Cprime + Slack – What, Why, and How?

Slack recently announced the launch of their Services Partner Program. We, at Cprime, are thrilled to be among the first certified Slack Services Partners.

 

Of course, this raises a few important questions, which we’ll address in this two-part article. In this first part, we’ll look at what the Services Partner Program is. We’ll also explain why Cprime is so eager to help pioneer this program and where we see the benefits for our current and future customers. In the second part of the article, we’ll dive deeper into specific use cases and examples of just how powerful a properly tuned Slack instance can be for your organization.

 

So, let’s jump right in and cover the big questions:

 

Why did Slack create the Services Partner Program?

Slack has been building their Technology Partner Program from day one, through powerful API-based integrations with some of the biggest names in professional productivity tools today, such as Salesforce, Google, Workday, Atlassian, Zendesk, and more. This plethora of apps has grown to over 1,500 at this point, and shows no signs of slowing down.

 

Many end users love and appreciate the convenience of integrating their Google Calendar or Dropbox accounts. However, the vast majority are not using this wide range of powerful integrations to their full extent. And, as noted in Slack’s official announcement, “introducing Slack into a company’s toolset opens up the opportunity to roll out new processes. Our initial set of participating partners offer a broad range of services, including solution design, business process optimization, change management and end-user adoption.”

 

In other words, while it’s super easy to start using Slack and users all over the world have fallen in love with it, it’s also not just a messaging platform. It’s not just an alternative to email or a newer, shinier HipChat. Slack offers the potential to completely alter and streamline how we work in the modern environment.

 

But, fine tuning all that potential to work seamlessly in your organization isn’t necessarily simple or intuitive. It takes knowledge and experience, which is what Slack certified service partners bring to the table.

 

What does Cprime uniquely offer as a Slack Services Partner?

Cprime is a well known as a leading Agile, DevOps and Cloud solutions provider since 2009. We’re a global consulting firm that helps Fortune 1000 simplify enterprise collaboration across people, products, and processes. Ultimately, this helps to unify business strategy and get work done.

 

Our services include consolidation, migration, integration, and synchronization of information to put your corporate vision at the center of execution. We work hard to reduce the signal-to-noise ratio across your process and technology work so the most important tasks and notifications rise to the top. Thus, you’re able to focus on what drives business outcomes in the moment.

 

As one of the first Slack service partners, some of the world’s first certified Slack administrators are Cprime thought leaders. Their deep expertise in scaled agile frameworks, and unparalleled skills in Atlassian technology provide the foundation for Cprime’s Slack Services Practice. Our practice focuses on advanced automation, integration, and alignment of Slack with tools and frameworks. Ultimately, this is designed to boost an organization’s effectiveness in agile, DevOps strategies, product development and service management.

 

Slack is a powerful collaboration hub that brings stakeholders together around clearly defined initiatives, funnels context-specific information, and increases overall productivity, effectiveness and engagement levels. We’ve developed six innovative implementation programs that allow organizations to leverage Slack to its fullest potential. They are:

• Slack for Agile Transformations
• Slack for Jira
• Slack for Customer Support
• Slack for IT Helpdesk
• Slack for Marketing
• Slack for Onboarding

In this article, we’ll demonstrate the true value of these contextually tuned Slack implementations is in bringing people, data, and process together at the right time to solve the right problems..

 

Why should current Cprime clients and/or current Slack users consider working with Cprime?

Slack can certainly enhance collaboration within any organization whether they follow agile principles or not. However, the way Slack can seamlessly facilitate collaboration across an entire organization — regardless of traditional team, position, or tool-based boundaries exist — makes it an exceptional fit for companies currently working through an agile transformation or looking to improve efficiency after moving to an agile framework.

 

This is, of course, our sweet spot. Cprime is well known for helping thousands of clients with successful agile transformations and tool integrations. We’re a Platinum Solution/Enterprise Partner for Atlassian, and the leading agile and DevOps training and coaching provider in the U.S. Based on that wealth of experience, we’ve developed a unique and powerful set of capabilities as a Slack Services Partner. They can be summed up in the following three pillars:

• Business agility
• Noise normalization
• Workflow standardization

In the second part of this article, we’ll dive deeper into these pillars. We will also explore some specific use case examples to highlight what the six implementation programs listed above could look like in practice.