Business Strategy - Dell Computer
The vision “Dell is a smarter way to buy a computer”, provides the innovative notation to the curious buyers. Introducing the new concept of confirming a PC purchase via phone or Internet has triggered the consumers’ interest in finding more about the capabilities of the company. Dell has eliminated the traditional way of purchasing a computer via a reseller, it allows its consumers to directly purchase them via their website or call in to their customer service centre. With this strategy, customers are able to purchase computers at the lowest price due to the elimination of the middleman.
Apart from the manufacturing of personal computers, Dell has also gone into partnership with various reputable companies to produce monitors, printers and other peripherals. Dell has increased its emphasis in the production of servers and storage devices as the demand for servers are increasing by corporate customers.
Dell Business Strategy
Dell’s proactive approach has helped the company to lay future traits which it would be going. Dell’s strategies were determined with the focus on their core components identified by Michael namely as build-to-order manufacture, partnership with suppliers, Just-In-Time (JIT) Components Inventory, direct sales to customers with their award-winning customer and technical support team and the use of the Internet and E-commerce technology.
There are various factors which Dell needs to evaluate to determine what need to be improved with. The recent price strategy Dell announced on the price cutting of all computers up to 22%, with confidence that its competitors are unable to slash prices to compete, especially a day after Hewlett Packard announcement on its business loss.
Dell partnership with suppliers has been closely collaborated to meet its customer’s requirement. They picked the name brand for its computer components to entrance its PCs’ performance and quality. It committed to purchase a specified percentage of its requirement from the chosen suppliers and thus assured Dell a timely basis of supplies. It also invited its suppliers’ engineers to join in its early stage of planning and design. This will transfer the knowledge of these engineers to Dell’s own workforce and helps in troubleshooting the customers’ problems in the early stage of promoting new products. With its commitment, Dell able to roll out Just-In-Time (JIT) delivery plan on its requirement of suppliers products with shared information and sales statistics. The best strategic alliance is not always apparent. That is why time is needed to explore the operational fits, as well as the relative present and future competitive position (Robert, 1999)
At Dell, they outsource all the core R&D and component production facilities. Dell concentrates on its own resources on developing a deep understanding of the customer and their requirements, maintaining intimate trading relationship with its customers and partners. Suppliers provide the largest part of the investment and expertise needed to support the broad array of customer requirements. To create a seamless product and service mix for their wide array of customers, Dell has needed to integrate its processes with those of its suppliers.