Organizations and individual teams across the globe are facing a dilemma on how they will move forward with remote, hybrid, or in-office work. Is office space is needed? How often and who should work from home? Several organizations will augment their tech stack, and others will consider trimming the fat. Migrating to the cloud is top of mind for some, and others like Delivery Hero have used the cloud for years but have expanded the use of their tools to help scale team collaboration.
Dennis Zhart, who leads the Systems Administrator team at Delivery Hero, described how his rapidly growing team has adapted to remote work successfully using Slack and Atlassian tools. In 2020, Delivery Hero reached 1.3 billion in orders for the full year, an increase of 96% YoY. His team, who is responsible for customer and employee systems support, has taken the lead in driving success and alignment. He also noted that despite the fully remote workforce, they have tripled the number of tickets they receive and manage.
Slack and Atlassian have partnered together for years, building integrations and solutions to streamline productivity for all types of teams. While Slack and Atlassian teams have benefitted from integrating our own robust toolsets, we wanted to know – What do our customers love about using these tools now that they’ve gone remote? With the help of technology advisory firm 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, we surveyed 100 IT leaders to better understand the impact of using Slack apps and Atlassian tools together.
Atlassian and Slack supercharge productivity
It’s no surprise that the report, Digital Transformation Trends Driving Team Collaboration and Productivity, confirms that our integrations help teams collaborate better and release new products faster, especially in remote-work environments.
While we know our joint customers can save time and gain productivity using our tools, we’re thrilled to share that 64% of respondents believe they save more than six hours a week. That’s 15% of your traditional 9-to-5 workweek saved! In addition to saving time, the report confirmed four major benefits of using the integration:
- Taking action directly from chat messages
- Faster software releases
- Transparent communication
- Automating collaboration
Solutions for remote team challenges
Improving communication across teams
In remote settings, it’s especially common to see team members buddy up or rely on a shortlist of colleagues, creating a siloed environment or asynchronous pods. Although this working pattern can feel efficient at a high level, it creates cross-team collaboration challenges and misaligned priorities for stakeholders.
In our recent conversation with Dennis, we heard him bring this issue to life as well as point out the physical challenges that create gaps in communication.
If I think back two years ago when I needed to reach out, for example with a dev team and I need to go up two floors, knock on the door and ask for a minute of time… now we have the possibility to not only reach out to the dev-ops team 2 floors above me, but I can also reach out to someone in Singapore 24/7… I can just call or drop a message over Slack which is really beneficial.
If you experience or see these cultural patterns in your own organization, you’re not alone. Based on our recent research and conversation with Delivery Hero, we know there’s a better way to work within and across teams.
A better way to work within and across teams
Transparent communication in a remote-first environment
With the right tools on hand, business teams can experience major benefits shifting to a remote-first environment.
The survey Digital Transformation Trends Driving Collaboration and Productivity shows that 78% of Slack and Atlassian customers integrating the toolsets believe they can better support remote teams, and 61% notices that they have improved visibility across work. Dennis’ sentiments mirrored these claims as well.
I can just use the search function in Slack to find out what was discussed months ago… you can find out who was involved and all the opinions that were contributed. By using Slack we have a long history of conversations that we can browse through.
Slack serves as a living encyclopedia of ongoing conversations and any tickets or projects associated. Dennis’ use case above is no surprise as we also see that integrations create more transparent communication for 65% of software engineers.
Take immediate action from a chat conversation
Over half of surveyed respondents (55%) noted that integrating Slack and Atlassian tools allow engineers and IT teams to take action directly from chat. Dennis described how his team has much more transparent communication using Slack, and they are able to create and resolve tickets directly from chat using Halp’s Slack ticketing integration.
You should get the Halp integration because you can take actions directly from Slack messages. It copies the entire chat thread into a ticket… this is something we use several times a day because it helps our team avoid wasting time or getting sidetracked.
Prior to using Halp within Slack, the process for creating a service desk or incident ticket was quite nuanced. The process required opening a new form, copying and pasting the details, and routing the ticket to the appropriate helpdesk or development team, creating more opportunities for error.
If you have a small team managing all of the documented incidents, it can lead to an overload of repetitive, manual work that isn’t exciting or efficient. When it comes to time management, Dennis agrees that there are much more beneficial (and fun!) tasks his team can do other than resetting passwords or assisting with minor tickets.
You can’t hire someone and promise them, that for the next 6 months they’re only going to do password resets. That’s 8 hours a day and nobody is going to apply for that job. The side projects you get to work on like product launches are more appealing. Now we’ve had the chance to integrate Halp by Atlassian, this helps reduce the workload of my team and other teams so these are the more fun projects that allow us to work on our passions, expand knowledge, do research alongside other engineers.
In addition to being able to take actions directly from chat, the survey expands on how automations contribute to building and shipping faster software releases. We’ve also seen this at Atlassian, which is crucial for teams and is a critical metric for several organizations.
Release software faster than ever before
Whether teams rely on outdated communication tactics like phone calls, email, and in-person meetings or are just getting delayed by extensive policies and security measures, there are several reasons why even modern tech teams are being held back from efficient releases.
Fortunately, there are several practices and methodologies that help teams streamline work, such as DevOps or an agile approach. By reducing more manual tactics like email and phone and layering in integrated tools, you can support those lean practices and create an assembly line of production. Almost 80% of respondents agreed that using Slack and Atlassian tools has helped improve collaboration when it comes to software delivery. 70% agree they have reduced waiting times and over two-thirds agree they have driven consistency across teams.
Automate collaboration and respond to rapid market changes
As we look back at 2020, we know that companies and teams should be better positioned to respond to changes in the market, whether it’s a security breach or a global pandemic, or anything else unforeseen. Not knowing what is coming but being able to respond to it effectively is crucial for organizations of all types, we found from the 451 Research survey that 86% of those using Slack and Atlassian integrations enabled their agile approach by improving collaboration.
Dennis from Delivery Hero explained how using Slack channels to pull the right people together and at the right time was key to improving their incident management in an efficient and timely manner.
Using Slack for incident handling is super beneficial because within 30 seconds I can create a Slack channel and involve someone from legal, finance, DevOps, product, and customer care to collaborate on this incident.
To Dennis’ point, the study also showed a theme of replacing less efficient tools. A whopping 95% of businesses who participated replaced at least one other tool through their Slack and Atlassian integration. The majority have reduced the need for multiple tools, including project/work management, email, spreadsheets, and reduced telephone calls.
Get the most out of Atlassian + Slack for your team
We believe your team should be equipped to focus on the products and initiatives that really matter to your business. Read the full report: Digital Transformation Trends Driving Collaboration and Productivity.
Learn more about Atlassian’s integrations with Slack.
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