• the data is accessible form anywhere, not just within your company
• the data is safer (your premises could burn down and it would still be OK)
• you pay only for what you use (regarding bandwidth and storage)

Drawbacks:

• possibly higher costs
• needs fast internet connection
• usually slower to use especially for data entry

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Paul Rigby is technical director at Awgar Stone Ltd, a provider of business applications and database services based in South East UK (covering all locations remotely). For more information on any of the topics mentioned and how they could apply to your business please contact paul@awgarstone.co.uk. 

Advantages include:

• Being able to spot trends within the business and with customers
• Identify opportunities for more sales and better service
• Identifying problems with timing, speed or quality

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Paul Rigby is technical director at Awgar Stone Ltd, a provider of custom software and consulting including BI solutions based in South East UK covering any location (remotely). For more information or to request an estimate please contact paul@awgarstone.co.uk. 

Excel is an amazing tool. It's so useful it gets used almost as a default place to put information. However it does have limitations and is not always the best tool for the job. A few problems include:

1. Excel files cannot be used by more than one person at once (except read-only). The solution to this is to migrate the file to a database.
2. Excel spreadsheets can become overly complex. This is easily done and generally means it contains useful and well used information. The solution here is either simplify and improve the spreadsheet with e.g. buttons and programming or ideally migrate it to a database.
3. Too big. Huge Excel spreadsheets can be slow to load, slow to close and clog up inboxes. These beasts need to be migrated to a database, which is the tool designed to manage large amounts of data.

Excel is very powerful and can be substantially customised to perform even complex tasks very efficiently. It is also able to link to other systems and files to exchange information. However, a database has it's place too and can be the best tool for the job depending on the situation. Generally speaking large amounts of data are better in a database (this is what they were designed for).

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Paul Rigby is technical director at Awgar Stone Ltd, a provider of IT solutions including Excel and database services based in South East UK covering any location (remotely). For more information or to request an estimate please contact paul@awgarstone.co.uk. 

Businesses need to store their data and for this they a use database. A "database server" is the software that enables this.

High quality database servers are available free these days so paying licence fees is unnecessary. But care is needed as some vendors have free versions which are limited, and when the limit is reached become chargeable. Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle are examples of this. There also exists paid-for database software which is far inferior to many of the free offerings, Microsoft Access being an example.

Help and support is available at a similar price for the free database servers which are widely used and mature pieces of kit.

It is possible there may be features that commercial database servers offer which are required in some instances. However this is unlikely in the majority of cases. One positive point for commercial software from large vendors such as Microsoft is arguably more likely to be supported into the future, though again the free database servers are well supported and have been for years.

Overall this is a potential opportunity for significant cost saving for many businesses and should be considered.

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Paul Rigby is technical director at Awgar Stone Ltd, a provider of custom software and database solutions based in South East UK (covering any location remotely). For more information please get in touch. 

Solicitors and other professionals who need to show they have a reliable system of storing and retrieving documents can do so now for a lower cost, but it's not only these types of business that use document management systems. However traditional systems are very expensive and time consuming to set up and lock a company in by moving their documents into a proprietary database.

The organisation of business documents such as quotes, orders, data sheets and notes for example usually takes the form of a hierarchy e.g. filing by customer then project – each customer folder contains project folders. However these hierarchies can be far more complex involving several levels, ID numbers, dates and various descriptors and codes. The more folders are involved, the more complex the hierarchy and the more important the documents the more important it is to have software that mechanically puts the documents in the correct place.

Human error occurs very easily and can be the difference between a document being retrievable and lost. Did she file it under "Chris Jones" or "Jones, Chris"? Or "C. Jones"? Once there is more than one duplicate folder there will be more than one version of the same document too.

Document Management Systems (such as Microsoft Sharepoint) usually work by springing into action when Save is pressed in Microsoft Word for example and automatically saving the document to the right place. However many systems save the document into a proprietary database which although very secure (no one can move, delete or rename it) means you can't see or open it in Windows Explorer as usual. It also means a big expensive job when you commission and decommission the system, documents need to be loaded into and out of the database. For larger firms and very large amounts of documents a database makes sense but for small and mid-sized businesses it is often not wanted.

ActiveFiler is a simple lightweight document management system that is currently used by solicitors and professional service companies in the UK and abroad. It does not use a database.

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Paul Rigby is technical director at Awgar Stone Ltd, a provider of IT services including document management and production systems based in South East UK covering any location (remotely). For more information or to request an estimate please contact paul@awgarstone.co.uk. 

Awgar Stone can now provide software to automatically enter information into Sage from various sources including documents, spreadsheets and other systems. This can save a great deal of time and prevent typos and other mistakes from occurring.

Data can be moved from most sources including a database, Excel, most IT systems, even Word documents and also web sites. It can be moved safely into Sage either by pressing a button to do so or automatically at a scheduled time. Most entities in Sage can be updated including customer product, quote and sales details.

Most companies have data such as customer, product and financial details duplicated across several systems and system integration of any kind can have a very good return on investment as hours of manual entry can be removed almost completely as well as the data quality being improved (less errors).

It is also possible to query or import information from Sage to other programs or e.g. an Excel file. For instance, when a new customer is being added to another system it could look it up on Sage and get the Sage code so the two systems can be easily cross referenced. This can reduce the amount of duplicated data a company holds.

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Paul Rigby is technical director at Awgar Stone Ltd, a provider of system integration services based in South East UK but covering all locations (remotely). For more information or to request an estimate please contact paul@awgarstone.co.uk. 

Microsoft Dynamics is ERP / CRM software – it manages a business's main data – customers, products, financials etc. and there are versions which are targeted at different types of businesses. However, every business is arguably unique and many do want a bespoke solution. Microsoft Dynamics can be heavily customised but lacks the agility and freedom that comes with a bespoke solution.

Microsoft Dynamics advantages:

• Lots of the work done for you by Microsoft, why reinvent the wheel?
• Can be extended and customised.

Bespoke software advantages:

• More flexible, can do what you want. Not restrictive like product customisation. More powerful solutions are easier to construct.
• Future-proofed technology. Once started on product customisation you are stuck with it. Microsoft Dynamics may be discontinued, whereas a major programming language / database will be supported indefinitely.

It depends how custom the software needs to be. If the answer is not very, then Microsoft Dynamics may be the best choice. If it must be very custom, a bespoke solution from the start may well be best.

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Paul Rigby is technical director of Awgar Stone Ltd, a provider of bespoke software and Microsoft product customisations based in South East UK (covering any location remotely). For more information or to request an estimate please contact paul@awgarstone.co.uk. 

Officially 255 is the limit but in practice Microsoft have suggested less than ten in the past which agrees with many reports. Access was originally designed as a desktop database, i.e. for one person, Microsoft have SQL Server was the big brother for multiple users.

According to Microsoft  the advantages of using a database server (SQL Server, Firebird, Postgres, MySQL, Oracle etc.) over using Access are:

• Better performance
• Minimize memory use
• Don't have a limit to the database size (it is 2Gb for Access). Any limit for database servers is huge – e.g. SQL Server can handle hundreds of terabytes of data.
• Hot back-up – back-up your database while it's in use without having to get everyone to log out
• More efficient handling of simultaneous editing
• Better security – account-based, table-based
• Auto-recovery – some database servers have automatic recovery from system failure
• Faster as processing is done on server
• Less network traffic produced as processing is done on the server

Also, many of these database servers are completely free (such as Firebird). Access has some stiff competition to say the least!

office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/ways-to-share-an-access-database-HA010279159.aspx

databases.aspfaq.com/database/what-are-the-limitations-of-ms-access.html

office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/access-2007-specifications-HA010030739.aspx

Systems Integration is getting systems to talk to each other to reduce the need for data entry and speed up business processes. For example:

A database or IT system could be "linked" or "synchronized" with another either in the same company or a partner company, possibly a supplier or lead provider. New leads for example could automatically be sent over to the other company or a manufacturing plant could update it's customer of it's progress.

The benefits can be huge – large amounts of information can be transferred quickly and accurately which translates in to business done. Manual methods cannot approach the volume, speed and accuracy. Also feedback on supplier processes can be used to keep customers up-to-date, enanbling superior service to be provided and possibly a competitive advantage.

The details of which systems can be linked up and how depends on which systems are in question, and what results are desired.

Examples of systems we have integrated include:

1. Sage
2. Databases
3. Web services
4. Excel and Word
5. Bespoke software