Need to win excel argument v access - help please

[Emjaye]

Ladies and Gents, your help would be very much appreciated...

Having spent the last 12 weeks on & off upgrading an excel workbook "training recording application" for work - at their request, you can imagine my dismay at being told today that (excel) macro are unlikely to be allowed to operate on work computers as they "are able to be hijacked"

As I mentioned, I've been making the upgrade for the last 10 to 12 weeks - this is on top of the time and effort it took to create the workbook several years ago.

I'm certainly no expert with excel, more a capable(?) amateur. I would like to give the bosses and idea of what it would cost if they'd contracted a professional spreadsheet developer, with this in mind, would maybe £30 per hour (sterling) sound about right?

Also... I need good, sound reasoning to back up a business case to argue for allowing this workbook app, and it's associated macro to be allowed to run.
Work = an Agency of the UK Government; the Government(?) security experts have already banned the use of Access... now they appear to be going against Excel (macro) too but apparently the way to go is the use of SQL databases: odd, because I understand Access uses SQL, and they banned Access

Anyway, I digress... to summarise >
1) I would appreciate a 'ballpark' cost per hour for a pro spreadsheet developer
and
2) Some sound and reasoned argument for allowing Excel macro to be used - other than '"because I made what you asked for in Excel, if you ban it then I've wasted my time"

thank you, Mike

p.s. I thought about getting a digital sig and signing the VBA project with that - more reasons appreciated though

 

[Padawan]

Emjaye

I'm going to go ahead and post my 2 cents worth.

I work for a very large agency of the United States government. Around 10 years ago I started working on an Excel application. Through a unique series of circumstances our national office headquarters became very interested in this application.

After probably 3 to 4 years (it was a fairly complex app) of development it was getting ready to be launched to our whole agency nation-wide. (IT WOULD NOT HAVE GOTTEN THAT FAR WITHOUT THE BRILLENT ASSISTANCE I RECEIVED FROM THE MR. EXCEL BOARD.) As everyone started to sign off on it, the IT folks stopped it dead in its tracks. The reasons, as best as I remember included:
1. Excel is not terribly secure.
2. The platform can be unstable
3. It did not meet other security requirements we had in place.
4. The application was an independent worksheet, and it was going to be used by 200 - 500 people, so there would have been no central control / statistics available for the application.
5. Independent workbooks could be corrupted.
6. Maintenance would have been very problematic.

And I think there were a few more.

The agency DID need the functionality of my spreadsheet, but it couldn't utilize it in its present state. The solution was me working with the professional IT folks, and they developed an application within our actual mainframe databases. This had several features that actually took my product to the next stage.
1. It was housed inside of our national firewalls on our secure servers.
2. It actually reduced data entry as it could directly communicate with our mainframes and import data. My app required manual entry of several items.
3. IT took over maintenance and upkeep of the application.
4. National statistics could be compiled to measure performance.
5. Historical data could be maintained, stored, and researched as long as the agency wanted to retain the records and as required by law.

The database took another 18 - 24 months to develop, test, and launch. Some functionality was changed due to management directives, database translation from Excel, and time/budget constraints. When it was all said and done, I believe they budgeted $300 - $500,000 to complete the project.

And of course, updates are now through a structured process as compared to end users sending me an email with a question.

I hope this sheds some light on your situation. I don't know if I've provided you with any answers, but I wanted to share my situation with you.

Best regards,

John

 

[Emjaye]

Thank you all!

I've got something to work with now, I hope.

"Nice" to know that all Governments seem to work the same

~ Mike