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

CRN: Will there be a duplication of vendors?

Miley: For accounts that span the spectrum of technologies we will undoubtedly will be engaging with them with a lot more people, which we do today anyways.

If you're a managed account that spans the spectrum you should be expecting to see an Ingram Micro sales executive from the enterprise technology team trying to sell you solutions and add value to your business around those technology. And you would expect to see another sales exec from Ingram Micro carrying a target and quota and expertise around volume technologies.

CRN: Is there flexibility for a ‘better' deal if a quote spans the spectrum?

Miley: The price aspect of the discussion really is a function of a lot of elements. Competitive landscape, competitive reference as well as the amount of business that the customer does with us. What I would tell you is the reason we're doing this is so we have a more intimate relationship with them and its two distinct business lines.

Walters: if there was a deal from a reseller that spanned both enterprise upgrading their local data centre and they also want to upgrade their network and desktops at the same time the simple answer is this: you would have the enterprise sales exec and the volume sales exec working on that deal together. Will the reseller give us one purchase order that spans both? The answer is, yes. We're not going to make it more difficult for the reseller we're trying to make it better for the reseller.

CRN: For an enterprise technology focused reseller how will their experience with Ingram Micro change?

Miley: They will be engaging with dedicated external outbound sales resources that have subject matter expertise that is deeper tomorrow than it is today because they have a finite list of technologies.

Our intention is to have these folks highly certified on the technologies that they're out in the market promoting. Actually, today, the level of certification is a bit more ad hoc and sporadic than it will be tomorrow. My expectation is that those partners of ours both on the vendor side and on the reseller side that are interested in the enterprise technology space will have a sales resource that's much more qualified and certified.

The other thing I would tell you is around the network server storage quote desk, you will see us expand our investment in that area. We will have larger pool of resources tomorrow than we have today focused on making that quote to purchase order much simpler. And hence you'll have faster turn around times.

This business will have 50 standalone sales people spread around the country in the field out there to do nothing but help our reseller partners. To take the defined technology set to the market. My experience has been if you want results you need to focus resources.

The message I was getting loud and clear is we need a sales organisation that is focused.

CRN: Is it the end of the restructure?

Miley: You never say never. Will we continue to improve? Absolutely. Do I think the hard yards are over? Yes, once we're over the implementation this will be successful. I won't rule out future iterations.

In March, we aligned our vendor team into this business unit structure; we then made a declaration to the market that we're working on two business. We also bought a third business.

But in March in particular we aligned our core business at the same time. Because of the state of market we took some cost structures for the future, a lot of that was in back office areas. But in the front office we made it clear that we own two businesses and what we just announced is the alignment of the sales into that pool.

This is not a cost exercise.