are graphic designers based in Ilkeston, Derbyshire. One of their important business needs is to keep track of work being undertaken: from initial enquiry through to completion. For many years this had been achieved through use of a whiteboard (shown below).

This whiteboard was updated at the beginning of each week and would take about 90 minutes to complete. This was not good use of the time of one of Simon’s graphic designers.

Simon already had a rudimentary Access database of all design work undertaken over the years. It was very quickly obvious that this could be the basis for an automated ICT solution to replace the whiteboard one.

The solution was to develop the database structure so that job data could more easily be added and amended with an indication of progress. The database was then able to hold information on not only current work but also that of completed projects. The next stage of the solution was to provide a means to report current work.

The new database had a ‘query’ that extracted relevant data on current work. Every time an amendment or entry was made this was updated by Access.

The need was now to present that data in a usable form. For this we used Excel’s ability to get data from a data table in Access, in this case the ‘current work query’. This data is automatically updated every time the spread sheet file is opened. The spread sheet is shown below.

Excel was used to ‘report’ the information as its features made presentation more manageable: colour coding could be used, further sorting and filtering of data was possible.

Current work could now be printed instantly on a daily or as needed basis and the white board was replaced with a pin board.

Finally

Not only did this system free up the time of Simon’s graphic designers’ for more vital design work but because the original database was restructured he was able to use  it to extract other useful business information.

Simon’s testimonial for this work can be seen on our testimonial page