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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: banker's lady who wrote (126603)	5/19/1999 9:18:00 AM
From: edamo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

lisette..."beat dell" yesterday received mailing..."compaq direct plus...award-winning solutions from compaq...to help your business grow"..this is a twenty page catalogue patterned after dell's typical mailings..pushing the "prosignia" lineup..from desktops, to workstations, servers and even the aero 2100 hand held pc.....they are not wasting anytime in "cranking up" their "new???" sales channels... cpq customer support much better..recently had a hard drive crash on an out of warranty armada lap top...they fixed it free of charge, just had to pay ups to the service center...got about four customer satisfaction follow up calls....they stress "carepaq" service packages..which includes unpacking to testing at your location of purchased equipment at $125 per desktop and $200 per server.......they are not as dead in the water as most believe, the choice of ceo can make the difference...get one like gerstner who is willing to slice and dice and they go forward with great success...imho, ed a.

To: banker's lady who wrote (126603)	5/19/1999 2:25:00 PM
From: rudedog	Respond to of 176387

Regarding point 1 - There is of course always the possibility that CPQ will somehow not execute their co-manufacturing strategy but the prototype of this process has delivered parts to shipment of on average less than 24 hours over the last 4 months. Of course DELL is finely honed to do this better than anyone in the industry, but the difference between 24 and 12 hour assembly, and 3 pints vs 0 points in distribution costs is a much different story than when DELL had a 9 point advantage in distribution costs and a 4 week advantage in delivery. And also, DELL pays for the assembly - under this model that is what CPQ gives up the points for. That could actually be a wash in real costs. on your point 2 - CPQ has traditionally had good to very good customer service. They weakened that in 1997 under cost-cutting constraints by Earl Mason, but in 1998 they started a renewed push for top tier service. The addition of 27,000 field support people has also helped. Incidentally, these are exactly the same support people who built DELL's reputation for great service - and they are no longer helping DELL. Several independent surveys in 2H1998 rated CPQ support as good as or better than support from DELL, IBM and HP. CPQ will not lose that momentum. 3 - co-manufacturing will cut the in-process inventory for those lines which use it (which happen to be the volume lines where CPQ and DELL compete) down to a few days at most. In short, DELL will still have an advantage, but it will be an increasingly small one. They need to keep on moving - last year's game plan will not win this season.