Customized Database Solutions

ARETEK is dedicated to affordable, user-friendly applications that meet the specific needs of your business or agency. We believe strongly in the philosophy that simpler is better.  Your personnel's efforts are enhanced by customized and easy-to-use computer applications.

    Database design is a specialized skill involving a careful analysis of the information needed by management and how it can most efficiently be gathered by line personnel.  Proper table design and careful consideration of user needs are crucial.

    Most companies and agencies have at least a few people who are willing and able to learn to maintain databases, but it is rare to find the expertise needed to actually create the databases from existing information.  If you have one or more employees that you would like to train, our programmer(s) will work closely with them, showing them each step of the process as your application is created.  There are several benefits to this approach:

1)
    To be useful, the program must be both user-friendly and management-friendly.  The programmer MUST spend a great deal of time with users and management to properly design the system.  When a programmer consults your personnel but then develops the program alone, it is easy to get off track and waste time on things that are not needed while overlooking essential functions.

2)
   Your personnel have the most thorough understanding of your specific data needs.   It is very helpful if your most computer-literate people are directly involved in the process.  They can best relate to the programmer AND your other personnel, acting as facilitators to provide the programmer with the detailed knowledge he or she needs to create a useful system.

3)
   After they have seen the application being built, your personnel will have the skills needed to maintain and enhance the program with little further assistance.  In many cases, they go on to create the next application by themselves or with minimal consultation.
 

    We have found that as long as your personnel are reasonably familiar with computers, it doesn't take much longer to explain the programming process than it does to program in isolation.  On many occasions your personnel contribute valuable suggestions that not only improve the product but save time that would have been wasted by going in the wrong direction.  The long-term benefits of having better trained personnel outweigh any short-term savings, and your personnel can also assure you that the time spent was productive.

    If, however, you do NOT have appropriate personnel as described above, or you decide that your computer-literate personnel are more efficiently utilized for other tasks, we can meet with you and your executive staff as well as your line personnel to determine your programming needs.  Either way, our satisfied customers can assure you that our applications are efficient, effective, and user friendly.  References will be furnished in response to your e-mail request, and you will find that integrity and excellence (arete) are our strongest selling points.

   Dwight L. Rhodes                 President