Helping VMCH Develop a Lifestyle and Services Blueprint
Villa Maria Catholic Homes (VMCH) has a vision to be the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne’s leading provider of high-quality disability, specialist education, aged care and retirement living services.
To achieve long-term success, a retirement community must make sure its committed and cohesive project team develops a common understanding and agreement about the strategic direction, roles and responsibilities, process, resources, budgets and timelines.
To ensure they were ready to launch a lifestyle and services offering that complements their brand objectives, VMCH reached out to Property Republic to facilitate the development of overarching objectives to reach their goals.
The Approach
In today’s evolving business climate, there are a number of operating challenges that must be addressed repeatedly. Some of the most critical in launching new retirement living communities are:
Developing sustainable processes to reach or exceed revenue targets.
Implementing strategies for building sustainable brand recognition, in concert with building a high-performing team.
Demonstrating progressive, repeatable results that will sustain the business today and tomorrow.
Alignment with corporate strategies.
We proposed that the Retirement Living Team (development, design, marketing and sales) participate in a series of externally facilitated workshops where industry best practice, competitor analysis, ideas generation and agreed outcomes are developed in a collaborative and encouraging environment.
Property Republic approached the development of a Lifestyle and Services Blueprint in three phases:
Understanding the project in context to the VMCH Brand DNA, the competitive environment and the requirements of the Kew site.
Brainstorm, refine and agree project pillars.
Build out a Lifestyle and Services promise by creating a framework and actions for each pillar over a 90 day period.
The best way to collaboratively approach these phases was with a series of workshops, which enable teams to develop innovative solutions, solve complex problems or get on the same page.
Three workshops were conducted across a 3-month period. The length of each workshop depended on the business requirements, but it was made sure that they were positioned as being of high importance to senior personnel so that complete buy-in and focus from all attendees were guaranteed.
The aim was to understand the challenges of launching a new retirement community and developing team values.
Workshop 1
This is workshop involved reviewing the project and agreeing the pillars. Participants also discussed the competitive environment of the retirement community and explored the customer profile.
Workshop 2
In the second workshop, participants developed the pillar objectives and the 60-day plan. This was where the rationalisation of pillars was done. Participants also touched on providing exceptional customer experience by laying out a strategy.
Workshop 3
The third and last workshop encouraged the teams to present their process, ideas, actions, budget, and acquired resources.
The Property Republic team created strategic documents following all workshops.
The Results
Outcomes from each of the workshops were used to produce a Lifestyle and Services Blueprint. This allows VMCH’s Retirement Living Team to work together based on a sound understanding of market best practice, required resources and execution capabilities, and project differentiations.
The outcome enabled VMCH to differentiate their Lifestyle and Services offering, provide clarity to the organisation and allow scalability across projects as required.
This type of solid framework is valuable, as it allows team members to move at the desired pace to achieve deadlines without constantly referring back to other team members.