At OpenText World 2025 in Nashville, strategic partnerships take center stage. In this OpenStudio interview, we explore how OpenText serves its largest global accounts with a dedicated team focused on aligning the company’s full portfolio to customer initiatives. From secure information management for AI to deploying Aviator agents across the entire value chain, discover how trust, customer satisfaction, and collaborative innovation drive success for enterprise partnerships spanning the US, Europe, and Asia.
Watch the full interview:
Introduction
Ajit Yohannan: Hello everyone. Welcome to OpenStudio. Once again, mu name is Ajit Yohannan, if you’ve been following our OpenStudio series from OpenText World, we have been having some great conversations and I’m so delighted to have with me Benoit with me. I will let him introduce because he has a large portfolio of customers that he manages. So welcome to OpenStudio, Benoit.
Benoit Perriquet: Thank you very much, very happy to be here with you. So I’m Benoit Perriquet and I look after all our OpenText global accounts, which is a reduced set of our accounts, our biggest accounts at OpenText, and I also look at another program named LA Program, so that is globally my perimeter.
Managing global strategic accounts
Ajit: That’s awesome and when you say global accounts you manage, you have a team of people who service these customers, manage these partnerships.
Benoit: Exactly. So it’s a group of people, it’s first it’s a reduced number of accounts, we’ve got dedicated global account directors and our job is very easy to understand. What we do, we align OpenText on our customer key initiatives. So it’s all about the quality of the discussion with this customer. We try to maximize the value of our exchanges. And at the end of the day when we understand our customers well enough, we are in a position where we can articulate the value. And we are a group where we just take OpenText as OpenText as a whole, then to cross BU 360 degree and we articulate the value across our OpenText unique positioning holistically in a way.
Customer experience at OpenText World
Ajit: Awesome. And I’m sure some of your customers are here at OpenText World. What’s been their experience and what are you hearing from them?
Benoit: Well, the first thing that I mean, it’s just we’re still in the discussion. We had the customers are here, I think they had a great experience and based essentially on two things. First, the quality of what we have introduced this year in terms of our vision and strategy, secure information management for AI resonates a lot. And they come, most of them come from experiences they had with us across our business clouds. Content cloud, business network clouds, our clouds with great success, and they’re very happy and resonates very much with them to see that we are moving and progressing well in our AI strategies. So for you to know, I mean, we started with AI and we announced OpenText.AI at the beginning in August 2023. So we really started our investment in AI early stage. And if you look at what we do today, I mean the fact that we can position agents, aviator agents across the entire value chain of our solutions that resonates very, very much with our clients. The integration between our agents and other partners, SAP has a good example with Joule is something also that resonates very strongly with our partners and clients. So no, I mean very, very positive feedback.
Key takeaways: Secure information management for AI
Ajit: Awesome. And any key takeaways for you from the last two days of new product launches?
Benoit: You know what I mean, it’s not very original. I’m going to say exactly the same. I mean, we are as OpenText, we are uniquely positioned. Secure information management for AI. Created in 1991, we come from content governance of the content in the condition for AI, and we’ve been doing that with our clients since how much is that? 30 years plus. So we have a very good positioning. The second thing is in our strategy, we don’t reinvent the wheel. I mean we keep data and information where they are, we don’t ask our clients to create huge consolidation of information, which is by the way, very difficult to achieve, very expensive to achieve as well and impossible to maintain. So we start with our customers where they are, they use our solution, the data is governed, structured and unstructured across our solutions, which gives us a day one advantage, I think. Security is in our DNA and so the AI component that comes on top across all our clouds makes a very compelling story to tell our clients. I mean, the proof is that it does resonate very, very well.
Priorities: Customer satisfaction first
Ajit: That’s awesome. And how are some of your priorities for this financial year? Are you working with these customers for a long term partnership? How are you going to move the needle?
Benoit: I mean, the first thing is that you build things where you need to have happy customers. So to me, candidly, the first thing that we want to achieve and we’ve progressed a lot is customer satisfaction starts. Everything starts with customer satisfaction. And discussing with many of these customers in the last couple of days, I’m very happy to see how much we’ve improved in making sure that we have happy customers. And you know what I mean, when we speak about that, we speak about AI as trust. You need to trust your data. And I think, I think as well you need to trust as a client, your providers of solutions. So I believe that we have also progressed a lot with our client, the dimension of customer satisfaction, which is a condition for success in the future.
Vision for 2030: OpenText becoming an AI Company
Ajit: That’s awesome. Anything that you see very different that’s—we have seen the space of the AI compared to last year and this year, let’s say in 2030, where do you see all of this? Is it going to be very different because this, how do you predict the future?
Benoit: It’s difficult to tell because I’ll never be a very deep product specialist, but what we’ve seen. OpenText discussion was about how successful we’ve been in managing content and we insisted in our ability to manage content coming from inside and outside the organization, the enterprise, content from supply chain, content from customer experience. And so we were able to be this single point of truth and we will remain that player. The only thing that we’re going to have much more intelligence added into what we know, into what we do already very, very well. In 2030, we will be a pure AI and we’re going to bring AI into this context of the content, context of the information. And we’ll be an AI company I think in the future because we have the foundation to do it.
Leadership philosophy: Trust and co-creation
Ajit: Yeah, I think that’s great. Thanks for sharing. I want to ask you also, I know you lead a big team of people, all of them spread across different parts. How do you lead such a big team? What’s your leadership style?
Benoit: You should ask them the question. Well, my leadership style, I think, how can I put it that way—I trust my team. I trust my team, that is number one. I think I’m very demanding to my team on new ideas. And so I think I implemented a process of co-creation where every individual, any global account director, which is the name that we have in my team, can participate into elevating what we do. So it’s a very collaborative organization. It’s a flat organization. Each of us can add value, and that is my ask, by the way, they need to add value in the way we engage. And they have been in the middle of our transformation. The group was created 7 years ago. We’ve been a growth engine for the company. And I think that’s it. It’s all about trust, making sure that the people get engaged. I mean their voice counts a lot for me. Multiple brains is better than one. And also I think basic principles based on we can, we need to measure what we want to control. So numbers is very important. And have fun.
Ajit: Have fun. Awesome. I met some of your team members and I’m sure they have the complete trust in you.
Benoit: Well, I hope so, but I think so, yeah, and I trust them very much so. Yeah, that’s awesome. It’s great people.
Message to Customers
Ajit: Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing. Any message to your customers out there that you serve, your team serves?
Benoit: Well, no, first I was so happy to see that more and more customers are coming to OpenText World this year, coming from the US, of course, but also coming from Europe and Asia, which is a very positive signal. So thank you for being with us. That’s my message. Embrace the change that we’re providing, I think essentially with AI in the next coming months, 26.2, which is the next version of our platform is on its way. And embrace it. And of course also this relationship is based on trust with the clients, so you can count on me, my team, to support you and make sure that we can best align OpenText on your business initiatives. That would be my message to the clients.
Closing
Ajit: Thank you so much, Benoit. It has been an absolute pleasure to talk to you and thank you very much for having such a candid conversation. Look, we should do more of these and thank you so much. And thanks everyone for tuning in. If you want to reach out to Benoit and his wonderful team, they’re happy to help you. Thank you for tuning in.
Benoit: Thank you.
About OpenStudio
OpenStudio is OpenText’s media hub for thought leadership and innovation. This series explores stories of progress and success from industry experts, visionaries, and trailblazers. Our goal is to inspire, inform, and connect audiences with the people and ideas shaping the future of the digital world.
