Climate change strategy

The Challenge

A leading Australasian services and technology company with over 4,000 staff, on becoming conscious of growing stakeholder expectations for it to act responsibly, engaged GerrardBown to assist it to develop an organisation-wide climate change strategy.

Our Solution

A comprehensive climate change strategy was developed, founded on a detailed understanding of the changing regulatory, economic and social landscape and industry best-practice. The strategy included recommendations on goal setting, carbon footprint measurement, governance structural changes, opportunities capture, resourcing, external offsets, implementation planning and cultural change.
The strategy generation process involved detailed analysis and expert interviews to gain insight into:

• The client’s internal dynamics, business drivers and climate change efforts to date
• The changing external landscape and its effect on our client. This included assessing:
• What similar organisations are doing about climate change in relation to goal setting, key initiatives, progress to date and future plans
• The relevant existing and emerging regulatory requirements (e.g. ETS, EREP, NGER, ACCC carbon neutral claims review) and trends occurring nationally and internationally
• Potential suppliers that may be involved in the implementation of our client’s climate change strategy, such as carbon auditors, offset organisations and reporters.

Whole-of-business sustainability strategy

The Challenge

A whole-of-business sustainability strategy with long term application was put in place. After successfully implementing a number of ad hoc environmental initiatives, our client, a major division of an ASX top 50 company, wished to integrate its existing environmental initiatives with a coherent sustainability strategy to be applied across its entire business. The strategy had to provide guidance on the business’ short-term initiatives as well as set the direction over the next 5 to 10 years.

Our Solution

A whole-of-business sustainability strategy with long term application. Throughout the strategy development process, GerrardBown helped the client:

• Agree a sustainability vision for the business
• Identify appropriate sustainability objectives across a variety of organisational areas including new business opportunities, operational improvements and cultural change
• Facilitate implementation by working with its key business staff to set business unit targets
• Obtain the requisite senior management buy-in
• Determine and secure the human and financial resources required to effectively implement the strategy
• Design a cultural change program to aid the transition toward sustainable behaviours, operations and innovations
• Determine the next steps to ensure successful delivery of the strategy.

Expansion strategy for a national environmental behavioural change program

The Challenge

A business model for the national expansion and long term viability of the client’s program was developed. Our client (a prominent Australian environmental advocacy organisation) wished to dramatically expand the reach and impact of its behavioural change program - which aims to significantly reduce household environmental impact across Australia, and at the same time overcome funding limitations - by diversifying the program’s funding base.

Our Solution

A business model for the national expansion and long term viability of the client’s program. The model enabled the organisation to interact with the program’s target audience at increasingly deeper levels of engagement. It provided an innovative methodology to dramatically increase the reach of the program while at the same time establishing additional revenue streams for the program.
The business model formulation involved:

• A review of the program’s performance to date
• Conducting interviews with staff, external stakeholders and industry experts to identify the program’s key challenges and ascertain potential solutions
• Collating a list of current and possible future program delivery mechanisms available to the organisation
• Identifying (in close collaboration with the client) appropriate criteria to evaluate the suitability of each delivery mechanism
• Applying strategic frameworks and analytics to formulate an appropriate engagement strategy, based on high value delivery mechanisms (as assessed against the evaluation criteria)
• Identification of high priority next steps

As part of the project, GerrardBown also developed a detailed implementation plan (including key tasks, timing, responsibilities and milestones) and comprehensive budget, to give the client clear direction on the actions that need to be undertaken and their financial implications.

Setting the organisation’s strategic direction

The Challenge

Our client, a road management government authority, needed assistance developing a strategic directions document to form the basis of its operations for 2008-2010. The project faced strict time constraints.

Our Solution

GerrardBown facilitated a strategy document development process that resulted in strong organisational buy-in into a high quality document that was delivered to a tight timeline. The development process involved engaging key business area managers to develop the main areas of focus for the organisation over the upcoming three years. GerrardBown guided the managers through a consultation process:

• With their business unit staff to determine the objectives, strategies and initiatives that fall under their relevant focus areas
• With key external stakeholders to determine the impact of focus area initiatives on their operations.

Insights from the above were assessed and synthesised in two strategy workshops with the client’s executive management team. The key content of the strategy document was finalised at these workshops.

Identifying the future direction in government

The Challenge

Our client, a new division within the Victorian government, wished to define its future direction and how it should operate to efficiently and effectively achieve its goals.

Our Solution

Over two days of workshops, GerrardBown worked with the key staff in the division to understand:

• Why the new division was established
• What the division’s vision, objectives and key initiatives should be going forward
• How the members of the new division should work together to achieve the vision and objectives. This involved mapping out:
• The division’s organisational structure
• Roles and responsibilities for each division unit
• Opportunities for collaboration across division units
• How to handle its relationships with external stakeholders
• What skills and capabilities the division staff exhibited and how to capitalise on them.

Product development strategy

The Challenge

Our client, a major provider of mental health services across Australia, needed assistance to determine if it was feasible and beneficial to diversify its income base by expanding its support services into the private market.

Our Solution

GerrardBown developed a strategy that involved:

• Identifying the nature of the opportunity by assessing the characteristics and size of the private market for our client’s service offering
• Developing a comprehensive business plan and three year budget covering the roll-out of the private service offering.

To derive the market size, GerrardBown conducted extensive research and detailed quantitative analysis examining issues such as:

• Who the potential buyers of the services were
• The price potential buyers would be willing to pay for the service
• Who the existing and potential key competitors in the market were
• The risks and benefits to the client in pursuing this opportunity.

In preparing the business plan and budget, GerrardBown:

• Defined the nature and extent of the offering
• Prepared a marketing plan covering communication strategies to promote the new service to internal and external stakeholders
• Prepared an operations plan detailing information about new facilities, likely business structure, employment arrangements, performance indicators etc.
• Prepared an implementation plan showing key steps that should be undertaken over the time restraints

• Completed a three year profit / loss forecast showing the financial consequences of providing the service to the private market.