“Less than five months after going public with plans to immediately start replacing its Windows-based PCs with Macs, Auto Warehousing Co. was forced to push back the project by more than a month. That was last December. The reason was not a lack of money, manpower or executive support. Rather, what stymied the project were protests from workers and objections from customers who perceived the technology switch as unnecessarily costly,” Julia King reports for Compterworld.
“‘I didn’t see this coming at all,’ says Dale Frantz, CIO of the Tacoma, Wash.-based company. ‘We never before had any of the workforce question our technological initiatives.’ But with the Mac project, ‘there was a perception that the equipment was much more expensive than traditional Windows PCs and that we were purchasing Lamborghini-level equipment with the company’s profits,’ he says,” King reports.
“AWC’s customers had similar concerns, raising questions about whether the technology migration might trigger increases in service rates. Computerworld story about AWC’s technology migration plans was published, both he and CEO Stephen Seher received a flood of phone calls and e-mails with questions, positive and negative comments, and even an anonymous death threat,” King reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Reports of a death threat should not be at all surprising: The combination of “Stockholm Syndrome” and “cognitive dissonance” produces a victim who firmly believes the relationship is not only acceptable, but also desperately needed for their survival.
King continues, “Employees wanted to know whether money that could go toward salary increases or other benefits was being diverted to what they perceived as a pricey high-tech project. Customers worried that the cost of the project would be passed on to them. AWC’s bankers wanted more details to determine whether switching to a new technology made sound business sense… A few key people were very anti-Apple, though they couldn’t articulate why. ‘They just didn’t want to switch,’ Frantz says.”
King reports, “As Frantz saw it, fully disclosing costs was the best way to do that. He spent the next month explaining to everyone who would be affected the many reasons for the technology swap. Among those is the more than $1.82 million the company calculates it will save over the next three years.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Old myths die hard. But, die they do.