7 years ago…

A forward thinking man called John Watling convinced his reluctant wife to modernise their catteries booking system. They found the large book that they kept the reservations in more cumbersome the more they used it.

Other issues that they had were:

• A customers history was hard to ascertain
• When different people in the business wrote down the bookings hand writing styles were an issue
• It took a while to list out who was arriving and departing on a particular day

So, the intrepid John contracted a programmer to create a Microsoft Access database to store the customers, cats and the bookings. Thereby making the whole system more manageable.

However, John lost touch with the original programmer but found a programmer (yours truly) to pick up from where the old programmer left off. Having studied Software Engineering at University I was in a great position to lend my skills to this application.

Over the years the application grew more sophisticated and became easier to use. At the same time I started a web and graphic design business called Revelation Media and for 5 years grew a team of programmers and designers (creating I think some rather excellent websites and brands)

One day John phoned me with a problem. When they go on vacation, they were unable to access their desktop bookings database – but they still wanted to record customers bookings that come through email. There were three solutions:

1. Install remote access software to remotely control their computer from an internet enabled machine (means leaving their home computer on)
2. Buy a laptop and install the access database on that machine, therefore taking the database with them (expensive and takes time to install all the software)
3. Build a web based version of the software so that they could access it from any machine (too costly and time consuming)

In the end, they went with option 2 as they needed a new computer anyway. But this got me thinking what if…….

• I could create a copy of the access database, but for the web
• Make it faster, easier and better than the access database
• Allow other catteries to add their business and manage their bookings
• Get those businesses to suggest ways on how to make it better so that over time it improves and gets simpler and better

By doing this I could make an outstanding application, get real customers to help make the system better, and make the world (well those involving catteries) a better place! Got a suggestion? Tell me by clicking here