Dell Abandons Its Customization Roots

LiveFreeOrDieInTheGo writes "Dell intends to scale back its build-to-order service model, while increasing sales of prepackaged systems. The goal: $3B USD savings by 2011. The downside: customers expect Dell to build-to-order. The deeper downside: Dell will outsource more production and assembly."

In other news...

Dell changes its name to "Dull"

Re:In other news...

she was a terrible ceo, and it's amazing how many of these clowns are out there, jumping from CEO position to position picking up huge packages and leaving a trail of distruction behind them.

stonemasons, i swear it has to be something of that kind that allows completely useless people to run these companys.

Re:In other news...

I think you meant Freemasons [wikipedia.org], not stonemasons [wikipedia.org], unless you are cursing HP for their conspiracies to create beautiful sculptures and pretty stone engravings.

Re:In other news...

actually i meant stonecutters, i was trying to make a refference to the simpsons ep.

Re:In other news...

No no no... it's the stonecutters! Now known as the Ancient Mystic Society of No Homers.

"Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Carly Fiorina a CEO?
We do! We do!"

Re:In other news...

I think it's a kind of hero worship. "Corporate Saviors," I believe they were called in the 80s or 90s.

It's a kind of narcissism to believe that it takes these special people to run your company, you have to get just the right person, someone who's done it before, even if they were a spectacular failure. Besides, look at the severance packages.. the companies must have believed in them to offer them that much...

But it's not all that different from the idea of the box-office superstar. As if only a few people making $20million a picture are capable of making good films. Precisely when it's just the opposite: a movie star will get people in the seats opening night, and maybe save a poor film, but a good movie will get people in the seats five weeks later and establish the body puppets associated with it as "movie stars."

Anyway, my point is that there are talented, capable people waiting in the wings in every field, and you might just be able to get great performance *and* save on salaries by expanding the scope of your talent search. I hope you're listening, shareholders meetings and Hollywood producers.

Re:In other news...

The way CEO performance is measured goes like this. When the company the CEO is heading does well, the CEO gets the credit. When the company the CEO is heading goes down the tubes, there's an excuse like "bad economic climate", "piracy" or something else.

Exactly. It's the same as religion:

Things go well - Praise the Lord ! Without him we'd all be fucked.
Things go badly - it's part of his "greater plan" or "we weren't worthy" or some other such bullshit.

Typical kneejerk business move...

I'm a fan of Dell kit, but when HP hae beaten you in sales for 6 successive quarters - as stated in the article - limiting the amount of customizing may save you cash, but it isn't going to get more people buying your kit is it?

The 'fix' doesn't seem to be the solution to the highlighted problem... sure it'll save you money in the short term, but no gains in share there at all. Less customization is never going to make a punter go "oh, I'll buy that because it's not as customizable".

Add to that the outsourcing of manufacture and it all looks like a world of hurt waiting to happen.

*baffled*

Hardly.

When companies seek to recover these kinds of profits, they cut something more important.

Their reputation.

Most likely, they will move their call centers out of India and into a lower paying 3rd world country. The lower techs will be given even less latitude to help fix problems. Along with that, they will reduce access (and numbers) of higher up support, along with "new policies" of the 'not our fault' game.

They will obviously cut their unprofitable programs, such as their IdeaStorms website, all Linux support for low and middle tiers, along with the cheaper customizable options. They will leave customizing available for the higher packages, as all businesses cater to the big spenders.

Yes, our system is based upon a race to the bottom, but depending how you get there means if you survive or not. That really depends on how their deals with Microsoft go, as they are parasites upon MS.

Re:Outsourcing Gets a Bad Rap, Race to the Top

We ourselves, each and everyone one of us, outsource all of the time. Go ahead can say Dell is terrible because they outsourced a call center to India or the Philippines, but we outsource every time we use a stapler or a printer, or for that matter, even a computer

Poppycock. It's one thing to outsource things that aren't your core business, I mean, those not in the stapler business shouldn't be making staplers. But if you're in the stapler business and you outsource the manufacturing, assembly, and support of staplers, then exactly what IS your business? What opportunity does that get you? You've mostly switched the business from being a manufacturer to a distributor. Assuming the distribution hasn't been outsourced. Maybe Dell is becoming just a retailer. All this sounds like is getting rid of your business and painting yourself into a corner.

Outsource more manufacturing?

Are you high?

Dell already outsources just about all their manufacturing. All that will happen here is that now they can streamline the supply pipeline because they only ship x different configs instead of 100x. Less work at the (already) outsourced supplier/contract manufacturer, less work on the order fulfillment side.

How it's going to save 3 billion, I don't know. I think they're aiming a little high. Expect support to be outsourced to even crappier Indian call centers....

A current "Dell House"

I work for a small (about 100 person) company with a heterogeneous environment (Linux, OS X, Windows). In the past few years the IT team has settled on Dell for quick turnaround of ordering customized systems and consistency (the devil you know). They order Dell laptops, desktops and servers. It has pretty much turned into a "Dell house." The quick turnaround on customized orders is extremely important to meet developer needs. If Dell makes custom ordering take longer or involves increased hassle, I would bet that our IT management would start looking into other vendors.

It's roots

Ahem. [angryflower.com]

Expensive options

My experience is that customizing a Dell always costs an arm and three legs. Upgrading RAM costs twice what it would to buy retail, and please don't tell me that a 320 GB hard drive costs $100 more than a lowly $160 GB model. They make money hand over fist when small/medium business purchase customized machines (I've seen co-workers add on $1000 in not-so-necessary option), but the company has a much harder time with price-sensitive customers. I've purchased three Dells for home use over the past six years, and in each case I waited until they offered an extremely good deal and bought a minimally configured system and added my own memory, second hard drive and video card.

Dell has been losing ground against other manufacturers, and one often sees off-the-shelf machines at Best Buy that offer better value and immediate availability. Part of the reason is that more and more buyers are opting for notebook PCs that are made in China alongside machines from HP, Acer and countless other competitors. In essence, Dell adds an extra layer of complexity to their manufacturing process by allowing customization of these laptops to occur once they arrive in North America. In the meantime, Acer is able to ship preconfigured systems directly to retail outlets without additional expense. The days of the big beige box are coming to an end, and much of Dell's business advantage centered on getting people to buy overpriced (and often unnecessary) upgrades that simply aren't feasible in a notebook form factor.

Re:Deeper Downside?

Ahh...but you see that's 5-15 years down the road. The shareholders (e.g. uber-rich trading firms) all want to meet this years or this QUARTER's financial targets.

Re:Deeper Downside?

Thats exactly it: nobody with power cares for the long term maluses by strongly pushing outsourcing.

As long as the quarter looks good, its golden. Another question would be this: Why do the uber rich trading firms want to only see short term gains, and not longer term ones?

What financial disadvantage would there be if companies developed new things and technology, and continued further research going ahead up to 30-100 years? Ma Bell did that and we ended up with the transistor, lasers, Unix, C...

Re:Deeper Downside?

Well, if you want to talk about 15 years down the road you might as well mention that in 15 years all the demand from our outsourcing will make the Chinese as well off as us, forcing them to charge as much, canceling out any benefit of outsourcing there.

Not a chance; not with the population they have. Maybe in a century, but fifteen years? That's ridiculous. There are millions upon millions of people in China (and India, and quite a few other places) who have grown up and are used to far cheaper standards of living than the average person in the U.S. That translates into dramatically lower labor costs for the foreseeable future, since they're going to be willing to work for less. Someone who remembers life in a mud-and-thatch hut on a rice paddy is probably going to have a markedly different bar for 'success' than someone who grew up in the U.S.'s heyday and expects to be able to do better than that.

You're a little capitalist, and you don't even realize it. Want all the jobs to stay in our country? That's greed; the same thing driving those shareholders to make more money. Unfortunately, whining doesn't get much done, so we'll all have to work really hard and offer some kind of advantage to keep the jobs. It's called "competing".

That's a great thought but it's a little lacking in substance. What do you propose the U.S. ought to specialize in? I'm quite honestly interested, and I've asked this question over and over to a lot of fairly intelligent people and have yet to get a satisfactory answer back. I'm not sure there is one. Do we try to go the Neal Stephenson route? Music, movies, microcode, and pizza? Other parts of the world are chipping into 'software' already, and there's no reason to think that we have some kind of automatic, natural, competitive advantage in any of those.

About the only thing we do have here in the U.S., at least at the moment, is a hell of a consumer market. Until we figure out exactly how we're going to keep ourselves going, I don't think it's necessarily illogical to want to carefully manage access to the one thing of value we have left. I'm not proposing or advocating for complete isolationism, just a careful analysis of exactly who we're allowing access, and to which markets, and what the effects are.

More bluntly, I don't see any reason why the U.S. ought to open any market to foreign competition unless there's a clear indication that opening it results in a net benefit to the United States. Now, it may be that fully-open markets are the best (or least-worst) policy for Americans in general, but I haven't seen any of the politicians pushing for open markets really going out of their way to demonstrate this. And from where I'm sitting, it looks a lot like we're just letting ourselves go bankrupt on imports without much of a thought towards the long-term sustainability of this situation.

Even if by restricting imports it increased the cost of non-essential goods to consumers, but in doing so bought us a few more years or decades of solvency in which to work on our comparative advantage (or for the Chinese and other developing markets to bring their labor force's standards of living, and thus costs, closer to par), I can't see why that would necessarily be bad.

National governments have a mandate to serve the best interests of the people they represent. If free trade and open borders are demonstrably the best path, I'd be more supportive, but right now they look suspiciously like a path that leads off a cliff.

Re:Deeper Downside?

The problem is unions and government regulations. Try firing someone. You have a union to deal with. Try building something really innovative, say a nice new nuclear power plant. Your kids will be grown before you get a single hole dug; you'll still be waiting for the next mountain of papers to be filled out and processed.

The Canadian automotive industry died because it has even more regulations and unions than the US. China kills US manufacturing because it has less regulation than the US plants. Can you believe that a US plant has to not only pay property tax but a tool tax on the machines? Ol' Patrick Henry would roll over in his grave.

There are two solutions to this problem:
1. Protective tariffs: historically a bad idea (recall the Civil War).
2. Deregulate and deunionize: historically a good idea (think the Iron Lady salvaging Britain).

Unfortunately, the US is rapidly adopting Hillary's favorite idea: the government can save you! Guess how?

But then, I don't know of any candidates who don't subscribe to that idea. Republicans just aren't what they used to be. It seems the only differences are on social issues. Economically, all the big candidates look the same. It's so frustrating to talk to people who like what Ron Paul says but dismiss him offhand with a sickly smile and say "But he's not electable."

The only way to save our economy is to somehow break through people's thick heads. Unfortunately, we are living a generation that thinks in a herd mentality, usually delivered by rich morons like Oprah.

I only hope the generation now at college (that like Paul so well) will learn something from the current disaster and do something about it.

(Wow, I this post is all over the map. I feel better after just saying it all though.)

Re:Deeper Downside?

The problem is unions and government regulations. Try firing someone. You have a union to deal with. Try building something really innovative, say a nice new nuclear power plant.

The unions in the USA are famously _weak_. Their wings have been clipped from the start. If you want to see how real unions look like, just take a look at Germany or France. It is widely known that France doesn't have a single nuclear power plant due to the tree hugging hippies, government regulations and unions, that is why their electricity needs are satisfied in 70% from the nuclear source.

It seems you're advocating deunionization without knowing what it actually means.

Deunionization as an economic measure means that you plan to solve fundamental problems in the economy by worsening the bargaining power of the lower and middle class, in effect worsening their conditions. Instead of outsourcing, this is bringing conditions from China to the developed world. Newsflash: if an industry fails because it cannot survive unless it has unacceptable working conditions, then that is a good thing.

Re:Deeper Downside?

Yeah, that's why everyone is unemployed in Europe. And of course we don't have 20-30 days a year of paid vacation depending on country (wtf makes people in the US accept 10?!?), or working hours typically set at 37.5 (less in some countries) either.

Oh, and all our companies are close to bankruptcy, and no executives and shareholders ever manage to take out huge bonuses and dividends..

Seriously, unions are why you don't still have 12+ hour working days in the US and most of the rest of the world. It took decades of campaigning, strikes that often were illegal and bloodshed when police struck down on strikers for the US unions to get employers to accept the 8 hour working day.

It's a paradox that the rest of the world can thank US unions for the 8 hour day, when your unions have been reduced to festering corpses, and that May Day was established as an international day for the working class to demonstrate directly in response and support of the US unions, while the US working class was quickly subverted into accepting the watered down Labor day.

A huge part of the improvements in working conditions in the latter half of the 1800's and well into the 1900's were a direct result of strong unions in the US.

Re:Deeper Downside?

man your grasp on economics is staggeringly bad.

all you have done is grossly over simplified the whole process and picked out the little bits that suit you. the money doesn't just flow in one direction to the widget makers, the widget makers need people from widget land to show them how to build the factories and train them, they need someone to design and market the widgets for them in the first place. In short the clever widget makers who started the whole industry get to specialise at a different part of the supply chain, and don't have to spend all their time subsidising work that can be done better/cheaper else where.

if your idea's really did work, why does communism and protectionism fail?

Re:Wow

Remember: The market is steadily moving towards laptops. And laptops are harder to custom-build.

Re:Wow

Not only that; people want to see, touch, and hold ... before making a purchase decision.

I'll leave the conclusion up to the reader.

You're not going to meet a girlfriend over the Internet?

Re:Wow

> But I remember all the old Dell commercials - the main thing they had going for them was customization.

I think the point is that those were the old Dell commercials. If you look at ones today, they're all about price. Features and price, admittedly, but price is the biggest thing.

This is a reflection of the market for PCs. When they represented a substantial capital investment, you wanted to tailor them to your particular needs, and avoid paying for anything you didn't absolutely need. That made customization and U.S.-based assembly locations worthwhile. Now, people don't want that as much. The PC, as a unit, has become increasingly commoditized. I bet a lot of buyers today don't even look at specs; they just buy "a computer" and make a lot of assumptions about what they'll be able to do with it. (Assumptions that are actually pretty safe if you don't plan on doing much beyond typical consumerish tasks with it.)

As a result, the goal is no longer "build me a PC to my exact specifications," it's "build me as much PC as possible for $500". Or $300, or $250. I suspect before too long it'll be $99.

That doesn't favor having a lot of assembly points close to consumers; it favors doing all your assembly in a quasi-slave-labor camp somewhere, to better keep costs down, and then shipping tons and tons of identical boxes in bulk to wherever the consumers are. 'Who cares if it's not exactly what you want? It's $500 and it's more power/features/speed than you'll probably need, so just buy it,' is the message.

It's easy to blame Dell here, but it's buyers of technology that are driving it. Not enough people want essentially bespoke computers (or the ones that do aren't buying them from Dell), and Dell is going to eliminate the facilities that provide that service.

Re:Wow

Dell unfortunately is a victim of its own success too. They sold a crapload of computers during the boom years and had phenomenal growth. The problem is that there's no way to sustain that growth. They'd have to sell like 10 billion computers a year. But Wall Street hits them hard when they can't the market's predictions. So they have focus on making more profits. Which means cutting costs by getting cheaper parts, labor, etc. All the while, the margins are shrinking. It's a bad cycle.