Chapter 12

Integrating Slack with Popular Enterprise Systems

IN THIS CHAPTER

check Getting familiar with enterprise systems

check Discovering how Slack fits in

check Recognizing how Slack can extend the power of enterprise systems

You can use third-party apps to extend Slack’s native functionality. (See Chapter 10 for more on this subject.) Slack doesn’t just need to be a place for sharing screens, exchanging DMs, calling colleagues, and reaching consensus on important organizational issues. It can do so much more.

This chapter illustrates the significant benefits that organizations can realize if they go even deeper with Slack. You learn about some initial integrations between Slack and back- and front-office systems. Depending on which systems your organization runs, you may be able to perform an increasing number of everyday business functions from right within Slack — and have that data magically flow into your employer’s system(s) of record.

A Brief Primer on Enterprise Systems

At a high level and irrespective of size, organizations typically use two types of systems:

  • Back-office systems
  • Front-office systems

Warning Maybe your organization’s Slack journey is just beginning, and it is experiencing some growing pains. In this case, it may not be ready to take advantage of the integrations in this chapter right now. That’s understandable. Still, I recommend that you at least skim this chapter. To paraphrase the iconic investor Warren Buffett, by knowing what’s possible, you can start planting seeds that will eventually grow into trees.

Back-office systems

You may never have heard the term back-office system. I assure you, though, that it exists at your employer in one form or another. These applications also go by the collective moniker enterprise resource planning or ERP systems. At a high level, they serve a number of invaluable operations and business-administration functions. Specific ERP activities include

  • Paying employees and tracking their benefits
  • Tracking employee promotions, training, and company property
  • Handling key accounting and finance responsibilities, such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, and invoice processing
  • Running standard financial reports, such as trial balances, profit and loss (P&L) statements, and different types of aging reports
  • Issuing standard regulatory and compliance reports to government agencies and tax authorities
  • Managing physical inventory and the supply chain
  • Tracking employee expenses and issuing reimbursements

No one would rightfully call these business functions sexy. Steve Jobs never announced them on stage in front of millions of awestruck people. Make no mistake, though: All firms have to effectively complete these essential activities — or outsource them to third parties that do. The need for this basic blocking and tackling holds true for hospitals, hardware stores, restaurants, bookstores, and chic clothing shops. The lone possible exception to the preceding list is supply chain management (SCM). For example, companies such as Twitter, Spotify, and LinkedIn (now part of Microsoft) don’t manufacture physical products. As such, there’s no tangible inventory for them to manage.

Front-office systems

The counterpart to a back-office system is — wait for it — a front-office system. Firms use this type of system to manage their customers, prospects, and sales. Without front-office applications, an organization can’t effectively track its customer pipeline, project revenue, determine which of its sales reps are the most productive, award sales commissions, determine their best advertising sources, anticipate customer needs, and effectively cross-sell or upsell customers. You know, little things.

Front-office systems typically fall into the following four buckets:

  • Customer relationship management (CRM)
  • Sales force automation (SFA)
  • Customer support
  • Field service management (FSM)

Depending on the industry, these application categories may overlap a tad. What’s more, while just about all organizations of a certain size rely upon proper CRM systems, the same may not apply to the other three buckets. For example, SFA is particularly popular, if not downright essential, for pharmaceutical companies but less so for a footwear maker or your dentist or local butcher. I guarantee you that your Internet service provider (ISP) uses FSM software to track its technicians’ on-site visits. Neither your butcher nor your dentist visits your home.

Slack and Current Enterprise Systems

If Slack is indeed where work happens, then couldn’t the collaboration tool ultimately replace back- and front-office systems?

For several reasons, the answer is no. I can’t envision a realistic scenario in which Slack in all its glory even attempts to replace either type of system.

First, enterprise systems allow organizations to manage critical business functions. The usual suspects include payroll, benefits, accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory tracking, CRM, and others. Many large firms implemented ERP and CRM systems decades ago — usually with decidedly mixed results as I write in my first book Why New Systems Fail (Cengage).

High-profile system failures run the gamut. You may have heard of debacles such as the 2013 launch of Healthcare.gov. These disasters don’t just affect government agencies, though. In 1999, Hershey attempted to implement a new supply-chain system. In a word, it bombed. The company lost $100 million in candy sales and filed a few lawsuits against its partners. More recently, car-rental company Hertz sued consulting firm Accenture for $32 million over a botched website redesign. I could cite IT-project failures all day long. Against this backdrop, rare is the chief information officer (CIO) or chief technology officer (CTO) who is willing to spend millions of dollars to replace enterprise systems that, while long in the tooth, still work.

Second, it’s folly to claim that all enterprise systems are created equal. Some are far more modern and app-friendly than others. Sure, every organization needs to pay its employees and track its accounts payable, but how each accomplishes these compulsory feats is anything but standard. Consider the vastly different types of systems that organizations use today to keep the lights on:

  • Legacy systems: These relics often run off of mainframe computers written in antediluvian programming languages such as COBOL. Believe me: The ugly green screen ain’t dead yet.

  • Custom-built systems: Sometimes CXOs aren’t happy with the offerings of major software vendors. They decide to build their own back- and front-office systems — a decision that often turns out to be regrettable. In my experience, their successors often live with the consequences of these decisions. One of the biggest gaffes: thinking that software development is a core organizational competency when it most certainly is not.

    I have seen this movie before. Twenty years ago, I used to work at the pharmaceutical giant Merck. The company’s IT staff built deficient homegrown HR systems that routinely frustrated many people, especially me. I would often ask: Why did Merck’s management go this route? Does Microsoft manufacture its own aspirin?

  • Commercial-off-the-shelf client-server applications: The on-premise COTS model was all the rage in the 1990s and 2000s. A company buys, configures, and maintains servers and purchases enterprise software such as Oracle, SAP, or Infor to run off of them. If this approach sounds expensive to you, then trust your instincts. (Many companies have since ported these same applications to the cloud.)

  • Outsourced systems to third parties: Many small and midsized companies don’t want to deal with the headaches of buying, deploying, configuring, and maintaining their own back-office systems. As a result, they pay vendors to perform these tasks for them.

    That’s right. Good old-fashioned outsourcing is alive and well. Case in point: Why does the U.S. government routinely solicit employment data from Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP)? Because the payroll-outsourcing company knows if companies are hiring. After all, ADP serves more than 700,000 clients in 113 countries. Kronos, Paychex, and Ceridian also provide comparable services. And then there are professional employer organizations (PEOs) that handle the full range of back-office services. Why outsource just the payroll process when you can outsource an entire department?

  • More contemporary, cloud-based applications: Thanks to the explosion of cloud computing, several vendors — including Slack — have adopted the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. (For more on SaaS, see Chapter 1.) The most prominent examples include Salesforce (CRM) and Workday (ERP).

It would take quite a bit of doing for Slack to develop a viable solution that would replace any of these key enterprise systems, never mind all of them. Brass tacks: Slack isn’t going to be playing in this sandbox anytime soon. But don’t think that Slack and its developers are ignoring you altogether.

Remember Even Slack’s most vociferous advocates — and I put myself firmly in this camp — understand this reality: Slack complements vital enterprise systems but doesn’t replace them. Slack’s own management would agree with that statement.

With respect to enterprise systems, Slack’s top brass is keenly aware of both of the following:

  • The fragmented state of the enterprise-technology industry
  • The reluctance of most management teams to disrupt their organizations’ fragile systems

At the same time, though, Slack’s actions indicate that it senses a legitimate business opportunity regarding enterprise systems. Rather than supplant ERP and CRM applications altogether, why couldn’t Slack do the following for its clients?

  • Enhance their existing enterprise systems
  • Make their employees’ lives easier
  • Simplify their business processes
  • Increase their levels of automation
  • Reduce the amount of paperwork that they have to complete

Put differently, couldn’t Slack complement their customers’ enterprise systems?

Before answering, let me reiterate a key point that I make in Chapter 10: Slack’s management has embraced platform thinking. Slack wants third-party developers and startups to take its core product in new and exciting directions — including with enterprise systems. In this vein, some ambitious companies are starting to do interesting things. One burgeoning area involves building digital bridges that connect essential but often clunky ERP and CRM systems to a lighter, more modern, more user-friendly application.

Yes, I’m talking about Slack.

Now back to my earlier question: To both Slack and its development community, the answer is a resounding yes. A few simple examples will prove my point.

Remember Beyond the simple examples I describe in the next section, make no mistake: Increased Slack automation and more integrations with contemporary enterprise systems are coming soon.

Exploring current system integrations

I’ll start by describing a few of Slack’s nascent integrations with enterprise systems. You may not be terribly impressed with the following examples but remember a few things as you’re reading:

  • Slack integration with specific enterprise systems is fairly new.
  • The following examples represent just the tip of the iceberg.
  • Slack continually forges new partnerships with large software vendors.
  • Early adopters have built private Slack integrations for their own systems.
  • Startups are feverishly working on new ways to enhance Slack.

Employees requesting time off

Think about how your employer handles most employee HR requests. I’ll wager that a good percentage of worker-initiated queries are manual. For example, at some companies today, employees still need to manually fill out forms requesting time off. Others have to email their managers and ask for permission.

Perhaps this process doesn’t irk you. After all, how often do you ask your boss to take a vacation, much less a leave of absence? But wouldn’t it be easier to request time off in Slack?

Tip Third-party Slack apps such as Vacation Tracker and Time.bot accomplish the same thing. As of this writing, though, these standalone tools don’t integrate with existing enterprise systems.

Employees submitting expenses via Slack

Business trips often don’t go as expected. Watch the 1987 flick Planes, Trains and Automobiles and see whether you can relate. When you finally arrive home exhausted, you probably dread submitting your expenses. Twenty bucks says that your company’s expense forms and internal approval process leave more than a bit to be desired.

What if you could submit your expenses via Slack? If you use Expensify and your company has enabled its Slack integration, then you are already saving yourself some time in this regard.

Creating new system integrations

What do you do for a living? You probably spend a good deal of time at work in front of a computer — and rarely do you request time off and submit expenses. Think for a moment about your job. What are the ways in which you routinely interact with enterprise systems? Depending on your role, you may need to do one or more of the following:

  • Open requisitions for new department or company positions
  • Generate offer letters for applicants
  • Sign up for in-person or online training
  • Write reports for your technically challenged colleagues
  • Fill out requisition forms for goods or services
  • After receiving approval, submit purchase orders
  • Pay vendors for goods or services provided
  • Close your company’s books on a quarter or year

In many instances, completing these activities involves executing several redundant or superfluous steps — even if your company has implemented state-of-the-art enterprise systems.

See whether the following scenario sounds familiar. Performing essential parts of your job regularly involves

  • Sending a series of internal emails.
  • Waiting for email approval before taking the next step — especially if you need to process exceptions or exceed thresholds.
  • Switching back-and-forth among different applications.
  • Entering the same data in different systems or multiple times in the same system. (Few things rankle me more.)
  • Looking up data in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or standalone Access database.
  • Following up with people who have ignored your initial messages.
  • Doing all of these tasks.

Did I just eerily describe your work day to a t?

I am not judging you. Really. A certain degree of inefficiency on the job may not bother you much or even at all. After all, work isn’t supposed to be fun, right?

Fair enough, but many rank-and-file employees would like to streamline their organizations’ cumbersome internal processes. Doing so would save time, minimize duplicate data entry, and reduce errors. Even if you’re comfortable with the status quo, consider this point: Few things excite execs in the corner office more than the ability to save money.

To be fair, performing each of the preceding tasks entirely within Slack may not be possible yet — let alone advisable down the road. For privacy, audit, and regulatory reasons, you still may need to follow the same less-than-ideal business processes even if your firm uses Slack in innovative ways. Still, for many activities in enterprise systems, there may be a better way to get something done. In this vein, Slack may prove to be just the ticket.

Integrating Slack with enterprise systems

Depending on your company’s particular systems, your organization can take advantage of three different types of automation options in Slack.

  • Use native Slack integrations: Enterprise-software vendors are hard at work building functions that link to Slack right out of the box. As such, you may be able to use them with minimal effort.
  • Use third-party integrations: Tray.io, Workato, and Zapier are well-funded startups that focus on application integration and automation. No, they don’t work exclusively with Slack. Each company, though, has built impressive integrations that serve as Slack bridges to many mainstream ERP and CRM systems.
  • Build your own custom bridges: Failing one of these two options, IT staff at your company can develop their own bespoke integrations — or hire outside developers to do the same. As a starting point, consider Slack’s developer tools. (For more on this topic, see the developer resources in Chapter 18 as well as https://api.slack.com.)

To paraphrase the Fleetwood Mac song, What if you go your own way? Slack benefits from a vibrant community of tech-savvy users and talented third-party developers. Many of these folks are downright effusive about their successes and often surprisingly candid about their failures. You can learn a good deal from talking to them about their creations and experiences, either online or in person.

Some of the largest enterprise-software vendors have built native Slack integrations. Others have encouraged startups to do the same — or at least not stood in their way.

Note that I’m listing the vendors in this section in alphabetical order.

Remember I obviously don’t know which systems your organization runs. If this chapter is starting to overwhelm you, then feel free to skip the rest of it. You can return to it once you’ve gained your footing with Slack.

INFOR

Thanks to a spate of acquisitions, Infor has grown to become one of the world’s largest enterprise-software vendors. At present, its products don’t natively integrate with Slack, but that’s where automation startup Tray.io comes in. The latter lets users build Infor-to-Slack connectors. Read more about it at bit.ly/trayinfor.

Not to be outdone, Workato’s HTTP Connector allows for tight Infor-Slack integrations. For more, see bit.ly/infor-workato.

MICROSOFT DYNAMICS

Microsoft’s ERP and CRM offering has undergone a number of facelifts over the years. You can use a number of automation tools to integrate Dynamics with Slack:

Note that I’m intentionally omitting Microsoft’s ubiquitous productivity suite. For the purposes of this chapter, Office 365 doesn’t qualify as an enterprise system.

ORACLE

For decades, Oracle has been one of the world’s five largest software companies. Over the years, the company has gobbled up nearly 140 firms as of this writing according to Crunchbase. Examples include the CRM outfit Siebel and the ERP vendors PeopleSoft and NetSuite. Translation: Oracle isn’t going anywhere — and Slack’s management and developers are acutely aware of this fact.

Along these lines, Slack and Oracle announced a significant partnership in October 2017. The Oracle Intelligent Bot Platform helps both developers and nontechnical users build smart bots. Read more about the program at bit.ly/2ohKF3A.

Remember A bot is a simple application that automates repetitive tasks.

Oracle customers should also consider taking Workato for a test drive. You can immediately download and install more than 100 pre-built recipes or templates for Oracle’s E-Business Suite. They each automate a task for a different business function. Read about what you can do at bit.ly/ora-slk-wrk.

SALESFORCE

Salesforce is the world’s largest pure-play CRM vendor. The company pioneered the popular SaaS model when it launched in 1999. To call cofounder and CEO Marc Benioff a trailblazer is the acme of understatement. Today Salesforce offers a number of different native integrations with Slack. For example, new Salesforce accounts can automatically trigger Slack notifications.

The Salesforce AppExchange is rife with apps that automatically connect to different enterprise technologies — and Slack is no exception here. For more information, see bit.ly/slack-integ.

SAP

The conservative German multinational software company is also among the oldest and largest in the world. One early and particularly useful SAP integration is its Concur Expense bot for Slack. Beyond that, Tray.io and Workato both connect SAP to Slack in interesting ways. For more, see the following URLs:

https://tray.io/connectors/sap-erp-slack-integrations

https://www.workato.com/integrations/sap_erp+slack

WORKDAY

Founded in late 2005 by PeopleSoft vet Dave Duffield and launched early the next year, Workday specializes in financial and human-capital management software. Much like Salesforce.com and Slack itself, the company embraced cloud computing and SaaS from its inception. Customers don’t own Workday; they merely rent it.

No shocker: Workday’s modern system architecture allows it to offer an ever-increasing number of useful Slack bridges. As of this writing, they include

  • Employee time-off requests and peer feedback
  • Enhanced coworker look-up tools
  • Rapid and role-based Slack channel assignment

More are coming. Bet on it.

ZENDESK

Zendesk is the industry leader in customer service and support ticketing. As of this writing, it sports more than 200,000 clients in 30 countries. If you’ve ever called or emailed customer support, you’ve most likely received an email from Zendesk. (Check your inbox if you’re curious.)

Zendesk is a natural fit for Slack integrations. If a company uses both applications, then its support employees shouldn’t need to constantly check their inboxes. Zendesk integrations let tickets, comments, and updates automatically appear in Slack. For more on this subject, see bit.ly/zdslack.

Warning What if you didn’t see your firm’s enterprise systems in the previous section? Maybe the reason is that it runs 25-year-old, highly customized back- and front-office systems. Odds are that you won’t find existing tools that will let those systems easily talk to Slack. Of course, your IT department can always try to build them.

Don’t view Slack integrations with the aforementioned enterprise systems as a binary. There are levels. Consider two intentionally polarized scenarios:

  • Company A: Uses the latest versions of both Workday and Salesforce.
  • Company B: Relies upon a patchwork of kludgy legacy systems.

All else being equal, Company A will be able to use Slack to automate far more tasks than its counterpart.

But what if you don’t work at Company A? No bother. Firms need not run the latest and greatest cloud-based ERP and CRM solutions to integrate with Slack. Generally speaking, though, the older its enterprise system, the less likely a firm will be able to enjoy the considerable fruits of Slack integrations.

Technical stuff As I was finishing the manuscript to this book, Slack launched a simple yet powerful way for developers to connect Workflow Builder (discussed in Chapter 10) to external systems. To read more, visit bit.ly/sl-wbhk.

Looking forward

Chapter 15 delves much deeper into Slack’s bright future. For now, though, know that the number, variety, and power of Slack enterprise-system integrations will only increase for the foreseeable future. No, no company can totally eliminate inefficiency. Also, complete automation inheres its own risks. People still matter.

Still, it’s not hard to read the tea leaves. Advances in automation and machine learning are letting organizations at least partially streamline many cumbersome, time-consuming, and error-prone business processes. It’s happening as you read these words. Slack is poised to play an integral role in this important shift.