Hi, I am a semi retired database programmer. I “specialise” in constructing systems for small businesses that would not normally be able to afford one. This is because money is no longer the main reason I do it. I expect some pay, but only from savings and potential savings to be made because of it’s use.
Because this is an intimate thing to do for a business, I often get to know how a business works (at a nuts and bolts level) better than the owner. This doesn’t mean I could do the business better than the owner, only that they often do things by gut feeling and make a success of it by sheer determination. What I do is to automate much or all of the tedious donkey work, thus freeing up much time to concentrate on what they do best.
It takes all sorts! I take great satisfaction in doing this. Often I am asked, some way into the project, when they can start to see the benefits “Could you do this?” – then I know they are seeing benefits!
In some cases the answer is a spreadsheet, but most of my spreadsheets are programmed. A recent one for an airline consisted of two parts. One part was sent to 75 different locations around the world, and sent emails back to head office where the main spreadsheet imported the results and put them into the right places, and updated all the graphs and pivot tables.
They are still using it 5 years later!