Beci 3.0, The Brussels Business Community

Voice, connect, serve : BECI unites, stimulates and supports Brussels businesses that want to commit to this threefold objective. Joining the Community means getting in touch with 350,000 people, developing your business thanks to the exchanges, content and advice of a real Community. It also means supporting the success of others. Together, we are strengthening our impact on businesses in Brussels.

‘One of BECI's greatest assets is the large number of members who have a great deal of expertise in various fields. The idea is for them to share their knowledge and pass it on to other members, who can themselves become experts in the specific subjects they master. Our role will be to put them in touch by co-creating events such as seminars, conferences and training courses on specific topics. It's a win-win situation, because each member makes himself available to the others. We're going to build BECI 3.0 together! ’

“ Nous entrons dans un modèle où le membre est au centre du système. Au sein de BECI, nous deviendrons les animateurs de la Communauté. Nous chercherons encore et toujours à détecter les besoins, mais ce sera la Communauté des membres qui apportera généralement la solution aux problèmes. Plutôt que créer la compétence chez BECI, nous faisons appel à des membres de la Communauté qui disposent d’une grande expertise dans le domaine concerné. Nous allons revenir à notre modèle historique où tout est gratuit, inclus dans le cadre du membership. "

“ L’expertise de nos membres va encore plus être mise en avant en privilégiant l’interaction. Nus continuerons d’être des généralistes pour aider et conseiller nos membres, mais ceux-cipourront apporter à d’autres leurs connaissances spécifiques à une problématique particulière. Ainsi, en matière d’exportations, certains ont une connaissance spécifique pour certains pays en matière de TVA, de marquages douaniers, de pratiques locales, d’interlocuteurs spécifiques… Notre rôle consistera à mettre toutes ces personnes en réseau, les faire interagir, et de cobrander certains événements en fonction de thématiques spécifiques. ”

“Avec BECI 3.0, nous serons davantage centrés sur l’actualité. Notre offre en formations en virtuel, en présentiel ou en hybride, seront étendues. Nous comptons d’ailleurs sur les membres pour venir avec des propositions de sujets qui apportent une plus-value à la Communauté. Ensemble, nous décidons du choix du thème et de la façon de l’aborder dans l’intérêt commun. Ce changement s’inscrit dans la continuité de ce qui avait déjà été entamé. La plupart de ces formations seront gratuites pour nos membres et le personnel des entreprises qui sont membres. ”

New horizon

BECI is inaugurating the ‘Brussels Business Community’, a new way of operating, approaching and supporting its members in an ultra-connected world.

‘Connect, share and co-create’. By renewing its mission based on these three objectives, BECI wants to change its relationship with its members and project itself fully into the future. The region, the country and the world have perhaps never evolved as rapidly as they have in recent years. CEO Olivier Willocx believes that collaboration, partnership and the sharing of expertise are absolutely essential in the face of the enormous challenges facing businesses.

But haven't connecting, sharing and co-creating always been at the heart of the Chamber's activities? ‘Perhaps what we want most of all is a change of heart that is even more in tune with the expectations of our members, the community spirit and the opportunities offered by technology,’ explains Olivier Willocx. ‘Even if digitalisation encourages exchanges, co-creation is above all a question of state of mind’, agrees Annick Hernot, President of BECI. ‘Partnerships are an essential element in the development of any organisation today. You can't evolve without them, or you risk becoming irrelevant,’ she adds. For her predecessor and still director Marc Decorte, ‘The business environment has changed fundamentally: the future is increasingly difficult to predict, the shifts are abrupt, disruptive and follow one another in rapid succession - the need to be connected between entrepreneurs has never been greater’. Opening doors wide

Opening doors wide

The Chamber is therefore calling on all its members to work with them to co-create the solutions they offer the community, using digital tools. To begin with, all members are invited to share their information content via the BECI digital platform, which also has a number of printed, web, radio and multimedia channels to give it resonance.

At the same time, all contributors can take advantage of the excellent search engine ranking it enjoys. ‘With our support, a young company can boost its visibility much more than it could on its own,’ says Olivier Willocx, referring to some of the content on the beci.be site that has attracted up to 60,000 views.

More than just a medium, the platform aims to play a role in bringing people together and developing business. It will, for example, open up its data to any interested member in order to provide precise information on the subjects of greatest concern to entrepreneurs and guide them in positioning their goods and services. The Chamber has a wealth of internal data on Brussels businesses and their managers. It will gradually integrate this data into the platform, enabling members who request it to segment, create personas and target their approaches.

BECI will also be making its offices at 500 Avenue Louise available to its members for the organisation of events and meetings. In keeping with its new role as a ‘Community House’, its three floors - including a café area on the ground floor - were given a complete facelift during the health crisis.

Platform

This new approach is partly based on the idea that each member can now become a driving force behind the Brussels Community. ‘For co-creation to succeed, the partners must of course want to work together, but they must also have complementary skills,’ says Annick Hernot. By evolving its role into that of an increasingly digitised platform, BECI hopes to become a place where each of its 3,000 members can easily call on the expertise of others, in all the areas that concern them.

Subsidies and financing, taxation and accounting, commercial and property law, mobility, import-export, HR and social law... These and many other areas will be covered by the platform, which will in particular expand the legal content - advice, model correspondence and contracts, etc. - that its members can already find on legal.beci.be.

But here again, the Chamber is aiming for greater depth. The idea is to give external service contracts to those of its members whom it will turn into referents. BECI would be responsible for relaying specific requests from other members that it could not meet itself, and would then settle the bill. ‘It is not the role of a chamber to compete with a law firm or other experts,’ explains Olivier Willocx. ‘But we do have to ensure that all our members can find an answer to their problems at any time. As a result, our in-house staff profiles will gradually evolve towards less in-house expertise, and more in leadership, communication and the ability to liaise and pass on knowledge between members faced with a problem and the experts who have the solutions’. In this respect, Annick Hernot points to the unique wealth of connections that BECI has developed within the ecosystem over decades.

Marc Decorte insists: ‘The soft skills of the future consist in orchestrating multiple parties, interpreting information, translating it into opportunities and focusing on the “future” and “solutions”. It's hard to find all this in one person, hence the importance of ‘entrepreneurial communities’, which are at the heart of Beci's purpose.

All inclusive

Reflecting this new approach, the Chamber is also evolving its membership model, from a la carte to all-inclusive. ‘We want to offer members an all-inclusive membership so that, regardless of their size, they can benefit from our full range of services,’ explains Olivier Willocx.

At the same time, BECI is retaining the other historic pillar of its business. In addition to the services mentioned above, it will continue to represent its members in the bodies where political and administrative decisions are taken (see also page 06). More than ever, the Chamber intends to defend the interests of Brussels entrepreneurs everywhere.

Our 3.0 vision