Four New 64 Gigabyte iPads for the Business!

After dropping Jocelyn off at the airport yesterday morning, Aaron and I went to Barnes & Noble to get a range of additional business books. We then returned home, Aaron decided to go to his parents’ house and paint Easter eggs with his nephew and mom.

A series of events then lead to my parents and I driving to the Apple store in the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, buying four (4) new 64 Gigabyte iPads with matching leather cases, as well as a new 32 gigabyte iPhone for my mom. The total came to about $3,600. We then went to dinner at Houstons steak house, which was excellent. The last time I had eaten there was with Ellary and Aaron when she was in town for a conference.

The iPads are so much more than a consumer device. It took only a few minutes and we had installed the specialized trading applications provided by our brokerage firms, giving us access to world markets. In virtually no time, we can convert United States dollars into Euros or Swiss Francs, place complex option orders for securities around the globe, and check our total exposure to certain asset classes and individual issuers. It is going to change our lives.  And that’s just the capital markets trading operations, not the operating companies.  That is where things get exciting …

The iPad Lets Us Access Real-Time Sales, Profit, and Cash Flow Reports for Our Businesses

On top of this, our retail businesses can be accessed in real-time, meaning I know sales, profits, and cash flow to the second. I could change inventory balances, put items on sale, or respond to customer messages. Well, not me since I don’t do any of that, but the staff could. I can be sitting in Texas or New York with friends and instantly check our cash position and capital market trading positions.

God bless Steve Jobs. Anyone who thinks the iPad is only a glorified consumer toy is unimaginatively dull (and probably doesn’t run a business).

What the iPad Means for Employment and Business Productivity

Ruby made a great point today … The productivity gains are going to mean that fewer employees are necessary. At the same time, new jobs will be opening in the software and technology field for people developing iPhone and iPad applications or figuring out how to create solutions that increase profits and make the consumer happy.

I mean, I am sitting on a balcony writing to you on an iPad as my companies grow. Peter Drucker predicted this knowledge based economy 30 to 40 years ago, and here we are living it. Now is such an exciting time that I wouldn’t have wanted to born anywhere, or anytime, else.

Why We Bought the First Generation of iPads for Business

We originally intended to wait for the iPad to reach its second generation and include features such as multiple application support, built-in video, etc.  However, we realized that the productivity gains alone are going to be substantial, we can run our tests on the four iPads we purchased for the business, and if things go like they should, we can expand our investment and use the iPads for everything when the next generation hits stores.

In other words, before taxes, the businesses are only spending $9.86 per day over the next twelve months to test out the technology that could ultimately save us millions upon millions of dollars.  After taxes, our costs are only $6.41 or less per day for the test.  This is probably the best risk/reward ratio we’ve ever seen for something that could help us gain substantial scalability.

I mean, imagine a company where we can integrate our retail stores with the ecommerce back-end and actually complete transactions with sales associates carrying around the iPads!