Slack is set to announce its new Chief Executive Officer next week, following the news on Monday that outgoing CEO Lidiane Jones has taken the corresponding role at dating app business Bumble.
According to a message on Slack’s internal channels, as reported by Insider, Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, Slack’s parent company, promised that a new Slack CEO would be appointed by next Monday and thanked Jones for all she’d done and wished her well.
Benioff said:
Lidiane, this a hugely-deserved achievement for you, one of our most incredible executives. While we will all of course miss you greatly (especially me), I recognize what an amazing opportunity this is for you becoming a public company CEO.”
Jones will finish her tenure at Slack at the end of the year, starting at Bumble on January 2. Jones has only been in post since January 2023, having succeeded Slack Cofounder Steward Butterfield, who had announced he was leaving the communications and collaboration business less than two years after its acquisition by Salesforce.
Jones was previously an executive vice president and general manager at Salesforce, joining the company four years ago. With an impressive CV across the tech world, she spent a decade in software development and product management positions at Microsoft. She led software product management at the wireless speaker business Sonos.
Salesforce originally announced its deal to acquire Slack in November 2020 for $27.7 billion, with the acquisition confirmed in July the following year. The agreement entailed Salesforce integrating Slack’s technology into its Customer 360 CRM suite.
Salesforce and Slack’s AI Journey in 2023
Salesforce and Slack have both launched AI products or feature updates this year as the business looked to leverage its transformational potential.
In May, Salesforce announced Slack GPT, a conversational AI tool to bolster business productivity. The technology utilised CRM and conversational data and introduced AI features into Slack, generative AI app integrations, and the functionality to use customer insights through the Customer 360 and Data Cloud.
The arrival of Slack GPT followed the launch of Salesforce’s Einstein GPT. However, Slack GPT offered more advanced agent-assist innovations within the Service Cloud application than Einstien GPT.
In August, Salesforce launched Slack Sales Elevate, a customised sales home that integrated Slack’s platform with Sales Cloud and entailed AI-powered features.
September was a prominent month for Slack’s AI push, with three new AI-powered productivity tools being announced, including Slack AI, Slack lists and new automation capabilities.
Slack AI is built natively into the platform to provide tools such as channel recaps and thread summaries. Slack lists enables users to track work tasks, manage requests, and oversee cross-functional projects with a transparent communication flow.
Furthermore, the new automation features empower every user, regardless of coding expertise, to automate certain tasks. The Taskflow Builder enables users to connect tools and a hub for simpler access. Developers can also build and deploy custom apps with Slack as the host.
This focus on AI culminated in Jones describing 2023’s AI moment as “amazing” while stressing that Slack’s access to unstructured data makes its AI capabilities “so powerful”.
Slack’s Sleek Redesign
Slack also launched a sleek new redesign in August, with a refined UI and improved user experience to improve productivity.
Slack highlighted that the new design would enable users to navigate channels and conversations to work faster and more efficiently, focus on tasks without distractions, and leverage new tools to streamline the workday.
“We know millions of people start and end their workday in Slack, so we took great care to ensure these improvements make it a more productive and pleasant home,” said Noah Weiss, Chief Product Officer at Slack. “The new experience helps teams stay better organised, focus on what’s important and quickly access a growing set of tools in Slack.”
