Ingram Micro Chief Digital Officer Sanjib Sahoo has spearheaded the technology distribution giant's digital transformation as well as the Ingram Micro Xvantage digital experience platform, which serves as the company's digital twin. However, transformation never ends.
I caught up with Sahoo, a Constellation Research Business Transformation 150 Hall of Famer, at Connected Enterprise 2023 to talk about future proofing and the year ahead.
Technologies to think about three- to five-years from now. Sahoo said harmonizing data and its aggregation will be the No. 1 theme in the years ahead. "Harmonization is a big challenge in large enterprises," said Sahoo. "Data is everywhere. Master data is an issue. How do you get real-time data harmonization and do change data capture from multiple systems and build the harmonization in the cloud?"
"No. 2 is definitely AI, but not for the sake of AI but using AI for experiences with the compute and storage it needs. We make AI agile intelligence. Right now, AI is still okay. How do we move to a more AI first approach that's extremely important? I think large language models will be much more popular in terms of customer, service, inquiries and everything."
Sahoo's No. 3 trend is "the journey from software to platforms." "I want to see much more orchestrations of ecosystems in the industry and connected ecosystems where AI and data blurs what's happening between different industries because you're serving a common customer," he said.
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According to Sahoo, data and AI will enable a single pane of glass for customers. "I think we'll see more ecosystems going forward with cloud data and AI," he said.
Value chains. Sahoo's third trend plays into the value chain concept that in theory creates a flywheel across industries where every player and customer in the value chain benefits. Sahoo said the core value of value chains has to be customer involvement and a flywheel effect. "For example, if you buy a car, you should be able to tie it up with insurance and everything a customer needs," said Sahoo. "In my industry if we're selling hardware, we can use machine learning at the right point to offer a warranty. At that point it's easier for the customer. Every core competency in the flywheel makes it easier for the customer to do business with us."
Connective tissue in value chains. The theory behind value chains makes sense, but the incentives to get rivals to work together may be tricky. Sahoo said on the technology side, "the world is moving from pure API integrations to data integration with machine learning models." "You can take any format of data using machine learning, convert it to your format and build the joint integration," said Sahoo.
The connective tissue on the business side will revolve around bundles.
"You have to create more bundles of solutions. In our industry, an average solution has six products. No one buys one technology item in isolation," said Sahoo. "What is happening is that you have a core platform or offering and then you bring in bundles at the right price and take complexity out for the customer."
Challenges with value chains and making them operate smoothly. "The biggest challenge is integrating your systems and making it nimbler and more flexible," said Sahoo. "Systems of record, systems of engagement, systems of experience and systems of engagement have to be tied together and orchestrated. Then you can bring your own data set." Today, most enterprises are struggling to extract data from their enterprise resource planning systems and really build intelligence.
Buying or building these capabilities. Sahoo said whether enterprises build these ecosystems or buy into them will depend on engineering and product acumen. "What you have to do is customize your architecture and build it in a way that gives you the business model flexibility to pivot and scale your business," said Sahoo. "And you have to build the product your customers really need using a feedback loop." Bottom line: Whether you build or buy the flexibility of architecture is critical.
Architecture lessons. Sahoo said Ingram Micro started with three layers. The first is the data engine and experience. "The data part is an intelligent mesh that replicates all the data from the different ERPs across the world. Then it stages the data on the fly and harmonizes it in the cloud," explained Sahoo.
"Then we move to build a lot of autonomous engines where we can communicate synchronous and asynchronous with the data. That gives us the flexibility to add agents that are completely segregated from the data layer. The agent to experience layer is completely headless where you can build in any experience such as mobile applications or desktop."
In 2023, Ingram Micro launched its new Xvantage Mobile Application on this architecture.
Sahoo added: "If you think about abstraction and every layer you can move without migrating or rationalizing the footprint as you transform."
