreed to subscribe to ChatGPT because it solved a real need in a simple, accessible way.In professional contexts, AI can be used in surprising ways. Some developers use it to generate code. But others value it more for having meaningful discussions about their work. It helps them refine their solutions. Others leverage it to communicate better. One developer shared that AI helps him present ideas clearly to colleagues and management. As an introvert, he can now better express his thoughts, which results in faster alignment and decision-making within his team.The art of promptingMartynas emphasized that the quality of AI output depends heavily on how questions are framed. A simple request like “Tell me a joke” produces something bland. But when you add just a few words and your request sounds like “Tell me a joke in Jimmy Carr’s style”, you will get an absolutely new result.The same principle applies to professional use cases. If you ask AI for generic feedback on a sales letter, you will get neutral comments. When you prompt it to respond as a VP of Sales at a specific type of company, you will receive far more relevant insights.Martynas advised users to refine prompts by adding context and even letting AI guide the process. One of his favorite tricks is to finish a request with: “What information do you need from me to answer better?” This forces the system to ask clarifying questions. Thanks to this, it can provide more accurate responses.To test the power of prompting, Martynas organized a public experiment in Lithuania on ChatGPT’s two-year anniversary. Together with a communications expert, he challenged 12 professional writers to submit essays on the theme “Why I write and what motivates me.” Martynas then created his own 13 texts using ChatGPT. To perform this task, he used different prompts, sometimes seven pages long. They included detailed stylistic instructions and writing samples.The experiment produced 25 texts in total, which more than 1,400 participants tried to classify as human- or AI-written. The results were surprising. People could barely tell the difference. One of the pieces was mistakenly classified as human-written by 76% of respondents. But in reality, it was generated by AI using the prompts prepared by Martynas.The importance of AI in MVP developmentMartynas believes one of the biggest misconceptions in technology is that companies need huge budgets to test new ideas. In traditional corporate settings, innovation can move slowly. With AI tools, however, teams can now build strong MVPs quickly and affordably.Instead of spending months and significant resources, it’s now possible to launch a simple web app, create landing pages with polished copy, or even deploy clickable beta versions in less than a day. All this is available when you use relevant platforms. Martynas recalled a recent hackathon where participants produced a working prototype within just four hours. The same process would have taken an entire weekend only two years earlier.This shift plays a huge role in the business space. While working on his app for developing good habits many years ago, Martynas pitched an early version using just a Google Sheets demo. It was crude, but it secured investment. Today, founders and teams can achieve significantly more and significantly faster.Still, many companies are convinced that MVPs require heavy investment or outside consultants. External experts can help. But it is also worth paying attention to internal talent. Every organization has domain experts who can become real AI evangelists. Their deep industry knowledge and interest in AI experimentation can significantly accelerate innovation and help deliver solutions that will be better tailored to the business needs.AI and regulationRegulation in the AI world is one of the hottest questions today.According to Martynas, regulation in the European Union is far stricter than in the United States and other regions. Oversight is essential in many areas, but excessive rules can slow innovation. But what is even more important, they don’t necessarily make systems safer.The easiest way to ensure no breaches is to forbid everything, but that comes at the cost of progress.Martynas emphasized that AI can already generate convincing text or code, but it often requires domain experts to assess whether outputs are reliable. For now, businesses in regulated industries are cautious, and AI is rarely implemented in core operations.Moreover, we shouldn’t ignore the psychological barrier. People may be comfortable with autonomous cars today. But pilotless planes or AI-only doctors can still cause distrust. Despite improvements, AI still hallucinates, and when facing critical decisions, like surgery, humans want human oversight.How to build a startupWith his solid business expertise, Martynas believes everyone should experience both building a startup and working in a corporate environment. Each path teaches different lessons. Startups demand agility, resilience, and creativity, while corporations provide structure and exposure to regulation.However, timing is crucial. Launching a startup while raising a newborn, for example, can feel like running two startups at once. Family support and financial stability are key, as entrepreneurship carries risks and uncertainty. Contrary to the myth of the young tech prodigy, research shows that founders over 40 often build the most successful startups. Many of them transition from corporate roles and have both maturity and experience. With the rise of AI, there are even more opportunities for those who are ready to build their own projects. Solo founders can now achieve what once required entire teams. Even a single person with the right tools can build something extraordinary.Ideas for a startupMartynas advised future founders to create something they would personally use. Passion is crucial because most ideas already exist in some form, and without genuine interest, it’s easy to get discouraged.Market fit is the number one reason startups fail. Many founders build “vitamins” (nice-to-have products) instead of “painkillers” that solve real, urgent problems. After market fit, the next challenges are financing and team building. Nevertheless, without clear demand, even great ideas can’t scale.Professional development: How AI will change itAI has shifted the value equation in the workplace. A single senior developer equipped with AI tools can often outperform a small team of juniors. However, relying only on senior talent is shortsighted. Companies must grow new talent, and that requires mentorship.The best model, according to Martynas, is pairing senior domain experts who are also willing to coach with junior professionals who are eager to learn. Juniors often struggle to distinguish between accurate AI outputs and convincing but flawed ones. That’s what experienced experts can help them navigate. In such an environment, coaching becomes a critical skill for senior experts.Despite some prejudices, juniors still create value, often even more than before. Martynas mentioned an example where interns, empowered by AI tools, delivered high-quality research and insights in just a week. This shows that with guidance, even less-experienced workers can have a meaningful impact.At the same time, in some large corporations, certain seasoned professionals contribute little. They often have roles where domain expertise is kept, but output is minimal. For companies focused on long-term value, nurturing motivated juniors may prove more impactful than maintaining such veterans who are not engaged in their processes anymore.AI in 2030: Expert predictionsLooking ahead, Martynas sees both opportunity and risk. As a father, he is curious and anxious about the world his children will enter. By the time his daughter finishes school, universities may look nothing like they do today (or might not exist at all).His biggest concern isn’t mass unemployment but a potential loss of purpose. With AI writing, coding, and even creating art, people may question the value of their own contributions. This existential crisis could become one of the defining challenges of the next decade.At the same time, AI may unleash entirely new services, industries, and creative possibilities that are hard to imagine today. Live, human-driven experiences, like concerts or conversations, will become even more treasured as digital content becomes abundant.As Martynas noted, by 2030, people will live longer and create more personalized products (music, films, and even businesses) using AI not as a distant tool but as an everyday partner. At the end of this talk, Martynas joked that creating AI could have been the key purpose that people had on Earth. This legacy could outlive us and would stay here forever.Whether it’s true or false, only time will tell.But one thing is clear: when applied correctly, AI has enormous power to streamline both business and everyday tasks. Want to explore the AI space further and gain insights from industry leaders? Don’t miss the upcoming episodes of the Innovantage podcast, where Max Golikov will discuss the most pressing topics in the business and tech worlds with his guests.

If your ERP still runs on an old server, your finance team spends most of its time maintaining Excel sheets, and your CRM barely talks to any of your other systems, you are far from alone. Many Belgian SMEs operate with disconnected, outdated tools that form small “IT islands.” On the surface, these islands appear manageable: people know their workarounds, reports eventually get done, and operations somehow keep moving. In reality, they quietly block the very things companies now need most: automation, integration, and real-time visibility into customers, orders, and cash flow.An IT readiness assessment Belgium is the first structured step to change this situation. Rather than pushing you straight into a risky, expensive transformation project, it gives you a clear, business-friendly view of where your bottlenecks are, which systems are holding you back, what can be integrated instead of replaced, and which improvements will generate the biggest impact first. It respects your size, your budget, and your day-to-day operations, and turns “we should modernize someday” into a concrete, realistic plan.Why Belgian SMEs Struggle With Legacy SystemsLegacy technology creates far more than just technical debt. It directly shapes how decisions are made, how fast your team can react, and how easily your business can grow. In many SMEs, reports take days to prepare because data is scattered across separate systems and spreadsheets. Teams re-enter the same information in multiple places, manually transfer orders from one tool to another, and spend time fixing inconsistencies that should never have appeared in the first place. Valuable insights about profitability, customer behavior, or operational performance often remain hidden simply because the data is fragmented and unreliable.When your systems are not properly integrated, it becomes difficult to fully trust your numbers or scale operations without adding more people. In Belgium, this is a very common situation. Many SMEs have delayed modernisation after previous IT projects ran late, over budget, or failed to deliver what was promised. Management teams worry about downtime, disruption to customers, or resistance from staff who feel overwhelmed by change. Budgets are limited, and it is often unclear what the return on investment of modernisation would actually be.This is where an IT readiness assessment Belgium offers a different approach. Instead of vague recommendations, it provides a prioritised roadmap that shows what to tackle first and what can safely wait. It presents a clear view of the main risks, such as fragile systems or single points of failure, and explains how to mitigate them. Most importantly, it tailors the plan to your specific context: your sector, your processes, and your regional support options in Flanders, Wallonia, or Brussels.What an IT Readiness Assessment Belgium RevealsA professional IT readiness assessment Belgium goes well beyond a quick inventory of servers and licenses. It looks at how your technology, processes, and people work together in practice and reveals the true state of your IT landscape.One of the first things it uncovers is where integration gaps exist. These might be older on-premise ERP systems, custom databases in Access or SQL, or departmental tools that were never connected properly to the rest of your environment. Over time, different teams may have built their own applications just to move faster, which leads to data being duplicated and maintained in multiple places and makes reliable reporting almost impossible.From there, the assessment examines data quality. It highlights where customer, product, and financial records are inconsistent, duplicated, or incomplete, and where departments use different naming conventions or structures. It often becomes clear that key identifiers, such as customer IDs or product codes, are missing or not used consistently. Without this foundation, it is extremely difficult to build trustworthy dashboards, analytics, or automation.Another important outcome is a realistic picture of your automation potential. Once your system landscape and data flows are mapped, the assessment shows where manual steps can safely be automated and which processes are strong candidates for technologies like low-code workflow tools, RPA, or event-based integrations. Instead of being a patchwork of quick fixes, automation becomes a controlled, strategic initiative that supports your long-term architecture.Finally, the IT readiness assessment Belgium identifies security and compliance risks. It tests whether backups are recent and properly validated, whether multi-factor authentication is used where necessary, whether access rights are structured and regularly reviewed, and whether cloud tools have been adopted with sufficient attention to vendor reliability and GDPR requirements. For Belgian SMEs, getting this clarity before investing in AI, analytics, or major automation initiatives is essential. If the basics are weak, those advanced investments will underperform or even introduce new risks.Integration Before Replacement: A Smarter Modernisation PathOne of the most valuable insights that often comes out of an IT readiness assessment Belgium is that full system replacement is not always necessary immediately. In many SMEs, the core ERP system still does what it was originally designed to do reasonably well. The main problem is not the system itself but the fact that it does not communicate efficiently with newer tools, such as cloud-based CRM platforms, financial software, or specialised operational systems.Replacing everything in one “big bang” project is expensive, risky, and highly disruptive. An integration-first approach offers a smarter alternative. Instead of ripping out core systems, you focus on connecting what already works. This can be done with APIs, lightweight middleware, or low-code connectors that synchronise master data and key events between systems. By standardising essential identifiers and aligning basic data structures, you make it possible for reports and dashboards to pull consistent, reliable information from across your landscape.The result is a gradual reduction in manual data entry and duplicate work, along with a visible improvement in reporting accuracy. Departments no longer have to reconcile conflicting information, and leadership teams can finally rely on a single version of the truth. You extend the useful life of existing system investments and spread costs over time rather than concentrating them in a single large project. In short, you stretch every euro of your digitalisation budget while building a solid foundation for future changes, including eventual system replacement where it truly makes sense.Belgian Support Programs That Strengthen Your IT ReadinessBelgian SMEs do not have to face this journey alone. Across the country, there are several regional initiatives that support digital readiness, IT audits, and transformation projects, often with financial aid that can partially cover an IT readiness assessment Belgium.In Flanders, VLAIO (Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship) serves as a central partner for companies looking to innovate and digitalise. It offers guidance and various forms of funding for projects related to innovation and digital transformation. For many SMEs, instruments such as the SME e-wallet and growth or transformation support schemes can be used to finance external advice, readiness assessments, and the setup of digital roadmaps. There are also specific programmes focused on improving cybersecurity, which align well with the security and governance aspects of an IT readiness assessment Belgium.In Wallonia, the Digital Wallonia strategy gathers several tools aimed at helping businesses progress in their digital maturity. Companies can benefit from digital maturity vouchers that co-finance external expertise to assess their current digital state and define a practical action plan. Other forms of support exist for training, IT consulting, and cybersecurity audits, making it easier to involve professional partners without bearing the full cost alone when planning an IT readiness assessment Belgium.For businesses in Brussels, hub.brussels provides tailored support for digital transformation initiatives. This includes advisory services, digital audits, and workshops that help companies structure their IT and digital priorities. When combined with regional grants, these services can substantially reduce the cost of initial assessments and follow-up projects.A partner that understands the Belgian landscape will help you identify the most relevant schemes for your region and situation and incorporate them into the project plan from the beginning. That way, your IT readiness assessment Belgium is not only strategically sound but also financially accessible.From Assessment to Measurable ActionA strong IT readiness assessment Belgium does not end as a document that sits on a shelf. Its value lies in how effectively it is translated into real change. After the assessment, you should have a clear and prioritised roadmap that distinguishes immediate quick wins from medium-term process improvements and longer-term strategic shifts. For example, you might start by securing backups and integrating two core systems, then move to redesigning specific workflows, and eventually plan the evolution of your ERP or data platform.You will also gain a detailed picture of system dependencies and risks. This includes understanding which systems are fragile and need extra caution during changes, where single points of failure exist, and which integrations must be tested thoroughly before going live. This transparency makes implementation more predictable and reduces the chance of unpleasant surprises.Another important outcome is a set of measurable KPIs that allow you to track progress and demonstrate business value. You can monitor improvements in data accuracy, reductions in process lead times, fewer incidents and less downtime, or higher user satisfaction. With these indicators in place, it becomes much easier to show that the IT readiness assessment Belgium is not just a technical exercise, but a driver of operational efficiency and better decision-making.Once these foundations are in place, the assessment lays the groundwork for automation and AI. When integration, data quality, and security are under control, you have a stable environment for introducing dashboards, workflow automation, or AI assistants. Instead of experimenting randomly with new tools, you know where they can plug into your processes safely and where they are likely to generate real return on investment.Start Your IT Readiness Assessment Belgium With SigliIf your systems feel disconnected, if your teams are maintaining multiple versions of the truth in spreadsheets, or if every new reporting request turns into a small project, this is the right moment to act. An IT readiness assessment Belgium gives you visibility over your IT landscape, a structured plan that fits your regional context and budget, and the confidence to modernise step by step rather than through disruptive, all-or-nothing projects.Sigli offers a free 30-minute consultation to help you take that first step. During this conversation, you can walk through your current IT setup, including ERP, CRM, finance systems, and any custom tools. Together, you will identify obvious integration blockers and risks and outline a phased modernisation roadmap that reflects your priorities and constraints. You can also explore which regional funding options may apply to your case and how they can support your IT readiness assessment Belgium.If you are ready to move away from isolated IT islands and towards a connected, future-ready architecture, booking this consultation is an easy and low-risk way to begin.Book a Call with Sigli →