Ingram Micro Gets a Digital Makeover with AI, Machine Learning

Ingram Micro is giving its organization a digital makeover.

The distributor said it is using artificial intelligence, machine learning and digital technologies to “solve and simplify the complexity of doing business in … the IT sales channel.”

Ingram Micro EVP and chief digital officer Sanjib Sahoo is spearheading the digital transformation.

Ingram Micro’s Sanjib Sahoo

“We are working to digitise one of the largest ecosystems in the world that is technological distribution,” he said. “Distribution needs an organization makeover in the way we service our customers, the way we build our platforms, use our data, machine learning, AI. There’s a lot to be done in this industry.”

The company’s priority is improving the user-experience for customers, vendors and associates, said Sahoo.

“We are trying to become, at least in the digital world, an experience-driven organization,” he said. “We need to start with the experience; otherwise, we will not be able to drive proper solutions. We have to start from the experience and work backwards, not vice versa.”

Taking Away Complexity

Sahoo notes the complexity that exists in the back end, and the company’s efforts to create a single pane of glass experience for customers.

“How can we give information back to the customers to improve their experience, make an informed decision about buying technology through the entire life cycle? You get the same experience in one platform, and not just going in multiple places,” he said.

“How do you do the same thing for our vendors, to make it easy to work with us? A lot of vendors and partners want their data back from the distributor to run their businesses easier,” he continued. “We need to really work on that to make that happen. And we want to make sure that our associate experience ties into all this, and the experiences all are synchronised. It’s about taking the complexity out of interacting with us and creating a rich experience.”

Hiring New Digital Leaders

The “digital journey” began last November with the launch of Ingram Micro’s Flexible Subscription Engine to help partners manage their recurring services revenues. The investment has also seen Ingram Micro hire a group of digital leaders to its newly formed Global Digital Solutions (GDS) organization.

Ajay Agarwal joins as chief product and platform officer; Andrea Chin as executive director, Digital Program Management Operations; and Zlatan Dzinic as executive director, Enterprise and Solutions Architecture.

The distributor has also hired its first chief data officer, Mukund Gopalan, who was formerly head of the Instagram business at Meta.

“This is the foundational backend group that is tasked with digitising the experience that we create for our customers, vendors and associates,” said Sahoo.