First joining the family at Higgins in a support and training analyst role, Revee Govender never expected to be leading Higgins’ high-performing and heralded I.T. team.
His initial role involved the management of continuous improvement projects, including training and national rollout.
National I.T. Manager Revee Govender celebrating five years of service at Higgins with Managing Director Gerard Higgins
Successes with the implementation of internal projects, saw Revee’s scope extend to customer-facing technology, which is where his importance to Higgins grew exponentially. We chatted with Revee to understand how his career at Higgins has been forged.
Can you tell us about your early days at Higgins?
My first role enabled me to gain confidence in project management and improve my presentation skills both to members of my direct team and broader Higgins teams.
After executing a project that improved our onboarding process and introducing an induction kit and knowledge base, I moved into a Business Analyst role, which was an exciting change of pace for me.
What was different about this role?
While elements of project management and rollout remained the same, the scope became far broader, with projects focussing on customer-facing software.
The SHOW was a major career milestone for me. Our General Manager of Operations and I travelled around Australia to each of our branches and conducted workshops overviewing the mobile app for our operations teams.
The introduction of the mobile app resulted in greater efficiencies for our customers as it created a central repository for all operational documentation to be available on-site for our trades teams.
What has it been like to take over as National I.T. Manager?
It has been a really positive experience from day one, with Higgins doing their due diligence before promoting me into the role. They knew I had the knowledge to succeed but challenged me to complete a development plan that included short courses geared to expedite my skillset. At first, I considered it a barrier to the role, but in hindsight realised that this process was necessary to provide me with the tools to thrive.
Since succeeding into the role there has been mutual respect from all the business leaders – the family-oriented nature of Higgins permeates our culture from top-to-bottom.
National I.T. Manager Revee Govender
What does the future hold for the I.T. Team?
Our data visualisation has come a long way, although we have a view to integrate more reporting to help monitor and track business wide KPIs.
Listening to our customers’ everchanging needs and continuing to optimise our service offering remains a priority – and one that the team and I can help with.