(First published in LinkedIn Pulse)
I recently had a debate with my accounts department who decided that
my team and I were not allowed to spend some of our departmental budget
on buying a few ipads. We hoped that ipads would support our team
enhance the customer experience and enable us to generate far more
storytelling and marketing materials than our tiny marketing budget
could do in years. I was the custodian of our own departmental budget
and there was a section on the pre-agreed budget subdivisions clearly
labelled general equipment so I thought “what a great idea..why didn’t we think of this sooner?”
However our accounts department had a different idea and pulled the plug on the request. Their argument was that ipads fall under the category of capital equipment and ALL capital equipment requests MUST come from a central company IT budget.
I could see their logic, it made sense, having capital equipment requests come out of a single unifying budget meant that they could easily monitor all IT purchases and keep easy records of a controlled stock. We are a rather large company after all and our department is only one of many, so if accounts said yes to us then the box of Pandora would be opened.
There is one tiny problem though… I do not see mobile devices and electronics as capital equipment! In the forums of English Language and Usage, Webster’s definition was utilised as evidence that electronic items are just consumables as they can easily be destroyed, stolen, or used beyond repair in much shorter time spans than ever before. After all, computers may last 5 or even more years but mobile devices are designed so that you can at best get 3 years out of them. In two years they are so obsolete that a consumer is “forced” to invest in the next model. So my argument was that mobile devices are consumable products and cannot be seen as capital equipment.
BUT my argument goes beyond mere definitions and choices of how many years of usage it takes to brand mobile devices as capital equipment. My argument goes deeper into the heart of your chosen philosophy and way of thinking when it comes to technology. If we don’t move with the times and continue to consider mobile technology as capital equipment (and by definition long lasting), then we will mostly be using out-dated technology. Our customers are young and tech-savvy and we would always appear as uninspiring and obsolete (at least in the technology department) to them.
In the handbook of hospitality published by Routledge (edited by yours truly) there is a chapter by Omar Ismail that separates old generation thinking to new, he calls it the dog versus cat thinking. This incident made me realise that I am a cat in a dog’s world and I do not wish to be spending 7 lives debating what I think is so obvious!
However our accounts department had a different idea and pulled the plug on the request. Their argument was that ipads fall under the category of capital equipment and ALL capital equipment requests MUST come from a central company IT budget.
I could see their logic, it made sense, having capital equipment requests come out of a single unifying budget meant that they could easily monitor all IT purchases and keep easy records of a controlled stock. We are a rather large company after all and our department is only one of many, so if accounts said yes to us then the box of Pandora would be opened.
There is one tiny problem though… I do not see mobile devices and electronics as capital equipment! In the forums of English Language and Usage, Webster’s definition was utilised as evidence that electronic items are just consumables as they can easily be destroyed, stolen, or used beyond repair in much shorter time spans than ever before. After all, computers may last 5 or even more years but mobile devices are designed so that you can at best get 3 years out of them. In two years they are so obsolete that a consumer is “forced” to invest in the next model. So my argument was that mobile devices are consumable products and cannot be seen as capital equipment.
BUT my argument goes beyond mere definitions and choices of how many years of usage it takes to brand mobile devices as capital equipment. My argument goes deeper into the heart of your chosen philosophy and way of thinking when it comes to technology. If we don’t move with the times and continue to consider mobile technology as capital equipment (and by definition long lasting), then we will mostly be using out-dated technology. Our customers are young and tech-savvy and we would always appear as uninspiring and obsolete (at least in the technology department) to them.
In the handbook of hospitality published by Routledge (edited by yours truly) there is a chapter by Omar Ismail that separates old generation thinking to new, he calls it the dog versus cat thinking. This incident made me realise that I am a cat in a dog’s world and I do not wish to be spending 7 lives debating what I think is so obvious!
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