How App like Slack Got 27 Billion Dollar Business Deal from Salesforce?

What is Slack?

Slack is an online business app that could be run on mobile and computer desktops. Slack is a team messaging application used by all walks of life. It is a project management tool that helps to keep a track record of the project updates, tasks, milestones, and consequences all over communication that is done through channels embedded in the app.  

In one of the blogs by hubstaff.com, they presented the facts they got from a University survey which said that Slack has brought-

• 32% rise in team productivity
• 48.6% less use of emails
• 25.1% reduction in meetings

Slack is an intra-office messaging system. According to, biz30.timedoctor.com, it is one of the fastest-growing workplace software apps. It was launched in 2013 and within 3 years of launch, it managed to have 2 million users that were using the app on daily basis. 

Slack majorly functions like a regular online chatting app. But it has some features as listed below that made it outstand and come under the category of business app.

Let us know about these functionality features in detail. 

1. User-Friendly Structure

The users are basically the business people. They work in teams for smooth functioning and Slack aids to that. If you are a freelancer, you can create multiple teams. If you are working for a company, a single team could be created. Well, the making of teams depends on your requirements.

Each of these teams has its own channels where they can talk about a particular subject. For example, an IT company could have channels of designing, testing, development, and content. Each of the channels has a conversation related to them. Seperate channel making avoids fuss and confusion.

These channels are denoted by #tags. Example- #management, #designing, #marketing, and #development .

These channels could be public or private as per your need. You can add multiple people to channels. There is no need of having a unique member in each channel.

2. Tool Integration

Slack could be said one of the selfless business apps as it is not all about itself. It allows other major project management apps like Asana, Jira, PivotalTracker, Blossom, and Trello for integartion. 

You can share the cards, tasks, conversations, and notifications from these other project management apps and discuss them over Slack.

Slack also offers other useful integrations, too. IFTTT automations that helps in streamlining reminders and automated actions. Tettra creates a wiki for the team inside of Slack.

There are multiple other apps like Google Drive, Dropbox, GitHub, MailChimp, Intercom, ZenDesk, etc that you can link with Slack for smooth functioning. 

Fun Fact- You can link and add giphy too!!!

3. Automated Reminders

Slackbot is the heart of Slack. If you type “/remind” in a channel, the Slack bot will automatically as you what you want to get reminded about. Fill in the detail and you will be given a notification when the time comes.

You can ask for multiple reminders and you will be given all respectively. Thus, why won’t you want an app like Slack that increases your efficiency and makes it a perfect business app? Isn’t it?

4. Task List Management

Doing tasks and managing their priority is the essence of project management. Slack is a proficient business app that does it effectively.

In Slack, you can integrate Wunderlist and Todoist to work according to the checklist made by you or your management. Apart from these foreign project management apps or tools, you can have a checklist from Slack too. Just add a star to a message and ask for the “Show Starred Items” button to see all of your messages with a star.

By this, you will know what task and information are necessary to carry a function.

5. Post Collaboration

You can share a post in form of video, text, and image amongst members of your team and channels. With posts, the team members can share and work together on items that are too big for messages. 

Slack posts are the simple version of Google Docs. work on them, add work on posts before sharing them, add checkboxes for tasks, and share them with anyone when they’re ready.

6. Easy search

When all the communication is happening over the Slack, it is quite obvious that your channel will be packed with thousands of messages. This could be irritating when you lose the track of a conversation or want to find about a particular thing that was discussed before.

For this, Slack comes with an easy search option. You can search by typing “in” and the related data will be showcased. To find a particular message from the person, type “from”.

7. Easy Shortcuts and Commands

What makes Slak a different business app? Its ability to be customized as per your requirement. It is absolutely customizable. You can make your own keyboard shortcuts for faster communication.

Simply add this with the slash command to make project management smoother and faster. Some of the standard shortcuts are- “/archive” and “/mute.” You can also create other customized commands according to your team and channel needs. 

Fun Fact- It was found that someone even developed a custom slash command for telling jokes. 

8. Friendly Bots

The bots of Slack uplift the work performance of the app and also helps in making your project management a smooth experience. It has many bots that work with it bringing different functions to the table.  

The DiggBot brings websites and news to your Slack channel. PaperBot organizes all of the links you post into a single handy website. The Monkey Test It bot is used to help you testing the broken links, files, and SEO related to your website.

The bots come in very handy if you work internationally. The Spacetime bot translates local time zones, so you can easily set up meetings at one common time. The other important bot  Team O’clock organizes Scrum standup meetings, even with video in different channels.

There are multiple bots you can attach to this business app as per your requirements. 

9. Calling Options

No need to depend on Skype or Zoom if you want to have a call with your limited team members. Slack facilitates the call- both audio or video up to 15 people all at once. This service is free of cost. 

Click here to include these features in your app today.

Business Deal by Salesforce

I got acquainted with this news that came in Techcrunch.com. It stated that Salesforce, the CRM powerhouse has recently passed their annual revenue in which they confirmed about acquiring the project management business app Slack for 27.7 billion US dollars.

Both the companies are happy with this agreement. To acknowledge this happiness, Marc Benioff the Salesforce co-founder and CEO of Slack said-

“This is a match made in heaven. Together, Salesforce and Slack will shape the future of enterprise software and transform the way everyone works in the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world,” 

To this statement joined Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield who further said- 

 “As software plays a more and more critical role in the performance of every organization, we share a vision of reduced complexity, increased power and flexibility, and ultimately a greater degree of alignment and organizational agility. I believe this is the most strategic combination in the history of software, and I can’t wait to get going,”

The acquiring has rose share prices of Slack to a good level and saved it from losses that it was facing recently. At the start of 2020 Slack had lost around 40% of its value on being public. Despite of its popularity and massive usage, the company reported a 16% loss in their original value.

According to both Yahoo and Google Finance, the estimated net worth of Slack was around $25 billion, and evidently, it got better deals post news leaks and a hike in share prices.

Aso buying Slack has put Salesforce back into the game where they were getting rough edges from their competent Microsoft who has come up with Teams- the business app with Slack life functionality.

Therefore, this sale indeed has helped one to cope up with their losses and turn into something massive. Whereas for another one, it is like getting one more feather to cap for better work productivity and still be in demand by the market.

Conclusion

An app like Slack got mega-deal and put everyone to amusement. Well, I was not surprised as the app provided such intelligent features that every CRM related company wants. And being a smart industry leader, Salesforce took the right decision at right time. The Slack will aid Salesforce to perform even better so that later in the run, Salesforce earns trillions from this billion dollars deal.