Photo Me

British company Photo-Me are the world’s leading photobooth manufacturer. Over 350 staff have helped install more than 6,000 photobooths across the UK - way ahead of any other booth manufacturer. Additionally, Photo-Me International has installed 20,000 machines in over 100 different countries worldwide.

A range of pioneering products and innovations have helped the company assume its number one mantle; including the world’s first photobooth that lets you review your pose again and again before you let your picture be taken. They also make a wide range of fun booths, electronic games and children’s rides - all looking to brighten the public’s shopping experience.

In the late 90’s, Photo-Me looked at developing a software solution to help run its call centre operation. A number of tools were considered, including Microsoft Access, Oracle and Visual Basic. Each one was eventually dismissed for various reasons, including inflexibility, expense - both time and money - and a lack of robustness for the task in hand.

Then, an IT manager within Photo-Me recalled his experience of Osmosis, which soon led to an introduction with the fourth generation language’s authors, CA Software Systems.

The programming language soon proved to be a very flexible way of getting the job done and the project grew to include a cash collection system. Then, field electronic modules (utilising Psion handheld computers) were later integrated into the mix.

By now, the Photo-Me Management Information System (MIS) - as it was later entitled - was just beginning to take shape. It soon became clear that to take the development on really needed someone more-or-less full time. That’s when faithworks-i.t and Chris Baxter were called in.

As one of the few programmers worldwide capable of writing code in PICK and Osmosis, Chris Baxter was given the task of taking the rudimentary outline and working as part of a team to drive the project forward to full implementation.

“Chris’ programming experience won him the job,” stated Richard Dicey, Photo-Me’s UK Operations Support Manager, who oversaw the work. “He had to come in, fit in with the team and pick up where CA Software Systems had left off and he was able to do that fairly quickly.”

The work continued apace, but within the furnace of a live system. “It was all done on the fly in real time,” continued Dicey. “The system was running as we were working on it which was pretty hairy at time. It’s bad enough everything crashing down around your ears but that’s nothing compared to cheques not being issued on time.”

By now, faithworks-i.t had taken the MIS several stages forward. It could now print and issue monthly cheques to customers after it had reconciled all cash collections. Unusually, the Photo-Me business model pays customers a commission on sales and so it was critical to keep them happy by issuing cheques accurately and on time. Downtime simply wasn’t an option.

Eventually; what began as a customer management tool, evolved into the entire UK operation’s central control hub. All information about customers, their accounts, the machines themselves, engineers, where they are located are now hold and processed by the system.

“It even orders spare parts,” added Dicey, “and interfaces quite nicely with external systems. We send messages to engineers through the network in the event of machine breakdowns. The data is collected from forms sent by the handhelds via a digital packet network transmitter and receiver housed in engineers’ vehicles.

“We now save up to 80,000 pieces of paper each month this way. It speeds things up, improves efficiency and has helped us reduce our back-office staff from eight down to just one.”

And so the system continues to expand. “We’re now looking at a module that sends messages via SMS to mobiles, not just handhelds, which means we can interact with engineers on site next to the machines - not just in their vehicle.

“Because of Chris’ familiarity with the programming language, we’ve been able to add a lot more functionality than we’d first thought.