When you ask if a CRM can be customized, the question is always "Yes". But at what cost?
Work the way you want to
Software should work the way you do, not force you to change your business processes to match its structure, right? Of course! So, frequently an off-the-shelf CRM application needs to be customized. In fact, that is what I spend most of my days doing.
The Key Questions
But even though the answer is always "yes" when asked if the software can be customized, there are a couple important questions to ask before digging into the code.
Will this customization be used often? Or in other words, "how much time will this save?" A simple ROI analysis will then be possible. For example, if the customization will cost $10K, but will save a couple hours of staff time a week. That will usually pay for itself in 12-24 months, so most likely it's worth doing.
Has someone else done this already? Most likely you are not the first person with this issue and with the prevalence of APIs it is highly likely someone has already created an add-on or plug-in which does what you want. It is worth looking around first to see if you can buy rather than built.
If you make it past these, you are ready to start scoping your custom project for your developer!