Real Estate

ERP vs. Microsoft Access

So you want to know more about why an ERP is better than a basic accounting package and some spreadsheets. I’ve mentioned that spreadsheets have a high error rate and are inherently single-user. I have talked about reports from a database because it is much easier to do the same from Excel. What might be left is an impression that using a database is the way to go. That would make some sense, and all things being equal, I agree with you. But I don’t, not all things are the same.

The king of do-it-yourself databases is Microsoft Access. It’s actually a pretty decent product, with a good community of users who are, if not experts, at least familiar. There are a couple of reasons that Access is a good choice, if you decide to go this DIY direction.

Access is relatively inexpensive. It is part of Microsoft Office, although the version with Access costs more money. It’s about $ 300 more to get the tools from the database. You get a few more things, but not many more useful tools besides Access.

“Scheduling” Access through the built-in wizards can allow you to create some tables and forms, reports, and queries at the end of a work day or two. So, call in those $ 500 of programming time and $ 1500 of software and you can have your item list, order table, purchase order report, etc.

Now, what is starting to happen is pretty serious, costing you A LOT of money for the next time.

Soon after your database is created and your purchase orders are shipped to vendors, you realize that you need to receive things. Suppliers are annoying, sometimes they ship exactly what you want, exactly in the quantity and price of the purchase order, but often they don’t. So as time passes, the simple access database begins an insidious march towards something deadly: COMPLEXITY!

As time goes by, it gets more and more complicated.

If you went back to a time machine and re-evaluated everything you had to do, you would realize that your original concept lacked all kinds of control and balance. Even if your people don’t make mistakes, your suppliers and customers do. Your database (and spreadsheets) need CROSS REFERENCES to try to detect and prevent errors. Turns out this is tricky.

Any decent database configured to do these things must have programming. That means you must have some Visual Basic and that’s not something that just anyone can do. You can hire a cheap college student to do it, but be prepared to have it for a year or two. And they won’t finish all the programming.

I’ve seen some amazing Access databases in my day. I have seen databases that interact with CAD and CAM tools, calculate nesting requirements for your software, generate demand for MRP, etc. When I talk to those clients, conservative estimates are that they spent between $ 200,000 and $ 300,000 to write the app. This is almost always a well-paid network administrator or engineer on the full-time staff. The business gets to the point where (whether intentionally or not) they feel trapped. They are afraid of losing this person. Usually when I arrive, it is because the Access database technology has reached some limit (the limit for Access databases is about 500-800 megabytes for their usable size). Either it’s because the designer quit, retired, got hit by a bus, or won the lottery.

The checks and balances are necessary for this system to work, without them you are half a step better than a spreadsheet, but 100 meters from the finish line. They are incredibly difficult to program and create. Do not be fooled. It is much better to spend 10-20k on a simple ERP than to go this route.

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