One of the biggest challenges facing large companies today is their ability to create market alignment: recognizing changes in market demands and shifting the company quickly to meet those demands.  In the B2B world business transformation takes the critical combination of strategy, relationships and execution speed.

Introducing Dell’s Large Enterprise Business Unit.

CIO’s know Dell as the company that offers great products at great prices – delivered fast to meet sometimes unreasonable demands. 

So, when I attended Dell’s CIO Advisory Panel (ie Customer Advisory Council) a few weeks ago in New York City, I was pleasantly surprised.  I knew going in to this meeting that Dell aspires to be something different.  Better, bigger, more flexible, and with a broader set of capabilities to enhance the value they bring to CIO’s through executive relationships.  What I didn’t know was Dell’s passion to listen, and the incredible ability to combine speed with their strategic focus.

Dell’s LE CIO Advisory Panel was organized and hosted by Steve Schuckenbrock, LE President, and Andy Lark, LE VP and GM.  The intent of the meeting was to capture insights (voice of the customer) into the minds and perspectives of CIOs from throughout North America.  I’ve worked with many large high tech firms, and the most intimidating moment for presenters or discussion leaders is to move away from telling, and focus on listening.  It’s inherent in the genes of an executive, hired to know their business, to present all their knowledge rather than listen to the market.  Dell isn’t like the others.  Dell actively listened to their CIO’s in this forum.  And the insight gained was immeasurable.   

Andy Lark states “We went in prepared for discussions with our ears and eyes wide open.  We weren’t sure what the outcomes would be – but we found that the insights gained from these market leaders will help us accelerate the vision for Dell to be the world’s #1 technology partner. “

All great, but what amazed me most was the ability for Dell to rapidly take insights from these market leading CIO’s and engage the Dell LE team to deliver.  Just days after the meeting, Steve Schuckenbrock was able to coral the team and resources needed to deliver against new market and service needs, and educate the sales force about positioning Dell’s leading cloud computing capabilities to CIO’s needs.  Dell's taken acheiving market alignment to a new level.

Dell is not a slow elephant in this world – in fact they move like the young mountain lion on the prowl.