Ingram Micro’s Paul Bay maps out ‘platform company’ vision

Ingram Micro CEO Paul Bay has a vision to reposition Ingram Micro as a platform company. 

Fuelled by the rapid rise of complex technologies, the explosion of digital marketplaces, and an urgent demand for value-added services, the distribution landscape is at the forefront of transformation. In a fast-moving market, partners need more than just products; they need strategic services and support to stay competitive and future-ready.

Bay was in town and discussed with ARN the positioning of its digital experience Xvantage platform to help drive speed, scale, and service with partner experience as the central focus. 

The Xvantage platform went live in the Australian market in April last year with a mission to reduce friction, enhance go-to-market strategies, and leverage data and insights.

Since then, the platform in Australia has seen about 5500 partners actively transacting, with more than 150,000 orders placed and three million search queries. 

The platform is powered by a global real time data mesh containing many years of operating and transaction data, as well as several proprietary engines which are enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). 

“The feedback from partners has been exceptionally strong. They’re enjoying using the platform. It’s freeing them up to focus on the things that they’re good at, which involves spending more time with their end users, and solving the complex business problems that exist in the ecosystem,” Ingram Micro Australia managing director Hope McGarry said. 

“We get the benefit of also seeing what’s happening in other countries and being able to watch that road map for success,”

As the platform continues to evolve, Bay defined the three phases involved in its approach. 

“With Xvantage, everything is wrapped around the customer,” Bay said. 

In the first phase, Bay detailed how Xvantage was removing friction from the complexity involved in pricing, order status, and tracking, including special pricing bids from the vendor to the customer and out to the end-user. 

The second phase, Bay said, considers the go-to-market approach, freeing up resources and helping partners be more profitable and grow their business. 

The third phase, plays into the ultimate vision of being a platform company, driving supply and demand as touchless as possible, Bay said.

“How do we use our data and our insights to run the company?” Bay said. 

“With our customers in the middle, it creates an amazing opportunity for us to help enable them. 

“How do we help them drive speed, scale, and service?”

Global innovation with a local lens

The innovation Ingram Micro is pouring into Xvantage at a global scale will continue to benefit local operations, Bay said. Recently, Xvantage Enable | AI platform was released locally to help customers and vendors align, adopt, and scale AI-powered services and solutions.

Offering a “step-by-step guide for AI success”, the platform assists channel partners by focusing on enhanced customer experience, scalable productivity, and future-proof security.

“We will still provide localisation for the Australian market and what’s important to be able to service them, but the benefit you get by our research and development, and the investment that we’ve made on a global basis, will allow Hope and the team to be able to scale up much more quickly than having to go country by country,” Bay said. 

Another feature of Xvantage is an AI model called IDA (Intelligent Digital Assistant) that helps understand business requirements at the user level, with data feeding into quoting and purchasing patterns. IDA will become available in the Australian market soon. 

Ingram Micro itself is using about 300 AI models to power its business, Bay said. 

“AI is not just a buzzword. You’ve got to set up your architecture in the right way with data,” he said. 

“Activities that used to take days and hours, like special pricing, we’re now doing in minutes and seconds. That’s pretty powerful because now we’re getting all that friction out of it.”

Ingram Micro EVP and Asia Pacific group president Diego Utge added that helping remove friction in the way Ingram conducts business, frees up its go-to-market talent to spend more time interacting with partners and helping them along this journey of new technologies deployed in the market, whether that’s across AI, cloud services or cyber security. 

The complexity arising from new technology deployments is an area where partners are continuing to lean on distribution, whether that’s for certain training and education, or access to skills, Utge said.  

In Asia Pacific, Ingram is present in 11 countries, with Australia sitting among the top countries in the region. 

“Adoption in this market has always been high,” Utge said. 

“As you see new domains of technology being deployed, whether that’s cybersecurity, cloud, services, AI, it’s all related to data,” he said. 

“Partners are realising they need to have a specialisation to provide the outcomes customers are looking for.

“Technology is becoming more complex to understand and deploy, and partners rely more on us.”

Building the talent engine

In recent weeks, Ingram has increased its talent pipeline with key hires of Kaaren Lewis and Mo Kandeel. 

 “We’ve invested a lot in our ASG [Advanced Solutions Group] business in the last three to five years. Our skill set and capability in the more complex technology stacks are second to none,” McGarry said. 

The investments Ingram has made in pre-sales, solution architects, and sales engineers are very strong, she added. 

“That’s about helping our partners, whether it be augmenting their capability or badging us as them, is something that we pride ourselves on,” she said. 

“I’m always really excited when I see our partners lean in and leverage the strength of our teams and the capability that we have to improve their profitability and help them scale in areas where they may not be willing to make investments just yet.

“We’re here just to support our partners, augment their capability as best we can and be a trusted adviser. We want to make sure they know we’re a safe pair of hands, and we’re in it with them to help them win.”