Ingram Micro Staff Assist Gives Partners Staff Augmentation Option

INGRAM MICRO ONE — Irvine, California-based distributor Ingram Micro is helping channel partners address hiring challenges with Ingram Micro Staff Assist.

The recently launched service lets value-added resellers (VARs), managed service providers (MSPs) and other customers of the distributor to bring on technical personnel from Ingram in the short-term. According to Ingram leaders, the staff augmentation offering helps partners bring on talent with minimal risk.

Ingram Micro’s Paul Hager

These are Ingram Micro employees who work on Ingram devices, but they function as “an extension of your team,” vice president of services Paul Hager said. That goes for both SMB partners and national partners.

“It will leverage the expertise and globalization of a Ingram’s platform to help solve for the challenge of hiring, retaining and attracting talent and doing so at economical price points,” he said.

Hager, a former MSP leader and longtime Ingram partner, joined Ingram in 2022. He said he has been working to bring to market services that would have benefitted a business like his.

“When I was an MSP, I wanted to make sure that I controlled as much of the direct line customer experience. And everything else that I can automate – everything else that I can kind of push into the back and make it as efficient as possible – that’s what I was after,” he said in a briefing with analysts and journalists.Tuesday at Ingram Micro One in Nashville.

Complete Technology Resources’ Cricket Paulsen

Channel partners in recent years have reported their struggles with attracting and retaining talent. For Cricket Paulsen, managing director of Massachusetts-based Complete Technology Resources, it’s difficult to find the right mix of experience, salary demands and work philosophy.

“We’re a very team-approach company. And sometimes you need to be flexible. Sometimes you need to kind of shift a little bit to fill in a gap somewhere. We’re looking for people who are willing to do that. And we’re finding a lot of people that are perhaps very well educated but have a very narrow focus. And, again, very high salary demands. And they don’t want to kind of pivot and stick a finger here and a finger there if necessary to fill a gap in the dam,” Paulsen said during the panel.

Benefits of Ingram Micro Staff Assist

For a flat fee, customers can bring in Ingram Micro personnel who can establish new managed, professional and consultant services, Hager said.

Staff Assist, the distributor says, aims to minimize cost and risk for businesses as they seek out their business goals.

Nerds That Care’s James Rocker

“Ingram is trying to fill what we feel is a gap in the market to help our partners continue to grow,” Hager said. “So when we hear partners can grow even faster when we solve for some of these problems, that’s removing friction; that’s accelerating growth.”

Nerds that Care CEO James Rocker said the news of Ingram Micro Staff Assist excites him. He recalled a time earlier this year when he was asking Ingram executives for their advice on finding talent.

“I was saying, ‘How do I hire people that Ingram hires? Where do you find these amazing people?'” he said. “And now that you’re going to help us do that staff augmentation and fill that gap, you guys are in trouble, because we’re going to scale like you’ve never seen before.”

Looking for more Ingram Micro news from One? Read about the company’s expansion of its Data Center and Hybrid Cloud Center of Excellence.