Ask why someone left their CRM and you get one of two answers. Either nobody used it, or it became too complicated and too expensive to keep.
They sound like opposite problems. They are the same one.
One root cause, two endings
A generic product fits no particular business exactly, and for a group of companies the mismatch starts underneath, with a platform that assumes one entity. From there the story forks.
Take it as it comes and the mismatch shows up as friction, every day, for every user. People route around it, a spreadsheet here, an inbox folder there, and within a year the system holds a partial, untrusted version of reality. That is the death by disuse, and it is also why AI in sales disappoints when it is layered on top: a model summarising untrusted records only repeats them more fluently.
Or force it to fit. Configure, customise, and build automation to bridge every gap between how the software assumes you work and how you actually work. That work is expensive to build, expensive to maintain, and brittle in a way that only becomes apparent when someone tries to change something. That is the death by complexity and cost, and the bill rarely stops at the quote: the real cost of a CRM, from licences to implementation, keeps climbing long after the contract is signed.
Same cause. The product was never shaped like your business, and you either lived with the gap or paid to close it.
The half-measure in the middle
There is a third state, and it is the most common one. Businesses with expensive CRM setups end up using spreadsheets to paper over the gaps between disconnected accounts, while simultaneously running elaborate automations built to work around the platform's assumptions.
Both at once: paying for sophistication and working around it, a pattern visible in the cost of custom CRM reports that groups commission to bridge gaps the platform was never built to close, and it is worth asking early on whether one CRM or one per company is the right shape for a group of trading companies before the workaround budget balloons. These workflows get built, sold, and, often enough, unpicked again a couple of years later. They are a half measure, and they are usually a symptom that the underlying fit was wrong.
What this hub covers
What actually drives implementation cost; how to read an adoption problem as a fit problem; what to check before committing to a migration; and how to tell the difference between a platform that will suit you and one that is merely willing to be configured indefinitely.