Migrating From MS Access With A Custom Solution

You can migrate away from Microsoft Access without losing your data, those special custom scripts, or other forms your team uses to run your business. In fact, migrating from MS Access to a custom software solution is more than a migration -- it’s an upgrade. And your team will thank you. So what’s involved? Let’s take a look.

Why Migrate From Microsoft Access To Custom Software

There are several reasons to move on from Access. As your business continues to grow and evolve, it is important that your software keeps up. Access likely served you well up to this point, but here are some reasons to consider moving to a new solution:

1. Support: Microsoft’s commitment to supporting Access and its users is far from certain, given their withdrawal of support for Access web applications and end-of-life support for its other products.
2. Reliability: As your business grows, Access may struggle to scale with you. Once you hit 20 users or over 2GB of data, Access’s performance starts to degrade significantly.
3. Team Usage: Access is not built for teams. Due to its single-user architecture, when you get to ten or more people using it at a time, it becomes slow and hard to use.
4. Integration: With Access, you’re tightly entangled in the Microsoft suite of software, which makes it more difficult to integrate with other software your business uses.
5. Ease of Use: While your team may be used to Access, it isn't actually that easy to use. By refreshing your application, you can make your current employees more productive and make it easier to train new ones.

If any of those reasons ring true with your experience, then doing a migration to your own, custom software can be a great solution.

From MS Access To Custom Software

When migrating from MS Access to your own solution, the opportunity is more than a simple database migration. You now have the chance to create a user experience and integrated piece of software that your team will use to increase business performance. Build around your business goals.

When migrating your business from Access to your own software application, you will need to consider the following:

1. A Complete Database Migration: Create a complete backup of your database, then export it.
2. Document Your Queries: Your data is important, and so is how you have been accessing that data. Queries are behind every report, form, table, etc. that you access. We will need to replicate those queries.
3. User Forms and Documents: You’ll want to recreate the forms, reports, and documents your team uses and generates.
4. Scripts: If you use Virtual Basic scripts, you’ll need to document those, in terms of inputs, outputs, and the algorithm.

The items above need to unfold along with the development of your custom application so that you don’t lose any functionality in the transition.

Get Your Business Ready

If you have come to realize that it is time for your business to move on from the limitations of MS Access, you have options with custom software as the next step. You’ll take the basic functionality of an MS Access database and add modern functionality, allowing multiple users to access the information through the internet, with a user experience built just for them -- including mobile access. You’ll be able to integrate other software solutions your business uses, which will create efficiency and reduce (or eliminate) data silos. Migrating from Access is an opportunity for improvement that your business can’t pass up.

Ready to start your migration? Schedule a call with us (Calendly).