Ingram Micro Highlights MSP Pain Points, Stresses Deeper Customer Conversations

Security, hiring and marketing, oh my. These are a few of the pain points keeping MSPs up at night as of late. It’s a lot to handle at once, but much comes down to having the right conversations with your customers, according to Ingram Micro.

We sat down with Eric Kohl, vice president, cybersecurity and data center, Ingram Micro, and Craig Weir, director of global cybersecurity, Ingram Micro Cloud, to get a sense of what they’re seeing in the industry. Who is doing it right, and how?

The Security Landscape

Ingram Micro Cloud’s Craig Weir

Craig Weir: If we put our MSP hat on with what the market data is telling us, we certainly see a progression here. Last year was all about “you had better scale up on cybersecurity” because the pandemic was unexpected and we all had to think differently. The shift this year highlights behavioral and consumer changes — how MSPs and customers want to buy, what they want to buy. They are realizing that they don’t want to spend much time on it [cybersecurity], but want to make sure they’re protected.

In terms of that, I think a lot of MSPs did a good job on shifting, but some of them did not. You’re seeing a shift where some MSPs are winning hand over fist, but the growth year to date for some of them is really poor. It goes back to the pain points partners have had, and why are those different this year? Are the partners who are winning doing something differently to continue to shift and pivot as needed?

Pain Points — Work-Life Balance

Ingram Micro’s Eric Kohl

Eric Kohl: Craig and I are actively working to strengthen our external messaging around the MSP and a value proposition. What are all the things that we can do to help that channel fuel growth? We’re heads-down, and we’ve got programs and content and things all over the place. But for us, at the highest-level growth strategy perspective, we’re talking about how we want the MSPs to lean into Ingram Micro more than ever. We see our role as helping the MSP channel to do all these things to fuel growth, and at the same time, to help take away some of their pain points.

One of the consistent threads in terms of MSP pain points is work-life balance. That’s likely because they’re accessing so many tools and systems from a multitude of vendors and portals. Ingram Micro works with our vendors to sit at the intersection between us and the MSP. We are also spending a ton of time internally to kind of smooth out operations to drive automation. We’re in the midst of our own digital transformation so that we can serve this channel better. 

Another pain point is sales and marketing. One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of our partners are jumping in with our Emerging Business Group (EBG), as well as some of the new solutions from [Ingram Micro] Cloud Marketplace. There’s much more of an appetite to look at some of the innovative solutions from some of these new and emerging vendors that maybe don’t …