One of the teams I support was pulling data from a series of Excel files from various external sources with varying column sequences. These files were already being loaded into a database table but the team needed to pull out a subset of the data, and append it to a new Excel file, to be loaded into a different database table. This was taking about 4 hours each week.
A few years back, I visited a screen printing shop to order shirts for an upcoming high school reunion. While speaking directly with one of the owners, I noticed a computer behind the counter, and naturally assumed the order would be entered here. I was mistaken.
Returned Materials. Returned Goods. Refunds. Credits. These seem like more of an afterthought in some off the shelf systems. If you want to be able to track details such as the nature of the defect, root cause, or do a statistical analysis on returned material trends, you need something a bit more customized.
