You've finally created databases that you can actually use tostore and manipulate all your critical data. That's great newsand quite an accomplishment. But in your rush to get youremployees to start entering information into these databases, youskipped the training process and let them go at it alone.

That was not such a good decision, but one you did not care aboutuntil you decided to tackle your first mail merge. Instead ofgetting what you expected to get, you got all variations ofaddress and telephone number formats, an incredible andastounding assortment of confusingly mixed usage of upper andlower case characters and fields with unusual amounts of whitespace that you've finally figured out is due to excessive use ofthe space bar. The data looks cluttered, inconsistent, and worstof all, unprofessional.

You don't have time to go back into every record and manually fixthese annoying inconsistencies, nor do you want to pay your staffto do this when they have so many other things to do. But you'vegot to get your promotion going so money can start arriving inyour business checking account. Now what do you do?

There is a way you can go in and clean up these types of datamesses and it won't involve firing the employees who caused theproblems in the first place! Nor will you have to becomeproficient at database programming. As with any good businessproblem, there's a software solution available that you can useinstead.

It's called DataPipe and it will clean up these and other typesof database errors faster and less expensively than you can do itmanually or by using other software tools. It does not matterwhich standard ODBC or OLE DB you are using. Just use its driversto connect to DataPipe. From there, it's a matter of selectingthe database and query or table you need to work on. Then sitback and watch as it works its magic in record time.

Even if you use packaged customer relationship managementsoftware at your business - products like Goldmine, ACT!,Epiphany and others - you still can use DataPipe.

DataPipe uses basic search and replace functions to tweak thetext that is stored in your databases. Whether you know exactlythe text you want modified, want to modify text that sounds likesomething specific, want to search for wildcards or particularpatterns, or want to use fuzzy logic to help find typos, yourdata will benefit when you use DataPipe.

And best of all, you won't have to contact your programmer andnegotiate a costly change order when you need to use a differentformat for your date fields, or when you need to swap the orderof last and first names. But you can if this is what you need.You or your programmer can create custom filters using industrystandard scripting languages.

DataPipe requires Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP or 2003, ahard disk with 15 MB free disk space and 64 MB RAM. It alsorequires SQL Server, Access, Informix, Sybase, DB2, Oracle,MySQL, DBF, FoxPro, FileMaker Pro, Excel Spreadsheets or any OLEDB/ODBC compliant database.

Isn't it time your data look and feel more consistent, moreprofessional, and perhaps even more impressive? When you run abusiness, you need all the help you can get. And in today'scompetitive business climate, first impressions make the biggestimpression. And unfortunately, sometimes first impressions arethe key "make or break" determining factor. So make sure yourfirst impressions count.

Copyright © 2005 Cavyl Stewart. Get the most out of the softwareyou use everyday. Check out the add-in software directory formore information on DataPipe and other great time savingadd-in tools. Visit: http://www.find-small-business-software.com/addins_general_software.php - Also, be sure to check out my Exclusive, 100% free, 100% original content ecourses.