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- Product and Service
Description
- In personal computers, we support three main
lines: The Super Home is our smallest and least expensive, initially positioned by its
manufacturer as a home computer. We use it mainly as a cheap workstation for small
business installations. Its specifications include ...
- The Power User is our main up-scale line. It is
our most important system for high-end home and small business main workstations, because
of .... Its key strengths are .... Its specifications include ...
- The Business Special is an intermediate system,
used to fill the gap in the positioning. Its
- specifications include ... In peripherals, accessories and
other hardware, we carry a complete line of necessary items from cables to forms to
mousepads ...
- In service and support, we offer a range of
walk-in or depot service, maintenance contracts and on-site guarantees. We have not had
much success selling service contracts. Our networking capabilities .. In software, we
sell a complete line of ... In training, we offer ...
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- Competitive
Comparison
- The only way we can hope to differentiate well is
to define the vision of the company to be an information technology ally to our clients.
We will not be able to compete in any effective way with the chains using boxes or
products as appliances. We need to offer a real alliance.
- The benefits we sell include many intangibles:
confidence, reliability, knowing that somebody will be there to answer questions and help
at the important times.
- These are complex products, products that require
serious knowledge and experience to use, and our competitors sell only the products
themselves.
- Unfortunately, we cannot sell the products at a
higher price just because we offer services; the market has shown that it will not support
that concept. We have to also sell the service and charge for it separately.
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- Sales Literature
- Copies of our
brochure and advertisements are attached as appendices. Of
course one of our first tasks will be to
change the message of our literature to make sure we are
selling the company, rather than the product.
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- Sourcing
- Our costs are part of the margin squeeze. As
competition on price increases, the squeeze between manufacturer's price into channels and
end-users ultimate buying price continues.
- With the hardware lines, our margins are declining
steadily. We generally buy at ... Our margins are thus being squeezed from the 25% of five
years ago to more like 13-15% at present. In the main-line peripherals a similar trend
shows, with prices for printers and monitors declining steadily. We are also starting to
see that same trend with software ....
- In order to hold
costs down as much as possible, we concentrate our
purchasing with Hauser, which offers 30-day net
terms and overnight shipping from the warehouse in Dayton.
We need to concentrate on making sure our volume gives us
negotiating strength.
- In accessories and add-ons we can still get decent
margins, 25% to 40%. For software, margins are ...
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- Technology
- We have for years supported both Windows and
Macintosh technology for CPUs, although we've switched endors many times for the Windows
(and previously DOS) lines. We are also supporting Novell, Banyon,and Microsoft
networking, Xbase database software, and Claris application products.
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- Future Products
- PROMPT: Present an outlook for future products. Is there a long-term product Strategy?
How are products developed? Is there a relationship between market segments, market
demand, market needs, and product development ?
- SAMPLE: Products in Development:
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- Future Services
- PROMPT: Present an outlook for future services. Is there a long-term service Strategy?
How are new services established? Is there a relationship between market segments, market
demand, market needs, and service development ?
- SAMPLE: In the future we will offer a broader range
of complete services to be able to offer our customers a o
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- Future Products and
Services
- We must remain on top of the new technologies,
because this is our bread and butter. For networking, we need to provide better knowledge
of cross platform technologies. Also, we are under pressure to improve our understanding
of direct-connect internet and related communications. Finally, although wehave a good
command of desktop publishing, we are concerned about getting better at the integration of
technologies that creates fax, copier, printer, and voice mail as part of the computer
system.
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