...But Challenges Lurk Around the Corner

• Data freshness and validity become issues when it’s on-line on the corporate stage

• Users will jump on the bandwagon and triple your scope

• Never underestimate user “density”

• If it isn’t on the corporate mainframe, it’s invisible to the Information Systems folks

Notes:

• * The person who traditionally keeps the database up to date sits very low on the totem pole. Usually that’s not a problem, because the data is published for a small audience. But when you go global, watch out!
  

• * As the audience grows, other groups may wish to piggyback a few additional fields on your database. Or expand its regional scope. Or add links to other data. But they rarely accompany their requests with $.

• * If you have more than one search field in the lookup, users will find a way to misapply search criteria. If you offer logical OR, they’ll be stymied at the huge number of seemingly-irrelevant hits. If you use logical AND, they’ll wonder why they never seem to be able to find any matching records. If you offer a choice of OR or AND processing, they’ll be totally mystified. You may have to staff a HELPLINE just to support your simple database lookup!

• * The owner of your source worksheet will not be able to run a mailmerge, save the resulting file as ASCII text, and FTP the file to their web site. On the other hand, the IS folks will not support or assist end users with simple spreadsheets. Although your application may have global utility, it can easily fall through the cracks. Then you get stuck doing simple database maintenance for the rest of your life.