Why I hated Apple and why I will love Apple

As CFO in charge of IT I used to have a recurrent nightmare for many months: the wish for almost all the employees of my company to switch the corporate tools to Apple. And the more I tried to explain to them why it would not be in the interest of the company, the more my corporate popularity was flagging. How to explain to the marketing and sales teams that the core of the IT is more PC compliant? How to explain that the accounting, invoicing, logistics and payroll systems can easily talk together through PC, when Apple are more family of creative tools? How to explain that our SAP technology was not conceptualized for linking with i-phones? I was so defensive that even my IT Manager was no longer daring pronouncing "Apple", probably afraid to lose 10% of his potential bonus whenever he was saying this word.

But something happened to me in September 2010: after four years of personal usage of my (old) Motorola Raz-r I decided to switch to an i-phone. I didn’t really like this new device because it is a bit big big to fit in the pocket of my jeans, but everybody was switching to this telephone so I did it too. And I have to admit that very soon I was really impressed by the tool and its technology, and I opened my mind to the Apple tools… even for work.

My company is selling hair-care. The sales field visits salons every day and place the order of products through a many laptop (HP) which is connected to the SAP Logistics and Selling tools through a web-portal. I implemented this tool two years ago. It allows the sales team to get live many data such as the history of the sales by customer, by day, by sku, in $$$ and so. Would the web-portal work with an i-pad instead of the mini HP? I think so but please don’t disclose to my marketing and sales team.

As CFO I work on daily basis to reduce the costs. A large source of expense in my company is all the marketing documentations and brochures, which have to be re-printed anytime we have a new launch, a change in price, or any other adjustment in the marketing strategy. Would presentations to the salons through i-pads be more “sexy” and save many printings and re-printings? I think so but please don’t disclose to my marketing and sales team.

My company is buying Capilliscopes, which are very expensive hair-profiler tools allowing to diagnose the kind of scalp/ hair (and so the kind of appropriate product) of the consumers. As CFO I limit drastically the number of purchases every year. I’ve heard that a company has developed an i-pad application, a kind of mini-camera to be plugged to the i-pad, which makes excellent hair-profiles. Would the hair-profiler application would replace the Capilliscopes for much less money, could be used by most of the sales employees and most of the salons, boost the sales, and all this for a much lower cost vs the current Capilliscopes? I think so but please don’t disclose to my marketing and sales team.

Well, I know what I should do in 2012 in order to make my co-workers more happy, modernize the tools of the company, save money, and get my popularity back to the top! The i-pad will replace the mini HP laptops, most of the marketing brochures, and the expensive Capilliscopes. But please, don’t disclose to my marketing and sales team yet!