Carey Baptist Grammar School – Stakeholder Engagement

CBGS is an independent, co-ed school with over 2,500 students – spanning Early Learning to Year 12 across multiple campuses. With such a broad audience, including staff, teachers, students, parents and alumni, the organisation’s digital properties have many modes of communication.

CBGS found their audiences were having difficulty accessing the essential information for a range of user journeys on both their external brand website and their internal intranet. And considered overhaul was needed. CBGS stakeholders wanted to investigate the possibility of implementing a communication and collaboration tool that would serve the needs of both the comms team’s marketing efforts and all internal stakeholder communications.

We engaged SGY to conduct a series of qualitative and quantitative data-gathering exercises to find out the specific needs and wants of our internal and external audiences. The team at SGY went above and beyond to fully engage with and understand our brand to ensure they gave us tailored advice specific to our unique circumstances.

– Carey Baptist Grammar School

SGY were engaged to undertake a design thinking program of work to help solve to key challenges:

1. Determine if a single solution could provide the correct approach.
2. Understand the varied needs for a wide variety of external and internal audiences.
3. Provide the school with a recommendations and insights report that will address the problems their target audiences were experiencing.

To determine the most suitable approach, CBGS needed to establish the needs of all stakeholders so they could identify common user requirements for external and internal audiences and stakeholders.

We cultivated a meaningful relationship with the team and completely trusted in their ability to deliver the best possible outcomes based on their personal and professional investment in our brand.

-Carey Baptist Grammar School

To uncover the commonalities and craft vital insights to enable an informed business decision, Spark Green + Yoke conducted a quantitate and qualitative investigation into the internal and external communication environment.  The tactics and activities included:

• Persona interviews

• Stakeholder discussions

• Empathy exercises

• Persona observations

• Historical data analysis

• Onsite behaviour analysis

• Usability testing

With vastly different needs between internal and external audiences, CGBS made the informed decision to pursue a two-system solution. Firstly, the redevelopment of the CBGS external website – focusing on marketing the brand’s value proposition to prospective parents to generate new student leads. Secondly, the redevelopment of existing intranet system.

SG+Y could not be engaged for the website re-development project due to CGBS’s vendor policy so we helped Carey find a vendor who would provide the best outcome for the school. SG+Y were able to quickly create a brief a detailed RFP for CGBS and a long list of vendors.  This document was submitted to potential external website vendors and SG+Y is now advising and collaborating with Carey Baptist Grammar School stakeholders to find a suitable vendor for the external marketing website.

Carey Baptist Grammar School now has a comprehensive understanding of the pain points and needs for their internal audience and actionable  recommendations and work packages which will enable the school to deliver an effective intranet for the organisation.

Throughout the entire process, we felt supported, listened to and respected, and we gained invaluable insights and data which informed the creation of an RFP for the development of a new website as a first stage.

-Carey Baptist Grammar School

SG+Y has a rigorous approach to understanding how and why audiences engage with brand and organisations, which is essential to ensuring a successful design and build of a new website or intranet. The insights uncovered through SG+Y’s research, combined with their expert analysis and guidance, gives us confidence that our new website will offer our audiences a tailored, intuitive and compelling online experience.

-Carly Moran, CBGS Marketing and Communications Manager