Channel Choice: Distributor Of the Year - Ingram Micro

Ingram Micro is the largest and most prominent distributor within the Australian landscape. According to the ARN Distributor Guide, it boasts more than 700 staff, and although it is headquartered in Sydney, it is comfortable dealing with resellers across the country.

It features a massive stable of the most prominent vendors in IT – from Cisco to EMC, Intel to Symantec – and has a logistics machine capable of  handling the 7000+ orders it receives each and every day.

And it has won the popular vote category, Channel Choice Distributor of the Year Award, at the ARN Awards for the past three years running – an achievement that just goes to show that Ingram Micro has a genuine resonance in the IT channel.

For all this, Ingram Micro marketing director, Grant Cleary, said the distributor is still looking to improve its engagement with its channel further.

“We’ve really focused on improving our service levels,” he said. “One of the things we’ve done is to increase our post-sales support, for example with our licensing teams, and generally undergone initiatives that have improved our customer service response times and improved our general customer service levels.”

Ingram Micro has undergone a number of substantial changes to its business model since the appointment of its current managing director, Jay Miley, in late 2008.

The tightening of processes has led to a happier reseller base, and Cleary said that continuing to look for ways to innovate and improve the Ingram Micro experience would be key to it winning again next year.

It’s a good time for the distributor to look to being creative, too. The (significant) volume side of Ingram Micro’s business is set to enjoy a dollar that is sitting around parity, and that extra breathing space would help give the distributor the room to be creative.

“I think last year was a particularly challenging year for the IT channel in general; this year we’re hearing that things are definitely on the up,” Cleary said.

“One of the things I think we can do is to continue to be innovative, and an example of being innovative is the Virtual Expotech, where we’ve moved to an online environment to enable the channel to learn and to be educated about new products and services that our vendors have had,” he said.

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