Ingram Micro d.o.o. Belgrade is part of the Ingram Micro Group – the largest global distributor of IT equipment, whether the criterion is global revenue, number of contracts with manufacturers of IT equipment or coverage of different international markets
Three Centres of Excellence have already been established in Belgrade for Ingram Micro globally – for Cybersecurity, for Cisco solutions and for Azure (Microsoft Public Cloud), which services Ingram Micro to partners worldwide, mostly in Western Europe and America.
Ingram Micro doo Belgrade is part of the Ingram Micro Group – the world’s largest distributor of IT equipment. Judging by the range of technical and logistic services you provide, you are unique in south-eastern Europe. Is that right?
Ingram Micro is certainly one of the largest distributors of IT equipment in the world, the criterion is total global revenue, the number of contracts with manufacturers of IT equipment or the coverage of different markets worldwide (our footprint).
Of course, each region has its own local specifics that are primarily conditioned by the degree of local market development, but it is this global footprint that Ingram Micro has, together with the diversity in the degree of market development in different parts of the world that creates opportunities for positioning the various types of services that a distributor can offer from the territory of south-eastern Europe and Serbia.
The services I would like to single out in this context are the technical services provided by Ingram Micro Belgrade through the global Ingram Micro network. It is already a well-known model in various fields of the IT business, that engineering services from countries with high-quality IT education, good English language skills in the IT community and lower labour costs compared to more advanced markets are relatively easy to market if there is a reliable, relevant and transparent delivery channel.
And this is precisely the context that is currently being formed and within which we see great room for progress. As a global corporation we have coverage and access to virtually all global markets, we are committed to focusing more and more on the distribution of engineering services to our partners (Added Value Services), and we have a technical team at Ingram Micro doo Belgrade that is capable of providing support in various technology verticals and solutions in the field of Cybersecurity, Data Centre technologies, Public Cloud solutions etc. …
Our engineers are part of attractive and challenging projects, which gives everyone the opportunity to progress and grow together
To this end, three Centres of Excellence for Ingram Micro have been established in Belgrade on a global scale that currently exists in only a few Ingram Micro offices in the world. These are the Cyber Security Expertise Centre, the Cisco Solution Expertise Centre, and the Azure Expertise Centre (Microsoft Public Cloud).
These centres of expertise provide services to Ingram Micro partners in various global markets, most notably in Western Europe and America, enabling our engineers to be part of truly attractive and challenging engineering-projects, giving everyone the opportunity to thrive and grow together.
What is the real potential of advanced technologies and to what extent are we using it? Is that exactly your job … to help your clients and partners exploit it in practice?
By its position in the IT market, a distributor does not work with end-users, but with partners who in turn provide technical support and expertise to end-users. However, what is observed as a recent trend is that the dynamics of change in advanced technologies are accelerating, that trends in technology are changing fast while on the other hand, small and medium-sized partners have a growing problem of following the speed of these changes – not only on our market but also in others.
And this is exactly the position that distributors are increasingly taking on – to technically assist their partners and provide them with all kinds of support to help them position complex technical solutions.
The role of a distributor is to assist and support their partners technically, to more easily position complex technical solutions
An additional aggravating circumstance is a fact that the period of positioning and selling complex technical solutions is quite long (a long sales lifecycle), very often with uncertain prospects of success. All this presents additional aggravating circumstances for partners who have to take all these factors into account to be viable, while it is easier for distributors to accept such risks given the size of the markets they cover.
Ingram Micro Group operates in more than 45 countries. How important in your Belgrade office is the experience of other markets and the exchange of experience and knowledge in the group?
Sharing experience is certainly important in any environment if that experience contributes to improving our work and business. However, what I would like to emphasize is that this exchange of experience was not exclusively one-way, that is that we, as a less developed market, have always been in a position to learn from more developed markets.
But in a particular segment, we have been able to share our experience with our colleagues from other countries, primarily from the point of view of technical support and the importance of engineering support in the development of certain technologies and solutions. It is for this reason that it was decided to set up the centres of expertise in Belgrade, and we are particularly proud of this.