BrazilTaco Nieuwenhuijsen joins Dubai's digital consulting network Konsälidön
Konsälidön, a consulting industry matchmaking company based in Dubai, has brought aboard experienced customer marketing executive Taco Nieuwenhuijsen as a Managing Partner for its Customer-Centricity practice.
Based in the UAE, and helmed by former PwC and Protiviti operations consulting leader Varun Malik as Managing Director and CEO, Konsälidön is one of a number of new era ‘matchmakers’ out to disrupt the traditional consulting partnership model – which with various approaches include growing names such as Talmix, SkillBridge and Comatch – the latter named Germany’s tenth fastest growing digital start-up earlier this year.
Essentially, the digital match-making model for partnering organisations with individuals or teams of consultants seeks to streamline the process of obtaining pre-screened expertise for clients and at a far lower cost, while also improving the take-home rate for freelancing consultants. In the words of Konsälidön: “Our platform enables us to operate an agile, decentralised and distributed global consulting firm with very low overheads – which means that our clients see only senior experts and lower charge-out rates.”
As a win-win for consultants and clients alike, it’s easy to see why the digital consulting network model is growing. For Konsälidön, which works with business clients from 15-plus sectors, that growth has translated to a network of more than 500 senior advisors in its first year and over 200 consulting teams – with the aim of accelerating that figure to 4,000 over the next five years. Together, the budding platform’s current roster of consultants can already boast cumulative experience on more than 6,000 consulting projects.
And as Konsälidön gears up for ongoing and rapid growth, the Dubai-headquartered company has welcomed aboard the both globally and locally experienced marketing and business executive Taco Nieuwenhuijsen as its new Managing Partner for Customer-Centricity – responsible for growing the practice in the areas of strategic planning, digital solutions and market entry and growth endeavours, underpinned by customer-centric drivers.
Nieuwenhuijsen comes to Konsälidön with a stacked and impressive resume, previously serving as the Group Commercial Director at engineering professional services firm Dar Al Riyhad in Saudi Arabia, before which he acted as the Vice President of Global Marketing for Qatar Airways. Earlier, he spent nearly twelve years in various international marketing leadership roles with Dutch airline KLM, ultimately as the global Director for Loyalty & Customer Relation Management.
More recently, Nieuwenhuijsen served as the interim CEO of Batuta.com, the Arabic-language short-term accommodation answer to Booking.com in the Middle East, and is the founder and CEO of Encompass Marketing Services (EMS), a boutique Dubai-based consultancy geared at organisations keen to enhance their customer focus through the implementation of customer-centric principles from the strategy and planning stages to end user experience.
With the conception and implementation of a number of other successful internet start-ups under his belt, Nieuwenhuijsen’s combination of digital entrepreneurialship with a customer-focused ethos appears a good match for Konsälidön. “The common denominator of my endeavors has been a genuine marketing philosophy based on a deep understanding of the Customer Experience Journey,” Nieuwenhuijsen states on LinkedIn. “I am tenacious about the usage of convergence platforms and customer insights to enhance the customer experience, organisational agility, and operational excellence.”
