“As of November 23, 2006 States shall require, as part of their safety programme, that an [operator, maintenance organization, ATS provider, certified aerodrome] implements a safety management system (SMS) accepted by the State that, as a minimum:

• Identifies safety hazards.
• Ensures that remedial action necessary to maintain an acceptable level of safety is implemented.
• Provides for continuous monitoring and regular assessment of the safety level achieved.
• Aims to make continuous improvement to the overall level of safety.” 

Professionals became trained in the fundamentals of safety management systems. They created systems based on available tools, most often Word and Excel documents. Occasionally, an MS Access database would appear.

In most cases, we would see systems like the following, where

• Users submit reports to safety managers (or security, quality & compliance);
• Reports would funnel up to department heads to aggregate and analyze;
• Upper management would receive only basic reports;
• When auditors or quarterly/annual reports were required, considerable time was required.
• Data was not aggregated in order to get timely and meaningful reports.
• Opportunities to improve efficiencies or quality are not realized.
• No way to determine trends over larger time spans or multiple operations.
• No way to easily determine what types of issues were costing the money.