Database Design, Development, and Integration

Your business needs to scale, shouldn’t your database be able to scale too? Database development is a lot more than one or several containers with organized text. In fact, approximately 95% of all clients that come to us have database that are either under performing, or have been poorly engineered. If a database is architected incorrectly, it can cause your organization several thousands of dollars in loss and it may eventually be required to be fully re-designed.

Many applications rely on databases to operate effectively. While some IT investments might be covered with a “do-it-yourself” approach, databases are highly mission-critical and therefore need an expertise that some IT staff do not possess. We can help.

Our goal is to identify your database needs and construct a database that works effectively with your applications, quickly and seamlessly. After all, the only thing that matters to your business is that you get the right information at the right time.

Once a database is developed, it needs to be integrated into your business. We work quickly and carefully to make sure that there is minimal downtime to your organization and no impact on your important data or on other applications in your system.

Common database problems

“My entire system is a bottleneck! We still have sales filling out paper forms in the field, then spending hours reentering the information into their “contact management” program; customer service seems to spend half their day entering phone orders and online orders into their CRM database; shipping is relying on printouts to process orders, customers calling all the time to find out the status of their orders, and accounting on a whole different program trying to track and control it all!

“To make things worse, whenever I try to get a report I get told the data isn’t sorted that way or they have to pull it from several different databases or do lots of hand-sorting. Sometimes it can take days just to get me the information I need. Why is it so difficult, and why can’t I have one system that can give me the reports I need to plan and run my company?”

This is probably the number one “Gremlin” facing companies that contact us! Most companies develop “organically,” adding additional equipment and software as they need it. Yet even as their business processes keep getting more and more specialized, they often choose inexpensive or “off-the-shelf” solutions at these critical points. This only adds to their problems as they grow, creating endless duplication of efforts, paper-shuffling, physical filing and unnecessary hand work. Most business owners know there’s a better way, even if they’re not sure how to go about it.

The reasons may be different, but they are similar in many ways: most businesses go through the same basic growth curve, starting out as small one- or two-person operations. As they grow, more staff are added, including specialists and consultants. If they need a bookeeping program, they go with their accountant’s recommendations. Their shipping program is provided by their shipping company. They hire a salesperson who suggests a sales database system she’s used before. At night they’re entering inventory and sales information into some database or spreadsheet included in some suite of office software that came with their computer. Before long they grow and need customer service support and guess what? Another program, this one for CRM.

Each person creates duplicate information, using different fields and variables, across several different programs. And usually none of the programs “talk” to each other. If the owner needs a sales report, he gets it from sales. Accounting provides her P & Ls and he tracks inventory on his computer. It sounds silly when we think of it this way, but that’s how it all usually happens. A few years pass and there are legacy programs in place that don’t do the job anymore (if they ever did) and instead of being able to have crucial information “at your fingertips” it’s become an ongoing process to get a report — any report — and then it’s a case of laying them side-by-side to figure out what’s going on. And they don’t know how to fix it because it’s always been this way — only now it’s really noticeable how much it’s hurting their business.

We get called in all the time to help companies like yours create smoother processes out of these system bottlenecks and their information chaos. We may not be able to make your office totally “paperless,” but by integrating those systems together, we can always make it paper –LESS! Without getting too technical, we usually build technological “bridges” called API’s to link across all the different programs and systems you and your staff are currently relying on.

Here’s an example: We worked with an insurance company to streamline their entire sales cycle, starting at the point where their customers called in or filled out their online quote form. We “bridged” these processes to the quoting and closing system they used, where their agents were having to re-enter the information several times to find the best price. By building in simple search parameters, we automated this stage (and made it where the agent didn’t have to re-enter the customer’s original information!), and created a “one-button” quote delivery back to the client (archiving each quote in the company’s database once approved). All of this data was safely backed up offsite, in a state-of-the-art data center for increased security, and was securely and easily accessible from anywhere in the world where agents or users had a computer with Internet access.

This not only allowed customers to access their quotes and the see the status of their policies from their home computers, it allowed the company’s staff secure access through their internal (“intranet”) system to the entire sales cycle, including approved documentation and signed agreements. While not 100% “paperless,” it dramatically reduced the amount of physical file space required, significantly cut their paper and ink costs, and eliminated countless hours of data entry, re-entry and hand work.

We’ll stop there. That answers the question of “Why is it so difficult?” Even though the “paperless office” ideal may not be realistic for every company, paper-LESS certainly is. The economic advantages of eliminating the bottleneck of wasted man-hours, endless printing, filing and re-entering data are significant, and in most cases can more than justify the cost of simplified and efficient paper-LESS operations.

And Concept Web Solutions can provide more than the answers to the questions… we can provide affordable solutions to the core problems, taking the chains off your business so you can really grow. How affordable? A quick, no cost analysis can identify the areas and the solutions you need, and you’ll be surprised at how inexpensive it can be to not just correct, but customize systems that work in your business, today.