Archived News

October 2008

FileMaker Pro turn printer into paperless office!

Gorilla Print provides print and design services to businesses large and small across Australia. They've experienced a great deal of growth since their inception in 2006 and recently were named winners of an Australian Business Award for Service Excellence.

With five key departments, PRINT, DESIGN, WEB, PROMOTIONAL PRODUCTS and DISPLAY, they are at the cutting edge of branding solutions. This has provided them with incredible opportunities, but also a number of challenges that required a system that could be tailored to suit their growing requirements and product mix.

"We previously used paper to record customer quote requests, generate our estimates and manage job costs " said Managing Director, Greg Costaras. "Now customer quote requests go directly into our FileMaker Pro database and we track timeslips, additional costs and invoices from our suppliers all in a centralised systems. It allows us to respond to our customers more quickly and manage their jobs more efficiently. We've reduced our quoting time by 30%, removed double handling completely and saved 8 hours a week previously used for filing, sorting and collating job bag paperwork. The new system provides us with the knowledge to simultaneously track the progress of 400 quotes per month, from an individual quote to the entire account management groups workloads".

By using the PDF creation and email sending capabilities in FileMaker Pro 9, the task of generating a quote and emailing it to customers is now handled via a single mouse click.

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The Home screen provides a list of active quotes and jobs. It also provides a count of where each is within the respective sales or production cycle.

Greg from Gorilla Print couldn't be happier, "The team at Insightful Systems were able to take all our requirements and come back to us with an intuitive system that streamlines our entire operation. Clerical chores that kept our staff busy every day of the week are a thing of the past. We're more productive, which in turn affects our overall profitability. "

Insightful Systems are based in Melbourne, Australia and specialise in the development of custom database solutions using FileMaker Pro. Managing Director, Shaun Cotter explained "We have a team of skilled developers who can build systems that work the way each individual business does, and we can do it fast. Most small businesses have a cobbled together solution comprising Outlook, Excel, Word and various paper documents. It's amazing to see the difference it makes when everyone is using the same system and there is only one version of the truth. We use pre-developed modules and know-how to transform a business from chaos to control within weeks".

Insightful Systems develop database solutions for clients in Australia and overseas across a broad range of industries - from manufacturing to professional services and everything in between. To learn more about how Insightful Systems can help your business speak with Shaun Cotter on 0419 324 385