All Data Management Services Include a
Complimentary Initial Evaluation and Assessment
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1st Contact has over 30 years experience building and managing specialty databases. Following are some types of specialty data Michelle can help you with:
- Nonprofit Data
- Association &/or Membership Data
- HIPAA Data
- Fire/Rescue Public Safety Data
- Government Organization Data
- Small Business Data
- Marketing Data
- Financial Data
- Payroll Data
- Manufacturing and Production Data
- Inventory Data
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1st Contact can help you build your database from scratch. Michelle Meyer has years of experience helping clients design, build and roll-out new database solutions. Every project Michelle works on is collaborative; end-users are drawn into the process from the very beginning and help guide the build process.
Building a database from scratch differs from other data management projects because most new database projects start with raw data needs. So, the first job is graphing and defining data structure. Data sets have to be analyzed for "one-to-many" relationships. A typical example of a one-to-many relationship is represented in the invoice below. There is one invoice but many items listed on the invoice. The yellow portion of this invoice represents the “one” side of the “one-to-many” relationship. The blue portion represents the “many” side of the “one-to-many” relationship.
In addition, it is also possible to see other data relationships in this invoice. For instance:
- One customer may have many invoices
- One Sales person may have many sales/invoices applied to them
- One sales person may be assigned to many customers
- One customer may interact with many sales people
Once data analysis is complete, work continues onto building the underlying data storage tables through creating data entry forms, reports, queries and other user capabilities. By the time a new database is rolled out to production end-users have had ample opportunity to test and guide the work.
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A very common data management problem is integrating and synthesizing data from multiple data sources. How many different sources of data do you have to work with? And how are all these data sources related?
Tackling a data integration project may seem overwhelming at first. But, there are tools available to make the undertaking more manageable. One of the most popular data integration tools on the market is Microsoft Access. Access can link to and share information with dozens of products. Microsoft continues to upgrade and add external data connection capabilities. Some of the most used external data connection capabilities include:
- SQL Server databases. SQL Server is probably the most common software database. Microsoft has supported integration with SQL Server since its’ inception.
- Most ODBC databases. SQL Server is the most common ODBC database, but there are others. If you want to integrate data from a cloud software service and on-premise data, chances are you’d need to use ODBC connectors.
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Outlook
- Sharepoint Lists
- Salesforce
With so many external data connection possibilities, MS Access gives your team the ability to assimilate data from multiple information sources in your organization. And 1st Contact Databases has years of experience joining various data sources for reporting &/or querying purposes.
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The one truth about data management is that data evolves and changes over time. One very common need clients have is managing information evolution. Data evolution can be related to data integration. But, it contains other components.
- How many data sources are you managing?
- What types of information is shared across those data sources?
- How much work is it to keep same records in multiple data sources updated?
- Does your team trust the data in all data sources?
Sometimes the answer is data integration.
Sometimes the solution is evolving the multiple data sources into one comprehensive database system.
And sometimes the solution is a combination of data integration and data evolution.
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Michelle Meyer has been managing and maintaining Microsoft Access databases for over 30 years. She has considerable experience in the following database maintenance areas:
- Building complex queries
- Writing complex reports
- Importing/Exporting data
- Debugging errors
- Revising database functions to address new user needs
- Helping clients with major data cleanup projects
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Is there someone on your team who works with Microsoft Access? Michelle Meyer is accustomed to working with end-users and teaching them how to build and manage their own Access databases. During remote screen-share work sessions, Michelle can teach folks how to more effectively manage their Access database. During tutorial sessions, users are working on their own database. This has two advantages. By the end of a screen-share tutorial session end-users will have built something in their own database, something they can use on the job. And - it is far easier for users to retain what they've learned, if they've learned on their own familiar database.
Following are just some of the things Michelle can help end-users learn:
- Build their own queries
- Build a solid data table structure with proper table relationships
- Build data entry forms
- Build reports
- Link to external data sources for integration purposes
- Build basic macros
