Documenting a Day

    This topic really brings me back to my roots. When I first started out in my job 22 years ago, most of what I did was in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access. Although I still use Word and Excel extensively, I don’t get to use the others much, if at all, anymore.

    In documenting a day in my life, I found the most appropriate software to be either Excel or Word. Listing the tasks I most often perform each day and the amount of time I do each of them worked well in Excel and being able to add in the pie chart to show the breakdown is a great visual. Word allowed me to describe each of the tasks more thoroughly.

    PowerPoint was a bit more challenging as it felt repetitive and simplistic compared to the others, but I do understand the point of it and PowerPoint definitely has its benefits for demonstrating things on screen.

    We didn’t really use a database application on this assignment, but most of the software that I use on a daily basis for my job has a database background.

    All four types of software, word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and database applications, have their advantages and disadvantages depending on how they are being utilized and how that information will ultimately be presented.

    One disadvantage of all of the software is that people can get carried away with their formatting. Too many colors, fonts, sizes, etc. can actually detract from the point you are trying to make if the material is too busy to be read or understood clearly. White space can be your friend!

    With spreadsheets, calculations can be sped up immensely or, if you aren’t as comfortable with calculations and make a mistake, screwed up royally. One tiny mistake in a function can throw the entire sheet off and can be a nightmare to hunt down. Spreadsheets are best utilized for calculations of figures or for mail merging purposes in combination with a word processing program.

    Word processing programs are best for reports, proposals, memos or any written correspondence. One benefit of word processing programs is their ability to proof whatever you have written. I’ve found myself using them just to check the spelling of a word I’m not sure of or to make sure I’ve phrased something grammatically correct.

    Databases are great for inventory or keeping track of customers. We use a huge CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, Dynamics, to track all of our sponsorship asks, leadership groups, speakers, donors, events and more. If one market wants to approach a company for a sponsorship ask, they are able to pull up that company in the database and check to see if any other markets have already contacted said company.

    Presentation software was a lifesaver during Covid for us. All of our fundraising events were forced to go virtual and were presented to our audiences—which can number in the thousands—via PowerPoint and Zoom. Those of us on the backend running those presentations had to learn, quickly, how to smoothly transition between videos, live feeds and multiple presentations without the audience seeing any of those transitions. Now that we are back to live events, we still use presentation software to thank our sponsors and show videos in the ballroom.

    Without all four types of software, I honestly don’t know how a business could run. There are literally thousands of software out there, but they all have a base in one of these four: word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and database.


References:
Ask Media Group, LLC (2020, March 27). What Are Some Advantages and Disadvantages of a Word Processor? Reference. https://www.reference.com/science-technology/advantages-disadvantages-word-processor-6ab564d0106821e7

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2019). Computing technology for all. zyBooks.