Director’s PC Specs

Your Director has approved the purchase of the PCs you suggested in your response to the Case Study - Part 1 specification. The information in this database you built is fairly minimal. What fields would you include in the database you generated for this project to assist you in selecting a supplier or providers to employ to complete the purchases?

The provider’s online rating on a site like Glassdoor is a vital field to include in the database because it communicates about the supplier’s service quality. Experience in computer systems sales should also be included in the databases since competence in business transactions is often tied to how long the supplier has provided the service (Osmond and Schnaper). The presence and length of warranty is another consideration that should be added into the provider information so as to choose the provider that guarantees the quality of the systems. Lastly, I would add after-sales services onto the provider data so as to choose providers that add most value to the procurement process.

Could you use an Excel spreadsheet to replicate the same activity that you completed for the Access database project? What advantages or disadvantages might using Excel have over using Access in this Case Study?

Excel spreadsheets could hypothetically be used to replicate the activity with the exception of the step requiring a form since excel solely uses its worksheets for data entry. Therefore, while excel might be easier to use when creating objects for manipulating provider information, it has a limited library of objects. Moreover, excel is more suitable for mathematical data analysis rather than data management. It would therefore be inappropriate in this scenario since the data is not numeric.

Works Cited

Osmond, Thomas and Beth Schnaper. “Tips, traps, and travails: How to choose the right outsourcing vendor for your company.” Benefits Quarterly (2000): 15.