Ingram Micro Case Study

The Requirement

An online tool to support reseller partners and the internal sales team

Ingram Micro is a wholesale hardware and software distributor, and is committed to helping its reseller partners grow their businesses and maximise profitability.

The company wanted to simplify and streamline the configuration, pricing and quoting process. It aimed to free its leasing sales team to focus on the most profitable opportunities, with those of fewer than 50 seats processes automatically through an online tool.

Ingram Micro needed to complete this project in a shorter timeframe than the 18 months it would take its internal IT team.

The Challenge

Converting annual sales processes into a predefined, digital sales path

Ingram Micro's sales were handled by the sales team and finance brokers. The company needed a technology partner that could digitise manual processes of managing pricing and reseller relationships - integrating with finance partners and freeing up the leasing sales team's time to focus on bigger opportunities.

The goal was to drastically reduce the time involved in the conversion process, initially for Microsoft Surface and HP products.

The Solution

Simplified configuration, pricing and quotation

Using our PreSalesAdvisor configuration, pricing and quotation tool, we created a step-by-step workflow that leads resellers down a pre-defined sales path. Once this process is complete and the basket of goods and services meets end-user requirements, resellers can apply for credit on behalf of their customers. As soon as the application is approved, the goods are automatically dispatched.

The tool integrates with the finance provider for a seamless experience. It has empowered Ingram Micro to deliver the right prices in real time, made it easy to manage pricing and stock, and helped strengthen relationships with suppliers and resellers.

The Result

A 5-day sales process reduced to 5 minutes

Using PreSalesAdvisor, Ingram Micro have achieved a huge benefit in terms of time savings, reducing what was once a 5-day process to just 5 minutes. This has freed up the leasing sales team and helped boost revenue while cutting costs of sale.

Since launching the tool, Ingram has asked us to add Apple to the portal. Gemma Glen said: “The response from our reseller customers to the PreSalesAdvisor tool has been fantastic. It’s simple to use and understand, meaning they can self-serve easily and with confidence. They get the right price in real time, and goods are dispatched automatically. And the time saving it’s given the leasing sales team has been little short of miraculous, enabling us to focus on bigger opportunities while giving everyone a high level of service.”

Why PreSalesAdvisor

PreSalesAdvisor, our cloud-based tool, makes the pricing and quoting processes for verified technology configurations simple. As a result, we were best placed to meet Ingram Micro’s brief within the required timescale.

“Our manual processes were slowing us down and limiting the number of opportunities we were able to chase,” said Gemma Glen, Synerg Lead at Ingram Micro. “We wanted to save resource on pre-sales, sales and pricing, and needed to work with someone who understood the nature of our business to deliver this. Mercato fitted the bill perfectly – and was able to work with our team and brand managers for Microsoft and HP to deliver the project smoothly.”