Why are databases useful?
We’re surrounded by databases and use them daily without even thinking:
- Most websites you visit (including this one) are stored in a database
- When you browse the contacts on your phone, you’re using a database
- Even the TV Guide on your TV is stored in a database
From a business point of view, no modern business could operate effectively without one form or another of electronic database.
Somewhere to store your customer information, business contacts, orders, invoices as a minimum. And more specialist information – for example, the type of equipment that you’ve supplied your customers, when it needs servicing, when it needs replacing.
Sure, you can store all this in spreadsheets or word processing documents and keep them in neat folders on your computer or server – but as you grow as a business, you quickly start to realise how unmanageable this becomes:
- What if you need to search for a particular piece of information that you know is somewhere, but you’re not quite sure where?
- What about totalling up say all orders that a customer has placed in the last year?
- What about the total for a group of customers?
- Or perhaps you want to find only the quotes that got rejected without an order being placed?
Practically impossible (or at least extremely time consuming) to do any of this manually – but, with a database, you can run a query in seconds to find the information you need.
Database development is at the core of all development we do – a good business application starts with a well designed database. If you are looking at building a custom database for your business, we can help – contact us for a chat.
