Ingram Micro’s Xvantage has enjoyed a positive response from the channel since it was launched in March for how it makes business easier – culminating in two recent high-profile award wins.
It has been a successful year for Ingram Micro’s Xvantage platform, having scooped the Stock in the Channel award for Distributor Platform of the Year and CRN Channel Award for the Most Innovative Distributor Award.
This is recognition for Xvantage, which has sought to disrupt the market since its launch and set new benchmarks for the sector, and the hard work the team behind it has put in before and after its launch to ensure that it delivers what resellers and vendors want.
Xvantage is not just an ecommerce website or procurement portal, it is much more than that. It is an intelligent digital platform, which has been built for the IT ecosystem. Here, the user can discover, learn, purchase, and manage technology and cloud solutions in a single pane of glass. One of the main benefits of this is it significantly reduces order and transactional complexity and time to market for the user, which should enable resellers to spend more time focusing on their customers.
Deserved recognition
At the Stock in the Channel awards, which were based on empirical data rather than a judging panel, Xvantage took the Distributor Platform of the Year title, having been the best performing platform on the Stock in the Channel site.
Meanwhile, the CRN award highlighted the innovation that is behind Xvantage, and there is plenty of that.
For instance, one of the advantages of Xvantage is it can be personalised. In a similar way to streaming services such as Netflix, the recommendations that resellers see on their pane is based on their interactions with the platform, which means they can save time in searching for items and focus on building their business.
Xvantage is also a self-learning ecosystem, underpinned by machine learning and artificial intelligence, which delivers powerful business intelligence and insights based on Ingram Micro’s years of experience across the globe, all in real time.
Another advantage is that it is seamlessly connected to all Ingram Micro sites via a data mesh, as resellers, vendors and Ingram Micro associates are all interconnected. For instance, if a reseller enters a quote on the platform, Ingram Micro associates can see it and ask if they need help – taking the friction out of transactions and turning them into meaningful interactions.
Interview with:
Matthew Sanderson, SVP UK & Ireland
How is distribution evolving?
The role of distribution has somewhat shifted from product-centric to service-centric, focusing on delivering value and outcomes to customers. We are innovating fast, with platforms, integrations, and services to enable our customers. This year we launched our Ingram Micro Xvantage™ digital experience platform with the goal of reducing complexity, optimising integrations, and delivering technical resources to transform the way our customers partner with us.
How have relationships with vendors and resellers changed for distributors?
The relationship has become deeper and more connected, with distribution playing an important part in supporting vendors and resellers to respond to rapidly changing customer needs, optimising costs, and differentiating themselves from competitors.
With the introduction of Xvantage, our vendors can now begin to access rich and measurable data-driven results on all aspects of their business with us. These real-time insights allow vendors to make more informed decisions that can lead to greater revenue. For our resellers, the integrations and services available via Xvantage help reduce the complexity of doing business, whilst personalising the experience and helping our partners focus on creating solutions, allowing us to build deeper relationships together. The overall goal of course, is to help our partners make their business better and to grow.
What should we expect from a platform-led distribution model?
Simplicity and efficiency. Of course, the traditional role of distribution remains as important as ever, however, with the rapid introduction of complex technologies often wrapped with services and financing solutions, we are evolving the way we support reseller partners to make it simpler to offer end-to-end solutions which can ease the route to market and help deliver a beneficial end-customer outcome. Xvantage brings together everything a reseller partner or vendor needs, offering greater control and more support.
Interview with:
Sara Horton, Director Business Operations and Kerrie Spalding, General Manager Platform Lead
What are the key milestones on the Xvantage journey so far?
We performed a full customer migration of our old IM Online ecommerce website over to Xvantage in May: since the migration we have continued to enhance and develop features and functionalities to maximise the user experience of the platform.
In parallel, we launched our industry first Xvantage for vendor platform to a handful of pilot vendors. This platform has developed in the months since with new and improved functionality and we are now ramping up to complete our vendor onboarding.
Our chief digital officer Sanjib Sahoo announced in May that we would be bringing our cloud marketplace, Ingram Micro’s cloud purchasing and provisioning platform, into Xvantage. In the UK we went live officially with our pilot customers at end of October and will continue the roll out into the new year. This industry first ability to process subscription cloud products on the same purchase order as a hardware transaction really opens a whole new opportunity for the IT Industry using Xvantage as a complete one-stop shop for business.
How are resellers and vendors responding to Xvantage so far?
Feedback from partners in total has been incredible. We couldn’t have got to where we are today without the voices of our reseller and vendor partners and in the majority of cases feedback has blown us away. Obviously change doesn’t happen overnight and that’s why we will continue to use those voices to regularly review, revisit and enhance on features and functionality that still require improvement. Xvantage is a journey, and this process of continuous improvement is what excites our team the most.
What have been the biggest learnings for Ingram Micro associates?
Our biggest learnings have been not to underestimate the need to involve associates in the early stages so they feel their voices are being heard and to reiterate that with a digital transformation journey like Xvantage, we cannot wait for perfection, instead, we must embrace progression.
Interview with:
Anna Wesley, SHI International, International Partner Alliance Manager – Distribution
What features of Xvantage do you feel offer the most benefit to your business?
I feel the sourcing features and the end to end order tracking are the most beneficial to our business as we are able to self-serve and support our customer’s needs throughout the whole sales process.
What change do you see the platform making to the way you do business with Ingram Micro?
I feel the migration to one single pane of glass platform with the Cloud Marketplace will ultimately help our interactions with Ingram Micro long term.
How has Xvantage changed your perception of what a distributor can offer?
I feel the platform has become a digital journey and full user experience, it’s not just transactional, it has become a foremost tool as part of the partnership between ourselves and Ingram Micro.
