As I was driving into work today and watching people who drove very unsure of themselves through the fresh snow from the night before, it made me realize something. When we are developing solutions, especially to the customer, it may sometimes when we are developing solutions and to the customer it may feel a lot like having several inches of snow dropped on you overnight and waking up the next morning needing to navigate through it. Like with a freshly powdered road filled with people who may or may not be comfortable in those driving conditions, a new software solution can be sometimes just as overwhelming. You need to make sure that not only are you using it to maximize its potential, but that others around you are as well.
Our role as the developers of these new solutions isn’t just to provide exactly what the customer is looking for at a cost they can afford, but it’s also to coach them through the changes. Often times when we get a call from a customer looking for a conversion from another platform, one of the first things they say is that the previous company really didn’t communicate well or that they didn’t leave them with the direction they needed to maximize the use of the solution for their business. With that, we start building a solution with the customer at heart making sure they walk through the process with us from the ground up and tailor it to fit exactly into their work style.
FileMaker provides us the environment and the tools we need to tailor any solution to the style of work that a person is most comfortable with at a rapid pace. As a FileMaker developer, I find great advantage in the fact that I can tailor any solution to meet a customer’s needs on the fly. When speaking with customers, I often try to highlight this aspect of our development cycle. Not only will we produce exactly the solution you are looking for, but, as the customer, you will be involved in the process, steering the project in the direction that best suits your needs from day 1 until implementation and beyond. Now if only mother nature would be so kind as to extend the same courtesy….
