What does Dell stand for now?

At a recent talk hosted by the IDA, Michael Dell (pictured above) defended the PC that was for years a visible manifestation of the Dell brand.“There are about 1 million PCs sold every day. It turns out there’s a lot of things you can do with a PC. There are 1.5 billion people per day that use a PC…as (new) devices came out, some people mistakenly came to the view that one device will replace another. This is sort of like saying ‘we have a bicycle, now we don’t need to walk anymore.”While Dell’s PC business is holding top position for PC sales in Asia Pacific and Japan, beating HP, the company has had to evolve into a very different entity to what it originally started out as.Marketing asked Yang Peng, marketing director, South Asia and Korea at Dell what the company now stands for, and how it currently markets itself.Yang admitted that there has been an industry slowdown in the South Asia’s consumer business but the company has still achieved a “consistent positive growth for revenue and profit in 2013”. He added that Dell has been aggressively expanding and focusing on providing end-to-end IT solutions, however.Dell’s strategy is to focus on five areas:Firstly, it will increase its investment in enterprise solutions and services through organic R&D spending, M&A and in emerging technologies. “65% our team members are focused on developing scalable enterprise solutions like servers, storage and networking, many of whom are located at our 29 design, solutions and R&D centers worldwide,” said Yang.Second, it wants to push the delivery of a simplified customer experience, from individual consumers to the largest organisations. Expanding its presence in emerging markets is its third point of focus. Fourthly, it will continue to invest in its PC, tablet and virtual computing markets. “Despite recent contractions in the global PC demand environment, continued competing growth in this sector is a keystone of our company and we will continue to invest in this important market,” said Yang, affirming that the company will not be giving up on the PC business.Finally, investment in its sales teams and growing channel partnerships is part of its focus.A large start up?The company views itself as a large start-up, said Yang. “Many elements of our company and strategy will remain the same, but we are in a position to make faster business decisions and execute better, all of which will benefit our customers,” he said.It also wants to depict itself as the brand that helped other entrepreneurial brands to achieve their potential.The company is also leveraging new techniques, such as its Idea Storm platform, which allows users to submit ideas for improvement and new techniques in social media. “These will help us gather the best and brightest ideas for Dell,” said Yang.Riding the content waveDell has also been pushing heavily into content marketing strategies. For example, it launched Tech Page One in December 2012, a mix of original articles, curated news and multimedia on major tech issues. Users of the site can also tailor the content to their own preferences. Content developed for Tech Page One is also repurposed for use on Dell’s social media platforms.