What Does Salesforce’s Acquisition of Slack Mean For the Future of Workflows?

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RoboPress

4 min readJul 21, 2021

Robots and Pencils congratulates Salesforce and Slack

There are big changes coming from the world’s most popular CRM platform, Salesforce. They have acquired Slack to revamp the way companies get work done. We predict that this will lead to big and positive impacts on the way employees interact internally and externally. Slack will also allow Salesforce to operate in new, automated ways while cutting costs for their customers.

The pivot from working in offices to working remotely has dramatically changed how businesses operate, and Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack further confirms and helps to accelerate this workplace transition.

The Deal

In December of 2020, Salesforce announced that they will acquire Slack for $27.7 billion dollars. The official deal was announced today and this means that there are some exciting things to look forward to as the companies integrate.

This is the largest acquisition that Salesforce has ever done, so it makes sense that everyone is on the edge of their seats to see what will happen when it comes to workforce apps and how they improve workflows and communication.

How Will This Partnership Affect My Workflows?

Salesforce plans to implement Slack throughout their entire product line.. This means that Salesforce users will have more solid ways to communicate with co-workers and clients all in one platform. Better integration and richer, more automated workflows are on the horizon!

By introducing artificial intelligence and machine learning to the way Salesforce and Slack operate together, important data and conversations from Slack will appear in Salesforce and vice versa. This will improve how companies communicate internally and externally. Additionally, the communication enhancements will streamline and expedite the amount of time it takes to do things like close deals or execute a marketing campaign, and these activities will all be doable from one hub. This will bring in more sales while improving communication across internal stakeholders as well as with customers.

What the Future Holds For Slack

About 90% of enterprise Slack users also use Salesforce. So, it’s expected that this acquisition will please the majority of users of the two apps and increase efforts at digital transformation.

Slack has become an integral part of connecting brands internally and with this acquisition, Slack will also be increasingly utilized for external communication to resolve customer service issues in a timely manner.

Slack has been a popular communication tool for internal communication but there are a few features it lacks. Mainly, native video conferencing. They currently have video conferencing functionality but it’s not as powerful as platforms like Zoom and Teams. So, we predict that Salesforce will develop or buy a native video conferencing platform to fill in the missing pieces and make Slack even more powerful than it already is.

What the Future Holds for Salesforce

CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff summed up the partnership well when he said that Salesforce and Slack “are a match made in heaven” and that the acquisition will help them “become a key leader in the future of work.”

Before the Slack acquisition, Salesforce acquired and has been using a communication module called Chatter. Chatter hasn’t been as effective and the company believes Slack will fill in any missing links.

The acquisition of Slack means that Salesforce will become more robust when it comes to communication. Salesforce doesn’t want to be known as the same old CRM platform that we have all come to depend on. They are constantly looking for ways to transform and this acquisition makes that desire a more tangible reality.

The constant improvements that Salesforce is making by acquiring apps like Slack shows their interest in entering new industries. The integration of Slack will appeal to more developers and technical organizations.

Why Robots & Pencils is Excited for This Acquisition

Ever since the pandemic started, massive amounts of people work from home and need to efficiently collaborate and communicate with clients and co-workers. This led to a rising demand for platforms like Slack and we are excited to implement Salesforce and Slack integrations into our own clients’ workflows.

Here at Robots & Pencils, we already have a bit of a reputation for implementing Salesforce and Slack integrations into our clients’ digital transformation strategies. Now that the two super-star platforms are merging, we believe that the platforms will exponentially help each other and revamp the digital transformation options that our clients have.

Want to check out some of our work with Salesforce and Slack? Here are some proven examples:

What are your thoughts on Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack? We’d love to open a great chat about this topic in the comments below so please weigh in!