Yes- these are problems that would be true of manual reporting. This is why
we need people with the expertise focused on these issues. Even when you have
experts focusing on the issue it's not a guarantee that there won't be any
problems. However it can significantly reduce the likelihood and difficulty
of your average user (and technical user alike) running into said problems-
or being able to get the part- or being able to get support for the part
under the OS they use.
The reporting databases can be useful, but they are more or less useful in
helping people with the expertise, time, energy, and resources to to narrow
down and/or put something better together. If your working for a huge company
with lots of money and time to do your own in-house testing they work
reasonably well as a tool in helping even if its not a total solution. You
can overnight parts (depending on where they are coming from, ie could be
5-10 days to expedite from China to the US for instance) from different
companies, test, etc. It's not a guarantee that those parts won't change
though by the time you need to get 1000 of part X or that part X will
actually be the same throughout the stock you do get (as stocks are mixed @
warehouses so you could test 10 of part X and then order a 1000, but end up
getting 300 of the part you tested, and 700 of some part you didn't, and
won't even work for you).
We get frustrated all the time by companies who change products on us. They
don't change the model, but they do change whats inside. Right now I'm trying
to secure stocks of one particular small part that hasn't changed in several
years- but now all-of-a-sudden has. I'm still unsure if we're going to be
successful because of the mixed-stock issue. There is nothing that identifies
the part as being different so you can't just ask “does the stock list
v2” on the box somewhere. Unfortunately there really aren't any other good
options for this particular part (that said half the time nobody can see the
physical stock- unless-maybe your ordering 1000 of something- and even then
sometimes not). We've already gone and done a lot of research, testing, etc.
and not much has really changed. If we are forced to change parts it'll
probably result in a significant increase in the cost which would be really
bad as whats a relatively cheap item in our catalog right now would become
significantly more expensive without any real benefits. I'm not even sure if
after all that it would be a good solution either compared to what we have
now. What we have now is excellent- but most other parts which might work are
junk. At least within the same price range.
