Dell India has come up with a new go-to-market plan for letting the potential customers know that the company is not just a PC maker, it is now an end-to-end solutions provider.
By Pankaj Maru
Dell India hosted the fourth edition of Dell India IT Executive Summit 2014 in Dubai. The event happened at a time, when the global tech giant has undergone a major transformation, and is now gearing to make a seminal impact in the global IT industry.
For Dell Global, the year gone by was chock-a-block with path breaking transformations. After being a listed company for many years, last year it become one of the largest privately held companies in the world. The company also took the decision to go into the market as a solution provider of impressive technological capabilities and not just a well-know PC brand.
“It is our strategy that we would like to be a leading solutions provider in the end-to-end scalable solutions space. We are doing whole lot of things – aligning our solutions, resources and investments to get there,” said Alok Ohrie, President & Managing Director – Dell India.
The transformation that Dell has undergone has been widely credited to the company’s founder and CEO, Micheal Dell, who prefers to call Dell as “World’s largest startup.”
Currently India is the eighth largest market for Dell. The impact of the changes that the company has brought into its business model can lead to further growth in the business that the company does in India.
Dell India has also put forward its new go-to-market strategy for the Indian market.
With the new GTM, the company has changed its route-to-market (RTM) with a strong focus on customer engagement and wider reach. Unlike the direct approach in the past, Dell India has come up with three RTMs that include Dell Led for direct sales engagement, Partner Led for business accounts with special pricing and products; and Distribution Led for consumer IT products.
The company was directly serving some 40,000 – 50,000 customers in the past 6-8 years. About 30,000 accounts are expected to get shifted from direct to channel model by the end of this year. Large enterprises, small and midsize businesses, government organisations, Public Sector Undertaking (PSUs) and consumers are among Dell’s customer base in India.
The company is now emphasising on collaborating with channel partners and distributors to take their solutions and technology products to customers in remote areas. They are planning to leverage their relationships and engagements with existing customers as well as their technology skills and knowledge.
“This new GTM will lead to improvements in coverage and reach and also ensure better engagement with partners. We will be able to get closer to customers and also be more accountable in areas where it counts,” said Ohrie. He is convinced that the three RTMs will help Dell expand its customer reach in India.
“First and foremost – customer is critical and centre point for us. Customer centricity is very important to us. Its all about culture – we need to slow things down, while we engage with customers, listen to them and build long term relationships,” said Amit Midha, President – Dell APJ & Chairman – Dell Global Emerging Markets.
“Our vision of world is where you have to walk with every body which is interoperable. There will be smart phones of Apple, Samsung and others – all are going to feed data into data centres and all have to work well with each other,” commented Midha on Dell’s software technology vision.
Unlike in the past, where tech vendors have pushed their proprietary software and technology to lock-in customers, Dell wants technology to be more flexible and agile to suit businesses.
“In the past we had large technology companies, which had different visions – they wanted to make sure that everything is about them — them first, customer second. However, we say customer first, technology second. That’s our business model, technology has to be flexible and agile enough to support the business,” said Midha.
According to Midha the general perception of Dell being a PC company is quite strong, but now it is important to ensure that the new line of products and solutions that Dell has developed are better understood by the market.
“The perception part I can’t fix quickly. I have to take my time to get it done and that’s the way the problem will get solved. However, for any body who moves into adjacent opportunities in business, there will always be gaps. So instead of saying its a hurdle, we should expect it to be a business problem,” observed Midha.
pankaj.maru@expressindia.com