We will look at the Out of the Box customization functionality of both Dynamics CRM and Salesforce.com.
There are several business cases for wanting to customize your system. A very common type of customization is a change made to a record such as adding a new field or creating a view within the record to surface relevant data. Both Dynamics CRM and Salesforce.com facilitate basic record customization, and while the Dynamics approach in regards to this feature is clean, intuitive, and simple, the SalesForce.com approach is disjointed, cumbersome, and complex.
Let’s compare the two different systems in regards to these 3 simple and basic customization functions:
– Customizing record forms: fields
– Customizing record forms: Surfacing related records and data
– Saving/Publishing your customizations
Let’s review the overall UI for record customizations:
In Dynamics CRM you can go to the record you want to customize and it’s one click on the customizations tab, and one click on the customize form button. You are then brought to a single screen that facilitates all 3 of the mentioned customizations as well as a few others.
SalesForce offers similar functionality (you can customize directly from the record) however each customization link brings you to a different screen. There is no one screen that allows the user to visually see the record AND all of the customization options in one place. The UI is disjointed and confusing.