Sydney Catholic Schools – MarTech Transformation: Discovery and Strategy

 

About the client 

Sydney Catholic Schools (SCS) is the system of 147 Catholic primary and secondary schools operating across the Archdiocese of Sydney, providing more than 70,000 students with a high-quality, low fee Catholic education.

The Problem

SCS’s IT and marketing and comms teams led an initiative to improve how the organisation uses digital technologies to engage with prospective parents and other stakeholders outside of current students and parents. This focused on the website technologies, looking to evaluate the current platforms and recommend improvements that align with the organisation’s educational and operational goals.

SCS tendered for assistance to run a comprehensive discovery process to assess their current platforms, identify inefficiencies, and propose an integrated marketing technology stack with a detailed rollout plan and budget estimate.

They engaged Zuni in collaboration with Sitback, who provided technical website expertise, and Zuni led the primary discovery elements and solution design. The collaborative approach ensured SCS got the very best in terms of independent and impartial advice, technical skills, and discovery expertise.

Discovery Process:

After initial project kick-off activities, the project turned to stakeholder consultation. Initially scoped as a CMS uplift project, Zuni identified the need to consider the systems and platforms that function alongside SCS’s websites. This phase was extensive for this project, as Zuni met with 25 different groups, including SCS central teams, School principals and staff, and IT and marketing stakeholders. These workshops focused on understanding the current state systems architecture, pain points, opportunities, and system requirements for the future solution.

With a better understanding of the systems and their associated pain points from the previous phase, Zuni was able to conduct a current state assessment of the systems architecture in use at SCS.

Zuni then identified a future state functional solution that would address the paint points and requirements. This involved the creation of a unique content management framework to meet SCS’s unique franchise-style needs. This solution design was fed back to the SCS project team for refinement and endorsement.

With the functional solution defined, Zuni then began technology and vendor research to evaluate options for SCS to consider. This included CMS or DXP systems, Digital Asset Management Systems (DAMS), and CRMs, to create the ideal systems architecture to best suit SCS’s needs. These were explored according to an evaluative framework developed by the SCS project team, which included functional fit, total cost of ownership, resourcing needs, and sustainability. Over 20 potential systems were considered, and the five initial options were refined to three complete solution options for SCS senior leadership to consider.

Finally, Zuni developed workstream activity recommendations and an implementation plan for SCS to initiate the website uplift. These deliverables will be utilised towards system procurement over the coming months as SCS seeks to make this ideal future state a reality.

Research:

During the consultative process for the engagement with SCS, prospective parents were identified as a key stakeholder group. With limited quantitative or qualitative data on this user group’s experience, SCS engaged Zuni to conduct supplementary research via an online survey.

The primary focus of this research was to understand the prospective parent user experience navigating SCS digital platforms in their school selection, open day registration, and enrolment process, and to probe the potential value associated with initiating post-open day attendance communications through lead management. The survey also sought to identify actionable feedback regarding the content, structure, and look & feel of SCS websites to be utilised in the website migration in the larger website uplift project.

With over 1000 responses, the results of this survey revealed some key actionable insights for SCS to consider, including high language diversity in respondents, key segments and insights into desired communications supporting the business case to procure an enterprise CRM. Feedback on SCS digital channels provided invaluable guidance for wireframing the new websites, and ensuring all marketing channels, such as social media and Open Day advertising material, provide the best outcomes for prospective parents, and subsequently Sydney Catholic Schools.

Testimonial

“Zuni and Sitback’s expertise were evident from the outset as they engaged many diverse stakeholders with sensitivity, distilled key requirements and recommendations, and presented us with pertinent advice as we uplift our tech stack. Their strategic approach and impartiality were assets to our technology evaluation, ensuring SCS got the best options throughout the system selection process. Across the entire project, they were adaptive when we needed them to be flexible and provided excellent guidance when needed – an excellent partner in this process. They combined strong organisational strategic understanding, in-depth consumer research and insights, and deep technical expertise providing us with an excellent roadmap to digital change. They delivered on time, in detail, and to a high standard.

The supporting data analysis and research insights will be an invaluable asset to my team’s work in the coming years – the commitment to evidence-based decision-making leaves us confident in their recommendations.”

Sarah Leaney
Manager, Creative & Studio, Sydney Catholic Schools