The ghosts of CRM past, present, and future point to bespoke software

As we enter the holiday season, I find myself visited by the Ghosts of Technology Past, Present, and Future as my day is split between an antiquated CRM, a more typical modern enterprise CRM, and AI tools that offer a glimpse of what's next. The rapid context-switching makes the progression notable.

Despite being billed as an AI-forward, no-code/low-code CRM, the back-end of Creatio feels like stepping back into VS Code circa 2010; wholly unfriendly to a non-developer admin, supposedly a major selling point. Package dependencies convolute config, C# blocks lurk behind every corner, and DevOps regularly (sometimes silently) hits merge conflicts, wiping out hours of work. "No code" quickly becomes "some code" plus a whole lot of time & compromises once admins hit the edges of what's possible.

I still spend plenty of time in Salesforce, fairly representative of present-day cloud software with relics from the past strewn about. Well, who amongst us in the present doesn't?. There are architectural choices that are hard to deprecate and not worth the squeeze for Salesforce (despite their claims that AI has taken over development 🤔). But to their credit, configuration remains far more approachable for non-devs, and even Change Sets are more usable and less error-prone than Creatio's process.

Then I move into the AI portion of my day, the future. If you've read other posts of mine, you know I'm far from a Hype Lord, but the value is nonetheless there. Learning how to weave AI into my workflows and seeing it supercharge my brilliant cofounders has made the potential crystal clear.

Which brings me to where I think we're heading: the long-promised by sales reps dream of low/no-code finally fulfilled. Software that is truly bespoke to the customer. But just as Creatio's back-end feels dated today, Salesforce carries decades of rigidity baked in — design choices made to support a narrow subset of customers that ends up holding others back. AI promises apps built from the ground up, unconstrained by pre-AI architecture that attempts to please everyone.

But here's what makes this future particularly interesting: it won't be a completely blank slate. We'll have known templates and patterns, like nuanced variations of CRMs for B2B, B2C, and having worked with many a nonprofit, "Org 2 Human" — each with their own distinct patterns and workflows. The difference is these won't be baked into the core architecture the way modern cloud platforms function today.

Instead, Gen AI will use these patterns as reference points to shape a bespoke CRM (or whatever you need) that's perfectly tailored to your specific context, and if you're smart, built on a sound framework that keeps your app safely on the rails. No more needing to build workarounds to the rigidity of a platform designed to please everyone.

It's an exciting time to be building software.

#CRM #SolutionArchitecture #AIAssistance #EngineeringLeadership #EnterpriseAI