CRM Limitations and lack of foresight

I'm starting to like Zoho CRM but I often seem to wonder about how they have come this far when they miss basic common sensical implementations.

I have quite a few that I've been through over the course of our few months of being a customer.

Variables would be great in subject of workflows. For example, if I create workflow alert to popup a reminder to the user to "Try calling again" .. it would be great if I could subject it as "Try calling {FIRSTNAME} {LASTNAME} again at {PHONENUMBER}" like they have for email templates. Currently, I have 300 alerts/tasks that say "Call again".
Reporting is nuts! It's not pleasing to the eye or as easily configurable. And sometimes the result is cumbersome. Too much work to get a simple report.
Lead Statuses by roles. Sales Agent would like to use Entered, Closed, Waiting for Numbers as lead statuses, and when this goes to the Sales Manager, it would be great is Sales Manager could use "Approved w/ numbers", "Denied w/ notes", etc.
Web to Lead forms - if one uses it, I'm pretty sure they use it on various websites or URLs. Try tracking where they come from. You have to go into the form and do a little bit of code manipulation - isn't this stuff supposed to be easy? "Name the source of this page" = "Company Website".
Mandatory Fields and Mandatory Fields Upon Status change. I'd like the first new lead to go in as First name, Lname, and phone number and those are mandatory. But before changing status to "Waiting for Numbers" to be gotten from the Sales Manager - it would be great if another set of mandatory fields can be checked because sometimes it takes more than 3-4 calls to fully furnish the details of a lead.
Manual Lead Approval - check this one out - when someone fills out a web to lead form - a) It goes to ONE user and sends an email to ONE user that there's a new lead. If this user doesn't come into work - we're done. However, if lead approval was tasked to a "Sales Managers" role/group.. about 2-3 people would be able to approve leads.
A reminder system that is easy to set. Open the Lead, call the lead, it went to voicemail. Add a workflow task that will remind you via popup maybe once every 20 minutes (customizable) to "Call Leadname again".

Mark:
Hello,

When we "Approve Leads" and change owner.. is there a way we can send an email to the New Lead owner from the Old Lead Owner's email address notifying them they have new leads?

Thanks

Support:

Hi,

Thanks for contacting Zoho CRM Support.

Sorry for the inconvenience. In Zoho CRM, we don't have this option as of now. However, we may analyze this for our future update and keep you posted.

Thank you for your valuable feedback.

Mark:
Hello,

I'm trying to create Leads views that can be found on "Last Week" .. how can I do it in the criteria?

Thanks

Support:
Hi,

Thanks for writing to us.

It is not possible to create a view for the leads created last week. However, you can create a report for the leads created last week or month.

(How is it that in the Leads module, you could look at leads from {TODAY} but not from {LASTWEEK}?) - Sometimes doing these custom views is way easier than reporting - I'm sure most of you will agree?

Mark:
Hello,

Is there an administrator way to enable all sent/rcvd emails to show up in leads for every user without hackery? We're integrated with Google Apps.

Support:
Dear Mark,

Thank you for writing to us.

In Zoho CRM, all the users can view all the records based on their Role. To view all the Emails sent to the record, the mail account should be in Complete Sharing for all the users, so that the the user can see all the email sent to the record which the user can access.

- Wouldn't life be great if as an administrator you could customize what view each new user will fall in, what the home view would be like, and to set email sync out of the box rather than having to MANUALLY do it for each and every user?

There's tons of little fixes that need to be done for CRM to be smooth enough. Zoho seems to focus on all the big events but forgets to add common solutions for small users. Even if the company is below 50 users, I think it's still important that the programmers work with sales people to see what works instead of blindly programming.

I'd like your thoughts please.