‘Our business and revenues have grown over the past couple of years and that’s gone hand-in-hand with the introduction of our hosted CRM system,’ says Kim Jenner, business manager at the Royal Academy of Arts. ‘Growth was a business objective that we had, but having a system such as this in place made it feasible and us more efficient.’

The Royal Academy is a non-funded arts institution that employs about 300 permanent and temporary staff and puts on regular exhibitions at its Burlington Gardens Gallery in London.

The organisation operates a friends membership scheme to help finance its business and provides them with a magazine four times a year.

The magazine carries advertising to pay for itself and contribute to running costs; the publishing team comprises seven staff including three sales people.

A couple of years ago, Jenner realised the existing client booking database, combined with a manual diary, phone book and wallchart, were no longer fit-for-purpose. Not only was it difficult to access customer information while on the telephone, it was also only possible to find out when clients had last booked adverts by scrolling through back issues of the magazine.

Jenner decided on a more flexible hosted CRM system from Really Simple Systems. The application went live in September 2006 after a week spent transferring data.

The new system has improved departmental efficiency because all client information is available on screen to everyone who needs it, and can be searched by customer rather than by issue.

It is possible to email from the screen and save messages for future reference, and to see at a glance what has been sold for forecasting and budgeting purposes. Such capabilities have enabled the business to take on additional contract publishing work from external customers, including the British Museum and the Chichester-based art gallery, Pallant House.

‘Initially we were worried about having something off site; it’s a psychological issue about losing control ­ but really you don’t,’ says Jenner. ‘And all you do is sign the contract and pay the bill each month. It’s fantastic.’