2021 Property and Construction Industry Honours: Leaders of the Year

2021 Property and Construction Industry Honours

Leaders of the Year

 

Honouree: the Relab team

Reason for recognition: Two outstanding leaders have joined forces to build an exceptional team of talented professionals, united by strong cohesion and creativity.

 

New Zealand has a one-stop big data platform developed by Chinese founders for property professionals. It focuses on bringing together all property data and providing the information needed for market research, project feasibility studies and the early stages of due diligence. Whether buying an investment property or a home to live in, it offers valuable insights. Its name is Relab.

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Behind every successful product is a team that works closely together; within every successful team are influential leaders. Relab is no exception:

 

Great teams build great products

 

Relab deserves to be called a great product because Relab.co.nz has created a market-leading online SaaS tool that simplifies and streamlines property due diligence and subdivision feasibility assessments, allowing projects to progress more quickly and efficiently. Its features also include Unitary Plan details, world-class topographic maps, underground services, sales history, an automated valuation model (AVM), advanced search and easy online ordering of property titles. Relab is committed to using specialist property big data analytics to help users stay ahead and seize opportunities in a rapidly changing market.

 

The closely coordinated product team deserves much of the credit for creating such a strong product. From 2 people at its inception to 11 today, the Relab team has continued to grow as its product evolves. Team members are passionate about applying world-leading technology and take pride in the products they create. Everyone gives their all to build a team that values differences and encourages creativity.

A great team keeps its customers firmly in focus, interacting with them directly to obtain first-hand feedback and incorporating their voices into key decisions at every stage of product development. In Relab’s early days, its management had differing ideas about the product’s target users, direction and positioning. To resolve these differences, the team went out and engaged with users instead of developing in isolation, conducting more than 200 in-depth user interviews. It then repositioned and developed the product around users’ needs to ensure property professionals, buyers and sellers could access the latest, most comprehensive and timely data and insights, helping them make the most informed property decisions.

 

A great team has a compelling product vision and works with tremendous enthusiasm. Everyone on the Relab team shares the same goal: we are building a world-class data platform that can transform the industry and help our customers achieve greater success. Our commitment to this goal keeps us curious, questioning and open-minded. We enable everyone to make full use of their expertise, support one another and work collaboratively, continually creating products and services our customers can trust.

 

Great leaders build great teams

 

Leaders are the soul of a team. Every successful team has leaders with strong professional expertise who can recognise and deploy talent and inspire their colleagues. Relab’s two leaders, CEO Knight Hou and CTO Leon Hong, undoubtedly fit that description.

 

Leon Hong has certainly earned the description “genius hacker”: at just 12 years old, he joined the global development team for the automation software Anjian Jingling. After graduating in information systems from the University of Cape Town 15 years ago, Hong moved to Auckland, where he worked for Auckland Council and served as CTO at several start-ups. Hong is a typical “tech guy”, while Knight is an accomplished business operator. A University of Auckland graduate with 15 years of senior management experience, Knight has worked for Air New Zealand, Telecom New Zealand and New Zealand’s largest IT consultancy, and is familiar with the New Zealand market and business practices.

 

With Hong and Knight dividing responsibility for internal operations and external affairs, they have led the Relab team to several accolades over the past few years. These include the BNZ-sponsored Best Innovation Award at the New Zealand International Building Summit, a gold medal in the Property Institute of New Zealand’s innovation competition, selection to pitch at Icehouse Demo Day and a place among the top 120 in Tencent’s SaaS Accelerator. Yet when they reflect on their years of building the business, their greatest source of pride is bringing together talented professionals to create an exceptional team with strong cohesion and creativity:

 

Chief Marketing Officer Louise Donnelly-Davey single-handedly built Relab’s professional image in New Zealand’s mainstream media. Sales specialist Bing Zhang is “a team unto himself”, bringing energy and success to Relab’s sales efforts. People are Relab’s most important asset. Upholding sincerity and trust, respecting individual differences and helping employees feel more secure and proud to be their unique selves enables Relab to deliver better outcomes for customers, partners and stakeholders. This is the shared conviction of Hong, Knight and the entire team, and the goal they continue to work towards.