- Ensure a steady stream of feature updates: In the near future, Slack should consider updating its messaging platform with missing features which its competitors have. By giving more quality of life options to its users, Slack would be honouring its company slogan while providing its users with more ways to communicate. While this isn’t an original suggestion, it remains vital that Slack includes commonly used features to retain its existing user base.
- Create an Educational Sub-Brand: Consider creating sub brands based on different consumers groups. For example, Slack could design an alternative mode for Educational use (eg: marketed as Slack Education or Slack Studies) with a design based on other LMS platforms such as Canvas and Moodle while taking advantage of the infrastructure it has developed on its main platform. Enterprises will have features which are exclusive to them and depending on the user’s needs, subscription pricing could be revised to make Slack more attractive such as education discounts.
- Increased efforts for Advertising and Marketing: Slack could consider adopting passive marketing if it doesn’t want to hard sell or over advertise it’s products. This recommendation was made based on the concept of market exposure as Slack needs an avenue to get its brand name out in order to increase its user base. As seen in the previous Porter analysis, the market is extremely competitive and saturated hence Slack needs to ensure that it remains relevant and known by users. Simple Youtube advertisements or press releases to announce collaborations would be examples of ways Slack could promote itself. The objective is to build enough brand presence for a wide audience to synonymously associate Slack with effective teaching.
- Diversifying Product offerings: As Slack is currently a communications based product, one bold recommendation would be to consider diversifying itself into a solutions based company where it combines emerging technology such as Cloud based Artificial intelligence into its SaaS platform. Slack could offer AI based communication, predictive technologies or AI Chatbots to help manage its platform. Rather than constantly refining its current offerings, sometimes moving in a new direction could be beneficial for a company though ultimately it depends on the costs, investments and resources involved. It could consider taking advantage of Salesforce's Cloud resources to formulate new possibilities.