ServiceNow and Appian compete in the enterprise software solutions category. ServiceNow seems to have the upper hand due to its flexibility and extensive configurability, which enable custom business needs adaptation, although Appian excels in rapid application deployment with its low-code capabilities.
Features: ServiceNow provides a high degree of configurability, allowing for rapid adaptation to business-specific requirements. It also supports integrated processes such as incident, change, and problem management. Appian excels in low-code development, allowing for quick application deployment with minimal coding. Its process design and management capabilities support agile methodologies and fast development cycles.
Room for Improvement: ServiceNow needs to address licensing complexity and costs, along with customization challenges and a sometimes unintuitive user interface. Enhancements in API access and cost reductions are often requested by users. Appian could improve in terms of UI customization, mobile and offline capabilities, and scalability as user numbers increase. Both platforms could benefit from improved pricing models for broader business adoption.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ServiceNow offers multiple deployment models, including public, private, and hybrid clouds, although this can complicate management. Its customer service receives mixed evaluations regarding issue resolution consistency. Appian offers strong cloud deployment options and competitive customer service, although consistency in support could be improved.
Pricing and ROI: ServiceNow is seen as costly, with comprehensive capabilities that justify the expense but can limit adoption in smaller enterprises. Its ROI is linked to operational efficiency improvements. Appian's pricing is more flexible and cost-effective, particularly for enterprises focused on rapid application deployment and process automation. Both platforms offer significant ROI potential, with Appian providing a cost-effective entry point.
They see return on investment in terms of cost savings, time savings, more efficient processes, and more efficient employees.
Appian is very efficient, allowing us to build a lot of applications within a financial year, making it cost-effective.
They have removed the costs associated with on-prem infrastructure, including data center costs, power costs, and physical server costs.
The return on investment is good when implementing for ourselves and for other clients.
Their customer service is responsive, and the team is very prompt for support.
The technical support for Appian rates as 10 out of 10 because they have a great support team.
The technical support is generally good.
The support is exemplary and deserves a perfect rating.
Obtaining support for maintenance is the current challenge because they don't have a presence in the local market.
I have contacted them four to five times over the past two years, and they have been quite helpful.
On a scale of one to 10, Appian rates as a nine for scalability.
Initially, without much coding, I can easily handle five thousand records.
Appian is scalable, but it depends on how you build your applications.
There are no limitations or performance issues with ServiceNow; it is cloud-based, so it is highly scalable and performs well.
It is capable of vertical scaling with no issues.
I rate the scalability of ServiceNow as an eight on a scale of one to ten.
It depends on how it has been designed and how it has been configured.
The stability of Appian would rate as nine, as it's a stable environment.
It is cloud-based, so it is highly scalable and performs well.
ServiceNow is stable enough.
ServiceNow is already a stable tool.
It has room to improve for use cases where the users are public facing, where anonymous users could come to a site and run a business workflow or interact with some data.
If there is a very complex process that includes a lot of data transitioning and memory-centric processes, it consumes a lot of memory.
I would like to see more enhancement in the user interface to allow more freedom in designing the sites and pages.
There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow.
Their customer support could make it a great solution, not just product support but also their relationship with partners and training initiatives in different regions.
From a functionality perspective, the features in ServiceNow are acceptable as, at the moment, the ITSM modules rank highly, being 13 plus Pink Elephant certified, which is a good aspect to have.
On the pricier side, both Appian and Pega are enterprise-level solutions, placing them on the slightly higher side.
The pricing of Appian is based on the number of users and generally ranges from 70 to 100 USD per user per month.
The price of Appian, on a competitive landscape, is a little bit on the higher side for companies, rating maybe a 6.5.
ServiceNow's pricing can be justified if more functionality is required.
ServiceNow is expensive for all regions.
The zero-code integration feature is remarkable, allowing for ease of data transfer and workflow enhancement.
Appian is aiding in leveraging AI technologies in multiple ways: one way is for developers, as they make development efficient and quick by enabling developer co-pilots across various phases of the application, which helps design Appian quickly and provides suggestions along the way.
It is easy for me to define the process and create configurable workflows.
ServiceNow provides a wide range of functionality, covering all the necessary modules, unlike Jira which is primarily for IT.
Automation capabilities are impressive, bolstered by a vast repository of out-of-the-box connectors and plugins that facilitate integration with various applications worldwide.
The features of ServiceNow that I find most valuable include its ability to easily access ticket details if you know the ticket number, monitor the timeline of when the ticket was created, and see the current status.
Appian is a unified low-code platform and solution used by businesses to build enterprise applications and workflows. This product adapts to the needs of clients and the technologies they are already using to combine their data in a single workflow and maximize resources. The platform has four main components through which it transforms the work process for companies of various sizes. They are:
Appian is utilized across a diverse set of industries, including automotive and manufacturing, energy and utilities, education, financial services, telecom and media, transportation, retail, insurance, healthcare, and life sciences. The most frequent use cases of Appian are customer journey, governance, risk and compliance, operational efficiency, supply chain, distributed order management, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) management.
Appian Features
Appian has various features that allow users to create solutions for their businesses. These features can be separated into a few groups according to function, including automation, low-code application development, and integrations and data. Some of the most frequently used features of Appian include:
Appian Benefits
The benefits of using Appian include:
Reviews from Real Users
A practice leader - digital process automation at a computer software company values Appian highly because the product is easy to develop, low-code, and has a good user interface.
Alan G., an advisory board member at Codecon VR, Appian offers a clear application life cycle, easy to learn documentation, and comes with a fundamentals course.
ServiceNow is a cloud-based task-management platform that specializes in IT operations management (ITOM), IT services management (ITSM), and IT business management (ITBM). ServiceNow allows users to manage their teams, projects, and customer interactions using a variety of different plugins and apps with which it easily integrates.
ServiceNow offers prebuilt applications to support any process, as well as a framework and tools that allow you to build your own.
ServiceNow’s service management solutions include change, request, incident, problem, and cost management, as well as HR, IT, field service, and facilities management solutions. They also cover business management solutions such as vendor performance management, financial management, performance analytics and project portfolio suite, as well as governance, risk, and compliance.
“The Smarter Way to Workflow”
ServiceNow’s activities, processes, and tasks are overseen as part of a comprehensive managed workflow that supports such features as real-time collaboration, communication, and resource sharing. ServiceNow’s suite of products allow for operation using serverless computing, and include the categories of Business Apps, Customer Service, HR, IT, and Security.
ServiceNow can be used to support most workflows because of the wide range of tools it offers. These include on-suite ticketing tools, predictive modeling to manage workflows, and benchmarking for the tracking of progress. ServiceNow can assist with artificial intelligence and machine learning processes and can be used to organize the cases of a help/service desk as well as for instance management and problem management. It also smoothly integrates with many legacy systems.
ServiceNow offers service management software for industries including:
Cloud services
Education
Financial services
Government
Healthcare
Manufacturing
Telecommunications
Reviews from Real Users
PeerSpot users prefer ServiceNow to its competitors because of its scalability, stability, and ease of use. It helps everyone in the company to be on the same page by creating a single source of record across all departments. One user stated that “I’ve definitely used over 20 project management solutions, but they can't be compared with ServiceNow.” Another said that “ServiceNow is an industry leader in multiple areas and provides an excellent ROI.”
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