With most business software you get a product with a fixed way of working. You set up a few fields, adjust a few settings, and for the rest you follow the vendor's logic.
That is limiting, but it has one big advantage: the most important choices have already been made for you.
Creatio works differently. It is a platform on which you shape your own processes, data model, screens and rules. That freedom is exactly why organisations choose it, and exactly why an implementation goes wrong when nobody has thought about the architecture beforehand.
The comparison we often make: standard software is a flat with fixed walls, Creatio is a building plot. On a plot you can build whatever you like, but nobody starts there without a drawing.
Creatio's no-code designers are good. Adjusting a process model, changing a screen, adding a business rule: someone from the business can do that, and that is the whole point of the platform. We believe your own team should be able to do it, and we deliberately set things up that way.
But that is something else than doing an implementation. Three things then go wrong systematically. So what you buy from a partner is not the execution, you can largely do that yourself. It is the architecture.
Most organisations know their process as it is written in the handbook, not as it really runs. Automate the theory and you build something people will work around. And because Creatio is so flexible, you can capture that mess very precisely too.
Creatio distinguishes structured processes in BPMN from dynamic files in case management. You make that choice per process and it is decisive. Squeezing a file with thirty percent exceptions into a straight BPMN line forces staff to work around it; setting up a strict approval process as a free-form file gives you no control at all.
That is the most fun part and the wrong place to start. The data model underneath determines what you can report on in two years' time, how your processes can branch and whether you can add entities. Changing that afterwards is not an adjustment but a rebuild.
Cloud or your own environment. For most organisations the cloud is enough, but strict requirements around data storage, sector rules or existing infrastructure sometimes make a different set-up necessary. This also determines your management model and your cost structure, and it is not a choice you can quickly reverse halfway through.
Creatio is composable: you use the sales, marketing and service capabilities you need, plus the platform underneath and AI Studio for agents. Switching everything on at once is the most common mistake in year one. Whatever you don't use, you still have to manage.
How do accounts, contacts, branches, contracts, products, files and entities relate to each other? In most projects, this is the decision with the longest after-effects and the shortest decision time.
BPMN or case management, and the level of detail you model at. Model at the level of individual actions and you get an eighty-step process that nobody maintains. Model at management level and you keep it workable.
The Creatio Marketplace contains hundreds of ready-made applications, connectors and extensions. Part of what you want already exists. Knowing that saves weeks.
Creatio is moving towards licences without hard user limits, which gives organisations with many occasional users a very different cost picture from a traditional per-seat model. It is worth working out with your own numbers, including the users you currently keep outside the system because a licence would be too expensive.
| Working it out yourself | With a partner | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | Screens and fields | Process and data model |
| Process type per process | Gut feeling | Deliberately chosen |
| Lead time to first working process | Months, alongside the day job | Weeks |
| Use of the platform | A fraction | Whatever fits your needs |
| Marketplace solutions | Unknown, so built yourself | Taken into account |
| Governance over who builds | Emerges by itself, usually too late | Agreed in advance |
| Chance of a rebuild within two years | Considerable | Small |
| Continuity | Dependent on one internal builder | Transferable and documented |
Here too, the cost comparison is not about the invoice in month one. That is lower if you do it yourself. It is about the hours of your own people that are never booked anywhere, the processes you have to set up again because the data model didn't keep up, and the return you miss out on with a platform that is used for a quarter of its potential.
From a few dozen users onwards, the nature of the work changes from configuring to designing.
We run this kind of project with our own development department on hand. That means that when a question falls outside the no-code limits, we don't have to say no and we don't have to propose a separate system either.
This is where Creatio is strong, provided it is set up properly.
The implementation ran in clear phases, so we could always see what was working. Within a few months our main processes were running in Creatio.
This is very much part of the story, because it is the reason for choosing a no-code platform. Adjusting processes, adding fields, changing screens, building reports and creating new variants: that should sit with your team, and we set things up so that it can.
What we keep doing is the work you need us for: architecture changes, integrations, custom extensions, new entities and AI agents. A partner who makes you come back for every process change takes away the platform's biggest advantage.
Setting up Creatio yourself is not impossible and not foolish. The no-code designers are built precisely so that people from the business can work with them. But building has never been the hard part.
The hard part is knowing which process to tackle first, whether it is a structured process or a file, what your data model needs to look like to answer the right questions in two years' time, and who in your organisation is allowed to build. Those are the choices that determine whether in three years you have an agile platform or a new legacy.
The day-to-day adjustments, certainly, and that is the intention. An implementation is something else: that is where you determine your data model, your entity structure, your permissions model, your deployment model and, per process, whether it becomes a BPMN process or a file. Those decisions can only be reversed afterwards with a rebuild. What you buy from a partner is the architecture, not the execution.
That depends on the number of processes, users, entities and integrations, and on the size of your data migration. Getting one well-defined process live takes weeks; a company-wide set-up with several departments, ERP integrations and entities in several countries runs to months. Alongside licences, always budget for analysis, configuration, migration, integrations and training.
We deliberately work in phases. A first well-defined process is usually live within a few weeks, after which you are already getting a return while the rest is being built. A complete environment with several processes and integrations is built up in phases over months. The analysis and the data model take more time than the building.
No. Creatio is a CRM and process platform, not an accounting system. General ledger, stock valuation, VAT returns and annual accounts stay in your ERP or accounting package. Creatio orchestrates the process across your systems and makes sure data ends up in the right accounts. In organisations where the complexity lies mainly in commercial and service processes, Creatio can become the operational heart, with a lighter financial package alongside it.
Yes, and that is a large part of our work. We start with an audit: what has been built, what is being used, where the pain is and what the underlying cause is. Sometimes reconfiguring within the existing environment is enough, sometimes a partial rebuild is wiser. We will tell you honestly, including what it costs.
Yes. Creatio's strength is that you can set up one process model with country variants instead of implementing again for each country, but that only works if you design it that way from the start. On top of that come the choice between one or several environments, entity routing to your accounts, languages, currencies and data storage per region. We work in Dutch and English.
By agreeing on governance in advance: who may design, who approves, how changes go to production, and how you phase something out. On a no-code platform that is not a formality but the most important control measure you have. We set that up with you and train your key users in it.
Technically you can, but we rarely recommend it as a first step. An agent is only as good as the process it sits in and the knowledge source it draws on. Set up your process and your data first, then let an agent observe and make suggestions, and only give it independence once you have seen its judgement over a period of time. That way you also have the governance in place that you need in a regulated environment.
Mobile XL is a Creatio partner with its own development team and offices in Geleen and Utrecht.
