Salesforce kicked off its annual Dreamforce event yesterday with a slew of announcements, including new features integrating its subsidiary Slack with its CRM offering.
Salesforce acquired enterprise communication platform Slack in a $27.7bn deal earlier this year, saying it would leverage Slack to become the interface for its Salesforce Customer 360 offering.
Salesforce’s vision for Slack is centered around giving companies a “digital HQ” that enables collaboration across organisational boundaries – a reimagining it said was necessary thanks to the sudden move to remote work caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our mindset about work has shifted from a place you go, to something you do,” said Bret Taylor, President and Chief Operating Officer of Salesforce. “Every company needs a digital HQ to connect its employees, customers, and partners, and thrive in a work-from-anywhere world. Organisations around the world build their digital HQs on Salesforce and Slack so they can work better and grow faster.”
Having already launched new Slack integrations across sales, service, marketing, and its analytics offering Tableau, Salesforce announced the launch of integrations for the remaining majority of its products, including commerce, experience, platform, Trailhead, MuleSoft, and Quip – as well as industry clouds including sustainability, corporate and investment banking, healthcare, and more.
“Building your digital HQ means thinking carefully about the digital infrastructure that connects everyone in your business, helping them find new ways to innovate, collaborate and stay connected,” said Stewart Butterfield, CEO and Co-Founder of Slack.
“This is a once in a generation opportunity for every company to reinvent themselves and make work more flexible, inclusive and productive. There could not be a more exciting time for Salesforce and Slack to come together to help every company find success in this new digital-first world.”
The companies said businesses including Domino’s, Intuit and Splunk were already leveraging Salesforce and Slack to enable collaboration.
Also announced was new Slack features such as Clips, which allows the creation and sharing of audio and video across channels, and a new government-ready version known as GovSlack.
In his keynote speech at the event in San Francisco, Salesforce CEO Mac Benioff said: “If [co-founder Parker Harris] and I were starting Salesforce today, would we do it up at 1449 Montgomery Street, a few blocks away from here? Or would we have just stayed in our homes and set up at digital headquarters instead? So a digital headquarters becomes an essential building block to build a trusted enterprise in today’s world.”
