Dell regroups around four customer segments
Computer maker Dell reorganized its global management structure to focus on four customer groups, and some executives are out of a job, the company said Wednesday.
CEO Michael Dell
The company's consumer business already is a global operation, but now three other groups will follow suit: those for big business customers, government customers, and small- and medium-size business customers.
"We have laid the foundation for the transition from a global business that's run regionally to businesses that are really globally organized," Chairman and CEO Michael Dell said in a statement. "Customer requirements are increasingly being defined by how they use technology rather than where they use it."
Michael Dell has been rejiggering company management since his return to the Dell CEO role nearly two years ago.
As part of the move, Mike Cannon, president of global operations and one of the CEO's new hires since his return to power, will retire on January 31. And Mark Jarvis, chief marketing officer, will leave during the company's current fiscal quarter, though he'll continue to advise Dell. Jarvis will be replaced by Erin Nelson, promoted from vice president of marketing for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Update 3:55 p.m. Friday: Cannon will be replaced by Jeff Clarke, who has been with the company for more than 20 years, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Clarke is a senior vice president of the business product group.
Steve Schuckenbrock, a 2006 hire who's currently president of global services and chief information officer, will lead the large enterprise group, Dell said. Paul Bell, currently president of Dell Americas, will lead the public-sector group. Steve Felice, currently president of Dell Asia-Pacific and Japan, will lead the small and medium business group.
Ron Garriques, whom Dell hired from Motorola in 2007, will continue to lead Dell's consumer group.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
The thing is, of course you need to separate your sales forces. But don't make that a burden on your customer. All we want is a computer, we don't want to go through your sales process.
Just silently and quickly sense that I need to talk to whoever in your organization that can sell me a Mac, and transfer me to them. What? Oh.
Most home consumers no matter how much they protest to the contrary don't care about quality or reliability. They simply want something that is cheap and this isn't a recent phenomena either. I remember working at the retail store a couple years ago and remember somebody asked me what I had for under $300 and I showed them the only thing I had and they asked what monitor they got and I told them that was just the computer. I told the lady to come back on Black Friday, because generally speaking you aren't going to get something that cheap. There was no reason to try to compete for this person's business. Even a desktop computer alone at that price is going to have to cut some serious corners to not lose money. There were a *lot* of people that wouldn't pay $50 more to get a machine with twice the memory, twice the HDD space, and a slightly better processor. A lot of resellers have gotten smart to realize that it is far too easy to get burned in economy market.
The business market within reason will pay more to get better support and better reliability. Being profitable off your sales to the the business and enterprise space isn't too hard, but in the consumer market you get into a price war where the only winner is the customer because everybody selling the machines is barely breaking even.
Just my .02.
I've directly purchased 6 or more Dell's and reccomended them to others. No longer. They recently decided to stiff me on a warrantee repair. Dell stood on a policy that contracti their warranty language. I stood on facts and backed it up by paying a local repair shop to prove my case. Dell is still refusing to deal. They can win this battle but the price is that I won't be reccomending Dell, nor will I buy any for my planned purchases over the coming couple of years. Even where I work I'll strive to open the doors to other vendoers.
What's frustrating is they won't or can't tell you why, the things you ordered are not being shipped out.
Now I am being denied when I ask to talk to somebody in America, since I'm in America. Dell wants to charge me a fee, to talk to a service rep in America. I am not going to purchase anything else from Dell. I promise you!
The customer came back into the store, and since it's past the return policy and they didn't buy a service plan, there's nothing we could either. One of our computer services guy contact Dell and was given the same story about the warranty being void.
Who sells a computer in Best Buy or Walmart and then tells customers their warranty is void for buying it there? This is why I never recommend Dell's when customers ask about them. I usually steer them towards HP, Toshiba or Sony.
If it's a brand new laptop my guess is some system file got overwritten or corrupted by some malware. Since it's a new computer I doubt it's actually a hardware problem. Windows probably just needs to be reinstalled. However, maybe the ram came loose from the laptop being moved around and needs reinserted via taking it out and sticking it back in. I just fixed a computer this way not a month ago actually. It's becoming more common for some reason.
Other than that it could be bad hard drive or CPU or whatever, but those are the two simplest things to check for. Not that that is your job, but the info may help in the future or you can pass it along to the owners.
- by myles taylor January 1, 2009 9:02 PM PST
- Dell is the Walmart of the computer world: you get what you pay for. (shrugs)
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(18 Comments)I don't see Dell going out of business, or making any big leaps this year.