You've seen the catalogues in your mailbox or in your office. Slick, substantial, easy to use. Glistening, attractive presentations of office supplies or hardware or any other sort of merchandise you might need. But did you ever stop to think about where that catalogue came from? For many of America's top catalogues, the trail leads back to New Berlin, Wisconsin — and the Sells Printing Company, specialists in high-quality catalogue production. And behind the scenes at Sells you'll find FileMaker Pro — the award-winning database software application from FileMaker, Inc.!

Business Challenge

When you glance at an Ace Hardware calendar, or plan out your next order of office products from Quill, you're looking at a product of Sells Printing Company — and you're looking at the end product of a production and printing process that requires extraordinary attention to detail. Every line of text, every image has to be precisely right. And clients all have different ideas of how they want they want to present themselves to customers — different ideas of how to ensure that their catalogues and calendars get used and not just tossed into a drawer.

Keeping up with the demands of Sells' clients is Ron May's job. And FileMaker Pro makes it possible.

Successful Solution

Keeping up with the demands of Sells' clients is Ron May's job. And FileMaker Pro makes it possible.

Using a database to track work orders was a natural progression for Sells, a company which prides itself on its technological prowess — but which database system to adopt? Clearly, the platform would have to adapt to whatever requirements Sells and its clients would require . 'The primary consideration was to work with a database that did not require us to redefine or change our operating procedures drastically,' recalls Ron. 'Our customers demand a very diverse range of manufacturing processes, not compatible with a 'cookie cutter' solution.'

The ODBC capacity of FileMaker gave us the opportunity to repurpose the data in our business management system.

— Ron May, Sells Printing Company

FileMaker Pro proved a natural fit. 'The ODBC capacity of FileMaker gave us the opportunity to repurpose the data in our business management system,' Ron notes. 'FileMaker's ability to run on multiple platforms was also critical — we were not about to abandon our Macs to run Access. Finally, the fact that someone like myself, with no formal computer training can pick this program up and develop a pretty decent working solution has been very helpful.'

Using Ron's system of fourteen FileMaker Pro databases, containing over 8,000 records altogether, Sells Printing is able to track every job, every step of the way — providing production staff with a consistent structure for job planning, and reducing costs resulting from errors and omissions. And clients themselves also benefit, thanks to FileMaker's easy web–accessibility. 'Data that we are generating on the solution is being put on the web for our customers to view,' says Ron. 'Currently they are able to look at finished goods inventory, and soon will be able to view the entire job plan on line.'