How much would this job be worth?

[MrRage]

I

[MrRage]

Easy to use layouts, arranged in 5 major groups:

Home:

* Reminders System. Send, create, close and dispatch to other employee reminders. Also Check on reminder status on all reminder types (Open, Closed, Dispatched)

Business Manager (Product side)

* Maintain a list of Client records, 40 fields

* Maintain a list of Product Records, 20 fields

* Product table and Client table are relational and products can be arranged by ones sent to clients, and clients to products.

* Logged email history from all emails sent and received by a client, either by the current employee or all employees

Email

* Send and receive all email though FileMaker

* Sort emails by clients

* Send multiple attachments

Business Manger (Service side)

* Maintain a list of Client records, 20 fields

* Some service clients are product clients, or the other way around. Allow for easy linking between these two tables

[MrRage]

A lot of the time savings have to do with jut having all the information in one place (including emails), and having it available in an orderly manner. That and the work order scripts.

[transpower]

Multiply your estimated number of hours by your rate and that will be what the job is worth. If there is a change in specs, add the additional hours.

[Ted S]

Mr Rage,

At the risk of sounding flippant, it is worth whatever the customer is willing to pay you for it and whatever you are willing to sell it for.

I just finished reading a book on economics and a major portion of the book focused on the fact that it is truly market forces that determines pricing.

It sounds like your customer will be more productive which is what it is all about. Since it looks like you only have one customer and they will have a package customized specifically for their needs I would think they will be willing to pay a premium especially when compared to a widely marketed product such as the FileMaker templates that you mentioned.

All that being said, you are probably wise to go with Transpower's plan. Or maybe go with the ever popular method of negotiating the price with the seller starting high and the buyer starting low. Some folks seem to get a real charge out of the negotiating process. I'm not one of them. If you're not either you may want to get some help. Frequently us technical folks are very poor salesmen. I'm certain that there a lots of great products and services out there that failed because of inadequate salesmanship.

[Fenton]

"Frequently us technical folks are very poor salesmen." Too too true; not for lack of enthusiasm, more for excess of optimism. Once I figure out theoretically how something could be done, I figure I'm at least half done -/

For example, your entire solution doesn't sound terribly difficult. But I'm sure it will take a long time regardless. There are many details. You mention "clients" and "purchases," but don't go into the gritty detail of invoices, and orders, etc., which are implied.

Much of what you mention has to do with email. I believe you'll find that the email plug-ins can handle everything you want. [i don't know about checking email automatically, as SMTPit had such a feature in 6, but I think it's still broken in 7, sadly.]

Having configured a few bulk email scripts, using SMTPit, I can tell you that it will take a while to fine-tune. Because sending bulk email also involves Finding the records to send from, checking for and logging errors (which can come from your ISP, which may necessitate sending smaller batches), logging what was sent when to whom, etc..

Then there are Templates. They undoubtedly want to have some standard forms to send, as well as "custom" emails. Both of these are possible, but require different structures. Templates require a structure to store them beforehand, calculations to merge data; but lightweight storage of emails sent (just the IDs). Custom emails require little prep, but a lot of storage (the whole email body). Then there's attachments. And Signatures. The real task is to integrate all this smoothly in an interface. It's more than your email client does.

The rest is mostly just building a correct relational structure; critical for the kinds of interactions you want. You want to think hard about how to deal with the clients/contacts aspect. Don't introduce a superfluous table here unless absolutely required. It will make finding and other things more difficult.

Security, limiting records, is not a huge problem. 7 has the tools to do it. But one has to be careful when one locks viewing by record-level access. Make sure scripts which must run for all still can (turn on full access per script if needed). Definitely script Account creation. (There's an example file in the Sample files, by yours truly -)

I also don't know about the automated Reminder part. I believe it can be done, but automated (ie., w/out user triggering), would probably require a plug-in, or be platform-specific.

You mention Video clips. Whenever there are external objects coming into, or accessed by FileMaker, it requires a user-friendly and foolproof mechanism to bring them in; and possibly store and access them outside the database (if they're huge, which they may well be). Once again, may require a plug-in, or be platform-specific.

It is my experience that "external to FileMaker" functionality takes much longer to implement than internal FileMaker functionality. But it can all be done.

[DykstrL]

At the risk of sounding redundant (I'm good at that) - some other things to think about is training, maintenance and revisions. How are those things going to be handled? Who is going to do it?

If you base everything on hours, then this is easy, but these need to be discussed in negotiations and also specified in the contract. They could bite you in the butt, where unless specified, the client just assumes that it is all included in the price. I have seen each of these issues cause trouble.

...just some more things to consider...

[MrRage]

very true, I was planin on doing a maintenance contract for a year that covered that kind fo stuff. Were still in the nogotiation stages right now. It took me several weeks to just figure out what exactly they wanted.

[stanley]

It took me several weeks to just figure out what exactly they wanted.

I find that this part of the job is the hardest to bill for. Not that I have a hard time writing the bill; the client has a hard time understanding why he should pay it, as if I should be able to understand their business needs instantly, through osmosis.

-Stanley

[stanley]

It took me several weeks to just figure out what exactly they wanted.

I find that this part of the job is the hardest to bill for. Not that I have a hard time writing the bill; the client has a hard time understanding why he should pay it, as if I should be able to understand their business needs instantly, through osmosis.

-Stanley

[stanley]

It took me several weeks to just figure out what exactly they wanted.

I find that this part of the job is the hardest to bill for. Not that I have a hard time writing the bill; the client has a hard time understanding why he should pay it, as if I should be able to understand their business needs instantly, through osmosis.

-Stanley

[Vaughan]

"Were still in the nogotiation stages right now"

no-go-tiation... yes, I've had clients like that!

[Vaughan]

"Were still in the nogotiation stages right now"

no-go-tiation... yes, I've had clients like that!

[Vaughan]

"Were still in the nogotiation stages right now"

no-go-tiation... yes, I've had clients like that!

[NYPoke]

You have several options. The first is to come up with a bid up front for the entire system. At this point, you seem a little unsure about the project. If you already have the system specifications (exactly what the layouts will look like & how they interact & the fields & such), you can estimate your hours reasonably.

However, make sure to build in time for unexpected problems (fudge factor), and make sure you focus the contract EXACTLY to the specifications. Otherwise, you are set up for the client trying to design as you go. Not good on a fixed bid.

Second option is to structure the contract based on your hours. In other words, you are working as a contractor for them. Then, they get to make design changes & use you to train & whatever else they want. This is good if the work may extend. This is normally how I work. Can turn into good deals. I wound up with a great employment position from one of these contracts. Turned down several others over the years.

The third option is to break the contract into separate deliverables, each one with a price attached. You can break down into the design (may already be done), beta release (for testing & revisions), primary release, training & testing. Might make both sides more comfortable.

As stated above, the savings they incur is not going to determine the exact price. It will, however, be a very critical point in your sales pitch/formal proposal. You need to put together formal numbers to use in no-gotiations/yes-gotiations.

Good Luck.

[NYPoke]

You have several options. The first is to come up with a bid up front for the entire system. At this point, you seem a little unsure about the project. If you already have the system specifications (exactly what the layouts will look like & how they interact & the fields & such), you can estimate your hours reasonably.

However, make sure to build in time for unexpected problems (fudge factor), and make sure you focus the contract EXACTLY to the specifications. Otherwise, you are set up for the client trying to design as you go. Not good on a fixed bid.

Second option is to structure the contract based on your hours. In other words, you are working as a contractor for them. Then, they get to make design changes & use you to train & whatever else they want. This is good if the work may extend. This is normally how I work. Can turn into good deals. I wound up with a great employment position from one of these contracts. Turned down several others over the years.

The third option is to break the contract into separate deliverables, each one with a price attached. You can break down into the design (may already be done), beta release (for testing & revisions), primary release, training & testing. Might make both sides more comfortable.

As stated above, the savings they incur is not going to determine the exact price. It will, however, be a very critical point in your sales pitch/formal proposal. You need to put together formal numbers to use in no-gotiations/yes-gotiations.

Good Luck.

[NYPoke]

You have several options. The first is to come up with a bid up front for the entire system. At this point, you seem a little unsure about the project. If you already have the system specifications (exactly what the layouts will look like & how they interact & the fields & such), you can estimate your hours reasonably.

However, make sure to build in time for unexpected problems (fudge factor), and make sure you focus the contract EXACTLY to the specifications. Otherwise, you are set up for the client trying to design as you go. Not good on a fixed bid.

Second option is to structure the contract based on your hours. In other words, you are working as a contractor for them. Then, they get to make design changes & use you to train & whatever else they want. This is good if the work may extend. This is normally how I work. Can turn into good deals. I wound up with a great employment position from one of these contracts. Turned down several others over the years.

The third option is to break the contract into separate deliverables, each one with a price attached. You can break down into the design (may already be done), beta release (for testing & revisions), primary release, training & testing. Might make both sides more comfortable.

As stated above, the savings they incur is not going to determine the exact price. It will, however, be a very critical point in your sales pitch/formal proposal. You need to put together formal numbers to use in no-gotiations/yes-gotiations.

Good Luck.

[printerman]

I'm trying to find out the same kind of costing issue regarding a database solution. Can anyone at least give a ball park estimate?

I looked into an off the shelf solution that a company was selling for around $11,000 including 10 licenses and 1 yr support and some basic training but someone from my company would have to tailor the database program more to my company. So that would probably mean another month or two making the program do what we wanted it to do...