Salesforce + Slack mashup signals the rise of deep collaboration

This week’s news that Salesforce is acquiring Slack has a lot of people commenting on the pros and cons of such a merger. But one thing is clear: Combining Slack’s collaboration functionality with Salesforce’s sales productivity tools is a monumental step forward in the history of business software.

My Emergence Capital team has been studying the cloud since we invested in Salesforce in 2002. Since then we have focused exclusively on enterprise software, partnering with productivity leaders like Box and Veeva as well as leaders in collaboration like Yammer and Zoom.

However, the sad truth has emerged with the maturation of the cloud: collaboration software is increasingly at odds with productivity. As the number of apps in both categories has exploded, there has been a huge increase in data loss (and frustration) as employees rotate between apps to do their jobs. It’s hard to stay on the move when you’re constantly being forced out by your tools.

The solution: deep collaboration

Collaboration and productivity tools have evolved separately. The shift to remote or hybrid work is the catalyst we need to merge them. We relied on collaboration tools for lighter tasks – updates, recordings, gif sharing, etc. – and reserve more in-depth and substantial collaboration for in-person meetings. The old stack worked (mostly) for this approach.

In a world where deeper collaboration takes place remotely, we need a new stack. Collaboration tools can’t be a destination. It must be integrated into the work itself.

My team calls this stack Deep Collaboration. The term refers to software that combines productivity and collaboration functionality in one place to do a specific job. In a future of Deep Collaboration, a person performing a specific task does not have to leave a single piece of software to do that work. All the productivity and collaboration features (internal and external) they need to get a job done are in one place.

Combining the Salesforce product with Slack is a huge advantage for people who are responsible for selling something. Today, many sales teams in our portfolio companies are creating internal Slack channels to collaborate on every transaction. Increasingly, they are also creating external Slack Connect channels to collaborate with aftermarket customers. But they follow and predict these agreements in Salesforce. This fragmentation of information can slow sales cycles, make transactions more difficult to predict, and cause salespeople to burn out.

What about Google Docs? Isn’t this a deep collaboration?

No. Microsoft and Google have added great collaboration features to their productivity suites over the years. However, both are generic and non-job specific platforms. As such, they are limited in their ability to be the only place where a specific job is done. And so in their ability to mitigate data loss and the frustration caused by the “command tab”.

Take forecasting, planning, and analysis (FP&A), for example, a critical finance function that relies heavily on collecting data and then sharing the analysis with functions within an organization. People in finance today rely on Excel and Google Sheets, but these generic tools lack FP&A-specific features like version control, granular authorization, and the scheduling modules needed to collaborate effectively. Cube, founded in 2018, integrates collaboration and sharing capabilities into its FP&A tool.

Or in the area of ​​legal contracts, MSFT Word and Google Docs let you redefine and comment on contracts, but lack deep, job-specific productivity workflows like permissions and approvals. Ironclad, founded in 2014, adds contractual workflows and internal and external collaboration features around Word’s text editor. (Disclosure: My company is an investor in Ironclad.)

These are just two examples of a promising crop of deep collaboration companies that also include Workstream (BI analysis), Layer (spreadsheet workflow), Mosaic (strategic financial planning), Basis (financial forecasting), Figma (design), Maze (product research), and more are being built to meet this challenge.

Focus on the job at hand, not the personality

One of the most exciting things about successful Deep Collaboration businesses is that they open up substantial cross-functional collaboration because everyone can be close to the work itself.

This is because Deep Collaboration companies don’t focus on creating a specific personality (e.g. salesperson, designer, etc.) but rather on building a specific job to do. Most high value-added jobs involve people from various departments. This new stack allows them to work together in more depth.

This is a major change from the way software has been traditionally built. Salesforce, for example, was built to serve salespeople, with a user interface and data architecture focused on that persona. But the job of selling is an inherently cross-functional task. Marketers are involved in getting the lead and creating transaction guarantees. Engineers are involved in demo creation and possibly configuration. Product managers are constantly seeking feedback from prospects. The acquisition of Slack, if well integrated, could allow collaboration and data sharing between these functions, helping Salesforce break out of the old personality-based paradigm.

Figma is a prime example of a Deep Collaboration company executing this new paradigm beautifully. Figma is focused on the work of designing something. In the old paradigm, designers were actually the only person involved. They would download expensive software from Adobe Suite, edit files, then save versions of those files to Dropbox and send links to other designers. They may also have Slacked / Emailed / etc comments on their design alongside the file. Unsurprisingly, this approach resulted in version issues, a lot of metadata loss, and very little involvement of people outside the design team.

Figma turned the situation around, democratizing the design process. He built the design suite as well as the collaboration suite natively in the browser, leveraging technology like WebGL to make the design transparent. They also set the price to ensure allocation across an organization, distinguishing between paid publisher seats and free viewer seats. As a result, Figma is the place where everyone involved in product design, from product managers and engineers to marketers and designers, will collaborate. It’s fast becoming the place where design work is done (although its competitors have taken this into account and are embracing this paradigm as well).

Maze is another great example of the cross-cutting benefits of deep collaboration. Maze focuses on product research work. In the person-centered paradigm, this is a siled task in which each relevant function uses its own tools, without much collaboration. Product managers use tools like SurveyMonkey to gather feedback on feature ideas. User researchers interview people who interact with prototypes of products. Marketers use tools like Optimizely to test copy performance (often after investments in the product have already been made). The result is a disjointed process, partitioning key information into functions and producing sub-optimal products.

Maze’s focus is on bringing all the tools you need to find products into one place. It dramatically simplifies large-scale prototype testing, enhances traditional survey tools with product-specific functionality, and enables copy testing before a product is put into service. Perhaps most important of all, Maze allows each character to see and collaborate on the results of their research. As a result, the whole team can test and review every decision point in the product creation process, creating strong alignment and interdepartmental accountability.

A central question in assessing the effectiveness of Deep Collaboration software is: How much of the work to be done is actually done within the software? In other words, how many app changes do you need to happen to get the job done? What is the loss of data? The most successful businesses of this next era will become the room where it happens.

Over time, productivity software gradually becomes more suitable for the end user. Collaboration software is late to follow suit. With the Slack / Salesforce mashup, the future of deep collaboration is coming a little faster.

Jake Saper is General Partner of Emergence Capital.