A vibrant scale-up ecosystem has emerged, with the aim to support (technology) start-ups and scale-ups in their development. Discover how you can benefit from this unique community.

Disruption is becoming the new normal and the pace of change increases every day. As an important member of this vibrant ecosystem, you will have a significant impact on tomorrow’s society.

The purpose of the ecosystem
 Actors across the ecosystem aspire to:

• Foster economic growth and build the businesses/employers of the future
• Address a multitude of economic and societal challenges (e.g. Future of Mobility, sustainability)
• Drive innovation across industries, allowing traditional players to keep up with technological advances

We deliver value in close collaboration with other actors contributing to the ecosystem.

As the trusted advisor, Deloitte supports scale-ups on their growth trajectory. We provide the guidance and advice needed to help you propel your business to even greater success.

We are committed to stimulating the Belgian economy by supporting young, exciting tech ventures and encouraging innovation in new technologies.

Our role in the vibrant scale-up ecosystem is to:

• Connect scale-ups with our corporate clients seeking new sources of growth or ways to transform their business
• Selectively embed emerging technologies in our Digital Offerings and establish go-to-market alliances
• Provide visibility and recognition for start- and scale-ups through programmes such as Best Managed Companies, Fast 50 and Rising Star
• Bring high-value expertise1, including through our Booster Programme, allowing scale-ups to build a solid foundation to support growth and manage risks

1Specific Deloitte offerings include Growth, Talent & Organization, Funding & liquidity management, Digital operations, Accounting - Tax - Assurance, Legal & Compliance, Technology Scaleability & Security

As the trusted advisor of start-ups and scale-ups, we have appointed different segment leaders with deep expertise across a wide range of sectors to address the specific opportunities and challenges that you may face.

Our experts are standing by to support you as you strive to scale up your business. With a broad set of knowledge and years of experience, we can be your trusted advisor.

Growth

With clearly defined goals and aspirations, you are ready to commence your growth trajectory by deploying a solid strategy. Strategy is about making choices to win in the marketplace. We can support you in making the right decisions and in defining what it is you need to win, today and tomorrow.

Challenges or questions you might face:

• Which customers and segments should we prioritise?
• What products and/or services should we offer? Through what kind of profit model and at what price?
• What should our operating model look like to enable our position and support our channel strategy?
• Which strategic partnerships, alliances or acquisitions should we consider for sector or geographical expansion?

How can we partner up?

• Further refine your growth strategy to accelerate your growth plans by means of a Growth Lab.
• Identify and develop potential strategic partnerships, alliances or acquisitions. Get end-to-end guidance throughout the M&A process.
• Perform an in-depth review of your profit model and optimise your pricing, ensuring a sustainable business model.
• Design your target operating model to remain flexible and future proof.
• Set out your intellectual property strategy to maximise your IP’s benefits.

Talent & Organisation

Your scaling organisation is nothing without its winning team, or our customers. One of the biggest challenges in your growth journey is to retain and attract that talent. But what else do you need, apart from an attractive rewards package? Discover how Deloitte can assist you.

Challenges or questions you might face:

• How do we attract, engage and retain our talent?
• How do we structure our organisation and teams?
• Which talent do we need to support our growth?
• What should the reward package look like?
• How should we organise our international workforce?

How can we partner up?

• Gain insights into how to optimise your rewards strategy to keep your employees motivated and attract new employees.
• Get payroll and legal support across the world, from our global network.
• Get advise on your full talent acquisition process or outsource your recruitment activities.
• Enhance your contracting with employees and make sure you are prepared for a possible social inspection.
• Get insights into how to build your HR strategy and how to maximise your talent as a driver for your growth.

Funding & Liquidity Management

As a scale-up, it is key to having a tailored funding mix is key to fuel your growth throughout your life cycle. What is the optimal funding mix for your scale-up? What are the potential pitfalls? We are here to assist you in these essential matters.

Challenges or questions you might face:

• How can we fund our R&D or investments via public funding and incentives?
• How deep do we go with equity fundraising?
• How can we monetise opportunities?
• How can we be relevant with respect to working capital?
• How can we leverage our international network?
• How can we position ourselves as matchmaker between scale-ups and funders?

How can we partner up?

• Working capital optimisation
  Cash planning & strategy | Cash cycle processes I WC Dashboarding & Analytics
• Grants and incentives
  Flanders, Brussels, Wallonia and EU cash grants, tax credit
• Equity fundraising
  Series B/C and growth capital
• Debt fundraising
  Venture debt, recurring revenue lending, EIB financing and growth financing

Digital Operations

Digital capabilities are often part of a scale-up’s DNA, but as you grow these capabilities are required to support your daily operations as well. What enterprise software is best suitable to meet your needs? How do you ensure your digital transformation is driven by the needs of your customers and employees? With a wide array of knowledge and expertise, Deloitte is ready to assist you.

Challenges or questions you might face:

• How do we really get to know our customers and tailor our digital communication channels to their needs?
• How can we scale our operations and client base, supported by the right IT architecture?
• Which digital capabilities do we need to support our sales, customer service, marketing automation or e-commerce ambitions?
• What can we do to manage customer retention proactively?
• How can we create new products, services and sales channels, and integrate them into our existing digital capabilities?
• How do we translate our data into powerful insights across different platforms?

How can we partner up?

• Bring your sales, service, marketing and finance teams to the next level by introducing industry practices and best-in-class technologies.
• Have an idea? Great! Utilise digital methodologies to transform it into reality by creating custom experiences for all audiences within weeks.
• Are you on track? Transform your data into key insights, in order to efficiently manage your strategic and day-to-day operations.
• Create a clear roadmap that brings your digital operations to a higher level.

Accounting, Tax & Assurance

As you grow, staying compliant as well as guaranteeing your required reporting can quickly become a burden. How do you make sure you keep track of your finances and your reporting is not just compliant, but also offers clear insights to help you take the right decisions? We can support your Belgian HQ and international offices as your global accounting, tax and reporting partner.

Challenges or questions you might face:

• How do we process our invoices, payments, expense notes, etc. in a digital, efficient and timely manner?
• How do we cope with increasing compliance requirements?
• How do we provide meaningful reporting to stakeholders?
• How do we deal with business events such as M&A, expansion to new markets and/or countries, or changes within the operating model?
• How do we address temporary financial resourcing needs?
• How can we benefit from tax incentives?

How can we partner up?

• Access seamless end-to-end multi-territory accounting, tax and reporting services, supported by a future-proof tooling setup.
• Empower your finance department by filling positions such as (chief) accountant, finance manager, cost accountant, budget/financial planner/controller, and many made-to-measure solutions.
• Gain clear insights into your margins through the commercial and operational dimensions that suit your business. Optimise data registration and reporting processes and install management reporting systems to support strategic decision making and risk/performance management (actuals vs. budget, KPIs, …).
• Get assistance with tax incentives, credits such as exemption wage taxes and innovation income deduction, and advise on the implementation of international tax structuring and transfer pricing.

Legal, Compliance & Risk

Throughout a scale-up’s life cycle, there are many legal hurdles to overcome. With topics ranging from contracting to intellectual property to shareholder agreements and many more, it is safe to say legal can become somewhat of a challenge. How do you address these fundamental elements? Our scale-up specific legal experts can support you in a swift, agile and no-nonsense manner.

How to turn legal into a business enabler?

Legal consultants and lawyers can not only be your advisor but also your coach, connector and gamechanger! Scroll down and discover the legal services we offer.

Challenges or questions you might face:

• How do we align interests between investors, founders and company objectives in negotiating deal terms?
• How can we optimise the customer experience in the contractual onboarding process?
• How can we engage our intellectual property and how do we determine what IP-strategy fits our business?
• How can we obtain legal comfort without slowing down our deal-making process?
• Do we need different legal support for issues that our co-founders, investors, board and software developers encounter?

How can we partner up?

• Get support to ensure that you cover all of your compliance needs, including GDRP and data protection regulations.
• Secure your intellectual property to maximise your benefits.
• Enhance your commercial, partnership or technology-oriented contracting from both a legal as well as a business perspective.
• Confirm your deal with your (co-)founders and/or investors in a term sheet and shareholders' agreement.
• Facilitate your deal making, with guidance every step of the way.
• Get assistance with all types of dispute resolution, from litigation to mediation.

Technology, Scalability & Security

The development of a technology product in a rapid growth environment might quickly become a significant challenge for scale-ups. Typically, technology is required to support rapid increases in demand and allow for a fast-moving functional scope. In this context, how do you make sure that your product is built on the right technology architecture allowing you to scale fast in a secured manner? Our experts help you optimize your product development to fit today needs, with the robustness to face tomorrow constraints.

Challenges or questions you might face:

• What should be our main IT priority to support our growth?
• How can we enable change in our solution architecture?
• Is our technology flexible enough for scaling users and/or functionalities?
• Is our technology governance and sourcing model optimal?
• How can we optimise our technology spending?
• What is our exposure level against ever-evolving cyber threats?
• How do we implement a security culture at employee level?
• How should we manage our data to maximise its potential?

How can we partner up?

• Analyse whether your current technology stack is fit for purpose, well-architected and will be able to handle growth or changes, highlighting key success factors for scalable technology.
• Define the right structure for delivery and operations at scale with DevSecOps principles beyond the MVP phase.
• Assess opportunities for performance, cost effectiveness, architecture and monitoring improvements in the infrastructure.
• Perform a web platform vulnerability assessment to assess how secure your core product is performing from a security point of view by reviewing key security domains.
• Imagine the data ecosystem and design the right supporting landscape with MDM and big data.
• Assess the technology landscape and organisation to feed financial transaction investigation processes.

Initiated by the Pulse Foundation, BEyond is Belgium’s premier national accelerator for scaling companies. Since 2018, this equity-free, 12-month programme has been driving international growth for Belgian scale-ups. It offers targeted mentoring, expert workshops and a supportive community to accelerate the scaling process of 10 companies. BEyond serves as a drive for global expansion, fulfilling Pulse Foundation’s mission to fortify Belgium’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
 

Deloitte and BEyond both advocate for ambition and active engagement towards Belgian entrepreneurs. Aligned in our values, we partner to help the ecosystem grow in excellence and accelerate its development.

Nicolas Streel, Programme Director BEyond by Pulse Foundation
 

Visit the BEyond webpage

imec.istart is the first investor and supporting partner to scale your tech startup. We are proudly recognized as World's best university-linked accelerator by UBI Global. Committed to supporting digital innovation and entrepreneurship in Flanders, the imec.istart business acceleration program supports entrepreneurs during the early development phase of their tech start-up. This incubation takes a minimum of 12 months and is meant to assess the feasibility of the business proof-of-concept, prepare the (commercial) launch of the first product(s) and establish the start-up to drive this commercialization together with the imec.istart corporate partners.
 

"imec.istart is pleased to partner with Deloitte. Deloitte's unrivaled industry knowledge and global network complement our startup accelerator program, amplifying our ability to deliver exceptional support to our startups and alumni."
 

Erik Vervloet, Business Development imec.istart be/nl

Visit the imec.istart website

La Grand Poste is the new creative and digital hub in central Liège. The 8,000 m² venue hosts a co-working space, start-up incubators, the University of Liège’s Media Campus, a craft brewery, and a food market. It aims to be a real hotspot, buzzing with life and open to the city, where students, professionals and the general public will be able to interact.

We are very pleased to have Deloitte as a partner of La Grand Poste, the totem of the creative district of Liège.

Gérôme Vanherf, CEO of La Grand Poste
 

Visit the La Grande Poste website

BlueChem is the first incubator in Belgium that focuses specifically on innovation and entrepreneurship in sustainable chemistry. BlueChem offers the ideal formula for ambitious start-ups and scale-ups to innovate, grow, and succeed within a unique business network and innovative ecosystem.
 

At a certain point, every start- and scale-up needs expert advice to help them grow. Our partnership with Deloitte and Deloitte Legal has helped BlueChem start-ups to reach the next level. For example, Deloitte Legal assisted individual companies in setting up their IP strategy, and marketing experts from Deloitte gave hands-on advice and directly applicable tricks for digital marketing actions.

Leentje Croes, Manager BlueChem

Visit the BlueChem website

RetailDetail, the leading B2B-retail network in the Benelux, keeps retail professionals up-to-date by means of online and offline publications, retail events, inspiring retail trips, and the unique co-creation platform Retail Hub, where retailers and their suppliers can experience the future of shopping.

Visit the RetailDetail website

The Big Score is an international venture capital & corporate innovation event focused on squeezing time and accelerating interaction between three essential tech branches: high growth data tech solutions, international venture capital and corporation innovation sourcing.
 

Deloitte and The Big Score combine their networks to support each year the most promising enterprise focused scale-ups from all Europe. Together we welcome each year, Europe’s elite tech entrepreneurs to score deals with global, deep pocket investors and corporate multinationals looking for impactfull technology. The Big Score and Deloitte have a track record on succesfully accelerating Europe’s finest & future economy.

Bruno Vandegehuchte, Managing Director

Visit The Big Score website

Vlerick is a leading international business school offering fully-accredited and world class education programmes. Its Scale-up Masterclass, a three-month learning journey for entrepreneurs across the globe, covers a variety of different topics such as international expansion, talent acquisition, customer retention, and sales process scaling.

Deloitte and Vlerick have a shared mission in life: We want to help scale-up entrepreneurs in overcoming their key growing pains as effectively as possible. That is what makes us excellent partners. We are both convinced that to achieve this goal, creating top-notch knowledge about scaling challenges is key and effectively transferring that knowledge to entrepreneurs requires being close to them and bringing them together in a close-knit community.

Veroniek Collewaert, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Vlerick Business School

Visit the Vlerick website

Log!ville is a demonstration and innovation center that contributes to the innovation of the logistics ecosystem in Flanders. It is an open demonstration center where visitors can become acquainted with the latest technical possibilities and trends that can be used in their logistic processes. The goal of Log!Ville is to stimulate knowledge sharing between startups, mature companies and institutions.

Deloitte and Log!Ville are both convinced that innovation in the supply chain is the key to growth and will increase the competitiveness of our entrepreneurs "Through this partnership, we can give companies a view on the changing world within our industry, making the future more visible.

Patrick Aertsen, Managing Director Log!VilleVisit the Log!Ville website

Visit the Log!Ville website