Ingram Micro Says Digital Signs Spell Profits For Partners

Ingram Micro is helping channel partners break into the digital sign business by giving them an online, all-in-one destination to create and deploy that messaging for customers.

’As digital signs become more prevalent everywhere you go, it becomes and opportunity for more and more customers,’ Kevin Prewett, director, ProAV and Digital Signage, at Ingram Micro, told CRN. ’We’ve tried to provide different services that a customer might not have available or on staff at the time, and allow the customers to pick from a menu if you will.’

Ingram said Signage Valet is a simple-to-use, fee-based online tool that enables easy creation, editing and managing of digital signage content. Additionally, Ingram is offering qualified channel partners a variety of pre- and post-build design services at no cost. These services can be used to create video walls, menu boards, kiosks, stadiums, sound and video, and more.

Robert Nishida, owner of HDDS Design in Woodland Hills, said Ingram Micro turns the channel partner into an expert and the single point of contact for all things digital, including signs, which present an opportunity partners ’can’t afford to ignore.’

’It’s booming everywhere,’ he told CRN. ’Everything from quick serve restaurants, to retail, to automotive dealerships, to you go into some very nice buildings, not only outside the elevator banks do they have an information board, ticker with the news and weather, but you go inside the elevator and they have those little information boards on there, giving them the same stuff. They really ought to start looking at a group, like Ingram’s content creation group, and have them start designing the conent for them."

Prewett said Ingram saw a demand for this in the marketplace by talking to the channel.

’Ultimately we learn what the market is looking for based on what our customers are telling us and what they’re asking for,’ he said. ’We’re really just trying to bring something back that we know that they need. We know that they need it because they’re asking for it. They’re asking questions about how to do it. That’s ultimately how we decided we have to go create something for this.’

By partnering with Ingram, the partner’s customers will get a site survey, design, providing the hardware and installation down to the financing as well as the disposal of old or unwanted electronics if the customer is upgrading. He said Ingram gives partners the ability to set margins on the service.

’They can and it's definitely a different margin profile than a display and a mount and the hardware and pieces that go into it,’ Prewett said. ’This will help them to win projects because it really helps them bring that end to end solution, and again I would just add, to be able to pay back the investment they made and then some.’