Optimising value delivery for Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn

We worked with the Catholic Education Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn (CECG) to redefine their competitive advantage in a changing marketplace. We applied a design innovation methodology and defined how the central office could better meet the needs of the diverse schools within the archdiocese.

The Challenge 

The CECG plays an integral role in education within the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales providing education to over 21,000 students and employing over 2,100 professionals. The organisation has a federated operating model distributed across Canberra, the South Coast, and the Southern Tablelands, consisting of 56 primary and secondary schools, early learning centres, and a central operations office.

In 2018, CECG launched a five year transformation program aiming to improve their value proposition to customers (students, teachers, principals, and parents). Due to a changing marketplace and customer needs, enrolments into the Catholic education system were declining. The CECG engaged Evolve&Amplify to help them understand and redefine their competitive market differentiation and value proposition to potential customers.

The Approach

We leveraged a design innovation approach to discover opportunities to improve the strategy-to-execution process for central operations office staff. We used contemporary design research methods to incorporate the needs of stakeholders (principals and teachers), customers (parents and students), and the business, to identify and address root causes of systemic problems.

We then illustrated how these motivations influenced the core business activities by relating value streams, strategies, capability maps and information models. Leveraging business architecture, we developed “outside-in” and “inside-out” views on the business to give transparency to executives and staff to ensure the right problems were being identified and that investments aligned appropriately to uplift internal capability, and drive customer value.

We worked with the business to produce a work plan that detailed the capabilities to be uplifted and those to be acquired. A decision-making framework was also developed to align investments to strategy, along with an innovation factory which allowed the central operations office to prioritise high-value goals and initiatives. The innovation factory also stored and processed insights gained from the CECG stakeholder perspectives.

The Outcomes 

We provided invaluable assistance to the CECG in delivering this important transformational project by applying proven business architecture and human-centred design methods. The CECG are building out a clear and communicable vision and strategy that the business can use to set direction and achieve goals and objectives. They now have insights into the needs of their stakeholders and customers to drive innovation. Further, this has resulted greater responsiveness to customer needs in a dynamic operating environment, as well as clarity on the investments required to realise their vision and uplift operations.