Salesforce.com this week rolled out the latest version of its online CRM software and said it now sports unprecedented customization features.

The new drive toward customization is important in the overall CRM marketplace. Until now, vendors of traditional on-premises CRM wares looked on customization as a differentiating factor vs. ASPs like Salesforce.com. They claimed that their solutions were more readily tailored to user environments since they were installed and hosted on the customer premises, and said online offering like Salesforce.com’s were more one-size-fits-all renditions.

Salesforce.com answered those jabs with its new Spring ’04 edition. The new version offers the ability to build customized tabs, not only by changing tab names, but also by creating completely new modules with associated objects, pages and tabs to better fit each organization’s terminology, industry and business environment.

"Salesforce.com is now the world's most customizable CRM -- more customizable than software and any other on-demand offering,” said Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com’s chairman and CEO in a prepared statement accompanying the rollout.

The new customization is delivered online via Studio, Salesforce.com’s new point-and-click customization suite. Studio requires no programming and lets business users customize all aspects of salesforce.com, including Web pages, data entry forms and even application extensions, the company said.

For developers who wish to perform more intricate customizations, Salesforce.com offers the sforce 3.0 platform, which enables developers to use Web services and popular tools such as WebSphere and BEA Systems to completely customize their salesforce.com implementation, including the user interface, business logic and underlying database, the company said.

In addition to the customization capabilities, the Spring '04 version has three new tabs -- Products, Contracts and Solutions. The Products tab allows companies to browse, manage and secure complex product catalogs, while the Contracts tab provides an integrated view of contracts, including tracking and management, and related processes such as approvals and renewals. The Solutions tab provides advanced customization, workflow, knowledgebase and business process management. The new version also now offers group calendaring, opportunity update reminders and advanced security controls.

Another key feature is the version’s language support. It supports 11 different languages, and with the new global translation workbench feature, users simply choose a language and any customizations are automatically translated.

The Spring ’04 edition is available now to all current Salesforce.com users. For more information, visit Salesforce.com here.