Credit: Dreamstime
Customer engagement software vendor Freshworks has appointed SAP's Ben Pluznyk to lead Australia and New Zealand.
Pluznyk will hold the title of director and country manager of Freshworks A/NZ and will be tasked with developing local relationships with partners and customers.
Previously, Pluznyk spent 10 years with SAP A/NZ, most recently serving as director of cloud platform, database and data management. Prior to SAP, Pluznyk held roles at Optus and IBM.
"Business software has been consumerised and users want it easy. Legacy SaaS has become too bloated and complicated," he said. "Customers and employees are demanding modern, intuitive and easy to use software-as-a-service solutions like Freshworks.
"There is a huge market opportunity and we've only scratched the surface. It’s an incredibly exciting time to join Freshworks. I’m looking forward to developing deep relationships with customers, partners and the team alike, as well as driving innovation and growth for the A/NZ region.”
Pluznyk's arrival follows that of Freshwork's first channel chief, Amr Farghali, in May this year.
Founded in India and headquartered in the United States, Freshworks provides a number of cloud-based offerings, including customer support product FreshDesk, messaging platform FreshChat and customer relationship management (CRM) software FreshSales
Last year, it first launched a local presence through a partnership with distributor Synnex Australia. It now counts the likes of Harvey Norman, Fujitsu, Booktopia and Chartered Accountants as customers.
In early 2019, Freshworks announced an expansion to its operations in Australia with the opening of its office in Melbourne, the company’s second office in the A/NZ region, after Sydney.
The Melbourne office’s opening was a result of surging local growth, the company said at the time, with annual recurring revenues increasing by five times, since the inauguration of the Sydney office in September 2015.
