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I know of a restaurant franchisee with 170+ locations that uses a home grown ERP system built in VBA on top of Access by an accountant about 20 years ago. I on

I know of a restaurant franchisee with 170+ locations that uses a home grown ERP system built in VBA on top of Access by an accountant about 20 years ago. I once had to update it to optimize (minimize) front-line staff working hours so the company didn't have to pay health insurance for those employees. A real nightmare of a task in more ways than one!

matwood 3y ago
My first programming job in the 90s while I was still in college was building systems exactly like you describe (and they were as poorly built as you think hah). I worked for a small IT programming/consulting shop. We did small jobs like this in town in addition to installing networks, IVRs, etc... while working on larger software to sell (which is an entirely different/crazy story that involved burning CD demos and using a hand 'stomper' to label and then mail them out).
aj7 3y ago
This post has more information than you realize.
- davidmurdoch 3y ago
  What do you mean? Are you suggesting you can figure out who the company is?
  - mattgreenrocks 3y ago
    I have a guess, but don’t want to offend the big cheese there so I’ll just see how this plays out.
protocolture 3y ago
In high school I got a gig rebuilding a pre 2000 Access DB + VBA front end in office 2003ish due to some kind of incompatibility that was preventing them from upgrading their PC's. It was a chemical safety database. It was used to identify chemical risks and track the storage of the chemicals. I pray near daily that someone else came along years later and rebuilt it in a modern language.
- davidmurdoch 3y ago
  Ah yes, where testing just means "I hit save on the live database file and didn't received an angry call from accounting 2 minutes later"
anonzzzies 3y ago
One of our clients runs everything on access; from the office security, factory automation, ERP, crm, hrm, cms and more. We are moving them to a cloud platform that will allow them to not change one thing but save them a fortune not having to deal with the many issues access has.

matwood 3y ago

My first programming job in the 90s while I was still in college was building systems exactly like you describe (and they were as poorly built as you think hah). I worked for a small IT programming/consulting shop. We did small jobs like this in town in addition to installing networks, IVRs, etc... while working on larger software to sell (which is an entirely different/crazy story that involved burning CD demos and using a hand 'stomper' to label and then mail them out).

aj7 3y ago

This post has more information than you realize.

davidmurdoch 3y ago
What do you mean? Are you suggesting you can figure out who the company is?
- mattgreenrocks 3y ago
  I have a guess, but don’t want to offend the big cheese there so I’ll just see how this plays out.

protocolture 3y ago

In high school I got a gig rebuilding a pre 2000 Access DB + VBA front end in office 2003ish due to some kind of incompatibility that was preventing them from upgrading their PC's. It was a chemical safety database. It was used to identify chemical risks and track the storage of the chemicals. I pray near daily that someone else came along years later and rebuilt it in a modern language.

davidmurdoch 3y ago
Ah yes, where testing just means "I hit save on the live database file and didn't received an angry call from accounting 2 minutes later"

anonzzzies 3y ago

One of our clients runs everything on access; from the office security, factory automation, ERP, crm, hrm, cms and more. We are moving them to a cloud platform that will allow them to not change one thing but save them a fortune not having to deal with the many issues access has.