Question

Dell
In January 2006, Dell, the world’s largest computer maker, announced plans to setup its fourth call center in India. The company already employs over 10,000 people in its Indian call centers, which provided a telephone help desk service to its many thousands of customers around the world. Like many other Western companies, Dell was attracted to India by the abundance of low-cost English-speaking workers, many of whom are well qualified and highly IT literate. Locating call centers in India sounds like a good deal all round. Customers get access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week wherever they are in the world, companies are able to reduce costs, and workers in a developing country get jobs.
However, not everyone is happy. Niels Kjellerup, Publisher and Editor of The Call Centre Managers Forum, an online chat room for call center managers, argues that the rush to outsource customer contact operations to cheaper locations has resulted in the worst of management practices in US and UK call centers being exported as ‘World Class Call Centre Practice’ in countries like India. He says that too often what is seen in India is bad customer service delivered cheaply. He claims that many Indian call centers are run as sweatshops with intelligent people being treated like cattle. Call center managers with little or no previous experience adopt ‘idiotic vendor measures’ such as ‘how many calls’ and ‘how short’, which simply result in the delivery of poor levels of customer service.
Agents are required to work nine and a half hours a day, but typically work anywhere from 12 to 16 hours. Processing 28 calls an hour is mandatory. Another target is to ensure that no customer calls back within seven days. The informant claimed that there are few, if any allowances for time off, even for doctor visits, sick days or handling family emergencies.

Answer 1

When a business expands its operation into other countries, the impact of globalization on human resource development and management is significant.

1. What role does HRM play for Dell? Support your answer with examples.
2. Discuss the obstacles that Dell faces for survival and success due to globalization. Support your answer with discussion and relevant example.

1.HRM is one of the units of most significance in any company. Employee productivity directly impacts earnings from the business and this productivity relies heavily on employee satisfaction. It's obviously shown at Dell where the workers are not being served properly. Clearly they're overworked. Because of the rise in working hours and high job demands the workers perform badly, only running to the end of the cattle line. HRM at Dell will help recruit the appropriate applicants and then grow them to function according to the company's needs. HRM will also play a vital role in controlling the workers within the company and ensuring they are not overshadowed. Any other workplace needs such as sick days, medical services will also be taken care of, which in effect will provide happiness for workers and improve their productivity thereby. HRM can also help set up fixed call times and determine guidelines about how to respond to the calls.

2.Dell's challenges are very clear that the employee working hours are not pre-decided as well as the workers are just worried with the amount of calls in a given period, resulting in low customer service rates. The roadblocks to the performance of the company are the incompetent workers, who are unable to function efficiently due to lack of proper operational standards. Despite these challenges, due to globalisation, the business is doing well.

India is a developing country and the cost of acquiring workforce is very small because of the large number of people willing to work. This draws a lot of global companies to move their operations to India to get low cost labor. For example, because of the high unemployment in the country, Dell gets well-educated English speaking people at very low cost and at flexible working hours.

A traditional view of globalization is that it involves rolling out the same offering across the globe using the same ingredients, brand name and marketing communications. However, organizations have realized that they need to adapt their offerings and communications to local preferences and conditions.By using B207B course material and other resources such as Dell website, discuss what is the difference between globalization and customization in marketing segmentation and marketing mix in relation to Dell Computers.

Globalization is a phenomenon where the same tactics are used globally and localization approaches are adapted to different market conditions differently. For instance, if Dell decides to build a globalized segmentation strategy, it should plan similar ways for segmenting consumer segments around the world. But if Dell wants to make a tailor-made plan, various strategies should be designed for different regions of the world. For example, if Dell forms a tailored strategy for the US, the market segment that needs to be targeted could be very high. But if the same strategy is made for India the segment will vary widely depending on different people's education and income.

If globalization is called Dell should retain the same price for its goods globally, but it is clearly seen that the price of the product varies from country to country showing marketing mix customisation. Additionally, marketing is done differently in different countries. For example, more realistic and product-oriented promotion is considered in the western countries, while in countries such as India the promotion is more inclined to display the emotional link to the product.

It was evident in the above cases that customisation works more than globalization. Yet globalization does the job in some ways. For example, the product that Dell sells is available globally with the same and same features. The goods are never personalized, and are a global strategy example.

Globalization increases connections among people around the globe, both narrowing and widening the differences between them in various ways. On the one hand, increases in trade and communication bring closer awareness among consumers and workers of many brands and businesses’ activities, but on the other hand, it has negative effects on the global marketplace.Required: Discuss the key negative effects of the global marketplace. Support your answers with examples in relation to Dell.

The global marketplace provides the businesses with an opportunity to increase their customer base. But all good comes with its own inconveniences. The first challenge facing a company as it enters a global market place is the laws and regulations of various countries. Different nations have different trade rules and the political climate is therefore different everywhere. In such a situation, the businesses must be very careful to obey the laws of the different countries. Often, for different countries the excise duty and taxes are different, and often the companies have to pay a lot just to reach a particular market. Rising rivalry is the next downside of global market place.

Globalization has really made the world really small, selling its commodity in Africa is not difficult for a US-based firm today. The emergence of various brands is growing rivalry for them in every corner of the world. For example, due to globalisation, Dell has to face competition with different computer brands including HP, Asus, Apple, etc. In addition, there are various kinds of labor required in different parts of the world because of the global marketplace.

The workforce works differently in various parts of the world and is a matter of concern for the businesses. Dell also faces many problems with the workers at its numerous call centers in India due to variations in the way they operate. Globalization also leads to loss of value for goods as new technologies bring a new product onto the market. For example, if a Macbook is released, the customers are more likely to move to it than to buy the product from Dell.