News in the Channel - Issue #5

INGRAM MICRO XVANTAGE

digitally. For example, if a Channel Partner is entering a quote on the platform, we can view it in our Associate platform and then we can be seamlessly interacting with them, saying do you need any help. Making that meaningful interaction with the Channel Partner – not a transaction.” “Secondly for our Vendor Partners. If they are uploading a SKU or product information, they can interact with our Associates and our Channel Partners directly through this platform. So, this is the connection we are building, this entire ecosystem which is interconnected,” channel partners connected to associates and vendors.

Added to this is the value creation and value addition of offering everything under one platform. I sell a product, but as a Channel Partner I want to add a finance offering on top of it. I might want to add professional services. And because of the automation of the platform, these “value adds” are recommended to the Channel Partner at the point of purchase allowing for total solution selling. As Sanjib tells us, “Let’s say you want to sell a hardware product and you want to add a warranty to the order. The warranty is right there, personalised at the moment of purchase, when our Channel Partner is looking at it.” “It’s also about who is buying technology today. The CIOs and CTOs are not the only ones buying technology anymore. Because technology has changed so much that every department is buying technology. Each business user is buying technology. Ingram Micro has to make the technology buying process easy and simple. Especially when technology is changing so quickly, and we have so many new vendors coming on every day. How do we make it easy and simple, through analysis and the content, for our Channel Partners to buy technology easier.” What the Channel Partners have to say As with any new platform, seeing is believing. With 43% of Ingram Micro’s trading customers now having transitioned to Xvantage in the UK, with the aim to have 100% of customers transitioning to Xvantage by the end of April, it seems that the customers like what they are seeing. As Marc Lester, CEO at WWCS says, “The new platform is faster and more stable. I would suggest it reduces ordering times by around 30%” In addition, its more intuitive… more people internally have adopted it now in comparison to the previous platform.” From an ease-of-use point of view, it is more efficient to source product and more importantly any “add-ons” for the product, such as warranties. It only took 10 minutes’ worth of training. It’s quite intuitive and the home page/ dashboard allows me to a get the information about client deliveries more efficiently.

“

It’s also about

who is buying Technology today.

The CIOs and CTOs are not the only ones

buying technology anymore. Because technology has changed so much that every department is buying technology.

Take out the complexity and make it more intuitive.

Xvantage has been created to mimic the way we use other platforms at home. You don’t need to learn to use Netflix, Google or eBay, they are intuitive. That is how Xvantage has been created. “You don’t need any training,” said Sahoo. “It is simple to use, and everything can be done on the one platform. The more you use it, the more the platform learns because it is self-learning, so it provides better recommendations. “It can provide the insights better, which insights are useful for our Channel Partner so that they can take the focus out of mundane tasks and can actually go and serve their customers better.” So why did Ingram Micro launch Xvantage? Channel Partners are moving away from only selling products and more towards selling solutions. Every solution sold has an average of 6 products. Ingram Micro wants to make it easier to move from only selling products to selling capabilities and solutions. The company plans to do this by making solution selling more intuitive and easier to navigate. Bringing together all the platforms – hardware, cloud, services and subscriptions- all under one platform. However, these are different propositions and have different requirements. You can track hardware, but you can’t track cloud services. Cloud services need provisioning but what about other services? Each of these have different needs and requirements. That’s what makes the ecosystem so powerful that Channel Partners can get these products and services onto one platform to make it easy for them to sell a complete solution.

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Marc Lester CEO, WWCS

wwcs.co.uk

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