The Total Economic Impact™ Of Slack For Technical Teams

Slack is a productivity and collaboration application utilized on a daily basis by technical teams, including developers, engineers, and IT staff. By consolidating their tasks within Slack using integrations and native workflows, technical users save themselves time and create a unified interface for their work.

Slack commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Slack to its technical users, including developers, engineers, and IT staff. The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of Slack on their organizations’ technical teams.

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed five respondents and surveyed 264 respondents with experience using Slack. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the experiences of the interviewees and survey respondents and combined the results into a single composite organization that is an organization with 2,000 employees, including 300 technical users, and revenue of $500 million per year.

Before adopting Slack, the interviewees observed that their technical teams relied on separate email, chat, and meeting tools for different communication purposes. This siloed and fragmented approach resulted in limited visibility, making it challenging to track the progress and timing of work. It also led to inefficient workflows, requiring the interviewees to repeat manual tasks and resulting in delayed responses to urgent issues.