Workplace by Facebook has been struggling to break ahead of the crowd in the collaboration and communication space, while faced with some significant competition from giants like Slack, and Google Hangouts. However, things might be looking up for the social networking giants, after they landed their largest enterprise user yet, Walmart Stores Inc.
As the largest United States private employer, Walmart is could represent a huge step up for Workplace, which will be rolled out to all the 2.2 million employees in the network in various strategic stages. Already, Sam’s Club employees are using the platform to share pictures of their brand-new product displays.
Growth Looks Good for Workplace
Originally known as “Facebook at Work”, Workplace has only been in action for a year, after launching officially in October 2016. With competition like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Hangouts waiting in the wings, Facebook had some challenges to overcome if it wanted to reach the top spot for collaboration software.
Fortunately, the familiar and simple nature of Workplace has helped it to achieve some incredible growth. The Facebook enterprise solution simply works as an internal social media platform for companies, where professionals can access intra-office video and voice chat, personalised news feeds, custom groups and more. There’s also analytics dashboards and software integration available for administrators too.
Since launch, Workplace by Facebook has earned the attention of a huge number of customers, used in 79 different languages by organisations in every single continent, including Antarctica. Total organisations using Workplace now numbers more than 30,000 worldwide. Some of the bigger enterprises in the Workplace network include the Singapore Government, Discovery Communications, Starbucks Corp, and Campbell Soup Co. Now, Walmart has become the largest single user in the whole Workplace community.
There’s Still a Way to Go
According to Julien Codorniou, the Facebook Vice President, Walmart workers, and associates have been able to jump straight into using Workplace without the need for a lot of training, because the system is so simple to use.
While it’s true that signing Walmart as an enterprise user represents a significant win for Workplace, it’s also worth noting that Facebook has yet to push ahead of their competitors in the collaboration space. Microsoft Teams has around 30,000 business customers to date, and the upcoming integration with Skype for Business is likely to see that number rise even more.
For Slack, the numbers are difficult to read accurately, but not so long ago, the company announced that they had around 50,000 teams paying for the service, for 2 million users. If you add the free tier of Slack into the mix, that amounts to 6 million daily users, and up to 150,000 business customers accessing the service.
Facebook seems to be sitting solidly in first place, and it may need more than just one big win to become the market leader anytime soon.
