FileMaker Consulting

A FileMaker consultant looks at the system your business runs on and tells you what condition it is in, what it could do that it does not do today, and what to fix first. Keene Systems provides FileMaker consulting from certified developers on a Claris Partner team, and the people who advise you are the people who do the work.

What a FileMaker consultant does

Most FileMaker systems were not designed in one go. They grew: a table added here, a script there, a layout copied and changed. Years later the system works, but nobody can say with confidence how. A consultant’s first job is to find out.

A FileMaker consulting engagement with us usually covers:

• A system review. We read the tables and relationships, the scripts, the layouts and the security settings, and we write down what we find.
• A list of risks. Backups that are not running, accounts that should have been closed, scripts that fail quietly, a server past its supported life.
• A plan in priority order. What must be fixed now, what should be improved soon, and what can wait.
• Honest advice on direction. Whether to keep building on FileMaker, upgrade it, connect it to other systems or, occasionally, replace it.

When to bring in a FileMaker consultant

• You depend on a FileMaker system and nobody on staff fully understands it.
• You are about to spend money on the system and want an independent view first.
• The original developer is leaving and you want the system documented before they go.
• Performance, errors or lost records have made people stop trusting the system.
• You are deciding between upgrading FileMaker and replacing it.

Advice from people who also build

Some consultants hand over a report and leave. We think advice is worth more when the adviser has to live with it. Our FileMaker Pro developers have worked on the platform since version 5 and have delivered more than 200 FileMaker projects, so the recommendations come from people who know what each one takes to carry out.

The team’s Claris certifications include App Developer for Claris FileMaker Pro and Claris FileMaker Server Administrator, both at Expert level. That covers the two halves of any FileMaker system: the application your staff use, and the server it runs on.

What a review turned into: Augustus Funeral Home

Augustus Funeral Home in Bermuda relies on FileMaker to keep track of escrow money for cemetery plots, which is not a process anyone wants to get wrong. Once our team had taken responsibility for the system, the priorities were clear: bring it up to a current version and put it on better hosting. We did both. That is the usual pattern. A review shows what the system needs, and the people who wrote the review then do the work.

Questions a consulting engagement answers

• Is our data safe, and could we recover if the server failed tonight?
• Why has the system slowed down, and can it be made fast again?
• Can we upgrade to the current version without breaking anything?
• Can FileMaker connect to our website or our accounting system?
• Is FileMaker still the right platform for where the business is going?

How our FileMaker consulting works

1. A first conversation. You describe the system, the business it supports and what worries you.
2. Access to a copy. We work from a copy of the file, so your live system is never at risk during the review.
3. The review. A certified FileMaker developer examines the structure, the scripts, the security and the server setup.
4. A plain report. You get the findings in everyday language, with the work listed in priority order.
5. Your decision. You choose what to do and when. If you want us to do the work, the same team carries on.

The next step is a short, no-pressure conversation. Schedule a FileMaker exploration call or use the form on this page.