My Industry Experience

At Axiata Digital Labs, one of the most important performance questions was how we deployed our engineers. I used KPIs to track billable utilisation, non-billable time and the length of time people spent between assignments. An engineer developing a product and an engineer waiting for a delayed project could both record non-billable hours, yet each called for a different decision. For R&D, I assessed the investment against its expected commercial return. For engineers between assignments, I used timely sales pipeline reports to match available skills to likely project start dates and guide redeployment and hiring decisions.

As the business expanded beyond its predominantly internal customer base, I helped sales and delivery teams strengthen how they costed, priced and negotiated external contracts. We worked through the skills and effort required, the margin the proposed price would support, and the terms governing scope, delivery and payment. During delivery, I reviewed actual effort against the original costing so the team could see where additional work was eroding project profitability and decide how to respond.

In a competitive bid, a small pricing concession, an open-ended warranty or a delay in customer acceptance can consume an already thin margin. I work with sales, technical and procurement teams before we commit to a price. Together, we identify which risks we can manage, which obligations a supplier can cover and which exposures we need to reflect in the price. I help negotiate warranty coverage, agree acceptance and billing milestones, and structure project financing around the gap between supplier payments and customer receipts.

After award, I use the approved project costing to review actual expenditure, outstanding commitments and the margin expected at completion. Tracking these alongside delivery, invoicing and collections makes it easier to distinguish a cost overrun from a cash timing issue and act on the right problem. I also develop long-range business plans and commercial strategies, assessing which opportunities the business has the capability and working capital to pursue profitably. My experience includes establishing N-able’s Singapore operation and setting up SAP and Microsoft Dynamics.

At Hemas, I established a group shared services operation for seven companies in the transportation sector. The starting point was understanding which processes each company needed to hand over and what its managers still needed to see and decide. During onboarding, I defined end-to-end responsibilities, agreed how exceptions would be resolved and shaped reporting around the needs of each business.

My hands-on experience with SAP Financial Accounting (SAP FI) helped me translate those business needs into finance workflows and management reports. I used feedback from the companies to improve how the shared team handled work and followed issues through to resolution. The aim was for managers to trust the team with the process and spend their own time on customers, operations and growth.

In medical equipment, purchasing decisions often come before customer order dates are certain. I work with business leaders to build budgets and business plans around specific opportunities, their likelihood and their expected timing. For imported products, I review the full landed cost so pricing decisions reflect what it actually costs to bring an item into the business.

I bring those two views together when reviewing profitability and cash flow. If a major order moves, we can revisit purchase timing, stock commitments and funding needs while there is still room to act. This also informs longer-term decisions about which products can support sustainable margins and where procurement and inventory processes need improvement.

Solar, mini-hydro and battery storage projects commit capital for years. I assess expected investment returns by examining the assumptions behind them, including capital cost, financing terms, operating performance and the timing of cash flows. I look at how a delay, a funding change or lower-than-planned performance would affect the return before an investment decision is made.

Once a plant is operating, I review generation alongside grid interruptions, plant availability and restoration timelines to understand both the revenue impact and the response required. For battery storage projects, I coordinate supplier payment milestones, bank financing, shipping documentation and insurance so that funding and delivery arrangements support the project schedule.

In a people-intensive security business, a contract can meet its revenue target while earning less than planned if the cost of staffing a site exceeds the assumptions used to price it. I review profitability by contract and site, bringing staffing requirements and deployment costs into the same discussion as customer commitments. This helps management identify where to adjust resource allocation and what to address in a contract review or renewal.

I also use operating and financial data to identify recurring cost pressures and strengthen the processes behind deployment and performance reporting. That work feeds into long-term planning by showing which contracts the business can resource reliably and grow profitably.