Ingram Micro Xvantage: Agentic AI, Partner Enablement & More

At Ingram Micro’s annual conference, the company showcased its Xvantage platform and celebrated wins alongside partners.

ONE conference highlights AI investments, evolution of channel model

Much of the mainstage keynotes on both days of the conference emphasized Ingram Micro’s years-long investments in AI across their internal and partner-facing technologies. 

“Three years ago, we took this big, bold bet to build a platform ecosystem,” the company’s President of the Platform Group, Sanjib Sahoo, said.

Xvantage is the end result of that big bet, and Ingram Micro continues to position itself less as a legacy distributor and more as an ecosystem connector with self-serve and automated capabilities for partners seeking new opportunities and stickier customer relationships.

“In 2022, we said we wanted to have AI-driven platforms that help our partners,” Sahoo said. “The most important thing that has changed is that our relationships are changing. Data drives decisions, decisions drive actions, and connection drives relationships.”

These client relationships, Ingram Micro emphasizes, are increasingly important as customers seek more consultative and proactive support from partners as they consider the breadth of AI and other solutions available to them.

CEO Paul Bay said throughout the event that Ingram Micro aims to be the partner of choice for partners as they shift their business focus to personalized support and guidance to remain competitive in the market.

“We’re building this ecosystem, and you can rely on us, because we’re doing it internally also,” Bay said at the opening keynote. “But really focus on the outcome, and the value that you’re creating in these solutions, because your clients ultimately see this, your value, and what our expertise is, as the opportunity. They don’t care, really, about the technology; they care about the business outcome you’re trying to solve for.”

”Xvantage is not a website. It’s a building an ecosystem across the channel,” Sahoo said. “Think about having your own operating system that knows the channel– that is what we’re building for you.”

Google Gemini-based agentic AI assisting Ingram’s internal sales teams

Built to accelerate customer growth opportunities and success, the AI-powered digital sales companion synthesizes real-time, context-aware market insights, sales signals, and recommendations into a single brief for Ingram Micro’s sales teams.

Vice President of Technology Solutions Cheryl Rang says teams will use the tool to drive more targeted and outcomes-focused conversations with partners.

“I’m very excited about this agent. We have a lot of partners that we’ve worked with for many, many years,” Rang told Channel Insider. “Now the level or quality of that conversation that we can have as a sales team with our partners continues to get heightened and more meaningful to them.”

Rang says the Gemini-enabled tool will help internal teams better understand the context in which partners are seeking opportunities, including new or expanding verticals and any recent issues or concerns, ultimately bringing better solutions to partner and customer needs faster.

Sanjib Sahoo on why intelligence is the operating system of the future

The overarching theme of the event set by Ingram was “aggressively digital, amazingly human,” and its leaders stressed throughout the several days that they were as focused on people as they were on the technology those people will use, buy, and sell.

To that end, Sahoo placed importance on the “intelligence” half of AI as he walked attendees through his vision for the future, not just of the channel but of how various technologies interact.

“Intelligence is the new operating system. We all talk about data, systems, and AI, but we forget one thing: the essence of AI came from human intelligence at scale,” Sahoo said. “And this intelligence can power and change every business.”

Sahoo placed Xvantage squarely at the center of this operating system of the future, walking attendees through its integration hub and other key features that promise to pull together diverse tech stacks and even marketplaces into a single pane of glass for partners. 

Because Ingram Micro has long supported those partners across hardware and software offerings, the company’s executives emphasize they are building the experience partners need to efficiently run their entire business across all clients, tools, and operational needs.

Channel partners tout faster time to market and operational efficiencies as benefits of Xvantage

At several panels throughout the event, partners from around the world shared their experiences and successes in leveraging Xvantage for billing and other processes.

One of the key themes: efficiencies in backend systems free up time for frontline client communications.

“Instead of taking hours to do something, it might now take half an hour,” said Mark Lester, CEO of WWCS, a London-based provider. “For us, it’s not about reducing a workforce, it’s about creating efficiencies so we can spend more time with our clients.”

Channel Insider will have more coverage of the annual conference over the next several days, including interviews with partners and more from mainstage keynote speakers.