Ingram Micro Intros Rebate Tracking, BI Tools For Partners

The new programs, which are now in pilot-testing but expected to be ready early next year, were unveiled at the distributor's 2009 VTN Fall Invitational conference, being held this week in Denver.

The new VTN Rebate Tracker program is aimed at helping VTN members take better advantage of vendors' rebate and discount programs, said John Fago, senior director of channel marketing in North America.

"Today, vendor dollar programs are very complex," Fago said. "It's hard to capitalize on front-end and back-end dollars. Ingram Micro will provide support to partners to help them do this. VARs today struggle with these programs and know there are dollars on the table for them."

Under the VTN Rebate Tracker program, Ingram Micro will provide guidance to VTN members, who will be able to pick up the phone at any time to see how they are progressing toward rewards, what they need to qualify for certain rewards, and to make sure they are doing what it takes to claim their rewards, Fago said.

"We're currently testing the scope of the program with our pilot program," he said. "We're pressure-testing it to see if there are any leaks."

Also in pilot testing is Ingram Micro's VTN Business Intelligence Portal program, which aims to help VTN members mine data from five years of orders in order to improve their customer reach, said Kirk Robinson, vice president of channel marketing for the distributor.

The new portal will let VTN members look at the data Ingram Micro has collected on past data to get a better understanding of what customers might need in terms of new products and services, Robinson said.

For instance, he said, partners could see which customers are due for a product refresh, or help develop specific programs to go to existing customers with new solutions. The data can be used to generate and track leads for VTN members' sales reps, and can be combined with data from Dun & Bradstreet to tie those leads with a customer's size and vertical focus, he said.

Ingram Micro is also working on a Web-based lead generation tool that ties to the VTN Business Intelligence Portal, Robinson said. The portal can pass information to a partner's CRM application to help track sales and deal closes, he said.

Greg Starr, a member of the VTN council and COO of I.T. Works, a Bellaire, Texas-based solution provider, took the stage with Robinson and said that the data provided by the portal will help partners compete with direct marketers like CDW. which already have the ability to mine their own order.

Jane Cage, a member of the VTN council and CFO and CTO of Heartland Technology Solutions, a Harlan, Iowa-based solution provider, also took the stage with Robinson to discuss her experience in testing out the Business Intelligence Portal, and said it will let her save a lot of the time she spends mining data on her own.

"I hate to say this, but this is data I probably would have paid for," Cage said.

Partners will pay for it, Robinson said. However, how much has yet to be decided.

"Each VTN member is a different size and has different data needs," he said. "We're invested heavily in these tools. We believe that VTN members should have some skin in the game."

Tools like the Business Intelligence Portal and Rebate Tracker should be made available to partners free-of-charge, said Rimon Moses, CEO of RMM Solutions, a Wausau, Wis.-based solution provider and part of VTN.

"These tools are hooks for the reseller," Moses said. "If Ingram Micro provides its information, and another distributor doesn't, I'm going to go with Ingram Micro. There's a huge benefit for Ingram Micro. They should hit the vendors for the cost."

Even so, Moses said, he will be using the tools. "I trust what Jane Cage says," he said. "She's very intelligent. So I believe there's an opportunity for us."

Robinson said that whatever pricing Ingram Micro settles on will not be a deal-breaker for its solution providers. "And people don't place as much value on something they get for free," he said. "This is not going to add billions of dollars to Ingram Micro's revenue from its VTN partners."

Ingram Micro also unveiled VTN Connect, a program under which it brings together 10 to 12 VTN members to work together on an intimate, member-to-member strategy, Fago said.

VTN Connect will allow those partners to discuss how to work together and how to share business analytics, as well as how to help employees of such partners to get the information they need to improve their sales, marketing and technical abilities, he said.

VTN Connect is a great tool, RMM's Moses said. However, he said he wishes Ingram Micro would have come out with it earlier. RMM is a member of organizations like the Heartland Technology Group or Cisco's 4Profit, which already have similar collaboration tools, he said.

Also new from Ingram Micro is a couple of social networking tools, including a VTN Facebook group and a VTN Twitter feed, Fago said.

Looking ahead, Robinson said Ingram Micro is working on other programs for its VTN members to help increase sales.

One such product is a predictive modeling application the distributor currently uses to help its vendor partners predict sales to solution providers and which could be used to help solution providers predict sales to their customers, he said.

Ingram Micro is also looking at third-party tools that can help its solution providers gain more benefit from the Business Intelligence Portal, he said.