BUYER’S GUIDE FOR SLACK

Key Considerations & Decision Criteria for Slack Deployment

PART 1: Getting Started with Slack

CONTENTS03 Introduction

What is Slack? ................................................................................................ 5

Slack’s Commitment to Workstream Collaboration ......................................... 5

Trends Slack Addresses .................................................................................. 6

09 The Benefits of Slack

Promoting Engagement and Productivity ........................................................ 9

Growing User Base ....................................................................................... 10

Slack and the Enterprise .............................................................................. 11

Comparing Slack to the Competition ............................................................ 12

14 What You Should Consider Before Adopting Slack

Where are You in Your Cloud Migration? ....................................................... 14

What are Your Employees Asking for ............................................................ 15

What are Your Voice Needs .......................................................................... 15

Do You Have Workstream Collaboration Apps Already Deployed? ................. 16

Consider Additional Security Needs .............................................................. 17

Don’t Forget Performance Management Tools .............................................. 18

19 Conclusion

Successfully Deploying Slack ........................................................................ 19

3INTRODUCTION WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

INTRODUCTIONCollaboration in the modern workplace is changing faster than ever before, fueled by a host of new tools and platforms that promise massive increases in productivity.

Business leaders understand the value these new technologies offer and are already implementing them in ways that challenge previous notions of how we work. These technologies provide oppor-tunities for every business, no matter its size or industry, and will only become more essential to success as time goes on. Among corporate employees and executives, according to SalesForce,

86% see collaboration issues as a cause of workplace failures, and 97% of them believed that task and project outcomes are affected by a lack of alignment.

The benefits of workstream collabora-tion platforms are immense, and those businesses who do not implement them in a timely manner are at risk of being left behind.

4INTRODUCTION WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

Workstream collaboration platforms offer a valuable opportunity for organizations of all sizes to incorporate a collaboration strategy into their communications ecosystem and accelerate productivity. Slack is a top option to meet these needs, as their platform has redefined the way that we think about workstream collaboration today and has opened the space up to smaller companies as well as large enterprises.

In Part 1 of our Buyer’s Guide for Slack, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the Slack platform and its features. We’ll begin by discussing the origins of Slack, then move onto the benefits of Slack adoption and the most important factors to consider before implementation.

In Part 2, you’ll see what a successful deployment looks like and learn the steps needed to get there. We’ll also discuss what you should expect after deployment is completed.

5INTRODUCTION WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

What is Slack?

Slack launched in 2013 as a workstream collaboration hub and has since played a major part in defining and popularizing this method of collaboration.

The platform allows organizations and communities to create “channels” in which their members can take advantage of a variety of collaboration features, such as messaging, file sharing, and voice and video chat.

Slack offers both free and paid use of the application, with the paid version offering building upon the free version and adding features such as unlimited search, apps, group calls with screen sharing, and guest accounts/shared channels.

Slack’s Commitment to Workstream Collaboration

One of the features that Slack is best known for is the plethora of apps and integrations they offer for the platform, an area in which they have invested heavily.

Perhaps the most notable of these inte-grations is with the Microsoft 365 suite, which was added to the platform in 2019. Slack had already featured integration

with certain Microsoft products such as OneDrive and Azure, but the updated capabilities take things a step further.

Users can now connect their Outlook calendar to the platform, which allows them to respond to meeting invites and join Skype, Webex, and Zoom calls from within Slack. Inbox integration has also been added so that emails can be for-warded from Outlook into Slack. Docu-ment sharing and collaboration has been improved as well with the ability to pre-view entire Office and OneDrive files.

Slack’s conference capabilities have also been improved with the addition of Zoom integration. Users are now able to sched-ule and start Zoom meetings from within any Slack channel, private group, or direct message.

In addition to the apps and integrations provided by Slack, the platform allows users to develop their own apps, making the possible functionality of the program nearly limitless.

6INTRODUCTION WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

Trends Slack Addresses

Generational DemandsWorkplace requirements are changing alongside workforce demographics, making collabo-

ration platforms like Slack more necessary than ever.

Millennials already make up a greater portion of the workforce than any other generation. Generation Z is right behind them, with over 12% of the national labor force in 2018 being 24 or younger.

For these workers, technology is more than a benefit, it’s an essential part of life. Mobile devices, social networking, and similar technologies are taken for granted by younger generations, and they expect them to be just as much a part of the workplace as everyday life.

Implementing these technologies on an organizational level allows the younger segments of the workforce to perform at their highest level. IT leaders should prior-itize enabling this degree of productivity. They must evaluate the systems that may slow down end users and replace them with ones that take into consideration more modern strategies and features.

Most workstream collaboration platforms, including Slack, have many of the same features that employees have become

familiar with on their personal devices. Perhaps the best example of this is the Slack App Directory.

Younger workers are accustomed to using technology that adapts to their needs with apps, widgets, and services readily available and easy to implement. Slack more than meets this expectation as it features a dedicated app store that offers a variety of third-party apps focused on enhancing the user experience.

While third-party apps will no doubt further enhance the workstream collaboration experience, it will be up to IT employees to ensure the safety and usefulness of apps being introduced to the Slack platform.

With these governance issues considered and addressed during implementation, however, Slack can provide employees with the collaboration they desire within an environment that is approved by the enterprise.

7INTRODUCTION WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

Remote WorkersIn the past, having employees work from home was simply not an option for most businesses.

Remote work was often seen as detrimen-tal to workflow and especially harmful to the productivity of large teams.

The advent of technologies such as giga-byte internet speeds, cloud computing, and workstream collaboration apps have challenged that paradigm, with 70% of professionals across the globe now working remotely at least once a week.

The employee benefits of remote working are notable. PGI found that 82% of remote workers reported lower stress levels and 80% reported higher morale. Working remotely offers major boons for the enterprise as well as the worker, with businesses able to avoid expensive real estate costs.

Contrary to what some may believe, with the right applications, remote work is not a detriment to productivity or engagement. Studies have found that when working remotely, employees are more invested in their projects and more efficient in time management.

It is important for companies with remote workers to implement collaboration strat-egies to ensure the realization of these benefits. Adopting a workstream collabo-ration platform like Slack will be beneficial in keeping remote workers engaged with the rest of the organization.

8INTRODUCTION WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

Intersecting with the CloudAs cloud-based technologies become more and more preva-lent, it is more difficult to oper-

ate with only on-premises services.

Even organizations that still attempt to op-erate on-premises as much as possible have had to adopt some cloud platforms and services. These companies operate in a hy-brid state between the cloud and on-prem.

By integrating Slack with the services already on-prem, there is existing infra-structure that can be leveraged to ease the transition from on-prem to the cloud.

For instance, the Slack application could be combined with an existing on-premis-es Skype for Business ecosystem to intro-duce the collaboration element into your communications ecosystem.

IT teams need to be prepared for this type of hybrid approach that may surface through end users without their approval.

9THE BENEFITS OF SLACK WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

THE BENEFITS OF SLACKSlack has the potential to promote communication within the enterprise on both an organization-wide and more individual level.

From reaching your entire company to person-to-person conversations, Slack breaks down barriers to communication and promotes greater collaboration and productivity.

Promoting Engagement and Productivity

Slack was created with the goal of simpli-fying workplace collaboration by providing a platform on which all communication and collaboration could occur within an organization in one place.

The platform is structured so that collab-oration can take place on an individual, group, or enterprise-wide level. This allows for easy segmentation of workers into channels dedicated to specific projects or tasks.

Organizing your workforce in this way is more critical than ever. Not only are more employees completing their projects in teams (80%), the majority are working across multiple different teams simulta-neously (84%).

Keeping track of each team, the projects they are working on, and the communi-cation platforms (email, IM, conference calls, etc.) that take place, can be needlessly complicated for employees.

10THE BENEFITS OF SLACK WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

Workstream collaboration platforms like Slack take all that critical information and organize it in a single, convenient, user-friendly location that promotes engagement between employees and facilitates greater productivity.

Slack allows instant communication through chat, calls, and video, with the ability to communicate individually or in larger groups.

Knowledge sharing is layered into chan-nels with the ability to upload and view files within the Slack platform, including documents, images, and videos.

Slack allows users to search any of their existing conversations, including file names, for easy indexing of all commu-nication. Additionally, bots are support-ed within channels on Slack and can be used to automate a variety of tasks like surveys and meeting reminders.

Growing User Base

Since its creation, Slack has become one of the most popular cloud applications among enterprises and is now used within 42.9% of organizations.

Slack’s individual user numbers are also impressive. Currently, Slack sees over 10 million daily active users. They have also been successful in expanding their user base beyond the US, with daily active users in over 150 countries worldwide.

Slack’s sustained success comes, in part, from the fact that their platform is targeted to end users as well as entire enterprises. Easy implementation by end users allows Slack to bypass the traditional IT approval process. Since Slack can be utilized by small teams or departments within an organization where it has not been fully adopted, it poses a security and compli-ance risk for IT.

11THE BENEFITS OF SLACK WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

Slack and the Enterprise

While Slack has become popular among individual departments, project teams, and even non-work communities, there is an effort to tailor and target this platform toward the enterprise.

Slack’s Enterprise Grid allows organiza-tions to create multiple, interconnected workspaces across a company. This means that enterprises can have dedicated work-spaces for each of the divisions within their company. Separate workspaces can be linked through shared channels to fa-cilitate communication between different divisions or even with outside vendors.

Slack’s intuitive search feature is not inhibited by the creation of multiple workspaces, with the ability for approved team members to perform an organiza-tion-wide search of all workspaces. Direct messaging and announcements can also be used to reach the entire organization or any group or individual within it.

12THE BENEFITS OF SLACK WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

Comparing Slack to the Competition

As time goes on, collaboration will only become more critical for organizational success, and

implementing a collaboration platform like Slack will pay dividends in the long-term.

However, Slack isn’t the only collaboration platform available to enterprises, and it’s important to make sure you select the option that best fits your needs before beginning the process of implementation.

Below we will discuss three of the most popular alternatives to Slack. While these may be the most well-known platforms in the collaboration space, you should remember that there are over a dozen alternatives to consider, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft launched Teams in Spring of 2017 to act as a collaboration hub for Office 365

products. It was built from the ground up to integrate with the entire Office 365 suite and includes functionality for workplace chat, calls, meetings, and at-tachments.

Current subscribers to Office 365 also have access to Teams, allowing enterprises who already use the suite to deploy it at no additional cost. This fact alone gives Microsoft an immediate competitive ad-vantage within the workstream collabora-tion platform market.

13THE BENEFITS OF SLACK WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

Cisco WebEx Teams

While the mindshare of the workstream collaboration space seems to be dominated

by both Slack and Microsoft Teams, Cisco has quietly rebranded its enter-prise collaboration platform, Cisco Spark, to WebEx Teams. This really should come as no surprise as Cisco is the online meet-ings market leader in the consumer/SMB space with 41% of the market compared to the number two vendor at 18%.

This rebranding move, as well as ongoing collaboration feature efforts by Cisco, positions WebEx Teams as a significant competitor in this space. This is especially true considering that unlike the other major collaboration app competitors - with the exception of Slack and Microsoft Teams - WebEx also has built-in confer-encing and voice functionality.

Workplace by Facebook

Facebook hasn’t been making the public waves that both Microsoft, Slack, and even Cisco

can claim, but as the largest social media platform in the world, it must be consid-ered. Workplace by Facebook is essentially a business-oriented replication of the regular Facebook app that billions of people are familiar with.

This mindshare gives Workplace by Face-book the advantage of ease of adoption as most everyone, no matter the genera-tion, knows how to use it.

However, it also limits organizations to a specific framework. Within the platform, individual teams can create groups, which can be created for different departments and teams, but Facebook is not known for its enterprise app acumen and expe-rience. Therefore, the app still has some serious learning curves regarding security, deployment, and scalability within an enterprise environment.

14WHAT YOU SHOULD CONSIDER BEFORE ADOPTING SLACK WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

WHAT YOU SHOULD CONSIDER BEFORE ADOPTING SLACKOnce you’ve decided that Slack is the collaboration platform for your company, there are still a few more factors to consider before you begin the process of deployment.

By considering where your organization stands in a few key areas, you will know ahead of time how Slack will fit into your operation and the business value it will provide.

Where Are You in Your Cloud Migration?

One of the most important Slack features that must be considered before imple-mentation is that the platform operates entirely within the cloud.

It will be essential to know where you are at in your cloud migration before imple-menting Slack. If you don’t take this into account, the deployment could fail before it even gets off the ground.

There’s a good chance that your company already has at least some experience with SaaS applications. If this is the case, a Slack deployment will feel somewhat familiar.

However, some organizations still operate with all their services located on-premises, and if your company fits this description then rolling out Slack may not go as smoothly.

Companies with services mostly or entirely on-premises shouldn’t take this to mean that Slack deployment is impossible. Even in these cases, Slack can prove to be ex-tremely beneficial, but working with your organization to prepare for the cloud first will be more imperative. Implementation of workstream collaboration apps before you’re ready will do more harm than good.

15WHAT YOU SHOULD CONSIDER BEFORE ADOPTING SLACK WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

What Are Your Employees Asking For?

Before you jump into workstream collab-oration it will be important to consider how the change is going to affect your employees.

Just because a Slack deployment is feasible doesn’t mean that it’s essential. You need to make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.

Consider ahead of time how the various departments, teams, and individuals that make up your enterprise will adapt to the shift in collaboration procedures.

It’s likely that many of your employees —especially the younger generations — will adapt very quickly to the new platform as its UI and features will feel very similar to other applications they’ve used in the past.

However, you should also be prepared to have training for employees where the transition is not as smooth, or do not transition as easily. It will be critical to offer training for anyone who requires it and provide further help for those who continue to experience trouble adapting.

What Are Your Voice Needs?

While Slack does provide some built-in voice and video conferencing functionality, it will not be enough to meet the needs of most businesses.

Slack users can voice chat, video call, and screen share with others in their workspace, but the platform does not support outside calls. This makes Slack useful for some inter-organization com-munication, but not much else.

Fortunately, there are several Slack integrations that add support for voice conferencing. This includes Zoom, who have announced a strong part-nership with Slack and launched Zoom Phone integration for the platform with Slack. With Zoom Phone, Slack users will be able to make calls to others on the platform using cellular data or Wi-Fi.

16WHAT YOU SHOULD CONSIDER BEFORE ADOPTING SLACK WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

Even if Slack’s Zoom integration does meet your needs, there are still other factors to consider before making it your go-to communication platform. While migrating to Slack will be a strategic and high ROI play in the long-term, it may also mean migrating voice from on-prem to cloud in the short-term.

All room conferencing systems and endpoint devices should not be forgotten and will need to be tested, recertified, and/or newly purchased to accommodate Zoom or any other Slack integration you decide to use.

In part 2 we will discuss a phased migra-tion plan for organizations who are not ready to make this transition right away.

Do You Have Workstream Collaboration Apps Already Deployed?

The ability for organizations to try Slack without any financial commitment makes it much easier to deploy within an enter-prise than platforms that require subscrip-tions to get started. However, if your orga-nization currently has other collaboration apps in use there can be some push back to Slack implementation.

With over a dozen different applications competing within the workstream col-laboration market, there’s a good chance

that you already have one deployed in your company, be it at the organizational, departmental, or personal level.

While all workstream collaboration platforms provide the same utility to an organization, they are also unique in the specific features and aesthetic styles that they offer. As a result, it is common for users to become attached to their platform of choice and put up resistance when faced with moving to an alternative.

When implementing Slack, it will be import-ant to assess how many collaboration solu-tions are already in use at your company and the degree to which they are deployed.

If you find that Slack competitors already have a foothold among your employees, it may be wise to consider a coexistence plan that includes Slack alongside these other platforms in the short-term while planning a longer transition to move all users to Slack.

17WHAT YOU SHOULD CONSIDER BEFORE ADOPTING SLACK WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

Consider Collaboration Security Needs

Concerns about security and governance are common during the deployment of any cloud-based application and work-stream collaboration platforms like Slack are no exception.

In fact, a survey of over 1,000 IT profes-sionals found that 90% were moderately or very concerned about public cloud security, making this a serious barrier to entry for platforms like Slack.

Slack’s platform is compliant with several certifications and regulations, including HIPAA and GDPR. They also offer a variety of basic security features, such as:

However, enterprises adopting work-stream collaboration apps will also need to consider modern collaboration security needs, including:

For organizations adopting Slack, issues surrounding governance, compliance, and security will not be a one-time consider-ation, but rather an ongoing process that will continue to change even after deploy-ment is complete.

Going forward, administrators will need to consider whether they require collabo-ration security services, like Unify Square’s Collaboration Security Right Track program, in order to meet these new demands.

DATA ENCRYPTION

SAML-BASED SSO

SCIM PROVISIONING

GRANULAR APP MANAGEMENT

CUSTOM MESSAGE RETENTION

ENTERPRISE KEY MANAGEMENT

DLP

GUEST ACCESS

EXFILTRATION RISK

DATA LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT

CONNECTOR MANAGEMENT

18WHAT YOU SHOULD CONSIDER BEFORE ADOPTING SLACK WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

Don’t Forget Performance Management Tools

You may think that performance manage-ment tools should only be implemented once Slack deployment is completed, but the reality is that these solutions should be a consideration from the outset.

It is all too common for organizations to implement management tools at the wrong time or not at all. In fact, Nemertes research found that 59% of companies neglect to purchase and actively leverage WSC monitoring and management tools. This can stifle successful adoption and limit their ability to get the most out of the new collaboration platform due to end-user frustration.

Fewer than 15% of organizations will implement holistic monitoring by 2021, risking $255 billion of investments in cloud-based solutions.

So, while many IT teams may roll out the collaboration features of workstream collaboration first, it’s imperative that as voice and video features are added, IT teams are prepared with performance management tools to evaluate provision-ing, performance, and user satisfaction.

Your organization can ensure a successful Slack transition by considering the imple-mentation of these tools as early in the process as possible. While Slack does pro-vide some built-in features to meet these needs, a third-party application like Unify Square’s PowerSuite can provide a single pane of glass view of your workstream collaboration ecosystem.

19CONCLUSION WWW.UNIFYSQUARE.COM

CONCLUSIONWorkstream collaboration is making an impact across industries and imple-menting your own platform will have a major impact on the productivity of your workforce.

The variety of workstream collaboration platforms available means that many organizations will use two or more different solutions simultaneously. With this in mind, it will be important to consider if your organization may need collaboration platform management tools, such as Unify Square’s PowerSuite software.

If you’ve reviewed the factors we’ve dis-cussed and decided that Slack is the right application for your enterprise, it’s time to consider deployment.

Successfully Deploying Slack

In part two of our Slack Buyer’s Guide for Slack, we’ll lead you through the steps of a successful deployment journey. You’ll learn how to prepare for deploying Slack, outline the goals that you hope to achieve, and evaluate deployment success.