I work as a file clerk for a government agency, and I worked with a guy who developed an Access application that parsed reports from our department mainframe into various smaller/localized reports, research tools, and worksheets for use by other clerks in our office. Some of these reports even make it all the way to department managers and HQ. It's a really handy little thing but he's not a strong programmer and the guy who actually designed it isn't around anymore. I made the mistake of mentioning I had programming skills... and here I am getting caught up in it. So when you're not able to install real technology, Access can fill the void. But it's painful. If you can convince your IT to let you use real programming tools and database libraries you'd be much better off.