It wasn't uncommon for the Chicago White Sox guest-services office to be cluttered with personal effects. You could expect to see jackets, watches, baseball caps, a few driver's licenses, dolls, and hundreds of mismatched earrings sitting in piles on top of file cabinets. Keeping track of the 10,000 lost items that are left at the stadium every year is no small task.

Julie Taylor, director of guest services for the White Sox, made a mental connection between the loot and an app the baseball team's sales department used to keep track of customers. She figured the GoldMine customer-relationship management software by FrontRange Solutions Inc. could help track lost-and-found items, too. Taylor had a systems analyst at the White Sox customize the software's interface so her interns could log found items using the system. The app tracks the date an item was found, what it looks like, and where White Sox staff picked it up. The items are then labeled and stored in a bin. Taylor estimates that since April, when the software was deployed, her department's been able to return 50% more items then last year.

"It's amazing how many things will match up now," she says. Before GoldMine, her department had a hard time locating items.