Acquisitions are very common in the business world, and it is important to understand how a headline-generating acquisition could impact your company directly. On December 1st, Salesforce announced that it planned to purchase Slack for approximately $28B. Not only is that a huge acquisition when it comes to the hefty price tag, but it is also big regarding the size of each company. These are two large and well-established organizations becoming one, and while nothing is certain, it is likely that this will be a drawn-out process due to the sheer size of each organization.

So, what does that mean for you or your business? It will take months, or even years, to see what Salesforce has in mind for Slack and what changes they will make. If you are already using Slack or plan to adopt it soon, you could see big changes coming with respect to both existing and planned features. Potential pitfalls could occur as Salesforce starts to take over and navigate with their own ideas. Salesforce is a business focused solution primarily used by Executives, Sales & Marketing managers, and Business Analysts to help drive business decisions. Slack is a collaboration and communication tool particularly popular in the engineering world. While Slack gives Salesforce a nice addition to its portfolio and provides a powerful competitive solution to Microsoft Teams, it does not seem to fit with their primary CRM offering.

Microsoft Teams offers more than Slack in the sense that you can use the platform for video calling and it also integrates directly to your other Microsoft platforms like Outlook Calendar and Email. Recent numbers put Microsoft Teams with over 10 times the number of daily users as Slack. Still, perhaps the biggest benefit for Microsoft users is that Teams is included free with Office 365. After spending $28B, it is unlikely that Salesforce will be giving Slack to customers for free. Time will tell whether this acquisition will be successful, but with remote work becoming more the norm in the foreseeable future, the safest bet seems to be on Microsoft Teams.

Want to learn more about Microsoft Teams? Spyglass can help you deploy Teams or get the most of your usage with the platform. Contact us today!