Microsoft Access

What is Microsoft Access?

In it's simplest form, Microsoft Access is a database management system (DBMS) designed for small to medium sized database projects. If you’ve ever had to seek out a way to store, organise and analyse your data without jumping straight into enterprise level complexity, Access is probably where you landed.

With Access, you can:

• Create tables to store data

• Build forms to make data entry somewhat less painful

• Run queries to pull out specific information

• Generate reports to turn raw data into something you (and others) can easily digest

It’s been around since 1992, and yes - it’s still very much alive.

Why might you use Access?

Businesses don’t tend to use Access by accident. Rather, they use it because it does a lot for relatively little effort or cost.

• Easy database creation - You can build databases from scratch or use pre built templates that already exist within Access. This can be helpful if you're storing customer details, inventory records or employee data. 

• Structured data management - You can define relationships between tables, apply validation rules and enforce referential integrity within Access which can help keep your data consistent and (hopefully) free from chaos.

• Data analysis and reporting - Need answers? Need them to make sense to everyone? Queries let you extract specific data, whilst reports help you analyse it with formatting, calculations and summaries that you can confidently put in front of stakeholders.

• Automation with Macros and VBA - If, like 90% of the population, you're sick to death of repetitive tasks, you'll be pleased to know that Access supports automation through macros and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). You can create macros to automate said tasks and perform actions based on predefined conditions and if you're a real tech head, you can use VBA to develop custom functionality and integrate Access with your other applications.

• User friendly data entry forms - Instead of dumping data straight into boring old tables, you can design custom forms with text boxes, drop downs, checkboxes and buttons making data entry faster and less error prone.

• Project Management - You can track tasks, deadlines, resources and milestones using custom databases or ready made templates - very handy if your projects don’t justify full blown project management software.

• Inventory Management - Access also works well for tracking stock levels, monitoring sales, managing suppliers and reporting on inventory metrics, especially if you fall into the SME category and these datasets aren't mahoosive.

• CRM (Customer Relationship Management) capabilities - Access even allows you to build a custom CRM to manage customer interactions, track leads, store contact details and analyse customer data and you can tailor it exactly to how your organisation works.

What are the drawbacks?

Whilst Access is powerful it ain't magic. If your business is growing, watch out for:

• Limited scalability - As your database(s) get bigger or more users pile in, performance can suffer. Access isn’t designed to scale like SQL Server, Oracle or cloud based databases.

• Concurrent user limits - Access definitely works best with a small number of users. Too many people accessing the database at the same time can lead to performance degradation or worse, total failure.

• File based storage risks - Access databases are stored as individual .accdb or .mdb files. This can be risky from a file corruption perspective, particularly if you're in a multi user environment whereby multiple users access and modify the same database file simultaneously.

• Limited security - Whilst Access offers basic encryption and security options, it very much lacks the advanced security, auditing and compliance features required as standard for highly sensitive or regulated data.

• Performance issues - Large datasets and complex queries can strain Access and whilst performance tuning is possible, it's generally manual, limited and arguably, a waste of your resources.

• Collaboration constraints - Whilst Access allows for multi-user access to your databases, collaboration features are basic and limited when compared to more advanced database management systems. 

• Compatibility with Web Applications - Access has been primarily designed for desktop use, and whilst it supports some web integration features, building web based applications with Access can be extremely challenging. Seriously, it's not worth the headache.

• Advanced features for non technical wizards: Much like it's first cousin Excel, Access is user friendly for basic tasks without the need for heavy technical knowledge. However, if you're intending to master advanced features including complex queries, macros and VBA programming, you'll be needing some specific and perhaps costly expertise.

How can we help?

If you’re already using Microsoft Access and thinking about upgrading or wondering whether it’s time to move on altogether - we can help.

With decades of hands on experience of this veteran technology, our developers can:

• Optimise and extend your existing Access databases

• Add automation, reporting and performance improvements

• Advise on (and migrate you to) better suited alternatives when Access becomes too problematic to ignore.

Ready to take the first step? Then come and have a chat with our friendly & experienced team today.