Complex Slack Consolidation Strengthens Organizational Structure and Culture

The Overview

Solutions that Help Educators Across the Country

The organization operates a platform of digital and SaaS educational solutions. They focus on developing digital curriculum, learning analytics technologies, online program management, and educator professional development services. They serve students, teachers, and educators in the United States.

The Challenge

A Need For a Unified Company Culture

Recently, the organization successfully acquired several other companies. While these acquisitions were a big win for the company, some growing pains quickly emerged.

To this end, the company aimed to merge all four Slack Workspaces into one. But as McNeal explained, this process was easier said than done. For one thing, each acquired company had been working together in Slack for a long time. As a result, each Workspace contained many shared channels and work history, which the organization didn’t want to lose. “The company wanted to keep a good bit of history because people do their work in Slack now, and it’s really important to preserve that,” McNeal said.

The Solution

Enter Cprime

Following a recommendation from Slack, the organization enlisted Cprime’s help to guide the consolidation from four Slack Workspaces to one. “We came recommended, but I think we brought our expertise to the table, and the company appreciated it so much,” McNeal said. After agreeing to complete the consolidation in six weeks, the teams got straight to work.

Thinking Things Through to Navigate Complexity

Before merging anything, Cprime conducted an assessment and health check of the four Slack Workspaces. Cprime also consulted with the organization about how the company wanted to govern its unified Slack Workspace in the future. For example, Cprime initiated conversations about how the company would name its Slack channels, what it would designate as best practices for communicating within those channels, and how it would delineate between public and private information on Slack.

“We really brought our best practices to the table. Then, we helped the company develop the framework it needed to move forward to be successful with its communication in Slack,” McNeal said.

From a technical standpoint, the consolidation was unusually complex. McNeal explained that while many organizations have 10 to 15 shared Slack channels, the organization had close to 300. “We even heard from the Slack engineers that this consolidation was more complicated than many they had executed themselves,” said McNeal. Cprime wrote custom scripts to help automate channel renaming, which alleviated some manual work for the organization. Cprime also assisted with mapping users so that all user information from the company’s pre-merger Slack Workspaces would carry over to the new, unified Slack Workspace. During this process, many employees were assigned unique usernames and email addresses, and they needed these aliases to retain their former data.

Finally, Cprime ensured that all the company’s apps were installed and working as expected post-migration.

The Results

Saving Money and Fostering Connections

By consolidating four Slack Workspaces into one, the organization dramatically reduced its licensing costs. “Now, the company’s only paying for one Workspace rather than four,” McNeal explained. “It has everybody communicating on the same platform, which helps enhance its company culture and organizational structure to have a central platform for folks to do their work.” From an employee engagement perspective, McNeal said the company’s post-migration communication is much less siloed. With just one Slack Workspace, it’s much easier for employees to find files and connect with other team members.“And overall, being able to participate with everybody in the same space kind of gives you the warm fuzzies, right?” said McNeal.

A Repeated Engagement

The organization recently asked Cprime to guide another Slack consolidation. “I think it speaks to our work that the company came back to us for another one,” McNeal said. “We worked really well together. We communicated often, leveraged Slack for troubleshooting help, and were very responsive,” she added. “Cprime comes with Slack best practices, and we have the knowledge and experience to help clients institute governance,” said McNeal. “We’ve helped organizations before, and we can help clients learn from the experiences that we’ve had.”

Interested in similar results for your organization? Explore our flexible Slack consulting and integration solutions.

About Cprime

Cprime is an industry-leading, full-service global consulting firm with a focus on providing integrated and innovative solutions around digital transformation, product, cloud, and technology. With over 20 years’ experience, we provide strategic and technical expertise to businesses across more than 50 industries. Our team of advisors and technical experts have the know-how to meet organizations where they are to develop actionable solutions and solve business challenges. We also collaborate with our expansive network of partners to design, deploy, and harmonize technology stacks across organizations. Our mission is to empower visionary business leaders and teams to reimagine the future of work to achieve better outcomes.