Alera

Transforming a group of companies into a unified organization.

From growth by acquisition to a unified growth engine

Alera had a massive challenge—the transformation from a company growing by acquisition to a unified organization positioned to rapidly grow organically. With 140 companies to integrate, Alan Levitz (CEO) focused on creating a culture of collaboration. At an off-site in 2021, 21 leadership team members gathered to create a transformation plan.

Transformation speed and effectiveness

Organizing 180 companies and 4,400 employees into one integrated, growing organization required accelerating collaborative action. Value creation is directly linked to teams' speed, accuracy, and adaptability.

Today, Alera Group has $1.4 billion in revenue and has grown to become the nation's 11th-largest independent insurance and financial services firm.

“With CrowdSmart, I was able to get 10x the value for a fraction of the effort.”

Harnessing the power of collaborative AI from CrowdSmart

In these early meetings, they first turned to the power of collaborative AI and CrowdSmart to turbocharge their effort. CrowdSmart enabled them to rapidly learn and become tightly aligned on what needed to be done. The leadership team collaborated on the need for leadership training and concentrated on creating a culture of ‘fierce collaboration.’ Over two collaborations, they sorted through 400 ideas and inputs from 54 participants.

CrowdSmart enabled them to establish a healthy balance between creative freedom and collaborative efficiency—allowing them to tap into the collective intelligence of their diverse organization. Expanding the benefit to the entire organization of thousands of employees was made possible through CrowdSmart. In addition, CrowdSmart created a persistent generative model for every collaborative conversation — providing Alera with valuable organizational memory and proprietary insights.

The beginning of the journey

In late 2021, a team of 21 leaders used CrowdSmart to prepare for an offsite meeting where they wanted to get aligned on key issues like:

Do you feel Alera is currently positioned to be the industry leader for organic growth? Can we be an industry leader for innovation? 

Even with the best offsite facilitator, listening deeply and learning areas of agreement and shared understanding is impossible with 21 people. Deep listening to 21 people while they brainstorm and bounce ideas off each other requires monitoring 210 lines of communication. The team initially generated over 100 ideas.

The details of the initial meeting that occurred nearly 4 years ago are captured in a private language model that distilled the complexity of shared alignment and prioritization. In addition, Alera has access to a corporate memory that was never available before.

Learning and development conference

Alera frequently uses CrowdSmart to create highly effective offsites and conferences. With CrowdSmart, they learn from the team the key issues and concerns before gathering in person.They then use CrowdSmart after an off-site or conference to surface key insights and ensure efficient follow-up.

In all cases, the memory of what was learned is retained in a knowledge model that is accessible through simple queries:

Summary 

CrowdSmart’s platform drives transformation effectiveness for Alera Group by allowing teams to co-create collaboratively, continuously update, and align on priorities as they transition from growth by acquisition to a unified organization positioned for growth. Alera’s continuous use of CrowdSmart accelerates the speed and accuracy of decisions, improving execution and driving greater team unity across the company.