Team collaboration is a growing market, and there is a lot of competition in the space. Microsoft presents major competition for Slack, but they recently released some impressive updated figures to show they are up for a healthy amount of competition. If you recall, Slack’s CEO, Stewart Butterfield, recently called out Microsoft on-stage in California, where he accused Microsoft of having “misleading numbers.”
Microsoft said its Teams app reached 13 million daily active users, making it ahead of Slack, which in October reported 12 million daily active users. Slack’s CEO said they have the metrics to support that its users were more engaged with the workplace collaboration app. All this brings us to last week when Slack released its latest figures to showcase the platform’s growing user base is indeed active.
An Uptick in Mobile Usage
According to Slack, of those who actively use the platform during the week, 76 percent of them use Slack on their mobile devices. It seems, at least according to its latest report, that Slack mobile users are in fact “highly engaged.” Slack is also reporting, the team collaboration app has five billion actions performed in an average workweek. More than one billion of these actions happen on mobile devices, they added.
“As a result, we’ve seen a corresponding uptick in mobile use on Slack, where we increasingly see people also use Slack’s mobile app as the jumping-off point to start their day or to tie up loose ends when the day is done”
“We also find that more than 70 percent of the total messages sent in Slack during a typical workday are sent by users who use mobile-only or a combination of mobile and desktop,” Slack shared. In September, more than 500,000 custom apps were used in a typical workweek, and Slack says these applications “fuel real work for our customers in the field.”
Updates to Slack
Slack also announced updates to the team collaboration tool designed to increase productivity. They’ve tackled increased workplace productivity with an improved version of their Salesforce for Slack app, which lets users manage Salesforce records from within Slack – even from a mobile device.
Developers at Slack have also made it simpler to coordinate with teams in the field with the introduction of RPI ambulance, a new feature rolled out in New York. Built as a Slack mobile app integration for workers on call, Slack wrote: “By the time the dispatcher’s actual message comes in, the crew members have already opted in on the assignment, know who they’ll be working with, and are en route to the garage.”
Slack even reported other key updates roughly a week ago, ones set to further transform the team collaboration into a force to be reckoned with. Slack’s competition will undoubtedly change, especially as the team collaboration arena continues to evolve. Although Microsoft has higher metrics, there is no doubt, they are worried about companies like Slack that remain agile and fast to react to the market as digital transformation persists.
