[AccessD] Re: Job posting

Mary,

Unfortunately this brings up another very important point that few small
companies think about or understand, which is that "doing it yourself" can,
in the end, cost you several times what it would have cost to hire a
professional to do it to begin with.  The reason is simple, a company's data
is where the value is.  Once the company decides to call in a professional
to "fix" or rebuild a database (do it right), they have often accumulated so
much data that it would be very expensive to "migrate" that data.  But they
often feel they can't "not do" the migration.  So instead of 3 or 4 months
to build a correctly designed system, they now face 3 or 4 months to rebuild
the system, plus additional time (usually a BUNCH) to get the old data out
of the old system and into the new.  Plus time to work in parallel to do the
testing, plus...

In fact I "lost my shirt" on my very first Access db for this very reason.
I estimated 180 hours for the base system, and I came in right on  that
estimate.  But I estimated 30 hours to migrate the data.  It actually took
me several times that long.  I now make it a point to NEVER bid the
migration.  It is "time and material".  In fact, many times I recommend that
they hire a person or two to re-key the data since that can be less
expensive than hiring me to build a migration system to do the data
migration.  If the data is huge though, that option goes out the window.

I do this "fix my system" thing all of the time and it is NEVER pleasant -
for me or the client.

John W. Colby
www.colbyconsulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Mary Davis
Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2003 1:48 PM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: [AccessD] Re: Job posting




William,
You've hit a important note below: yes, we are hard pressed to know how
Access can be better used along with our other software.  Web use;
blended with our accounting system; made usable for off-site employees.
  We are a small company with very little expertise with *any* of our
software.  Our IT department is one guy who is also the "plant manager."
  It all puts him in a *very* bad mood once in a while.
"Small business software consultant" vs. Access developer.  We'll take
one of each, thanks very much.

> Re: [AccessD] Job posting
> From:
> "William Hindman" <wdhindman at bellsouth.net>
>
> Mary
>
> ...thanks for posting ...
>
> ...btw, ime most any pure "Access" problem can be handled quite well by a
> remote developer ...but most small businesses tend to be dependent upon a
> computer guru rather than just an Access guru ...they need someone they
can
> build a relationship with on site that can set down with them and look at
> their problems through their eyes ...and if that means solving some
network
> or other application problems along with handling your database ones, well
> that's what small business software consultants do best :)


--
Mary Davis
Wilmington, DE


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