Help files for FileMaker Solutions March 4, 2008
Posted by Dan Stuchbury in : FileMaker Pro , add a commentI’ve been writing the ‘Help’ documentation for Knowledge Base CRM over the last few days, and was thinking about how to deliver this to the end-user. One option was to include it in each distribution, however that would mean having lots of help files, some better than others (as additions and improvements are made) all over the place.
Using the web viewer, it is easy to make your ‘Help’ file appear as though it is part of the solution, when what’s actually happening is a web page is being shown. This means you can update your ‘Help’ system whenever you want and it will be immediately delivered to your users.
Ok, so your users will have to be connected the the Internet to view the help system, but then most people generally are when in the office. Knowledge Base CRM V6 will be eventually shipped with an online help system, so watch this space to see it in action.
Factors to consider when purchasing bespoke software October 25, 2007
Posted by Dan Stuchbury in : Business In General, Software , add a commentPlanning:
Do you actually need a bespoke software solution?
There are lots of purpose built off-the-shelf software packages, built for a variety of businesses. It is well worth evaluating these as well as talking to a bespoke developer.
Your business comes first
When evaluating off-the-shelf software, remember that the software should fit your business, not the other way round. Businesses that purchase software, then adapt their processes to fit that software are taking the wrong approach.
What makes you think you need bespoke software
Consider what you’re looking to achieve. No point in buying software just for the sake of it. Don’t buy software just to automate a single, possibly inefficient or unnecessary process.
Talking to a software developer:
Do they have experience in your sector?
A company whose experience is entire B2B are unlikely to be the best people to develop a solution for a B2C client and vice versa.
Set a realistic budget
Bespoke software is written solely for you, and should not be considered a cheap option. Whilst an off-the-shelf solution may cost £500-600, it is developed for the mass market and won’t necessarily do everything you need it to do,and in the way you need to do it.
Dedicate time to your project
Almost every software development company will need to spend time interviewing your staff about their experiences and expectations of your existing software and the bespoke solution being developed. A thorough developer will gather opinions of everyone in the company, not just one person from each department. The input of everyone is important in developing workflow processes that the software will follow.
The developer needs to understand what the software needs to do from the user’s perspective as well as the perspective of management.
Be prepared to give additional input
Often, the development team working on your project will require further information from you as development goes on. It should be considered a sign that good progress is being made, and that the developers place importance on getting things right first time.
BETA testing is an important step
When handed a BETA version of your software, it is advisable to give copies to several members of your team, to allow them to experiment with the new software and provide valuable feedback as to the real-life usability and efficiency.
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Stuchbury Associates Ltd are bespoke software developers, specialising in bespoke CRM software. As developers exclusively using FileMaker Pro, software from Stuchbury Associates is 100% cross-platform (PC & Mac). Full details are available at http://stuchburyassociates.com/
Copyright © 2007 Stuchbury Associates Ltd, All Rights Reserved. You may reproduce this article in its entirety but you must keep this copyright notice intact and notify info@stuchburyassociates.com including a link to where the article is published.
Re-sizing images in FileMaker Pro: a story September 25, 2007
Posted by Dan Stuchbury in : FileMaker Pro , add a commentFileMaker Pro is not an image editing program, therefore it cannot re-sample images - it just displays the images as they are, albeit within any size constraints you specify.
But what does this mean?
Just because you have changed the dimensions of an image in FileMaker, the actual image itself hasn’t changed, and is still the same size and resolution. A photograph to be used as a background for a report exported as a PDF file, is a good example of how not properly re-sampling and resizing images can come back to bite you. Take the following scenario:
John runs a photographic image library, and has some stunning high-resolution photos that he wants to use as part of his FileMaker solution as a background in the user interface and some of the reports. John enters Layout mode in his FileMaker solution, and imports a master image from his main server. The image is huge (the photograph was taken with a 10MP Digital SLR camera), so John reduces the dimensions of the image using FileMaker’s object size tool, ensuring he maintains the original aspect ratio. Because this image is to be used as part of the cover of the report, John places the resized image in a Title Header layout part, saves his changes, enters Browse mode, and runs the report. A few seconds later, the report is displayed on screen, and the new images looks great. Feeling pleased with his work, John saves the report as a PDF file to his desktop, ready to email to one of his retained photographers.
As he attaches the file to his email, John notices that the PDF file is 30MB in size, but can’t explain how, as he resized the image before placing it on his report layout. He runs the report again, and gets the same output, a 30MB PDF file - much too big to email.
Earlier in the day, John used a couple of other images, which he’d faded, so use as a background in the primary user-interface of his FileMaker solution.
John returned to his ‘Home’ screen, and wondered why it took several seconds to display, a supposed to the instantaneous switch he was used to. He wasn’t bothered though, as the ‘Home’ screen looked fantastic. The next time the phone rang, John pulled up the details of the photographer, and again wondered why it took so long to display the ‘Photographers’ screen (which had a nice-looking background image), and why running scripts that acted on this screen took so long. Finding such slow speeds unusual for his powerful computer, John called a colleague, who asked if John had resized the images before inserting them into FileMaker. John explained what he’d done, then realised that FileMaker hadn’t actually resized the images, just changed the dimensions.
John opened the images in his favourite image editor, resizes the images to the size he wanted, re-sampled them to 72DPI, and inserted the new images into his FileMaker layouts replacing the images he used earlier. He ran the report he tried to email earlier, saved the result as a PDF file (it was a more sensible 30K), and emailed it to the photographer. John also noticed that his FileMaker solution was running as it’s usual fast pace, as it was no longer displaying 30MB images.
The moral of this story is “always remember to resize your images BEFORE inserting them into your FileMaker layouts”.
The same rule applies when inserting images in web pages, including your Ecademy Profile, Blogs Club posts and Marketplace listings.
What is CRM and why do I need it? May 5, 2007
Posted by Dan Stuchbury in : CRM , add a comment“Don’t worry about the definition of CRM. If you don’t come up with your own definition you’re wasting your time” – Ed Thompson, Gartner Analyst.
This probably accounts for the fact that there are so many different definitions of CRM out there.
One of the first things to do when considering adopting CRM is to define what it means to your business, in as much detail as possible, remembering to consider why you are doing it, and what results you want to achieve from doing so. It is crucial that you fully understand what you want to achieve from your CRM programme, as without knowing this you will have no way of knowing how successful, or otherwise, the implementation has been.
Often high on a list of desires is to increase customer satisfaction, and understandably so. Research suggests that dissatisfied customers will tell 7-10 people about their experience, whereas satisfied customers will refer you to 3-4 new customers.
Successful CRM is about competing in the relationship dimension. Not as an alternative to having a competitive product or reasonable price - but as a differentiator. If your competitors are doing the same things you are (as they generally are), product and price won’t give you a long-term sustainable competitive advantage. But if you can get an edge based on how customers feel about your company, you can start to develop a more sustainable, long term relationship with them.
A New Home April 2, 2007
Posted by Dan Stuchbury in : Stuchbury Associates , comments closedFollowing the creation of our new web site (www.stuchburyassociates.com), this blog is now situated under our own site, hosted by the same hosting company (StuchHost), which means greater reliability, greater flexibility for adding plug-ins, and overall a better impression.
Over the next week or so, I’ll be changing the theme from the WordPress standard, to something that fits with the design of our main web site, as well as posting some articles of interest.
Watch this space!
Synchronising FileMaker Databases - It Can Be Done! February 25, 2007
Posted by Dan Stuchbury in : Business In General, FileMaker Pro , add a commentI was asked by another Ecademy BlackStar member last week if it was possible to have a stand-alone, but synchronisable version of a FileMaker database on a laptop, for remote users, and to allow users to work on their data away from the office. After a bit of research in FMForums.com, it appeared that the answer was “yes, but it’s complicated, and very difficult to achieve (therefore likely to be prohibitively expensive”, so that was what I passed on.
However, a bit more digging around brought-up a company called WorldSync, and their product SyncDek. I requested a 30-day demo, and was contacted by a guy called, Jason Erickson - who, it turns out, is their CEO and chief architect of SyncDek, with over 10 years development experience. He knows his stuff then.
I took some time to comtemplate the opportunities that a product like this could bring. SyncDek would have been ideal for a prospect I met recently, it will be ideal for an existing client in the future, and may well aleo be ideal for another existing client fairly soon. We could use it internally, as it’s often useful to be able to take my own CRM database out on the road - so I’ve got telephone numbers of people I’m due to meet, and people I need to talk to that day without having to take bits of paper with me. OK, so I could just have the database on my laptop, but the laptop is my secondary computer, so it’s not always out, and desk space is at a premium.
The download links arrived in my inbox not long after, and after a brief look around the developer guide, it looked complicated to get working, so I put it off for later that day, when I had some time to devote to it.
It wasn’t as complicated as I first thought, and the development guide is excellent. Some changes were required to a few relationships and scripts in Knowledge Base CRM, and it took me a few attempts, and an email to WorldSync, who responded within 10 minutes (it was late at night, and they’re based in Berkely, CA), to get it right, but this evening, I got it right, and it worked perfectly. I had expected it to work, but given that I screwed it up a few times, it came as a nice surprise.
So, using SyncDek, I’m able to maintain multiple copies of a database, and synchronise them with a master copy stored on SyncDek server (no dedicated machine required), at the click of a button.
I don’t yet know how much SyncDek costs. I imagine it to be expensive, as there is no indication of pricing on WorldSync’s web site, but we shall see.
Shameless Plug : Fraser Hay (The Lead Generation MBA) February 15, 2007
Posted by Dan Stuchbury in : Shameless Plugs , add a commentI first came across Fraser a few years ago, when I was looking for a marketing course. The Lead Generation MBA wasn’t what I was looking for (I didn’t run a business at the time, I was looking to ‘learn how to do marketing’), but I’ve referred a few people to it who were more suited to it’s purposes than me at the time.
A hands-on marketing guru, Fraser is a genuinely nice guy, and I highly recommend you connect with him. I guarantee that he will have some snippit of information that will make a real difference to your business.
Two testimonials I’ve written for Fraser, below:
“I don’t write testimonials very often, and for me to give two, to the same person is ever rarer.
Using the 3 Minute Marketing Audit, I have been able to identify 17 marketing areas to address within my business, and now have a focussed marketing strategy to put in place.
Fraser is a unique individual. He knows his subject inside out, and backwards. If you’ve not taken advantage of the 3 Minute Marketing Audit yet - you’re missing out. It’s not rocket science, and that’s the beauty of it.
Dan “FileMaker Pro” Stuchbury”
“Fraser is an absolute legend, seriously. What else can I say?
Dan “FileMaker Pro” Stuchbury”
I’ve just signed up to an 8-week marketing coaching programme, and will share my experiences, and the results, here. Without breaching copyright, or confidentiality, of course.
Web-Based CRM System Wanted February 15, 2007
Posted by Dan Stuchbury in : Business In General , add a commentI met a company this week who were after a decent CRM system, for little money. I couldn’t help them with our solution, Knowledge Base CRM, but suggested they take a look at SugarCRM Open Source, because there is no cost involved apart from web hosting (which, by the way, we can now offer through StuchHost, but more about that another time).
I was thinking about it in the car on the way back from this meeting, and decided that we should think about offering a web-based CRM system as well as the desktop-based Knowledge Base CRM. I think it’s important to be able to offer more than one solution, as desktop-based is not always ideal for the client. (See the topic in The CRM Club on Ecademy for discussion on this subject.)
There is no reason why I couldn’t refer prospects for a web-based system to someone in my network, I know at least one NetSuite Consultant for example, but what do I do when the client wants to spend as little money as possible? That’s what got me thinking about SugarCRM. I don’t intend to become a PHP expert (Julian Bond is your man for that, if you can afford him), but in terms of having the ability to deploy SugarCRM for small companies, and recuit the expertise of a specialist where necessary, there is definitely some mileage.
FileMaker Network Sharing : The Problem Doesn’t Exist February 15, 2007
Posted by Dan Stuchbury in : FileMaker Pro , add a commentOr so FileMaker tech support tell me. They have had no reports, and it is not a known issue, however I maintain that there is.
I’m not 100% certain, but I don’t think FileMaker have their own tech support team, based on an email address for them I was given by a representative yesterday. They appear to be based in India anyway, and FileMaker don’t have an office in India that I can find an address for, so that leaves me to assume that they outsource the entire support operation. Please feel free to correct me, though.
I had expected them to have heard of the problem - I don’t believe nobody has reported it.
Network Sharing in FileMaker Pro 8.5 February 6, 2007
Posted by Dan Stuchbury in : FileMaker Pro , add a commentAt first I thouht it was just me, but having visited a client last week who had just installed FileMaker Pro, I started to think it was some sort of bug. Network sharing doesn’t work in FileMaker 8.5 & 8.5 Advanced, which is a major pain, and may end up costing this client of ours a FileMaker Server licence.
We’re both using the latest release, and it seems that other 8.5 users are having the same problem - there is a thread about it on FMForums. The only workaround is to host files using FileMaker 8, but that defeats the object - as none of the 8.5 features will be available. I’ll be suggesting this to our client, but I don’t know how easy (or otherwise) it is to get hold of version 8 nowadays.
FileMaker, if you’re reading this - FIX IT! Please 
I’m going to talk to FileMaker Support and see if they have a solution, and will post here if they respond positively.