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Dell Tells Staff To Get Ready For the 'Biggest Transformation in Company History' (businessinsider.com) 75

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Dell's chief operating officer Jeff Clarke has informed employees that the company is preparing for what he calls the "biggest transformation in company history," a sweeping systems overhaul scheduled to launch on May 3 that will standardize processes across nearly every major division.

The initiative, dubbed One Dell Way, will replace Dell's existing sprawl of applications, servers and databases with a single enterprise platform designed to unify the 42-year-old company's operations. Clarke's memo, sent to staff on Tuesday and obtained by Business Insider, said Dell has spent the past two years building toward this transition.

The May 3 launch will affect the company's PC business, finance, supply chain, marketing, sales, revenue operations, services, and HR. The ISG division, which handles cloud and AI infrastructure, will follow in August. "We need one way -- simplified, standardized and automated -- so we can be more competitive and serve our customers better," Clarke wrote. Mandatory training begins February 3.
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Dell Tells Staff To Get Ready For the 'Biggest Transformation in Company History' More

Dell Tells Staff To Get Ready For the 'Biggest Transformation in Company History'

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  • I remember the last time they tried that (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ebunga ( 95613 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @04:55PM (#65924752)

    Around the time they bought EMC to buy Documentum. It was a resounding failure. They tried again a few years later, and also had the same level of failure. This time, well, don't really care now that they made the partner program worthless. Fuck'em. We're selling HPe now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by crow ( 16139 )

      Catalyst was the project name.

      Or was Catalyst the replacement for the one that failed?

      As I recall, the failed one customized everything for how EMC did things. The replacement changed how EMC did things to match the default, as it was easier to change the company than customizes the software. The only pain point I remember on the engineering side was all the part numbers changing to match the new standardized format.

  • I could be wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @05:05PM (#65924778) Journal

    "The initiative, dubbed One Dell Way, will replace Dell's existing sprawl of applications, servers and databases with a single enterprise platform designed to unify the 42-year-old company's operations."

    I could be wrong but I predict this will be a huge, costly, multi-year disaster that will cripple the company in new and exciting ways.

    • Maybe they built it in-house - there's a chance then. Or if they went to SAP or the likes, they better have had customized their processes to the ERP, not the other way round, because that would be the shortcut to clusterfuck and a bottomless pit to throw money in without ever getting out of pre-alpha.

      Or, considering the times we are in, maybe they had someone vibe code everything with an AI backend. That would be fun to watch.

      • Maybe they built it in-house - there's a chance then. Or if they went to SAP or the likes ...

        Either way is bad but in-house is a special kind of hell. It means that only one or two people will know how it works and how to fix/maintain it, and it'll have tons of goober code that makes you wince and look up towards Heaven. They'll use whatever works, except it won't, and fixing or refactoring it is impossible because they didn't plan ahead for the things they couldn't possibly know. In my experience these homegrown, in-house super-apps almost never come to fruition.

        I'm seeing this right now where I'm

        • It is also our experience that huge ERP deployments almost never come to fruitition. The companies hired to make them happen are more interested in milking the cash cow than getting the job done. Getting rid of that incentive is probably the most important thing one can do there.

          On top of that, the customer company is going to ask for an endless amount of customization to be made to the ERP to suit their processes, and these end up exactly as you describe the in-house app. Except worse, because you are basi

          • The right way to do it is to change the processes to suit the ERP,

            If you said that out loud in a CEO-level meeting, you'd never leave the room- they'd cut you into pieces and dispose of you like Jamal Khashoggi.

    • Multi-year indeed.

      My previous employer was moving from Uniface on VAX/mainframes to the GUI version 7 when I began there in 1998 as sysadmin. The software team has been migrating to various newer ERP frameworks every few years since then and the German high command has decided last time to migrate all companies to SAP.

      My best mate only has a couple more years to go before early retirment and has declined to join the SAP knowledge course. He's busy enough as one of the very few people who can service the sti

      • It's going to be fun there once he's gone.

        If by "fun" you mean "a torturous, soul-crushing hellscape of confusion and doomed projects", then, yes, it'll be "fun". lol

    • "The initiative, dubbed One Dell Way, will replace Dell's existing sprawl of applications, servers and databases with a single enterprise platform designed to unify the 42-year-old company's operations."

      I could be wrong but I predict this will be a huge, costly, multi-year disaster that will cripple the company in new and exciting ways.

      Agreed, but I can also see both sides of this. Wikipedia lists 33 different Dell acquisitions over its lifespan; some stuck (Alienware, Kace), some didn't (Sonicwall, VMWare), but the odds are pretty good that there are a bunch of legacy systems still in place, and they probably don't talk to each other, meaning that there's more than a handful of people across the company who's job is basically to copy/paste data from system X to system Y and back again. It's only natural for a company who *sells servers f

      • There are two problems with this method: the first is that it takes *years*,

        Yes, and the likelihood of them changing direction somewhere along the way for a New Shiny is almost guaranteed. It's just a rolling exercise of burning pallets of money and dancing in the flames.

        The thing is that the Poobahs in the C-suites will never have to personally deal with any of it, ever, because normally they'll be long gone before it ever gets anywhere near Milestone 2.

        I can't count how many times I've seen this exact scenario play out. The guy at the top gets some "revolutionary, paradigm-shifti

  • If I were one of Dell's competitors, I'm pretty sure I would be applauding this move.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rahmrh ( 939610 )

      It is not as if HP-laptops/HPE-enterprise is any more competent.

      If either of them had a clue it might be trouble for the other one, but there is pretty much zero chance of that happening.

  • Speed matters more than ever in the AI era.

    That won't cut it in an AI-driven world.

    This is foundational to our success in an AI-driven world, and One Dell Way is how we get there—working as one company, with one set of processes, focused on what matters most.

    Of course doing it for the the "right" reasons...

  • Its a common problem without an easy solution. Lets see how it goes

  • Cool! From what I hear, their divesting all of their hardware and software interests and concentrating solely on supplying best quality, high grade Baba Ganoush to the market. Can't wait!

  • I certainly understand the motive, but it's much easier to introduce a new single unifying platform than it is to migrate off and retire the myriad old ones.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Maybe keep them both running, and do a partial migration, so you never know which part to use.

  • "We've come up with a way to eliminate the rainbow patchwork of disparate systems we use to run the business! Everything from now on will be managed with Excel!"

    • "We've come up with a way to eliminate the rainbow patchwork of disparate systems we use to run the business! Everything from now on will be managed with Excel!"

      Go the way Gateway did: MS Access. Yes, I used to work in their service department, and this was how they tracked all service requests. There may be a reason they aren't around anymore as anything other than a name. I mean, besides Ted Waitt's, uh, ... let's say, unique vision of the future.

    • And when that one system goes down AND IT WILL, the entire company will be crippled, rather than just a portion of the company going down because their patchwork system went down.

  • ... to the probability of success.

  • and saying "Damn, what a great source of material this will be! I died too soon."
    (I take no position on whether Adams is looking down, or looking up...)

  • So says the Dell guy: We need one way -- simplified, standardized and automated -- so we can be more competitive and serve our customers better

    Makes so much sense.

    After a long career, all I can say is it is less important than you might think.

    Let’s see where they are in a few years and whether it was worth it.

    My guess: lots of heat and light, lots of short term chaos, followed finally by stabilization, followed by the realization they are only marginally more productive.

  • They're really going to do it ? (Score:4, Funny)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @05:45PM (#65924880)
    Dell are really going to do it ?!

    After all this time ?!

    Convert all their laptops USB ports to USB 3.2 Gen 2 ?

    Oh, Michael, you crazy guy !

  • Call Elon and DOGE (Score:3)

    by boxless ( 35756 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @05:49PM (#65924888)

    They re-wrote the social security systems in 30 days, didn’t they? Or maybe it was the US air traffic control system. I can’t remember. Well, whatever it was, I hear they are wicked smaaaht and specialize in things like this.

    • They re-wrote the social security systems in 30 days, didn’t they? Or maybe it was the US air traffic control system. I can’t remember. Well, whatever it was, I hear they are wicked smaaaht and specialize in things like this.

      Well... I imagine they at least downloaded a bunch of stuff in 30 days.

  • I think this pilot alone will merit a whole bunch of different popcorn flavours from the Kernels kiosk in my local shopping mall...

    Oh! I see from TFA that they'll also be relying on AI - this could turn into a multi-season sitcom!

  • Mergers Have to Merge (Score:3)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @06:07PM (#65924938) Homepage Journal

    Dell has made lots of acquisitions over the years, and each one had their own systems. Dell acquired me at one point (I'm sure that was their intent, and they just got EMC thrown in with the deal), so I've certainly seen this. It took a long time to really merge the companies, and I'm sure they still have many separate systems. Eventually it makes sense to move everything to the same enterprise management system; at least everything that they aren't keeping separate for an easy future spinoff.

    While the obvious answer is to move everything to Dell's existing system, or possibly EMC's, they may well have realized that none of the existing systems were adequate, so it was time for a new one. Might as well rip the bandaid off quickly all at once and be done with it.

  • My condolences and heartfelt sympathy for Dell employees about to undergo what must be the 300th failure to try to do this thing in the past 20 years. You will singularly bear the brunt of the pain, you will endure insane new meetings that will go nowhere and do nothing, and the result will be yet another new, mediocre thing to deal with.

  • It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for them.

  • "In some cases, that may mean we may make a choice that isn't optimal for a particular function, but it speeds up decision-making or improves quality for the company as a whole. That's the trade-off, and it's the right one. We're optimizing for Dell, not for individual functions."

    My reading of this is that you frequently won't be able to do what needs to be done, and what you have hitherto been doing successfully with some kind of custom-built in house software. Instead you will do what the new system has m

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Ah tradeoffs.... no sacrifice is ever to great for someone else. More metrics, more visibility, more executive reports, more centralization of power.. meanwhile I would guess that any function that actually does work is about to see their productivity (and reviews) go down.

  • Order your Dells by April... (Score:3)

    by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot.worf@net> on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @07:53PM (#65925178)

    Because you don't know what's going to happen to orders in-flight on May 3, and you definitely don't want to order a PC afterwards.

    It's going to be chaos - you might try to order a PC but I can tell you all sorts of weird errors are going to happen. And the phone lines are going to be jammed solid with people who can't get their order through.

    Chances are after a week they'll revert back to the old systems just to be able to handle orders again because the new system would be continually failing and people just can't order anything.

    Also, if you customize, make sure you do it early because who knows what the new system will do.

    It's basically universal that any big system change will promptly fail the instant it's put in production. It can be simple things like the act of everyone logging in at once causes the system to bog down and start timing out.

    The problem is, the proper way is to migrate users slowly so you can monitor and get feedback. Of course in the short term it costs more time and money to do this, but it's probably cheaper than switching everyone over at once and having the system flop over and die in the first 5 minutes of the transition and having no one able to place orders. And all the overtime for people who have to fix the numerous bugs and missing features while you try to get the shiny new system working again.

  • Just by mentioning XKCD in this discussion I'm sure most folks probably already know which comic I'm referring to and understand exactly how this will end for Dell.

  • So.. I wonder what executive came in and bet their reputation on this project, how much more are they going to be paid at their next job, and how long till their replacement starts a whole new plan to undo the new mess to replace it with their personally branded mess.
  • "I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization". - Charlton Ogburn Jr. in 1957.

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