Farah WijayaChief Financial Officer

Personal correspondence

Cash arrives after the signature, not the work

Chief Financial Officer Singapore / Southeast Asia

In IT services, the balance sheet is mostly salaries already paid and acceptances not yet signed.

In early 1998 I spent three weeks counting stock in a Surabaya textile warehouse for an audit client whose rupiah sales could no longer service its dollar loans. The stock was real and the looms were running, yet the company's lenders had already stopped discussing profit. I was twenty-three, an audit associate with Sentanaya & Rekan, the Jakarta accounting firm I had joined in August 1996 after my economics degree at Kalimaren School of Economics. That engagement taught me to ask three questions before any other: which currency a business earns in, which currency it owes in, and how long cash takes to travel between them.

A services company spends its money first and is paid later, often in another currency and only after someone outside the company has signed. I want directors to see that sequence as clearly as the margin it produces. The covenant, the acceptance certificate and the engineer's annual pay review belong in the same conversation as revenue.

Group revenue
S$286m
2025; system integration, managed services and offshore delivery
People in four countries
2,180
Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam, December 2025
Public-sector collection period
109 days
Malaysian agencies, December 2025, down from 171 in June 2023

I run the finances of an IT-services group on the assumption that cash arrives later than the work, in a different currency, and only after someone else has signed.

I am group CFO of Ravendara Integrated Systems, a Singapore-headquartered system integrator that builds and runs technology for public-sector agencies and banks in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, and develops software for overseas clients from a delivery centre in Ho Chi Minh City. We reported S$286 million of revenue and S$34 million of EBITDA in 2025, with 2,180 people in four countries. The founder's family holds 54 per cent, a private-equity investor 38 per cent and employees the remainder. I lead 46 finance colleagues through five direct reports and present to the board and its audit and risk committee.

My first employer was an audit firm in Jakarta, and my first serious lesson arrived in 1997 and 1998, when the rupiah collapsed and clients with dollar borrowings and rupiah income found that a profitable year could still end in default. I moved to Kuala Lumpur in 2000 as a project accountant for a system integrator and spent almost ten years learning how fixed-price contracts, performance bonds and acceptance certificates shape cash. I joined Ravendara in 2014 and became group CFO in April 2019, a month after our private-equity investment completed.

The three decisions described on this site each cost us something visible. I paid a higher margin on our 2022 bank facility for covenants that could absorb a fixed-price loss, and a deferred shareholder distribution formed part of the price. I declined a receivables-purchase offer and an attractive public-sector tender while we repaired how acceptances were documented. I asked delivery clients to accept a wage-linked rate review, and one of them moved its work elsewhere. None of those choices improved the quarter in which it was made. Each made a later quarter easier to explain.

A bank facility built for the year a project goes wrong

Our 2022 refinancing cost about S$300,000 a year more than the first offer. When a fixed-price programme required a RM14.2 million loss provision in 2024, the revised covenants held without a waiver request.

Public-sector collection days cut from 171 to 109

An eleven-person acceptance desk, a declined RM42 million tender and a refused receivables sale reduced Malaysian public-sector receivables from RM118 million to RM84 million by December 2025, with no write-offs.

A delivery margin rebuilt through the rate card

Wage-linked reviews lifted the Ho Chi Minh City centre's gross margin from 14 to 21 per cent between 2023 and 2025, although its revenue fell from US$31.0 million to US$28.5 million when one client left.

Current focus

I am preparing our lenders, investor and board for the 2027 refinancing, with a fixed-price project register and a currency-exposure statement attached to every half-year compliance certificate as standard rather than on request.

Conversations I welcome

I would consider one independent directorship in Singapore or Malaysia, preferably an audit and risk committee seat in a project-based or multi-currency services company, with about twenty-four days a year after my own board's consent and a review of client and supplier relationships.

The leadership record

Trusted with consequential decisions.

Formation

  • Bachelor of Economics (Accounting)Kalimaren School of Economics · 1996
  • Directors' foundation programmeLumentara Institute of Directors · 2024
Farah told the committee about the bank programme's loss in the week the delivery team confirmed it, before the quarter had closed. She brought the covenant arithmetic with her, and her paper was clear about what management did not yet know.
Hasnul IskandariIndependent director and chair of the audit and risk committee, Ravendara Integrated Systems
The full record ↗

Contact

I would consider one independent directorship in Singapore or Malaysia, preferably an audit and risk committee seat in a project-based or multi-currency services company, with about twenty-four days a year after my own board's consent and a review of client and supplier relationships.

  • Board appointments
Write to Farah Contact page