I would approach it as follows.
Set a specific budget, don't be vague
Set objectives
Decide who'll work on the project, make decisions
Allocate a specific time slot to work on this.
Do a list of problems, a simple chart of
time/resources consumed relative to gain.
Decide how you'll know/measure progress is being made
Decide how you'll know objective is achieved
Then when you've decided all the above, talk to a 2 or 3 people and see what solutions they suggest. You might get 3 different solutions, all valid, But you'd be more informed as to what you need.
Perhaps you can buy off the shelf software that will meet your objectives, perhaps you need something customised to your requirements. perhaps you don't need anything, just a change in your process.
Sometimes, you can do a simply word/excel macro or adatabase that saves hours of work, by automating tasks which have been done manually for years. As most people know Office applications, they don't have go spend time learning how to learn some new software. Sometimes the ongoing support costs of some software are too expensive for the budget.
Hopefully some of the above is useful.