In-depth: Miley details Ingram's ‘focused' strategy

CRN: When did the enterprise technology side of Ingram become a big player?

Miley: Since, I've been here (November 2008) it's been a large piece of our business. The work that John [Walters] and others did dating back three or four years positioned us in this space so we have a sizable piece of business that on a standalone basis is very relevant and very large.

That being said the announcement we just made (the sales restructure and Walters' exit) is about aligning sales resources to both businesses in a distinct manner so that we get the right skills and the right go-to-market approach.

John Walters: We had resellers which we had a really good relationship with buying enterprise products from a competitor of ours because we couldn't look after them to the level we needed to in the enterprise space.

We had vendors not giving us access to some of their enterprise products which they were instead giving to our competitors because we weren't supporting them or didn't have the structure to support them.

Hence, we set up the solutions group. To me this [latest sales restructure] is just the next evolution. The solutions group was successful but it wasn't going to be able to be really competitively successful to the level we wanted unless we aligned the vendor management teams and the sales teams together, and that's the key to this restructure.

Under Jay's leadership, when he first came in, he took the retail business away from me and gave it to Matt [Sanderson] to align the sales effort with the vendor management. So this is the next iteration. Get retail aligned, get enterprise aligned and get volume aligned.

What it means now is that you've got a sales executive that visits resellers who will now be responsible, at the enterprise level, for looking after approximately 15 vendors. Today they're responsible for around 90 vendors. It's going to be a different style of engagement. There are different skills sets required and the vendor and the reseller should get a better result out of that.

CRN: In practice though you would have had sales people lean one way or another rather than looking after all 90 vendors.

Walters: Different people have different skills sets. Their role was the relationship manager for the account they were responsible for and to take the portfolio of vendors that Ingram has today to market. So inherently they were responsible for 90 vendors.

Under the new structure it will be around a sales exec to get focused around a core set of technologies and vendor products where they can understand how those technologies can be sold and utilised in the market and therefore position that better.

And when you start segmenting other innovative things start happening. Jay talked about other managed services or serviced components in the enterprise. I actually think - and this is the John Walters view on the volume business - if it's got a more dedicated focus you'll see innovation around services there too such as managed print services.

CRN: Are managed print services part of the plan?

Miley: You could draw a logical conclusion that if the print market is evolving in that direction we would have resources that align to that. But that would be an initiative that our volume business will initiate because the technology you're talking about is more of a volume-centric play not a value-centric play.