jsut said:
Isn't this supposed to basically run a whole repair aspect of the company when it's done? Isn't it supposed to help you build your client base, and better serve your customers, and ultimately cause the business to grow?
If those are the goals, don't nickel and dime it. Do it right, because the success of the whole repair business could hinge on whether or not this thing sucks.
exactly. it may seem expensive as an upfront cost, but the reality of it is that if this is a system your techs are going to rely on and customers are going to rely on it needs to be up 24x7, reliable, secure, and maintain data integrity. it also should be able to scale fairly easily and be easily expandable/customizable...hopefully your business grows which means more traffic and more data, and that also means more service offerings and web features, which means customization (which also drives scale).
look at it this way: you spend $2500 to get this done and it works, but it keeps breaking and is unreliable. this drives away business by making you seem crappy, decreases the quality of your customer service. basically, it costs you money. people will tear their hair out trying to figure out what the problem is and they'll decide it's because you're surfing the net during business hours, you were 15 minutes late, or whatever, and never get the point the the reason the business is failing is because the business systems you're relying on just plain suck...which adds time to jobs, impacts customer experience, and leaves people idle enough to surf porn on company time. management will think about it for a while, decide to hire another tech or spend money on advertizing, or whatever, and probably waste $10,000 to $20,000 trying to get things back on track and it will all still be broken.
you could also spend $12,000 to $20,000 on something like this and end up with something that has most of the features you need and works more or less as expected, and is reliable and secure. if it gains you good customer support points and makes people happy, getting them to come back and bring in friends it's probably paid for itself.
but that's the hidden cost of IT. companies never want to pay for IT because it never makes money. it's a cost center with no easily noticeable returns. they scream a lot when email or web goes down, complain about lost work and seem to be able to put a price on that, but the cost of IT is not always appreciated. it's like an insurance policy; you only thing, "thank god I have that policy!" after your car is totalled.
my advice would be that if you can complete the back end yourself, do it yourself. it's cheaper and as long as you're in house you can maintain it and expand it. you know the code so in theory it should be cheaper and easier to use you than any outside contractor...at least until your time becomes very expensice. I'd also advise separating out the backend/dynamic parts of the site from the site design and art work. if you're not a good designer farm out the art and site design to someone else. ask for flat HTML files and cut them into templates yourself.
