Hi Everyone,


My family has a small business in the finance industry (~25 employees). Our company works off software written by a mad Russian who left our company about 5 years ago. Its written in completely flat code and the tech support companies we currently use all describe the code as very dated and impossible to update or even edit in any way.


We are in sort of a niche market and none of the available off-the-shelf stuff will fit our needs. Our needs primarily relate to processing incoming mortgage applications but the standard industry software is designed for more specialized divisions in larger companies. We also need to be able to create a large variety of reports and do some fairly complicated calculating behind the scenes. I know almost nothing about programming so I'm wondering if anyone has any advice for this?

Right now I'm considering just using some guys we've worked with before (two79.com) and getting them to design custom software for us but I'm sure this will be the most expensive route. I'm getting a quote from them next week after we meet and I show them the extent of our needs. Is this the only real option if I want decent support?



Different hardware question:

I also want to update the old POS computers we are on. Our Tech companies all want me to order through them so that they can set them up and provide us better support. Of course they want to order them all from dell.com and it could come out to ~1200 per unit. Nothing we run requires any kind of serious power at all. In fact we have a great central server and I was considering picking up Thin-Clients. Any recommendations on the best/most cost-effective way of updating?

I'm sure I'm being too vague here so feel free to ask for any more info needed to answer my questions!

Thanks

Call Dell (or Hp, or whomever) and order them yourself? 1200/machine is absolutely crazy......

As for the software, if it's that specialized you really won't have a choice but to pay someone to custom design it. First i'd look at available packages and see if they are customizable to do what you need.

Moving to programming for a better answer.

I agree, 1,200 a machine is entirely too much unless this includes something I am not aware of.

As for software, it sounds like it will probably have a hard time finding something already made, but I have never looked for software of this type so there might be something out there.

I do software development and own a software company that is about a year old. I am still just getting started and will more likely be more affordable. If you are interested you can e-mail me at andrew@advontsd.com. We can talk in more detail about what you need to see if we are a good fit.

As far as your first question, OP- yeah, you are being much too vague. But then again, the scope of this problem would probably require a LOT of detail. If you want to post it all up here I guess some details on what the current software is written in, what problems it is giving you, and some of your current requirements for starters.

A question about the current system, does it work? Is it running everything OK? Why do you need to upgrade?

Be aware that re-writing everything like this is exposing your entire business to a huge amount of risk. So you should be very cautious. If I was hiring someone to re-write this I would make a big point of quality. Pay for the best you can afford. If you want to save money you will end up with the same problem later on. Find experienced high quality programmers.

Hi: I think its very important to completely tease out all of the realistic options before progressing. The workflows being handled or effected by this program should be detailed at a higher level, and the functional requirements fully specified. This is a very interesting project and I would like to help you some more with it.....