Dell - key organisational capabilities

Organization


圖片參考：http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/ae/Dell_logo.svg/150px-Dell_logo.svg.png


A Board of Directors of nine people runs the company. Both Michael Dell, the founder of the company, and Kevin Rollins, the CEO, serve on the board. Other board members include Don Carty, William Gary, Judy Lewent, Klaus Luft, Alex Mandl, Michael A. Miles, and Sam Nunn. Shareholders elect the nine board members at meetings, and those board members who do not get a majority of votes must submit a resignation to the board, which will subsequently choose whether or not to accept the resignation. The board of directors usually sets up five committees which have oversight over specific matters. These committees include the Audit Committee, which handles accounting issues, including auditing and reporting; the Compensation Committee, which approves compensation for the CEO and other employees of the company; the Finance Committee, which handles financial matters such as proposing mergers and acquisitions; the Governance and Nominating Committee, which handles various corporate matters including nomination of the board; and the Antitrust Compliance Committee, which attempts to prevent company practices from violating antitrust laws.

The corporate structure and management of Dell extends beyond the board of directors. The Dell Global Executive Management Committee sets the strategic direction for how the corporation keeps customers at the forefront, from designing and manufacturing computer systems to offering products that meet customers' requirements to providing the sufficient service and support. Dell has regional senior vice presidents for countries other than the United States, including Paul Bell for EMEA and Stephen J. Felice for Asia/Japan. Other officers include Martin Garvin (senior vice president for worldwide procurement) and Susan E. Sheskey (vice president and chief information officer).


Support

Dell Inc routes technical support queries according to component-type and to the level of support purchased with a unit. Currently Dell offers four levels of customer supportand encourages customers to educate themselves on the differences between these service types.

Dell Inc brands its current service agreements at four levels:

Basic
Silver
Gold
Platinum Plus.

A primary criticism of Dell's customer-support states that, because of the variety in service types available, the Dell system sometimes transfers customer calls several times between queues before they reach the appropriate department.

Though the service-agreements between Dell and its customers on the higher-level support agreements (Silver, Gold, and Platinum Plus) do not specifically state the guarantee of American-agent technical support, Dell has opened up several new call-centers in the United States and Canada to begin handling enterprise-class technical support requests.

According to the Better Business Bureau however, complaints about Dell more than doubledin 2005, to 1,533.

In the Americas, Dell has customer-contact centers in Ottawa, Ontario; Central Texas; Middle Tennessee; Chesapeake; Roseburg, Ore; Twin Falls, Idaho; Oklahoma City, Okla; San Salvador, El Salvador; as well as Glace Bay, Nova Scotia and Panama City, Panama.[2]

In the Asia-Pacific region, Dell provides customer support from Pasay City, Philippines; Penang, Malaysia; and Xiamen and Dalian, China.

In India, Dell has customer support centers in the northern cities of Gurgaon and Mohali; and in the southern cities of Hyderabad and Bangalore.

Dell Computer is indeed an assembler rather than a manufacturer, it mainly assembles computer components from major suppliers such as Intel, AMD, and other component manufacturers after taking orders from volume quantity buyers, who are mostly office and institution buyers (such as big firms, government and universities) seeking for low cost. These buyers would have own IT staff who are competent of what computer configuration, system and software needs and installation for operation that requires low degree of after sales service in order to return much saving to customers.

No R&D costs, taking customers' order through tele-marketing & internet as point-of-sales system; advertising at low cost media like newspapers, flies & pamphlets as Dell's business strategy is an emphasis of high efficiency & low cost with mass customization embedded with JIT inventory like Toyota’s TPS, Its product is simple and basic, and looks very odd with low degree of differentiation as Dell believes computer product just a commodity having very short life that few customers are willing to invest too much for something prestigious

Dell builds orders at last minutes after collecting substantial no. of orders from customers as postpone of aggregate demand that could realize economies of scale in assembling processes.
Its direct sales model is sensitive to what customers' needs instantly and trend of demand that is able to avoid demand uncertainty. It doesn't need to have high inventory and avoid the risks of dead stocks since computer is an extremely and easily obsolete product and its suppliers would be willing to take this role due to strong bargaining (VMI), and even if stocking components is much less risk.
It doesn't employ retailers and sales staff--the intermediaries that the cost can be saved or return to customers for their interests.
Owns no mortar & bricks and outlets that distribution is essential to business success, it delivers computer products to customers by courier service at low cost; the courier (DHL) companies would have low bargaining power to Dell when Dell continuously can give big business to them.

Dell also smartly plays well in supply chain management—HK and China market for example, its products are usually made in Xiamen, China where is very much low operating cost and also close to the big target market, support with courier service for rapid delivery of products that such the waiting time after booked order is still acceptable by customers