Consulting clients
The focus of Polytrope's FileMaker development work is on improving CMAssistant, our circulation management solution, but we do custom development and advisory consulting work for special clients from time to time. Our clients are mostly small businesses making big impacts in their markets. Here is a selective list of our present and past consulting clients:
- The Chicago Public School District. We developed a system using a Filemaker Pro database as the back end and a PHP-powered Web user interface that was used by CPS to do its district-wide self-analysis in 2006. Well over 1000 users were accessing the solution every week.
- WorldWide Incentives, a Dallas-based incentive travel firm. Client travelers complete information about their travel preferences using online forms; data is stored in FileMaker Pro 8. The boss can access the site either through the Web or directly over the WAN using FileMaker Pro. The databases are stored at our hosting service, Point in Space, up in New Hampshire. WorldWide Incentives is in Dallas. Nevertheless, the primary inside user can launch FileMaker Pro and open and use the remotely-served database as if it were stored right on his own hard disk.
- Moriarty & Leyendecker, a law firm in Houston specializing in mass tort litigation. We
were hired originally to help develop a database used to track the tens of thousands of
potential claimants in a large lawsuit. In 2003, we designed and developed a solution to keep track of roughly a thousand potential plaintiffs and their complex medical histories; this solution is used by users and three law firms in two states. Most recently, M&L called us with an urgent request for a database to store and analyze juror information during the jury selection process. This solution, which was built in three days at a cost of roughly $2000, was used by the attorneys to select a jury that returned a multi-million dollar verdict in favor of M&L's clients--every dollar the attorneys had asked the jury for.
- The Full Gospel Fellowship, Irving Texas. This small office runs a world-wide ministry and everything depends upon a FileMaker solution. We didn't develop the solution: we were called when the solution "got sick." We repaired the solution and provided recommendations on how best to share FileMaker solutions on a network and avoid problems in the future.
- The Houston Teachers Institute at the University of Houston. HTI runs a tremendously successful program that brings teachers in the Houston area to the UH campus for serious, grad-school style seminars under the leadership of UH professors. The solution Polytrope developed for HTI is a modified school enrollment solution, used to process applications to the seminars, to store information about fellows, seminar leaders and seminar topics, etc.
- The Galveston Daily News, Texas' oldest newspaper.
We helped online services editor Greg Mefford figure out how
to put the Galveston Daily News online, taking control of this process back from an application
service provider that had been charging thousands of dollars a month.
- The Daily Court Review, Houston, Texas -- not quite as old as the Galveston Daily News, but almost.
Working with systems coordinator Colleen Carrizales, we built a custom solution that helps the
Daily Court Review track its publication work orders as they come in.
- Ant & Dec productions, Ltd., of London, producers of the most successful
Saturday morning television show in the U.K. We built a solution named "Vermeer" to help
Ant & Dec keep track of the thousands of videotapes that are involved in the production
of their weekly program (or "programme").
- Datagraf, an award-winning graphics and web design firm in Denmark.
One of our most interesting jobs, but not one of our most satisfying. Datagraf's client
was a school of journalism in Århus, Denmark, that wanted to put its course schedule
and registration database on the Web. We advised that the existing database needed
substantial redesign in order to work effectively on the Web; the school decided to
go forward without the redesign. We did most of the work in Texas, traveling only once
to Denmark at the end of the project. Ultimately and regrettably, our predictions came
true: The site worked but performance was not good.
- BindView Development, Houston-based makers of network administration and security software.
We redesigned BindView's training curriculum from scratch and wrote a series of
coursebooks for them.
This page last modified: 16-Feb-04 8:57 PM
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