Xvantage delivers again for Ingram Micro in Q1

Ingram Micro has emphasised the importance of its Xvantage platform with the channel player continuing to increase the business that flows through the offering.

The distributor reported its first-quarter (Q1) numbers for the three months ended 28 March, with net sales coming in at $14bn, a 13% improvement on the $12.3bn reported in the previous year. The arrows were pointed up across all regions. Net income of $98.9m was up year on year (YoY) by 42.9%.

In EMEA, net sales were up by 14.1%, hitting $3.9bn, compared to the same period last year. Decent sales in client and endpoint solutions, notably notebooks, contributed to that growth. There were also improvements in cloud and advanced solutions, but that improvement was offset by declines on other services.

The numbers came in directly at or above the distie’s higher end of expectations and gave Ingram’s CEO Paul Bay an opportunity to talk on an earnings call of a strategy being successfully delivered.

The Xvantage platform has been a key plank in the firm’s strategy over the past few years, and it continued the momentum it had shown in the last fiscal year in Q1.

“Our investment in our Xvantage digital B2B platform is increasingly becoming a competitive moat. We made this investment ahead of the curve because we anticipated the shift now taking place across the market, where B2B customers increasingly expect the same speed, simplicity and personalisation they experience in B2C environments,” Bay said.

He added that the company would continue to improve Xvantage and margins as it embedded more AI capabilities into the platform: “We began the Xvantage journey by bringing together talent from some of the world’s largest leading platform companies and combining that expertise with our deep industry knowledge.

“We built a real-time data mesh and deployed more than 400 AI and machine learning models designed across the end-to-end customer journey. We progressed from building the foundation to automating workflows and reducing friction to now scaling intelligence through capabilities like Intelligent Digital Assistant, or IDA, to improve conversion, optimise pricing and enable more proactive selling.

“Xvantage is not a tool or a marketplace. It is the operating system for B2B. It’s a global real-time intelligence layer powering end-to-end B2B execution as we transform from a traditional IT distributor into a platform company,” he added.

Bay said that the distie was looking to use AI across the business to release more efficiencies and enable quicker and smoother ordering processes, adding: “We are increasingly applying intelligence across core business processes as our AI models continue to learn, improve and scale.

“We are also realising meaningful productivity gains with both revenue and margin per go-to-market resource increasing as automation enables associates to redirect time towards higher-value activities. We believe this is a strong indicator that the digital adoption, automation and AI-enabled selling are driving greater efficiency and increasing operating leverage across the platform.”

Bay stated that the investments made in Xvantage puts the firm in a strong position going forward, providing the basis on which it was redefining its market position: “As I look at the remainder of the year, I am confident that Ingram Micro will continue executing both our short-term and long-term strategy by further differentiating as a platform company, regardless of the uncertainties.”