Join our digital evolution

Introducing Project Darwin

July 2017 marks the fifth anniversary of our current Barratt Homes and David Wilson Homes websites. These - along with our more recent Barratt London website - are key to driving our sales success. With over 90% of our advertising taking place digitally through means such as email, and on property websites including Rightmove, our websites receive more than 8.5 million visits and generate over 225,000 sales leads a year. More and more people consuming information ‘on the move’ through the next twelve months, the team will be developing and rolling out a mobile devices, and customers’ expectations have vastly increased over new content management system (CMS) which will allow our Group and the last few years. People expect to find what they want, where they want Divisional Marketing teams to provide more personalised, targeted and it and when they want it. engaging content to our website visitors. This will allow us to generate In order to keep up with continuous changes to technology, Group Sales better quality leads, which in turn, will support our sales targets. and Marketing are developing our customer facing websites, with a keen As a key system used by marketing teams across the Group, it is eye on increasing conversions, improving lead quality and creating an fundamental that we build and deploy a system that meets the needs online end-to-end Customer Journey. This will both support customers of our Marketing teams. We’ve already started to work with a number throughout the buying process and give them easy access to relevant and of divisional marketing teams and have set up a User Forum who will helpful information once they have moved in. support the project team throughout the system’s development. The project will be managed by James Wallace, Group Head of Digital, But more than that, this is a business-wide project, changing how our Media and Analysis and run by Shane Lightowler and Leonie Baxter from data is used to target prospective customers, from plot positioning, Group Marketing, with specialist IT support from Andrew Sparrow room dimensions and specific plot details, through to pricing, and Adrian Forbes. affordability and enablers to support purchases. It is important that In order to take us to the next level and to continue to be digital leaders in our industry, we need to invest in the technology to support us. It is the whole business is on board to support our advancements into a new digital space. this notion of our digital evolution that inspired the project name, Darwin, Keep up to date with Project Darwin through after the Victorian scientist who developed the theory of evolution. Over OurPlace and Foundations. Project Darwin at a glance:

• Introduction of personalised customer web journeys • Content tailored to a customer’s location • Website experiences tailored by device • A new system for Divisional Marketing teams

Jeremy Hipkiss

Jeremy Hipkiss, Group Sales and Marketing Director, has recently started managing our IT functions, as well as taking the lead on our Building Excellence programme… Foundations spoke to him about his role, and what the business simplification project is all about.

Biography

Barratt Developments PLC (2008 – Present) Group Sales and Marketing Director The Spirit Group Ltd (2002 – 2007) Marketing Director Regent Inns PLC (1999 – 2002) Head of Marketing Sodexho UK (1998) Operations Director Allied Domecq Retail (1995 - 1998) Area Manager Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries (1992 – 1995) Area Manager Graduate Trainee

Date of Birth: 19th August, 1971 Nationality: British Status: Married. Two children. Education: Economics B.A. Hons. (2.1) The University of Leeds Interests: Running, fitness training, yoga, cooking, restaurants, wine, the arts and cinema.

Can you give us a quick overview of what the average day looks like for you? My day usually starts around 6.30am when I catch the bus into work. I use the journey to reply to emails, read the previous day’s press cuttings, customer complaints and prepare for meetings and calls in the day ahead. I'm definitely a morning person so this is also usually a good time for ideas. A typical day will be a mixture of one-toones with some of my eight direct reports, performance reviews with third party agencies, project meetings and various Executive meetings. When not attending a business event or late meeting, I try to get home and read with my eight-year-old daughter before she goes to bed. We're currently on the fourth Harry Potter book and I have to do different accents for all the characters, I'm particularly pleased with my Hagrid impression. I visit our Group Support Centre in Bardon every couple of weeks and go out to divisions as frequently as possible. Divisional visits are definitely the best days in my month, I really enjoy spending time with our teams in the Divisional offices and out on site. I usually come home wanting to move house based on what I have seen! One of our priorities is Customer First - what are the ways we are looking to maintain and improve our performance with our Customers? Putting the Customer First in practical terms means communicating and delivering what we have said we will do. At a site level this is what most of our teams do as a matter of course, following up every sales enquiry, helping customers choose the perfect plot, delivering a home of high standard to the agreed timescale and quickly resolving any issues. In divisions this is about delivering to time and quality for our site teams and colleagues. As you will read in this issue, we are currently working on upgrading our websites and digital marketing platforms, this will allow us to streamline and improve the customers’ journey through the home buying process. A huge amount of work has been put into finishing our homes to high standard, from performance management of our suppliers to quality checks and sign off procedures. There is still more to do though, particularly working with our suppliers and subcontractors to ensure we have better performing partners than the competition. We also need to get quicker at resolving issues when they occur which I know all our Divisional Heads of Customer Care are working hard on with Emma Toms and James Nicholls from Group Customer Experience. You are taking the lead on Building Excellence and business improvement, what benefits will we see from this programme? Building Excellence is our margin improvement programme. There are six workstreams covering Sales and Marketing, Construction, Commercial, Land, Product & Layout and finally our overheads. We have done a lot of work in Sales and Marketing in the last couple of years to become more efficient. We are making our marketing more targeted and reducing the cost of leads while streamlining the whole sales process. This is all reducing our cost of sale. In the Construction Workstream, Rhoddy MacKinnnon and his team are in the process of delivering a range of improvements to standardise best practice from compound set up to reducing waste management at site. This will reduce our non-productive costs. While in Product and Layout, Michael Finn and his team have done a great job in redesigning both Barratt and David Wilson housetypes to make them more cost

Jeremy Hipkiss

THE BIG INTERVIEW

effective, improve layouts and perhaps most importantly easier to build both traditionally and through advanced methods of construction such as timber frame. All our divisions are now plotting and building the new ranges which will make a significant difference to both our profitability and also the quality of product for our customers. It's a win-win. Your responsibilities include IT, what specific projects are you and the IT Team working on at the moment and how will they affect the business? Technology is going to be a significant driver of performance and efficiency over the next few years and forms an important part of the Building Excellence programme. The team in Bardon are exceptionally talented and working really hard on some key improvements. The development team led by Paul Astbury is working on new websites with Group Marketing, supporting Daniel Smith Group Commercial Director and his team develop new Commercial systems, delivering improvements to Construction systems and a new E-Learning platform with HR. However, there is also much valuable work that the IT team led by Ashley Brown do that most of the business never sees. As well as looking after 800 offices, they have been upgrading our phone system software and making network improvements that connect all our computers and there has also been a big programme to switch over to iPhones which will make a lot of our mobile working easier. Recently they have spent a lot of weekends and late nights protecting us from cyber attacks - whatever you do, don’t click on links in emails unless you know the source, this is how computer viruses can get in our systems. Finally, and most importantly there is the IT Service Desk and the Application Support team them led by Chris White and Ashley Wheldon. These guys, and the 2nd line engineers who are out there supporting

divisions, are dedicated to keeping us all up and running. Next time they help resolve an issue for you, please thank them, it will make their day. Finally, what has been your most memorable moment at Barratt? I can genuinely say that my most memorable moment in recent times has been our long service dinner. I have been with the business nearly ten years but was humbled to spend an evening with people from across our business who have worked for Barratt or David Wilson for 20, 30 and even 40 years. We are really lucky to have such skilled and experienced people working for us.