Commodity Master-Data Recovery Authority — Responsible Sourcing

The mandate

The master-data director resigned after assurance testing linked duplicate supplier and estate identities to unsupported responsible-sourcing claims in two product chains. Physical material remained traceable through local teams, but group systems cannot consistently connect smallholder, aggregator, concession, certification and batch references through changes of ownership. The board has paused expansion of customer-facing provenance statements until one executive restores defensible identity.

The interim must start in Kuala Lumpur within four weeks for twelve months, taking executive ownership through assurance remediation and one complete sourcing cycle. A permanent search begins in month five after the future role’s regional remit is defined. Six weeks of overlap are planned; extension is possible only if seasonal field verification delays an otherwise accepted handover, not to accommodate unbounded cleansing.

Handover requires priority supplier, estate, plot, facility, material and certificate identities to reconcile across procurement and traceability systems; ownership changes and merges must remain historically reproducible; and two assurance samples must be re-performed without local spreadsheets. The successor will approve a live merge decision, accept the unresolved-identity register and own the next customer-claim evidence cycle.

The interim may quarantine records, block unsupported group claims, establish identity policy, redirect the sanctioned RM86 million remediation and appoint temporary regional stewards. Permanent appointments, supplier suspension, public claim language, policy exceptions affecting contractual eligibility and spend above budget require COO, Sustainability or committee approval. The authority cannot certify a farm or determine commercial sourcing alone.

Procurement-price strategy, replacement of plantation systems and field remediation unrelated to identity evidence are outside this assignment. The leader may require interfaces and verification from those areas but does not own supplier development, certification schemes or historical record repair with no present claim, regulatory or material consequence. Scope must privilege critical traceability chains over cosmetic enterprise-data completeness.

Why this seat is open

The assurance finding exposed how locally understandable supplier relationships became misleading when compressed into group master records. Resignation removed the only leader able to arbitrate Sustainability, Procurement and Technology during a claims pause. A temporary executive must rebuild identity evidence now and leave the permanent owner a regional stewardship model that survives organisational and land-reference change.

What you will own

• Reconstruct affected supplier and material chains across smallholders, aggregators, estates, facilities, batches, certificates, legal entities and customer claims.
• Define persistent identity, hierarchy, merge, split, effective-date and evidence rules for ownership and sourcing relationships that change over time.
• Decide which records may support group claims, require qualified language, need field verification or must remain quarantined from external use.
• Establish regional stewardship with decision thresholds, segregation of duties, ageing, escalation and assurance evidence for contested identity changes.
• Reconcile procurement, sustainability, certification and customer systems while preserving differences that are real rather than forcing false master uniformity.
• Direct two assurance re-performance cycles and measure retrieval time, spreadsheet dependence, unresolved exceptions and claim consequence.
• Transfer authority through a witnessed merge case, regional stewardship review and successor acceptance of unresolved and seasonally unverifiable identities.

Candidate qualifications

• Held executive master or reference-data authority in commodities, agriculture, food, mining or another multi-tier physical sourcing network.
• Reconstructed supplier, site and material identity where aggregators, ownership change and inconsistent local references affected external claims.
• Designed temporal hierarchy, merge and split governance that preserved historic truth instead of overwriting complex commercial relationships.
• Worked across Procurement, Sustainability, Technology and independent assurance without confusing data control with supplier certification.
• Blocked or qualified a public provenance claim when supporting identities could not be independently evidenced despite commercial pressure.
• Handed permanent leadership a stewarded operating model after remediation, with unresolved field-verification limits made explicit.

Non-negotiables

• Available within four weeks with frequent travel from Kuala Lumpur to sourcing regions in East Malaysia during field-verification windows.
• Has governed physical supply identities and traceability claims; customer or finance master-data experience alone does not qualify.
• No undisclosed interest in certification bodies, traceability platforms, suppliers or assurance firms active in the affected chains.
• Will separate defensible data evidence from certification and sourcing decisions that remain with accountable functions.

1. 49 words maximum. State your Kuala Lumpur availability and one physical supply identity failure whose external claim impact you bounded.
2. 49 words maximum. How did you preserve historic truth when a supplier, estate or facility split or changed ownership?
3. 49 words maximum. Which evidence would make you quarantine a master record from a responsible-sourcing claim?