Ultimate Guide to Partnering® 273 – Transforming the Channel: Ingram Micro Drives AI-Powered Go-to-Market Success
Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!
Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/
Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/
Is your business ready for 2026?
Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast.
Join Peter Graber from Ingram Micro and Christine Mulcahy from ContentGen as they unveil a powerful synergy transforming the MSP and SMB landscape. Peter details Ingram Micro’s evolution from a traditional distributor to a “platform first, experience-driven company” with their Al-powered Xvantage platform, seamlessly integrating commerce, insights, automation, and enablement for multi-vendor, multi-solution environments. Christine then introduces ContentGen, an automated content development platform leveraging Al to drastically reduce the cost and complexity of content marketing for partners, enabling them to tell compelling “better together” stories and accelerate their go-to-market. This session highlights how these innovations are providing MSPs with simplified management and strategic growth, crucial for navigating the complex world of Al, hardware, and software solutions.
- Traditional distribution is evolving beyond logistics to focus on intelligence, integration, and enablement, driven by the increasing complexity of hybrid cloud, multi-vendor, and AI environments.
- Ingram Micro is transforming into a “platform first, experience-driven company” with its AI-powered Xvantage platform, designed to be a growth engine for partners by simplifying operations and accelerating market access.
- Xvantage unifies commerce, insights, automation, and enablement, allowing MSPs to manage subscriptions, hardware, SaaS, and services seamlessly in one intuitive interface, even integrating with their existing ERP/CRM systems.
- ContentGen provides an automated, AI-powered content development platform specifically for the partner channel, drastically reducing the cost and complexity of creating diverse marketing materials.
- Partners, particularly MSPs, need to tell differentiated stories for various audiences (customers, platform partners, resellers) requiring tailored content, which ContentGen helps to scale efficiently.
- The combined offering of Ingram’s Xvantage platform and ContentGen empowers MSPs with simplified management and strategic growth, enabling them to effectively deliver complex AI and multi-vendor solutions to the SMB market.
If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins.
As we enter the last four months of the calendar year, you are probably asking yourself, “What events should I attend this fall and why?”
Many Partners and Leaders are trying to determine if the big events make the most sense and what they will learn. Many of these events are big and unyieldy, and while you may bump into some friends, you need to really ask yourself if they will help you achieve your greatest results – as a leader, as an organization, or as a partner.
Our attendees tell us they get more accomplished in two full days than in most of the year at our events – they learn from Hyperscaler Leaders, Top Award Winning Partners, and the Masters. Learn from the best, meet the best, grow your business faster and further.
Why Ultimate Partner is Unique
An Ultimate Partner LIVE is like YOUR Masterclass. We begin with a view of “Where We Are Today” as the tectonic shifts are happening faster than ever before. Our first day sessions explore the advances in AI, Hyperscaler Growth, Marketplaces, Co-Selling, Ecosystem Led Growth, and more. These sessions are led from the leaders driving the discussions at Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, AvePoint Veeam Software, Carahsoft, Elastic and more.
Bringing it All Together
On Day Two, an Industry Analyst will bring it all together as our industry experts help you plot the future course – applying the learnings to maximize results.
And, you’ll learn more from the Partner Technology firms, Partner Consultants, and others helping partners like you achieve more and walk away with over a million dollars worth of insights, learnings, and practical advice to apply to your business. In fact, we will have over 10 unique workshops at the fall event alone.
The Executive Experience
You will be in the room with other executives like you, or partner leaders looking to get to that level. Join us for a unique welcome reception and – if you’re fortunate – you’ll be joining our Executive Dinner. This event will feel more intimate than past Ultimate Partner LIVE settings. You’ll love the experience.
Don’t Miss this Early BIRD Opportunity – Ends in a Week
This is your last chance to take advantage of a unique opportunity to sign up early and SAVE.> Next weekend, Early Bird Pricing Ends – and will NOT be available again. Also, our special Hyatt Regency Reston will only last for a short time.
Book your tickets today and get ready to join this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
I look forward to hosting YOU this fall!
Click HERE while time still lasts.
.
Key Tags:
Ingram Micro, Content Gen, distribution evolution, MSPs, SMB market, AI platform, Advantage platform, ecosystem enablement, automated content, channel marketing, go-to-market strategy, strategic growth, digital transformation, cloud solutions, hardware-software integration, recurring revenue, partner profitability, AI agents, cybersecurity, hybrid cloud.
Transcription:
[00:00:00] Christine Mulcahy: Well, I’d say, you know, if you’re any type of partner in the ecosystem, buy into these platforms because they, there’s a lot of smart people building them and doing all the work for you so that you don’t have to figure that out as part of the rest of your biz dev strategy, and you can just focus on what you do.
Well,
[00:00:17] Vince Menzione: we believe this time is like no other. We, we refer to these as the tectonic shifts,
[00:00:23] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models.
Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership.
[00:00:55] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft Redmond Campus. Our most powerful event yet. Over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry.
If you weren’t in the room, this episode and interview features Peter Grabber from Ingram Micro and Christine Mulcahy from Content Gen for a lively discussion on the future of distribution. We take it right to the edge of what’s next. So let’s dive in now, and we’ve talked about this SMB moment. And the MSPs and this incredible opportunity area.
This is where the fire hydrant is gonna come at us and the, and the power is coming at us really strict right now in terms of how we drive more success in our marketplaces. I am thrilled to invite on stage for the first time. Ingram Micro as both a speaker and a sponsor or event, and Peter Grabber is joining me for an in-depth conversation on what’s been going on in Ingram.
We talked, we heard PAX eight yesterday, but Ingram has an incredible approach, has an incredible pedigree as a distributor and is really evolving their business as well. So I wanna welcome to the stage Peter Grabber. Thank you. Thank you for joining us, Peter. Thanks Vince. So good to have you join us.
Thank you, sir. So, so great to have you on stage. Absolutely. Thank you. And supporting our event. Awesome. Awesome. Peter’s from Buffalo, New York. For those of you go Bills who might be part of the Bills mafia. Yes. Uh, they are my second favorite team after the Philadelphia Eagles. So, so great to have you.
Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. So, so great to have you join us. Um, some really exciting things happening in your organization. Uh, for, I, I want you to. Tell us about your role and maybe a little bit about Ingram. I don’t want to pre assume some things, even though I know about Martha and Bronson back in the day.
Sure, sure,
[00:02:57] Peter Graber: sure. Go ahead. Um, so Peter Grabber, I actually run our, uh, Cisco and our Microsoft practice at Ingram Micro. Plus a couple other hats that I wear as well. Um, but Ingram Micro is a global distributor. Obviously. We have a, a huge scale from a distribution standpoint, multi-vendor, multi solution service generated organization.
And, um, we’re, we’re taking the leap into a platform company, which is something that I’ll, I’ll dig into a little bit.
[00:03:21] Vince Menzione: Fantastic. Yeah, and I think the really important to note, because back in the day, distribution was a very different thing than it’s today, right? We used to think about credit. Availability of product.
Right. And shipping and all those things. Sure. That were so important to be a distributor and why people use distributors back in the day.
[00:03:38] Peter Graber: Absolutely. And now all that still is valid, but it’s being rolled up into a platform now. Yeah. That will be pretty seamless.
[00:03:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I want, we wanna hear about that, right?
Yeah, we want to talk about that. So let’s talk about this, we’ll call the future of distribution. Right. As we, we, we go back to the old days and we need a product delivered. We needed credit, we needed all those things to have distribution. What’s changed and what is the future of distribution from your perspective?
[00:04:02] Peter Graber: Yeah. So, so thanks Vincent. That is, um, I, I think it’s a great topic. It’s interesting, especially over the last couple days when we’ve talked about how our industry is evolving. And distribution definitely needs to be part of that discussion. So no longer is distribution, just about logistics, like you said, or moving product from point A to point B.
Um, it has necessary to evolve beyond that. Um, so the way that we look at the future of distribution is really, um, based on, um, intelligence integration and enablement. And that’s a huge shift for every player in, in, in our space, from CSPs to MSPs and every partner type. Um, the one thing that I’ll say, and we, we talked about over the last couple days too, and it’s obvious that, um, our industry is exploding in complexity.
Yes. And it’s something we all know and it’s not slowing down. But if you think about everything we’re dealing with in terms of, um, hybrid cloud environments, um, uh, multiple subscription, uh, models. Managed services, cybersecurity, LA layers, multi-vendor environments across the ecosystem of product.
[00:05:09] Vince Menzione: Ai,
[00:05:10] Peter Graber: ai, ai, ai.
Absolutely. And we have something called, um, customer expectations that we continue need to manage ’cause those continue to rise and evolve. Um. So we also know too, that our partners, especially MSPs, aren’t just sourcing product anymore. They are building customized, full scalable solutions across a multitude of vendors and services.
When you add all of that together, that’s a lot to manage and scale. Yeah. So that’s where the transformation of Ingram comes in. So we are no longer distributor. We are a platform first, experience driven company. And what is driving or at the heart of that transformation is Advantage. Advantage is our, uh, AI powered.
A digital experience platform. Interesting. And it’s more than just a, a portal. It is an intelligent interface that stitches together commerce, insights, automation, and enablement.
[00:06:11] Vince Menzione: Wow. Um, so I, ’cause I was gonna say marketplace, but it’s more than just even a marketplace from that perspective, right?
[00:06:17] Peter Graber: Absolutely. It’s a very intelligent interface that is, provides a simplified experience. Um, one platform to handle all of your business. So when we look at, at the, at the future of distribution, we look at it really in three stages. It’s, it’s about the platform, right? So moving out of the, um, the back office from a distribution model standpoint, it into the front office as a growth engine for our partners, um, by offering digital experience tools.
Uh, second stage is, uh, AI and automation. Um, AI for intelligence to predict needs and, uh, automation to, uh, reduce friction and create a smarter, faster path to market.
[00:07:01] Vince Menzione: Fascinating.
[00:07:02] Peter Graber: And then the third piece is ecosystem enablement. It’s all about providing the new, that the full solution that’s going to produce business outcomes and not just focus on the product.
Advantage is built for all of that.
[00:07:14] Vince Menzione: So tell us, take me through ecosystem enablement. To me that’s taking multiple partners. Uh, on the path to the same customer. Is that, is that what it looks like?
[00:07:22] Peter Graber: Um, you know, the way I would define ecosystem enablement is when you look at the product portfolio and bringing it all together under one platform.
So when you look at the, the span of hardware services, sas, um, et cetera, being able to provide that in one unified platform seamlessly. Um, without any friction. Yeah.
[00:07:44] Vince Menzione: And I think one of the things that dis distinguishes Ingram is sort of the pedigree of the business in that you’re not just software, you’re software and hardware, you’re all things to the customer.
Correct. And if I think about MSPs, the old days was that we worried about boxes and cables and things like that, right? That’s what you delivered. Now in this new world of ai, you’re delivering agent ai, you’re delivering. Uh, cloud, you’re delivering all the different solutions from ISPs. So they’re coming to your portal, they’re coming to your solution set, and they’re able to deliver all that to their customers.
Is that, is that what I’m, the way it’s coming about a hundred percent. Yeah.
[00:08:19] Peter Graber: Seamless, um, easy path to provide operational efficiency, but also strategic growth.
[00:08:26] Vince Menzione: Nice. And it is strategic in that you’re able to support that partner. And add anything they need to do for that customer, not just one point of the, of the spear.
Yeah.
[00:08:39] Peter Graber: So if you look at the dis, the traditional distri distribution MO model that you talked about in the beginning, a hundred percent, that’s not going away. Right? And you know, obviously there’s a lot of talk about the cloud and. Subscription models, recurring revenue. That’s right. That’s certainly important.
But hardware’s not going away either. It’s not going
[00:08:58] Vince Menzione: away. I still need servers on site. I still need other technologies that I’m utilizing.
[00:09:03] Peter Graber: A hundred percent. So how do you create a platform that brings all of that together under one seamless, intuitive interface that removes the friction for our partners, and that’s what Advantage does.
[00:09:13] Vince Menzione: It’s fascinating. Tell us a little bit about how Ingram is structured, like number of partners, like size of the organization. We didn’t get into the details. Just I think from a framing perspective for everybody, it’d be good to cover some of that. I mean, from
[00:09:26] Peter Graber: a, from a global standpoint, I mean I obviously we’re a $50 billion plus organization, um, you know, serving servicing.
Thousands of, of partners, all, all partner types, whether it’s an SMB, mid-market enterprise, um, CSPs, MSPs, um, et cetera, you name it. Um, we, we service that, uh, full portfolio.
[00:09:50] Vince Menzione: Let’s, I, I wanna jo, dive in on the solution. I think we have a graphic here about Xan. I was thinking maybe we could talk about how it’s helping the market and how it’s unique, uh, and maybe differentiate it a little bit too.
’cause I think this is an opportunity to stand out in a big way. Sure. Uh, Ingram brings a set of skills and capabilities. As well as, uh, a portfolio of vendors that you help scale and bring to the market, the s and b market. I think about specifically of one that’s going through incredible growth. I look at the MSP myself and I go, there is a tremendous transformational moment.
Now, I’ve been in many of these events. I’ve seen some of and met with some of these MSPs and they’re living in the past. There are organizations that maybe worked in Telco, worked in other markets, break fix. But the customer is not there anymore. The customer is on this transformational journey with agentic AI and layering multiple is V solutions in and pulling it all together for a customer.
Right? So this is what you do.
[00:10:53] Peter Graber: Absolutely. And you know, MSPs need help. To simplify things. Yeah. You know, and that, that’s what’s unique about the, about what we’re bringing and how we’re helping the market in very simple terms, in very, very powerful ways. Because advantage just simplifies everything, creates a faster path to market and accelerates growth.
At the end of the day, you know what, what Advantage is really doing, it’s taking a, a very fragmented, messy, um. Slow manual process and modernizing it under one platform.
[00:11:28] Vince Menzione: It’s fascinating.
[00:11:28] Peter Graber: Um, you know, if you think about, um, the things that the MSPs have to deal with on a daily basis, um. And, and, and we, we’ve kind of talked about it in terms of, um, you know, managing renewals, um, putting multi configurations together, figuring out how to order ’em, produce ’em.
And they’re oftentimes, our MSPs are doing it through multiple systems Yeah. And manual processes. Um. Advantage, simplifies all that under one platform. It’s very intuitive. Um, it offers recommendations, cross-sell, upsell opportunities to help them grow their business. Um. So to to, to answer your question, there’s uh, a lot of things that are happening with Advantage, um, especially when we look across the industry and what’s unique about Ingram Micro and what we bring to the market is, um, our size and our scale.
[00:12:23] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:12:23] Peter Graber: And the fact that, um, we have, uh, the ability to have a global reach, a vast, vast product portfolio. And, um, the ability to, um. To bring that all together under one platform is pretty powerful.
[00:12:39] Vince Menzione: Under one platform, $50 billion company. Correct. Yeah. So that, that, that alone sets you up. Oops. I’m sorry. I’m just popping up a couple of slides here.
Um, yeah, so, uh, incredible opportunity for our, our partners that, oops, I’m one slide ahead. I’m, I’m moving quickly. There’s something’s happening. Either it’s going fast or I’m going slow. One or the other. Um, maybe it’s the end of the day type of thing. Yeah, that’s right. But yeah, just incredible opportunity for partners to take advantage of this.
Uh, these are organizations that are fairly less complex. Let’s say some of these MSPs are smaller, although we’re starting to see this aggregation. We have MSPs that are now growing to billion dollar companies. But then the ability to serve this customer, this SMB market, in a very unique way, is the way I’m, I’m, I’m reading what you’re having to say.
[00:13:24] Peter Graber: Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. You think about MSPs and, and we, we talked about it in terms of. Needing to simplify everything. And if you, we, we talked about the multiple, multiple systems that they use and, and many times, um, they have their own systems, whether they’re ERPs or CRMs and things like that.
Uh, one of the things that is very unique about Advantage is you can actually plug it in to your. You don’t have to. An MSP doesn’t have to go outta their system to take advantage of all of the goodness of an AI powered model. Um, you can plug it into your ERP, you can plug it into your RM, RMM, um, et cetera.
And. Everything’s at your
[00:14:04] Vince Menzione: fingertips. It’ll be seamlessly integrated with your, your complete solutions inside, inside your organization. So these organizations struggle in many respects as well, right? So these are companies that are the precipice of growth in my perspective. They are, there’s a huge opportunity for them to grow.
There’s a market, this SMB market is going to, we had the conversation with Alistair talking about, we call it this smec, which is enterprise and channel, but that gets to be in that SMB market is, is relatively small, but they’re still very complex and, and how they need to drive it. A lot of these organizations do struggle with how to go to market though.
Right. And so we were gonna, we were asking Ashley, Christine Mulcahy to join us up on stage. Christine is the founder and CEO of Content Gen. And her company helps a lot of the partners in your ecosystem to be more successful, to have a stronger go to market. So I’m excited to welcome Christine Mulcahy to join us.
And we’re gonna continue the conversation ’cause we haven’t really spent a lot of time. We talked about go to market from the Microsoft lens. We talked about how partners can do a lot of things, but we really haven’t. Touched on this really important subject, uh, what we need to do with these, uh, with these organizations.
So it’s, uh, great to see you, my friend.
[00:15:20] Christine Mulcahy: Great, thank you.
[00:15:21] Vince Menzione: And, uh, why don’t you introduce yourself, Christine, and what content Gen is all about and what your organization does.
[00:15:26] Christine Mulcahy: Sure. So I’m Christine Muli. I’m the founder and CEO of Content Gen, which is. An automated content development platform really focused on the partner channel.
I’ve been working at Microsoft and in the channel for the last 23 years, um, developing go to market materials, doing a lot of the consulting that you see here, um, in the workshops in the afternoon about that joint value proposition, the better together story, and we recognize that there’s a. Massive need for content marketing.
You know, partners get their stories, they get their solutions built, they put them in the marketplaces. They have kind of those three bare minimum pieces of content to get them listed and think, why aren’t the leads coming? And why aren’t I, are my leads seeing many ROI? Where’s my revenue? And the fact is that that’s just, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
You have to be able to then tell your story and not just your two customer story, but your two partner story. And we’ve heard a lot about, um, marketplaces and all of the different, uh, partners in those marketplaces. You’ve got your platform partners, you’ve got your integration partners, your build with partners, and your reseller channel partners, and they all.
Need something different from you. They, you’ve gotta align your messaging with the platform partners. And then you’ve got to tell a better together, you know, what makes us sticky? How could we go, uh, um, attack customer sales together, and then what’s the, you know, what’s in it for resellers? And you need different stories for each of them, and that requires a different set of content for each of them.
And content is. Ridiculously expensive. Yeah. ’cause you need a dozen pieces of content to lead a buyer through a journey or a partner through a journey. And so, um, it’s fantastic that AI has come along, but you’re still, you know, if you’re just using Chad GPT to create content, you still have to create every single piece of content.
And so content gen massively simplifies that process for partners and helps them create content together without all of the back and forth and rev cycles and what have you. And so I love the term you were talking about earlier, the, um, ecosystem enablement. Yeah. Somebody should trademark that because that’s what we need to do.
We’ve gotta enable, you know, you’ve gotta tell your two customer story, you’ve gotta enable your partners, and then you’ve gotta enable your sellers to know how to sell your solution. Because that’s the magic of these ecosystems. Mm-hmm. Is that you can connect all those people, but until you tell them what, you can’t just say, here’s my two customer brochure.
Go sell it. Right. They need to know why. What’s that value prop?
[00:17:59] Vince Menzione: So how do you help partners work with organizations like Ingram and their solution and platform?
[00:18:05] Christine Mulcahy: So we, you know, we have done all of our work in the Microsoft Partner channel in the past. Yes, yes. Um, but really, you know, the, this new platform at Ingram is fantastic because it’s not only a marketplace, but it’s connecting that partner to partner story and providing opportunities for partners to work together.
So really, I mean, the tool can be used, content gen can be used by, um. Um, partners in channels where we can work with Ingram and say, okay, well what’s the services story that you want to put out there through your channel? Mm-hmm. And then we can build that into the tool and say, okay, so if you need proof points or you need, you know, industry trends, or you wanna really tell the story of your.
Services, then the partners can go out, build their own content. It’s partner branded, it’s partner, you know, look and feel messaging led, and then they can pull in those, um, those messaging pieces so that they can align with their platform partner and tell the story.
[00:19:05] Vince Menzione: Very fascinating. Fascinating. So, um, how should MSPs and Partners position derive success with Microsoft Ingram?
How would you, how would you position them for success?
[00:19:19] Christine Mulcahy: Well, I think that. The ecosystem is moving so fast and every time we turn around there’s a new solution popping up. Mm-hmm. And what I have learned, you know, I’ve been consulting on the channel for decades, but now on the opposite side as a partner, um, trying to navigate it, it’s a whole new world.
And so I would say I’ve learned, you know, also being a software developer is very different from being a marketing consultant. Um, so I’ve learned that you’ve learned
[00:19:47] Vince Menzione: that. Front end,
[00:19:48] Christine Mulcahy: there’s a huge need. You know, we kind of talked about like Jay Mc, Bain’s concept of the seven partners that you need to work with.
Yes.
[00:19:54] Vince Menzione: The seven seats at the table we like to talk in about. Yeah.
[00:19:58] Christine Mulcahy: And I, it just, I, I knew, but I didn’t know, I didn’t internalize it like I should have gone out and looked for help in the. In the ecosystem long before I ended up developing with the developer that I worked with. Right. Or, um, at the last Ultimate Partner event, I was sitting at a table with Cloud Atlas and Justin asked me, well, how did you, um, who helped you get listed in the marketplace?
And I thought, well, we had to go figure it out ourselves. I didn’t, it didn’t even occur to me that there were partners that could have helped me with that, you know? So I’d say, you know, if you’re. Any type of partner in the ecosystem buy into these platforms because they, there’s a lot of smart people building them and doing all the work for you so that you don’t have to figure that out as part of the rest of your biz dev strategy.
And you can just focus on what you do well.
[00:20:43] Vince Menzione: Nice.
[00:20:43] Christine Mulcahy: It’ll change your life.
[00:20:45] Vince Menzione: So we’ve got the best, like a better together story here. It feels like. I think so too, Peter. Yep. We’ve got this incredible platform that you’ve built that allows these MSPs to get into the s and b market more effectively. Mm-hmm.
And there’s. Tens, hundreds of thousands of these organizations in the SMB market, right, that have certain size and scale. And then Christine, we’ve got your capabilities to help reach those, reach those audiences more effectively.
[00:21:10] Peter Graber: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:11] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:21:12] Peter Graber: I, you know, I, and I would say this too, is, um. You know, there, there’s two things you talk about enablement and things like that.
You know, when you, when you break it down, it come, I, I think it comes down to two things for a, a partner is simplified management and, and strategic growth, smarter growth. And once you solve for those from a simplified management, taking the friction out of the business and helping them from an operational flow standpoint, and then if you can point them in the right direction with AI and insights and how they grow their business.
Mm-hmm. Yes. Is those are the two biggest points. And then you bring enablement on top of that. Mm-hmm. In terms of continuing to grow their business from a, a, a product standpoint, a knowledge standpoint, um, understanding where to align their resources more effectively. Mm-hmm. Put marketing on top of that and that’s a, a very good recipe for success.
[00:22:06] Vince Menzione: Sounds, sounds terrific. Actually. And I think this market opportunity is huge. Right now. Ingram is coming about at very differentiated. You’re, you’re providing all the tools and resources I need as an MSP to be successful both within your platform as well as the vendors supporting your platform. And then content gen is helping me go to market in more effective ways.
[00:22:28] Christine Mulcahy: Yeah, and I think one of the other topics that I just had in the hallway conversation, um, was that, you know, content marketing is extremely expensive. Yeah. To create a campaign, you know, you’re spending $30,000 on your two customer campaign and then another 30 on your two partner, and then the messaging isn’t right.
And you need to tweak it and you’ve gotta go. And agencies are expensive and we can’t afford that anymore, you know? There was just a Gartner, um, industry trends report the other day that said, by 2028, 70% of marketing budgets will be spent on offline events like this.
[00:22:58] Intro: Interesting. Yeah. You know, but you
[00:22:58] Christine Mulcahy: still have to have a digital presence.
Yeah. You still have to have content to tell your story. They’re just not going to. Spend that much anymore. So you’ve gotta bring those costs down. And with a tool like Content Gen, you can create all that content and then you can ab test it. And if you wanna tweak it, you go and just modify it a little bit or clone that campaign and then change the messaging for the partner audience and just, you know, you can keep telling the story in different ways over and over again because you’ve got the content all there already in your platform.
[00:23:28] Vince Menzione: Peter, where can partners in the room and other partners watching us learn more about your solution and how do they, how do they engage with you and the team?
[00:23:38] Peter Graber: So I think most partners that have a relationship with Ingram know who their main points of contact are from a, from a sales perspective. Okay. Um.
You know, I, I think the best way to learn more about that obviously is you can Google, you can look it up online, et cetera. Yeah. But I think the best way to do that is to contact your Ingram Micro Associates that you deal with on a daily basis, and they can walk you through not only what we’re doing from an advantage and platform standpoint, but all of the services that we’re bringing to market, all of the tools that we’re equipping our MSPs with to help them grow their market, um, more strategically.
There is a boatload of information that we can download. I could probably spend a half a day talking about everything that we can bring to market from a standpoint.
[00:24:23] Vince Menzione: Very cool. But we can Google all that information and get it. We can bing it too. ’cause we’re in a Microsoft facility. They still bing around.
But How about from your side, Christine? I.
[00:24:32] Christine Mulcahy: Uh, grab me in the hallway content gen.com. Uh, you can go take a, you can sign up for a free trial right now. Yeah. Um, there’s contact information on the website. We can do a demo and get, and you’re both
[00:24:44] Vince Menzione: utilizing ai really. We talked about AI so much. Gentech ai, you’re both utilizing AI and Gentech AI to drive these solution sets mm-hmm.
And make for a better experience for these partners, right. Ly. So you’re both doing that in a big way? Yes. Yes. Great. Yep. I want to thank you both. Uh, this has been incredible in terms of sharing the information. I think there’s an awareness about what you’re doing, what Ingram’s doing, what content Jen is doing, and we are about lunchtime and I know that people are like really dying to eat.
It’s Friday afternoon, it’s been a long week, and I want to thank all the people for sticking around and spending some time. I want to thank you both for Absolutely. Thank you, spending time with us today. So thank you so much for being here. Thank.
Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate partner experience where leaders come to learn from each other.
It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge. With insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started. We’ve got big plans for you this summer as we’re taking this studio, and we’ll be hosting livestream and digital events here, and it’s all coming to you soon.
So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.
Join Peter Grabber from Ingram Micro and Christine Mulcahy from Content Gen as they unveil a powerful synergy transforming the MSP and SMB landscape. Peter details Ingram Micro’s evolution from a traditional distributor to a “platform first, experience-driven company” with their AI-powered Advantage platform, seamlessly integrating commerce, insights, automation, and enablement for multi-vendor, multi-solution environments. Christine then introduces Content Gen, an automated content development platform leveraging AI to drastically reduce the cost and complexity of content marketing for partners, enabling them to tell compelling “better together” stories and accelerate their go-to-market. This session highlights how these innovations are providing MSPs with simplified management and strategic growth, crucial for navigating the complex world of AI, hardware, and software solutions.