When I worked in a big, open-plan office, my colleagues and I emailed one another rather than getting up to talk.
This worked fine, except when those conversation threads got buried under the deluge of other emails flooding into my inbox.
Chances are, if I was still there now, we would be using Slack, an office communication app – wait, it’s more fun than that sounds – that keeps all conversations and files shared between employees searchable and in one place.
You can search across the whole archive and confine certain chats to one-on-one conversations, private groups or open, office-wide channels.
The idea of having to get to grips with yet another piece of software just to send messages back and forth sounds like a pain, but Slack is actually intuitive to use, connects with services such as Dropbox and Google Drive. It also syncs, as you would expect, across all your devices.
The technology magazine Wired noted that all the early adopters of the app are “the trendy and brave young media properties” such as Buzzfeed and HBO, as well as the likes of Tumblr, Airbnb, The Wall Street Journal and Urban Outfitters – and that 93 per cent of people who try Slack keep using it.
In an interview with MIT’s Technology Review, the Slack co-founder and chief executive Stewart Butterfield, who also happened to be the brains behind a certain photo-sharing app called Flickr, explains that his new app can also help with transparency at work. There may be chat rooms about marketing or quarterly returns that it is useful for IT people or assistants to check in with, and catch up with what other teams are up to.
It also makes it easy for new employees to catch up with what is happening, as they can browse old threads in their own time. Mr Butterworth has hinted at big ambitions – he wants Slack to be the default hub of any business; the app that’s always running in the background, as ubiquitous as Facebook or Google. He is not there yet, but it is not hard to imagine his vision becoming a reality.
Q&A
Bill Macaitis, chief marketing officer at Slack, tells Jessica Holland about the app’s rapid growth:
What problem was Slack created to solve?
Teams transition to Slack from a highly fragmented collection of tools they’ve cobbled together to build their own communication fabric: email, IM, Skype, SMS/iMessage, enterprise social tools, intranets, project management software, etc. Pulling all of those disjointed conversations into a single, organised and searchable view radically increases productivity and transparency.
Can it help increase productivity?
Yes, our customers report an average 32 per cent lift in their team’s productivity.
How useful could it be to a big corporate company headquartered in the UAE?
Often the larger the company, the more siloed the communications are with people on different teams spread across different floors, offices and countries. Think of it this way: if you are part of a 100,000-person company, how much would it cost to hire 32 per cent more staff vs making your existing staff 32 per cent more productive? Slack is widely used by some of the largest companies including Samsung, Dow Jones, Expedia, Nasa, PepsiCo and Ogilvy.
How has it grown since launching in February last year?
Today it has more than 1.1 million daily active users and more than 300,000 paid subscriptions. It is currently the fastest growing business application in history.
business@thenational.ae
Follow The National's Business section on Twitter
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
Director: Shady Ali
Cast: Boumi Fouad , Mohamed Tharout and Hisham Ismael
Rating: 3/5
How to watch Ireland v Pakistan in UAE
When: The one-off Test starts on Friday, May 11
What time: Each day’s play is scheduled to start at 2pm UAE time.
TV: The match will be broadcast on OSN Sports Cricket HD. Subscribers to the channel can also stream the action live on OSN Play.
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
The Brutalist
Director: Brady Corbet
Stars: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn
Rating: 3.5/5
THE LIGHT
Director: Tom Tykwer
Starring: Tala Al Deen, Nicolette Krebitz, Lars Eidinger
Rating: 3/5
Sweet%20Tooth
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECreator%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EJim%20Mickle%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EChristian%20Convery%2C%20Nonso%20Anozie%2C%20Adeel%20Akhtar%2C%20Stefania%20LaVie%20Owen%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E2.5%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
All%20The%20Light%20We%20Cannot%20See%20
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECreator%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESteven%20Knight%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStars%3A%C2%A0%3C%2Fstrong%3EMark%20Ruffalo%2C%20Hugh%20Laurie%2C%20Aria%20Mia%20Loberti%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E1%2F5%C2%A0%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
