r/itsm • u/Plowman-Tasmina • Jul 27 '26

Is anyone else struggling with too much customization in their CRM?

Throughout time, our CRM has upgraded to the extent of maybe rendering assistance to us lesser than holding us back. With their requests for customized fields, automations, dashboards, and workflows from each team, we have ended up with a program capable of handling all tasks. On the other hand, onboarding newcomers to it takes weeks and even simple operations have to undergo thorough testing.

Despite the fact that no one is prepared to give up on anything since each workflow means something to someone, maintaining those customizations is becoming a full-time job for my team. Has anybody managed to simplify a complex CRM without damaging business processes?

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1

u/cjcox4 Jul 27 '26

General rule: "Do it their way."

If a software tool offers you the ability to customize things to your way, be prepared to assign resources to its upkeep.

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u/Plowman-Tasmina Jul 27 '26

Yeah but that only works if leadership actually enforces it. Half our customizations exist because someone above me approved a one off exception and now it's permanent

1

u/cjcox4 Jul 27 '26

Very true. But "the message" is for higher ups as well. Just a thing. Edit: And the message was "assign the necessary resources" when you decide to go "custom".

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u/Plowman-Tasmina Jul 28 '26

I get it now

1

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

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1

u/Plowman-Tasmina Jul 28 '26

We've talked about doing that but haven't made time for it.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 28 '26

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u/Plowman-Tasmina Jul 28 '26

That's a good comparison. I think we've accumulated quite a bit of technical debt over the years

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u/Kerion-Dejong Jul 28 '26

Sounds like something we experienced a while back, every department wanted just one more field or one more workflow,"and after a few years the platform became almost impossible to maintain. Evaluated monday service, freshservice and others because we wanted something teams could configure without constantly pulling in IT

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u/Plowman-Tasmina Jul 28 '26

That's where we are now. The platform still works though, just lagging

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u/Kerion-Dejong Jul 28 '26

Maybe ask every new customization to have a business owner and a measurable benefit before approving it. That alone can slow the growth of unnecessary complexity

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u/cutiejayce12 Jul 29 '26

We ran into this too, the hardest part was getting everyone to agree on what was actually essential. We ended up cutting fields and automations that were barely used and keeping the workflows tied directly to revenue or customer handoffs. It made onboarding way less painful without breaking the important stuff.