>Bill, I understand what you say and perhaps I somewhat mixed concepts in my post.
>But there is a failure in the corporate system that a lot of systems have, and it's related to the reporting system. If you let people get reports on sensitive data and save it as Excel sheets, then you have a security problem. That data should have never left the central repository. Why you get to that situation? Because you need to manage data and you only know Excel (most of managers skills are limited to Excel), and the corporate system is not flexible enough to let your work to be done. So that much technology that is embedded in the system fails where it matters a lot, and we go back to Excel 97.
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Javier -
I was gonna make a large techo rant about sales force automation tools and the ability for sales staff to use them, then remembered that on most rewrite projects I've been associated with, the sales team got used to doing it 'the excel way' cause what ever tool was in place was absolutely either too hard to use or did not meet their needs.

But ? I left that out in posting here, thinking I had better things to do with my time, and remembering the most important thing about a remote sales team - they need access to the data if out of the office . Laptops with stored files are 'a way' to accomplish that task . High Profile sales reps are usually given what ever they want, as well.

But, all n all, the food company failed in its 'policy' for de-commissioning computers . I understand your points, however, quite well, having lived through many 'retraining' sessions ..

mondo regards [Bill]