The classic American Express slogan told cardholders that "membership has its privileges." Amazon Prime's catchphrase for 2022: See where it takes you.
Now, Ingram Micro Cloud is rolling out a modern day membership strategy. The effort involves a monthly subscription service that provides enhanced business care to MSPs and VARs across the United States and Canada.
Ingram Micro Cloud Ultra: Partner Membership Program Details
The effort, known as Ingram Micro Cloud Ultra, is a "strategic membership program" that costs $199 per month. What do partners get? The cloud marketplace provider points to four program components and associated partner perks. According to Ingram, the program offers:
- ULTRA Insights – Providing partner specific lead opportunities, end customer retention reports, whitespace analysis to visualize key growth areas, skill enablement and access to certification courses.
- ULTRA Automation – Supplying free user licenses for the CloudBlue Professional Services Automation tool (CloudBlue PSA) white-label marketplace PRO, advanced integrations of their current PSA, ERP, or CRM tools, and more.
- ULTRA Knowhow – Offering certified expertise for demand generation, customer success management, expert support, and more.
- ULTRA Exclusives – Permitting access to special channel incentive programs, practice development engagements, certification vouchers, and more.
Aside from generating revenue for Ingram Micro, the membership program will potentially allow the distributor to more deeply engage partners that truly crave deeper engagement.
We're intrigued by the subscription strategy, and whether it will spark similar efforts from rival vendors across the IT channel.
Engaging Operationally Mature MSPs -- And Aspirational Partners?
Admittedly, low-end VARs and MSPs are notoriously budget conscious. But operationally mature MSPs -- the top 25% of the market -- typically generate EBITDA profit margins of 18% or more, according to Service Leadership. Those profit-driven MSPs, we believe, are more inclined to open their wallets for high-value services that accelerate sales pipelines and time to revenue.
We'll be watching to see if Ingram Micro Cloud Ultra delivers that type of partner payoff.
