FAQ: Salesforce Completes Slack Acquisition

Quick take: Salesforce today announced it has completed its acquisition of Slack Technologies, Inc. The announcement brings together the #1 CRM and the trailblazing digital platform for the work anywhere world — connecting employees, customers, and partners with each other and the apps they use every day, all within their existing workflows.

Why it matters: Together, Salesforce and Slack are creating the new digital HQ — one where companies, employees, governments, and every stakeholder can create success from anywhere

Q. What is Slack?

Slack brings all of a company’s people, data and tools together so entire organizations can collaborate and get work done, from anywhere. Slack Connect extends the benefits of Slack to enable communication and collaboration between a company’s employees and all its external partners, from vendors to customers.

More than 750,000 businesses use Slack every day to collaborate and to take action and automate work via more than 3,000 integrated apps. With Slack Connect, companies can extend the collaboration outside their organizations, transforming the way they work alongside your partners and customers.

Q. How many employees does Slack have?

Slack has nearly 3,000 employees in 17 offices globally.

Q. When did Salesforce announce its intent to acquire Slack? 

On December 1, 2020, the companies jointly announced a definitive agreement under which Salesforce would acquire Slack. 

For more information on the announcement, please refer to this press release.

Q. Why did Salesforce buy Slack?

The events of this year have greatly accelerated the move by companies and governments to an all-digital world, where work happens wherever people are — whether they’re in the office, at home or somewhere in between. More than ever, people need to stay connected no matter where they are. 

The Slack platform connects everyone in a business — employees, customers, and partners — and integrates deeply with apps to get work done, all within a flexible digital workspace that’s easy to use. 

“Together, Salesforce and Slack are creating the digital HQ for success from anywhere.”

Together, Salesforce and Slack are creating the digital HQ for success from anywhere. The combined companies will connect people, apps, and data in ways that drive frictionless workflows across Salesforce, all within a single interface centered around people working together from anywhere.

Q. How will Salesforce support Slack’s strategy and product roadmap?

Salesforce is committed to Slack’s roadmap and vision. As part of Salesforce Customer 360, Slack will be positioned to accelerate and extend its mission to make work life simpler, more pleasant, and more productive.

Slack will continue to operate under the Slack brand, driving forward a continued focus on its mission, customers and community. Slack will continue to be led by CEO and Co-Founder Stewart Butterfield.

Q. How will this transaction impact Salesforce’s strategy moving forward?

Together, Salesforce and Slack will deliver the Slack-first Customer 360 that gives companies a single source of truth for their business and a single platform for connecting employees, customers, and partners with each other and the apps they use every day, all within their existing workflows. Every Salesforce Cloud and Industry Solution will be deeply integrated with Slack. As the new interface for the Salesforce Customer 360, Slack will transform how people communicate, collaborate and take action on customer information across Salesforce as well as information from all of their other business apps and systems. As a result, they’ll be more productive, make smarter, faster decisions, and create connected customer experiences.

Q. What does Slack bring to Salesforce?

Slack acts as a digital headquarters that supports the way people naturally work together — in real-time or not, in-person and remote, structured and informal. Not only is Slack the new interface for Salesforce Customer 360, it also empowers Salesforce employees by transforming work collaboration. Slack helps people collaborate across account teams and plan next steps all within a single channel. 

Slack’s open platform seamlessly integrates with more than 2,400 apps that people use to collaborate, communicate and get work done. Together, Salesforce and Slack will create the most extensive open ecosystem of workflows for business and empower millions of developers to build the next generation of apps, with clicks not code.

Q. What other companies has Salesforce acquired?

Please refer to this post for a list of notable Salesforce acquisitions.

Q. What have Salesforce and Slack said about the acquisition? 

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, COO Bret Taylor and Slack CEO and Co-Founder Stewart Butterfield have spoken about their vision for the acquisition at a variety of events including Wired HQ, Press Club on Clubhouse, Salesforce Success from Anywhere World Tour, and Dreamforce 2020. Reference recaps of those events at the links above.