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A next step of analysis, usually associated with the 10. Relatively Buyers
externally-focused TOWS Matrix, helps to think about the large market cannot
options that a company could pursue. To do this a company share. physically
match external opportunities and threats with company’s 11. Partnership touch or see
internal strengths and weaknesses. with the tangible
This helps to identify strategic alternatives that address the Microsoft product
following additional questions: Corporation. they want
to purchase.
• Strengths and Opportunities (SO) – How can a company
Opportunities Strengths - Weakness -
uses your strengths to take advantage of the
Opportunities Opportunities
opportunities?
1. The growth 1. Strategies to 1. Increase
• Strengths and Threats (ST) – How can a company takes of enter or R&D
advantage of company’s strengths to avoid real and developing develop the spending
potential threats? economics. growing on PC
• Weaknesses and Opportunities (WO) – How can a 2. Growth in number of developme
company use company’s opportunities to overcome the online sales. developing nt and other
weaknesses company is experiencing? 3. Developme economics. product
nt of new 2. Utilize Dell’s portfolio.
• Weaknesses and Threats (WT) – How can you minimize technologies customization 2. Continue to
your weaknesses and avoid threats? such as ability and reduce
cloud integrate into costs and
storage, all possible increase
The following table no. 1 represents the application of
tablets, products. sales, by
TWOS matrix for Dell.
mobile 3. Using a continuing
Table 1: TWOS matrix phones and strong brand to
business name and implement
Strengths Weakness
servers. global their online
1. Direct sales 1. Due to low
presence, platform.
business R&D
Dell has the With an
model & spending in
ability to increase in
online sales. PCs, lack
continue to online
2. Product of
develop their retail, Dell
Customizatio competitive
products could
n. edge &
portfolios. continue to
3. Effective product
increase
Supply Chain innovation
their sales,
Management 2. Leadership
whilst
process. and
operating a
4. Inorganic managemen
more cost
growth t
effective
structure. 3. Financial
online
5. Business to debt
strategy.
business 4. Dell’s sales
Threats Strengths - Weakness -
(B2B) sales. revenue
Threats Threats
6. Providing from
1. Patents, 1. Use 1. Review
good educational
copyrights previously their
customer and
and design adopted pricing
service both universities
2. Financial inorganic strategy
before and only
recession growth to against
after sales. accounts
such as Dot expand, competition
7. Brand name for a
Com Crash taking over , gaining
and global merely 5%
3. Online possible competitive
good will. of the total
dependence competition advantage.
8. Leadership PC sales.
4. Industry life and / or 2. Target
and 5. Customers
cycle acquiring educational
management cannot go
5. Competition firms in institutions,
& to retailers
different building a
Privatization. because
industries. larger client
9. Diverse Dell has
2. Using the base and
product very
strong brand gaining a
portfolio. limited
image and large
retailers.
3
partnership market majority of consumers’ spending that might have otherwise
with share. gone to laptop or desktop computers. Large market: The large
Microsoft to market gives them a greater influence and buyer power. High
develop tab competition has resulted in the vulnerability of PC
let portfolio manufactures, allowing consumes a large range of relatively
and other similar products from various companies.
Information Threat of substitute products and services: Moderate:
Technology There is strong presence of computers throughout society and
products such will continue to be in the coming years. However, the PC
as servers. industry is being influenced by the development of substitutes,
possibly resulting in future sale. The current substitutes are
I. PORTER’S FIVE FORCES tablets, smart phones and smart TVs, which are growing in
Porter’s insights started a revolution in the strategy field popularity. Currently, these substitutes still do not have the
and continue to shape business practice and academic thinking computing power in comparison to PCs or laptops, which may
today. A Five Forces analysis can help companies assess change in the near future.
industry attractiveness, how trends will affect industry Rivalry: High: High concentration: There is fierce
competition, which industries a company should compete competition between the top manufactures in the personal
in—and how companies can position themselves for success. computer industry. Competitors are contending to produce the
Porter's Five Forces is considered a macro tool in business cost effective platform at the best price for their consumers.
analytics – it looks at the industry's economy as whole, while Industry: Due to the previous profitability of the industry,
a SWOT analysis is a micro analytical tool, focusing on a competition are using all their available resource to become
specific company's data and analysis [4]. The following figure the market leaders.
no. 1 represents the application of Porter’s Five Forces of Dell.
II. BUSINESS STRATEGY
The four market segments in a industry are thought as
Business to Business, Business to Consumer, Consumer to
Business, and Consumer to Consumer. Dell targets Business
to Business and Business to Consumer commerce to satisfy
their business and specific customers. Dell differentiates
between classes of customers because the needs of these
business customers, who buy large quantities of computers,
are different than the who want to configure an individual unit.
"Dell's business design is no top secret, of course, and it's
really been emulated with considerably less success by many
of its opponents (Henricks, 2003). "
Figure 1: Porter's Five Forces Dell's preliminary success was due to its early
implementation of the internet as the means of sales and
Bargaining Power of Suppliers: Moderate / High: marketing. "Dell's direct-to-the-customer strategy presents an
Moderate: Some suppliers have limited bargaining power due extremely attractive cost benefits that's rough to ignore. Their
to the saturated supplier market. High: Items in computer and direct interaction using their customers is still "a key drivers
laptop construction are extremely important and usually in sales for the quarter. " Dell's early on work with utilizing
sourced from trusted partners. For example, there are only two the web helped them get a join their competition while their
main suppliers of processors: Intel and AMD. With this, competition was finding it difficult to conduct successful
partnership and relationships have to be built in confidence for Business to Business procedures online since "exchanges are
both parties, giving the supply considerable bargaining power. still in their infancy and many haven't even ended up live yet.
Threat of New Entrants: Low: Capital requirement: A Matching customer ease of ordering and direct interaction
large amount of capital is required to be able to enter the through the internet proven successful because Dell believes
mobile phone market, as technological and R&D costs are that it's the client that drives the business model [5].
extremely high. Economies of scale: It would be extremely Dell acknowledged the challenges in working with the
difficult for new entrants to be able to compete with current customers and fragmented them into two distinctive
large brands in the mobile phone market as it is highly communities with different needs, working with the business
saturated and they would not be able to compete with the large customers (like businesses) and working with specific
scale that the main competitors of the mobile phone market customers. Dell did an exceptional job managing both of these
are operating at. Product differentiation: There are hundreds different kinds of consumers so far. Within the last year or
of mobile phone handsets and the main competitors in the two, Dell made a decision to split their procedures into two
mobile phone market rely on brand recognition and customer different websites with different B2B sites. With distinct sites,
loyalty to sell their products. Dell planned to "simplify the Internet procurement process for
Bargaining power of buyer: High: High competition: the businesses and organizations of all sizes, generating personal
personal computer industry is somewhat vulnerable against savings that can range to huge amount of money annually for
the bargaining power of buyers. In recent years customers large customers. " However, this notion failed, and "Dell were
have more and more alternative options to the personal required to turn off its B2B site, four months after it launched.
computer. Alternative products are suggested to be taking the
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Dell said "the website failed to appeal to more than three Cost focus strategy: Unlike the previous two strategies,
suppliers". focus strategy is founded in the choices of a small competitive
ranger within an entire industry. If an organization is deciding
III. COMPETITIVE STRATEGY upon a focus strategy then they have to primarily target a
certain sector of a market. This can be influenced by buyer
Dell’s business model focuses mainly on compliance type of geographical location. These factors therefore
with laws and rules, credibility with stakeholders, business influence a company’s approach to this strategy (Porter,
ethics, being a part of compliance groups and focusing on the 1980). In order for an organization to implement focus
changes coming due to how they reach customers, taking strategy, a firm must be able to develop expertise within a
advantage of their cloud computing technologies and sector – meeting the specific demands of specific sector. This
preventing bribery and corruption in the emerging free- strategy offers the organization the potential to have the
market. The following figure no. 2 represents Porter’s Generic competitive advantage of one sector of a market, rather than
Competitive Strategies of Dell. across a wider range of that market.
Focus strategy can adopt many different shapes and
forms, but primarily has two forms: “cost” and
“differentiation”. Within cost, an organization looks to attain
a cost advantage over a target sector. In differentiation it looks
to differentiate amongst a certain sector [8].
Competitive strategy is the approach that an organization
takes in order to gain advantage over its competitors.
According to Porter, there are two major sources of
competitive advantages: costs and differentiation. Cost-based
competitive advantage involves reducing production costs so
that an organization can earn higher profit margin or offer
products at lower price compared to competitors.
Differentiation-based competitive advantage involves
offering unique properties that are not offered by competitors’
products. Differentiation allows an organization to charge a
Figure 2: Porter’s Generic premium for their products because they offer additional
benefits to buyers.
Cost Leadership: It is observed that “low cost leadership”
helps a company to maintain above-average returns,
regardless of the competitors [6]. Cost Leadership strategy is IV. DISCUSSION OF COMPETITIVE STRATEGY
usually chosen by a company that is looking to product and Looking at Porter's Generic Strategies DELL follows a
market resources at a more affordable rate than its cost leadership strategy – best value for the best price. They
competition. The profitability and market shares influence this achieve to increase their market share through charging lower
strategy as low cost leaders are able to compete with their prices while still being profitable because of their effective
competitors and tend to aim at consumers with basic needs. direct sales model. Except of Apple – their customers are
The importance of consistence in this strategy, and claims that considered less price sensitive – the majority of competitors
a lack of consistency [7] “dilutes the positioning of the on the market as HP and Lenovo follow cost leadership
company”. Thus, a company must maintain that expenditure strategy. Differentiating is difficult on this market as PC
is at a minimum while investing enough to remain competitive standards have been set and determined long time. While
in the market. To implement a cost leadership strategy [8], an customers are primarily interested in products with low prices
organization must attain a significant relative market share, the quality still is extremely important. Mobile products,
“which requires capital investment in product R&D and smartphones and tablets, will make it more important for
manufacturing, as well as aggressive pricing.” DELL to begin to differentiate as these may be considered by
many people as substitute products.
Differentiation: This type of strategy looks to be unique
within the industry via differentiating its service/product Dell uses efficient cost structures to protect their markets
(Porter, 1980). This type of differentiation is achieved on the from the competitors by responding to competitors’ move of
basis of a certain skill or competence that offers the firm a making in-roads in the market space by reducing prices. Such
competitive advantage other its competitors. reactive response may makes Dell inward focused. Better way
to strategically position Dell on advantage of cost is to
The primary aim of this strategy is to provide a better increase market share by transforming from lowest cost
quality service/product to help produce a distinctive market producer to lowest cost supplier of products. This way the
proposition. The type of organization which can implement a company translates its cost advantage into price advantage for
differentiation strategy will have to have an above average its customers and thereby improves the market share. The
performance in the market. Cost leadership strategy is prospect of increasing the market share provide great
“characterized by a successive reduction of the selling price”, opportunity for Dell to leverage the economies of scale
a differentiation strategy means that an organization is coupled with the ruthless cost cutting measures it plans to
“capable to use a premium price, with higher profit margins.” execute. More the competitive space it occupies which also
Therefore companies look to build price loyalty and means that more competitors eliminated effective are
“inelasticity” to produce entry barriers against competitors economies of scale and as a result the costs are driven still
[8]. lower.
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Dell’s initial competitive strategy was to focus mainly on differential more
differentiation. Its strategy was to sell customized personal to offset sophisticated
computer systems directly to customers, which was a rapidly competitors’ ;
emerging market at that time (1). This was done by targeting brand • Imitation
second-time customers, those that already understand images or narrows
computers and know what they wanted. Meanwhile other other perceived
companies at the time was selling “’plain brown wrapper’ approaches differentiatio
computers” (2). By offering customizations, Dell gained a
to n, a common
better understanding of customers’ needs and wants. This
differentiatio occurrence
helped the organization position itself differently against the
more popular brands, such as Compaq and IBM. n. as industries
mature.
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advantages which help drive its revenue growth and asset also enhance the data center utility. It offers ProSupport – the
efficiency while also delivering cost savings organization AI- and ML-based support. ProDeploy accelerates technology
wide [11]. deployment in the enterprises, and accelerates client and
infrastructure managed services. Dell is providing value-
VIII. SUCCESSFUL STRATEGIES OF DELL TECHNOLOGIES added services with ProDeploy, ProSupport and Managed
Services. They can be bundled effortlessly and paired with all
The company has concentrated on the analysis of the the financial consumption models, bringing a tailored as-a-
growth opportunities in the future, to consider the customer service experience. The multi-cloud world is here and will
segments, geography and business groups, but in order to only grow, which means customers need on-demand and
obtain these opportunities, they continue to produce consistent infrastructure that yield predictable outcomes
developments to become to the market effectively. across all of their clouds, data centers and edge locations. Dell
Dell believes that if it builds an excellent technology with has 2030 moonshot goals. For every product a customer buys,
direct sell, then clients will want to buy this technology, except Dell will reuse or recycle an equivalent product. 100% of our
it must be effective in selling their technologies as it is an packaging will be made from recycled or renewable material.
image in the first place. So far, it had conducted a long-term More than half of our product content will be made from
analysis of its sales strength; Making sure that they have a recycled or renewable material [13].
sufficient number of appropriate skills and experience with
account managers, and the correct management of the X. CONCLUSION
accounts in the correct places, and in its target with the DELL quickly became incredible successful in its early
opportunities available for development. In this method, this years growing within short time from a start-up into one of the
aims to get better results of sales, while declining costs in the market leaders. Their business model and philosophy, and
sale off. In order to make the service provided to their clients their sophisticated supply-chain-management-system enabled
and clear and accountable, Dell has made several new
them for a long time to sustain their competitive advantage by
programs; therefore the development of new incentive providing low price products while still delivering high
schemes in the process to achieve greater growth and profits quality. This brand image is still alive although the company
for both Dell and its partners. had hard years in the mid 2000's. Competition is getting
The company will be the potential for growth can be stronger and profit margins smaller. While Apple grew
achieved only by gaining customer loyalty and customer quickly with their high-prized iPods, iPhones and iPads and
respect the outcome of positive experiences. There must be the related services, DELL missed the point to jump on that
better coordination of sales and marketing with targeted train and still relied on desktop, laptop and server business.
investment if the company is to increase growth and achieve Considering the decline of the PC industry they finally
an improved return on investment in those regions where it is made the right choice to expand their product palette with
seeking to create more demand, it also a need to interact with exactly these devices while still expanding on corporate
customers in those regions where the clients spend a lot of business. The decision to take the company private again at a
time on the website [12]. perfect time, shares were incredibly low, brought them the
necessary flexibility to operate without the restrictions of a
IX. THE FUTURE OF DELL TECHNOLOGIES public company. For many years the strategy of not providing
Dell Technologies’ next-generation Power product lines in 'all things to all people', their strong market segmentation and
storage, servers, data protection and networking include tailor- specialization, brought the lasting success. Based on market
made solutions for the SMB market all the way up to the research they were able to formulate their action plan which
largest enterprises in the world. Its new PowerEdge servers ultimately became DELL's brand repositioning and the 'Power
aim to become the bedrock of modern data centers, while its to do more' campaign.
PowerMax storage line is chock-full of automation. Dell Finally the decision to generally stick to their direct model,
Technologies also is betting that its PowerSwitch networking but with modifications of pre-built configurations but to enter
gear will drive new wins in 5G and at the edge. And, as the emerging markets China and India with thousands of own
protecting data becomes paramount for customers, its new retail stores was the right choice. For corporate customers this
PowerProtect data protection appliances are able to manage, may be easy through dedicated sales and service
recover and secure data at scale. representatives but for PC consumers they closely need to
The new streamlined portfolio spanning from the edge to monitor product and customer service reviews on dedicated
the core to the cloud is now locked and loaded, executives portals and on their own web clients.
said. And, according to Michael Dell, now is the time for
solution providers to sell across the full Dell Technologies REFERENCES
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