Sprimoglass has just recovered from a cyberattack, but is hungry and ambitious for the digital future. An enthusiastic IT team works on solutions that partially support production on site, while the Salesforce ecosystem is crucial for optimizing business processes and AI ambitions.

Sprimoglass transforms and installs glass. In order to efficiently support these activities, the company has specific IT requirements. These are so specific that Sprimoglass today markets some internally developed solutions through a separate entity, Synerglass. However, the organization relies on existing solutions for the majority of its needs. The digitalization process currently revolves around the further introduction and optimization of Salesforce.

Salesforce has already proven itself to some extent at the company, which fell victim to a cyberattack earlier this year. The SaaS solution ensured that Sprimoglass could quickly resume commercial activities and customer data remained secure.

What are the priorities of the Sprimoglass IT team today? On the sidelines of Dreamforce, ITdaily speaks not only with CIO Peter Cuypers (photo), but also with enterprise architect Pierre Mathieu about the goals and challenges of the glass company’s digital transformation.

What does the IT environment for which you are responsible look like?

Cuypers: “The Sprimo Group is a large company with many facets. Our company has a total of nine locations. Sprimoglass has two locations that focus on production. Synerglass is the software company where we develop our own customized solutions. Then there is SprimoInstall, which is responsible for the glass installation. We have six installation hubs for this, because it is important to be as close to the customer as possible.”

“I am responsible for the IT environment at all of these locations. On the hardware side, this consists of laptops, VDI and factory controls, among other things. Then there are tools like Google Workspace. There are also software platforms that help optimize sales and customer experiences, as well as solutions that support the various departments in production. And finally, there are applications that allow us to develop the necessary analytical capabilities to support all departments in their decision-making. All of these infrastructure and application environments work with Mulesoft in an integrated manner.”

Mathieu: “Customers and users need to have secure access to web applications like Salesforce. So we are also responsible for the networks, switching, segmentation and security.”

What are the most important priorities at the moment?

Cuypers: “When I started my role as CIO, we designed the entire application landscape and all business processes. At the moment we are using this information to plan our future path. When we encounter a problem in an application, we take a step back. We’ll look at the process and go from there.”

“We have tailored Salesforce to the processes of our installation department SprimoInstall. SprimoInstall worked entirely on paper and is now paperless. The next step for SprimoInstall is to establish a service cloud for refined centralization of all customer requests.”

“Sprimoglass follows the same approach to further adapt the systems to the customer’s needs. We are also currently evaluating Commerce Cloud and look forward to testing this solution.”

Does the company sufficiently understand the IT challenges?

Cuypers: “On the one hand, the company certainly has a lot of trust in us. On the other hand, it is also important to keep the company up to date and provide regular information about further developments.”

“When it comes to projects, we always try to include everyone involved except me. In this way, we always combine the technological perspective with insights from the business side.”

“We are also fortunate that our CEO has very good IT skills. I realize that this is an exception. He is a strong supporter of Salesforce solutions and a driving force behind our presence in the ecosystem. We use Mulesoft for integrations, Tableau for decision support, Sales Cloud and Service Cloud and as mentioned, we are thinking about Commerce Cloud.”

Does the CIO organization have sufficient staff and resources?

Cuypers: “In general, we don’t have any major problems with it. The management sees the added value of digitalization and we receive positive feedback from our customers. If we also want to scale faster, we are primarily looking for partners.”

The board sees the added value of digitalization.

Peter Cuypers, CIO Sprimoglass

Is the future of Sprimoglass’ IT environment in the cloud, on-premises or a combination?

Mathieu: “We migrated servers from the cloud to local servers. Ultimately, this option proved more beneficial for certain workloads. The cloud is not possible for the factory anyway, so we also use the on-premise infrastructure. We use the cloud with the Salesforce ecosystem. The cloud is perfect for such applications.”

Cuypers: “The factory must continue to run even if there is a problem with the connection. A hybrid infrastructure is then the only solution. We run performance-critical matters locally, but others run together in the cloud. In some cases, such as Salesforce, we rely entirely on SaaS.

What impact do regulations like NIS2 have on politics?

Cuypers: “NIS2 is a fantastic initiative. If you look at the number of attacks today, you can only come to the conclusion that a large number of companies are falling victim to hackers. Belgium is suffering financially. The impact on businesses and the government is truly significant and NIS2 is finally providing direction. The regulations are necessary and it is good that they are binding.”

Mathieu: “We ourselves were victims of a cyber attack some time ago and were quickly caught. All the necessary measures were already on the roadmap, but we had not yet implemented them. We have now taken over a SOC service. That’s why we teamed up with Easi. In this context, we have also included Darktrace and Sentinel One to protect our networks and assets.”

“We also have a comprehensive backup strategy, including secure cloud backups. The attack also affected our internal backup, but not the one in the cloud. You can’t just remove something from it.”

About two weeks after the attack, part of our production was already running in restricted mode again.

Pierre Mathieu, enterprise architect Sprimoglass

Cuypers: “About two weeks after the attack, part of our production was already running in restricted mode. We then had to restart, but in the correct order so that the correct orders were processed first. This was possible because all customer inquiries via Salesforce are stored securely in the cloud. ”

How does Sprimoglass deal with the AI ​​hype?

Cuypers: “We are currently examining what added value AI can bring us. We have already developed a system using computer vision to track employee hours.”

“Salesforce is on the agenda. Two years ago, Salesforce introduced the Data Cloud. Then we waited for clear added value. Things get really interesting with the introduction of Agentforce. Our sales staff also find Tableau Pulse, which is based on AI, very interesting.”

“We will start with a small pilot and see what happens. We are very interested in moving forward with Salesforce AI agents.”

What are the main plans and challenges for the near future?

Cuypers: “Our main focus is on improving the digital experience of our customers and suppliers, for example by implementing a state-of-the-art customer portal and web shop. We also want to simplify our communication strategy. We have too much. Slack is an interesting solution, but at the moment we cannot connect external phone functions to it. If we had to switch to Slack, this would be an additional solution. If we can connect the tool to the telephone system, possibilities open up.”