I was wondering if anyone could give me a little feedback regarding 'market value' of an area of programming which I am considering moving into.
I work for myself, and my normal line of business is PLC /HMI programming. I have a customer who wants me to capture various data items from his Allen Bradley PLC, store the data in a Database, and provide a front-end to interrogate the data. The customer does not know a great deal about how to achieve this, so I am able to suggest my preferred solution - which is to use RS LINX / DDE / MS Access with the front-end being written in MS Excel. Between my partner and I, we are able to do this, but have not done so on a commercial basis before, and have very little idea of the "market value" of the work we are proposing to complete.
We have built up a strong relationship with the customer - who trusts what we do for him, therefore we are in a relatively strong position to be able to command a decent price - but we would like it to be realistic. Should we be comparing rates for this type of work with the rates which we charge for PLC programming - or is this a more specialised field??
Any thoughts gratefully received!
I work for myself, and my normal line of business is PLC /HMI programming. I have a customer who wants me to capture various data items from his Allen Bradley PLC, store the data in a Database, and provide a front-end to interrogate the data. The customer does not know a great deal about how to achieve this, so I am able to suggest my preferred solution - which is to use RS LINX / DDE / MS Access with the front-end being written in MS Excel. Between my partner and I, we are able to do this, but have not done so on a commercial basis before, and have very little idea of the "market value" of the work we are proposing to complete.
We have built up a strong relationship with the customer - who trusts what we do for him, therefore we are in a relatively strong position to be able to command a decent price - but we would like it to be realistic. Should we be comparing rates for this type of work with the rates which we charge for PLC programming - or is this a more specialised field??
Any thoughts gratefully received!