Navigating IT Vendor and Enterprise Relationships with David Bundy at OpenText World 2024

This is Techron tv. Hey folks, we're back at OpenText World in Las Vegas, and we're talking about how the relationship between IT vendors and large enterprises and the folks who work there is changing and evolving. David, welcome to show.

Thanks For having me. You know, a while ago I was having a conversation with a fellow and he was asking me about some opinion about this, that and the other, and I said to him, you know, here's what I know. And, and then I asked him later, I said, you know, we publish all this material.

We have all this content all over the place. It's our privilege to do that, but you know, how come you know, you don't know about all that stuff already? And he is looked at me and he said, son, it's very hard to think about fire prevention when you're holding onto a 10 inch hose for dear life.

So how do you kinda have a conversation with folks who are always busy, always have some crisis that they're trying to deal with, and get them to focus on information management and data management fundamentals? Yeah, it's a, it's a great question and, and an ongoing challenge to be honest. Um, so my team in the account development org focuses really on that last mile for the customer.

So we could have the best story to tell without the context and the relevance. It never, it never reaches where it needs to. So I would say, uh, being relevant and being timely are always paramount.

Um, knowing and understanding your audience, um, our, our buying centers are, are larger and more complex than ever. The reasons people are making it investments vary, but need to be mission critical in order for them to actually commit and invest in something. So I think from our perspective, we are there to start that conversation in an authentic way, be that trusted business advisor, open up the door, and then allow them to build the coalition on, on their side as well, to have a full understanding of what a, an open tech solution could do for their entire enterprise.

And that's part of the challenge. It takes this coalition to put together the budget for this kind of project. So, um, do you have to be their advisor to help build the coalition of a willing and, and, and help them figure out who can provide funding for something like this?

I Think oftentimes, um, when we have the authenticity of approaching them in the context of how they see the world and, and their business and the challenges that they have, we, uh, we oftentimes earn the permission to start to be that educator. And then with that education, you will naturally start to pull another functions over a period of time. So for us, it's about that long game for building the relationship into the future.

It's not a transactional sale. We have a, a deep and wide portfolio, and we'd love for them to be a customer, uh, in many different ways across, you know, the OpenText ecosystem. Are there things that you'll provide to them as, uh, you know, almost free advice to kind of build that relationship?

Or how do you do something that is authentic that they value and then find their way to you? Yeah, It's, it's a good question. We have a couple different tactics we take, but we're open to listening and hearing what would be meaningful for them.

It's typical for us to do something like a health check where we would go in with, you know, a services team and, and take a look at what their current environment is, where those challenges stem from. Conversely, it could be a, a market opportunity that they want to capitalize on. So any kind of a early engagement like that, we would, you know, show up and, and invest and commit to them early on so that they know, uh, they can trust OpenText for the long term.

Are there signals that you can pick up from companies that kind of suggest that they have a data management issue and you're able to kinda read those signals, whether it's investments in data centers or something, uh, you know, something's going on in a particular vertical industry that you know, is gonna drive things? I mean, and how do you become informed so that, you know, you're not just not making a cold call going, Hey, you like some information management today? Yeah, there's a, there's a couple key indicators, whether it be m and a activity, cost cutting initiatives, information sprawl in general, which are all indicators that there's something going on.

Um, but if we talk about, you know, further, you know, further back in the, in the cycle, we can use intent tools to do that listening, um, online to see, you know, whether they're an education purchase or decision, so that we can kind of, uh, segment our, our audience and then look at, you know, them, them by vertical, look at them by use case, look at them by geography, and start to understand the profile of these customers, the needs that they have, and how we can take our solutions to go better service them. Yeah. Um, is this getting simpler because, you know, my experience so far, every company, you know, launches an AI initiative about three weeks later has a data management issue.

Yeah. So is that getting easier to pick up those signals and have that conversation? It's not getting any easier, but the, in it, the investment that we put into this is, uh, also a direct correlation of what we get from an outcome perspective.

So it's important that when we take this journey with the customer, that we're actually with them in the early stages to help them build what they wanna see at the end of the road. And then my team, oftentimes they have that white glove approach where if they're, they're in a demo or a trial environment, we're, we're checking in on them regularly to see how's it going. Uh, oftentimes the customer won't know where to start, they'll be overwhelmed.

So the basic thing that we would do is just take those building blocks and start at the beginning, and then we would build over time. And that approach, well a little longer in, uh, in, in, in duration tends to produce a better result in the long term. Are most of the organizations trying to, like, take on some big standardization initiative?

Or are they kind of doing more bite-sized chunks of things and then over time they'll build on it from there? Absolutely the latter. Uh, they, they, uh, they're looking to us to help them understand their own use cases, help them prioritize those use cases.

They wanna see proof of concept, they wanna see traction early on before they commit and scale anything in this space. A lot of people are talking to them about AI and what AI can do for their business, but when it comes down to the practicality of the application of whatever solution they invest in, they wanna see it work, they wanna talk to people who it's working with, uh, as well. Alright.

Going back to the committee that buys this stuff, they have different interests, different personas. How do you kinda navigate all that because they're not all looking for the exact same thing and they don't have the same set of priorities? That's right.

Um, often an OpenText solution will have an enterprise wide impact, which is a good thing, but also the challenging thing when it comes to selling, uh, and that coalition again is really important. It's understanding the pain points and the needs of everyone sitting around that table and probably finding a few people that aren't at the table that should be, that would typically enter, you know, later in the sales process, which oftentimes will catch a seller or a selling team, you know, um, off guard. But if we, uh, if we invest the time early to really understand the organization and the things that matter to each of those stakeholders, we build the business case for those needs.

How often are you introducing people at a prospective client who've never met each other, but have this vested interest in this thing? Yeah, It happens more than you'd think, actually. And, and one of the most satisfying things is sitting in a room with a customer, uh, and a non-customer from the same organization.

And the customers there espousing all the benefits of why OpenText is so great. We don't have to do any of the selling to do it for us. So oftentimes with the business unit model that we have, we could be talking just, you know, as you mentioned, a persona or a line of business and other parts of the organization have no idea who we are or what we do in that space.

Uh, but as our solutions work so well together, it's about bringing these teams together to really invest in the investment that they've already made with us as, as a business. Who are you seeing in there? Because, you know, we used to see Chief Data Officers was the buzzword title for a while, seems that CIOs are now back in the mix.

There's some cheap AI officers running around a couple of data science chiefs and whatever else. So who's kind of, you know, driving the budget in most of these organizations? Or is it just so radically different?

It's a mix, which keeps us on our toes, right? We can't make assumptions. We have to go in there and learn.

For a while we were selling, you know, almost exclusively to it. Now there's a lot of, uh, lines of business in areas that we wouldn't normally have planned for early in the sales cycle. And we just have to go in and go always within the organization to meet people, shake hands, learn and understand.

That's why it's not just a wash fence, repeat with a single title that may get you a phone call, but that's not gonna get you a long term frugal relationship. Now, are not other IT vendors doing similar things or is this kind of a, a unique outreach kinda effort? Or is it a fight for attention essentially?

There's a lot of noise out there. I, I get the calls constantly. I'm sure you do as well.

So the ones that make the ones that pierce through the noise are the ones, ones that are incredibly relevant that show it, uh, a you know, a demonstrated understanding of my business and my pains and where I want to go, uh, as a leader. And I always take the time because, um, my people are out there every day trying to do the same thing. Yeah.

You have, uh, partners that you go to market with. Um, how do you kinda weave that together? There are GSIs in the world that you work with, there's SAP and all these other folks and you're all kind of banging on the door together.

So at some point, how does that converge into some sort of, you know, linking of the conversations? Or is it all kinda isolated channels? It, it Kind of depends on, um, where you're in the world and, and what solution and organization you're, you're working within.

But we have a number of tremendous partners of all varieties that we, that we work with. Um, for, for us, I think it's about understanding, is there already a footprint in the account where they have, you know, a certain, you know, SI is a trusted partner or a reseller that they prefer to work with. Um, for us, you know, the partner team is really a force multiplier.

So they, it's, it's a one plus one equals three situation. So we try not to all show up on the same bus together. Uh, we try and leverage where the relationships exist and, and, and we, we partner in whatever format the customer would prefer.

Are there certain industry sectors that are red hot right now compared to others when it comes to information management? Or are they all pretty much equal and intensivess? The demands are pretty through the roof, across the verticals.

Uh, we see a lot within public sector, a lot within financial services manufacturing. It, it's, it's all across the board. Yeah.

When, um, things don't turn out as planned, what's usually the root cause of that problem? Is it, uh, is it, is it more something on this side or is it more something on the customer side that was unforeseen that kinda leads to the hiccup? For the most part, especially in the last couple years coming out of covid, it's been a, a reticence to spend in general.

So, uh, for the most part it's not them choosing another vendor over OpenText, it's them not making a decision to proceed or doing something in-house. We find that that's usually the most common thing if, if you look across the board. Um, so our tactic in that situation is just to maintain that relationship so that when they're ready, they think of us first.

And if they've got a certain hiccup in their journey that we can help with, we're along for the ride. We're, we're investing in the relationship. One is the data and maturity of the organizations that you're seeing in general.

'cause I've been talking about this space for a long time and data management, not every organization's very good at it. And, uh, they don't manage structured data as probably they manage that better than unstructured data, but they're uneven in their approaches. So our organizations as a whole getting better at data management, or is it still kinda, you know, it's a, it's, it's something we tip our hat to, but we don't quite do it as well as we might.

I Think you said it well, right? It's, uh, I think we're not, I don't think in overall we're seeing companies get better with information management, but they're more keenly aware of a need to have a solution that will help them address the problems. It's, it's the data sprawl.

It's having the, you know, the, the access to information at your fingertips and being able to kind of cut through the noise to get to what you need to. Uh, I just think about my own team as it relates to, to, to data sprawl and productivity. And we have our own internal AI tools that we use constantly to help get their product, you know, their productivity up to save time for them to invest in the human relationships that they're building, not doing a bunch of research on the backend.

Yeah. Is the board more involved because of these AI initiatives? And sometimes I will talk to IT folks and they're like, I don't know, I opened up the Wall Street Journal and the CEO said we have an AI initiative and I have no idea how that thing's gonna get driven.

Um, so it seems like there's a gap between the board that has a bad case of FOMO and the capabilities of the actual IT team and, you know, are you helping to bridge that conversation? Yeah, I think it's, um, I think it's almost expected that you have an AI strategy now, but to be honest, a lot of people don't really understand what that means for their business. And I think the number one question we have is what is the use case that I should be thinking about for my part of the world?

What are my competitors doing in this space that I should be thinking about as well? So a lot of people don't like to admit it, but it's education all around. We're teaching, we're learning.

Um, and that's how the relationship starts. I feel like there's, because of budget concerns been a narrowing of the AI projects, we went from last year rational exuberance to let's have a million proof of concepts, but now people are starting to say, we can only afford to do two or three of these things this year. So our people getting a little more focused about this.

They are. And before they invest big, like we said before, they're going small to something that's containable manageable and that that's proven and that's how, uh, they, they grow, that's their springboard. So it's our job to get in there and make sure that first project's wildly successful.

So, Um, one, and where is the data science team in all of this? Because I think they were in the corner for a while doing this whole thing themselves, and now we're starting to see more of the infrastructure managed by it, more of the data engineering process being moved out. Where do they fit in this little, uh, village that it takes to build something?

The data scientist is still important, at least as we've seen, uh, to kind of develop and own the data strategy, uh, of it all. But like you said before, uh, the, the, the, the involvement in senior levels of the organization has become so prevalent, uh, down to the fact that, you know, the CIO is personally involved in this, which is really good thing. I think as you mentioned, they're, they're kind of back in style again, which is great.

Um, but the data scientists I think is still a critical part of the team, but the team has grown. Is the selling motion different or are we headed back to, you know, I don't know, martinis at lunch and let's go play golf? I dunno about that.

But I will say as evidenced by, you know, this week, our customers, our partners, my colleagues, we, we all crave the face-to-face interactions. Um, whether that turns into the old days of, of the lunches and the, and the golf course talk, I'm sure there's a time and a place for it, but I think they are craving the, the human interaction for sure. Is there something that people are hungry for that you've seen where they'll come to you and say, yeah, that's the, I need that information or that type of content or that type of engagement?

They may, you know, beyond your typical webinar, but is there something where they're coming and saying, you know, yes, I will come to a small meeting with nine of my peers and we'll have a chat about what's going on, and you know, and some of them may be competitors, but they're willing to have that chat. Yeah, that's exactly right. So, uh, the, the, the route to market that we've seen the most success with are those, those smaller executive round tables, even virtually.

So, um, within our, our largest accounts, we'll take either a vertical approach or an account based approach. Uh, and you know, on the account side, it's, it's the, it's the parent company who may already have an OpenText footprint that's spending time with all the, you know, the child companies within their, you know, hierarchy, uh, talking about what they did and how they did it and, and how it could work for them too. On the, uh, on the vertical side, it's about taking a a, an industry like financial services and talking about, um, what we call points of view, which are how, um, the OpenText solution portfolio impacts, whether it's compliance and regulatory or other things that are very industry specific.

And I think the value there is the specificity of the content and the audience. They want to hear and see what their peers are doing. And I think that's the biggest draw.

Are there charter house rules? How do you get people who compete with each other to sit in a room and be comfortable with each other? Yeah, I think, um, in the beginning we started these more virtually, so it was a low commit.

Um, they're not doing a lot of sharing right away. It's kind of us bringing in some of our own thinking, um, maybe having a customer talking about their journey. And then I think it's over time you build that community, that rapport and then you, you bring that virtual community to a face-to-face community.

Um, but I think it's about having a very specific agenda that drives some context for the discussion instead of it being a loose kind of, we're coming here to share that tends to get people a little, uh, a little quieter. Alright, Once that one thing you wish folks knew about OpenText before they even heard from you. Yeah.

Um, we always hear, uh, I didn't know you did that. And it's because we do a lot of things. Uh, we do a lot of things and, uh, part of what we just rolled out, uh, with our latest cloud editions release is a whole new simplified naming scheme for our products.

We have a lot of heritage acquisition products, uh, really important names go along with these products, but sometimes it's a little confusing for our customers to know what space we're in and what space we're not. So doing that and communicating it more effectively is, is, uh, our a one priority for the next year. All right.

Well folks, you're heard in here. Hey, it's not your father's open text. It may not even be your cousins or brothers, but it's a brand new open text.

Hey David, thanks for being upset. Thanks to be with you. Thank you.

All right, we'll be back in a minute folks.