Following Slack’s introduction of a variety of features on its flagship collaboration platform at Dreamforce 2022;

Gregg Willsky, Principal Technology Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view on how these features will help companies become more productive:

“By focusing specifically on productivity, Slack has a competitive advantage. Every business places a premium on productivity regardless of industry, target markets, geographic location, or any other distinction. In addition, while competitors are preoccupied with levelling the playing field for workers regardless of location, Slack has placed the goal of helping companies increase productivity squarely in its sights. Increasing productivity signifies the truest potential of hybrid work tools.

“The most relevant way hybrid work tools raise productivity is by facilitating a confluence of people and resources around a single initiative. In addition, hybrid work tools lift productivity by virtue of being digital. As digital tools exist in the virtual realm, they hold advantages over their physical counterparts. They allow tasks to be completed more efficiently and enable tasks that are not possible with physical tools (such as workers in different locations interacting with a whiteboard).

“Three key announcements are emblematic of Slack’s dedication to helping its customers enhance productivity: the upcoming 2023 launch of Slack Canvas, the general availability of coworking feature in Slack Huddles, and the beta release of the Slack Developer Platform.

“One important facet of the Slack platform is that it promotes the exchange of knowledge. With Slack, knowledge that would typically be stored in silos scattered across an organization can be harnessed into a single repository and shared.

“The storage and democratization of knowledge that Slack enables opens the door for organizations to adopt an intriguing operating model usually reserved for academia. Like professors at a university imparting their years of accumulated knowledge in their field of study onto their students, seasoned employees at a company can pass on their industry and functional expertise to more junior staff. Slack could help companies recognize that a rich knowledge base is their greatest asset.”