Apple eats its own dog food and it tastes good

One thing that never ceases to amaze me every time I visit an Apple store is the extent to which Apple manages to “eat its own dog food”.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, “eating your own dog food” describes companies that use their own products to conduct their business. So I’m going to describe a purchase I made in the Apple store yesterday, which will hopefully serve as a good example.

I asked one of their assistants for some help choosing an Apple keyboard for my iPad. The store was quite busy as you might expect in the run up to Christmas, so the assistant took my name (recording it on her iPad) and said that someone will be with me shortly. Within a few minutes, another assistant came over, introduced himself and told me which keyboard I needed. He then walked over to a free Apple Mac Pro that no one was using (the same ones that serve as demonstration models for people to play with). He brought up an order management system, logged in and submitted an order for the keyboard, then told me that another member of staff would arrive with it shortly. This happened within about five minutes and of course, I then had to pay for it. The assistant pulled an iPhone out of his pocket, scanned the barcode on the keyboard, then scanned the code on the credit card terminal and asked me to insert my card to make the payment. The payment was made and my receipt was emailed to me as usual.

This approach of using technology that you sell to your customers for your own purposes has many benefits. Firstly, as a company, it reduces your costs as you get the equipment and infrastructure at cost price. Secondly, if you use the equipment yourself, it has to be fit for purpose, which means that the research and development to make this happen results in a better product for your customers. Finally, your customers will have more confidence that your products are good as they can see you using them to conduct your business.

This is a win win situation, provided of course that there is some overlap between your products and your customers’ needs.