Case Studies
Project Profile for the Legal Records Database
Executive Summary
Company
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) was founded in May 12, 1908 with 120 founding members. The Association became the largest trade association in the United States in the 1970s and today has over 1.2 million members, 54 State Associations, and more than 1,400 Local Associations.
Solution Description
The Microsoft Access Database providing a repository for legal records required enhancements for usability and reporting. Numerous improvements increased usability and functionality for mailings and management reporting.
Benefits
Using Microsoft Access provides a user friendly central location for the use of NAR staff when tracking legal records.
Software and Services
- Microsoft Access 2000
- Microsoft Windows XP
- Microsoft Windows Vista
Customer Profile
Sector: Real Estate
Industry: Non-Profit Services
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) helps its members become more profitable and successful by collectively influencing and shaping the real estate industry. It is a leading advocate of the right to own, use, and transfer real property and the acknowledged leader in developing standards for efficient, effective, and ethical real estate business practices.
Business Situation
The organization lacked adequate ability to automate the generating of letters. The database needed to capture additional information, allow multiple user access, and create an Excel file to be used for mail merges. NAR desired to further develop their legal records database to centralize and automate their record keeping.
Solution
Legal Records Database
The alligatortek team enhanced the Access 2000 database used for entering, storing, and reporting information. The ability to capture information such as staff names and member statuses increased the usefulness of the database. The Access platform provided a system that was cost effective and met the Association’s needs.
Implementation of Database
The separation of the database into a front-end and a back-end paves the way for multiple user access and improved data integrity and accessibility. alligatortek added numerous improvements to improve user friendliness:
- New dropdown lists and check boxes make data entry tasks easier.
- Scroll bars are no longer needed to view all the data elements.
- A query form provides for selecting records for export to the new mail merge function.
alligatortek smoothly implemented new data categories not previously stored. Users now benefit from easy to use buttons to perform queries and merge functions.
User Friendly for All Staff
All staff now have simultaneous access to the system and can easily store events efficiently in a usable format. The use of Microsoft Access provided an intuitive user interface familiar to most pc users.