Apple Does Lean Business

By George Lee Sye

I walked into the Perth Apple Store last week and as usual the crowds were flocking around the vast display of cool stuff made by Apple … yes, I’m a fan, I admit it.

I did the compulsory browse through the technology before moving on to the accessories. I quickly located a number of items that I needed to finally present my seminars using only iPads before walking to the end of the rapidly lengthening queue of shoppers with credit cards in hand.

As my thoughts drift to how easy it is to browse and select but how difficult it is to pay for your selection, a young man, obviously an Apple Store employee, walks up to me and asks “Are you paying by credit card Sir?”

I tell him I am so he leads me away from the queue to one of the display stands.

He then whips out his iPhone and in a matter of minutes processes my purchase.

He scanned all of the items with the iPhone, he swiped my card through the iPhone, and then he had the audacity to make me realise how inadequate our payments processes are by asking me “should I send the receipt to your email address?” … you know, the one that he showed me on his iPhone screen, the one I hadn’t given him yet … what the!!

Yep … the system recognised my credit card and its link to my iTunes account. It had automatically populated the personal details area.

That’s Lean Thinking at work folks.

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