Applying information technology to produce affordable IT solutions for small business

Although there are many commercial packages to cater for the needs of any small businesses, those packages are generally very expensive, and incorporate many additional features that are rarely used. In most cases the extensive variety of additional features overcomplicate the system, making it difficult and confusing to use, and often lead to system instability. In this paper we discuss the approach that was used to apply IT technology to tailor make a software package to cater specifically for the needs of an individual business, using very feasible, cheap alternatives to the existing highly specialized and expensive veterinary management systems. The main focus of this paper is to discuss the techniques and design methodologies that were employed throughout the development of the system, and the system architecture used to provide the user interface to the database.