Extracting and presenting information from our business management software---general guidance needed!

Question

My company is an electric motor repair facility.   We use a software program called ACS Master to basically run our entire business.  Everything we do with motor sales, managing inventory, repair, accounting, etc. is done with this program.

The program runs on Basis.  They provide an ODBC connector that can extract information from the ACS database.  However it does it in sort of a general and/ or generic way.   Very hard for an ordinary user to find the correct fields and columns, that can build the information that we want.

My CEO wants to be able to "extract information in a more user friendly manner" as he puts it, from this program.  Where we can create custom designed interfaces and web pages that pull information such as sales reports, trends, etc from this ACS database.

Can anyone advise on tools, software, programs to accomplish this?  I am largely a hardware support/user support person, and have done next to nothing with programming.  I am not sure where to begin to tackle this, so please if anyone can give some good general advice on where to start or how to approach this will be much appreciated.

Please get back to me with any questions and I will try to clarify what we are trying to do!  Thank you!

Answer 1

What are you going to use the data for?

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Tatyana Yakushev [PredixionSoftware.com]

Answer 2

We want to create a better "front end" for the info that we already have available in our company program.  To make it easier and simpler for users to extract information.

For example:  one of the things we would like to make available to our managers is monthly sales reports.  The information for creating this is in the database of our ACS Master program.  However to get to this info, a user first has to have the ODBC connector installed and setup on his computer.  Then they have to open Excel , go to Get external data, and tell the Basis ODBC connector which fields and columns to extract from the database to create this report.

To reiterate:  we have this data available, and a means to extract it.  However it is difficult for ordinary users who are not totally familiar with Excel and ODBC to find what they need out of the mass of data available.  We need to create programs or methods to simplify the process.

Answer 3

Are you familiar with PowerPivot?

I think it is exactly what you are looking for. It will store connection to your ACS Master program and you can refresh the data as needed.

You will be able to create pivot tables to get monthly sales information and similar reports.

In PowerPivot you can choose to hide or not import columns that you don't want users to see.

Read about it and if you have more questions, ask at this forum http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlkjpowerpivotforexcel/threads

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Tatyana Yakushev [PredixionSoftware.com]