"Of course, we’re not in the Promised Land yet. I’m actually surprised that Salesforce isn’t a lot bigger than it is; a variety of things are holding back the migration to the utility model"
Many organizations still attempt to 'build' their own highly customized CRM system using SFDC as a starting point. It doesn't matter if they buy a system off the shelf, the IT organizations for big companies will manage to make these projects just as unsuccessful as their built from scratch counterparts.
The success of these implementations, and in turn the companies that sell the systems like SFDC, are dependent on how willing their own customers are to change their internal processes to match what the system does well. The biggest project failures for these systems occur when these organizations refuse to change how they do business and instead spend millions of dollars in customization fees to the vendor. SFDC isn't immune to the failures that the author describes, they just experience it from a different perspective.
Many organizations still attempt to 'build' their own highly customized CRM system using SFDC as a starting point. It doesn't matter if they buy a system off the shelf, the IT organizations for big companies will manage to make these projects just as unsuccessful as their built from scratch counterparts.
The success of these implementations, and in turn the companies that sell the systems like SFDC, are dependent on how willing their own customers are to change their internal processes to match what the system does well. The biggest project failures for these systems occur when these organizations refuse to change how they do business and instead spend millions of dollars in customization fees to the vendor. SFDC isn't immune to the failures that the author describes, they just experience it from a different perspective.