There is a benefit to experience, as BeDamCo well knows. The company draws on the knowledge and experience of its ex-military personnel to provide consulting services and professional staff for management and projects in the defense and security sector, focusing primarily on navies and coastguards.
While some companies can claim to be early adopters of the partners in business (PIB) initiative, BeDamCo was part of the driving force behind the creation of the PIB. Together with the NIDV, they worked to start a PIB in a new target region and both parties soon settled on Southeast Asia and Malaysia and Singapore in particular.
BeDamCo’s managing director, Mr. Nico van Dam, told us that the company already had extensive experience with doing business in the region. BeDamCo has worked together with the Indonesian Navy and the Indonesian Coastguard on logistic concepts for fleet maintenance and operational readiness and visited a number of Southeast Asian defence exhibitions. These activities resulted in various contacts and contracts, broader in the Southeast Asia region.
As such, Mr. van Dam explained, BeDamCo has experienced that there is a lot of interest in the training and programs that BeDamCo specializes in. He also expressed that the company’s experiences in Southeast Asia had been very positive and that cooperation with Navy and Coastguard clients has been very fruitful showing significant improvements.
“We are very enthusiastic about our work and partnerships in the region: working with a professional military, where people are skilled in their own right, eager to learn and eager to draw inspiration from how things are done abroad.”
Mr. van Dam mentioned that BeDamCo still had several projects and opportunities that they were excited about in Indonesia. He also expressed an interest in pursuing more opportunities in Malaysia, but added that COVID-19 had made this much more difficult. In Mr. van Dam’s experience, being physically present is extremely important for doing business in Malaysia. Of course, with the travel restrictions caused by COVID-19, it soon became very difficult to organize in-person events for the PIB.
Despite this, Mr. van Dam remained enthusiastic. He explained that BeDamCo had been hard at work to reach out digitally to parties participating in the PIB and expressed eagerness to meet people in person as soon as COVID-19 regulations would allow.