Ingram Micro to launch online initiative

AGRA: Ingram Micro has launched an online initiative in India that would help in the dissemination of information about its product line. This was announced by Ingram's vice president, (marketing), PG Kamath at a two-day event organized for its channel partners.

Ingram presently has 1,700 manufacturer partners at the global level while in

India it has struck partnerships with nearly 25 manufacturers. The advantage of

this online initiative is that it will offer partners access to real-time

information about the available inventory while the firm can complete online

financial transaction at a later date. This in turn is expected to bring in more

cohesiveness among the manufacturing community.

The two-day (March 3-4) gala event in the historical city of Agra has

attracted channel partners from all corners of the country. The event conducted

under the theme 'Empowering Channels with Global Technology' has attracted 1,000

partners from 100 cities, who have gathered to strategize their business

activities for 2001. An annual business event, Ingram Micro 2001 was essentially

meant to create an awareness to its partners on the new available products and

on how to position themselves vis-a-vis the products. To achieve this end, the

event also showcased a solution center that will provide demonstrations for its

products and educate partners on how to provide the best solutions to its

customers.

Ingram Micro president (Asia Pacific), Hans Koppen, who inaugurated the

event, spoke on the changing business paradigm in the channels market. While the

traditional model compartmentalizes the roles of a manufacturer, distributor and

the reseller, the evolving model envisages a center-stage for the customer with

responsibilities no longer specific to each player.

In fact the new emerging breed of business partners call themselves

technology service providers. Therefore providing the customer with improved

services in terms of better solutions, support, and cheaper products have

assumed critical positioning in the channels game. Kopper, however, parried

questions on the firm's future strategies on having to deal with the direct

marketing model from rivals such as Dell by merely stating that the "role

of a channel can never be undermined".

While the core-competency of an IBM is to develop technology, Ingarm Micro

has the edge in terms of wide distribution and logistics back up. This apart,

Ingram's strength lies in its strong credit policy that is one of the most

important strategies in the distribution business. Ingram Micro Inc, a public

listed firm had a sales turnover of $30.72 billion in the previous year and is

ranked 41 among the Fortune 500 list of companies.