Ingram Micro Launches AI-Powered Xvantage Platform

‘We’re going to consumerize 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 and how we enable our team,’ says Ingram Micro CEO Paul Bay.

Ingram Micro launched its much-anticipated AI-powered, self-learning platform Xvantage, which will make doing business with the distributor easier for partners.

“It takes the complexity out, it personalizes the experience for the partners and it helps them focus on creating solutions,” Sanjib Sahoo, executive vice president and chief digital officer at the Irvine, Calif.-based distributor, told CRN. “It really is a $54 billion company helping partners to make their businesses better.”

Through automation intelligence and machine learning, Xvantage provides a personalized experience with data insight tailored to each and every one of Ingram Micro’s partners. That’s on top of the real-time transactional benefits such as up-to-the-minute order status, tracking, renewals, subscription billing and real-time customer service capabilities.

[Related: Ingram Micro Hires Paul Hager As Services VP]

“This is one of the biggest opportunities we have at our company in creating the digital twin,” Paul Bay, CEO of Ingram Micro, told CRN. “We’re going to consumerize 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 and how we enable our team.”

Xvantage is powered by a global real-time data mesh containing decades of operating and transactional data and is enhanced by AI and machine learning. Ingram Micro’s cloud marketplace is also integrated into Xvantage, allowing cloud solutions to be easily incorporated into solutions containing technology hardware, software and professional services.

“It‘s a comprehensive platform at record speed,” said Sahoo. “It’s bringing that excitement back [to an] industry that I felt really needed that excitement.”

Xvantage brings consumerization into distribution not only to Ingram Micro but to the industry.

“It’s going to allow [partners] time to have a different and even further business conversation with the end user,” said Bay. “It’s going to allow us to be, as we say, the business behind the world’s leading brands.”

Ingram Micro has more than 200,000 partners and about 2,000 vendor partners, Sahoo said.

“So we have the data. All you need is a digital product and a platform that connects both sides and creates value exchange.”

The platform went live in the U.S. and Germany Wednesday and will be rolled out to about 10 countries by the end of the year. The platform will be rolled out worldwide by early to mid-2023, Sahoo said.

“As the industry moves towards selling more solutions than tech, this platform will help [partners] to be more cognitive and creative and help them to create and capture value for [their] customers,” he said.

James Rocker, CEO of Ronkonkoma, N.Y.-based MSP Nerds That Care, said the single-pane-of-glass management platform makes doing business with Ingram Micro easier.

“It helps manage our subscriptions and services and everything purchased through Ingram in a analytical-style-looking control panel,” he said. “It’s going to provide me a ton of visibility into things that I really can’t see now.”

The reconciliation with licensing and the automation of consolidating billing is going to help Nerds That Care tremendously, he said.

The platform also will help Rocker pinpoint “things that have been more successful than others” based off trends throughout the year, he said.

“We may be able to look back and say, ‘We were really successful in selling XYZ product, let’s focus more there.’ Or, ‘How come sales were not that good with this solution?’” he said.

“It’s going to help tremendously with how we’re going to be more efficient with the integrations as well as visibility into our business that maybe was a little more difficult to see with what we have worked with,” Rocker said. “We’re very excited to be able to continue and scale our business faster.”