God, I work in an environment like that. We are a non-profit, and our primary CRM is The Raiser's Edge. However, data is never manipulated within The Raiser's E

God, I work in an environment like that. We are a non-profit, and our primary CRM is The Raiser's Edge. However, data is never manipulated within The Raiser's Edge. Instead every process involves exporting data from The Raiser's Edge, manipulating it with an MS Office application, and then re-importing it. When I started, almost every process was based around Access, using queries made using the query builder. With some basic scripting I managed to cut a couple of man-months of work down into about an hour or two of work a month. The entire thing is more fragile than a stack of cards though. At this point I could literally write a 200 page dissertation on all of the reasons why this is a bad idea. But it works, and it is cheap. So there you go.