The Business
Value of Slack
IDC Research, Sponsored by Slack
The Business Value of Slack for Sales 1
Table of Contents
01 The Business Value of Slack for sales
02 The Business Value of Slack for engineering
03 The Business Value of Slack for hr
04 The Business Value of Slack for marketing
05 The Business Value of Slack for customer support
The Business Value of Slack
32%
“I’ve had more contact with other internal
Less email teams during the first six months of using
Slack, than I’ve had during my prior six
years at the company.”.
23%
“Slack made us heroes in
Fewer meetings the company.”
This is what the Slack-connected enterprise
looks and sounds like.
But what business value does Slack drive, and how does that take
shape across different roles within an organization?
To find out, IDC interviewed organizations spanning 5 countries, 11
industries, and ranged from a couple dozen employees to over
10,000. The observed data provided insights into how the adoption of
Slack added value to members of the sales, engineering, HR, market-
ing, and customer support teams.
Read on to see the findings, organized by role.
Excerpted from IDC research, sponsored by Slack, The Business Value of Slack, 2017
The Business Value of Slack 3
01
The Business Value of Slack
for Sales
Win More Deals
with Slack
Sales teams are able to spend less time
digging through account details and more time
addressing the needs of the customer, and
ultimately, moving deals forward.
5% 25% 0.2%
More likely to Increase in potential Increase in annual
win a deal deals won per year1 revenue2
“The sales team has been able to increase its productivity
more than the other teams. I’d say 20% higher productivity,
contributing to 5% higher revenue.”
“We keep all of our communications related to a specific
proposal in one channel with Slack. We have everything from
pre-sale all the way until the campaign is executed and the
sale has been made.”
1 IDC estimate based on average metrics of sales organizations using Slack that participated in this study that include: 3% more deals in pipeline with
Slack, 5% higher deal win percentage with Slack, and 13% less time to close deals with Slack
2 Average increase of $904K in annual revenue; Analysis based on companies with average revenue of $514M
Excerpted from IDC research, sponsored by Slack, The Business Value of Slack, 2017
The Business Value of Slack for Sales 5
Respond to Sales Opportunities
Faster
Less internal back and forth during the deal cycle
allows every aspect of the sales process to run
more efficiently, from responding to leads, to
closing deals.
21% 16% 13%
Faster response time Quicker to issue Shorter overall
to sales lead sales offer sales cycle1
“The sales team is very busy and traveling all the time,
and Slack is super user-friendly, especially on mobile. Just
being able to quickly access documents and communicate
with one another is really cutting down on the time it takes
to follow up with leads and put together a proposal.”
1 Based on time it takes to close a deal
Excerpted from IDC research, sponsored by Slack, The Business Value of Slack, 2017
The Business Value of Slack for Sales 6
Foster Transparency
and Collaboration
Slack channels increase the depth and breadth of
information sales teams have access to, as well
as a provide an avenue to share out updates and
learnings in real time.
Of sales leaders surveyed...
100% 86% 86%
Find Slack helps Say it’s easier to Say Slack gives
them better share key learnings them better access
collaborate with with Slack to information in
non-sales teams the field
“Slack has helped promote information sharing across
our sales verticals, as well as generally increase access to
knowledge across our business.”
Excerpted from IDC research, sponsored by Slack, The Business Value of Slack, 2017
The Business Value of Slack for Sales 7
02
The Business Value of Slack
for Engineering
Speed Up
Development
Centralized tools, automated workflows, and
reduced context switching between applications
result in more products and services delivered
on time.
24% 23% 5%
Increase in features Faster time to More engineering
delivered on time market output delivered
“The engineering team is spending more time moving our
own product forward with Slack. They are shipping more
code faster.”
“The impact of Slack is really faster time to market. In some
cases, we’re the first to market, so we are beating competitors
and effectively positioning our product in the market.”
Excerpted from IDC research, sponsored by Slack, The Business Value of Slack, 2017
The Business Value of Slack for Engineering 9
Automate Workflows
Through Integrations
Slack integrates automated tools into a single
place, allowing engineers to spend less time
with iterative, lower value tasks, and more time
focused on product development and design.
27% “One of the engineers was able to set
Less time up a system that automatically pulled all
needed to test of our support center tickets and move
and iterate them into Slack.”
“What we’ve seen is the engineering
team really taking advantage of Slack’s
integrations with Jira and GitHub... Teams
have done things like set up specific
channels to automatically notify them of
each build, and subsequently use those
same channels to resolve issues as they
come up.”
Excerpted from IDC research, sponsored by Slack, The Business Value of Slack, 2017
The Business Value of Slack for Engineering 10
Squash Bugs
Faster
Slack centralizes feedback and increases
discoverability of relevant information,
which equips engineers with the context to
respond to bugs more quickly and accurately.
21% Less time needed to identify and resolve
engineering-related bugs
“We can use Slack to “The data discoverability has
evaluate customer been the biggest benefit on
feedback in real time, and the engineering side. When
the team can start working all this data is in a place that
on solutions for problems everybody can search, it’s
before the problem is much, much easier later to go
even called in.” back and track things down.”
Excerpted from IDC research, sponsored by Slack, The Business Value of Slack, 2017
The Business Value of Slack for Engineering 11
03
The Business Value of Slack
for Human Resources
Recruit
More Effectively
It’s easier to find the right person for the job
when you can move candidates through the
hiring pipeline quicker with Slack.
3% “Our recruiting team uses Slack to
Reduction in facilitate a more seamless and effective
time to hire new interview process. This helps us optimize
employees interviewing candidates, which makes
that process easier for us internally.”
“Instead of grabbing links and copy-
pasting them in an email, HR can share
that information directly in Slack... I would
say that has reduced hiring time by 5%
to 10%.”
Excerpted from IDC research, sponsored by Slack, The Business Value of Slack, 2017
The Business Value of Slack for HR 13
Onboard Employees More Quickly and
Keep Them Happier Over Time
Faster onboarding means employees can more
quickly do the jobs they were brought on to do;
while the increased access between teammates
fosters a more pleasant and productive culture.
24% “I would say new employees are at full
productivity ~25% sooner because there
Faster to reach
are fewer questions asked – they know
full employee
productivity where documents are and where to
access them with Slack.”
“You can very quickly get up-to-speed
and there’s a lot of stuff in Slack that
you can look for as a new employee. It’s
incredibly helpful for not starting at zero.”
10% “Slack really helps to facilitate culture at
Improvement
the company… and allows everybody
in employee who needs to be involved to be
satisfaction collaborating and accessible.”
Excerpted from IDC research, sponsored by Slack, The Business Value of Slack, 2017
The Business Value of Slack for HR 14
04
The Business Value of Slack
for Marketing
The Business Value of Slack
for Marketing
Through the use of channels in Slack, marketers
have reduced the time needed to approve budget,
review creative, and plan media spend. Ultimately,
this means quicker campaign cycles and more
campaigns shipped each year.
16% “Coordinating messaging, adjustments,
Faster execution optimizations, learnings, product
of marketing development updates, approvals: all of
campaigns that is being done through Slack.”
8% “We work by projects for marketing,
so each project has its own channel,
Less time
needed
and all discussion is centralized within
to launch that channel. Instead of having multiple
marketing emails... now everything is happening in
campaigns one specific Slack channel.”
Excerpted from IDC research, sponsored by Slack, The Business Value of Slack, 2017
The Business Value of Slack for Marketing 16
The Business Value of Slack
for Marketing
Slack helps to bring marketers (and agency
partners where applicable) in lockstep, so that
projects are kicked off with alignment and on
time. Less time is spent on searching for progress
reports or asking for the latest creative, leaving
more time for higher-value tasks that help to
better realize each marketer’s potential.
“Launching a new brand from scratch with an agency has
typically taken anywhere from six to eight months. We recently
did it in about two-and-a-half to three months, and a good part
of that was due to the ability to coordinate with our agencies
over Slack.”
“Since we were sharing a lot of versions within emails, we
sometimes were not sharing the right version with clients or
people were using old versions to add modifications. I know
that for a fact it’s not happening anymore with Slack. Just this,
I would say cuts down on campaign time by 15%.”
Excerpted from IDC research, sponsored by Slack, The Business Value of Slack, 2017
The Business Value of Slack for Marketing 17
05
The Business Value of Slack
for Customer Support
The Business Value of Slack
for Customer Support
Resolve customer tickets with more
speed and precision by tapping into the
collective knowledge base available in Slack.
Integrations with customer support software
allow support teams to triage issues quickly
and transparently, monitor social chatter and
buzz, and even respond to customers directly
from Slack.
31% 8% 7%
Average reduction in More tickets More tickets
ticket resolution time routed correctly resolved correctly
Excerpted from IDC research, sponsored by Slack, The Business Value of Slack, 2017
The Business Value of Slack for Customer Support 19
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