>So we are looking for something that can create files very quickly. In your experience with Crystal reports can it run as efficiently as the VFP report writer when creating files?

Crystal Reports is awesome. But... It doesn't work natively with VFP5- you have to use ODBC support. Once you get over that, the things you CAN do will exceed the things you NEED to do with Crystal Reports. I know the die-hard VFPers would rather use the built in reporting module, but Crystal is much easier to develop reports(IMO)

Crystal Analysis and the accompanying suite looks pretty fascinating too. I haven't used it, but it looks like a well-designed set of dictionaries could completely remove the IS manager from the report fulfillment process. (which give the IS manager time to do other work, and lets Marketing/Accounting/etc. get whatever they want when they want it)