India investments going up, says Dell MD

After going private a year back, Dell is trying to change the way it does business in a bid to keep up with the fast-changing technology landscape. Recently, it changed its marketing strategy with the aim of giving a differentiated experience to customers. Business Line met Alok Ohrie, President and Managing Director, Dell India, to discuss the new go-to-market plan.

What is the new go-to-market strategy all about?

We rolled out our new model 3-4 months back and now we’re stabilising it. If a customer has to be served in a manner that’s differentiated then we need to demonstrate it, starting with our level of engagement. Some types of customer are advanced on IT and at a higher level of technology maturity, so they need a deeper engagement.

Did you change your business model because customers are now asking for business outcomes instead of just solutions?

Yes, that’s partially right. It is also changing because of the way the market is changing. Clients now need more of a consultative approach from IT vendors. There’s so much of new technology. Their interplay needs a deeper relationship with the vendor. Earlier, our account managers had too many accounts, which made it impossible to manage. The change we have made is massive, we literally ripped apart what we were doing.

Where does India figure in Dell’s overall plans after privatisation?

India is among the top 10 countries for Dell. In India, we are seeing investments going up. More work is coming here. We now have an end-to-end R&D centre here that work on servers, storage and networking. Our global service-delivery capabilities are moving to India. From a sales organisation point of view, there is a huge amount of work in maximising our coverage.

If that’s so why did you close down a facility in Mohali?

We constantly see where it makes business sense to have resources in terms of cost, infrastructure and talent. We have another site in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu that’s coming up. At a higher level, India is growing and it will grow much more in the next few years given our expansion plans.

Dell has regained the No. 1 spot in the PC market after a long time. How did you achieve it?

Our approach to market has been more balanced. We have not gone berserk on pricing. We were conscious on doing it the profitable way.

This strategy pushed the organisation to look for sustainable engagements. Most of our competitors pick one large deal; that’s not sustainable every quarter. We are pushing a broad-based business. Since we didn’t start with a ridiculous price level, we are able to maintain future conversations.

What kind of response has your tablet received?

It’s doing so well that the demand is more than supply. In the next 3-4 weeks we should get over the supply issue. We are seeing a huge market for our tablets in the enterprise space as well. We are having discussions with banking, insurance and telecom companies not just to sell devices but also to enable applications.

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