Some of the high-level characteristics of a business that cause one to have very different CRM requirements from another include:
The Business Model: One location or many? Franchises? Regional Sales Offices? Products or services? High or low unit sales value?
The Customers: Where are they? Who are they—businesses or individuals?
The Scale: How many employees—2? 25? 50? 100?
The International Needs: Multiple language support? Date format? Currency format?
Compensating and adjusting appropriately for these varying requirements will make the difference between a CRM that suits your needs, and is quickly embraced and adopted, and a CRM that never feels like a good fit, and quickly falls into disuse and is abandoned.
To genuinely understand why a CRM needs some measure of customization to become a truly effective tool within an organization, we need only examine what it is that a CRM is meant to accomplish:
Sales force automation including lead capture...