The document discusses Michael Dell's entrepreneurial journey, starting from his early ventures to the founding of Dell, Inc., emphasizing his direct selling model and focus on customer relationships. It highlights Dell's strategic decisions, such as eliminating resellers, maintaining close supplier relationships, and fostering a culture of ownership among employees to drive innovation and efficiency. The conclusion notes Dell's success in growing the company and achieving significant market gains by prioritizing customer needs and adapting to technological advances.

1. Reviewed by:
Rishitha Y, Ritabrata Basu, Sandhya

2. BUDDING ENTREPRENEUR
• Michael Dell's first business venture, at 12 years old, arose from
his hobby of philately.
• Targeted the segments for newspaper subscription.
• Inquisitive in nature.
• Passion for computers.
• He discovered the huge markups sustaining computer sales.
• Birth of “PC’s Limited”

3. THE GROWTH
How DELL made the process of buying the computers better?
• DIRECT SELLING
• ELIMINATE RESELLER MARKUP
• PASS SAVINGS TO THE CUSTOMERS
What all strategic questions DELL has concentrated to gain competitive
advantage?
• Where are we TODAY?
• What is our ultimate GOAL?
• What all OPPORTUNITIES can be grabbed?
• How to gain ADVANTAGE from those opportunities?

4. KEY ACTIONS
• Recruiting sales force and training them in key areas.
• Providing right technology for the right customers.
• 30 DAY money back guarantee – winning CREDIBILITY
• QUALITY - Dealing with suppliers who can meet their standards
• Maintaining close relationships with the suppliers and helping them for
continuous improvement.
• Designing the product based on high performance. (Winning
performance award)
• Release of product on time to the market.
• Low inventory

5. NARROWING DOWN ON FOCUS
Disciplined way of prioritizing the opportunities, FOCUSED GROWTH
Focusing the employees thinking in terms of shareholder value:
• Disdain inventory
• Always listen to the customer
• Never sell indirect
“In leadership, it’s important to be intuitive, but not at the expense of facts”
DELL requiring outside help – BAIN & CO.
Becoming functional – Positive and Negative
Sharing Power - allocation of top management executives
“You have to be focused on acheiving goals for the organization, not on accumulating
power for yourself”

6. STANDARDIZATION
Hiring external – organizing the product development process
Divide & Conquer - Segmentation based on customer, not by products
Retail EXIT - Focusing only on DIRECT SELLING
The DIRECT MODEL - VERSION 1.1
• Eliminate reseller  Eliminate MARKUP  Reduce Maintenance Cost (V 1.0)
• In Version 1.1 – Reduce inventory inefficiencies

7. REVOLUTIONIZING AN INDUSTRY
Launching of WWW.DELL.COM
Including the online sales – ultimate extension of direct selling
Achieving the LIFTOFF – By 1996, $1Million/day sales
Campaign on INTERNAL EVANGELISM
Driving change in others organization – Capturing the BIG BUSINESS
Bringing the Customers and Suppliers inside the business through Internet

8. CREATING A POWERFUL PARTNERSHIP
“ The greatest threat to DELL wouldn't’t come from its competitors.
It would come from our people” – Michael Dell
Developing ONE TEAM, ONE STRATEGY
Hire based on the candidates potential to grow and develop, don’t hire to
fill a job.
“We are not bringing them to do a job; we are inviting them to join the
company”
Segmenting the CEO
Make the most out of the Incidental Interactions

9. SOURCE OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
1. Mobilise your people around a goal
2. Invest in mutual long term goals
3. Don’t leave the talent search ONLY to the human resource folks !
4. Cultivate a commitment to personal growth
5. Get involved !

10. BUILD A COMPANY OF OWNERS
“At DELL everyone is an owner”
Learn Voraciously – the willingness and ability to learn constantly
• Teach innovative thinking
• Encourage smart experimentation
Mobilizing your people around a single goal
Consistent strategy and well articulated objectives:
1. Look at learning as a necessary, not a luxury
2. Study the obvious for non-obvious solutions
3. Make failure acceptable, as long as it creates learning opportunities
4. Constantly question – even the good stuffs
5. Communicate the goals of the organization to everyone
6. Treat all employees as owners

11. LEARN, DIRECT FROM THE SOURCE
Close connections with customers – major strength
Service and high quality alone was not enough – Delight your customers
1. Know your customer history and yours too!
2. Develop products from the customer point of view - They didn’t create
something and pushed it to the customers
3. Know your customer’s pulse – Beat for Beat – Direct model –
understand like and dislike –help them to be more effective
4. Become you customer’s advocate – sales team and product team
collaborate
5. Remember that one size doesn’t fit all
6. Target a customer of one – Boeing – 30 Dell personnel

12. DEVELOP A CUSTOMER – FOCUSED
PHILOSOPHY
Use the information you gain to forge a seamless, strategic partnership
How?
Turn your customers into teachers
Add value “Beyond the Box” – Who are the best customers?
British Petroleum
Expand the range of vision – problems and solutions
What do you gain from this?
Create opportunities for shared savings and also become a valued advisor

13. FORGE STRONG ALLIANCES
Dell’s strategic partnership with Suppliers
Define your value, tightly - $1000 – leverage on supplier’s expertise
Choose what you excel at, find great partners for the rest
Align complementary strengths for success
Disk drives, memory chips etc.,
Clear expectation for quality
Fast feedback – a plus from Dell
Early adoption of relevant technology – lithium batteries

14. DIFFERENTIATE FOR A COMPETITIVE EDGE
Superior customer service, achieving high velocity on inventory and in
getting new gen products to the market, focusing on the total customer
experience and of course the direct model itself !
Focus on your customer, not on competition – your greatest source of
competitive advantage
Play judo with the competition – changing competitor’s strength to
weakness
Turn disadvantage into profit – Direct method – no stores for service – in-
house service
Skate ahead of the competition – Internet revolution

15. THRIVE ON CHANGE IN CONNECTED ECONOMY
What happens next?
Find opportunity in an age of uncertainty – dive headfirst into change –
doing away with retail - readapting direct model strategy
Tap into the power of the internet
Go for hyper growth
Conventional wisdom is wrong – 127% growth - Mort

16. CONCLUSION
2013
Now a private company,
Dell accelerates its long-
term growth strategy and
focuses with a single-
minded purpose on
customers.
2014
Dell is the fastest growing,
large integrated IT
company in the world with
revenue growth across our
businesses and PC and
server share gains
outpacing the market.
2015
Dell – EMC Acquisition
$67bn
World's largest privately
controlled, integrated
technology company

17. COMPARING DELL AND IBM
“I want to compete with IBM”
They started as a company which built IBM compatible PCs.
IBM compatible PCs faster than IBM – competitive edge
6 megahertz($3995) vs 12 megahertz ($1995)