Excel is used all over the world for a wide range of applications,
from
simple calculations, to complicated industrial spreadsheets. Of
course, its
most common use is in accounting or financial departments, but how
many of us
really know that Excel can help almost all departments in a modern
company?

CASE 1: Automated website updating?
One of our customers had the following problem: he had one of his
employees assigned to update the company's website everyday with new
values. The website offers information services to visitors and
potential customers. So, each day, the employee had to gather
information from other sites, process this information and update the
website using an updating system their outsource web creator had done.
This system used SQL Server database to update the site, but the
creator did not supply an option for batch updating.

This procedure required the allocation of almost half of everyday's
time for
this employee. We suggested a simple solution:
1. Excel connects to external websites that contain the
necessary information
2. It processes the data and formats using specified guidelines
3. It batch updates the database
4. Excel automatically closes.

All that is needed by the employee is to open the application and wait
around
3 minutes until it finishes processing and sending the data. Then, he
performs a simple check on the website to ensure that everything is
updated
correctly. We installed this solution almost one year ago and since
then it
failed two times. In both cases, there were network problems and the
application could not connect to external web sites.

You do not need Excel to calculate that this company reduced the
required
time for this procedure by more than 90%! And they assigned much more
creative and efficient tasks to this employee, so everyone was happy!
Some
weeks ago, we received a call from our customer, explaining that they
have
fully automated the procedu with the help of an electrician, they
created
a method to start the pc automatically. Once started, the pc is set to
login,
start our application and shut down with no human interference at all.
Nice
stuff!

CASE 2: Label printing for mass mailings.
Many companies in our days use plenty of techniques to communicate
with their
customers. Many of them use the mail to send letters, marketing
material or
product catalogs. One company that sends almost 100.000 catalogs each
month
approached us asking for a simplified label-printing solution. At the
time,
they used a combination of Excel and Word and plenty of manual work to
first
remove duplicate addresses and then print the labels.

We suggested a solution implemented in Excel 2007 version which only
requires
pasting the addresses in a specific worksheet of Excel. We used our
enhanced
duplicate removing algorithm to "clean"� the data and then created an
advanced VBA macro that prints the addresses using the customer's
specified
label dimensions. The user also has the ability to choose whether they
want
the printing done in one batch or in small packages in case they want
better
control of the printing procedure.

There is no end on this list of tasks inside a company that Excel can
improve:
Almost all departments of an organization can take advantage of this
powerful tool. Some simple examples: Logistics and Inventory can print
and
manage barcodes or control stock using advanced Excel macros.
Marketing can
manage customer lists and apply simple CRM tasks. Information
Department can
produce or import ASCII files easily or improve EDI transactions.
Personnel
can program shifts or use Excel as a Payroll application. Management
can have
dynamic reporting or decision analysis tools!

WHY CUSTOM EXCEL APPLICATIONS? WHY SHOULD I PREFER YOUR APPLICATIONS?
Because you can have innovative applications, with really affordable
prices.
Excel is usually pre-installed in almost any PC, and in case you will
need to
buy it, it costs less than $200. By choosing to use a custom
application, you pay only for things you really need.
On the other hand, with stand-alone applications you pay for a bunch
of
extra options that do not fit your needs and you are not interested
in. Just like cost, the time needed to create a custom application
in Excel is much less than any stand-alone one. In custom Excel
applications, you do not need to design and implement an interface,
this is supplied by Excel itself and users are familiar with it.

Most www.exciter.gr applications are free of licensing costs and
restrictions.
You can use our applications in any workstation with no extra cost.
And we
use a balanced philosophy: Simplicity and user-friendliness weights
for us as
much as the powerful VBA code we use to make the application work just
like
you require! Please visit our site to learn more or download some of
our demos.

www.exciter.gr
Custom Excel Applications and Functions!