We’re all familiar with Microsoft Word which is great for
writing letters, procedures and other common documents. Microsoft Excel is a powerful spreadsheet
application which is great for analyzing and presenting data. Microsoft Access…. Anyone?... Anyone?... Does
anyone know what Microsoft Access does?
Meanwhile each time a new piece of employee information
needs tracked, it is too often dumped in to one of many Excel spreadsheets that
make up the organizations “HRIS System”.
While Excel is great at what it was designed for, it was not designed to
store even remotely complex data. That
includes your HR Data.
Relationships between different types of employee data are
often difficult to maintain and prone to human error using multiple
spreadsheets. Too often date elements
are repeated in multiple places leading to inconsistencies when something is
changed in one location and not another.
Typos and other errors commonly occur because the spreadsheet does not
limit your input to valid data with the use of dropdowns and programmed
validations.
Microsoft Access is a relational database management system,
the key words being “relational database”.
Unfortunately most users are unable to just jump into Access and create
a well-designed relational database do to its complexity. It is important to have the different data
tables and relationships properly defined so the system works properly. An example of this might be where I have a
data table to manage employees where any given employee only has a single
record in the table. This table would
include information such as Name, SSN, Gender, etc. I might need a completely different data
table to track the employee’s position history.
This table may have multiple records for any given employee since an
employee may have held more than one position during their time with the
organization. Things like this must be
taken into account when designing the database.
We haven’t even talked about bells and whistles; this is just the
foundation defining what data can be stored in the database and how. So while we’ve determined that Access is a
much better tool for storing employee data than Excel, we have also determined
the learning curve may be a bit much for most people. After all, you want to concentrate on
providing HR Services, not becoming a database programmer.
Why re-invent the wheel?
The HR Data Manager (www.hrdatamanager.com)
is a powerful HRIS/HRMS written in Microsoft Office Access and is compatible with
Office 2007 and 2010. We have already spent
the time to design the database and develop the software to provide you with a
powerful solution that is completely Microsoft Office compatible. Your existing Microsoft Excel spreadsheets
can be easily imported into the HR Data Manager giving you a fresh start with a
tool designed to save time, reduce errors and help with common compliance
concerns. Feel free to check out our web
site and take the Free 30 Day Trial for a test run. www.hrdatamanager.com
