The Future of Agent-Powered Work in Slack

 Auto-transcribed on Tuesday, September 17, 2024.media and text playback available on this page: https://aliceapp.ai/recordings/2SCvN7BynR8Yf9OL3IMzUp1hZG6JiueW

Key 	Value 	
Words: 	1,625 	
Duration: 	00:07:45 	
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Uploaded on: 	2024-09-17 20:40:53 UTC 	
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Using: 	Uploaded to aliceapp.ai 	

Speakers:

 Speaker A - 36.92%

 Speaker B - 25.97%

 Speaker C - 37.11%

Notes:

- Ryan Gavin is the CMO of Slack. Archana Kanan is the new vp of platform at Slack. So welcome. So much to Dreamforce.-  Slack is a work operating system for your entire enterprise. 60% of people are working with agents. Agents working right alongside my teammates in slack can be transformative. This is how we have to prepare ourselves, prepare every organization to take advantage of this moment.-  Slack is creating something that's human centric but also AI powered. This is the time when we have to be really deliberate about how do we bring AI into our organizations. How can slack help shape that transformation?- Arch: We have 700 million messages sent daily, 3 million workflows that are undaily, and 1.7 million apps that are used on a weekly basis. He says Slack is giving every employee superpowers. How is AI in particular, fueling that?-  Slack across Salesforce clouds. Salesforce channels and agent force assistant. By connecting like Salesforce and Slack, what we have now is a shared understanding of the customer. It's been a total game changer. It really is showing us a new way of working.- If you're interested in learning more about Slack and the innovations announced here at Dreamforce, please scan the QR code on the screen or go to the link. Let's go.

[00:00:00]  Speaker A 
Welcome.

[00:00:00]  Speaker B 
Ryan. Welcome, Archna.

[00:00:01]  Speaker C 
Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

[00:00:03]  Speaker B 
Ryan Gavin, you are the CMO of Slack, and Archana Kanan, you are our new vp of platform at Slack as well. So welcome. So much to Dreamforce.

[00:00:10]  Speaker A 
Thank you. Very excited to be here.

[00:00:12]  Speaker B 
Well, let's go ahead and kick it off. Let's talk about this pivotal moment in time. Why is it such a pivotal moment? And what are the responsibilities of leaders in this moment to kind of guide through this change?

[00:00:23]  Speaker C 
Well, yeah, this is incredible. I mean, the idea of working without limits with agent force is just this unprecedented moment in history for us. Um, but the reality is, it's not going to come to us for free. Uh, I think, as most people have felt, uh, as certainly we see from our customers, work oftentimes feels a little broken. 40% of the time, working is on the work of work. Uh, almost 50% of people struggle to find the information just to do their job. So bringing AI into the system that could be kind of inefficient, could actually just amplify the inefficiencies. Imagine in this world today, we're already working with. 60% of people are working with agents. Imagine when we're talking to more agents than teammates, is that more spool sharing? Is it more. So, we need to be really thoughtful about how do we tap this opportunity of working without limits.

[00:01:07]  Speaker B 
I love it. You're just amplifying stuff that's already broken. We need to find a way to fix that. So how does Slack play into this?

[00:01:14]  Speaker C 
Yeah, I mean, this is where Slack was born. Uh, we are a work operating system for your entire enterprise. Uh, we think of ourselves as this conversational interface that takes their humans, your data, your workflows, your AI, your agents, and we bring that all together. So your people have a central operating system for work. No more swivel chairing, no more moving from place to place. And now we can bring agents to the team. This is so cool. Agents working right alongside my teammates in slack, uh, can be transformative. And this is how we have to prepare ourselves, prepare every organization, prepare every employee to take advantage of this moment.

[00:01:51]  Speaker B 
It is very exciting. As someone who's relatively new to the slack side of the house, I am so thrilled to be here, because this is the future, and it is so clear, and it's so exciting. So let's talk about the strategy between creating something that's human centric but also AI powered. What does it look like for companies? And how can slack help shape that transformation?

[00:02:11]  Speaker C 
Well, I think this is the time when we have to be really deliberate about how do we bring AI, uh, into our organizations and what that's going to look like. You know, as I talk about Slack being this work operating system, you want a place to deploy your enterprise applications, you want a place to deploy your agents that's safe and secure and trusted, and you also want to do it right in the flow of work. Um, these amazing agents that are going to be able to work on our behalf. Bigger reason I need those sitting with me inside of slack, working right alongside with all my workflows, all my automations. Uh, and so that's what we're building. That's what a lot of the innovations you saw today.

[00:02:45]  Speaker A 
Yeah. And, you know, Ryan, like, uh, there was this Harvard business review that said that it's not AI is not going to replace humans, but humans with AI are going to replace humans without AI. And that's really what slack is doing. Like putting people in the center with these agents.

[00:02:58]  Speaker C 
That's exactly right.

[00:02:59]  Speaker B 
I love it. Bringing it all together, empowering the people who are in slack to be able to use those agents and take advantage of those innovations. So, Arch, now I'm going to come right back to you. Um, you are constantly interacting with all sorts of business leaders, right? And I want to know, how are you seeing that slack is really helping them balance and accelerate their business growth in this moment? How is AI in particular, fueling that?

[00:03:17]  Speaker A 
Yeah. So, jillian, people come to slack to do work. Do you know that we have, like, 700 million messages sent daily, 3 million workflows that are undaily, and, like, 1.7 million apps that are used on a weekly basis. This is the place that people work. And when I talk to business leaders, what they tell me is that, hey, we want to really improve the productivity of our employees. How can we empower the workforce with tools so that they can focus on the task that needs to be done? And I understand that because an enterprise, on average, has like, 1000 apps and only 30% of them are connected, which means just put yourself in the shoes of an employee, right. You have to remember where all the apps that you are going to use on a day to day basis, you have to know where to go find the information, how to navigate the UI in each of these different apps and systems, and that's a tremendous amount of cognitive load. And this is where AI is going to be such a game changer, because now you have a conversational interface. You have such a natural conversational interface where you can go and ask questions get information, do tasks. So many things become a lot easier. But as Ryan said before, if you don't do it now, instead of having 1000 apps, you'll have a thousand AI agents and you have to remember where to go for what. And this is where Slack comes in. By connecting all those applications and the agents and all the data. Now you have one place to go. You can go and access your data, do the task at hand and finish and be much faster and agile. As a company, I think what we're doing right now is giving every employee superpowers.

[00:04:46]  Speaker C 
With Slack, I love that.

[00:04:47]  Speaker B 
Totally superpower. We could just say Slack superpower, no matter what you're doing. Superpower time, Slack superpower. Um, okay, so let's talk a little bit about all of the innovations we've had so much over the last few years. And it's really deeply connected. Slack across Salesforce clouds. It feels like we've reached a major turning point in this evolution though, with the introduction of Salesforce channels, which I'm personally very excited about, and agent force assistant, which we have been talking about for a while. Archana, can you talk to us a little bit about the vision behind this?

[00:05:20]  Speaker A 
Yeah, so this is a great question, Julian. I think this is such an impactful moment for us to bring the world's number one AI, CRM and the world's most beloved platform together. Our vision has always been to simplify work for teams, make it easy for them to work effectively and efficiently with one another. And by connecting like Salesforce and Slack, what we have now is a shared understanding of the customer. So everybody has the data that they need to go run with like their customer information and take decisions and take actions. Um, so with Salesforce channels and agent force assistant, what, an agent for assistant is a starting point for other agents too. What we're trying to do over here is actually have this one place where you have the structured data as well as all the conversations about a customer in one place. And your agent force agents can now take both of this when it's giving you insights into what you can do with your CRM as well as help you with actions like generate an email or produce content. So this is a game changer. I really am super excited about this. We have been internally actually using it for a couple of months. So Ryan, what do you think customers can do with this?

[00:06:28]  Speaker C 
You're right and 100% it's a game changer. When you think about this idea that I can sit and look at accounts having conversations in Slack, I can see what's going on. I can use AI to summarize them, but I don't see all the structured data, I don't see all the things in the CRM. And now with Salesforce channels, that comes to me right in Slack, I can see what's the next opportunity. I can see who the account contacts are and as Archie said, I can use agent force to then help take action. I feel like as a chief marketing officer, I just became a first class citizen in this whole world of selling with Salesforce because I can see this data, the structured conversations or the structured data in Salesforce, the unstructured data all coming together. It's been a total game changer. It's a game changer for our sellers, it's a game changer for all the teams that are working around our customers. Uh, and it really is showing us a new way of working.

[00:07:11]  Speaker B 
Well, thank you so much, Ryan. Thank you so much, Arjuna. I am so thrilled and looking forward to what Slack is going to do next and I get to be part of it. Thank you for joining us today.

[00:07:20]  Speaker C 
Let's go. Thank you.

[00:07:21]  Speaker A 
Thank you. Thank you.

[00:07:22]  Speaker B 
If you're interested in learning more about Slack and the innovations announced here at Dreamforce, please scan the QR code on the screen or go to the link. Salesforce.com news story Slack Dreamforce 24 News it.