{"id":632,"date":"2015-09-13T22:50:23","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T02:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/slack-a-digital-open-office\/"},"modified":"2015-09-13T22:54:10","modified_gmt":"2015-09-14T02:54:10","slug":"slack-a-digital-open-office","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/slack-a-digital-open-office\/","title":{"rendered":"Slack, a Digital Open Office"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was first introduced to Slack during my internship this past summer at a very small startup that used Gmail as their email client of choice; an already significant step-up from my previous Outlook experiences.\u00a0 A few weeks into the summer, during our weekly team call, one of our founders mentioned that a number of his Remote Year<\/a>\u00a0colleagues have been using Slack to stay in touch with their coworkers based in far-flung places around the world.\u00a0 We decided to give it a try and make a concerted effort to use Slack for our interoffice communications for a week.\u00a0 With our headquarters in New York, a few team members in San Francisco, and our founder working in a new city every month, it seemed like we could benefit greatly.<\/p>\n

After two days of playfully chiding each other that this email or that Google chat message should be redirected to Slack, we were all fully hooked and couldn\u2019t imagine going back.\u00a0 It quickly became apparent why Slack has taken off as quickly as it has across a host of industries reaching (as of June, 2015) 1.1M active users<\/a> with nearly 30% of those contributing to their $25M annual recurring revenue since its launch in 2013.\u00a0\u00a0Their latest $160M funding round in April brought their valuation<\/a> to a soaring $2.8B.\u00a0\u00a0Of the many reasons why Slack is quickly gaining ground on traditional email and winning against other office communication tools, three stand out as key.<\/p>\n

First, Slack is exceedingly company-friendly and easy to trial.\u00a0 In just a few minutes, you can set up a free account for yourself and an unlimited number of coworkers.\u00a0 If you like what you see, you can upgrade for $8\/month per user to get robust search functionality and access to a panoply of integrations.\u00a0 For a total of $15\/month per user, your support and uptime guarantees are increased.\u00a0 Additionally, unlike Salesforce and many other SaaS offerings, you only pay for active users, so you no longer have unused licenses burning cash while collecting dust.<\/p>\n

Second, Slack is quickly establishing itself as a nexus for managing productivity tools across the organization.\u00a0 With over 80 established app connections available at the click of an \u201cAdd to Slack\u201d button, users can funnel notifications and data from a host of tools across departments into the single, easy-to-use, Slack environment.\u00a0 Managing your storage, development, support, marketing, and numerous other functions from a single app makes Slack exceedingly useful and sticky.<\/p>\n

Finally, and most importantly, Slack truly enhances the free and easy flow of communication across an organization of any size or type.\u00a0 It\u2019s so easy to lose track of important information in the overwhelming flood of unnecessary and\/or meandering threads that leave us desensitized to notifications and buried in unread emails.\u00a0 The powerful search capabilities in Slack allow you to quickly find the pertinent information you\u2019re looking for.\u00a0 Additionally, the ability to easily create, subscribe to, and opt-out from channels or topics allows you to self-select what you spend your time on and stay informed where your attention is needed.\u00a0 Furthermore, having a free-flow of information within a company allows for greater communication across the organization and helps level the playing-field for employees working remotely.<\/p>\n

The ability to pop in and out of office conversations gives you the benefits everyone looked for in an open office floor plan without the added joy of overhearing every phone call on your\u00a0floor or smelling your cube-mate’s lunch.\u00a0 While Slack may not be the immediate end of email people have been forecasting for years, if we can get a few more walls and a few less decibels around\u00a0the office, I\u2019ll call it a big win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was first introduced to Slack during my internship this past summer at a very small startup that used Gmail as their email client of choice; an already significant step-up from my previous Outlook experiences.\u00a0 A few weeks into the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[279,7],"class_list":["post-632","hck-submission","type-hck-submission","status-publish","hentry","category-slack","category-winner"],"connected_submission_link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/assignment\/digital-winners-and-losers\/","yoast_head":"\nSlack, a Digital Open Office - Digital Innovation and Transformation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/slack-a-digital-open-office\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Slack, a Digital Open Office - Digital Innovation and Transformation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I was first introduced to Slack during my internship this past summer at a very small startup that used Gmail as their email client of choice; 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