kerushan govender

I am responsible for growing the small to medium public sector business for Microsoft in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland. The public sector business spans education, healthcare and government. I work via a strong team of sales and marketing professionals. I utilise two primary growth engines: breadth and depth. The breadth model delivers growth through broad touch and low impact (campaign led growth), while depth delivers growth through close account-management (relationship led growth). Within 2-years (from beginning 2010 to beginning 2012), the business grew 70% under my charge. This does not take into account the new growth range that the business has entered during 2012. Furthermore, over the same period, the customer satisfaction in my segment was the fastest growing in Microsoft South Africa. I laid a strong strategic foundation for continued business growth by setting up valuable public-private-partnerships and alliances. I was the recipient of several awards at Microsoft for my achievements in this role (cited below).

Cura provides a governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software platform, a common infrastructure for organizations to manage GRC information on an enterprise-wide basis. Cura Software has offices in Boston, London, Sydney, Melbourne, Hyderabad, Singapore, Cape Town and Johannesburg. Cura is a subsidiary of Cura Technologies Ltd., traded on India NSE & BSE Stock Exchanges. I worked as the Senior BDM responsible for growing existing business in Africa, reporting into the VP for Africa. My primary task was to increase solution penetration into existing client accounts. I did this directly and via a team of sales people who managed new and existing business. During this time, I developed a sound understanding of enterprise risk management. This know-how together with the ability to understand a customer's unique situation and configure an appropriate solution made it easy to become more entrenched in existing accounts.

I worked as part of a team specialising in merger and acquisition transactions of JSE listed entities in the diversified industrials space. As such, I conducted asset valuations, company and opportunity analyses and worked on a full delisting of a large company. While at Standard Bank, I also worked on the launch of a new reverse factoring product in South Africa. As this was a brand new business, I was closely involved in the setting up of the revenue model, the tax and accounting treatment of the revenue, and the acquisition of new customers.

Having completed a global graduate program with Microsoft, I moved into the role of Partner Account Manager in Microsoft's Dynamics business in South Africa. The Dynamics business provides business solutions to customers (financial, distribution, logistics, manufacturing, customer relationship, and other management systems). In this role, I was responsible for managing a partner channel and growing Microsoft's revenue and share in a very competitive market segment. The business was fledgling and there was a strong focus on enabling new resellers. I introduced a novel program called Launchpad to activate new resellers and build a strong channel. Toward the end of 2006, I was credited for turning the business around by the head of the Dynamics practice in SA.

I run the sales and marketing engine at Microsoft that reaches out to small to medium sized healthcare, education and government customers across the Middle-East and Africa. As part of the team at our regional headquarters, I work with several country offices in deploying the strategy I create and lead.

We’re a platform for connecting business leaders with relevant technology solutions. All business leaders have technology needs. We help business leaders make the right technology choices that minimise risk, grow revenues and reduce cost. We don’t sell our own technology. Instead, we stay abreast of the latest in the tech world and forge relationships with choice technology suppliers. We work closely with our community of suppliers on an on-going basis. We often train them, insist on the highest standards and become deeply involved in their businesses. You could say we’re not into transactional relationships. We stay the course with both our technology buyers and suppliers every step of the way.

I am part of a team that has founded and continues to run a nonprofit community learning centre in Randburg, Johannesburg, with the express intention of improving skills of workers who earn less than R2,000 (or $250) per month.