The Classic Group is a collection of property related businesses that includes land development, residential and commercial building, property investment (commercial and residential) property management, commercial construction software development and lifestyle village development services. With a headcount of 320 employees, Classic Group supports an ecosystem of thousands of trades, partners, installers, and suppliers. 

Chief Information Officer Andrew Goodin, who first worked for the organisation as a consultant before taking up the CIO role, has established a five-year Digital Roadmap aimed at improving business outcomes through increased efficiency and innovative approaches to solving business problems.

Goodin and the team have been working on a number of initiatives in the past two years including a custom-built software development product called HUB. The software enables the organisation’s residential building company (Classic Builders) to reduce timeframes, getting people into their homes faster. This integrated system provides up-to-the-minute information about build activities, facilitating quick supplier and subcontractor payments, and supporting an improved client experience by making our processes efficient. 

The custom-built software coordinates the logistics, the subcontractors, timelines, and all components required for a new build (in excess of 3000 components per property) creating a fit-for-purpose, end-build product for clients. 

“Currently, Classic Builders builds around 800 houses a year; with HUB the business now has the capability to build more houses and meet targets around expected business growth. The software is cloud based (AWS), scalable, supportable, and reliable,” says Goodin.

The team is currently rolling out Infrastructure as Code (IAC) for HUB to improve provisioning speed, enhance security, maximise efficiency, and minimise financial waste. They have been able to draw on learnings from their first, successful, IAC production environment for Classic Group’s custom-built Health and safety application (CASE).

As part of the development of HUB, the technology team has implemented an adaptation of the Scaled Agile framework model (Safe). Originally designed for a larger organisation Goodin and the team modified the framework to meet the needs of their business. In doing so, they have introduced multiple feature teams, moving away from fortnightly sprints to quarterly intents and a continuous improvement and continuous deployment model. Goodin says this innovation has increased throughput of features by 25%.

Data has also been a focus for Goodin and his team. Using an AWS Data Lake, Classic has been able to enhance group wide reporting, including data insights and analytics capability.  

“Using the Data Lake we have integrated data from HUB, our CRM system and financial system which has allowed for a range of data analysis providing greater visibility of process performance and regional differences across our 11 branches throughout New Zealand. Previously this data was retrieved and analysed manually,” says Goodin. 

Improved analytics will allow the organisation to further enhance the build experience for clients, reduce costs and improve processes. The availability of data is allowing for better and more calculated decision making. There are also significant future benefits to be gained through the optimisation of the supply chain.

“We now have reliable data around cost per build and can accurately review estimates versus actual times across all activities in the build cycle. In turn, the data will assist with projections, cost forecasting and resource utilisation for our partners,” says Goodin.

“We believe these innovations provide us with a competitive advantage, allowing us to differentiate our product offering and provide a cost/value advantage to our clients through greater efficiency,” he adds.