Distributor Ingram Micro is expanding the professional services it offers to VARs selling into the point-of-sale (POS) and data-capture markets.

The offerings range from upfront wireless site services to pos-sale break/fix support and will be listed as Ingram SKUs. Specific items include equipment maintenance, rollouts and installation, and wireless networking site surveys and installations. With the new services Ingram hopes to carve out a larger share of the $6 billion POS segment.

The professional services will be delivered on an outsourced basis by National Service Center, a Greenville, SC-based provider and brokered by Ingram’s Services Network to its VARs. NSC, which has operated in the automated identification and data capture (AIDC) industry since 1995, provides service, repair, and spare parts distribution for barcode, data capture, POS, laser, personal computer, RFID, wireless, video surveillance and telephony equipment. It is owned by Illinois Tool Works, manufacturer of engineered components, industrial systems and consumables.

“We are building our services capability in the data capture and point-of-sale space,” said John Soumbasakis, Ingram Micro vice president and general manager. “This enables VARs to attach SKU’d services to all their POS and AIDC hardware sales. It helps VARs in this market to expand their geographic coverage and delivery speed.”

Soumbasakis said that the new services can be accessed by VARs either through the distributor’s peer-to-peer services referral network or as a line- item SKU from Ingram. He declined to state Ingram’s prices for the services, but he did note that VARs will be able to mark up from list price to add profit to a sale.

Hari Dhiman, president of Infocentrix, a Mira Loma, CA-based developer and reseller of POS solutions said that outsourced, SKU’d services can be advantageous for VARs. “With Ingram Micro’s new retail-focused professional services offerings, we can attached SKU’d services such as installation and maintenance to our POS and AIDC solutions with confidence,” he said.

Soumbasakis said that up to 20 percent of Ingram’s VARs are selling data capture and POS solutions. “The technology for point-of-sale and data capture are converging with the traditional products that we sell,” he said.

He estimated that at launch 10 percent of the distributor’s active list of about 9,000 POS and data-capture VARs will take advantage of the new service offerings, with more partners joining as the service offerings gain traction. Ingram will market the services to its VAR base through conferences, regional partner events and webinars, he said.

Ingram’s services division has been in place for about four years. It began with the distributor’s 2004 acquisition of Nimax and has grown more than 400 percent since its inception, Soumbasakis said. The distributor has expanded its POS/data capture business globally with two acquisitions in Europe and one in China, and divisions in Latin America and Canada.

 

 

TAGS: wireless, services, distributor, VARs, Ingram

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