Pandemic Raises Stakes for Training in Key Areas

Training has taken on a heightened importance for many of our partners over the past several months, and it’s not surprising.

The pandemic has accelerated the pace of change in nearly all businesses, driving the need to learn new skills and technologies in an abbreviated timeframe. Many vendors are transforming their own businesses, as well, retiring old certification programs and launching new ones.

To meet the growing demand, Ingram Micro Training is launching a new Learning Management System in Q4 that will make it easier to search, find and register for our classes worldwide. The system will also feature distinctive regional and country pages with various language and currency options.

In addition, to help our partners accelerate their sales and delivery capabilities in specific categories such as security and IoT, we recently released a Practice Building Program curriculum. For more information, please visit https://www.practicedevelopmentprogram.com/.

Courses in Demand Right Now

In 2020, we’ve seen growing demand for education related to security, cloud, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and business outcomes—all driven by the latest market trends. A significant uptick in the demand for Microsoft Office 365, Teams and Azure, for example, has driven the demand for cloud- and IaaS-related coursework. And the growing emphasis on outcome-based solution sales is increasing the need for soft skills such as sales training and modern technology skills such as DevOps and API management and containerization. Many of our training options in these categories are multivendor and solution centric.

The Immediacy of Digital Transformation

The pandemic has caused a sudden sea change in the way businesses are working, most notably in the push for remote work options and new supply chains. Even companies that were putting off adopting digital transformation were forced to do so quickly—out of necessity for survival.

At Ingram Micro, we understand that education and training are the foundational building blocks of digital transformation. As new digital technologies and solutions are being introduced all the time, we saw the need to embed our global training capability into our pre-sales and delivery services.

This comprehensive approach is a distinctive differentiator for us. We now provide the whole lifecycle of education in tandem with the latest technology solutions as they’re created and released.

Training Is a Priority for Us

Ingram Micro has made an extensive investment in our training and education infrastructure to support our resellers and vendor partners. We focus on enabling and accelerating their need for speed to market and augmenting their capabilities by leveraging Ingram Micro’s best-in-class delivery capabilities.

We provide a number of ways for our partners to purchase training, including using their terms accounts, MDFs, vouchers and coupons. We even offer financing options to help defer payment over many months to improve their cash flow.

At a time when training is more important than ever, Ingram Micro is committed to making it easy to get. For more information, click here.

Greg Richey is Director, Digital Transformation Solutions at Ingram Micro.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.