Are you doing it wrong?

I’ll let you in on a secret… when I hear an end user talk about the need for customization I roll my eyes (and I know I’m not the only one all of you vendors out there). It seems every company in every vertical market believes their processes are special in some way but the fact is they really aren’t. The basic uses of CRM for instance, are the same whether you’re a manufacturing company in the Midwest, a pharmaceutical in New York, or a financial services firm in London. Sure, the integration needs will be different (Humm… Cast Iron anyone) and you’ll want to configure the screens a bit tighter but overall you shouldn’t need to change much. If you do… well, you might be doing it wrong. When we see customization efforts that are more than just minor it’s more likely to be an organization matching a broken internal process than forging new ground. Think about the Siebel folks at Oracle for a second. They live and breathe CRM every day and are likely to have integrated all of the best practices for CRM into Siebel. If you’re considering customizing your instance, take a hard look at whether it’s really a best practice or if it might be better to reengineer a broken internal process.