I apologize for the length before hand but im long winded 🙂
Alright, I had the pleasure of going down to the place where my wife works and taking care of some malware on an office computer (thanks Elite Killer). I never looked into their IT infrastructure, but while I was there i backed up the lotus approach database. This is where I started seeing some basic flaws, and my wife later verified my fears...
This is a screen printing business. They have two storefronts, one which all the work is done in, and another where orders can be made and picked up. Both have separate databases and there is a lot of emailing, faxing, copying and pasting, sometimes retyping. I'm also told invoices cant be exported as pdf or equivalent, so in order to get them to far away customers, they are either printed and faxed, or printed, scanned, and then emailed. As a recent graduate entering the world of IT, i found this terrifying for efficiency.
I love databases. They have a terrible design. No 3NF. No tables. Lots of redundancy. They are using their database like a spreadsheet, and that drives me crazy. My wife says that when a customer returns for a new order, they open up their last order, change any contact info, delete the last orders contents, then put in the new order.
They need a system to keep track of
Client - School, business, or person, phone, address
Contact Person - Name, address, phone; can be contact for multiple clients
Artwork - table of artwork that can be associated with work orders
Work Orders - individual orders
etc...
and for the love of god, a common database.
What software should I talk her boss into here. Right now they are running some P3 Micron PCs on Windows 2K with Lotus Suite Millennium Edition. The only thing ive ever worked on is web based systems (PHP/MySQL). I'm open to FOSS or closed systems. The OS will have to be MS because they are running Corel Draw and possibly the Adobe Suite in the future.
Wheres are my IT pros with their suggestions? Thanks in advance.
Alright, I had the pleasure of going down to the place where my wife works and taking care of some malware on an office computer (thanks Elite Killer). I never looked into their IT infrastructure, but while I was there i backed up the lotus approach database. This is where I started seeing some basic flaws, and my wife later verified my fears...
This is a screen printing business. They have two storefronts, one which all the work is done in, and another where orders can be made and picked up. Both have separate databases and there is a lot of emailing, faxing, copying and pasting, sometimes retyping. I'm also told invoices cant be exported as pdf or equivalent, so in order to get them to far away customers, they are either printed and faxed, or printed, scanned, and then emailed. As a recent graduate entering the world of IT, i found this terrifying for efficiency.
I love databases. They have a terrible design. No 3NF. No tables. Lots of redundancy. They are using their database like a spreadsheet, and that drives me crazy. My wife says that when a customer returns for a new order, they open up their last order, change any contact info, delete the last orders contents, then put in the new order.
They need a system to keep track of
Client - School, business, or person, phone, address
Contact Person - Name, address, phone; can be contact for multiple clients
Artwork - table of artwork that can be associated with work orders
Work Orders - individual orders
etc...
and for the love of god, a common database.
What software should I talk her boss into here. Right now they are running some P3 Micron PCs on Windows 2K with Lotus Suite Millennium Edition. The only thing ive ever worked on is web based systems (PHP/MySQL). I'm open to FOSS or closed systems. The OS will have to be MS because they are running Corel Draw and possibly the Adobe Suite in the future.
Wheres are my IT pros with their suggestions? Thanks in advance.
