From hospitals to school desks, Dell seeks businesses in Brazil
Valor Econômico
It's been a little more than two months since Raymundo Peixoto, CEO of Dell in Brazil, started taking a very different path from what he was used to in order to get to his office. Instead of the path between Porto Alegre, where he lived, and the neighbor city of Eldorado do Sul (RS), which received the Dell plant ten years ago, when the company arrived to the country, the executive now lives and transits in São Paulo.
The head office of the company is still in the South, where the center of software development and the call center are, but after a decade Dell opened its first commercial office in São Paulo. The reason? To be closer to the clients, the main guideline of the primer the Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell is using to entirely redesign the company.
Dell became the biggest world PC seller supported by its model of only selling directly to the client, via internet or telephone. For a long time, thinking about using the retail chains sounded almost like a betrayal to the model that made the company feasible. In 2007, however, it was clear that the model was worn out. In difficulties, the company adhered to indirect sales and started a transformation process that is still in progress, which included the reorganization into units per type of client instead of per line of product.
Dell always gave a lot of attention to great companies, with the reformulation, it started to give emphasis to smaller companies as well. Peixoto redirected efforts for this area and the result is that in the second quarter Dell took over the leadership in the segment of small- and medium-sized companies in Brazil for the first time, with a market share of 11%, affirms Peixoto, based on data of the IDC consulting company. All that without leaving the first place in the market of large-sized companies, in which it kept a share of 36%, says the executive. In another front, Dell is aiming at the final consumer, which purchases the computer to use at home. It is a competitive market, of tight margins and extremely price sensitive. For Peixoto, however, there are many chances for the company in the segment.
In the next weeks, Dell will mark its entrance in another area defined as a priority: the public sector, mainly the segments of education and health. On November 5, Michael Dell himself will be in the country to launch a computer specially developed for students. In the field of health, Dell has already created a system for the Heart Institute (Incor), in São Paulo, which facilitates the access of patient information by the doctors. And there is, of course, the effort to increase the presence of the products of the company in the retail. "We are present in 500 stores of chains like Carrefour, Fnac, Fast Shop, Walmart and Ponto Frio, but we continued to increase the amount of partnerships", says Peixoto.