Dell vs. Apple Essay

Concerning corporate customer service by Dell and Compaq should be mentioned deep understanding of customer needs at Dell Corporation and 24/7 support against based on forecast production system with 64 days of delivery period. (see Appendix 4, 4.1 for detailed explanation)

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak was founded Apple Computers on April 1st, 1976. Throughout Apples’ history there are a number of events that helped shape the company as we know it today.

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’s business processes are mainly customer focused and are not determined by what managers and staff is willing to provide. They address the zero-value-gap principle by providing the customer with the product that they desire, consistently, by only building products when they are requested by the customer. The build-to-order philosophy enabled the company to build customer value with a quick

Fulfilling the client/customer’s requirement Dell perform primary and support activities that produces cost effective and differentiated features. The company provide

Thanks to just in time manufacturing system, Dell built its brand as an efficient and

In 1976, when Jobs was just 21, he and Wozniak started Apple Computer. The duo started in the Jobs family garage, and funded their entrepreneurial venture by Jobs selling his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak selling his beloved scientific calculator. Jobs and Wozniak are recognized for revolutionizing the computer industry by categorizing the technology and making the machines smaller, cheaper, intuitive and accessible to every day consumers. Wozniak was in charge of making the computers while Jobs was in charge of

Dell, one of the largest technological corporations in the world, sells personal computers, software, computer peripherals and other digital products among the world. According to the Fortune 500 list, Dell is currently listed as number 51. Dell is well known for its customer-oriented services such as supply chain management and electronic commerce. More specifically, the supply chain management (SCM) used by Dell allows customers to build their own PC online and successfully satisfies each customer’s specification. The selling and buying of products in Dell is conducted over electronic systems, for instance, online transaction process enables consumers attain various services through the Internet. Such considerate

Steve Jobs’ first rise began in 1976 when he and friend Stephen Wozniak founded Apple Computers. Apple became very successful in the early years after their startup, aided in large part by the release of the Macintosh, the very first successful computer with a graphical user interface otherwise known as a GUI.

Products were first stored in company warehouses and later dispatched to resellers, retailers, and other intermediaries who typically added a 20–30 percent markup before selling to their customers. But Dell sells directly to all its customers, “from home-PC users to the world’s largest corporations”.

Dell developed its internal business process by creating production cells that start assembly at the point of order. It also established an internal information system to make the details of the products under production electronically available to all parties within the chain. To manage the supply of computer parts, Dell maintained close relationships with their suppliers and logistics providers to make their vendors manage the

This situation was different to Dell’s supply chain, were by using new technologies Dell shared information in a real time fashion with its suppliers, helping them know Dell’s daily production requirements making the supplier more responsive to Dell’s needs.

In Dell’s website, there is also an interface called the ‘premier page’ for corporate customers to facilitate B2B or Business to Business sales and to separate them from the personal use customers. The interface is designed for purchasing manager or whoever is in charge to log on and place an order. This interface is also customized according to the company’s needs.

By grafting its system of custom direct sales onto the Internet infrastructure, Dell has transformed these activities, creating an innovative and efficient procurement, production, and distribution network. The innovative advance made by Dell in deploying Internet communication as the foundation of its production network, is a process innovation. Although to some extent, the Internet has enabled Dell to create a new product -- a PC custom-configured through Internet communication -- it is the process of organizing flows of materials and information within its network, from customer order to procurement, production and delivery, by means of Internet communication, that defines the innovation at the Firm. The case supports this notion by stating “While most other PCs were sold preconfigured and pre-assembled in retail stores, Dell offered superior customer choice in system configuration at a deeply discounted price, due to the cost-savings associated with cutting out the retail middleman. Additionally, an important side-benefit of the Internet-based direct sales model was that it generated a wealth of market data the company used to efficiently forecast demand trends and carry out effective segmentation strategies. This data drove the company’s product development efforts and allowed Dell to profit from information on the value drivers in each of its key customer

The development of Apple Inc. came during the unstable economic times of the 1970’s. Best friends and college dropouts, Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak pooled their electronic and business