Productivity solutions guide
http://www.macworld.co.uk/filemaker
FileMaker has helped Nimlok, the UK’s leading manufacturer of display and exhibition solutions, to cope with an intensive restructuring of its business in the face of massive competition and to maintain its impressive international growth.
According to Tim Perutz, Managing Director at Nimlok: “We had rapidly grown in size in a quite ad hoc fashion. We had a number of departments, each with different systems. The result was a lack of organized communication between different parts of the business. It was clear that we needed a powerful integrated information system. We looked at a number of different solutions before we decided to use FileMaker.”
Nimlok’s sister US company had already evaluated and liked FileMaker—so leading FileMaker development company G2 was assigned the task of building the combined MRP1, MRP2 and CRM system, led by G2 Director Mehrdad Goudarzi.
“No other product can do what FileMaker can do as easily and cost effectively,” Goudarzi says. “It allowed for a highly iterative and interactive development process. This was crucial to the evolution of the whole business model from originally being briefed to building the finished system. FileMaker’s key feature is its flexibility.”
“To support our move into bespoke display solutions ,we needed much more sophisticated information about a whole host of business factors,” Perutz says.
According to Senior IT Manager Gary Clement-Boggis: “Our business is hugely system-oriented. However, our previous information systems were virtually all paper-based. “A customer may approach us some three months before an exhibition to discuss their requirements. However, they may only finally commit to the order six days before the show, which gives us a tight window in which to build and deliver the finished product. Unlike many businesses, our deadlines are immovable. If we were even one day late, we would have failed our customer.”
The process begins when a sales lead is fed through from the marketing department. Once a quote is initiated, it is given a unique code that remains with it throughout the process, from design, through to production and delivery.
Continues Clement-Boggis: “In the past, managing this process was a traumatic experience. Because we were handling information on paper and passing this between departments, finding out the true status of a job was difficult. For example, if a change was made to the initial design, communicating that through to all other relevant departments in a timely fashion was problematic. With FileMaker, this has now changed. With its flexibility, we can smoothly handle and track the process through design approval, production, stock control, and so on.”
“With the move to providing more solutions with a broader portfolio of services, G2 has done a fantastic job in developing the system to meet our needs. We made intense changes to the business, and the FileMaker system developed by G2 was a huge contributing factor in our success.”
As an example, Clement-Boggis was working late at the office one night when he took a call from an Italian customer who was working with a distributor from Dubai. “They had a show at Earls Court the following day and needed to know where the consignment was. Within seconds I was able to track where the order was and solve the problem. There’s no question that our FileMaker application has saved the day many times through its ability to instantly give people the information they need.”
Says Goudarzi: “Other database tools make you fit the way they work. FileMaker is the opposite. Also, it was important that we helped improve business processes while building the system, not simply automate the old way of doing things. The integration of barcode technology into Process Management combined with Stock Control and Production Capacity Management has given Nimlok a real edge in the market.”
Continues Clement-Boggis; “Other systems take a couple of years to bed down—and we didn’t have that luxury. FileMaker is without doubt the easiest to use software we’ve ever encountered. G2 has created a fluid and simple-to-use application that has helped our business enormously.”
Concludes Perutz: “The key benefits we’ve gained from FileMaker are in helping us to reduce costs, improve our service to customers, and making everyone’s job more enjoyable. Anybody can go to any computer in the company and find the information they require. Enthusiasm is tangible for the system. Without FileMaker, our growth would have been impaired. Indeed, if we had not implemented FileMaker, we would not have survived as a business.”
