BMC Helix ITSM Reviews

The solution is for all IT management. It takes care of the day-to-day operations and customers' policies. The initial implementation was to start creating a knowledge base and capture information as it happened. Then by using that knowledge base analysis and see what trends are occurring within the systems.

The most valuable features I have found to be the activity logs. Additionally, the other features where you are able to continuously address issues and are able to annotate notes inside to convey them to the customer. The customer can read the notes and are able to know where you are in the procedures and process of fixing the problem for them. It has a good interactive piece for dialogue with customers where you do not have to interact with them personally but they can do it on their own just by going into that activity log. This is great for the customer to have the ability to find out how things are being progressively taken care of.

The reports need improvement, it is not a good functioning tool. No one in my organization seems to be able to use the reports properly. I think it is a dysfunction in the product because there has to be a more simplistic form for building those reports to allow the extrapolation of information for trend analysis and other operations. You want to be able to pull information from a variety of sources to see how you are providing support to the customer, this is what your performance base is. This is why those reports are a significant piece of the equation. You need to be able to produce those right now. People would rather create spreadsheets on their own and just thumb through all kinds of time-consuming tasks, why not use the actual databases that are there to produce that information.  

I have been using this solution for many years.

When updates come out I am very hesitant when they put out a patch or an update because it disrupts some operations or functionality that is important. It makes it harder for us to readjust the solution and have to start implementing things all over again because the patches are not properly vetted.

I have found the solution to be scalable. However, other competitors products such as ServiceNow are more robust and scalable. We have many people using the BMC solution in the organization, service managers, individual managers, problem manager, vendors, and individual tiers 0-3. The amount of people is needed as we service over 60 thousand people.

The tech support is not consistent. You might get a good person to help you out and actually knows what he is doing or you get somebody who is trying to figure out a solution on their own. You both are left trying to figure out a solution together because you get the feeling you do not have the expertise that you should have for the product. When you initially make the calls, you have to break down the issue to such a deep level of explanation when it should be simplistic for them to understand. This causes some difficulties for the customer. This type of inexperienced customer service devaluates the product, this needs to be improved.

The maintenance of the solution is overseen by a staff of approximately seven people.

I am not sure the exact price we pay for the solution but I know it is in the high seven-figure amount annually.

I was trying to get my organization to use ServiceNow because it is more cloud-based. I have seen several demos of ServiceNow and I like the features that it has. It is more intuitive, easier to implement, define roles and manage.

I would advise others to consider other options before choosing this solution such as ServiceNow. 

I rate BMC Helix ITSM a four out of ten.

To manage the ITSM process in our organization and the organization's infrastructure via CMDB.

I have implemented and worked on this product at many customer sites. The way you can customize this product to adapt to the process the customer is already using is what sets this apart from other ITSM products out there. This helps customers to adapt to the tool pretty quickly.

The versatility and customizability of the product is what I like most. It provides a strong customization platform in the AR System.

The interface is one major complaint about this product. With the recent introduction of Digital Workplace and SmartIT products. I think BMC is finally going in the right direction on that front.

The BMC Helix ITSM can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud.

We use BMC Helix ITSM in the financial sector.

The most valuable features of BMC Helix ITSM are the ease to use and integration.

BMC Helix ITSM should improve its price.

I have been using BMC Helix ITSM for a couple of years.

BMC Helix ITSM is a stable solution.

We have a lot of clients using BMC Helix ITSM.

The initial installation of BMC Helix ITSM is fine.

I have a team that does the implementation of BMC Helix ITSM.

The price of BMC Helix ITSM could improve their price.

I would recommend BMC Helix ITSM to others.

I rate BMC Helix ITSM an eight out of ten.

This is an IT Service Management tool for incident management. 

I use this product as an end-user and not an administrator. This is not a product that I use extensively. We primarily use it for incident tracking and service request tracking.

The interface is nice and it's simple to use.

It provides a good user experience.

Functionality-wise, it falls short of our expectations. This could be the way we have it deployed. Perhaps, the functionalities have not been enabled 100% in our organization. There could be some additional features that our enterprise is not aware of, yet is available.

There is a text editor that we use to enter our incident description or service request description, and it should be richer in terms of features. For example, it would be helpful if we had more formatting options.

We have not faced too many issues with stability. It's fairly okay.

This product is used enterprise-wide, with between 600 and 800 users.

Our administration teams are the ones that have contact with technical support. As such, I have not had any experience with them.

Prior to using BMC Helix, we used CA Service Desk.

I prefer using BMC.

We used a system integrator for the deployment.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

Helix ITSM has several great features. One of them is the chatbot — the artificial intelligence solution that BMC has. Secondly, Digital Workplace Advanced is important for the end-users — it provides great flexibility. Also, the end-users can manage all requirements and all of the information that they need related to IT services. The chatbots are also integrated with this. The workflow solution is another great feature for the end-users, as part of the engine. It has the power to automatize several different tasks in the ITSM world.

In fact, BMC had a business workflow — this is a solution that is out of the ITSM environment. This solution helps you solve business-related problems. You can automatize a lot of activities related to human resources, finances, production, and so on. It's very useful, it's another feature to emphasize. The presence of BMC in the market of ITSM has been around for more than 20 years. The maturity of ITSM processes has been very good. I think it's excellent. In fact, over the past several years, BMC has begun changing the idea of interfaces for end-users, users of ITSM, and IT people.

Nowadays, the interface is very modern, clear, and practical. It's very easy to use. The user interface is one of the best features. Also, it has a very advanced model of reporting. It's very powerful when it comes to managing metrics, in order to manage APIs. This process is constantly improving. In this arena, I think BMC has very good solutions.

Some parts of the solution are using the old interface — the contracts and contract management part of the solution. It needs to mature a little further in order to become more user-friendly. BMC has been a leader for several years now. In fact, it's a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, along with ServiceNow. I believe BMC is actually on par with ServiceNow in terms of critical capabilities. For this reason, I don't see many areas for improvement.

BMC not only has ITSM solutions, but it also has solutions for asset management — they are really powerful. Discovery, for instance, is a very good solution. It complements ITSM because it's autodiscovery. It's very powerful in terms of discovering all assets connected to the network and the cloud. This capability not only shows all of your infrastructures and relationships in mass, but the connection with CMDB is very strong. It takes all of the information that has already been discovered and transfers it to CMDB. From an ITSM perspective, you can manage your CMDB and the construction of different services more efficiently because all of the information is updated and the relationships between assets are clear. 

When you have to use ITSM processes, you can assign incidents, requests, or changes for the right assets. For instance, in the case of a change in management, you can perform a very efficient impact analysis. This is another reason why Discovery is a very good complement to the ITSM solution. Of course, I am mentioning this as a complement to the ITSM environment, but all the solutions are related and work together very efficiently.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give BMC Helix ITSM a rating of eight.

The solution supports our supporting processes. My responsibilities include reporting on the services we offer to end-users, primarily through channels like email. I focus on coordinating arrangements for the services we provide.

The valuable feature for me is that it's a tool that allows me to track processes right from the initial user request. It helps in updating the solution throughout the workflow. I use it to gather information about the people involved, track time, and more.

Working with numerous processes can be complex, and the processes are not always transparent in the solution. At times, users may not be aware of the meaning behind various processes when receiving certain information. The most frequently requested change for the solution is integrating the latest technology to facilitate interactive resolution.

I have been using the solution for the past 20 years.

The solution is stable. I have several servers working together in a cluster.

The solution is scalable.

We haven't needed customer support extensively. However, we did encounter some delays, waiting for several hours to receive a satisfactory answer. Fortunately, there have been no issues with the technical components.

I have worked with SentinelOne and ServiceNow.

The solution is best-suited for medium-sized companies. I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use BMC Helix ITSM as a managed ticketing solution for the telecom industry.

The solution is already aligned with the framework, so it is easy for us to proceed with any ISO 27K certification. We should take a certification in terms of Service Assurance and Service Framework.

There are plugins to the solution that have come onto the market, so the solution should also be updated in terms of administration to increase efficiency. That is why we have come up with other products that have a similar use case. BMC needs to come up with a plug-and-play system that requires a minimal partition, it would be highly beneficial.

I have been using the solution for seven years.

I give the stability an eight out of ten.

I give the scalability an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is not simple. We require a skilled administrator to complete the deployment. Depending on the customer's requirements the solution can be deployed on-premises or cloud.

I give the solution a seven out of ten.

The differences between BMC Helix and other ITSM solutions depend on the use case, process alignment, and organizational requirements. We have realigned the entire product to suit telecom operations, so it depends on the organization's strategy regarding ticketing solutions.

I recommend the solution to others.

This tool is used for ticketing purposes, to track down daily issues and requests as part of business requirements.

It includes ITIL practices such as incident management, problem management, change management, asset management, and configuration management. We are able to link tickets to one another.

It is used to create, modify, update, and resolve tickets. Parent/child tickets are possible to create. It can also create problem tickets and change requests. It will easily calculate SLAs and can create and customize reports as per user requirement. 

This product has helped us to maintain our OLAs (Organisation level Agreements) and SLAs (Service Level Agreements) by tracking incidents, requests, problem records, and change requests, all in the form of tickets.

We can easily check the progress of these tickets and follow up with the respective teams.

It provides us the facility to maintain a KEDB (Knowledge database), which is indeed very beneficial for day to day activities.

It can easily add notes to every ticket with the status update.

For us, this tool is essential for ticketing purposes.

The most valuable feature is the linking of parent and child tickets. When there are major issues, through the help desk, multiple tickets are raised for the same issue. This allows us to segregate it by parent or child tickets and link the child tickets to the parent.

It's easy to calculate the SLA as it provides the timing as to when the ticket was raised, and the clock automatically stops when the ticket is on pending status. Thus, at the time of resolution, it provides the SLA, whether the ticket met the SLA or not.

To raise any ticket, there are too many fields to be filled and it makes generating tickets very time-consuming. Some fields should take data automatically; for example, ticket routing to the teams after entering the team's respective CI (Configuration Item). This will save time and creating tickets would be faster. 

The GUI looks a bit complex and can be much better.

When generating reports, there are limited options to customize as per user requirement. It is in need of better customization so that these requirements can be satisfied.

We have been using BMC Helix ITSM for six years.