Originally Posted by
Efrem
I'm not so sure. Unless you're doing hairy stuff, which doesn't sound likely, you can almost certainly replicate the Access part in FileMaker Pro. It's multi-platform and interfaces quite well with Excel, oddly enough in some ways better than Access does. There may be some one-time development work (depends on how deep into Access your work goes) but FM is, all else being equal, easier to use than Access. (This is according to every review I've read and is borne out by my own experience with both.) IMHO, if Access wasn't bundled into most versions of Office for Windows, its market share would be negligible. (Access has some plusses for professional developers, but that doesn't sound like the situation here.)
Maybe, but it also comes back to how much of the work product is shared with the other 2 partners in the organization. Unless the OP can convince the partners to also switch that might be enough to derail even the finest plans. The fact that the OP has to deal with supporting the other partners anyways makes me think that adding more potential interoperability confusion is not going to help on the efforts to reduce time spent providing support versus doing "real" work.