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.