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Fortune
Fortune
John Kell

Dell's employees had 800 different gen AI ideas. Here's how the PC maker winnowed the list to 8

middle-aged man wearing blue shirt and suit jacket poses for a photo portrait (Credit: Courtesy of Dell Technologies)

Within a few weeks of OpenAI debuting its ChatGPT chatbot 2022, igniting the AI craze, employees at Dell Technologies had proposed 800 different ways their company could also harness artificial intelligence.

The brainstorming reflected leadership's excitement—CEO Michael Dell is a big believer in AI—as well as an organic, enthusiastic response from the broader workforce. But several hundred ideas were far too many for the PC maker to act on. So the company winnowed the list, first to 132 use cases, and then further to eight priority projects.

A key executive, John Roese, Dell's chief technology and chief AI officer, has taken on the job of decider-in-chief. Rather than give everyone free rein to develop AI within the company, he chooses which projects to pursue.

“You cannot do this by consensus and every business unit has its own agenda,” says Roese. “You have a finite amount of resources and you need to prioritize the most ROI-impactful projects.”

Four areas within Dell are allotted the most resources when it comes to AI: services, supply chain, engineering, and sales. Some of the projects that have already been deployed include a tool called “Next Best Action,” an AI assistant that helps Dell’s technical support team find information to answer customer questions, leading to a 10% reduction in the amount of time needed to close a case. Another example are AI coding assistants that help make Dell’s 20,000 engineers more productive. Meanwhile, a new generative AI search tool aims to trim the time needed for sales team members to prepare for a pitch and focus more on customer conversations.

“One thing we tell our customers is as you start your AI journey, the first question you should answer is, what makes you special?” asks Roese. “If you don’t know what your core source of differentiation is as a company, then you don’t know where you should apply AI.” 

He says other departments, like HR and finance, haven’t gotten generative AI tools because deploying the technology in those divisions wouldn’t achieve the desired big return on investment. “You’ve got to have someone at the top who is willing to take the arrows and be the bad guy,” says Roese.

Potentially, however, Dell may tap the AI services of other companies. Over time, as workplace management vendors like SAP SuccessFactors or Workday add AI capabilities, Dell could license those features if the expected productivity gains they create are worth the cost. 

Roese joined Dell 12 years ago as CTO of EMC Corporation, a leader in data storage that Dell acquired through a $67 billion merger in 2016. At the time, it was the largest tech deal ever.

As CTO of Dell, Roese says his priority is to ensure Dell is competitive on technology advancements including AI, quantum computing, and blockchain, but also doesn’t get distracted and invest in technology that would be a bad fit.

“If Dell wakes up one morning and is just flat footed because we missed a technology inflection, I should be fired,” says Roese.

One multi-year project Roese led was the expansion of the total addressable market that Dell could pursue. Dell, which generates nearly $90 billion in annual revenue and ranks 48 on the Fortune 500, already has a diverse business that includes selling computers, data storage devices and services, and software. But Roese has since sought new opportunities in the telecommunications sector, data management, cloud services, and AI. As a result, Roese says the total addressable market Dell is chasing is now worth $2 trillion, up from $600 billion before the five-year initiative kicked off. 

On AI, the company’s revenue has gotten a lift from selling AI servers. Dell shipped $2.9 billion of them in the most recent third quarter and has a backlog of $4.5 billion in orders.

As for the future, the company has projected that its new AI PCs will help bolster overall demand for its products from enterprise customers.

Dell’s AI strategy has four components: “in, on, for, and with.” “In” involves AI that’s embedded in Dell’s products, like the company’s PCs; “on” is for storage, services, and networking platforms that run AI workloads; “for” is how Dell is applied internally for the company’s workforce; and “with” is the ecosystem created to support AI, including partnerships with AI vendors.

Roese says founder Michael Dell and chief operating officer Jeff Clarke have been very supportive of AI investments internally because of the focus on ROI. The decision about what to invest in is always based on whether it would support revenue growth, margin expansion, cost reduction, or offset a material risk to the business. The ROI question must be answered first before Dell even considers how advanced the tech is or determining whether to fund the project or to get the legal department’s sign off.

“We don’t want to waste time on projects that are not going to impact the business,” Roese.

John Kell

Send thoughts or suggestions to CIO Intelligence here.

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