CRM - Salesforce Is Launching a Mobile Chat and Collaboration Tool but Don't Call It a Slack Killer
When the economic shutdown to bring COVID-19 to heel hit, the power of the cloud and mobility was unleashed -- albeit haphazardly. Organizations were sent scrambling to set up continuity plans and get employees working from home. Collaboration tools like Slack (NYSE: WORK) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Teams were quickly put to use to help suddenly dispersed employees to continue to work together. Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) is now entering the fray -- or rather, upping its game in the digital collaboration space.
The company purchased real-time document editing and collaboration outfit Quip for $750 million in 2016 and fully embedded the tool in its sales and service clouds last year. Now the company is applying what it's learned from Quip to a new app, Salesforce Anywhere.
The problem, as Salesforce sees it, is that existing collaboration tools like Slack pull users away from what they're working on and into a new window. Insights gained from team conversations and the context in which they were discussed can get lost. Salesforce Anywhere brings those collaborative contexts into the Salesforce ecosystem itself, updating accounts, data, and workflows in real-time across a team of employees. For a team that already works primarily on Salesforce, the new application could help streamline its process in a big way.