Flemish Brabant: research, headquarters and local trades
Flemish Brabant is the most knowledge-intensive province in the country. Leuven revolves around KU Leuven, the university hospital and imec, one of the world's leading nanoelectronics research centres. Around them sit the Haasrode research park and a long line of spin-offs in semiconductors, software, medtech and materials. For these young firms, one clear website often has to convince investors, partners and candidates at once.
The western half tells a completely different story: the Brussels-Zaventem-Diegem-Vilvoorde corridor is a belt of headquarters, consulting firms, airport logistics and distribution centres, highly international and largely English-speaking. Between those poles sits ordinary Flemish Brabant: builders, installers, wholesalers, professional practices and shops in Tienen, Diest, Aarschot, Halle and the periphery. A university spin-off and an installer from Tienen live in different worlds. Yet both have to explain what they do to someone who does not get it, which is a communication problem before it is a technical one.
Working in Flemish Brabant, next door to Brussels
In this province the distance argument collapses: from our Brussels office, Zaventem is twenty minutes away and Leuven half an hour. We have no office there, since our only two are in Brussels and Lille, but travelling out for the first meeting, the scoping workshop and the pre-launch demo is easy. Meetings take place at your premises, in the office or in the lab. Between those meetings, you follow progress in a staging environment that stays open at all times.
For young technology companies we typically build a bilingual site in Dutch and English that holds up in front of investors and candidates, with a blog and a self-service admin. For a classic SME in Flemish Brabant, the payoff sits elsewhere: being findable locally, taking quote requests online and killing administrative re-entry. Either way we work in Dutch, with English alongside where it helps. You can also start with a showcase site and add a blog or a second language later.
A few checkpoints come up in our Flemish Brabant projects. In the periphery, many firms serve both Dutch- and French-speaking customers, so the site must handle both languages cleanly, without mixing them on one page. Spin-offs publish vacancies and news in English and want to do it on their own. We also check that each contact form reaches the right inbox in the right language. Finally, the legal notice, company number, VAT details and a GDPR-compliant privacy policy apply in every language of the site.
