Ingram Micro Aims to Streamline Channel Processes

Ingram Micro this week launched two initiatives at the Ingram Micro ONE 2018 conference intended to reduce the daily operational friction between channel partners and the distributor.

The first offering is a RenewVu, an online portal through which channel partners can access an Ingram Micro software licensing tool to manage license renewals.

The second offering is Ingram Micro Partner Connect, a program that previously had been available in beta through which partners can launch their own digital marketing campaigns.

Both offerings are part of an ongoing effort to streamline tasks that take partners away from selling, says Kirk Robinson, senior vice president and chief country executive for the U.S. at Ingram Micro.

At the same time, those offerings also substantially reduce the number of emails and phone calls that might otherwise be generated between the distributors and partners, adds Robinson.

“It’s all about the ease of doing business,” says Robinson.

Ingram Micro recognizes that most partners employ multiple distributors to extend the amount of credit required to finance deals. But streamlining the processes a channel partner needs to manage should result in more partners relying more on Ingram Micro simply because the amount of administrative overhead that they need to allocate has been reduced. That enables those partners to reinvest more resources in engineering and sales, says Robinson.

In general, Robinson notes that in the age of digital business transformation partners need to embrace a much wider array of emerging technologies to succeed. That’s difficult to achieve if resources are being tied up by other aspects of the business that could be better served by a distribution partner, says Robinson.

It remains to be seen to what degree the line between channel partners and distributors will continue to blur. But as the number of services provided by distributors continue to grow, it will become increasingly difficult to distinguish where distributors really end, and their channel partners begin.