By Rich Eichacker
Vibrance Technology Corporation
Although you may curse Microsoft every time your PC crashes, the proliferation of Windows-based systems has resulted in a commonality within the business community.
How does this commonality help your business? Well, not so long ago we were vendor (and system) dependant. One platform running software that was designed exclusively for that system. It was very difficult to share data between platforms. Today, because of the tools available, we can exchange data across systems - from Access to Oracle to SQL to mainframe downloads.
The following examples demonstrate real-life situations where this commonality was leveraged to provide a solution where one might not have existed ten, or even five, years ago.
Lost information after upgrades...
A number of my clients have come to me with problems regarding data access after installing software upgrades. In one case, a client upgraded commercial software to the vendor's client/server version. This software was critical to their core business. The upgrade, however, omitted many of the reports that were essential to their operation. The vendor's promise to re-create these reports in the new version was not kept, and my client was left scrambling for information. With the help of today's development tools, I was able to create a program that pulled data from the newly upgraded software and re-create the lost reports.
Extending existing systems...
I am often approached by clients to help enhance the functionality of existing systems. Recently, a client had contracted with me to provide a software package to do financial analysis for their capital planning projects. The client typically forecasted anywhere from five to forty years into the future with both revenue and expenses. One of the requirements was to replace paper reports with live, "serviceable" analysis tools by dropping data into Excel and Word, eliminating the need to retype data that already resided in the system. The Excel reports facilitated the visualization of the revenue and expense streams by displaying graphs and allowing the user to create "what-if" scenarios within the spreadsheet. The Word reports allowed the creation of proposal templates with the financial and project data already populated in the document.
Bridging the gap between disparate systems can now be accomplished with relative ease. Data can be exchanged, existing systems can be enhanced and, best of all, your software systems can start working together, for you.
Fall 2002 -Volume 12, Number 4