The Berkeley Partnership - Who we work with

What Berkeley did for Habitat

Berkeley supported Habitat in shaping a 3 year vision and measurable objectives for a fully functioning e-commerce capability.

Where were they?

In the context of a competitive market and aggressive revenue and profitability targets, Habitat asked the Berkeley Partnership to support them in exploring the potential of exploiting the web as an additional sales channel.

How did Berkeley help?

As a first step, Berkeley worked with the Habitat management team to assess the commercial value and feasibility of the opportunity.

By demonstrating the size and growth of the e-commerce market in their core product categories, the success of comparator organisations in exploiting e-commerce and the potential opportunity to extend their market reach, the analysis helped to show that e-commerce could play a critical role in support of Habitat’s commercial goals.

In terms of feasibility, the analysis showed that the external market for e-commerce services had matured significantly in recent years and that Habitat could acquire the capabilities it needed quickly, with limited investment and with limited impact or risk to their current internal operations.

Based on this assessment, Berkeley supported Habitat in shaping a 3 year vision and measurable objectives for e-commerce - along with a proposed operating model and implementation roadmap.

With the leadership team mobilised behind this vision/direction, Berkeley continued working with Habitat in shaping an initial pilot implementation - and went on to support the successful selection of a preferred e-commerce service provider. Through a rapid and pragmatic RFI and RFP process, the selection encompassed a comprehensive set of ‘build’, ‘buy’ and ‘software as a service’ options on the market in arriving at the final decision.

Berkeley subsequently supported Habitat in planning and mobilising for implementation.

Where are they now?

The delivery project is now well underway. The new site went live in September 2007 - with an eCommerce pilot for selected products going live on the new site in France in November 2007.

The pilot products are trading very well in France and Habitat is looking at options to roll out more widely.

Mark BryantConsultant

My time at Habitat proved how much you can achieve when everyone’s pulling together on a project. We had less than three months to develop the strategy, shape a forward plan and select a technology partner, so pretty tight timescales! For me, the key to our success was the close working relationship and position of trust we were able to build very early on and then maintain throughout the project.

We faced two significant challenges when we decided to engage Berkeley to support us with this initiative. Firstly we needed to harmonise the thinking from diverse parts of the business behind a single shared vision of a future e-commerce business. Secondly, we needed to make key decisions about implementing an initial pilot very quickly without going down potential future ‘blind alleys’. Berkeley made a significant difference in meeting these challenges successfully in a very short space of time by applying a combination of exceptionally clear thinking with relevant experience and a deep understanding of the human factors in decision making. Best of all, Berkeley fitted in so well with the business team that most people hardly knew we had consulting help on board.

Jacques Dekock – Group Head of Business Information Systems