My contribution to a board
I would bring an executive's understanding of how consumer data is produced in fragmented, cash-heavy trade: at a shop counter, in a van, through a distributor or in a household's delivery instructions. Boards in this sector receive sales, price and customer figures that look precise and are often assembled from several conventions. I can help directors ask how a figure was captured, who could change it and which partner holds the underlying personal records. I also understand the commercial cost of better data, because each improvement I have led slowed someone down or ended a relationship, and I can help a committee weigh that cost honestly. My limits matter as much. I am not a finance professional, a lawyer or an experienced director. I have presented to an audit and risk committee for several years, but I have not shared a board's collective accountability. A first seat should use my experience on the committee where it is most relevant, while giving me time to learn strategy, capital and people decisions from directors who have made them.
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 24 days per year
- Current directorships
- 0
- Sectors
- Packaged food and beverages · Grocery and convenience retail · Consumer distribution
- Company type
- Listed mid-sized or family-controlled consumer company in Malaysia or Singapore
- Company stage
- Strengthening reporting, data protection or distributor arrangements during growth or a move to wider ownership
The seat I am pursuing
I am seeking an independent non-executive seat on the board of a consumer, retail or distribution company in Malaysia or Singapore, preferably listed or preparing for wider ownership. The company should sell through many outlets or partners, so that the reliability of field and customer data is a board matter rather than a technical detail. I would like to join its audit and risk committee, not chair it, and to learn from directors with finance, legal and operating backgrounds. I would decline a seat where my role was effectively that of an unpaid data adviser, or where the company competes directly with Telagawangi. I want collective responsibility for the whole business: its pricing, investment, people and reputation. I expect to contribute most when the board is examining how its numbers are made and what its partners hold on its behalf.
Judgement in practice
01Asking what an attractive model would change in the field
The shop-level ordering module came with a confident volume case and the support of a respected commercial director. My contribution was to test it where it would be used, and to separate forecast accuracy at the shop from usefulness at the route. On a board I would ask similar questions of any data or technology proposal: at what level will decisions be made, who will act on the output, and what has the pilot shown about their response? I would also want dissent recorded, as the commercial director's was, because a board benefits from seeing a recommendation together with its best-informed objection. I would not oppose investment in forecasting or automation as a habit. I would ask management to describe the field conditions in which the promised benefit appears, and the measure that would tell us early that it is not appearing.
02Seeing a partner's records as the company's responsibility
The household records held by our water distributors were not on any system the board had seen, yet customers had given that data to us. I would bring that perspective to another board's review of data risk. Consumer companies often hold personal data through distributors, agencies, delivery partners and franchisees, and a register of internal systems can miss most of it. I would ask management where customer records are kept outside its own systems, under what terms and how deletion is checked. I would also ask what the remedy will cost commercially, because ours cost two distributor relationships and higher delivery costs in two states. A committee should approve that cost knowingly rather than discover it later. The question is not whether every partner can meet a head-office standard at once, but whether the company knows the gap and has a dated plan to close it.
My first year on a board
Before my first meeting I would ask to spend a day with the people who capture the company's main records, whether that is a van crew, a store team or a distributor's order desk. I would then read a year of committee papers and minutes alongside the follow-up records, to see which questions were closed and which kept returning. In the first two quarters I would mostly listen, and ask the chair to tell me where my questions were useful and where they belonged with management. I would complete the accreditation and induction that the exchange and the company require, and meet the external auditor, the head of internal audit and the data protection officer separately. By the end of the year I would hope to have helped the committee settle a small number of measures for data quality and partner-held personal data that it reviews regularly, without creating another report that management prepares only for the board.
Conflicts and their management
My relationships run through a drinks maker that sells to thousands of shops, supplies supermarket chains, appoints distributors and competes with other beverage companies for shelf space and van calls. A board seat at a retailer, a distributor or a food and drinks company could touch any of those. I would list them for the chair before any meeting and ask the company secretary to compare them with the company's own customers, suppliers and competitors. A direct competitor of Telagawangi would be ruled out. Where a matter involved one of our customers or distributors, I would declare it and leave the discussion. I would bring no Telagawangi pricing, outlet or customer data into the boardroom, and take none back. My employer's written consent would be a condition of accepting. Time is a conflict too: twenty-four days must include reading and committee work in a year when my own company may make heavy demands of its own.
My independence statement
Any company that buys from, supplies, distributes for or competes with Telagawangi would need to examine that connection with me before I described myself as independent of it. My employer's written consent would also come first, and the board's own assessment would decide the matter, not my description.
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to join | Audit and risk management · Risk or data governance, where separately constituted |
|---|
Board and committee exposure
Presented to the Board or a committee
Telagawangi Beverages Berhad
Audit and Risk Management Committee; board discussions on data matters
July 2022–present
Presents quarterly on data quality, personal-data incidents and exceptions to data-sharing rules; attends board discussions as an executive; not a director.
Reported to a committee
Telagawangi Beverages Berhad
Audit and Risk Management Committee
January 2019–June 2022
Reported twice a year on reporting controls and data quality, through the chief financial officer.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA databank is an Indian register and does not apply to the Malaysian and Singapore boards I am considering, so I have not registered. A first appointment to a Bursa-listed board would bring the accreditation programme required of new directors, which I would complete within the required period.
- I have studied, across several quarters, how our audit and risk committee records its questions to management and the external auditor and checks that each is closed.
- I am discussing board papers and the responsibilities of a non-executive director with two experienced independent directors who have agreed to mentor me.