Comments on: Everyone needs customization

By: Ashley

Ashley — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:52:04 +0000

I agree with everyone preferring customization. The results of customization is very effective, PWB. I insisted that even when I did project on CRM.

By: pwb

pwb — Wed, 13 May 2009 02:47:33 +0000

I mostly disagree. Energy spent on customization can usually be better spent on more important tasks.

By: Jeremy Heffner

Jeremy Heffner — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 02:47:59 +0000

I think the main problem we see with customization in Salesforce is that nonprofits tend to have very badly defined processes. A CRM system is only as good as the process it supports. An out of the box product on the other hand forces you to fit into it’s mold — which hopefully had some thought put into defining good business processes.

Once we see nonprofits switching CRMs over time — having already well defined processes — I think customization will become crucial for our sector. At present I think shared structure is a good way to introduce organizations to some semblance of good design, which is why the Starter Pack concept is so critical.

By: Marc Baizman

Marc Baizman — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:19:14 +0000

One other point about customization: make sure there are at least 2 internal people who can make those (“small c”) customizations, rather than relying solely on outside consultants or the vendor who provided the software in the first place. If you don’t have that duplicate internal ownership, you’re going to be unhappy when the 1 person with the knowledge inevitably leaves the organization, or that vendor moves on to their next client.

By: David Geilhufe

David Geilhufe — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:05:51 +0000

Like everything, the devil is in the details. And in your definition of customization vs. configuration.

I agree that everyone needs configuration. This is the “adjustments” natively supported by an application within an application-provided interface. These are usually learn-able and discoverable by an administrative user.

Configuration is still a very dangerous subject for most average buyers. By this I mean code and extensions that are usually done by specialists and NOT learnable or discoverable by admin users.

Salesforce and NetSuite and most modern cloud providers don’t break customizations on upgrade, however the actual mileage varies depending on how much of an edge case the customization is and the quality of the customizer.

So, in general, configuration is a yellow flag and customization is a red flag. But neither is intrinsically bad. Keith’s conclusion is right on: “Talk to people who have traveled the customization path and see if it paid off for them and was viable for the long term.”

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:06:06 +0000

Reading between the lines, I think that might be what Keith is getting at–”Big C” customization. We shoot for the smallest customizations possible on top of tools that are really good at some core things. Agreed, balance is the key.

By: Kristin

Kristin — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:20:04 +0000

Steve, I agree with you about customizations being critical to making a system usable and useful. I am also an advocate of keeping things simple. I think balance between the two is key.

I wonder if Keith Heller’s perspective on customizations is influenced by the old software model — the one where you had to worry about your customizations when the software was upgraded. We both know this is not something to worry about when customizing Salesforce.com, for example.

By: Everyone needs customization « Salesforcehelp

Everyone needs customization « Salesforcehelp — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:09:10 +0000

[...] Here is the link to the post. Link [...]