Thanks to Tony Celini; Design Critique and Discussion next meeting!

We’d like to thank Tony Celini of CAB Inc. for presenting at Tuesday’s meeting.

24 group members came by to listen in as Tony walked through an excellent case study of an integration project linking a custom FileMaker application with New Millennium’s Genesis Accounting System and World Sync’s SyncDek. He focused on three key factors for a successful project: process, controls and return on investment (ROI). These factors influenced the order in which modules were developed and provided justification for choosing certain applications over others.

We discussed how using the Genesis package made more sense technically than other accounting programs, such as QuickBooks, for this particular project, and how SyncDek has allowed the company to push out the solution to users in the field. Because Genesis is a FileMaker based product, integration was easy and intuitive. The project resulted in the following gains for the client:

1. The reduction in the billing cycle and its financial impact.
2. The reduction in the account receivable older than 90 days and its financial impact.
3. The ability to calculate and report on dynamic accounting data.
4. The business impact of scaling a business from $8M to >$24M in yearly sales without adding any additional administrative staff.

Feel free to follow-up with questions or comments for Tony at

tony.celini@thinkcab.com
CAB Inc., Pomona, NY 10901
Office 845.362.4726

We were also lucky to have both Steve Gallagher and Jason Fiske from FileMaker Inc. in attendance!

By all reports the “Inspiration Bar” was a hit as well, though I’ve been asked to rebrand it as “Stump the Chump”. Consider it done.

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What’s next:
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For our July 28 meeting we’re going to hold our 2nd semiannual Design Critique and Discussion meeting, and we’re once again soliciting victims. Er, participants.

We are going to have two or three members present projects they have worked on and open the floor for critique and discussion. Each will have about 20 minutes of floor time.

We are going to be focusing mainly on high-level topics:
What decisions were made to model the business/org the project was for?
What could other design avenues offer?
What design paths had to be ruled out?
What are the best and worst aspects of the system, and what lessons can be taken into future projects?

In short, a friendly critique and open discussion, learning from the imperfection of real-world examples, communal brainstorming, with the object of taking away from the dialogue ideas for our own design practices.

If you’re interested in putting out your work for review at this meeting, please contact me at colin.keefe@itsolutions-inc.com. We promise to be kind.

Best,
Colin Keefe
Philadelphia FileMaker User Group Coordinator