Where should gem appraisal records live?

An appraisal is a conclusion. The record is the evidence behind it. Over the years, those records become a gem business’s memory, and a large part of what the business is worth. Where they live is not an IT detail.

Think about the moments when old records matter. A client brings back a piece appraised years ago and asks for an update. An insurer asks how a value was reached. Someone asks whether the stone in front of you is the one that was examined before. Each of these is answered from the record, or not at all.

What a gem record holds

A complete record usually brings together several kinds of information, built up over time:

• a description of the item and the details that identify it;
• measurements and observations from the examination;
• photographs;
• the value conclusion and what it rests on;
• the client’s name and contact details;
• the history: what was done, when, and by whom.

Some of this is commercially valuable, and some of it is confidential. Client details and the values of what they own are exactly the kind of information people expect a business to protect.

Four questions to ask about any system that holds them

1. Who controls the account the records live in?

Every system keeps its data in an account somewhere. If that account belongs to the software vendor, your access to your own records runs through your subscription and the vendor’s policies. If the account belongs to you, control stays with you, whatever happens to the software.

2. Can you take your records with you?

Ask how you would get everything out: not only the text, but the photographs and the history, in a form another system could use. The best time to ask is before the first record goes in.

3. Who can see your clients’ information?

Your own staff, certainly. But who else? Ask whether the vendor’s staff or subcontractors can reach your data, under what conditions, and how you would know.

4. What happens when the relationship ends?

Software changes hands, products are discontinued, and businesses change their tools. Ask what happens to the records in each of those cases, and how quickly you would have them.

Two ways to answer

Vendor-hosted software

Most business software today runs on the vendor’s own infrastructure, delivered as a service. It is convenient: there is nothing to install, and the vendor runs and maintains the system. The trade-off is that the records live in the vendor’s environment, and the answers to the four questions depend on the vendor’s terms.

Software in your own cloud account

The alternative is software installed in a cloud account that your business owns. The records stay in that account, you pay the cloud provider directly for what you use, and your own access rules apply. It asks something in return: someone has to own that account and look after it. We explain the model in more detail in Software that runs in your own cloud account, explained.

Neither model is right for every business. The four questions are a way to find out which one fits yours.

How Atelier answers them

Atelier, our gemology platform, takes the second approach. It runs in your own cloud account, so your stone data and client records stay there. Quorum doesn’t host or store your data. You pay your cloud provider directly for what you use, and Quorum builds Atelier and installs it in your account.

Whatever system you choose, ask the four questions before the records go in. Moving years of records later is much harder than choosing well now.

About Atelier