Ingram Micro Lays Out 2020 Road Map Featuring Partner Enablement, Portfolio Expansion

Written by Lynn Haber
November 20, 2019

Ingram Micro wants partners to keep the distributor front and center on their growth path.

(Pictured above: Ingram Micro’s Paul Bay on stage at the distributor’s One event in Aurora, Colorado, Nov. 19.)

INGRAM MICRO ONE — Ingram Micro’s 2020 road map, as laid out by Paul Bay, executive vice president and group president, Americas, focuses on helping partners make their businesses indispensable and create sustainable value in today’s business market. That’s in addition to partners understanding value-creation factors such as creativity, mass customization and solution delivery.

More specifically, the distributor wants partners to leverage what Ingram Micro brings to the table.

“The good news is that you have a $50 billion partner behind you in Ingram Micro. Our job is a couple of things: No. 1 is that we want to help you lower your cost of transactions,” said Bay Tuesday at Ingram Micro One in Aurora, Colorado. “And, to what extent do you consider Ingram Micro as a true extension, a truly integrated partner to your team? I want to make sure that’s the case.”

Bay outlined some of the investments the company is making in 2020, a journey that began this year. Investments are being made in automation – all along the supply chain – and customer experience. The distributor also is making investments in demand planning and inventory — investing millions of dollars in turning systems into being proactive rather than reactive, making sure product is in the right location and having the right allocation across the U.S. and Canada.

“The first and foundational pieces that we have to have is getting the systems right, and then we’re focused on making sure that we’re upgrading and enhancing our skill sets as it relates to giving you that better experience,” said Bay.

Another area is technology and resource investments. Ingram Micro has a team focused on IoT, for example. The goal is to help partners understand how to make money with IoT, cut through the hype and give solutions, service assessment and blueprints to own your own business and the solutions you sell.

Ingram Micro also announced financial program enhancements Tuesday.

The distributor this year hired an outside organization to get better aligned with partners from a sales perspective — incentives and compensation, specifically.

“This is focused around your growth areas. We’re segmenting our customers, so we better understand how you go to market. This is going to account for things such as cloud and consumption models in the compensation of our sales organization,” Bay explained. “There are clear objectives and calls to action to support you proactively.”

The five areas that Ingram Micro is focused on internally to help partners grow their business, and to make sure that partners understand where Ingram Micro is focused, are:

End-user insight to get more visibility into end user trends, as requested by partners.
Solution portfolio and expansion — addressing where partners want to expand and focus their expertise, such as security, hyperconverged infrastructure, hybrid cloud, and a deeper cloud portfolio, for some examples.
Enablement to help partners lower costs and expand into new markets.
Expanded financial solutions — investments in software tools/automation; expanded global vendor relationships; making investments in ISVs.
Value creation — How Ingram Micro can help partners and what partners must do to differentiate themselves.