Today's Guest: Ray Daly of in North Buckinhamshire, UK
Today's Host: John Bentley
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Ray Daly Expert PageANNOUNCER: This VTalk Radio Photography Spotlight is sponsored by morephotos.com the online photo sales solution to professional photographers worldwide. Welcome to the VTalk Radio's Photographer Spotlight with your host, John Bentley.
JOHN: Today on VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight, we have Norfolk, UK, owner and developer of Photosys, Ray Daly, joining us. Welcome to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight, Ray.
RAY: Fine nice to talk to you.
JOHN: We appreciate you calling on the phone here and touching base with us. Tell us a little bit about the Photosys sales management software you have developed.
RAY: Well the concept is that, well it's all very well taking very nice pictures, and then get the customer to actually relate to them. Then they're going to buy them. People these days have less and less imagination so there's no point in saying well it's going to be your picture on that matte in that frame over there, because they just can't do it. So at the end of the day having booked the customer in, get them in, do the shoot, prepare the images, have them select the ones they like, you can then put them in a matte that they choose and put a frame that they choose around it, and you can project it life size onto a screen so they can see exactly what they bought or near enough exactly what they're going to get. That's the end game.
JOHN: That's not the only thing that your software does?
RAY: Oh, no by no means.
JOHN: Tell us a little bit more of what Photosys can do for the photographer.
RAY: It is a studio management system.
JOHN: Ok.
RAY: It has a full customer database, their activity history, their payment history. We have a telephone function where you can input maybe fees that you get from outside or you can put them in manually and it will prompt you to call back when you said you want to call these people back. There's a very, very comprehensive mail merge. Financial reports and all sorts of stuff.
JOHN: So you're telling me that this software can give the professional photographer not only the tools to demonstrate what they can do with the photographs, but also the organizational skills to actually run an effective business...is that what you're telling me?
RAY: Yep. It's designed to be used by people who are computer illiterate. In other words, they're frightened of computers and don't know anything about computers. They think if they press a key they're going to break the computer and so on and so forth and it works.
JOHN: So it's very simple and easy to use for anybody out there.
RAY: As far as I'm concerned it is, because I know it inside out. Some photographers don't like it because it's not pretty, but the people who are using the bit behind the scenes don't care about pretty really. All they want it to do is what they need to do today, book a customer in for a shoot, book a viewing, etc., produce this report. They don't really mind if it's pretty or not.
JOHN: So now there's other things this can do. What is short listing? Tell me what that is.
RAY: Shortlisting?
JOHN: Yeah.
RAY: Well basically the whole process consists of first of all get your customer information, make a booking an appointment for someone to come in to be shot, not literally you understand, but anyway. On the day that you arrive them, the system will generate a job number for them, you do the shoot, and then you book a viewing for them maybe in a weeks time or so. Then you go into the production and file side if you'd like. You've got some pictures there. You've got to get them into the system. So what the system's got is a tool for you to do that. Set your camera to feed, drop it onto a CD or whatever it is you want to do and then images go into the system and identify them as belonging to that customer in which case it gives the images a job number and an image number and then at the viewing which is now an activity for a customer all you have to do is pick it up and it will show the thumbnails and then from there you can start shortlisting. You can do it by slideshow or you can do it by setting up folders if you'd like or groups as I call them. I have a group called favorites and a group called no and a group called maybe and so on and you select them and pop them in a group. So that way you can refine the images that you want to have a look at in more detail maybe. You can show them full size on screen. You can put a magnifying glass over them to show details to see if somebody blinked, whatever, all that sort of stuff. So you end up with a short list of the images that you really like, and you go on to mounting and framing.
JOHN: We are in the studio with Ray Daly. He is the owner and developer of Photosys, sales management software, and you are listening to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. Before we take a break here, Ray, can you give your website address and contact information for our listening audience.
RAY: www.photosys.co.uk.
JOHN: And what about a contact number.
RAY: You'll find contact numbers on the site.
JOHN: Excellent. We're going to take a break here, we'll be right back with Ray Daly. This is VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight.
ANNOUNCER: This VTalk Radio Spotlight is sponsored by www.morephotos.com the online photo sales solution to professional photographers worldwide.
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JOHN: We are back in the studio with Norfolk, UK, owner and developer of Photosys, sales management software, Ray Daly. Welcome back to the program, Ray.
RAY: Thanks, John.
JOHN: Now we've been talking about your sales management software and all the wonderful tools it enables the photographer to use. Let's talk about the origin of Photosys. When did you decide to design this? How did this come about?
RAY: Well it started out in mid 2001 when I happened to meet a photographer named Guy Mayer via a mutual friend. Now he was just getting into digital photography which believe it or not that was when it really started, not that long ago. And he was trying to find pieces of software to do this, that, and the next thing to get his studio organized, because he had price lists thrown all over the place and it was absolutely chaos. So I designed a back office system to allow him to maintain customers, their activities...like their orders, their bookings, their viewings, etc., their payments...when they paid for something and various product lists and source lists so you knew where the customer came from. You want to now have an advertising campaign goes. Not all worked fine. It took me about 8 months, I think, to get that rolling. We sold a couple of those and then photographers starting saying, well it doesn't show pictures. God, are these guys never satisfied?
JOHN: So what did you do then?
RAY: I developed the system to show the pictures.
JOHN: There you go.
RAY: That took me quite some time and it's been evolving more features over the years. I mean one may come back with a suggestion, if I think it's weird, we might punt it out around a lot of...we have about 135 in the UK. We might send it around to all of them and see what they think, or if we think it's a good idea, we'll do it anyway. Extra features to make life easier. So the product has evolved over the years driven by photographers. It's not something that's been invented in an ivory tower like a few other products I could mention. It's been driven by the photographers, by the people who use it.
JOHN: Now what about your background? What is your background, Ray? How did you get involved in all this?
RAY: I was born at a very early age. I discovered computers in 1964.
JOHN: That was a big computer.
RAY: It was a big computer and had 4K of memory.
JOHN: Oh boy.
RAY: I was working at one of the big banks here, and I sort of accidentaly tripped into their computer department and started off writing computers and then I started programming them, then I started maintaining the systems. And after that 4 years I moved onto a telecommunications company where I got away from the system side into the application side where I developed a bit of a material processor system for them using a piece of software by IBM called BOP which I think is now called MET or something like that to help them control their sales and production. After that I went to an outfit called Scottish and New Castle Brewery in Edinborough which interesting. Where again I designed an ordering system to make sure the pubs were kept stocked with beer.
JOHN: That's an important job!
RAY: Yeah, very, very, very, very, very sociable job that was. Then got dragged back down to London again to work for a big brewer on consultancy to various things and then got invited to go out and work in the middle east in Iran on a legal system. That was interesting. Went for 2 years, stayed for 4. Got out before it all went belly up.
JOHN: Well let's get back to your Photosys a little bit. What is your most important goal as somebody who is providing this service to photographers?
RAY: Most important goal is wanting to sell it.
JOHN: Certainly. Now when a photographer buys your system, what about the technical aspects of it? Is there a way that they can get ahold of you or somebody from your organization to help them implement the system?
RAY: When we sell the product, we provide 30 days support. After that you can buy support on a three month basis and if you don't want to pay for it up front, then when you call we'll say well send us a check for $50 and I'll give you some support. Well why not? Everybody else does it.
JOHN: That's right.
RAY: You don't get free support from Bill Gates.
JOHN: You certainly don't, Ray. Ray, I really appreciate you joining us today on VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. WE do have to end the program here.
RAY: Ok.
JOHN: We have been speaking with the owner and developer of Photosys, sales management software, Ray Daly, out of Norfolk, UK, and you've been listening to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. One more time, Ray, what's your website address?
RAY: www.photosys.co.uk.
JOHN: Thanks again for joining us today, Ray. Have a great afternoon.
RAY: Lovely talking to you.
JOHN: Definitely, you too. This is John Bentley signing off from VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. Have a great day everyone.
RAY: Have a great day yourself.
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