Salesforce buys Slack. So, what does this mean for Not for Profits?
Increasingly, more and more mid to large size organisations are adopting Salesforce as their CRM. However, there is still a heavy reliance on third-party applications such as Microsoft Outlook and Twillo for communications. While Not for Profits have not embraced Slack the way that businesses have, Salesforce will be able more effectively compete against the growing adoption of Microsoft Teams with this acquisition.
For NFPs using Salesforce as their CRM now and in the future, I don’t see Slack being used as a communication tool with clients and customers. Instead, it will be something to consider for internal communications especially for those of you collaborating on case management type functions. This should allow you to record all Slack interactions within the activities of the customer/client record automatically.
However, in order for Slack to make a huge difference for Salesforce users, in my opinion this communication tool would have to be fully embraced throughout the organisation rather than just within the CRM. And for now, I just don’t see that happening when most NFPs are just starting to use the chat features within Teams now.
Instead, Microsoft will be incentivised to invest further in Dynamics/Teams functionality to remain competitive, and this will be good for all their users.
Tammy Ven Dange is a former charity CEO, Not for Profit Board Member and IT Executive. Today she helps NFPs with IT decisions.