Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea may be at opposite ends of the Premiership table, but both have deployed customer relationship management (CRM) software to try and boost their fortunes.

The clubs are using Talent CRM software from Software4Sport to gain a better insight into corporate sales and the buying habits of fans.

At Wolves, which had a ticketing system that could not accept advance bookings, demand for match and season tickets outstripped supply, particularly after the club was promoted to the Premiership at the end of the last season.

The club has just finished implementing a new ticket priority system that offers advance booking facilities and provides an improved view of ticket sales revenue.

"We have to manage the delicate seating of home and away fans in relation to each other, the huge surges in demand for seats when cup matches are drawn and the complexity of handling corporate or family group bookings," said Julie Grant, marketing manager at Wolves.

As a result of its CRM project, the club is now able to combine merchandising reports with ticket sales.

"One key benefit has been our ability to sell more than one thing in one transaction, like a shirt with a ticket," explained Grant.

"We were able to generate incremental revenue for the club and improve the ticketing service for fans."

Chelsea has also deployed the Talent system to boost club revenues, modernise its ticketing systems and create a club-wide revenue database to improve its understanding of ticket and season-ticket holders' buying habits.

Chelsea's ticketing is also linked to other revenue generators including merchandising and corporate sales.

Talent automates the process of extracting data from Chelsea's old, disparate systems to provide an overall view of sales, which was previously done manually.

Elaine Clark, group IT manager at Chelsea, told vnunet.com: "If somebody wants to buy the same seat for every home game, they can now pre-pay.

"It is also possible to buy tickets on the web now, as well as do season ticket or membership renewals."

Chelsea also has plans to use the system to develop loyalty and smartcard access schemes in the future.