The Top 25 Newsmakers of 2006 – Number 8: Ingram Micro Canada Martin Kalsbeek

Martin Kalsbeek has quickly rewarded the trust shown by his superiors when they chose him for the demanding Canadian general manager position.

Many of the changes he made this year fall under the category of improving the customer service. That’s been a big focus for Ingram Micro, as has making sure that message cascaded down to the more than 800 Ingram associates working in Canada.

For resellers, Ingram introduced initiatives to improve sales coverage, especially for SMB resellers. These included proactively increasing their credit lines, implementing enhancements such as Web banking, using lower-cost transportation carriers and being far more responsive to resellers’ special bids.

Ingram’s VentureTech Network (VTN) grew by 15 members in 2006. Kalsbeek calls remaining recruitment of VARs for VTN now “more of a fine tuning exercise,” to ultimately to bring membership up to the 100-VAR level.

The controversial decision to offer managed services via the Ingram Micro Seismic Platform has calmed down, argues Kalsbeek, mainly because resellers have seen the program can complement their offerings.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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