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Slack’s New CEO Brings Generative AI to the Workplace Conversation

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Slack’s New CEO Brings Generative AI to the Workplace Conversation

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/slacks-new-ceo-brings-generative-ai-to-the-workplace-conversation-af053233

 1. CIO Journal


SLACK’S NEW CEO BRINGS GENERATIVE AI TO THE WORKPLACE CONVERSATION


MESSAGING APP HOPES NEW AI FEATURES AND MORE INTEGRATION WITH SALESFORCE WILL
RESONATE WITH BUSINESS USERS

By

Belle Lin


May 5, 2023 5:30 am ET

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Slack CEO Lidiane Jones spoke at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything
Festival in New York on Wednesday. Photo: Bryan Bedder for The Wall Street
Journal

Lidiane Jones, the new chief executive of Slack, is betting that the future of
the messaging app—purchased by software giant

Salesforce
for $27.7 billion about two years ago—will rest on the combination of their
technologies using generative artificial intelligence.



Corporate technology leaders have questioned whether the addition of Slack’s
collaboration and communications features makes Salesforce’s flagship
customer-relationship-management software that much more useful. But the rise of
generative AI, the technology behind ChatGPT, has prompted some to reassess the
value of combining the two platforms.

Slack on Thursday unveiled several new generative AI capabilities, including
features that can summarize conversations and help draft responses within the
messaging app. A new Slack development platform lets developers choose among
large language models from OpenAI or Anthropic to build their own workflows and
Slack-based apps on top of. 

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The company also last week released a product called Canvas—a hub where
employees can share internal documents, Slack messages and customer data from
Salesforce applications. Generative AI is applied on the tool to “accelerate
connecting the dots for people, because we can bring that context and knowledge
together,” Ms. Jones said.

“What really is important for us is how do we amplify the capabilities of Slack
as a platform across all of Salesforce, because that will shape the future for
many years to come,” Ms. Jones said in a session at The Wall Street Journal’s
Future of Everything Festival this week. As generative AI becomes more
pervasive, Slack is “the most relevant platform for customers to interact in a
very human way with the technology,” she said.

Lakshman Nathan, chief information officer of

Paramount Global
, said the ability to combine Salesforce data with Slack’s messaging app and
generative AI could make Canvas a more useful productivity tool for the media
giant, which also uses tools from rival software maker
Microsoft
. Paramount began using Slack at the onset of the pandemic and so far has used
Salesforce and Slack in limited ways, such as helping its ad sales team work
together, Mr. Nathan said.



Enterprise technology firms like

Amazon
, Microsoft and Salesforce are racing to integrate generative AI into their
software platforms—each aiming to capitalize on the pressure that technology
leaders, too, are facing to quickly take advantage of the technologies.



Since the launch of ChatGPT last fall, more CIOs have increased their investment
in AI, according to IT research and consulting firm

Gartner
Inc. A recent poll of more than 2,500 IT leaders by the firm found that 70% said
they are in “exploration mode” with generative AI, and 19% are already testing
it.



Alex Waddell, CIO of Adobe Care & Wellness, said the healthcare services
provider doesn’t currently use Slack, but is considering using the platform’s
generative AI features to help build its own customer chatbot, rather than
starting from scratch. “I don’t want to reinvent this wheel,” he said.



> Every CIO that I’ve had the chance to meet over the last few months has talked
> about, ‘How do I accelerate the value that I already have from Salesforce with
> Slack?’
> 
> — Slack CEO Lidiane Jones

Mr. Waddell said the Phoenix-based company uses Salesforce as the underlying
technology for its electronic medical records system, but has struggled to
connect its Salesforce data with Teams, Microsoft’s workplace collaboration
tool. “Interdepartmental communication is huge,” he said, “but it’s really
hard.”

Despite greater interest in generative AI, analysts say many CIOs are still
approaching widespread investment in the technology with caution. Larger-scale
use of the technology remains a challenge for corporate technology departments,
spurred by fears of data leaks from employees using ChatGPT.

Based on its customer feedback so far, Slack is being cautious about “safeguards
for data,” Ms. Jones said. “A big part of our administrative capabilities, and
even end-user feedback, is ensuring people know where their data is, how it’s
being managed, and they can drive the controls of that,” she said.

So far, Salesforce’s largest-ever acquisition, which marked its ambitions to
move beyond its core product and compete with Microsoft, has yet to yield
significant financial results. Slack’s revenue growth has slowed since it was
acquired: Salesforce reported $410 million in Slack subscription and support
revenue in the fiscal fourth quarter ended Jan. 31—reflecting
quarter-over-quarter growth of nearly 2%, but a slowdown compared with 6.9% and
9.3% growth in the previous quarters.

Ms. Jones, a former Salesforce executive who was named CEO after co-founder
Stewart Butterfield announced his departure last December, said she has spent
the past months meeting with CIOs and helping solidify the joint product vision
for Salesforce and Slack.

“It’s just taken us this long to get it right,” she said. “Every CIO that I’ve
had the chance to meet over the last few months has talked about, ‘How do I
accelerate the value that I already have from Salesforce with Slack?’”

Still, for Salesforce customers like New York City-based Ponce Bank, that vision
takes a back seat to more urgent IT needs like updating its core banking
systems, said Chief Executive Carlos Naudon.

“We have a technology road map that is very robust, but Slack is probably a year
or two away,” Mr. Naudon said. “We have other things, including standing up our
digital bank, that are very critical to our future.”

Advertisement - Scroll to Continue



Write to Belle Lin at belle.lin@wsj.com

Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8




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FINANCIAL SERVICES: 6 WAYS TO SUPPORT A GENERATIVE AI RISK MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

Generative AI provides opportunities to modernize the financial services
industry, but institutions are likely to face emerging risks inherent to its
increasing use


GENERATIVE AI: 60 BUSINESS-READY USE CASES

Looking across six key industries, a new report examines potential applications
to help enterprises navigate the transformative impact of generative AI


SURVEYED CEOS EXPECT GENERATIVE AI TO DRIVE GROWTH, EFFICIENCY

The Summer 2023 Fortune/Deloitte survey also suggests CEOs are continuing to
invest in emerging technologies but are moving cautiously with implementation
and preparing for talent shifts
Content from our Sponsor: Deloitte
The Wall Street Journal news department was not involved in the creation of this
content.



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