01732 759725 Ingram Micro is meeting partners demand for a frictionless unified procurement platform with the launch of Xvantage as 50% – while also making it easier for partners to build solutions that, in Ingram Micro’s experience, typically bring together six complementary products and services. Optimised for solutions For Ingram Micro Executive Vice President and Global Chief Digital Officer Sanjib Sahoo, who has driven the development of Xvantage since joining the distributor 18 months ago, the ease with which technologies can be combined through the platform is a major benefit at a time when Ingram Micro, channel partners and end users are prioritising solutions. “Everyone is looking at solutions. So the question for us is how can we make solutions selling much easier through a dashboard? How can we make meaningful solutions that are powered by data and machine learning and give them to our channel partners in a more seamless way? “Today, bringing together hardware, cloud, services is a very asymmetric process; it’s very disjointed. You buy cloud a certain way; you buy services a different way; you buy hardware a different way. For example, you can track hardware, but can you track cloud? It is a different experience, with provisioning and subscription management. How do you conjoin all these experiences through one platform to make it easy and intuitive for channel partners?” Having a single pane of glass is helpful. So too are automation, AI and machine learning, which free up time for Ingram Micro and partners to have those more strategic, consultative discussions that underpin solutions selling. Matthew Sanderson, SVP & Chief Executive UK, Ireland & EMEA Professional Services, adds that the aim of Xvantage is not to reduce interactions with partners but to change them from the mundane to something more meaningful. “From our perspective, it allows our sales associates to be more productive. We’re asking them to sell more services, to wrap services around this and that – and the resellers are asking for that as well. It’s just a question of having the time to be able to do that. If we take away all the friction of doing business, they will have that time.” Phased introduction Xvantage is being introduced in phases over the next few months but by the end of Q2 it will be the sole way for partners to interface with Ingram Micro online. For now, Xvantage is limited to hardware, including quoting, billing, subscriptions and renewals. There are also links to Ingram Micro’s Cloud Marketplace, which will become redundant when cloud solutions and services are fully integrated into the platform in the next few weeks. Xvantage was launched in North America last September and is now active in 12 countries including the UK where it is already being used by 730 channel partners. All partners (active and dormant) are expected to move to it before Ingram Micro retires its old systems in Q2. In addition to Xvantage for Partners and Xvantage for Associates, which Ingram Micro uses internally, it will soon be introducing Xvantage for Vendors, creating a complete eco-system that will enable partners, vendors and the distributor’s own employees to interact with one another through the platform. This is not a website At the UK launch of Xvantage, Sahoo repeatedly stressed that this was not another e-commerce website, but something entirely different, describing it Ingram Micro is promising channel partners in the UK an easier, unified customer experience with the launch of the machine learning-powered Xvantage platform. Or as CEO Paul Bay said: “We’re going to consumerise distribution, remove a bunch of friction and accelerate value for our customers and our vendor partners. The net of it is we really want to make it easier to do business with us.” Instead of the disjointed procurement path of old, with partners having to buy different components from different systems, Xvantage offers the convenience of a unified ‘single pane of glass’ that allows partners to look at everything – hardware, software, cloud, subscriptions, services – through one platform, create quotes and orders combining multiple technologies and view tracking information in real-time. This simpler path to purchase is backed by high levels of automation, realtime 24 x 7 insights and personalisation familiar to users of Netflix and other consumer platforms, such as proactive product recommendations based on past purchases and trending products. The combination of Xvantage’s advanced capabilities and clear, intuitive interface is designed to reduce the amount of time partners spend tracking deliveries, managing subscriptions and carrying out other routine processes – some early adopters report time savings of as much Introducing Xvantage DISTRIBUTION 18 Sanjib Sahoo Matthew Sanderson Everyone is looking at solutions. So the question for us is how can we make solutions selling much easier through a dashboard?
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