The article is based on Slack – SWOT analysis, which can be found in the Library, in CayenneApps SWOT application.
No matter what kind of company you think of, there are some people in it. The bigger the organization, the more complex it becomes, and the more difficult it is to communicate effectively. More people work on more tasks in more projects in even more processes. It does not matter whether it is a homogeneous team of graphic designers or diverse project-team,; if we want to cooperate, we need to talk to each other. Exchange of ideas is the way we find and develop better solutions. This is why we need a proper solution for communication. And highly effective communication would be your company’s advantage. This time we use SWOT to analyze a hot tech company, SLACK. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of it.
Challenge for remote teams
As long as all your colleagues work at the same time and space, say in the downtown office, 9-5 scheme, you can simply talk to them or organize team meeting in a devoted cozy room. However, nowadays many of us work in diffused teams, and our coworkers do not sit in the same building or even city. Since then, it is yet more important to have a tool that helps you communicate with your colleagues. That’s a tremendous opportunity, but isn’t it easy to take.
People want something more than a simple communicator
Of
course, you can use IRC communicator or e-mails. For basic communication within small teams or groups, it should work,
but people want something more. High efficiency is important,;
actually, it constitutes the core value of a communicator. Today it’s
not enough, though. As everything now, it should be well-designed, have a nice interface, create a unique user experience
and prepare the best espresso. Apart from the last, Slack does it all. But how
did it happen?
Slack isn’t a typical start-up run by eager students who make their first steps in business. Stuart Butterfield, Slack CEO, is a co-founder of another technology company you might have heard of. Flickr. Creativity, energy, and devotion are important in business, but experienced team and good connections also cannot be ignored. The advantage of an experienced team is one of the biggest strengths of SLACK.
What about money?
This year Slack has gathered over $1 billion, and its value hits $7.1 billion. That amount of money will surely help develop better and even more reliable product. Talking about money, while most of the communication applications base their pricing on the number of users, Slack goes
Is SLACK the best for your company?
You can integrate Slack with many applications, including Google Drive, Trello, Wordpress or even Asana. It seems every software company wants to be Slack-compatible. For users, it means it should be easy to implement Slack in your organization.
It’s getting more interesting as Slack is a multi-device solution. You can use it on your computer (Mac, PC or even Linux), tablet or smartphone. It’s everywhere you go. You want it or not.
If you want to make the best product on the market, you can try at least two ways. Either you count on your own creativity and invent everything on your own, or you can ask your clients. SLACK chose the latter. They really read and listen to users’ feedback. It doesn’t mean all new ideas are introduced right away, but many improvements have user origin. You may call it double strength since you have free beta testing and feedback from the market, as well as a great PR opportunity.
Slack’s competitors, on the other hand, don’t improve their products as much. Despite new colors or mobile version, they work pretty much the same way they did years ago.
Slack is a hot topic
Everyone writes about it. It’s been Company of the year 2015 of Inc. You will read about it in Forbes, Bloomberg, The Verge, and even the New York Times. Moreover, it’s used not only by other start-ups and small businesses but even by NASA. Yes, the space things involved NASA. They also used Slack in November 2018 when the spacecraft InSight was landing on Mars. That proves something. If everyone is talking about a company, and among its clients, you can find HBO or NASA you don’t have to post job advertisements on LinkedIn. People will ask for a job before you think about it.
The growing number of clients and outstanding employer brand result in rapid growth of headcount. A company that grows so fast may be rtough to manage. And I don’t mean only moving to a bigger office every year. New people, new teams, new relationships. All that must be managed, and it’s not an easy thing.
Is Slack addictive?
As I wrote earlier, the free version has limited chat archive, and because of this, it may be difficult to take advantage of chat and uploaded files browsing.
In order to keep up with all the information that appears in Slack chats, you should check from time to time. You never know when someone could write something important and when your teammates have SSlack on their tablets and smartphones, they will use it, and you can miss your opportunity to intervene if you forgot to check the chat after hours.
Do you really need it?
We come across a threat that people already use many communication applications. Skype, Jabber, Teams (Microsoft), Workplace (Facebook), or Basecamp are only a few of them. If you add Whatsapp, Hangouts and Facebook Messenger, I wonder why would people decide to implement another one in their companies? You might say that Slack is better in so many ways, but have you really experienced problems solved by Slack? What’s more, there are lots of communicators that are free to use. Some of them have a limited number of users, but there is no reason why you cannot make your own inner communication app, the same way Slack was made at its very beginning.
Why not try DIY?
It is pretty easy to make a simple online communicator. It might be hard to build sophisticated tool that will work for big teams in organizations as complex as Microsoft, Toyota or Exxon Mobil, but if you want to enter the market and gradually improve your product, the doors are open.
Unless your current communicator is strongly integrated with other software in your organization, you might choose a different application every week and migrate between them with only a little harm to your team.
Stay tuned
Slack has now over 10 million daily active users, and this number will most probably grow. No matter if you need it or not, you should stay tuned for news about Slack. Even if you and your colleagues would get used to Slack, what will make you stick to it when a new hot communicator appears? If you have any ideas, let us know in the comment section below.