Dell Case Study

...

Dell Inc. needs to further exploit its acquisition of Perot Systems, and possibly further expand organically, to continue to compete with its competitors in the complete IT services arena. It can manage this thru its expertise in direct marketing and focus on increasing its share of the market in large enterprise and public business. They can use their direct marketing and marketing knowledge in general, to tout its x86 open-system servers and position it to where the customers believe it will be better than any proprietary server – hopefully cutting into IBM and Oracle server business. If it can manage to couple its manufacture of good hardware, supply chain management, process engineering with Perot Systems services it most certainly will be a force to contend with. By placing this many resources in this area it will also have the added benefit of maintaining a high entry barrier for new entrants.

To compete with its rivals Dell Inc. can utilize its proficiency in process engineering and supply chain management and even continue to wait until high-end computing devices become standard before they utilize them in their products. This will allow for a lower R&D budget and allow the company to continue to focus on its processes and cost reduction.

The main ingredient to any shift in strategy is management. Dell Inc. needs to ensure that its management and the company as a whole know and understand its new goals and strategy. Since R&D will be kept to a minimum management needs to be very apt at environment scanning and be familiar with how to ethically utilize business intelligence. If the current management does not have the skill sets required, then as in the past, Dell Inc. needs to reach out and get seasoned apt managers who can execute Dell Inc.’s new strategy.

References

Wheelen, T. L., Hunger, J. D., Hoffman, A. N., & Bamford, C. E. (2015). Strategic Management and Business Policy: Globalization, Innovation, and Sustainability (14th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Learning Solutions.