. The two companies are said to be nearing final terms and could report a deal as soon as today when Salesforce reports earnings for its fiscal quarter that ended in October.Slack is valued at more than $17 billion, which could make this Salesforce's biggest-ever acquisition. Most people know Slack as a leader in the growing enterprise-collaboration tech market—and the company has been expanding its offerings during the pandemic.
But it hasn't seen remarkable growth compared with other online tools and even withdrew its 2020 guidance in June. Still, there are other use cases for Slack beyond internal company communications. Some B2B companies have begun to set up external Slack workspaces for customers—without in-person events, these Slack channels are a place to encourage community and conversation among clients and can serve as the next generation of customer support message boards. And as more customer communities are built on Slack, Salesforce would have a goldmine of first-party data.
For Salesforce clients, data and conversations from their customer Slack workspaces could be ported over to the Salesforce customer relationship management platform to inform communications outside of Slack. Currently, there's no way for B2Bs to get a holistic view of the conversations happening within their Slack communities, but with the acquisition, this could be facilitated down the road, making Slack workspaces a more viable channel for B2B marketers.