Microsoft Access migration in Lancaster, OH

Access Migration in Lancaster

The database is only half the system

In Lancaster's manufacturing businesses the Access file is rarely alone. It exports to a spreadsheet, a macro in that spreadsheet reformats it, somebody pastes the result into a second workbook, and a report comes out the other end. The database is one link in a chain that has grown by accident over fifteen years.

Migrating only the database breaks the chain, and that is how these projects fail. So the audit here has to map the whole path: what feeds the database, what it feeds, and which spreadsheet is doing work that should have been in the database all along.

Usually a good part of the chain can simply disappear. The macros exist because the database could not produce the figure directly, and once it can, three steps stop being necessary.

What we would look at first in Lancaster

• What feeds the database and what the database feeds, mapped end to end
• Which spreadsheet macros exist only because the database could not produce a figure
• Who runs each manual step, and what happens on the days they are away
• Whether the production rules in the file match what the floor actually does now
• Which of the chain's steps can be removed outright rather than rebuilt

What Microsoft Access migration includes in Lancaster

• A free audit that maps the spreadsheet chain, not only the database file
• The production and scheduling rules written down and confirmed by the people who use them
• A blueprint naming which manual steps disappear and which stay
• A verified data migration with counts and totals reconciled on both sides
• A parallel run with the old chain still working until the outputs match
• The system, the data, the documentation and the logins yours at hand-off

The only way to map a spreadsheet chain is to watch someone run it, so Lancaster audits happen in person on a half-day visit.

How Access Migration works, step by step →