​Where is Your WAG Data?

The first time I ran into the acronym “WAG” was several years ago. One of my clients (a business owner) knew he had some problems with data accuracy, and asked me to review the affiliated spreadsheet application.
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There were dozens of columns of data. My client walked me through all the columns, teaching me what type of data each column stored. After a couple hours of analysis, note taking, discussion, and diagraming, we were coming to the end (or so... I thought). I looked at the last column, titled “WAG” and asked my client what “WAG” stood for.

​He looked pretty sheepish, and then told me “WAG” stood for “Wild Ass Guess”. Then he proceeded to tell me, that the WAG column was one of the reasons he needed data management expertise. His “WAG” estimate was not dependable. From his perspective, he had the data (spread across multiple spreadsheets – that we’d not even begun to review), but data organization was (in his words) “out of control”.

As he walked me through the various spreadsheets impacting his WAG estimate, the problems became self-evident. Following are just a few of the issues we ran into:

• Data from different reporting periods (years) stored in separate spreadsheets.
• Inconsistent spelling – across the various spreadsheets - of key data points, such as:
  • Names of individuals
  • Addresses
  • Types of services rendered
  • Names of employees involved in a client projects
  • Types of business/organization his clients were assigned to
• Spreadsheets had been copied/pasted from one reporting period to the next. Then the end user used the copied spreadsheet as a template for the new reporting period. This caused errors in data, because end-users would delete previous year’s data, and try to retain formulas, etc… Of course doing this year after year led to formulas being unintentionally deleted and rebuilt (wrongly). Sometimes formulas didn’t capture all the cells intended, etc…
• Multiple people were managing the various spreadsheets, and there was really no consistency in the way related data was managed from one spreadsheet to the next.

Those were just the major problems. There were many others as well. The bottom line is that his data had evolved beyond the spreadsheet level. He knew he had a problem, because he had real data and yet he couldn’t do anything more than come up with a WAG when estimating an essential data point.

My client knew this intuitively. He couldn’t really put it into words, but he understood that Excel couldn’t do the job anymore. He wanted control of his own data, and so he decided to move to a custom database application.

Data is dynamic. The very fact that we work so hard to grow and evolve our businesses and organizations, dictates that the data will follow suite. If we do not accommodate the growth and evolution of essential data, we could very well hamper the growth and evolution of our business or organization.

WAG data just doesn’t cut it, when you’re trying to make critical decisions.

Learn More about Building Custom Data Management Solutions with Microsoft Access​​

• Yes – Microsoft Access works in a Multi-User Environment
• YES – Microsoft Access Can be Used Securely
• Deploying Microsoft Access in a Remote Environment
• Why You Should Care about RAD and How It Impacts Your Bottom Line ....
• Do you have questions about your own data management project? Contact Michelle.