Meet Marc Beijn
Director – Deloitte Netherlands
The Faces of Deloitte TMT is a series of articles exploring the personal histories of our people, sharing the key experiences that defined their values and exploring why they do what they do. In this story, Marc discusses taking an active role in growing clients’ businesses.
Marc Beijn has dedicated his career to solving challenges for clients in the telecommunications and technology sectors. And while he enjoys tackling a range of challenges, he’s found a recent calling in helping clients understand 5G and how to actively use it to power their businesses.
“At Deloitte, we help our clients define the ‘Futures of,’ in which advanced connectivity plays a crucial role. However, we saw that many of our clients—across all industries—didn’t fully understand the potential of 5G or how 5G could work in their particular industry,” Marc says.
Marc, a native of the Netherlands, didn’t begin his career taking such an active role with clients or in technology. He first started out in corporate law but, after a few years, decided he wanted to work with clients to actually build their businesses. The next step was an MBA from IE Business School.
From there, he has worked extensively in different countries, including Latin America and throughout Europe. In addition to feeling comfortable speaking English, Spanish, and German (in addition to Dutch), global exposure is proving invaluable at Deloitte. “We’re getting more and more global. It’s not unusual to work with people from five, six, or more different countries. The opportunity to collaborate across countries and cultures is a very rewarding experience in itself.”
His ambition to help clients build their businesses led Marc to be among those who recognized the potential of 5G early on. He is part of the team that came up with the ‘5G Imagination Lab’, a Deloitte initiative that allows companies to see for themselves how 5G enablement can help them reach their business goals. “The lab helps them visualize what they can do,” says Marc.
Marc also leads the people stream of the global 5G program at Deloitte, and a few years ago, he began an open discussion group among Deloitters interested in learning more about 5G. It’s now evolved into a monthly online group—called 5G5—and brings together people from Deloitte offices around the world to discuss what 5G can do for our telecoms and industry clients.
Despite his global experience, Marc now chooses to live in Rotterdam—the city of his birth. But he still enjoys an active challenge in his personal life by pursuing backcountry skiing—where the skier strikes out from marked trails to set their own course and is less adventurous but more competitive; he is an avid golf player.
Why TMT?
Curiosity plays a big part in what brought Marc to the world of TMT. This is also why he picked up the co-lead of the alliance with Google Cloud In the Netherlands. Even though he has no engineering or formal technical background, his deep interest in the field enables him to work closely with tech professionals and focus on the business side of their challenges. In recent years, he’s excited that he’s had the opportunity to help (telco) clients realize the potential of 5G. And his work with 5G-5, in particular, has allowed him to tap into a dynamic group of people that want to bring innovative 5G solutions to their clients. “The great thing is that it’s driven by people from a number of disciplines, all of whom are curious to learn and share about 5G,” says Marc. “There’s been a real snowball growth to it as it has spread across Deloitte and interesting opportunities are pursued.”
