Another 15 years!

[TOPSie]

About 4 years ago I picked up the task of supporting an Access system run by a distribution company. The system dates back to about 1985 and has undergone many many changes. In my 4 years I have added much functionality as the business evolved. Email and SMS have become the main communication methods with the end customers and events such as COVID have meant that the system is constantly evolving. Also all (once paper) records are now stored and managed electronically



I reckon I have another 2 to 3 years left in me to support and enhance the system but the owner's long term plan foresees the business continuing for at least 10 years.

Access may still be around but the evolution of computing will make it harder and harder to integrate new trends.

The system as it has evolved makes it very complex and it is highly bespoke and becomes more so with each change.

I am looking for ideas and possibly a person to take this forward with a 10-year plan of how to transition to a future proof system.

Early stages - so all ideas and suggestions are welcome

Geoff

[CJ_London]

My own experience is that off the shelf systems will only cover around 80% of the requirements and Access is very good at filling the gap. A current client uses 4 online systems (2 x sales/stock management/accounting) which although they can communicate between themselves to a certain extent, keeping them synchronised is a lot of work. Access is very good at being able to help with that using a mixture of csv download/uploads and use of REST.

To future proof is difficult - at the moment AI looks like it is becoming a trend which will stay but it is early days and not clear what the future will actually look like or be relevant to distribution. So a 10 year plan feels ambitious. And a lot depends on how the system is currently constructed.

Whereabouts in the world are you? You might want to find someone reasonably local or can at least to face to face occasionally. Perhaps an example - during covid video conferencing became the must have technology for businesses to survive, but now the trend is back to face to face. Video conferencing will now always be with us and has opened up new working methods but is now not always the desired method of communication.

[Edgar]

I reckon I have another 2 to 3 years left in me to support and enhance the system but the owner's long term plan foresees the business continuing for at least 10 years.

Access may still be around but the evolution of computing will make it harder and harder to integrate new trends.

MS Access is surely going to be around and it will be able to integrate new trends with the new browser control which supports new frameworks. However, if you think about it carefully, adapting the new to the old through a browser control will be a step backwards. I would say it's best to gradually replicate what your Access solution can do now to a web technology that has new trends taken into account already.

Let's for a moment imagine one scenario. Let's say a client of you wants to be able to watch in real-time what he has bought from you, or the process of it and maybe download reports and what not. You will have to migrate your backend to the clouds for that and maybe your client will have to download a copy of the frontend where he can view this information. However, knowing the security risks involved with Access, some of the backend logic will have to be embedded and easy to see from that copy. Someone might be able to reverse engineer your backend security and thus create a mess with your business. Using web technologies you would be able to integrate better security, by far. If you follow security standards, of course. Now, you could implement some temporary API keys through which your client will be able to access only his information through REST, but then if you implement new stuff to the frontend your client will probably have to download another copy of the frontend and all of this is good until your client does not use Windows and even worse if he wants to see his stuff from his phone.

There is another possibility, there is always another, I think of one where your team has Access locally and Access sends information to a database on the clouds, where your clients can see their information though a dedicated frontend that only handles client information and none of your business data is there. This is nice until you have teams in different places and these teams must share some information.

So the first thing you should figure out is whether web interaction will be necessary between clients and business or business to business, and see if you can migrate it. I have experience with it so if you have questions, go ahead.

[Minty]

We use Azure SQL storage for Access front ends for a number of clients.
Some have a web requirement for road warriors and they have a website connected to the same data. This hybrid approach works well as there is no "synching" between two different data sources.

This retains the power of the Access app for those at home or in the office that need it, and offers the flexibility for any web access that might be required.