South African Tourism

Migration to Slack in 24 hours to beat lockdown

Key deliverables

Migrated all staff to remote workers in response to Covid-19
Creation of Slack workspace in 24 hours
Transition of 200 employees to Slack in 24 hours

The world has changed

The Covid-19 pandemic is having a profound impact on industries world-wide and tourism is, understandably, particularly badly affected.

This month many governments, including the South African one, implemented severe social distancing measures and restrictions. For the South African Tourism Board this meant having to move nearly 200 office based employees to remote working in the space of days to ensure they were fully set up ahead of the national lockdown.

Staying connected

Rainmaker was engaged to assist South African Tourism with a solution. Having operated a remote and agile business model for ten years, Rainmaker quickly assessed the situation, user needs and key requirements.

Rainmaker reviewed Slack as a communication and collaboration tool to help alleviate the immediate issue of going from predominantly office based operations to remote working. This was done by quickly spinning up a free Slack workspace to allow a small test team to be onboarded. Rainmaker provided answers to questions, as well as advice and guidance from their Slack partnership enablement programme, and extensive experience with the platform.

The Rainmaker team was able to expedite the decision making process by assisting and guiding South African Tourism through the different licencing models, using the knowledge of the client’s working environment to enable them to successfully embed the product, for example integrations, data retention and security policy requirements.

The system was stood up in less than 24 hours to maintain business continuity as South Africa went into lockdown. Rainmaker ensured that the system was workable from the onset, with the opportunity to iterate as users get used to the applications and we explore optimum ways for Slack to act as the connective tissue between current applications and tools. The implementation included channel creation, user training and communication.

The future

South Africa is heavily reliant on tourism revenue and Covid-19 will have a serious impact on the country’s economy as well as national health.

The future for tourism is uncertain however Slack enables South African Tourism to communicate and collaborate effectively with employees as well as external stakeholders during this crisis. Adopting the platform as well as transparent and agile working practices will help the organisation operate and adapt during the pandemic and beyond. 

“The pandemic led to South African businesses going into full lockdown and our workforce had to very quickly transition to a fully remote working environment. Rainmaker supported the tool assessment by rapidly creating a free Slack workspace to test with a small team. Rainmaker then advised on a licensing plan to meet key requirements and implemented this system in less than 24 hours.”

Mphenyi Ramovha

Enterprise Analysis Manager, South African Tourism