ABSTRACT
Universal specifics come to mind. Generic customization is how one vendor describes it. Another emphasizes configurability over customization. Historically, software vendors have had to contend with offering a universal solution on the one hand and meeting customer specific requirements on the other. Far more than a simple plug and play, significant efforts had to be undertaken to adapt local practices to the specific demands of a supposedly universal solution. When universal indifference — the indifference to the ease and extent of configurational change that can be wrought over time by nontechnical users — is of concern. Risks are compounded when we speak of key custom fields that are updated unknowingly without assessing the impact on other custom fields, records, workflows, or scripts. Vendor responses specifically can sound suspicious when they contain verbiage encouraging clients to "upgrade" from multi-tenant to single tenant environments to build custom fields, records, and workflows.
