The Next Number…
How many of you have a spreadsheet or access database that you pull a sequential number from? It could be the next part number, drawing number, customer number, etc. We all know how much this sucks. We have all done the application juggling act as well. Start creating an item in the business system, pop out to excel, open spreadsheet, type words, copy the number from excel, paste it into the business system.
In every single job I’ve ever had, this number juggling process has been involved. We all know the problems with this: Any time you’re duplicating information, it opens up the opportunity to make a mistake. We have to remember to close the document that we are saving information to. “Hey Bob! Are you done with that spreadsheet? Can you close it?”. How can we make sure that data is valid? How can we make sure that everyone is being consistent in how they are describing things?
A particularly poor consequence of just grabbing the next number is that the previous number is perfectly valid. When I say valid, there is a reasonable chance that someone could accidentally enter THAT number and end up with the wrong information.
You’ve all been on an e-commerce site and entered in your credit card number. Some websites will actually tell you prior to clicking a button if the number is valid or not. Have you ever stopped to think about how that is so? Is the website sending your informatino to the credit card company before you’ve clicked a button? No. Credit card companies adhere to a system called the Luhn Algorithm. This system is used to generate credit card numbers, and is followed world-wide. This algorithm adheres to a bigger concept called a check-sum. A check-sum is basically just fancy math that guards against a user entering a sequence of numbers incorrectly by guarding against transposition of digits and being off by one. Examples: 4523 valid, 4532 invalid, or 4523 valid, 4623 invalid. This probably works well for others, but you never make those kinds of mistakes, right? Me neither!
While you can accomplish validation, even check-sum validations, in excel, there are usually better ways to remove the friction from this process. Reach out to us today to find out how we can help you stop bothering Bob to close that spreadsheet.
