SWOT analysis defined is an overall evaluation of the company’s strengths(S), weaknesses (W), opportunities (O), and threats (T). Strengths include internal capabilities, resources, and positive situational factors that may help the DELL companies serve their customer and achieve their target or specific objectives. Weaknesses are including internal limitations and negative situational factors that may influence the DELL’s company performance. Opportunities are the favorable factors or trends in the external environment that the DELL companies may be able to exploit to their advantage. The threats are the unfavorable external factors or trends that may present challenges to performance.
Strengths
Product customization
Dell companies have successfully differentiated their product and offer different products, services, or product features through the use of information systems. They use information systems to customize and personalize their products and it has given them a very large competitive advantage in the area of personal computers (PCs) and laptops market. For example, Dell has allows their customers to customize their laptops such as the laptops size (14” or 15.6”), laptops body colour (red, white, black), or the laptops software such as laptops system (Window7 or 8), core processor system (i3 or i5). Dell allows their customers design on their own laptop and choose the hardware inside their laptop through their website.
Direct Selling through the Internet
Dell recognized as one of the largest personal computer vendor in the world and its strength was selling their products directly to their consumers and keeping its costs lower than those of other hardware vendors. Dell are employed a direct to consumer sales technique ...
... middle of paper ...
...when working with public and government agencies.
Reduce cost
Dell was the first personal computer manufacturer to use the Website to take customer orders. Dell can gain the advantage because it can attract the customers by convincing them its product differs from the other competitor. For example, customers enter dell.com through the unique pages tailored to their needs, and all have available to the website service tools. By this advantage, Dell can even save the cost of wastage. Besides that, Dell also has an efficient supply chain management system with respect to procurement, manufacturing and distribution. They do not manufacture its own products, which mean that they assemble their products using cheap labor and components from suppliers. This help them achieve strategic competitive advantage as it can assemble and distribute products in an efficient manner.
Dell’s main strength lies in their perfection of the Direct Model, which boasts a production process that lasts only a day and a half so the company is able to serve customers quickly and has the capacity to withstand very large orders. Dell built held no finished goods inventory on hand, which helps to reduce idle assets and risk. The company maintained excellent relations and communication with suppliers who were able to adhere to Dell’s just-in-time inventory management and allowed suppliers to send shipments direct to customers, reducing inefficiency. Dell encouraged suppliers to locate their facilities in close proximity to assembly operations. Additionally, Dell had very high customer service and support satisfaction and maintained some of the best performance metrics in the industry. Finally, their main source of revenue came from businesses and large government institutions and no single customer represented more than 2% of their sales, which lowers their risk of buyer power.
To assess the attractiveness of a new venture, Gretzky (2010) recommends the use of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threat (SWOT) analysis. The SWOT, identified in Table 4 presents conclusions on both the internal and external environment by matching strategy with strengths and opportunities (Thompson et al. 2016).
There are several current legal and regulatory aspects that face the company. The company has to meet the entire legal requirement and frame work of operating in computer technological industry as far as quality and price regulations are concerned. Dell has been able to meet the legal and standard requirements in the manufacture, distribution and promotion of its products. For instance it offers its products at reasonable prices that reflect the industry pricing regulations. The...
A SWOT analysis analyzes the current state of the company and shows the companies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
The method used in this analysis is the SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for, strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. “The SWOT analysis points to strategic issues organizational decision makers must address in their pursuit of sustainable competitive advantage and high levels
This type of analysis is designed to help identify several areas of a business that may need improvement and other areas where the company may be able to improve upon. SWOT is an acronym for; Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats. A company should consider this analysis to be one of the most important steps to becoming one of the leading stores and schools of this nature in the area.
Dell combined packaged applications from Microsoft and others with its homegrown software. That will help Dell integrate its planning and manufacturing systems with those of suppliers and create a free information flow within their respective core systems.
In terms of Entry Barriers, Dells direct to consumers sales approach has increased their sales each year and they will soon be among their top competitors. Because of this approach, Dell has entered into this highly competitive market in a unique way. The biggest entry barrier that Dell has to face when entering into the technology industry is having customers gain the trust of company over the more popular veteran computer companies. Nevertheless many of competing companies use a range of different suppliers. Competitor Sun Microsystems annual sales are lower than Dell's. They offer an online service where customers can order servers, and personal computers. They differ from the rest of the organizations is that they do not use the Microsoft operating system which is a weakness compared to the rest. Sun does not see Dell as a major competitor, in obvious place of Dell; they see Microsoft as a major competitor along with Hewlett-Packard and IBM
Dell is one of the renowned companies in the world. If someone is asked to name the companies, which sell computers, he/she will definitely include the name of Dell (Martin 2002). In fact, it is widely accepted brand in the world. However, with the arrival of rival companies, post 2007, for Dell, it was testing to stay alive in the race in the computer industry. Dell in effect is acknowledged by some experts as one of the vulnerable brands. Hence, it would be preemptive for the corporation to continue to exist in the contest, where big companies, such as Apple and Acer have dominated the market by this
The SWOT analysis is a method used to evaluate the attributes (of a particular company) that will support the firm's effort in achieving their goals as well as the attributes that will weaken the company.
Historically, personal computer companies produced most of the components for a computer which they assembled into their final products and distributed to resellers. The manufacturing of these components was vertically integrated into the organisation. Dell, as a small start-up, could not build this infrastructure. Instead, they developed a model where they developed relationships with organisations that could provide these components, allowing Dell to focus on selling and delivering computers. By selling directly to customers, initially through mail orders and later by using the internet, Dell avoided reseller mark-up. Dell also enabled customers to order customised computers, which Dell then assembled after receiving the order (Magretta, 1998, p.73-74). “Customers got exactly the computer they wanted and Dell saved money making the computers only when they were ordered” (Hill & Seggewiss, 2008)....
Dell Computer’s business model, when viewed with that of a traditional manufacturer was set aside as unbelievable. When Michael Dell thought of making a business like Dell Computer, he focused on making personal computer systems and selling directly to customers. Personal Computer 's Limited could better understand customers ' needs and provide the most effective computing solutions to meet those needs. Notably quoted as saying that “technology is about enabling human potential,” Mr. Dell’s vision of how technology should be designed, manufactured, and sold forever changed the IT industry.
A SWOT analysis is a measure tool to summarize a company’s internal and external aspects. By measuring the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and looking for improving solutions by using the strengths and opportunities to improve on the weaknesses and take the necessary actions concerning any threats a company can survive in today’s world market.
Dell Computer was first known as PCs Limited in 1984, selling PC components and PCs under the brand name PCs Limited. Dell’s strategy was to sell directly to end users; by eliminating the retail markup, Dell was able to sell IBM clones at about 40% below an IBM PC price. By 1985, the company was assembling its own PC designs and had about 40 employees. Sales had reached $33 million by the year ending 1986.
New online manufacturer brand e.g. Dell.com - Entrepreneurs saw opportunities for developing online manufacturers' brands that took advantage of online technologies that enabled innovative new products to be adapted to customer preferences, and by using IT to enable efficient and effective operations such as assembly and logistics.