Mio Chats with Senior Manager of Enterprise Systems, Lyndsay Lantz @ SailPoint

As SailPoint moves from HipChat to Slack, Mio caught up with Lyndsay Lantz, Senior Manager of Enterprise Systems, to learn the selection process, messaging history and future of messaging within the business.

SailPoint provides an identity governance platform that answers three critical questions:

•    Who has access to what?
•    Who should have access to what?
•    How is that access being used?

SailPoint is recognized by Forrester as the leader of all three categories in the 2018 Forrester Wave for Identity Management and Governance.

HipChat to Slack

Mio: You've just gone through the process of choosing a new chat tool, how's that been?

Lyndsay: We've just been through a 4 month decision making process with 30 members across different departments.

Mio: Have you opted for Slack for everything or do you have something else in mind for meetings?

Lyndsay: Slack is for chat and integrations. Our next project will be for conferencing, web phone and video conferencing. We might have a combination of Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Slack will be the primary chat application and the primary connected app to all our business applications. Microsoft Teams will serve the function of facilitating meetings and sit in the background until it's needed.

Mio: That's the common use case I see. Often Slack is used as the primary interface then Microsoft Teams or Cisco Webex Teams brings people together in meetings. Will that be the same at SailPoint?

Lyndsay: Yep, it became really clear that Slack was going to be the place where day to day work got done. Microsoft Teams didn't really support that.

Replacing HipChat

Mio: So, why are you replacing HipChat? Were you pro-actively looking or was it forced?

Lyndsay: Since Slack purchased HipChat, we were forced to move. HipChat is deprecating in February so we won't be able to add more users. We were initially looking at replacing our intranet. We thought that was the best place to start for internal collaboration. Since the purchase of HipChat, our hand was forced to start in chat.

Looking back, I feel after many surveys across the company that chat - and Slack in particular- is taking the lead in day to day work and collaboration. So, it's made more sense to choose the chat application first.

Mio: We're hearing a lot of HipChat customers that have quickly decided that Slack was the right choice. It seems to be more positive than negative. Was there any push back?

Lyndsay: There were a lot of skeptics in that 30 person team - me included. We already get Microsoft Teams for free as part of Office 365.

I couldn't go to my CFO and ask for additional spend without a solid business case.

We had to flesh out our uses cases from sales to engineering to finance. In the end, we had pivotal stories that would change the way we worked and fundamentally shift us to where everyone wanted to be. We're moving to a real-time collaboration strategy rather than everything getting lost in your inbox.

Slack vs Microsoft Teams

Mio: It's fascinating that paid Slack trumped Microsoft Teams that you already had. What sort of things made the business case?

Lyndsay: Once we distilled the requirements and major use cases that weren't supported by Microsoft Teams like integrations and their API, it was pretty clear that Slack was two years ahead in development.

We couldn't take the risk that Microsoft would lose chat focus and leave it to Slack. They're a big conglomerate and it's just one piece of their bundle.

Messaging history

Mio: You're moving from HipChat to Slack. There's maybe going to be some Microsoft Teams. Where were you before HipChat?

Lyndsay: We never had good HipChat adoption. Around half the company is on HipChat. It's very developer focused so understanding how to create rooms and set status is difficult if you're not technical.

Mio: You've gone HipChat to Slack and Microsoft Teams. What does the future of messaging look like?

Lyndsay: I think Slack is making a really good case to be the foundation of the business. It will become the centre of communication and collaboration. Just like Salesforce is the core for CRM, Slack will be the core for our collaboration.

Slack doesn't need to develop use cases for every fringe business. It enables integrations to be built and developers to create these bespoke use cases. It feels like Slack is so far ahead in the market with things like that so we won't see much change.

Bigger companies don't see it as a big dollar on their revenue stream. With smaller players, I wish them good luck catching up with Slack.

Mio: There's a lot of competitors. We did some research that showed there are 231 alternatives to Slack.

Lyndsay: There are so many out there. I think where Slack has the upper hand by integrating with all of those. They're not trying to be Box or Jira, but they are serving as the platform for everything to plug in to.

Slack driving the war for talent

Mio: I really like your Salesforce example. I've heard stories where salespeople have taken one job over another because a company uses Salesforce. Do you think we're at the point where Slack can have this impact too?

Lyndsay: We're already there. It was shocking the amount of stories from recruitment and engineering. Engineers are really hard to recruit. They do ask "what do you use for chat, do you have Slack?"

And especially for millennials, it's a major factor when choosing a new place to work. It's becoming as important as getting a nice computer. It's now "do I have the toolset to get my work done in the least manual way?"

Migrating to Slack

Mio: What's the plan to get SailPoint from HipChat to Slack?

Lyndsay: We're working with Slack on a playbook. This will cover how we manage the architecture in Slack. As part of our license agreement, we'll work together or a living document to get us from one to the other.

Mio: How will you ensure adoption?

Lyndsay: The 30 person tech council choose every single global tool that we use in-house. This provides the business a voice in our technology selections. It also provides us with automatic advocates in every department.

If they see someone using something unapproved, they can say "hey, do you know we just got Slack? Can I show you how awesome it is?" They become advocates in their department and it organically grows.

SailPoint is of one of many HipChat customers starting their journey to Slack. If you're going through the same process, we'd love to hear from you. We're always looking for interesting tech thought leaders.

Reach out to @mio on twitter if you have a messaging story to share.

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