ACCESS DATABASE DESIGN
What is MS Access for?
MS Access is about making your information useful to you and accessible to you in the way that helps you the most.
There's a good chance that, if you have lots of very similar, repeated spreadsheets that you would benefit greatly from moving to a database system instead.
In many cases MS Access it is the quickest and lowest cost means of sharing data within an organisation, allowing teams to share data in real time.
It is particularly good for producing applications that look familiar in Windows, with a "traditional" form-based desktop user interface. As a means of rapidly producing reports for print or PDF/Email it is highly flexible. As such it has been used for years by vast numbers of businesses for a very wide range of applications.
It can be used to import data automatically from a variety of sources or export data for use by other applications (e.g. Accounting software, courier software, client ordering systems)
Despite its low cost of implementation it still has a very high level of flexibility because of its programmability using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). By using VBA complex business logic can be applied to data for a huge number of purposes. If you can describe a logical process based upon stored data then we can almost certainly implement it. The possibilities are endless!
Integration with Other Microsoft Office (Microsoft 365) applications
Being a part of the Office Suite MS Access is designed to communicate easily with and use functions of Outlook, Excel, Word and Powerpoint. For example it could generate and send out PDFs of invoices to customers with personalised emails or generate individualised Excel spreadsheets of data with graphs of performance to regional Sales Managers.
Is MS Access usable for remote working?
MS Access is not designed for use over the Internet out of the box, however we can set things up such that you can use MS Access from multiple locations with Internet access. Read more about this..
What about on a Mac or Linux machine?
We run MS Access on a Mac routinely using Parallels Desktop (other virtualisation software is available too). Although Microsoft Access does not run on OS X or Linux it is relatively simple to create a "virtual machine" which runs Windows allowing non-Windows users to have the ability to use Windows without needing additional hardware.
MS Access is an ideal solution for rapid and low cost development
We have many years of experience in MS Access database development.
Access is excellent for:
- rapid application development
- small to medium size businesses
- individual projects in large organisations
- front end development using SQL Server back ends
- use by teams of people at the same time
We design database Solutions designed through a strong understanding of your business needs.
