The implementation was done via a vendor team. I'd rate them four out of five since the team was good and dedicated, although we faced some external turbulence due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

We had partners to do the implementation and worked with different partners. We required around 20 to 25 people to implement the solution in totality. After that, we now need two to three people to maintain the solution.

There are approximately eight to ten people involved in the maintenance tasks.

The product's initial setup phase was straightforward. There weren't too many complexities in the product's setup phase, as the tool can be installed straight out of the box.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

The solution's deployment took a few weeks. We implemented the solution through a consultant. A small team was involved in the solution's deployment, and it was relatively easy to deploy.

We implemented Salesforce Service Cloud through an in-house team.

We used a Salesforce Professional Services team and had both an internal and a contract Project Manager. One huge advantage is that we had an overall business process owner who acted as a go-between, communicating with all of the teams Salesforce, sales, marketing, support, IT, finance and corporate management.

Whether using a vendor or having your internal team set up the system, make sure that a certified Service Cloud consultant is involved in the analysis and solution-ing of the product, even if you are only using the basic Case functionality through a Sales Cloud license as opposed to a full-fledged Service Cloud feature license.

I am an implementation consultant, so my advice would be to consider using an implementation consultant for your first release, but have a plan in place to transition in house over time. Make sure your implementation consultant partner is certified and follow up on their references. Use them to educate your in-house team during that first implementation.

Anyone can learn Salesforce if they have prior CRM experience, so make sure your in house team gets involved in the implementation and takes ownership. At some point the consultant will leave, and then you must be able to take over.

We used a vendor because we were migrating data from another organization at the same time.

I've done it with both. My recommendation would be to steer clear of vendors. Find good people to work with in house. Vendors usually will only add extra time to the project. They usually deliver less than optimal solutions that will need to be re-done later. I have worked with major providers, including like Apprio, ICON and Slalom. All of these vendors have had "consultants" with much less exposure to the platform than myself and generally delivered really crappy code that took way longer to develop than it should have.

We implemented it through a vendor because of a lack of in-house knowledge at the time. I have since been an implementation consultant who has seen initial in-house implementations. Salesforce is so admin friendly that the temptation to try it out alone is strong. I know that budget can be a concern but I would advise to use a vendor who knows the product.

In most cases, it takes more effort (and money) to fix what in-house novices have put in place than it would have been to set it up right the first time. If the in-house crew has a good technical aptitude, they can usually carry on from there. Just get the foundation right to ensure user adoption and scalability.

We did it in-house. I would advise you that before starting the implementation, you go through the implementation guides.

I'm working for a consultancy that implements Salesforce products.

I'm a consultant and it's quite fun to set Salesforce up.

We had an in-house consultant who did all of the implementation, and customization of Salesforce for us.

We did it in-house.

We planned and designed the functionality we needed ourselves. We also did most of the configuration and implementation ourselves, but we worked with a consulting partner to create some customized components for the console and to modify the Live Agent Customer Facing chat window style.

We used a certified Salesforce systems integrator. I highly recommend using a systems integrator for the initial implementation, ensuring there is sufficient knowledge transfer so that the internal team can support after Go Live.

We implemented it through a vendor team.

I am part of a vendor team and do the implementations for our customers.

I implemented it myself as described above. However, I would recommend using an integrator. They know the system really well and can ensure your system is implemented following best practices and taking advantage of all the latest features.

While my original implementation was satisfactory, it could have been much better. One example is, I lost all of my record creation dates from the legacy system because I didn’t know that Salesforce could make the Created By and Created Date fields editable when creating records as part of a migration.

It was done mostly in-house.

We implemented all this in-house. As Community Cloud is all template-based and no code is required, this was very simple to set up.

I have done it both in-house and with a vendor.

With the vendor. If you start from scratch, you'd better work with a vendor team. Then you can either develop your in-house expertise during the project implementation, or hire someone in marketing who has the skills.

We did it in-house.