Review the Client's Background and Current State
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Confirm the client’s business objectives and goals.
- Determine the client’s current status based on their background.
- Define the difference between knowledge transfer and research.
Before You Start
Before you start this module, make sure you complete this content. The work you do here builds on the concepts you learn in this badge.
Discovery Is Time Well Spent
As a seasoned consultant, you’re already familiar with the value that thoughtful discovery can bring to client engagements. It allows you to:
- Understand the client’s business objectives and goals.
- Identify how the client measures success.
- Learn how the client makes decisions.
- Uncover the client’s obstacles or objections.
- Get to the heart of what’s important to the client.
Discovery is a critical part of any Slack services launch project and informs every deliverable–the grid design workshop, channel strategy session, governance session, communications plan, learning plan, and learning materials.
Dive into the Client’s Background
Gathering background information on your client can start before you even meet with them to talk about Slack.
- Knowledge transfer: Meet with your colleagues who were involved in the sale of services to collect basic information about the client. Additionally, meet with other counterparts who can have legacy information about your client.
- Research: Access the client’s website, social media (like LinkedIn), and any news articles that report on them to better understand their business, industry, and goals. For public corporations, consider accessing their annual report or 10-K to find more detailed information on their financials, history, and other relevant data.
Not every client has existing Slack use, but if they do, a knowledge transfer typically includes information around how the organization is currently using Slack.
Take time to build an initial impression of an organization’s current stage. This helps you ask more targeted questions about their current Slack use to fill in gaps in your understanding. Where different teams within the organization are with their Slack adoption helps inform the scope of the deliverables you prepare for them.
By familiarizing yourself with the client before kicking off the services project, you:
- Save time by learning and getting answers before you engage with the client. This is especially important during Slack launch packages where time is limited.
- Bring an initial point of view to your future-state conversations with your client about their needs. This enables you to tailor discovery discussions and build your credibility/trust to start off on the right foot with your client.
- Identify any potential pushbacks, risks, assumptions, or issues ahead of time and that you can discuss at the beginning of the engagement.
Example questions to ask yourself during this initial discovery phase:
- What are the client’s strategic goals, and how do they hope Slack can support these goals?
- Why did they decide to implement Slack?
- What is the organization’s employee count?
- How is the organization structured (flat, hierarchical, and more)?
- Where does the most cross-functional collaboration happen?
- Are there any glaring points of friction for collaboration?
Service Engagement Example
Review this example of knowledge transfer and research notes about a company that’s looking to upgrade to Slack Enterprise Grid.
Overview | |
|---|---|
Company size: 3,000 employees (plus >1,000 from acquisition) Industry: Technology Location(s): New York, Sydney, Luxembourg, London, Hong Kong Acquisition:
| Goals:
|
Current Slack plan: Upgrading from Business+ to Enterprise Grid | Challenges:
|
This background information provides a lot of detail that can inform the services deliverables. A few details that stand out:
- Their organizational structure informs the grid design approach.
- Their promotion of remote work across the organization impacts the potential channel strategy.
- Their current Slack use begins to guide where the Slack learning materials and channel strategy session needs to focus.
You just learned about the early discovery phase and how even the initial information you gather starts to inform your approach to grid design. Before wrapping up this unit, it is important to know the basics of grid design.
Understand Grid Design
Grid design is all about how you guide your client to set up their Slack Enterprise Grid. You do this work during the design phase of a Slack launch project. Your grid design recommendations show them how to structure a Slack Enterprise Grid to improve their employees’ experience and productivity.
Grid design is a series of decisions that impact how employees work within a Slack environment. This can include moving or consolidating existing workspaces and creating new workspaces. The structure and design of an Enterprise Grid org isn't meant to be static. In fact, it should adapt and change over time and be totally unique to the needs of the company.
Of course, before you can guide the client through decisions about their Slack grid, you need to complete your discovery. Next, learn what details to collect for the experience design category of information, and the importance of a vision statement.