guide to implementing custom apps in weeks with metropolis studios
TRANSCRIPT
GUIDE TO IMPLEMENTINGCUSTOM APPSIN WEEKSWITH METROPOLIS STUDIOS
2 Guide to implementing custom apps in weeks
YOU
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S BE
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OVERVIEWWhen your business changes or grows, it can feel
like control is being taken out of your hands. Pressure
increases on processes, people and your profit margin.
So how can you make sure that your team has
access to business enabling apps that will really
help them drive successful outcomes? The answer
is to create your own custom apps! After all, who
knows your business better than you? No one.
CASE STUDYIn this guide we look at Metropolis Studios. We’ll
track the six week journey that helped them turn their
business from a £1million annual loss into sustainable
profitability. And at the core of this turnaround were
custom apps, built on the FileMaker Platform.
Through their story we’ll show how SMBs of all
shapes and sizes can truly transform all elements
of their business - from finance to customer
service - in a matter of just weeks. Really!
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HERE’S HOW THEY DID IT1. Identified the needs of
each department
2. Created their custom app strategy
3. Mapped out existing systems
and data sources
4. Developed, tested, and
deployed their custom app
5. Established an iterative
development approach for
constant improvement
ABOUT METROPOLISMetropolis Studios is a small to medium business (SMB), with all the concerns and processes
typical of organisations of its size. It also happens to be Europe’s largest independently
owned recording, mastering, creative and production complex. In the 25 years since its
inception, Metropolis has seen the likes of Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones, Adele, Amy
Winehouse, Lana Del Rey, U2, Rihanna and many more make music behind its walls.
Based in a former railway power station, Metropolis’ sound engineers are responsible for half
of the UK Top 40 charts from within their Grade II ‘Power House’ building in West London.
KEY FACTS• A new strategy, based on custom apps,
helped turnaround the business
• Decision to deployment took just six weeks
• Custom apps were built to answer the specific needs of the business
• Cost of implementation was around one-quarter of the previous SAP licensing fee alone
• Annual licensing cost for FileMaker is about 5% of that for previous system
• Metropolis is now profitable; previously it was loosing circa £1m per year
Guide to implementing custom apps in weeks4
THE
BACK
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METROPOLIS’ EPIPHANY: GOING DOWN THE CUSTOM APPS ROUTEToday, Metropolis Studios is a business in profit.
But less than two years ago the company was
losing around £1.1million a year. So what changed?
5 Guide to implementing custom apps in weeks
5
Understanding they had to immediately
stem losses, the management team
began the turnaround looking for ways
to improve operations, beginning
with the Finance department.
The team was relying on unscalable,
inflexible software like Microsoft Excel and
Microsoft Access for managing Metropolis’
financials. With numerous spreadsheets
being passed around, confidence in data
accuracy was low, complicating critical
decision making. What Metropolis needed
was a dedicated finance solution to
centralise the numbers and get everyone
aligned. SAP’s Business One Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) system was
selected as the platform of choice.
Sometimes it’s right to blame the tools:
Once implemented, it quickly became
apparent that the system wasn’t geared
to the needs of a small to medium sized
business like Metropolis. SAP’s Business One
was simply too complex, and demanded
too much commitment from the finance
team. Data entry was clunky and time
consuming, and getting useful reports nigh
on impossible. To cope, Metropolis took on
the expense of hiring data entry specialists
to feed information into Business One.
The company hadn’t got rid of its initial
data problems, it had added to them. After
wasting countless hours and significant
funds on the packaged SAP application,
Metropolis realised it needed to explore
custom apps as a better fit for its needs.
“The whole business was geared towards putting information into what was effectively a closed
box. We were getting nothing out of it. It was like the organisation was working for a software package. We couldn’t get basic information such as ‘what are the occupancy rates of our studios?’ and ‘who are our biggest paying customers?”
GETTING THE NUMBERS STRAIGHT
Guide to implementing custom apps in weeks
People, process and profit - made simple
Oli Sussat, Metropolis’ Director of Marketing,
Communications and Technology,
needed an alternative solution that
would meet all of Metropolis’ business
criteria - without breaking the bank.
Finding the ‘obvious’ answers: Sussat’s first
hurdle was that no one in the organisation
at that time wanted to go through another
period of transition and change. SAP was
failing, but the hurdle of re-implementing
and re-training seemed almost as bad.
Sussat knew he had to find a solution that
would be simple to learn and operate and
easy to implement. As he described it, he
needed a platform where he could “build
the plane and fly it at the same time.”
Sussat combed through the existing software
at Metropolis, to see if anything could be
modified or expanded to solve the Finance
team requirements. He discovered a small
department using a FileMaker custom
app, and realised it wasn’t being used to
anywhere near its full potential. This sowed
the seeds of an idea that would ultimately
help turn the business from its £1million
losses into a profitable organisation
Making technology work for you: Sussat
approached the Board with a series of
recommendations based around FileMaker.
He wanted to create a custom finance
application built on the latest FileMaker 14
Platform, that could succeed and expand
where the SAP system was failing.
The initial scope was to completely
manage and streamline all of
Metropolis’ financial requirements-
-but even Sussat hadn’t realised
that it would end up happening
in less than six weeks, from board
approval to deployment.
WEEK ONE
WEEK TWO
6 Guide to implementing custom apps in weeks
KEY LESSON: Going down the
custom app route can be very
empowering for an individual
department, or for the business as
a whole. It ensures that complex
processes can be connected
in a simple manner, that critical
business indicators can be recorded
and that money isn’t spent on
functionality that adds no value.
7 Guide to implementing custom apps in weeks
“Okay, imagine if you could talk to your customer on one screen, get an overview of everything about them:
all of their communications with us, all of the jobs they have ever booked with us, and how much money they have ever spent with us. Do they already have a next booking? If not, we could look at all this data and make assumptions based on their prior contact as to whether they would be tempted to book with us again. We don’t need to imagine anymore.”
Understanding that staff support would
be crucial to success, Sussat went round
to individual team members in the finance
department. In front of their eyes, in
real time, he built small functions and
processes on the FileMaker Platform.
Successful collaboration: With his colleagues
on board, the team used a custom app
approach. Finance managers would explain
how a particular task might be a five hour
job with the current system. By delving
into what needed to be achieved and how
information needed to flow, Sussat designed
a simplified system and built a FileMaker
custom app that massively increased efficiency
across the department. Those five hour jobs
were morphed into a half-hour task. The
department was soon convinced by his plans.
KEY LESSON: Businesses can
be resistant to change. In a
high pressure environment,
inertia takes over. People
choose to stay in their comfort
zones rather than take risks.
To mitigate the fear of risk, it’s
important to include the end-users
in the selection process, and to
make sure they have adequate
input so they can reap tangible
benefits from the end-solution.
If you’re utilising a third-party
developer, or if you’re handling
the build yourself, make sure
they / you spend time on the
ground with your staff for the
initial business audit. A fine
balance must be struck between
keeping the project build efficient,
yet also seeking feedback from
staff members, who will act as
your key stakeholders. In this
way you can use a malleable
development platform such as
FileMaker to create better end-
solutions and custom apps, all
the while keeping the project
moving swiftly - which will be all
round better for your business.
Guide to implementing custom apps in weeks
Implementation made
easy with FileMaker
With Board approval for a custom app
strategy, Sussat had to make it happen.
Thanks to the flexibility to develop
the custom apps on a ‘do it yourself’
basis, or to make use of a FileMaker
partner, Metropolis had plenty of
options. Sussat decided to build their
custom app with FileMaker himself.
“Simplify everything - make it something that people are going to enjoy doing. And for the bits
that they wouldn’t enjoy doing - the repetitive bits, the brain ache stuff - you get the system to do that.”
Building a custom app from zero: Sussat
had no formal IT training, just a keen
enthusiasm for technology. Supported
by some minor technical help from the
IT team and a wealth of online training
resources, he was able to build a
custom app that catered for the finance
department’s every whim in just six
weeks. The finance team played a
huge part in the development process,
contributing their time and extensive
knowledge of the company and its
processes. They proved the best people
to create requirements and workflows,
while Sussat provided his newly-
honed software development skills.
The applications were built by IT, and
tested by the teams who would use
them. Take for example a job requiring
the submission of data to a regulatory
body. The staff member reported
that it would take her about six weeks
every single year to provide them
with all the information they needed.
After understanding the current
process, Sussat built a custom app
over the course of a weekend, then
sat with the staff member for an hour
to test and refine the app. The same
process now takes just one hour!
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WEEKS THREE & FOUR
9 Guide to implementing custom apps in weeks
The grand unveiling
The FileMaker-built apps took over
all Metropolis’ invoicing, credit
and financial requirements from
SAP Business One - in a way that
was perfectly suited to its business
structure. After only a few days
of using the new custom apps,
members of the Metropolis team
quickly realised the potential of
FileMaker to make a huge difference
in the other areas of the business.
Now FileMaker has touched so many
different areas of Metropolis’ business
that it’s virtually impossible for staff
members and external clients not to
interact with the system on a daily
basis. Also, thanks to the incredibly
user-friendly nature of the platform -
people enjoy these interactions too.
WEEKS FIVE & SIXKEY LESSON: When creating a piece of business software with FileMaker, possessing developer or IT expertise is the secondary focus; being able to identify the problems is your first priority. With a custom app development platform, it’s incredibly easy to self-start and begin creating brilliant custom apps to solve business problems straight away. While it sounds obvious, you need to be acutely aware of the problems you’re trying to solve and the simplest workflow possible to achieve that.
Start by asking yourself some questions:
• What problem do you want to solve?
• What pools of data do you need to tap into?
• What is the correlation between the data and the issue?
• How would you design a system to bring those data sets together?
Having the answers to these four simple questions, will put you in the best possible position to succeed quickly with your custom apps implementation by either starting the development yourself or engaging a FileMaker developer to build the solution(s) on your behalf.
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LIFE
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INVEST THE EFFORT, THEN REAP THE BENEFITSIn just a few short months, Metropolis gained
complete control of all the data coming in and
out of the organisation, something it hadn’t been
able to do in a long time. Visibility of accurate
financials was critical for the business turnaround.
“When artists decide to arrive at 3 o’clock in the morning, we can deal with that and make sure a studio is allotted. Before, the
booking team didn’t have the infomation at their fingerstips. Now, even if at home, they can book studio time from a custom app on iPad.
Sussat and the team also fulfilled their desire for a cost-
effective alternative to SAP Business One. The cost of
implementation was around one quarter of the SAP
licensing fee alone, and the annual licensing cost for
FileMaker is only about 5% of that for the previous
system. Metropolis is now profitable, whereas it was
losing circa £1m per year prior to the FileMaker roll out.
11 Guide to implementing custom apps in weeks
Intelligent Business Decisions
BUSINESS AND SOFTWARE IN COMPLETE HARMONYToday, Metropolis takes advantage
of many of the different features that
FileMaker offers. This includes fast access
to their FileMaker apps within mobile
browsers via FileMaker WebDirect, so end
users can interact with a FileMaker built
application not just on Mac or PC, but on
a variety of Apple, Android and Windows
tablets. When Metropolis’ clients bring
their own devices to the studio they easily
connect with the systems they need.
KEY LESSON: The courage to get started is one of the biggest hurdles of a FileMaker development project but if you can imagine it, you can build it. Whether it’s remotely tapping into a system while on the road from a tablet or laptop, or taking advantage of automatic cataloguing by turning the camera on iPad into a barcode scanner, nothing is off limits.
The benefits of FileMaker custom apps extend beyond just time savings for employees. The ease of development means they can also evolve as required. Communicate this effectively to employees and customers, and they will start behaving like consultants for your business. They’ll find further uses for custom apps within their departments, saving further time and money as a result. Get it right, and profitability and overall business success can be increased exponentially. After all, just look at Metropolis now!
By linking FileMaker into many of its day
to day business operations, Metropolis
has created a system that is faster,
smarter, more agile and inherently easier
to upgrade than its old SAP system,
or anything else it had previously.
The ability to customise the functionality,
look and feel of FileMaker built applications
quickly and easily is what cements it as the
ideal platform for not just SMBs in the creative
space, but for all types of organisations
that are looking to change the ways in
which they manage, and do business.
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Custom App
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In just six short weeks, Oli Sussat and the team at Metropolis
Studios used the FileMaker Platform to create a custom
app that would re-define their business. Having suffered
annual losses of over £1million, the business has gone
through breaking even and is now profitable.
By understanding the needs of the business, and then
creating a custom app to address these needs, they
have fundamentally changed the way the organisation
operates. Now, with FileMaker, Metropolis Studios has
the platform it needs to deliver sustainable growth.
GET IN TOUCH WITH FILEMAKER...If you want to find out more about how a custom app can help
your business, one of the FileMaker team will be happy to help
You can contact us on:
w: www.filemaker.com/uk/appsinweeks
12 Guide to implementing custom apps in weeks