Ingram Micro bets on a diversified value business to increase share and growth

The Symposium 2016 has made clear the evolution of the wholesaler's reinvention last year towards diversifying the business not only to maintain its position, but gain a point in market share, without giving up its objective of adding value to the channel and differentiating itself with a profitable and future-oriented proposal.

With the support of 103 brands (three more than last year) and similar assistance (2.500 professionals), Ingram Micro The Symposium has ended 2016, its great event with the channel that already has fifteen editions, with a diversified business proposal, fruit of the investments made in recent years and that have resulted in an increase in business of more than 7%, doubling the growth of the wholesale market 3,7% (data of Context for the period from January to September).

If at last year's event the message was the reinvention of the wholesaler, at the recent celebration of the edition 2016, also in the Dome of the Sands in Barcelona, The key has been business diversification, although with the same objective of its origins: “provide value and profitability to the distribution channel”, as Jaime Soler stressed again before the specialized media, general director of the Spanish subsidiary of Ingram Micro.

“The result obtained with the foundation for the future that we are building at a global level – he explained- to diversify technologies and channels, with a strategy based on acquiring knowledge and capacity through company purchases has borne fruit. “We are very happy and we hope that this continues during the next year.”.

The most recent acquisition is framed in this line (at the beginning of this month of November) from the Madrid-based company One 2 One Logistics in its Mobility division & Lifecycle Services, “which allows us to enter the operator market in Spain with Vodafone and offer a direct logistics platform to the distribution network of this operator, that he already does 10.000 daily shipments and also have a warehouse in the Canary Islands”, Soler points out.

New business initiatives

With an increasingly consolidated wholesale market, Ingram Micro bets on growth in market share, which in Q3 has been one point more, “and the acquisitions made by other companies in the market have been very good for us to achieve this”, Jordi Muñoz clarifies, director of the value division and one of the most diversified and profitable divisions of the wholesaler.

Specifically, the 'specialty' areas of this division, like AV Pro (with a recent agreement with Samsung) and DC/POS have achieved growth above double digits, while Physical Security, from which they started from scratch a year ago as Muñoz recalls, “we have increases of the order of 200%, and we have closed agreements with the access control manufacturer ZKTeco and with Plantronics, as has also happened with the Unified Communications area”.

The strategy in the physical security environment is to incorporate new brands during the next year of software and alarm management systems “opening ourselves to new channels, such as retail and domestic environment”.

Other innovations in this business division focus on the Internet of Things environment. (Internet of Things – IoT) y Smart Tech, “where we are presenting lighting and energy efficiency proposals with international manufacturers, with the aim of presenting a catalog of solutions in 2017”, the person responsible for the value unit advances.

The wholesaler has also launched the Ingram Microtraining training initiative, with more than 120 courses from around twenty manufacturers for the channel, as well as in professional services.

In its commitment to Cloud and the creation of a Marketplace, Muñoz assures that “we are setting up the Ingram Micro of the future in Cloud, with a powerful global structure with references such as Microsoft Acronix, Dropbox Business, etc, and in which more than five hundred distributors already do so”.

Besides, The wholesaler is in the middle of the transaction process to join the Chinese company Tianjin Tianhai, belonging to HNA Group, after announcing its acquisition at the beginning of 2016. “It is a very complex process due to the number of countries in which we have a presence, in which you almost have to go one by one – Soler points out –, and American regulations, but nothing has changed. It is a group that does not have a technological distribution area, “but we do have a huge financial network that will allow us to continue developing our strategy.”.