Mercury Blinds

Since it was established almost four decades ago, Mercury Blinds has grown and expanded to offer more to its customers than ever before. Originally offering four varieties of window blinds, the company now provides manufacturing and installation for 16 different ranges, an increase that has seen Mercury's product database expand to take almost 7000 items and 160 price lists into account. While this expansion into new markets has been good for business, it hasn't been without its headaches too.

"When you’re in an industry like ours," Stefan explains, "any IT or production databases need to be unique to the business. Creating something that can deal with all of the intricate details of our product set means that only a custom built solution is going to give you the depth you need to keep track of where everything is at one time."

Stefan's previous system, created back in 2003, used a range of solutions to an adequate – but not brilliant – effect. "Our business has expanded to such an extent that we needed a whole new system from the ground up, one that would help us to integrate the new products that we make and sell, and one that would help us do business better."

Enter FileMaker, and specifically FileMaker Go – the new iPad and iPhone compatible version of the award-winning database. "I'd actually looked at FileMaker before," comments Stefan, "but had missed the fact that it had remote sharing built-in. I wanted to be able to use the new solution on the move, so it was the release of FileMaker Go that prompted me to take another glance and I downloaded the trial version to see what it could do."

The results were immediate. "I do have a background in IT, which was helpful but definitely not essential," says Stefan. "I haven't programmed in about 25 years, but found it simple enough to use that in about two to three days, I'd built something that was capable of flawlessly managing our production process around our four biggest products. That gave me the inspiration to really go for it and build our new system myself."

It was FileMaker's scripting qualities that immediately drew Stefan in. Citing them as one of the key reasons that the database was so easy to use, Stefan capitalised on the FileMaker toolkit to quickly implement processes that hadn't even been possible with Mercury's previous setup. "Even simple things like adjusting pricing structures used to be a manual process for us. Now we're able to change one thing in FileMaker and everything updates alongside it."

Within just a few weeks, Stefan had created a brand new database from the ground up. He rapidly put it to good use, deploying 10 iPads with FileMaker Go installed on them around the Mercury Blinds factory. All product information is displayed in crystal clear high-definition on the iPad screens and interacted with via touch-screen buttons, meaning that Stefan's team are able to get an up-to-the-second view of where everything is at one point in time, wherever they are on (or even off) site.

"It's a hugely intelligent system," Stefan continues. "Say there's a fault with one of the fabrics we've purchased for instance. Previously, we would have had to raise it as an issue, manually track its return, wait for the credit note to be raised and then track that it had been received. With FileMaker Go, that process becomes a one button prompt. The system handles everything else for us."

Away from the actual production processes, Stefan has also used FileMaker Go to help maintain customer relations. "Just as with any other business, sometimes things don't always go according to plan," he says. "But not only has FileMaker helped us perform hundreds more checks on every order than ever before, if something does slip through the net, it will automatically generate an apology to the customer to inform them that we're having trouble fulfilling their order."

For Stefan, the real proof that he's built something special comes with wider recognition. "I've been in meetings with other window blind companies – real multi-million pound suppliers – and they've been blown away by what I've created thanks to FileMaker Go. That's quite satisfying!"