[awuji]

But most of the time, we as engineers don't pick the winners. Some C-Suite executive or middle manager, who isn't very technically inclined, picks the winners, and we as engineers are forced to make it work.

As I don't think a engineer has ever had the chance to choose a company's CRM, the CRM with better marketing would always win over the CRM with better engineering.

[NikolaNovak]

Question I would pose is, why should engineer have the decision on a new CRM?

They can provide input regarding e.g. maintainability, but majority of input would come from other stakeholders - users and business unit owning the customers whose relationship we want managed, ideally primarily. And it is somebodys job to take these inputs into collective whole.

It was a mind blowing exercise to me 15 years ago when I was telling my boss how horrible our current installation of some ERP software was, and be asked me what's the user perspective. They log in every day, run financial reports they need, and log out. The system was great from their perspective! They had even less concern for my perspective of poor architecture and suboptimal implementation, than I (at that point) had of their perspective and goals. Thank krishna I didn't make the decisions on the CRM :-)

[johnnyanmac]

>why should engineer have the decision on a new CRM

well there's the craftsman argument and then there's the broken windows argument.

the craftsman one if obvious: if you're in a devops/IT role and your job is to manage salesforce, then you should have some input in it as it'll affect you efficiency (aka the profitability of your company). A salesman shouldn't be buying tools for the carpenter without the carpenter's input.

the windoww argument is a bit more superficial but still a factor to consider. I may not be working on mainaining saleforce, but I will need to interface with it for logstics purposes. if it's so inefficient that it becomes a chore to track hours or update documentation or etc. it's going to leave a bunch of broken windows. You can still operate with a broken window, but that part of the building will be a place to avoid. You may even try to work around the CRM wherever possible. Which seems to lose the point of a CRM

[PhasmaFelis]

Upthread, bayindirh posted half a dozen examples of financially-motivated decisions that were actively, deliberately hostile, sometimes fatal, to the customer. We're not just talking about good-enough fiddly details here.