ANKESH KUMAR
Chief Marketing Officer, Ingram Micro India
Evolving Marketing Strategy for the AI Era
The fundamentals of marketing have not changed with AI — understand your customers, be present where they are, and give them a compelling reason to engage with you. What is changing dramatically is our ability to execute these fundamentals with greater intelligence, speed and relevance.
Our focus is therefore not on using AI simply because it is the latest technology trend, but on using technology to make marketing more meaningful for our partners and customers. That means sharpening our content and value propositions, becoming more contextual to different partner segments, and delivering the right engagement through the right channel at the right time.
AI and data allow us to understand intent better, personalize engagement at scale, accelerate content development and continuously optimize campaigns based on outcomes.
Technology-driven Trust, Partner Ecosystems, and Customer Experience
We look at AI much more broadly than just using Generative AI for content creation or customer targeting. Those capabilities are increasingly becoming hygiene factors for modern marketing organizations. The bigger opportunity is embedding AI into the way we operate, transact and create value for our partners.
A good example is Xvantage, our AI-powered digital platform, where AI and data intelligence are built into the experience—helping our associates identify opportunities, provide more relevant solutions and engage customers more effectively.
Brand Positioning in Competitive Market
One of our biggest priorities is accelerating digital adoption and creating greater awareness of how Xvantage can help partners manage and grow their businesses more efficiently. We want digital engagement to go beyond transactions and become an enabler of better business outcomes.
A second priority is expanding our engagement with the SMB ecosystem and partners across Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities and emerging technology markets. India’s technology opportunity is becoming increasingly distributed, and we want to make Ingram Micro's portfolio, capabilities, services and expertise more accessible to partners wherever they operate.
The third area is transforming the role of marketing itself. Our ambition is to increasingly position Ingram Micro Marketing as a Marketing-as-a-Service capability for the ecosystem.
That means bringing together To-Channel, For-Channel and Through-Channel marketing—helping technology providers reach and activate partners, helping partners build their own marketing capabilities, and enabling joint programs that ultimately reach end customers.
