A sales orders program is inherently a multi-user application and sales reps must ensure that contact and order changes made on the road are incorporated into changes made by colleagues at the office. Changes to both copies can be made independently and merged together at a later time via a network connection, modem, e-mail, or the Internet. Many sales representatives still take orders the old fashioned way, writing them down and turning them in over the phone or faxing their hand written notes to the office for someone else to enter into the computer. As a result, there are transposition errors, order delays, and often, variances are not discovered until it is too late.
More daring reps take the hot potato master copy of the data on the road.
Unfortunately, it seems like this copy always gets damaged or written over by another older copy. Replication enables users at different locations to share and synchronize the changes they are making to the database. The Enterprise 'Make Replicable' tool is used first to convert the BrokerForce data to a replicable database. Next, the 'Create Replica' tool enables the user to make a full or partial replica for use at an alternate location. A date range is used to limit the size of the replica and avoid archival records.