Slack is seeing new partner opportunities as a result of its merger with Salesforce, according to its new EMEA boss, Pip White.
Salesforce acquired Slack for $27.7bn earlier this year and White told UC Today that the pandemic has opened up the potential around hybrid working and collaboration and Slack’s role to be “prevalent” in that journey for organisations.
“That’s also seen by a lot of our partners now; we’re getting a lot of inbound requests to understand what the art of the possible is, and then to start to think about building practices around this concept of the ‘Digital HQ’. It’s a very exciting time for the partner community, as well as for us here at Slack,” she said.
“There’s a big Salesforce ecosystem of partners that have a lot of success in the market and are very keen to have an engagement with Slack, as well as continuing with Salesforce going forward. [There are] the large GSIs, who are thinking about how they can help organisations transform and a different working experience with the use of Slack and the Customer 360 experience.
“Then there are the smaller partners with a very deep knowledge of Salesforce and they want to now build out their Slack practice and start to engage with customers on those concepts of hybrid work and efficiency”
White joined Slack as its new SVP and GM for EMEA in October. She had previously held senior leadership positions at Salesforce before joining Google Cloud as MD for the UK&I last year.
She said she returned to the Salesforce fold because she was “intrigued” by the Slack acquisition and the opportunities it opened up for both organisations.
“It’s a very smart move and an interesting and powerful opportunity for Salesforce given what the world is going through,” she explained.
“When I had the original conversation with Slack, I was very much intrigued and excited by the opportunity and leading the integration across EMEA with Salesforce and knowing what I know about Salesforce and how loved they are by their customers as much as Slack is loved by their customers [was an interesting proposition]”
Though she has only been in her role for around two months, White is clear on her priorities as EMEA head. Her focus is on making sure customers and partners capitalise on the benefits of the merger, as well as attracting and retaining top talent across EMEA.
“We are seeing a continual motivation from both external and internal talent to want to join Slack and that’s always a good indicator of culture and market opportunity,” she said.
“The joint customer engagement is also really already flying; I’m very hopeful that we’ll start to promote and announce more of those as we win together with Salesforce. The power of the Slack proposition with Salesforce is really turning up in our customer and our prospect bases, and I think that’s a very exciting opportunity for us.”
