Elevating the Digital Experience of Partners and Customers alike with Ingram Micro Xvantage

With technology distribution evolving constantly over the last decades, Ingram Micro believes that it is time when the business must undergo a complete overhaul to ensure a superlative experience for customers. The company has further raised the bar with Ingram Micro Xvantage, an AI-driven digital platform that offers what is regarded as the industry’s first all-in-one business-to-consumer-like experience.

Navneet Singh Bindra, Senior Vice President & Chief Country Executive, Ingram Micro India highlights how the company has transitioned from a traditional tech distributor to a Value-added Distributor in the digital age and how it has transformed the way of doing business - 

How do you see the role of an IT distribution company changing in the digital era of doing business? 
The advent of the digital era calls for a redefined approach to doing business, and IT distribution companies will have a more pivotal role in the coming years. In the digital era of doing business, organizations across verticals focus on agility, flexibility, convenience, and experience. 

IT distribution companies must comprehend all these aspects and incorporate them into their value propositions to help businesses achieve the desired outcomes by leveraging digital technologies. To help businesses accelerate their digital transformation journeys, we launched Ingram Micro Xvantage last year in India. This is a self-learning experiential platform that enables partners to streamline their operations and achieve a higher level of efficiency through a wide range of features, functionalities and capabilities of the platform. Ingram Micro Xvantage simplifies the overall process of technology acquisition & selection, placing orders, tracing shipments, and making analytics-driven decisions to drive growth and profitability. 

Ingram Micro Xvantage also allows our partners to explore our wide range of services, such as Professional Services, Cloud Services, Managed IT Services, Cybersecurity Services, IT Asset Management & Lifecycle Services, Financial Solutions, Vertical-focused Solutions, and many more through a simplified user interface. Partners can even connect with Subject Matter Experts to know more about any of these services through Xvantage and build customized solutions to meet project-specific requirements. Hence, we aspire to become a strategic partner and enrich our portfolio with a wide range of services and solutions that can help partners cater to the emerging needs of end customers competently. 

How are you prepared to meet the emerging needs of businesses in this era and how do you plan to stay relevant in this dynamic age? 
The best way to meet current or emerging needs and to stay relevant in the industry for the coming years, every organization has to focus unequivocally on innovation. That’s why we are constantly creating new business models and practices that can help our partners stay ahead of the competition curve.  We offer various solutions and services that can enable our partners to serve their customers’ needs in a better, more competent way. 

Besides technology distribution, we also provide implementation, integration and optimization services for our partners so that they can accomplish their digital ambitions efficiently. We also offer a comprehensive set of Value-Added Services, such as Cloud Services, Professional Services, and Managed IT Services to help our partners handle and manage their technology-led business transformation initiatives successfully. Furthermore, we offer IT Asset Disposition and Lifecycle Management Services to help businesses extract maximum values from end-of-life hardware or equipment and dispose of those assets in the most responsible, environment-friendly way. 

We also offer Financial Solutions to help businesses refresh their technology landscape with minimal upfront investments. Recently, we have also started offering Vertical-focused solutions for hospitality and healthcare verticals. These solutions are specifically designed to help organizations in these verticals achieve excellence by leveraging the power of cutting-edge technologies. All these innovative solutions and new business models are helping us meet the emerging needs of businesses and stay relevant in the competitive age. 

How does Xvantage simplify the overall tech acquisition process for any organization, especially in remote areas? 
Ingram Micro Xvantage is specifically designed to simplify the overall tech acquisition process and make it an enriching, intuitive experience for customers. It empowers our partners with a centralized procurement platform, where they can explore all the available options, build bundled packages, and choose the best offers available on those specific sets of products or hardware. Besides all these, Xvantage is laden with a host of compelling features and functionalities, such as order management, simplified quoting experience, shipment tracking, and analytics, insights & recommendations to help partners make the best decisions. Our Customer Support Team and Subject Matter Experts are also just a click away for any users on Xvantage. Thus, Xvantage ensures a high level of visibility, flexibility and choices to partners to choose the best products, services, and solutions. 

We aspire to bridge the digital gaps across urban and rural areas, and Xvantage is a significant move in this direction. Xvantage ensures the same level of interactive and unified experience to partners in remote areas, irrespective of the nature and size of their business. This means that a partner sitting in a Tier II or Tier III city will enjoy the same level of agility, flexibility and choice on Xvantage as his counterpart in any metropolitan city does. 

How will Value-Added Services help you differentiate your company from the rest of the names in the industry?  
We believe in creating and capturing value for our partners, and that’s why we have added a rich portfolio of Value-Added Services to our offerings. Our Value-Added Services help us position ourself as a trusted, strategic and innovative leader with a more holistic towards tech distribution. These services ensure enhanced customer satisfaction and drive collective growth, and we are committed to delivering more value and ensuring unparalleled support to all our partners throughout their journey. 

We have embraced a comprehensive and innovative approach to tech distribution, and therefore, we focus on solving business challenges through a rich portfolio of services and solutions. Some of the key Value-Added Services we are currently focusing on are Professional Services, Managed IT Services, Technical Support, Training and Certifications, and Financial Services. Each of these services solves a distinct set of challenges and helps our customers accomplish their goals conveniently. Moreover, our partners also have the choice to customize these services as per their needs, which plays a pivotal role in enhancing their overall experience with us. 
Thus, our Value-Added Services enable businesses to address the challenges that fall beyond the purview of tech acquisition, and this helps us attain the position of a strategic, trusted partner.