If there’s one thing Tamara is on a mission to eliminate, it’s switching between apps. Whether it’s helping millions of customers shop, pay, and bank from one app or supporting its employees with a unified platform, Tamara is all about delivering a seamless experience for everyone.
As Saudi Arabia’s first fintech ‘unicorn’—a startup valued at $1 billion without being listed on the stock exchange—Tamara has rapidly expanded since its founding in 2020, growing across the UAE and into Kuwait, empowering people to confidently pursue their dreams.
However rapid growth brings its own set of challenges, such as enabling teams to collaborate and operate efficiently at scale. When Tamara replaced email and WhatsApp with Slack, it didn’t just boost collaboration, it also:
- Enhanced enterprise security
- Created one central workspace by integrating systems
- Provided merchants with direct communication channels
- Accelerated decision-making and case resolutions.
Slack perfectly aligns with Tamara’s people-first culture, creating a space where teams can thrive. Let’s explore how Tamara runs its business through Slack.
“We had an amazing experience with Professional Services. We thought it would take 12 hours to migrate to Slack Enterprise, but it took just 90 minutes.”
Centralizing conversations without compromising on data security
As a fintech, Tamara is committed to strict data privacy regulations, ensuring customers’ sensitive information is secure and protected from unauthorized access.
Before its fourth birthday, Tamara upgraded from Slack Business+ to Slack Enterprise, enhancing its governance framework to strengthen security and compliance. When setting up its Slack channels, Tamara implemented policies to manage data flow effectively. Each channel follows a strict naming convention, and any new channel requests must go through an integrated Google form that requires mandatory fields for the channel description and justification. If approved, the channel is created, backed by policies to keep customer data secure.
“Slack is integrated with our data protection tool, Skyhigh, and our identity management solution, JumpCloud,” says Rakan Alassaf, Director of Cyber Security at Tamara. “It prevents users from posting sensitive information, such as customer ID numbers, passwords, or email addresses, in public channels. Certain keywords are also restricted, and any attempt to share a credit card number is automatically removed.”
To support the transition to Slack Enterprise, Tamara partnered with Slack Professional Services for a two-month migration engagement. “We had an amazing experience with Professional Services,” says Renjith Radhakrishnan, Head of IT Business Solutions at Tamara. “We thought it would take 12 hours to migrate to Slack Enterprise, but it only took 90 minutes, and our staff was up and running again in no time.”
Integrating multiple systems to eliminate switching between apps
At Tamara, integrations are an integral part of daily operations, connecting tools like Jira, JumpCloud, Salesforce, and Skyhigh seamlessly. The ability to integrate with Slack has become a key criterion when evaluating new technologies.
“My team loves integrations; we maximize our use of Slack,” says Radhakrishnan. This approach allows staff to accomplish more without constantly switching between applications. For instance, Tamara uses Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Chatter.
“Chatter notifications are crucial, but people prefer not to navigate multiple systems,” explains Sara Zaki, CRM and Business Process Manager. “We developed a custom integration to push those notifications into Slack, ensuring they appear in the relevant channel or as direct messages.”
The team also created an integration to connect Sales Cloud to Slack. When a sales rep closes a deal or has a contract ready for a merchant to sign, an automated notification is sent to the appropriate channel. This not only provides the sales team with visibility of won deals to congratulate their colleagues but also allows merchants to sign and return contracts more quickly.
“It’s incredibly beneficial to have Slack and Salesforce working together. My colleagues are always asking for new integrations,” Zaki adds. “Next, we’re launching a channel to automatically share Salesforce announcements.”
“Without Slack, my world would feel silent. It keeps me connected to my colleagues and the rest of the business.”
Saving the helpdesk up to three hours a day
Slack has significantly enhanced the productivity of Tamara’s IT team. By integrating the ticketing system Jira, all notifications are automatically assigned to the appropriate team members preventing them from getting lost in overflowing inboxes. Additionally, the integration provides an audit trail for each issue, helping the team understand root causes and speeding up resolution times for similar cases.
Staff can pick up, manage, and respond to tickets directly within Slack, resulting in quicker responses for customers and merchants. This efficiency allows Tamara to save up to three hours each day.
“Slack keeps our IT team lean. Without it, we’d need twice as many employees to manage the help desk, which would be significantly more costly,” comments Radhakrishnan. “We’re also leveraging bots for simple tasks like assigning tickets and handling password resets, which account for about 10% of cases. I love that Slack gives us the flexibility to do anything we want.”
Connecting to merchants to speed up case resolution times
Tamara leverages Slack Connect to collaborate in real time with merchants, making communication faster, more convenient, and more secure than email. Merchants without Slack licenses can be added as guests to workspaces, ensuring that all conversations remain within Slack and providing a comprehensive history of every interaction. Through Slack, merchants can easily connect with consultants for expert advice or request technical support.
Additionally, the integration between Slack and GenCloud enables Tamara’s outsourced SecOps team to respond to queries within five to ten minutes, a significant improvement from the previous response time of over 24 hours. This dedicated team monitors Tamara’s infrastructure and IT events around the clock, ensuring the seamless operation of its payment app.
Establishing a healthy work-life balance
Tamara takes ‘anywhere’ working seriously. It not only allows staff to work from any location, but it also proactively ensures they maintain a great work-life balance, regardless of their time zone.
Previously, WhatsApp was the primary communication method, making it difficult to establish boundaries between work and personal life.
“Slack displays each user’s location and time zone, and we’ve implemented measures to prevent messaging outside of working hours,” says Alassaf. “I use Slack reminders to schedule messages for future delivery, ensuring they arrive during office hours. This feature also helps me manage my workload and prioritize urgent tasks.”
Today, Slack has replaced email, WhatsApp, and video conferencing. For urgent issues, employees initiate direct messaging threads with relevant team members and quickly start a Huddle. Anyone available can join the call, which integrates seamlessly into their current workflow, allowing for prompt issue resolution. This not only saves time but also reduces international phone bills. Huddles accelerate decision-making by eliminating delays between emails and getting straight to the core of the issue.
Radhakrishnan also trialed Slack AI Summaries to catch up after a vacation. Instead of sifting through hundreds of direct messages and channels, the AI-generated summary provided all the necessary information and tasks to action. This feature is expected to be rolled out to more staff in the future.
“Slack displays each user’s location and time zone, and we’ve implemented measures to prevent messaging outside of working hours.”
Keeping staff happy, productive, and responsive
From admin assistants to the CEO, everyone at Tamara uses Slack. This platform supports business growth, enhances productivity, and protects employees’ work-life balance while safeguarding customer data.
“If you want an instant response, send a Slack message. If you want a response by the end of the week, send an email. Tamara is a Slack-first company through and through,” says Radhakrishnan.
The company has experienced almost zero downtime, but even a few hours without Slack was enough for Zaki to realize its importance: “When I couldn’t access Slack, my world went silent. It was the first time I didn’t know what was happening across Tamara. Slack is the beating heart of our workplace and will be for the foreseeable future.”
