Salesforce: There's no more Slack left to cut

Opinion The accuracy down tech manufacture leaders during nan pandemic appeared to be, "never discarded a bully crisis." While nan likes of ServiceNow scrambled to show nan advantages of producing a caller workflow connected nan fly, Salesforce reached for its checkbook.

But 18 months aft nan CRM giant paid $27.7 cardinal for chat level Slack, location is abruptly a batch to discuss.

Salesforce is group to shed astir 10 percent of its workforce — astir 7,000 jobs — arsenic it adjusts to life aft what we dream is nan highest of nan pandemic.

"As our gross accelerated done nan pandemic, we hired excessively galore group starring into this economical downturn we're now facing, and I return work for that," Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said.

Billed arsenic a "once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink and reshape everything astir really and wherever we work," nan Slack acquisition has seemingly yet to ray a occurrence nether nan Salesforce customer base.

Liz Herbert, a vice president and main expert astatine information-technology investigation patient Forrester Research told nan Wall Street Journal location was small pent-up request for Slack among those utilizing Salesforce. "It really hasn't go thing compelling," she said.

The publication besides quotes a Salesforce CRM personification who seems unimpressed by Slack and contented to transportation connected pinch Microsoft Teams arsenic nan chat level of choice.

The study is successful statement pinch Slack's gross growth, which slid to 6.9 percent quarter-on-quarter successful nan 3rd quarter, down from 9.3 percent successful nan 2nd 4th and 11.7 percent successful nan first 4th (Slack subscription and support revenues are elaborate arsenic Platform and Other).

Slack is utilized by each kinds of employees, from engineers to accountants to, erm, journalists. Only salespeople usage Salesforce. If Slack isn't bringing thing to Salesforce, what is Salesforce bringing to Slack? Are customers really apt to guidelines their agency chat determination connected their existing CRM system?

Salesfolk, their customers, and nan inferior of nan tools

Yet Slack is not nan only Salesforce acquisition raising questions. Tableau, nan information visualization and analytics strategy bought for $15.7 cardinal successful 2019, was deed proportionally harder by occupation cuts than different Salesforce divisions, according to reports past week. Salesforce already fto CEO Mark Nelson spell from nan information analytics section successful December while different managers were axed past Wednesday.

Weirdly enough, different Salesforce acquisition — nan API-farmer MuleSoft — underscores weaknesses successful its M&A strategy. While the $6.5 cardinal buyout would let Salesforce to create a "Salesforce Integration Cloud" to let enterprises to aboveground immoderate data, sloppy of wherever it resides, to "drive deep" into "customer experiences," that is thing of a two-way street.

If you tin usage API-based integration to propulsion business exertion information into your CRM system, why not do nan aforesaid to propulsion information from Salesforce to nan visualization instrumentality of your choice: Google's Looker aliases Qlik, for example? Does it make immoderate much consciousness for visualization to beryllium adjacent to CRM than sitting it adjacent to a information storage aliases analytics strategy for that matter?

For workplace chat, businesses are apt to scope for Microsoft's Teams, not because it is amended than Slack, but because Microsoft has nan irresistible personification gravity of Windows and Office, and nan Redmond elephantine has been cutting tempting firm repast deals since Benioff was still moving astatine Oracle.

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Salesforce has strived to innovate successful its location CRM markets. Last twelvemonth it launched Genie, a lakehouse-style architecture borrowing a conception from Databricks to harvester nan thought of nan information reservoir pinch nan SQL queries of nan information warehouse, to bring real-time study to customer data. But nan expert guidance suggested nan organizations that would summation nan astir from Genie are those already utilizing aggregate Salesforce products, particularly manufacture unreality clients.

The only instrumentality near successful nan tech-biz container is past nan axe, wielded mercilessly by Benioff past week contempt each nan talk astatine nan institution of "Ohana." While attempting to utilization nan opportunity presented by nan pandemic, he is uncovering retired that 1 situation tin lead to another, sadly each excessively existent for those losing their jobs. ®