James Deeley

Providing a partnership through innovation training and collaboration, helping drive transformation and new thinking from within the business by encouraging internal team members to find alternative approaches to achieving their business goals.

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Berkeley Group are a market leading and well-established property developer, specialising in luxury homes for customers worldwide, and have an ambitious to continually drive new thinking and innovation throughout their business. 

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The strategic objective

The housing sector is currently going through a transformation, both in how we buy and live. Customer expectations are constantly rising, as choice is increasing. To stand out, a brand needs to anticipate customers’ needs and adapt. Berkeley Group are the leaders in this sector, but to stay at the top of the market they needed to make constant innovation a principle of their business.

 

Our brief included the following business goals:

• Improve sales and marketing performance

• Stay ahead of customer expectations and new buying habits

• Set the standard for the sector

• Bringing the brand to life

• Build, accelerate and influence a new strategic vision

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The solution

As agency lead I defined the approach to an ongoing Academy programme: Paper Planes, looking to collaborate, facilitate and unlock creativity across Berkeley Group. 

 

We devised and facilitated a series of bespoke workshops, each one planned and created based on the client objectives, team knowledge and balanced with the customer viewpoint. Using design thinking techniques that perfectly suited Berkeley Group’s values and culture, the programme ultimately provides teams with a detailed business case proposal for stakeholder presentation. 

 

By building a point of difference, we could then uncover new commercial ideas and think differently about Berkeley Group’s processes. Through this programme, successful proposals are taken forward into full-scale planning and development, turning new ideas into real deliverable programmes of work. 

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The outcomes

The programme was sponsored by senior Berkeley Group management, teams presented their ideas back to the senior team, who were able to see for themselves the impact of the initiative. The first programme focused on digital channels to support attracting international buyers. A second programme focused on improving the sales process is due to complete in early 2019. The third programme concentrated on improving communications between global teams. 

 

By looking analytically at the market, and building a real business case for ideas, we developed a new internal process for innovation. Design Thinking unlocked Berkeley Group employees to look differently at their work and build a consultative element into the framework of the business.