Dell Inc. Company 's Strategy

In 1994, Dell made the bold decision to remove their products from retail stores and focused on direct to customer sales. In 1996 Dell began selling through their website which is to this day their most successful sales channel. By eliminating their retail store presence Dell was able to reduce costs on multiple fronts, reduce inventory, and maximize profits. Dell created an order system which allowed customers to specify and select options, components and features they wanted on their Dell device. Dell 's just in time inventory system lowered inventory holdings to just 3 days from 9 days and storage costs were thus minimized significantly. In 1995, Dell entered the Chinese market where a population of 1.3 billion was a great opportunity to create a significant market presence; IBM, Compaq, and Hewlett-Packard had all penetrated the Chinese market prior to this date and had opened offices in China during the early 1990’s. It wasn’t long before Dell proved to be worthy competition with not only international companies but also with local companies like Toshiba, Samsung, NEC and Acer. With so

Dell Computer Corporation was founded in 1984 by Michael Dell. From the early 1990s until the mid-2000s, Dell was ranked as a PC market leader relying on their distinctive marketing pattern “Direct Model” which undertook direct communication with customers and provided customized products. Recently, the PC industry is facing inconceivable worldwide competition, and Dell is gradually losing their competitive advantages by using its direct model in critical business segments. The company is facing shrinkage of growth, increasing competition, declining quality of customer service, and limitation of expansion. These issues have an enormous impact on Dell’s position as a technological giant in the PC industry.

Dell put together a business strategy that included mass customization and just-in-time manufacturing (letting customers design their own computers and custom-building systems). Dell also stuck with its direct sales plan and offered sales on the Internet.

Dell. Dell’s products—computers, servers and printers—are commodities. Dell tends not to develop the technologies underlying these products. Instead, it purchases the components from firms that develop the technologies (semiconductors and computer software). Dell’s direct-to-customer marketing strategy is not unique, but the extent to which Dell performs this strategy better than anyone else in the industry gives it a competitive advantage. Its size, purchasing power, quality control, and efficiency permit it to operate as a low-cost provider.

Majority of Dell’s individual devices are provided by outside suppliers which consist of China, Korea, Mexico, and Singapore. There are over sixteen countries that are involved in the manufacturing process of Dell products; however, China, Korea, Mexico, and Singapore are responsible for the key components of Dell personal computer products. China manufacturers are responsible for keyboards; Korea manufacturers are responsible for LCD and memory chips, Mexico manufacturers provide batteries, and Singapore manufacturers provide hard and disk drives. Penang, Malaysia, Xiamen, China, Bracknell, UK, Manila, Philippines, Chennai, India, Hyderabad, India, Noida, India, Hortolandia and Porto Alegre, Brazil, Bratislava, Slovakia, Łódź, Poland,

This allows Dell to have more control over its product offering, by eliminating retailers and therefore have more control over the type of customer service its customer base receives.

Historically, Dell has been known as an industry leader in supply chain management. They have been credited with developing supply chain processes that have come to be recognized as some of the most innovative not only in their industry but throughout all business sectors. All of these accolades made Dell an unlikely choice since there didn’t appear to be much room for improvement, at least from a supply chain standpoint. However, over the past few

DELL’s PC and laptops business have strong market share in the United States and is fast gaining market share worldwide with a double-digit growth rate in countries such as India and China. DELL is ranked the world's number two PC maker with a market share of 13.7 percent for the 2nd quarter of the year 2009, according to the industry tracker IDC. Due to the recent global economic downturn, DELL posted a 22% decline in PC revenue, which made up to about 60% of DELL’s overall revenue (Source: Reuters 7/10/2009 - Appendix 1.1). PC and laptops are DELL's core businesses. DELL’s PC business continues to grow in Asia and the focus will be in China and India for the next few years.

With a net revenue of $61,133,000,000 is the second largest computer manufacturer company in the word and the number one in United States. Dell focuses on Business to Business(B2B) and Business to Consumer(B2C) commerce to satisfy their business and individual customers. Dell differentiates between classes of customers because the needs of their business customers, who buy large quantities of computers, are different than the individuals who want to configure a single unit. The present

Dell is considered a very successful company. According to Govindarajan & Gupta (2005) one of the successes is its customer-direct concept that has been practiced since the company 's inception. The concept involves dealing with customers directly and not through a third party, which helps maintain the quality of the relationship with its customers and also the products. In addition, this concept allows Dell to eliminate unnecessary inventories, warehouse space and storage expenses. Dell succeeds by expanding its business, which can be measured by how it creates relationships with other big businesses, such as Walmart, Boeing, and Ford. Dell expands its business by providing products other than computers, for

Dell is a computer corporation recognized for manufacturing computer systems through parts assemble. In 1983, Michael Dell saw an opportunity in using IBM compatible computers for a new assembly line that can be sold to local businesses. The idea as explained by Michael Dell, in one of his interview, is that in the early days of computers' manufacturing, companies had to be able to produce every part of the system. As the industry matured, companies started to focus on single parts and to become specialized in creating items that can be assembled with other parts to prepare a computer. As a result, Dell understood that to have a competitive edge in the market, they needed to

Supply-Chain Management is the activities that procure materials and services, and transform them into intermediate goods and final products and deliver them, through a distribution system (Heizer & Render, 2011, p. 452). DELL is a computer technology corporation that develops sells, repairs and supports, computers and computer related products. DELL has realized that supply chain is becoming more and more important for the success of today’s business world and they work accordingly to keep a competitive advantage in the market. This study will examine to what extent Dell has used supply chain management to gain and retain a competitive advantage in the computer market.

The founder of Dell Computer Incorporation is Michael Dell in 1984. Dell’s primary products are personal and office computers and business of Dell also engages in other products such as printers and software. A feature that determines PC companies such as Dell to manage their products is through standardization of PCs. The main benefit of standardization is that it helps Dell to reduce the cost of productions. However, when Dell adopted standardization strategy, it made Dell more generic with other PCs companies such as IBM, Compact and Hewlett-Packard since most of PCs companies had access to the same suppliers such as Intel and Microsoft.

Michael Dell, the founder of Dell, Inc., recently took the company private, because he would like to concentrate on the Enterprise Solutions, Software and Services divisions. He felt that stockholders did not want to change the core business from the manufacturing of computers. This doesn’t mean he plans to stop manufacturing computers; in fact, he wants to sell computers at a competitive price to get

In 1988, Dell brought its technology to the public. After four years of business the company began introducing its products to the general public worldwide. By 1991, the company’s international sales had doubled for the third year in a row. Dell began tapping into other aspects of the computer market in 2003 with the introduction of Dell printers. Twenty-one years after being founded, in 2005, Dell tops Fortunes “America’s Most Admired Companies” list. (Company Heritage)