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Don’t limit your ambitions. If you set your sights high and commit relentlessly you can exceed others’ expectations

Interview with Tom Cachet
Senior Manager Global Trade Advisory
Deloitte Thailand

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Hi Tom, thank you for joining the interview with us. Could you please kindly introduce yourself and your background to DBWT?

My name is Tom, I am 31 years old, from Belgium. I grew up around Brussels and studied law at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven).

I currently work as a Senior Manager for Deloitte Tax & Legal where I advise multinationals on customs & global trade matters in relation to their supply chain activities. I have been with Deloitte for 6 years, of which 4.5 years here in Thailand.

What is your passion for the law & consulting field? What was your first job?

After concluding my Bachelor, I had the opportunity to do an internship at a foundation in Vietnam, focusing on economic and international trade policy in Southeast Asia. This experience convinced me to get into international trade advisory, especially in relation to emerging markets where all the big changes are happening. Towards the end and right after my Master studies I landed traineeships at the Trade Section of the Belgian Consulate-General in Mumbai and at a trade law firm in Brussels. My first “real” job was right after that, at Deloitte in Brussels in their Customs & Global Trade team. It wasn’t long after that I seized the opportunity to help expand the team in Southeast Asia.

What I like most about consulting and my job specifically is that I get to navigate companies through this complex maze of customs & trade rules to help them optimize their global supply chains.

Deloitte is one of largest auditing company in the world, how did you get to work in this worldwide organization, and what would be your suggestion for people who dream to pursue their career with a similar goal as you?

The nice thing about firms like Deloitte is that they hire a lot of young graduates straight out of university. This is how I landed my job. In my final year of university, I applied at Deloitte during one of the career events that the university organizes. I was aware that Deloitte also did consultancy on customs & trade and liked the global profile of the company, so I decided to give it a shot. What followed were a number of aptitude tests, interviews and case studies after which I was offered a job as a junior associate.

If you’re interested in doing advisory or consulting for a global firm, having a good degree is a solid starting point. More importantly you need to show that you are passionate or committed about the thing you want to do and willing to learn lots and fast in order to excel at it. Demonstrating versatility, whether its through your past professional experiences, international exposure or other types of milestones, is another big plus as your job will be different every day, when dealing with a variety of clients, projects and people. 

Once in the firm, it is about absorbing as much as possible the knowledge and skills around you from your seniors and peers. In your first year(s), you get a lot of training and exposure to different types of tasks to prepare you to become an advisor. After that you work your way up by getting lots of project experience, building client and network relationships and taking on management responsibilities.

How does Deloitte apply gender equality and inclusion in the organization, especially in Thailand? In your opinion, what do you think is the real issue with inequality in the workplace that could happen?

Deloitte has a company culture focused on a set of common values which include fostering Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in order to create an environment where everyone feels they can belong and grow.

To achieve and enable such an environment, Deloitte focuses on 6 specific topics which are inclusiveness, gender balance, mental health, LGBTQ, having a multi-generational work force and eminence. On an organizational level, the company has set up networks, meeting groups, awareness sessions and community events. Other ways to ensure more equality on the work floor are the introduction of flexible work or work-life integration and reliance on trusted mentors.

Deloitte is a big and diverse organization that attracts and hires people from across the whole society so you will find a good gender balance, people of different nationalities and all kinds of backgrounds. This kind of diversity definitely helps create an inclusive and open environment.

On the gender balance specifically, I like to point out that our Deloitte Thailand Tax & Legal executive leadership is just over 50% female which is still quite exceptional anywhere in the world. First and foremost, this is because our woman leaders have worked very hard to get where they are and are exceptionally good at what they do, but it also shows that the right environment and possibilities exist in Deloitte for women to make it to the top leadership.

Despite all such efforts, workplace inequality can still persist. It remains difficult to tackle because it exists in many ways, small and big and people may not always notice it’s there because we all look at things from our own mindset. Overall, I do get the feeling that at Deloitte people are happy and comfortable being themselves on the work floor.

How do you like working with people in Thailand? Any stories you could share about your inter-cultural and also, inter-gender experience at work? Is there any difference in working with Thai and Belgium, male and female colleagues?

My experience has been really good. Working here over the past few years, I got the feeling that people are very open, accommodating and fun to work with. I think there is more of a community/ social vibe on the work floor than I experienced back in Belgium. I have always liked working in different environments, with different nationalities and backgrounds and that is also the case here. In the Bangkok office, most of my colleagues are Thai, but we also have lots of Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and some US, Australians and Europeans. It’s a nice mix and a good reflection of the globalized world we work in.

How is digitalization supporting your business and how important is ‘being digital’ for an advisory company?

Digitalization is obviously becoming more and more important, both for our own business and for our clients. The office has taken meaningful steps towards becoming paperless. This makes all of our admin work more efficient, and it is environmentally friendly. Besides that we are continuously reviewing and challenging our internal work processes and the services that we offer to clients to improve them. Digitalization is playing a big role in the transformation process that follows.

Nowadays we use data analytics tools for companies to more easily identify cost savings and potential compliance risks on their trade flows, something which is very hard to oversee when you need to do this based on reviews of transactional documentation. Our teams are progressing from manual document reviews to using online “health-checks”, data capture exercises and rule-based automated solutions. All of these things are not meant to take over any person’s position but rather to remove certain burdens that complicate their work and increase the quality of their output. It changes people’s roles in an organization from that of a firefighter to an effective manager.

What are the challenges of being a young manager? How do you empower other colleagues? Is there any conflict with age and seniority?

The main challenge is there is a lot of pressure to perform and deliver all the time. There are also a multitude of tasks to handle simultaneously when you manage multiple projects and clients: guiding your team, delegating and reviewing tasks, upholding quality standards, providing clear communication towards the client, handling administration, dealing with contracts and pursuing new business development opportunities. The grind never stops and you need to be very efficient and structured to make sure everything keeps running smoothly.

In my role, I like to work very closely with my team to have a good sense of what everyone is doing and to make sure we are always moving towards our targets. It’s of the essence that we divide the work efficiently, avoid duplications, leverage of existing solutions and so on. This means regular, short interactions to provide updates, hear suggestions and agree on next steps. I tend to engage my colleagues a lot, especially the young new starters, asking them lots of questions and their inputs. I will also challenge and provide constructive feedback in return.  On any project I will always share a lot of background and provide my colleagues with my own experiences and suggestions. All of the above are ways and means that I picked up myself from my best managers in the past years.

You are the chairman of the Supply Chain Management Committee at the Thai-European Business Association (TEBA). What is it about, why is it important and what do you contribute to the community?

In the TEBA Supply Chain Management Committee, we exchange knowledge and best practices on supply chain matters in Thailand, we organize and participate in awareness raising events and advocate government authorities on specific supply chain issues the business community is facing. Our main focus points are the promotion and improvement of Free Trade Agreements (including the EU-Thailand FTA), customs & trade facilitation, development of Industry 4.0 and Sustainability in Supply Chains.

I believe it is important for EU and Thai businesses to have access to a medium where they can find guidance and support on issues that are impacting their supply chain, especially now that supply chains globally are very much under pressure and face big challenges. By bringing together different independent companies and identifying common pain points we can also create a clear voice towards government authorities and work with them to find solutions that can increase competitiveness, ease of doing business and sustainability. Some of the authorities we are currently engaging with are the Thai Ministry of Commerce, Thai Customs as well as the EU Delegation to Thailand.

Do you have a role model?

I do not have one specific role model, but I do have a special admiration for the likes of self-made entrepreneurs who were able to build a business empire out of nothing or come up with an innovation that changed the world because they saw or did something that no-one else did and on top of that they were able to execute and capitalize it. A lot of these self-made stories also involve some classic invaluable traits that can be applied in any career or for the pursuit of any passion such as the willingness to take risks, perseverance and thinking outside the box.  

What do you like to do when you have free time?

I love travelling and discovering new places together with my wife and look forward to doing more of that again now that the Covid situation has improved. I enjoy doing sports a lot. It’s physically rewarding but also helps me clear my mind and push out stresses. During the work week I try to get to the gym a couple of times and I play squash. Every weekend I go for a run, in Lumpini park if I can bear the heat or otherwise at my gym.

Other than that, I enjoy going out with my wife and/or meeting up with friends around Bangkok.  Since the work week is mostly fully packed with work and other obligations, we do also like to find some free time in the weekend to enjoy being at home. I will catch up on my reading or watch some tv shows. Taking the Saturday morning on the couch to read up on all the news in the world with a cup of coffee or spending the Sunday afternoon with a good book on my terrace is definitely time well spent.

What is your inspiring message to the DBWT community?

“Don’t limit your ambitions. If you set your sights high and commit relentlessly you can exceed others’ expectations.”

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