FileMaker is more than an application, it’s a data based workflow platform. Let’s take a look at what that means for your company’s bottom line when you plan for the future and drive the change your company needs. First, it’s data based, which means that managing information is at its foundation. Second, it’s designed to build workflows, allowing you to design your business processes into the application, instead of the other way around. And most importantly, it’s a platform that scales to support your needs today as well as in the future.
Every company has data that is unique to its business. This business information often supports the characteristics that make your company stand out from others. This business information is different than common practices across companies, like payroll, finance, and sales. While those common practices have a large market of software vendors to provide high quality applications that support them, businesses in niche markets have few options to address their application needs. Recognizing that your business has unique software needs is the first step on the path to FileMaker.
Manage Business Information
That’s where FileMaker comes in, as a no-code solution to your specific and unique business information needs. As an example, imagine a florist shop that wants to improve its bottom line. A large source of loss is the flowers that die before being able to be sold. The owner wants to reduce this loss by tracking how long different flower types last in her store, and how long different flowers take to sell. She is unlikely to find any commercial software that addresses that specific need, and any that may exist will likely require expensive customization or extensive development knowledge in order to implement.
A common solution to a simple data management problem like this is to utilize a spreadsheet application, “the database for the rest of us.” Unfortunately, a spreadsheet is not a relational database and is not designed to build workflows. That means that the flower shop owner is spending valuable time manually entering, calculating, and tracking this information. What money she is saving from improving flower shelf life is being lost by the time she spends managing it. No one goes into the flower business because they love spending hours in a spreadsheet. What’s worse is that after 6 months that spreadsheet file has grown massively and is becoming more and more difficult to manage. A spreadsheet doesn’t scale over time. And lastly, while this process may be manageable for her corner flower shop, what happens as her business grows to a larger store, or expands to other locations? Multiple locations means multiple files that then need to be shared across the business and manually integrated. This usually leads to multiple versions floating around staff emails and shared drives. Recognizing that spreadsheets won’t address your business’s unique software needs is the second step on the path to FileMaker.
Build Business Workflows
FileMaker enables several capabilities that elevate your spreadsheets into powerful business workflows. A workflow is a set of automated steps that import, process, and report on your business information. The first FileMaker capability is a visual set of tools for creating a relational database of your information, called the Relationship Diagram. Second is a comprehensive list of actions to perform on your information, called the Script Editor. Third is a simple way to design the user interface and display your user information, called the Layout View.
These capabilities allow you to design an integrated business application for importing, relating, and processing information from multiple locations and applications. Vendor information can be automatically imported from her customer relations manager, sales information from her point of sale tool, and flower shelf life logged by employees as dead flowers are pulled from shelves. This information can then be automatically processed by scripts that can report the raw data or summarize it as a vendor score or a graph comparing multiple vendors. FileMaker turns your business information into business insights. Utilizing these powerful capabilities is the final step on the path to FileMaker.
Future Proof Your Business
FileMaker is an incredibly flexible tool for building data based workflow platform. It’s designed to help users go from idea to business application very quickly, with no computer programming knowledge required. And behind the drag and drop simple interface are extremely powerful and extendable tools that take advantage of the latest technologies. Features such as encryption, secured login, and web integration are included, with each FileMaker update bringing additional features for your business application. The limitless possibility with FileMaker is the future proof platform that ensures that your unique business information is managed with the latest technologies now and in the future.
