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Hi,
A lot of the software used for inventory/maintenance and management is actually the same relational database- MS ACCESS with a different front end or GUI tacked onto it. For may users plain old Access is not easy to write to directly and furthermore is not really setup to do what the marine industry wants to do so this wee front end program ties up the loose ends and gives us ( hopefully) an easy to understand and use interface to the back office.
As for the supplier being near the yard- It depends on which one you go with, the big players generally have representatives all over the place and a lot of troubleshooting can be done online.
When I was first looking to buy an off the shelf one having spent a few years with a self written in FMPRO I became acutely aware that a lot of what the client was paying for was the development and application of this little front end program that controlled the DB. A number of the suppliers I spoke to and visited were smallish operations and none had made any provision as to what would happen to the source code for this GUI should the author pass away or the company go out of business bar one- That was one of the reasons I chose IDEA at the outset because they were very professional and upfront with all questions I asked. Other things that encouraged me to take this system was the experiences of two others who had (a) joined a boat that had it (b) chosen it for much the same reasons I did.
5 Yrs on I have not been disappointed or let down by this company.
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Cheers,
K1W1
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- we have only MAC's onboard 
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