Database Management Systems

Do you have a lot of spreadsheets and spend a lot of your valuable time adding up numbers, chopping them, running Excel Pivot tables?

You could be using that time more effectively. The following 3 examples give an idea of the range of uses to which database can be used and they are not as costly as you may think.

Numerical Calculations

Asenior manager of a large business spent 5 hours each month manipulating masses of data to produce 12 critical reports on the staff pensions. Scio Consulting developed a database that reduced this complex procedure to the click of a single button which imported all the data, manipulated it and produced the reports. It took less than 2 seconds to do this

The company benefits in many ways:-

• 2.5% of this man's productive time becomes available. Just in salary, this is worth over £1000 but shoudl be worth a lot more in what he can do with this time

• Risk of errors is reduced in a critical system. Can one person consistently perform complex operations for 5 hours with accuracy.

• Resilience. If the key person is sick, absent or away from the office, the job can still be done simply and accurately

This solution cost just £2,000

File Management

Another company has paper files of 1000s of design drawings produced over the last 15 years. It could take them 2 hours to find an old drawing. They now have a system on which they can locate a client and all his drawings in a matter of seconds, whilst the client is on the phone. As an additional benefit, they have quick access to all contract information with a client, as well as their contact details.

This solution cost £600

Target Tracking

A national charity provides a helpline for its clients. There are 2 primary information needs:

• Helpline staff need to access client records to be able to provide an effective service when a call comes in.
• To prove they are providing a service, the funders require reports on the performance.

The solution provided creates all the reports needed from the entries that the helpline make in the normal course of recording their notes. There are other benefits, includign an understanding of when calls come into the helpline, exxential for planning volunteer rotas on the helpline.

All businesses should track targets so whilst this solution was for a charity, the same principles can be used for any business.

Total Cost £1500

An example of a Scio database product can be seen at www.MagazineManager.co.uk.

We are proud that in the 12 months since release, the few support calls that we have had ,have all been answered effectively and the answer was in the manual in all cases. We know that no-one reads a manual!

Note that a bespoke solution is NOT always the right answer.

At Scio, we want to give you the right answer for your business. This may mean suggesting an off-the-shelf solution. These are almost always cheaper but you may have to bend your operations to their processes. However, they can provide a more cost effective solution and we will tell you that. Of course, you may need to go on training courses for these products. We will help you find the right answer.

For a discussion, please contact us: info@scioconsulting.co.uk