"A lot of staff are confirmed 'technophobes', so ease of adoption with FileMaker has been very impressive. To see people who were not 'power users' being able to easily use the system – and want to use it – has been a big change for us!"

College of Naturopathic Medicine

FileMaker: The Natural Choice for The College of Naturopathic Medicine

Based in Surrey, with 12 colleges located throughout the UK and Ireland. The College employs some 60 full-time staff – primarily lecturers, teachers and administrators – and serves approximately 1,500 students, with a further 2,000 potential students on its database. Providing thorough training in Biomedical Sciences, Naturopathy, Acupuncture, Herbal Medicine, Homeopathy and Nutrition, it aims to increase the acceptance of these therapies worldwide.

As its business has grown, the College found it required a database solution that would enable it to manage increasing volumes of student data. It also wanted to market its courses, seminars and further study opportunities to prospective students and graduates more effectively. Furthermore, given that it provides training in therapies that are comparatively new to the UK higher education sector, CNM must adapt to constant changes in certification and registration rules, as well as other legal/regulatory aspects – making flexible and cost-effective development of the database a vital concern.

"Because of the proprietary nature of what we do and the daily changes we need to make in terms of our data structures, we needed to find a product that wasn’t going to cost us an arm and a leg – since our budget and profit margins are very tight," explains Richard Douglas, Web Programme Manager at CNM. Ease of use with minimal investment in training were also key requirements, as was ensuring security, since a number of different types of user – from student representatives to senior management – need access to the information held on the database.

A streamlined solution

A number of vendors were invited to demonstrate their solutions – including those with platforms based on Goldmine, Lotus and some proprietary platforms – but the decision was taken to install the FileMaker solution provided by third-party reseller, Cruse Control. "FileMaker offered us a quick and simple deployment, as well as ease of use, really lightweight administration and flexibility with regards our future needs," states Douglas. "A full, end-to-end CRM solution was simply too expensive," he adds.

As a comparatively small organisation, CNM outsources the majority of its IT function, which had made supporting its existing database an issue. "We already had a proprietary database based on IBM's DB2, but it was very difficult to administer, very slow, and you had to be a techie to work with it," he continues. "A lot of staff are confident 'technophobes', so ease of adoption with FileMaker has been very impressive. To see people who were not 'power users' being able to easily use the system – and want to use it – has been a big change for us!"

With FileMaker, the College is able to manage most of its database administration in-house. According to Douglas, over the past year he has spent just ten hours on administration of the database – whereas he had spent ten-times this amount of time managing the previous DB2-based platform. "For an organisation of our size, FileMaker is the perfect fit. It is a streamlined product, updates are painless, everything is simple to administer and we don't have to go through complex development cycles, as we can do most of it ourselves – i.e. adding fields to the user interface and changing the relation from one set of data to another."

Business benefits across the board

Having implemented FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Server some 12 months ago, CNM has since realised far-reaching benefits. Ongoing costs have been reduced significantly, from both a hardware and management perspective. "The size of the database has grown significantly but with FileMaker there is less maintenance for me to do and I don't have to call in third-party integrators when making changes. In addition, it doesn't use a lot of resource on the server, which was one of the problems with the old database," says Douglas.

The database is now more accessible to the College's staff and students, with security ensured via hierarchical access. "Being able to set differing levels of permissions is key. For example, if we have a student representative who needs to look up information, we can ensure they cannot edit anything. It is also essential for us to be able to allow users to login from different geographic locations." This has been achieved using FileMaker Server, which is providing remote access for members of the accounts, enrolment and IT departments. It has been deployed on a shared server also running Microsoft's Small Business Server 2003 and Exchange, with all data backed-up to an off-site dedicated facility. There are also plans to integrate CNM's Dublin office using FileMaker's web capability.

From a marketing standpoint, the College is now able to obtain a more granular data set, allowing users to segment a target audience accurately and achieve better conversion rates. "The 'unsubscribe' rate for our electronic newsletters and emails has dropped from 25% to just one percent, so this has made a big difference," Douglas states. "And for enrolments, the time it takes to get student information onto the system has been halved. Some of the data is now imported directly from webmail and we can choose the data sets we want. Previously, there could be up to 90 entries that would have had to be entered manually each day."

FileMaker has also ensured that CNM is more efficient in keeping track of its accounts receivable and, with plans for the introduction of an online learning system, the College will be looking to integrate this new development with FileMaker, to create a web-based service infrastructure for its students.