You also have to be careful here that you don't get into a race-to-zero. Being the cheapest option isn't always the greatest, for a few reasons. While true that we don't want to unnecessarily bill clients just to bill them, there is a value proposition that is more important. That value can mean, like @OliverBarrett points out with this particular client, the value is actually too low to service them... or mean that the client is willing value the outcome more than just the "time" you charge for.
Same idea why one person is willing to pay $30 for a watch, and another is willing to pay $4,000.
Taking it in the round I think that licence cost of starting to use FM for yourself it too high - it should be free to use for yourself - period.
Once you deploy it for clients it should cost significantly more - it is really too cheap to be credible if you compare it with likely competitors.
A registered dev should be able to develop over a network with shared use and for client trials for free.
Once the client accepts then the Claris licencing should be in the middle of the range of competitors. If the licensing cost more it would be more worthwhile selling it, surely, assuming that margin was also raised to a reasonable level.
As I think @Bobino suggested, people value a £4000 watch more than a £30 watch don’t they?
@jormond Josh, I didn't for a second imply that getting the job done quickly was about keeping the price low. It just means it costs less to get to the finish line with FileMaker than many other competing technologies. And, of course, there are people who have a). no idea how to value that work, like a company in Japan that wanted an old FM solution re-written in Oracle for a budget of $2750 or b).. simply cannot afford to spend the money. I know a man in Vegas who buys cars that cost $2 million or more; the average person can't even conceive of that. FileMaker delivers extraordinary value but not everybody will see that.
Using a web-based approach, the current estimate for the re-write of the client system is $250,000, approximately. The only license fees are for the database back end and would be a "CPU" license meaning any number of users for a single non-subscription cost. If we can convince the client to use MariaDB instead of SQL Server (the current favorite), then license fees go to zero. Thus, $0.0 year-to-year software costs and any number of users. Just more work up front and multiple frameworks.
If the client decides to go with MariaDB: $0.0 (any number of users). All the other components would be open source and free. Software maintenance costs like adding new features, fixing issues, etc., is expected in any case at a negotiated rate (either T&M or contractual).
Above you quoted $100,000 to do it in FileMaker and that would leave quite some room for the Claris licensing cost.
And I still don't get it that this client is so picky about a $0/year maintenance, which by the way is not real as servers cost, someone has to keep mysql and others updated and adjust to changes in those packages.
It's more about the client having been burned by proprietary software companies (MS, in this case) and not wanting to go down that road again. They would rather pay more up front and have gravy, more or less, going forward with no company in their knickers, so to speak.
The $250K is a rough estimate based on updated requirements. We still are not done estimating or even picking the technology.
Understood. I would say that even saying it's cheaper because it's FileMaker still presents wrong. It implies the value is dependent on the technology. There are clearly licensing costs with almost any approach. So they have to be taken into account. And each client will have their value proposition on that. You can get around licensing costs, sure. But no technology is free. You are paying for it somewhere. In a day when hardware ages out, and buying new hardware can force an incompatible suite of software... pay once and never worry about it for 10 years is getting harder and harder.
However, if you are pricing the outcome, for example, the value is tremendously higher. Things that add value:
Time to deployment.
Time to update / build new features.
Ease of integration with other systems.
Reliability.
Disaster recovery.
Efficiency. Reduced operational costs.
Revenue gains.
Increased profit margins.
Increased customer service and customer retention.
Increased repeat customers.
Ease of use and satisfaction by users ( whether clients or internal employees or contractors )
Here is an example:
Client says he wants to rebuild their current system. Two options to go here ( somewhat oversimplified ).
Sure I can rebuild this. It will take 120-200 hours @ $150 / hour. High estimate is $30,000. We know this is wrong, 75% of the time. And as you get closer to the deadline, there will be stress about going over-budget. This is not only common, but expected to happen.
Find out what outcome they are actually trying to achieve. For example, they want to reduce operational costs by 10% over the next 2 years. If operational costs are about $800,000 a year. You look at their business, and you see you can reduce operational cost, likely by 20-25%. You quote them 3 options:
• Option 1: Rebuild system and reduce operational costs by 10% within 24 months. $50,000.
• Option 2: Rebuild system and reduce operational costs by 15% within 24 months. $100,000.
• Option 3: Rebuild system, audit workflows, and reduce operational costs by 25%. $200,000.
The client choosing option 1, nets them an additional $110,000 in profit.
The client choosing option 2, nets them an additional $140,000 in profit.
The client choosing option 3, nets them an additional $200,000 in profit.
Here is the kicker.
You never talk about money during the project again.
You made more money.
The client made more money, and is giddy like a school child.
You never talked about which technology you were going to use. You do what's best for the client, and not necessarily what's best for you.
The client chooses where their value is. You provide a guarantee. You don't make the numbers, they get their money back. The lowest option, the client carries the risk. The highest option, you carry the risk.
This is a win-win. If the client chooses to go with someone that quotes them for $30k, you know a couple things... they are going to pay more than $30k, the project may fail hard, and they may come back to you later and pick one of your options...if you are still available. That's just how opportunity-cost works.
One of the great advantages of FileMaker is that you can prepare any non proprietary data formats for export at the push of a button for a possible later exit: JSON, XML, Plain Text, CSV, whatever the customer wants.
SQL Server, as just one example, allows you to create with query results FOR JSON or FOR XML right in the query itself. Additionally, there are tons of free libraries that make these kinds of text formats easy to create.
The original post asked for input to a list of benefits for using FileMaker Pro. All I am seeing for a while now is a focus on keeping the licensing costs to $0 and an explicit exclusion to use the FileMaker platform.
Soooo… can we still be of help with comments, additions or whatever to improve this list? Is this list still relevant?
