I'm in the other side of the situation: I'm in charge of the IT and programming department of the company I work for. Usually, when I have people working in my department I understand that they can give good ideas and ways to improve things... if they are capable to demonstrate their methods are better I'm glad to adopt them. I don't tend to micro-manage everything, at the beginning I give them a small book on "how to do things" and then I put them on the pressure of making a small exam that ask them to solve the typical problems they will face working here and that takes more than one week to be done. After that they usually understand why we are solving those problems in that way and sometimes (not usually) they have given us fresh ways to look at the same issues. Then the general management usually tries to reduce costs and yadda, yadda..., but this is another issue and this is not affecting the people in the IT department at all as I act as a filter here. I guess everything depends on costs (important always), who is listening and the open minded they are... Regarding access and the kind of problems they are proposing you I would expose it in this way: 1. There are free databases out there that work better and more reliable than access. --- put some comparison charts here (they always help). 2. It would be faster to use. 3. Given what you want to receive from your data I could create it in a better way, easier to maintain, better documented... Changing technologies/languages/methods is never easy and most of times we (managers) tend to stick to what we know. It is not easy to change minds of closed-mind people, but giving good arguments and showing them benefits should be enough to get at least their attention. Good luck! [www.tamautomation.com] | Robots, CNC and PLC machines for grinding and polishing. [YouTube channel]