A lot of the value is the access control part of that. You can set up a role hierarchy and/or groups and only see the records you're supposed to have access to

A lot of the value is the access control part of that. You can set up a role hierarchy and/or groups and only see the records you're supposed to have access to when you query. Plus configuration of what fields different user types have access to. The downside of that is it means every query, no matter how simple, is a join against multiple internal tables to enforce those rules.