Introduction
   

Who Needs Custom Software?

I often find business people spending hours at the computer to complete a specfic task, while the same job could be completed in just a few minutes using the right software. This is usually frustrating for the person doing the job, as well as being a huge waste of time and money.

I have to admit I always enjoy discovering situations like this, because it gives me the opportunity to really help people, and make their everyday jobs a lot easier.

People naturally tend to use tools they are familiar with. They may suspect there is a better way, but don't realize how much time the right software could save, while also producing more accurate and professional-looking results.

 

For example, a word-processing program can be a valuable tool, and with enough time and effort a word-processor could theoretically be used for every task. It might not be easy, but no other program is absolutely necessary. One of my clients actually maintained the same long list of vehicle registration data in a two Word documents. One document was sorted by licence number, and the same data in the second list was sorted by renewal date. Of course, every update had to be made twice, once to each list.

Obviously, this sounds silly to most people, because they know that by using a spreadsheet, for example, a single list could be sorted either way as needed, and each of the updates would only have to be made once. But it's a true story and hints at an important principle: it is only obviously silly to someone familiar with a better tool. For the same reason, a lot of people use spreadsheets for everyday tasks that would really benefit tremendously from the use of a more powerful tool, like a database.

If you use a spreadsheet for your regular, daily business, or
If you frequently enter the same data in more than one place, or
If you manually enter the output from one program into another, or

If you just suspect you may not be using your computer in the most effective way, please feel free to contact me for more information. I would be happy to talk about your specific application and try to answer any questions you may have.

A few examples of current Favor Software projects are described briefly here.

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