Q: Why do you often recommend FileMaker as the technology of choice for small to medium sized businesses?
A: FileMaker is often worth considering for several reasons:
1) It empowers the end-user. It is very common that an end user will have the capability in-house to manage changes to existing layouts and reports. They also have the ability to create ad hoc reports, when the need arises. This takes an expensive third party consultant or programmer out of the critical path for getting many things done.
2) It is platform agnostic. Nothing better than being able to use a Mac or Windows, or both, without being locked into a choice dictated by your operations management application.
3) It is a very flexible and powerful rapid application development (RAD) tool. What this means to you as the client is that a custom solution can be developed much more quickly (less expensively) and with a much friendlier user interface than applications developed with most other programming languages and database systems. FileMaker can interface with the Web and also with other internal databases. It can bulk send emails and print form letters.
4) It scales well. A fileMaker Pro solution can be scaled from a stand-alone system (one person) to a small group (5 or fewer) to more than a hundred users (or even beyond via the Web).