How can FileMaker Best Replace Your Paper Based Processes

The constant changes in the lifestyle and choices of modern customers have made it essential for modern businesses to optimize their process. The advancement in communication technologies have further made the paper based processes obsolete. Many reports have highlighted how an organization can avail several advantages by replacing its paper based processes with a powerful cross-platform relational database application like Filemaker. As the application is designed by integrating a GUI interface and a database engine, users can easily customize and manage records simply by dragging the elements into screens, forms and layouts.

Advantages of Replacing Your Paper Based Processes with Filemaker

Design Databases Accessible on Multiple Devices

Unlike conventional record management systems, the Filemaker allows organizations to digitalize their paper based records in a quick and convenient way. The innovative tools provided by the platform further makes it easier for businesses to create custom databases without putting any extra effort. The custom database solutions can be further accessed by users of desktops, laptops and mobile devices. Also, the database’s look and feel can be customized according to the device it is being accesses on.

Make Business Data Accessible in a Distributed Environment

Many enterprises, nowadays, outsource business processes to cut down expenses. The traditional paper based processes need to be automated completely before being outsourced to a local or distributed company. The business data must be sharable on the internet or over a network in a safe and secure way. Along with allowing the members of a distributed team to access the business information on a variety of devices, Filemaker further make the data sharable across multiple platforms.

Generate Reports and Charts Quickly

Most modern enterprises facilitate communication among employees by sharing reports in common formats like Excel and PDF. The Filemaker platform comes with a set of tools that complement the reporting needs of modern businesses. Each user can create a variety of reports and charts simply through several clicks. The reports can be further shared with other members of the team without requiring any additional software.

Save Information in Multiple Formats

While digitalizing business records, a modern organization has to save the important data in PDF and Excel formats. In addition to allowing users to save the business data in PDF and Excel formats, Filemaker further allows them to stay connected to popular data sources. Whenever a user opens the database, he can import the Excel data automatically by enabling the recurring import setup. The feature makes it easier for users to keep the business records updated without having any programming skills.

Option to Build Data-Driven Websites

Many enterprises allow their employees to access business information through data-driven websites. The websites help the users to access the business data by using any device with internet connectivity. Also, the website will allow the distributed team members and sales staff to stay connected to the updated business information regardless of their current locations. Filemaker platform allow organizations to build custom data-driven websites within a shorter span of time. The Filemaker web solution can be further accessed on a web browser with Filemaker Server.

Provide Mobile Solutions to Your Team

A constant increase is noted in the number of users who access internet on their smartphones and tables. So your business processes need to be optimized and accessible for widely used mobile devices like iPhone and iPad. When the business processes are optimized for mobile devices, the data can be accessible by employees regardless of the locations they are working from.

At the same time, the business data will also be accessible by the sales or marketing staff on the go. The Filemaker platform comes with several tools to optimize the business processes for iPhone and iPad. These features can be further used by an organization to optimize several business tasks like customer management, invoicing, project management and field data connection for these widely used mobile devices.

You also have option to choose from several versions of Filemaker according to the requirements of your business processes. Further, the current Filemaker 13 platform further comes with a set of innovative tools that allows you to build custom business solutions that can be accessed by your employees anytime and anywhere. To get maximum benefits of FileMaker, you may consider services of a custom FileMaker development company to assist your development needs.

We provide FileMaker development services. If you would like to talk to one of our FileMaker expert developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Using FileMaker to design custom business solutions for iOS

FileMaker 13 can be said to be the next-generation platform meant for business productivity. Teams find it easier and faster to create customized business solutions aimed towards Mac, Windows, iPad, iPhone and web, delivering phenomenal productivity gains. It also helps minimize the design time while streamlining the business processes at the same time. Organizations benefit from the variety of options rendered for delivery of powerful yet easy-to-use solutions that include new tools as well as latest web technology for desktops and iOS.

FileMaker is considered by many as a system for database management but it is actually a development platform as well which may be used for the quick building of robust as well as visually appealing cross-platform applications. It has the seamless ability of generating applications not only for Mac and Windows desktops but for smartphones and tablets as well. But the most significant use of FileMaker for iOS is designing of solutions that can perform particular tasks more efficiently leading to cost savings, increase in employee productivity as well as customer satisfaction.

There are three key areas to focus while you design high-performance apps through the platform- database design, layout design and wide area network design.

Database design

When designing this your focus should be on reduction of data movement and apart from tinkering with the scripted behavior you should follow some practices.

:- Few redundant joins should be used in the relationships graphs, avoiding actions which may lead to creation of extra join caches. Use combinations of task-oriented smaller table occurrence groups along with scripting of search routines and avoid creation of extra join caches.

:- Your tables should have few fields so that there is less data to consider, record and move. Get familiar with relationships that are one-to-one so that data movement can be isolated to the relevant fields and specific task or layout.

:- Large related record sets should not be filtered at the portal, but at relationship instead. Portals that are filtered are best suited for working with small sets of records that are related since with the growth of record sets the performance may be seriously hampered.

Layout design

The performance of custom solutions may be drastically increased by some focus on this aspect.

• Simple layouts as well as minimal use of objects will see less data being rendered by the engines when spanning the screen.
• Simplify the styles of layout objects since multicolor gradients take a lot of time for filling up of objects when comparing solid color fillings.
• The layouts should be appropriately sized so that scrolling can be restricted to just a single direction at least.
• Compressed graphics should be used in JPEG or PNG formats as they will be displayed faster.
• Field objects should not be overlaid with embedded graphics as the rendering engine might find it taxing to edit, enter or exit the field.

Wide area network design

Understanding the data movement between clients and hosted database is very important as it will help you optimize the solution's performance.

:- Use custom menu feature as that will help disable commands which trigger data movement, helping you tackle the problem of slow processing when modifying records in FileMaker applications.

:- Use FileMaker Server to do your hard work as that will help you transform large record sets or even produce summaries that are pre-cached. The data volume will be reduced along with the processing effort, thus the performance gets impacted positively.

:- Pre-fetch behavior should be managed so that the platform retrieves data from the found record sets which will lead to faster record movement.

FileMaker 13 may be an excellent choice if you want a production-ready, field-tested, web capable application development platform and database system altogether. Your development efforts will be simplified up to quite an extent especially in such a multi-device development sphere. To get maximum benefits of FileMaker, you may consider hiring services of a custom FileMaker development company to assist your development needs.

We provide FileMaker development services. If you would like to talk to one of our certified FileMaker developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.