Need advice

[Gustavo]

Hi everyone,

This is a question for those more experienced with FMP 7.

I've been asked to prepare a quotation to re-write in FMP 7 an entire system currently in FMP 6. The system functionality regards basically to inventory management, so it has the following files (most relevant):

- Vendors

- Customers

- Items

- Purchase Orders

- PO Line items

- Sales Orders / Invoice

- Sales Order Line items

System was developed by other consultant, and I was originally contracted to improve interface, performance (there is a lot of nested calcs that slow down the entire system), and solve other stuff. After almost 2 months of work, now customer wants to compare the cost of re-write the entire system in FMP 7, versus buying a commercially product in the market.

I've been starting to explore FMP 7, but haven't gone real deep. Just some simple samples and much reading up to date.

I have enough understanding of current system as to estimate a reasonable numbers of hours required to build such system from zero with FMP 6.

Now my question:

Apart from the time spent on courses and/or reading books on significant concept changes, is there any reasonable way to estimate the hours required to build my first development on FMP 7?

Those of you that have already gone through this, how did you came out with the estimate for your first FMP 7 development?

I know my proposal must be atractive (read "cheaper") when compared with the price of other commercial software in market, but at least I need to know to myself how many hours I will need to dedicate to the project.

Any advice would be appreciate.

Thanks in advance.

Gustavo

[Vaughan]

"I know my proposal must be atractive (read "cheaper") when compared with the price of other commercial software in market..."

There is a lot more to it than software price... any commercial packagewill require a significant amount of system setup and configuration to suit the company AND the company will require some work flow changes to suit the software. Guess which of these is the most difficult and expensive? Yep, changing the company to suit the software.

You need to include these costs into the price of the commercial software package.

[Mike D.]

Gustavo,

Vaughn is right - you should stress the fact that the company would need to change the way they are doing business now to accomodate the commercial software. The custom solution that you provide will match the way they do business now.

Also, you are local and can provide on-site (face-to-face) support if changes are desired or if there is a problem. In one of my solutions, I was able to mimic the Quickbooks packing list & invoices in FileMaker to eliminate double entry. That was a big cost savings to the customer.

HTH, Mike

[stanley]

Gustavo:

Welcome to the Forums.

Whatever you do, don't sell yourself short. There is nothing worse than getting most of the way through a solution and realizing that you're now working for free, or at a loss, or for $2.25/hour. If you've been doing some work already, you should have at least a half-baked idea of how much time it takes (for you) to accomplish some things in FileMaker. From that you should be able to produce a wild guess regarding how long it will take to do the job. Add in some time for poring through manuals & head-scratching, posting and reading responses here on FMForums, and then tack on time for testing the whole thing thoroughly. If they'll want documentation (and they should), you'll need to create that, too. I make two sets of docs for my clients - an introductory tutorial (for new trainees) and a proper manual. You can see the hours start to pile up.

Whatever amount you come up with, take Vaughan & Mike's advice to heart - it is hard to put a value on a company being able to keep its current way of doing business, rather than having to adapt to the strictures of some off-the-shelf product. This is a big selling point for a custom solution, and I hammer it home with every client.

Good luck, and remember to get a contract.

-Stanley

[Gustavo]

(I'm posting this again - not sure if I submitted well before).

You are all right. I've cross that road before (estimate vs real hours) and also suffered from my over optimist.

Besides that, I am looking for feedback from those already experienced with FMP 7 in how they managed to estimate the time required for their first project on version 7.

And last, my words of appreciation - this is the best FM forum around. I've been ocassionally visiting this forum during the last year in search for advice and answers, and never needed to ask because answers were there. This is just awesome and fun. I thanked all of you that make this forum one of my permanent "reference book" on FMP.

Thanks

[Fenton]

When comparing the cost of FileMaker to commercial systems, you can always find cheaper commercial ones. Of course, you can usually also find more expensive ones. Usually the more expensive ones would have more than they need, therefore be more complex, but still be missing some of what their particular business needs.

FileMaker strength is its customization. Every solution I've built, even for two businesses doing something similar, has quite a few differences; customizations specifically requested to fit the data flow of that business. There was not much of a learning curve for the users, because it was basically what they were already doing, with new functions they'd specifically asked for, and with all the rough spots ironed out.

It's true that a commercial package might have done 90% of it. But it would have been harder to learn, and generally clunkier. The 10% missing would be almost impossible to do however. If something essential was missing, it just wouldn't work for them.

FileMaker can not only present each user with exactly the data they need, it can enforce the entry and use of the data, eliminating costly errors. Unless the software can help you prevent mistakes, there will be a high, and often hidden cost of misplaced and lost data.

There is also the question of stability. FileMaker is a stable application. It has been around for a long time, with sales in the millions. Yes, it still occasionally goes down. But that means that a commercial vertical market solution is likely to be even less stable, with a higher chance of corruption; perhaps no "recovery" tool either.

As to your specific question, of time to develop in 7, it's faster, I'd say 10-20%, perhaps more. For one thing, there's less structure needed to get the same thing done. For files (tables now) with a lot of interaction, it's much faster. No more external scripts, just go to a different layout. No more "tunneling" data with calculations, just look "thru" intermediary table occurrences. Relationships are bi-directional; relationships can be compound, relationships support operators. Most script steps can be run directly from a button. Field Behavior allows fields to only be entered in Find mode. Accounts and Privileges is just wonderful (instead of painful), and security is, well, secure. All of these save time.

But it will take you about the same time as 6, because the power of the relational features, and the close tie between a table occurrence and a particular layout, will sometimes be confusing (the "you can't get there from here" problem).

Remember, you can convert the existing solution, and salvage the good parts of it to use in your new "built-from-scratch" file(s), saving a lot of time with tedious Layout work. But many of the calculations, though converted so they work, will want to be revisited, to take advantage of newer methods. For example, auto-enter by calculation, "Allow replacing", is a new option, very handy. A lot of stuff is the same though, basic fields and calculations, and can be resused as is, after conversion. It's still FileMaker after all.

[Gustavo]

Thank you very much Fenton.

That's the answer I was looking for.

I really appreciated your advise.

Gustavo