Additional benefits include a reduction in hard-drive encryption costs (IBM can rely on Apple’s native FileVault full-disk encryption) and lower antivirus expenses.
On the staffing front, the ratio of support staff to supported employees is dramatically improved. “We need a lot fewer people to support those machines.”
Satisfaction improvement
At the same time, customer satisfaction is improved. The help desk is achieving 85% customer satisfaction – and 95% of employees say they are satisfied or very satisfied with the skill level of the person they spoke to, Previn said. “That’s a much higher CSAT than I see on the PC help desk.”
Why is that? “When you do get through to this help desk, you actually talk to someone who can resolve your problem. You don’t get sent to tier two, or tier three, or assigned to a special help desk. You get your problem fixed.”
And it’s still early days. Measuring the benefits is a work in progress, but “the longer this programme runs, the more compelling the business case becomes,” Previn said. “The incremental purchase price of the Mac definitely is paying for itself – and then some – in reduced support burden” over the life of the device.
While Previn said he cannot share a dollar figure yet, “I can confidently say every Mac that we buy is making and saving IBM money.”
Real soft benefits
While the business case focuses primarily on hard cost gains, IBM recognises soft benefits, as well. One example is the company’s ability to attract and retain technical talent.
Using Macs at work “is something people want. It makes them happier, it makes them more productive. And increasingly, we see it as a competitive disadvantage not to allow employees to have a choice in this space,” Previn said. “We see a lot of people who see it as a condition of employment.”
What about the app gap?
That’s the most common question Previn gets asked. His answer: “My own experience is that it’s much less of a real issue than people make it out to be before you start.”
There will be applications that don’t work, but it’s a lot fewer than what is often asserted.
IBM has an application portfolio of about 3,000 apps, and Previn knows there’s never going to be a business case to go in and overhaul 3,000 applications. “But what we can do is bring that data forward into new interfaces, either by way of native apps, or web experiences, preferably by way of APIs,” he said.
One example is IBM’s newly created ManagerHub, which pulls the data that managers need from multiple legacy systems – for tasks such as performance management and compensation – into a single app.
Application readiness
For companies that are considering a move to Macs, Previn does not recommend spending too much time on app readiness assessments, which he sees as a great way to justify doing nothing. Instead, let the device rollout drive the app rationalisation work, not the other way around.
“Rather than focus on the people who are telling you the reasons that they can’t use a Mac, what we tried to do was focus on the people who want to go on that journey and get velocity with them as opposed to getting completely drained by the people who don’t want to do it in the first place.”
“By dealing with these things as they come up, we’ve been able to get much better traction than spending 18 months coming up with reasons not to move forward.”
Hiring is critical
Investing in new talent is key to making the support model work, Previn said.
“Rather than take people who were already supporting PCs and dub them Mac support, it was really important to hire people who loved the Mac as much as the people who were going to be using them,” Previn said. IBM has hired (and continues to hire) a mix of ex-Apple Genius Bar people, new college graduates, and IT people who have professional experience with Macs.
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