My experience is that it's a very very expensive hammer, and suddenly everything in the org becomes a nail. Somewhere a higher-up decides SF is the way to go,

My experience is that it's a very very expensive hammer, and suddenly everything in the org becomes a nail. Somewhere a higher-up decides SF is the way to go, and then it's use and implementation is mandated for everyone in the org. They need to justify that cost somehow. I worked on a small side-project for a major South African bank recently, and they closed a MASSIVE deal with SF a couple of years back. At some point we wanted to employ a customer support desk, because we had a legit need for it. In 30 minutes I had FreshDesk set up and running and working, with custom email domains and a ticketing system and everything. A week later it was shut down because we were not allowed to use anything but SF. It's been 2 years, and the salesforce replacement system is still not live, and the team's forced to support customer directly over the phone or email.