There are scores of apps out there promising seamless employee communication and collaboration. One of the market stalwarts that has shown high adoption and growth is, inarguably, Slack.
But is the platform right for everyone? Not quite. Slack does not serve the 2.7 billion-strong global non-desk workforce. That way, it fails to optimize its communication and collaboration potential. While Slack is a great tool for desk-bound workers, it’s wise to look for a Slack alternative if you’re looking for a communication tool for frontline workers.
Here are the areas that limit Slack’s ability to be a highly productive employee communication tool.
User experience: Slack mainly caters to tech-savvy corporate desk workers who love the platform’s sophisticated user experience. But most non-desk employees are either business users or on-field employees who are not too tech savvy. Rather than a messaging-led ‘slash command’ interface, they prefer a simpler and familiar UI-based experience that doesn’t require any training. So adoption by non-desk employees takes a beating.
Integrations: Slack’s integration capabilities are limited. It provides integration of those systems and apps that have been specially developed for the platform. Enterprises need to invest in the integration of their systems with Slack if they are not a part of the Slack ecosystem. This increases effort and cost, and hampers productivity.
Channel: Since most Slack users are desk-based, they predominantly use desktop as the channel of consumption. The non-desk workforce prefer platform access on the go. As such they lose out on the mobile-first approach, which hinders smooth communication. Therefore, a secure Slack alternative seems to be the need of the hour for these workers.
Teams: Slack’s adoption rate is driven majorly by multiple small teams even in large enterprises. They use the tool to ‘huddle’ and get things done faster. Only 5% of active Slack users are signed in to 5 or more teams. Today, while businesses are trying to create common channels to facilitate communication across the enterprise, Slack fails to rope in most non-desk workers.
Onboarding: Only employees with an email address can join Slack. This leaves a major chunk of the non-desk workforce, which may be more comfortable using mobile phone numbers, synced out. The consequences of ignoring the non-desk workforce can be damaging. With such limitations, enterprises often look for a Slack alternative.
Groupe.io is designed specifically for deskless workers, making it an ideal alternative to Slack. The UI of the employee communication app is very simple, intuitive, and social-media like. This makes the mobile-first platform easy to be used by the non-desk employees. Through feeds, announcements, polls, surveys, and private and group chats, the communication model is optimized for company wide broadcast as well as departmental or team communication. This makes the solution easily deployable as an overarching communication solution by small and large enterprises alike. Even onboarding the frontline workers is easy. They can be looped in properly with only their mobile numbers. Moreover, Groupe.io’s open architecture ensures system-agnostic integrations with enterprises’ internal and third-party apps with ease. This means the non-desk workforce can seamlessly use apps like SAP, Zoho, Google Drive etc. within Groupe.io. Add to these, Groupe.io’s unique offerings that set it aside from its competitors like Slack.
Microapps: With its microapps feature, enterprises can rapidly develop lightweight apps — enterprise or internal — on Groupe.io that non-desk workers can securely access from their mobile devices anytime and anywhere. Unlike Slack, these apps are developed in HTML5 and provide a rich UI experience. Most importantly, it doesn’t require any specific integration with Groupe.io. This means no vendor lock-in. What’s more, enterprises can control access to these apps based on roles, function or even location, making it the best Slack alternative in this niche.
AI-powered bots: Groupe.io enables enterprises to drive productivity through AI-enabled chatbots, which can serve as digital assistants for the on-field workforce. Enterprises can also leverage bots developed using the Microsoft bot framework to work out-of-the-box on the Groupe.io platform. This makes Groupe a great slack alternative client for frontline staff.
Biometric security: Thanks to its 256-bit AES encryption, Groupe.io comes with a robust, bank-level security. Also, biometric, passwordless, multi-factor, and FIDO-certified strong authentication make for highly secure communication and transform enterprise security, making Groupe the most secure Slack alternative in the market.
Its ability to connect everyone in an enterprise — mainly the on-field staff along with the desk-based employees — seamlessly, securely, and productively, makes Groupe.io the best Slack alternative compared to other vendors.
Schedule a personalized demo to find out how you can get the most out of your hotel workforce with Groupe.io. Any questions? Drop us a mail at [email protected], and we'll be on it right away!