What software do I need to do this?

[Mike1983]

Hi everyone

I was hoping you IT experts could advise on a suggested software package to help with the following scenario.

I work in an engineering related role for a large company where the jobs undertaken by our team require a mix of both office and site work. Office work is simple but working outside on site requires the following....

1) Documented pre-planning of various criteria
2) Storing of the above documentation on file for audit purposes (3 years)
3) A line manager has to audit 20% of the above completed paperwork
4) Monthly reports generated to highlight how many hours a specific person spent on site with further filtering for certain criteria specified in point 1.

Currently, the above is all handled by creating the paperwork in MS Word, logging a summary of the details in MS Excel which in turn allows for manual "data filtering" to assist in compiling reports.

Now I'm sure there must be some way of making efficiencies here.

Is there a program available that could generate the paperwork / forms mentioned in point 1 by selecting pre-filled in items from a drop down list?
Could the same program store all of these details in a database for future auditing / report generation?

I'm assuming MS Access is the answer but I'm not familiar with it but guessing someone here is.

This is for business purposes in a large company so if some kind of enterprise level software is required then that wouldn't be a problem. Software that integrates well with general office applications like MS Office suite would be preferred though.

Your help would be appreciated and may go someway in getting me some recognition! I'm pretty good with learning new applications so I'd just like to know the suggested path before I follow it.

Thanks

Mike

 

[rexehuk]

MS Access + Crystal Reports I imagine. Crystal Reports is amazingly powerful, with some companies requiring you to know it. It will produce very high quality reports for you, should get you noticed . I'm sure some others may have better solutions for storing the documents etc.

 

[SiriusB]

If your company runs any kind of Windows Server platform, you could try Sharepoint. It is accessible over the web and is highly customizable to various needs. I wouldn't be surprised if there are ways of generating reports within Sharepoint or with third party software.

Sharepoint is fantastic for document management as it can store templates, previous versions and also supports check-ins/outs [only lets one person edit a file at a time, to avoid conflicts].

 

[Sin_Chase]

Sharepoint can suck me. Hate it with a passion.

Crystal Reporting is so easy to work with. MS Access is sufficient as a database application.

Do you NEED document management? 9/10 products are trash imo. Can you not store in flat files as the documents are written and code in the linking from Access/Reporting for document viewing?

 

[Mike1983]

Thank you all very much. I'm going to research this further and hopefully get a trial version of Crystal Reports to see if it suits my needs.

Our company does not use sharepoint as far as I can tell. My previous company used it but the document management system in place at the current company looks very much different. We do use MS Windows based computers / servers though.

Thanks again,

Mike