Dell's Working Capital Business Case

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

Tying up too much capital in products that are not in demand could be a fatal mistake for struggling small businesses. Moreover, Inventory management can mean the difference between success and failure for some companies. According to the New York Times article, Macy’s was able to post a profit last quarter thanks in large part to improvements it made to its inventory management system. In spite of the unstable economic conditions and the huge competition in the market such as J.C Penny and Kohl’s, Macy’s was able to get market share and raise their profit. In this paper, I will be briefly discussing the inventory management history at Macy’s and how the changes in inventory management helped the

Dell's cash conversion cycle has been negative. The negative numbers reflect that there is a disconnect between the direct labor manufacturing overhead in creating the final product. But some people think that it is okay and that Dell has an excellent future planned.

Dell uses a just in time order fulfillment policy and accurate forecasting of sales to minimize inventories. This allowed Dell to hold inventory of finished products far below levels of their competitors (10-20% compared to 50-70% industry level) and furthermore allowed them to quickly implement changes to their product lines as new technologies became available. This quick inventory turnover also allowed Dell to retain more capital. Finally, this policy enabled Dell to respond immediately to technological progress in components and deliver state of the art new finished products (e.g. Pc’s holding the newest Pentium microprocessors) while competitors

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

The advantages of Dells model are: The internet allows Dell an extensive scope and reach for its products at a relatively low price (Dedrick and Kraemer 2001). Using the internet Dell has been able to automate many of its business functions, such as product configuration, order entry and technical support (Dedrick & Kraemer 2001), therefore the company can achieve higher revenues without customer service costs increasing greatly. Online configuration ensures that the customer gets exactly what they want. Dells build to order strategy means that inventory levels are low, they only hold approximately 4-8 days of stock, therefore inventory costs are low (Breen 2004).

The case stated that the purchases were forecast to be $2.7 million. Since level production would require equal purchases for each month, we divided total purchased by 12 months to determine the monthly accounts payable. Next, we added the accounts payable, notes payable, interest payable, accrued taxes, long-term debt, and shareholder's equity. This summation gives us the total liabilities and equity.

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)

worldwide to serve the customers and is famous for the variety of products that it provides in the

5. You now have all the necessary information to calculate the weighted average cost of capital for Dell. Calculate the weighted

Having the low cost advantage Dell is able to expand the gap between cost and customer's willingness to pay. Therefore, they are able to satisfy their end-consumers, who are educated want product stability, high-end performance and low lifetime costs. They have served the US market and started to expand their market worldwide; in addition, they have

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.

The terminal year cash flow accounts for the recovery of NWC, the after-tax salvage value of the new machine, and the lost

Dell set itself apart from the competition by developing a system to better manage its working capital. While competitors focused on forecasting future sales, Dell developed the Build-To-Order model. This allowed for Dell to maintain their inventory cost at a minimum, which in turn lowered their cost of goods sold. Through this process Dell’s Work-In-Process (WIP) inventory and finished goods inventory in relation to present total inventory in the 1990’s was approximately 10% to 20%. This knocks out the competition which stood at about 60%. Dell definitely set itself apart from the competition. Dell made sure to master this process which allowed them to provide a service to

There more management methods of inventory of how to optimize inventory. Dell uses already the Just-In-Time inventory. If the optimization of the JIT processes should be done then “the whole supply chain” has to be observed. The dependency form supply get higher and the shortages problems can happen. As the result would be a disappointed