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

Ingram Micro’s 45-year track record in the market is a testament to its enduring presence and experience & trust it has gained in all these years from its partners and customers. The company has stepped it up a notch with Ingram Micro Xvantage, the AI-driven digital platform, which is considered to be the industry's first all-in-one business-to-consumer-like experience. This includes integration of hardware and cloud subscriptions, personalized recommendations, instant pricing, order tracking, and automated billing.

In conversation with VARINDIA, Diego Utge, EVP and Group President – APAC, Ingram Micro, and Navneet Singh Bindra, Senior Vice President & Chief Country Executive, Ingram Micro India, share their views on how Ingram Micro has evolved from a traditional tech distribution company to a Value-added Distributor that believes in bringing value in everything it does in the digital era.

Ingram Micro has been scaling great heights of success in the last few years. What are the key factors behind this success story? 
Diego Utge: What defines Ingram Micro today is our people. Our company’s long history of over 45 years in the market speaks volumes. We owe our success to the dedicated individuals who work here. We go about every market that we operate in by keeping customer centricity in mind and by putting customer at the forefront of everything that we do. We continue to make investments in how we help our OEMs to deploy technologies into the market. In India, we have been present here for many decades now and are present in every single city. 

Ingram Micro also continues to innovate as a company. We bring new technologies into the market for the benefit of enterprises, consumers, citizens, and the government. So we try to challenge ourselves in trying to bring more value to the market, because at the end of the day the industry we operate in relies largely on technology. The technological innovation occurring in this country, along with the government’s efforts to promote technology adoption and enhance citizen services, makes it clear that we are perfectly positioned to seize these opportunities at just the right time.

How are you enabling your partners and customers for the digital era of doing business by thinking beyond traditional tech distribution?
Diego Utge: You can’t assist your customers with digitization if you haven’t digitized your own operations first. So, you need to walk the talk. So we brought in a concept or an expanded platform, called Ingram Micro Xvantage to not only remove friction from our business, but also to make sure that our partners are able to do more. Our business of aggregation, and distribution of hardware, services, cloud, software is very fragmented; every product has a different pricing, depending on where the product will be consumed or who will be consuming, and so on. So that is one of the first stage of complexity.

The advantage of our platform is that it provides our resellers and OEMs the possibility to remove friction from the system and interact, besides just transactions. This will also ensure the application of the latest technology around artificial intelligence, machine learning in a more automated and digitized fashion. We can also provide insights and recommendations to our partners. 

Navneet Singh Bindra: Today’s customers comprise of mostly the Gen X or Gen Y. So how can you provide a consumer experience in a B2B environment? Besides, customer demands are also changing. Earlier, they wanted products but now they want outcomes. So the question is, beyond technology, what more can we deliver in a digital fashion. And that is how we empower our partners, in order for them to deliver those additional requirements, in a seamless fashion. For instance, if we look at the consumption part, customers are using technology on a pay per month, or pay per use basis. So we need to keep these preferences in mind to deliver those outcomes to them in a bundled technology fashion. Another example would be – we are all today becoming very sensitive and concerned about the environment. How do you ensure that this e-waste gets disposed of in a responsible and environment-friendly manner? To address this, Ingram Micro has its IT Asset Disposition and Lifecycle Services and we have trained our partners well to manage their customers’ end-of-use IT assets in a compliant manner. 

How do you believe you can elevate the experience of partners and customers through Ingram Micro Xvantage? 
Diego Utge: Ingram Micro’s platform is a personalized one. So depending on how you interact with the platform, it will eventually learn, predict how you operate and also understand your preferences. You can customize the way you operate. By doing that, you will save a lot of time as you are free from doing the repeated, mundane tasks. So, that is a great point in terms of elevating our consumer experience on the part of the partners. 

Navneet Singh Bindra: So, in a partner organization, there may be small partners who are working in complete silos and then there can be large system integration partners who operate just like any normal organization with multiple departments. How do we deliver a personalized experience to each one of them? And that's a great example of how we customize every single experience in a B2B setting. Whether it's a 20 partner or a 20,000 partner organization across the world, it is exactly the same experience each one of them gets. 

Diego Utge: Another uniqueness of our services is our mobile first approach. So, we provide the same experience on a mobile phone that we provide on a desktop to our reseller community. This ensures that partners have access to their customers and the work tool all the time. The idea of having a mobile app has helped partners to be more productive, as they can even close deals while on the go without having to wait to come back to their office. 

On similar lines, you must have been collaborating with many new OEMs and Cloud MSPs to accelerate the cloud transformation journey of customers? Can you please give an example or two?
Diego Utge: We have been offering a comprehensive range of cloud services for over a decade, empowering our partners to sell and deploy these solutions effectively. Our key partnerships with industry leaders like Amazon AWS, Microsoft, Google, and others allow us to provide a wide array of cloud-based products. We collaborate closely with these partners to develop targeted plans and investments that strengthen the reseller ecosystem. Given the specialized nature of cloud technologies, our partners are required to obtain specific accreditations, which we support to ensure they can deliver robust cloud solutions to end customers. Our focus remains on enabling more partners to deploy cloud services and solutions successfully.

Navneet Singh Bindra: For instance, consider a cloud partner skilled in areas like migration and implementation of cloud offerings. If their end customer requires a security solution, such as Palo Alto, the partner might face challenges due to their different specialization. This is where Ingram Micro steps in. With our established relationships with both AWS and Palo Alto, we bring these solutions together seamlessly on our platform. This enables the partner to offer a comprehensive security solution to their customer while leveraging Ingram Micro's expertise to implement the specific security posture required.

Another example is a situation where a partner is well-versed in Palo Alto but lacks cloud expertise, yet the customer needs a combined Palo Alto and cloud solution. Ingram Micro bridges this gap, empowering the partner to deliver the necessary solutions and grow their business effectively.

As a responsible organization, you have been aspiring to contribute towards a greener future. Can you please elaborate upon some key initiatives you have taken in this regard?
Diego Utge: We are deeply committed to becoming a carbon-neutral organization by 2030. On our website, you can find our 2023 ESG report, which highlights our extensive initiatives and investments across environmental, social, and governance areas. Our 2024 ESG report will be released soon. In this country, we have established committees dedicated to social responsibility, focusing on promoting female labor, gender diversity, and creating an equitable work environment for everyone.

Navneet Singh Bindra: All our reports are certified by independent agencies that are leaders in ESG certification. For example, in India, we are strongly committed to being environmentally friendly. We leverage the power of solar energy in our warehouse to reduce our carbon footprint. Additionally, we also use battery-operated delivery vehicles, which may come at a higher cost but reflect our dedication to environmental sustainability. We also offer extensive IT asset disposal services, ensuring that end-of-life IT assets are disposed of in an eco-friendly manner. Furthermore, we are actively promoting Green PCs and are focused on bringing this offering to various customer segments. 

Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs) are a crucial segment in the Indian economy. How is Ingram Micro tailoring its offerings to cater to the specific needs of SMBs in India, especially those in emerging cities?
Diego Utge: The GDP of this country is spread across Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 cities, with SMBs serving as the key engine of the economy. Supporting SMBs is always a top priority for us in every country. We define SMBs as small and medium-sized resellers, who typically serve small and medium-sized end customers or enterprises. While we also operate in the large enterprise space, our value proposition is particularly strong for SMB resellers due to our aggregation model, which includes specialization, certifications, and financial offerings. These resellers can rely on us to enhance their capabilities and expand their reach. Larger enterprises often have in-house skills, so their needs may differ based on market segments, but SMBs remain our primary focus. To support them, we conduct targeted roadshows and enablement sessions in this country.

Navneet Singh Bindra: One of our recent initiatives is SMB TechTalks. SMB customers and partners, whether in small towns or large cities, often lack the technology exposure that larger partners or enterprises enjoy. Without in-house IT departments, they face challenges in adopting and utilizing technology to grow their businesses. To address this, we organize SMB TechTalks in specific cities, where we invite end customers to experience technology firsthand and explore ready-to-use solutions. We also invite SMB partners to learn how they can collaborate with Ingram Micro to offer comprehensive solutions to their SMB customers without worrying about support, implementation, or technical expertise. This initiative empowers SMB partners to confidently address their customers' needs. Our recent TechTalks attracted over 3,000 participants, underscoring the demand for such guidance and solidifying Ingram Micro as the go-to solution provider.