Freedom and Flexibility

Factor 10 in askSam project development

by Joop Witvoet

After working with askSam for almost three decades the word freedom comes to my mind.

While using askSam over the years as journalist, communication consultant and interim manager, askSam served me well as a great organizing tool.

During the development of CrimeCatcher, a database for investigative police work, I discovered the secret power of askSam: freedom. The flexibility of the system along with an editor to generate askSam databases made it possible to develop systems at a amazingly low price.

I became a reseller and application developer in the early seventies. I've never had the urge be a programmer myself - which saves me from using technical talk. And I must say that was and still is highly appreciated by the end-users of the systems we created.

The worldfamous free support and hospitality we received from the askSam families in Perry Florida

turned hard work into a vacation. Projects like CrimeCatcher (MOT to track dirty money in banking), Easy Surplus (a transactional system for spare-parts in aviation) and many other projects like Qsite (a universal content management system), were all delivered within time, within budget and last but not least to full satisfaction of the endusers.

askSam, being in a category all its own, needed some time to position itself in the ICT landscape.

Personal Information Management, Text Retrieval System, Content Management System, Text Indexer, Free Form database -- all terms which only partly indicate what it is.

That makes it difficult to compare. But the freedom to allow you to organize your information your way and the flexibility of its architecture, with expanding fields and ultrafast searches, are, in my view, the keystones to its success over the years. People who work with expeditors like Word or rigid databases like Access are surprised when they step over the threshold of askSam.

Since I have been involved in ICT projects for several multinationals I can say, from my own experience, that the flexibilty of askSam generates a Factor 10 -- that's a fact and not a fancy advertising slogan. There is no doubt, using askSam in projects cuts time and costs by 90 percent.

The benefits are endless. Flexibility and the many possibilities to tune the standard product to the needs of users; Low licensing prices; Lowcost programming; Flexibility to make changes on the fly (most costs arise when a system is operational and the users like to make adaptions. In comparison with traditional approaches askSam can adapt very fast to the needs of the usergroup); Low overhead; Minimal maintenance costs; and endusers doing their tasks faster and better. These are just a few of the benefits that complete the investment picture.

Joop Witvoet

askSam Benelux B.V.

Bredabaan 820

2930 Brasschaat

Belgium

Phone: + (32) 499723730

Fax: + (31)  084 8725804

Email: ask@asksam.nl

Web: http://www.asksam.nl