Your question: Price is a big factor in making a decision. CRM costs quite a large pot of money no matter what way you go, even online. For even a small company the cost can be as much as £30,000 (Servers and applications, firewalls, remote access servers, internet access etc). Are there ways to do it on a shoestring? Can you give advice without trying to sell me something?

BT replies

The business decision you are addressing must begin with understanding the value of any investments you are being encouraged to make. There are benefits you could have from employing low cost solutions, however, this should be coupled with utilising existing resources, e.g. staff. By developing a strategy to capture customer information by telephone and to stay in touch with them consistently by phone and email will be more cost effective than installing new technology. You would need to maintain a healthy database of information, for example in Outlook or Access.

I would suggest that you take a step back and be very clear about what you need to achieve with your customers before making any decisions about investing in new technology.

A £30,000 outlay sounds like you are investing in call/ contact centre technology

There are ways in which organisations can store small amounts of customer information for under £10,000 including installation and training