There will come a time when Excel no longer suffices: centrally managing data in the cloud so that everyone within the organization can consult it, with the right permissions based on roles and areas of responsibility.
But a database in the cloud is difficult to manage? No, it is not.
Learn more about how our instant database can take your central data management to the next level and what the advantages are over file sharing.
Instant means ready to use
You do not need to install a server or create a database.
You don't need any technical skills to manage a database.
Your database is ready to use and comes with a comfortable user interface for data entry.
You don't have to worry about performance, disk space or regular backups.
Our Instant Cloud Database is more than a database, it is a service provided by us that manages all of the above and more.
Having a database is a first step, making it securely available to all users, wherever they are, and offering them a modern user interface to manage and edit their data is the next big step. Again, we got you covered.
Our cloud solution is accessible from everywhere and runs in highly secured data centers. Our entity or table designer is straightforward, its power lies in all the work that is carried out behind the scenes. It relieves you of the technical work required to setup and manage a database. Our user interface is designed according to the latest web standards, clean and simple and responds to the various screen sizes.
We are using Excel and Dropbox, why change?
That is a very good question, especially since Excel is one of the best productivity applications in the world and probably the most used as well.
However, despite all its strength and possibilities Excel is not, and never was, intented to be used as a database.
Excel has limited capabilities to manage user access: when you give a user edit permissions then that user can change everything in "your" worksheet (insert or delete columns, change formulas, erase formatting rules, etc...). Giving users the permission to insert or modify certain data, but not delete, and this while being limited to a subset of the data in the worksheet based on one or more values in one or more cells of the worksheet is not possible with Excel.
Even when you use a file-sharing platform like Dropbox or OneDrive you will still have multiple copies of the Excel worksheets floating around your organisation and you will still have users asking to mail them a copy of the lastest version. Besides, file-sharing applications synchronise the data to the local devices and thus with the loss or theft of one single device you risk exposure of your data to the outside world.
Creating a formula to validate the input in a cell is easy in Excel. It is however as easily forgotten to copy that formula to a new cell. It is also easy to modify the formula in just one cell to create that one - and of course only one - exception. These are just two of the reasons why data inconsistency starts.
Think about the following: you want a cell to be filled in mandatory, the value needs to be taken from another worksheet and the value must meet a specified minimum length or value, otherwise the data cannot be committed. Not being able to commit an entire row of data because of the validation of a single cell (in this case the cell is mandatory to be filled in) is a database concept and is not supported by the formulas of Excel.
In a database, columns and their properties are defined separately from the data entry or worksheet which guarantees a consistent data validation. Every column or cell is validated before data is committed which guarantees that data is consistent with your business rules.
With our designer it is also easy to create a lookup to another entity (table or worksheet) and even a hierarchical or sequential filtered lookup to multiple entities.
Explore all of our features like audit trails and approval workflows that come right out-of-the-box and discover what the next step of your centralized cloud data management might look like.
Have a look at some of the key features
Key features
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