5 million businesses worldwide use Sage for their bookkeeping, including 760,000 in the UK – so Sage runs over a third of all UK businesses. There are good reasons for this and its clearly a great tool for accountancy professionals, providing high level functionality in terms of payroll, tax management and business analysis.

But Sage and indeed most other accounting packages need trained personnel and are usually the largely exclusive domain of accounts departments.

Many businesses need to manage significant amounts of fiscal data in other workgroups – long before it is ready for expert processing. Even Senior Management may need an intermediary to get even the simplest live data reports. Typically there’s an ‘us and them’ divide. And apart from palpable frustrations this is far from efficient. It frequently leads to a great deal of duplicated effort as well as error potential as data is copied and moved, often by hand, from one process to the next.

BabelFix can provide a unified fiscal approach by integrating the fiscal data so often handled as two separate elements, (production and accounting).

With prudent management of process it is possible to allow workgroups actually managing the production process stages to control those elements for which they are responsible right up to the point where their work is done, not posting data to Sage until it has been fully pre-processed – and then doing so by direct and automated transfer.

This means that the parts of a business process that don’t yet need the intervention of qualified book keepers - such as estimation, incoming cost allocation and project budget reconciliation, right through to actual client billing can be managed by those who are actually responsible for them. It is also true that the effort of data entry is dramatically reduced, since figures need only be entered once.

More significantly, management are able to view, analyse and edit data and it before it even reaches Sage – at which point, though locked to maintain integrity, it is still fully available without intervention by a Sage-authorised trained professional. So giving immediate management access whilst saving resources by reducing administration burden.

BabelFix principal, Chris Manton, was raised in an advertising family, (his account director father Michael, founded KMP in the 60’s) and spent some 20 years as a senior producer in the TV departments of agencies large and small. The ad business has certainly evolved since, though according to past colleagues certain universal issues still remain.

Document storage, version and access control, job-bagging and progress chasing, project management, budget spend forecasts and invoice re-allocation are a few of the areas in which we have special knowledge – and for which FileMaker™ Pro is a perfect match.

We created special workgroup tools for Grey International to aid cross-country communications and begin the task of unifying elements of European co-production.

We also created a prototype creative choice making tool, ‘The Base’, to simplify the assessment of suitable commercials director talent, (as well as a sister product ‘The Book’, (together with FileFX) for production companies to match their talents to agency creatives, etc.

A number of gallery management applications are readily available.

However, because no two galleries are run exactly the same way and, besides, there are vast differences in scale, few galleries find that a one-size-fits-all approach ever really works perfectly. There are too many compromises and too few advantages.

BabelFix have spent some time with several galleries and collectors who have decided that in the current climate they cannot currently proceed. A number of samples of this early work are available in our portfolio.

Four primary areas of special interest have emerged, all of which can be handled extremely effectively with FileMaker™ Pro.

Asset Management & Control

• Aquisition data, ownership
• Keeper & Location
• Provenance & References
• Images



Fiscal

• Insurance Valuations & Certification
• Appreciation/Depreciation per timeline
• Aquisition Costs
• Maintenance & Shipping Costs
• Client Sales
• Partner Share Settlements



Curation

• Size, Weight, Framing, Pedestals/Cases
• Special Conditions
• Restoration Records
• Packing & Shipping Records / AWB



Exhibition

• Exhibit Selection/Listings
• Loans
• Show Cards
• Communications

For any in the art world, our expertise could facilitate the perfect system, specially created for you.

We are now very ready to take on such a commission...

BabelFix principal Chris Manton’s 30 years field and production experience gives him significant prior knowledge of the Broadcast sector.

So there's little in film or tv location or studio live action that we don't have direct experince of - and that's on top of music and radio, as well as animation...

In particular there is much we can offer in handling scheduling, budgeting, logistics, carnets & equipment, crewing and call sheets, as well as asset & rights management and licensing.

No two creative people see the world the same. Which is as it should be. There again, no one software package is ever likely to satisfy all of them either.

That’s where we come in.

We can create solutions that are just as small or as large as they need to be. Some clients may need comprehensive studio management with everything from time sheets and job bagging with document management and storage, right through to complex cost estimation and billing, where others may need little more than solid address books with contact management so that they can hire suitable freelance talent, identify new customers and ensure they keep in with existing ones.

BabelFix can help you organise all your stuff and even your people and allow you to do things your way - whatever it is.

Keeping track of what there is, where it is and where it needs to be next - as well as how that’s happening and taking care of all the paperwork and letting everyone else know what’s what , is exactly the sort of thing FileMaker is great at.

Maybe add in some integration with mapping, texts and even remote input by phone and you’re looking at something that could be really powerful.

We already understand a lot about shipping and transport – so we’re ready to roll up our sleeves and help with everything from Carnets and AWBs to fleet management as well.

With over 25 years of experience in Film, TV, Radio, Music and advertising, BabelFix principal Chris Manton has a wealth of hands-on experience of the challenges that come with the entertainment business.

Handling inevitable changes to requirements, schedules and budgets is a universal issue that hasn’t changed in decades. its much the same with live venues, theatres and concert halls too. We also know plenty about casting and audience ticketing...

But ultimately we understand that its as much about juggling as anything else. And we’re ready to create software that can help you keep even more balls in the air without missing a thing.

Just like our clients, though there are often similarities, no two events are ever identical. So if you need software to help direct and manage events, to handle the sharp end stuff its going to need to be amazingly flexible.

But so organised...

Sure, you’ll want to keep a very big database of a zillion suppliers in thousands of disciplines. And that’s before we consider clients and venues and loads more besides. But we can make them very very easy to find and give you tools to shortlist possibles and track contacts and bookings – right up to automating movement orders and event contact sheets. We know there are a hundred constantly evolving to-do lists and you need to ensure that every detail is taken care of. But the more successful you become the more there is to keep track of and the more people sharing responsibility. We can help ensure that fewer balls ever get dropped. And then there’s all that post event budget reconciliation to do – we can make this a breeze, handling invoice split allocations, payments and client invoicing too.

You need it – we can deliver a way.

And we know that sooner or later you’ll need to be able to change just about anything or everything. So we’ll want to work with you to create exactly the tools you need. To do it your way. Not some ‘helpful’ programmer’s.

As a film, TV & radio producer, BabelFix principal Chris Manton spent decades working in facilites houses and knows well the challenges that come with cross plotting staff, rooms and equipment.

FileMaker pro can handle this kind of scheduling very well indeed - and by integrating library functionality, stock control and time records into the solution, its possible to make billing a great deal simpler and easier too.

Chris Manton was a manger at The Pelican Inn in Marin county, just North of San Franciso for a year or so in the 80's when he took a sabbatical there. So he knows the catering and restaurant business... See The Menu Maker we made for the Boston Deli.

Add to that years of producing TV commercials for companies like Crosse & Blackwell, Procer & Gamble, Kellogg and Nestlé and you know you'll be dealing with someone who already has something to go on.

FileMaker is particularly well suited to stock control and logistics, as well for management tasks like administration, including bookings, allocations staff rosters, orders and customer relationship management.

As a sector category name, this has to be one of the most absurd generalisations.

No two businesses are ever exactly the same. Not even if they do more or less exactly the same thing. Each enterprise will do things differently - there really is no such thing as a one-size-fits all that won't be riddled with poor compromise that will lead to frustration, sooner or later.

BabelFix can create specially designed bespoke solutions that can handle just about any aspect of just about any business - and we'll make sure that each solution we create is as individual as the the business we've written it for.

Here are just a few of the kind of things we can offer:

People & Organisations Records

• Flexible Multi criteria tags
• Filter by Staff/Client/Supplier/AnyOther tag
• People related to organistion record(s)
• HR data (restricted access per user)
• View all related activity per organisation
• Powerful multi criteria searches
• Images
• Attched documents
• EMail/Skype/SMS at a click
• Project / Assignment links
• Contact notes - related to specific user do lists
• Location maps
• Demographics
• User record markers
• Group record markers

Projects & Assignments

• Flexible Multi criteria tags
• Filter by Staff / Client / Date/ Status, etc.
• Related to organistion record(s)
• Powerful multi criteria searches
• Images
• Integrated and fully linked document management
• Estimation
• Actual spends
• Invoicing
• Scheduling
• Personnel (linked)
• Pwerful ststus reporting

List Management & Merge letters, etc

• Create and save lists of people
• Relate to templates
• Send group EMails
• Print letters
• Manage event invitations
• Create and adjust new templates

Marketing & Sales

• Sales groups / individual staff members attached to client/customer records
• Annual targets against sales to date
• Call reminders
• New business Targets
• Attched documents
• List all people recorded for each organisation
• Review all Assignment links and Contact notes per organisation
• Location maps
• Demographic filters
• User record markers
• Group record markers

Finance

• Live currrency conversions
• Job bag style reconcilliation
• Multi split supplier invoices to different project/assignments
• Sales Invoicing
• Post data to Sage/MYOB
• Advanced sitrep reporting

We can also bridge the gap between the things management and regular staff need to be in charge of and the things that only the accounts department can do by linking FileMaker with Sage 50, Accounts 2010 and Sage 200 2009 or MYOB and accounting packages.

Nobody is going to suggest that FileMaker is the right tool to run something as large as, say, the entire countrywide health service, complete with all patient records. No, that's a job for an industrial strength database like Oracle, together with a truckload of raw source code that'll probably take years to build and even longer to deploy.

All the same, FileMaker can be an extremely cost effective rapid developemnt environment, wher proof of concept models with limited data sets and deployment can be taken to preliminary user testing for just a teeny fraction of what most mega projects cost in the end. Such prototying can form firm specifications based on per-tested concepts, layouts, work flows and user interaction and feedback - so dramatically reducing both initial development time and making the entire task of specification far less rigid - making changes in FileMaker is veryquick and easy...

It is also true that in many cases there are smaller workgroups within government departments of under 100 users for whom large scale software development is neither appropriate nor affordable. And here BabelFix can make a major contribution. Affordably, reliably and effectively.

What's more, FileMaker can exchange data with the 'big' guys using ESS technologies such as OBDC and JBDc, that allow us to use SQL statements to query external databases - so a small workgroup can often work in their own environment, but still access an organisation's primary data seamlessly.