Technology & Innovation

Dell's customer crowdsourcing model

Africa

Africa

One of the strategies on which Dell built its business was the ability to customise its products using feedback from consumers. So it comes as no surprise that the computer company&;s model of innovation is based heavily on tapping into ideas from its customers. To do so, the company started to investigate how it might connect with customers online and find out more about their complaints, requests and problems. The result was IdeaStorm, initially a blog and now a website facilitating what is known as "crowdsourcing".

Launched in February 2007, IdeaStorm allows the company to solicit ideas for product improvements and innovations from online communities of Dell customers and potential customers. Once a user posts an idea or suggestion on the site, the community can vote for or against it with a simple click of the mouse. A forum section of the site allows individuals to debate ideas in more depth.

When, soon after the launch, visitors to the site suggested that the company should offer the Linux operating system, hundreds of thousands voted for the idea. "So before we launched the new product, we did a survey on IdeaStorm and we had 100,000 people respond within a week telling us exactly what type of Linux they wanted and what type of support they wanted," explains Bob Pearson, Dell&;s vice-president of communities and conversations.

Consumer feedback allowed Dell to tailor the product to customers&; requirements and launch the product extremely quickly. "By the end of May, we&;d launched our first systems with Linux," says Mr Pearson. "Normally the product development window in technology for hardware is 12 to 18 months. This was a software improvement, but that&;s still a very quick turnaround."

Mr Pearson sees the model as an effective way of speeding up product improvements and innovations. "It still makes sense to talk directly with our business partners one-to-one in conference rooms, but only if it is balanced with the real-time feedback we receive from our customers," says Mr Pearson. "Last year, we had more than two hundred million customer interactions, and that&;s a significant amount of feedback that we can learn from."

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