Abstract: Embodiments of the invention provide methods and apparatuses for determining privileges pertaining to a customer relationship management (CRM) application and granting the privileges in a secure and traceable manner to individual companies and users to effect a differential cost assessment scheme based on resource usage.

Abstract: Methods and apparatuses for tiered customization for an application with a plurality of users. In one embodiment, an application with various options for different users has a tiered system for customization to provide cost efficiency. For example, in a tiered system for customization, multiple option values can be specified for one option at multiple tiers of user group hierarchy and resolved based on the tier hierarchy to balance the capability for deep customizability, and the efficiency of resource usage. For example, a deep customizable hosted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application allows customization from company level to individual user level.

Abstract: Methods and apparatuses for grouped customization for an application with a plurality of users. In one embodiment, option values for options are grouped (e.g., to represent best practices) for selection by groups of users, such as users of companies of different industries of a hosted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application. For example, serialized best practices can be grouped for use in the tiered system to provide option values for certain users or user groups.

Abstract: Embodiments of the invention provide methods and apparatuses for providing hosted highly tailored vertical applications. In accordance with one embodiment, a set of universal configuration options for a customer relationship management application is created and presented to a user. The user selects one or more options from the set of options provided and the selected options are used to automatically configure a tailored customer relationship management application. For one embodiment of the invention multiple incompatible business entities and processes from existing verticals are decomposed to provide a set of configurations options to a customer company. The customer company selects from the provided configuration options and a highly tailored vertical is automatically configured based upon the selected configuration options.