We examine FileMaker consulting and distance factors
The majority of our clients are local to our area. Why? Because nine times out of ten, those are the people who call us. Some of this is due to local marketing campaigns, but that’s not the only factor. Business owners tend to look for local consultants more than those that may reside halfway around the planet, or even in a distant city in the same state. While there is something to be said about developing a face-to-face relationship, this is not absolutely necessary in this day and age.
Remote access and teleconferencing solutions have existed for quite some time, and it seems like new ones are being produced every day. But it has only been recently that new breakthroughs have occurred in bandwidth that allow remote connections to distant sites to act almost as if they are local (that word, “almost,” is a very important one ? think about the old adage regarding hand grenades and horseshoes). ?We have clients in places like the SF Bay Area, fully eight hours away, that we are able to provide service to as if they were just down the street. And recently, we hired a web services team from the Eastern time zone without batting an eye.
The fact is, once we get past the initial discovery stage, we don’t get out more than a few times a year to see even the most local of our clients. Despite the fact that some of our clients are receiving FileMaker consulting services from us in nearby areas like Claremont, Yorba Linda, Ontario, Irvine, and Rancho Cucamonga, we actually are able to be more efficient if we support them remotely from our offices. They might as well be in New York or Dallas as we upgrade their FileMaker server, or provide a demo of database work in progress.
So what am I really getting at here? Simply this: we like meeting our clients face to face once in a while, but proximity is not as much of a factor as many might think. Local, global ? it’s all about the level of service, not the location.
