ServiceNow Reviews

I'm a consultant, so I primarily work on projects implementing Service Now inside of different organizations.

The biggest improvement I see is that unstructured work, which would primarily be worked on within spreadsheets or within emails, is able to be centralized, managed end-to-end, and have that visibility and structure in ServiceNow. That provides enormous productivity gains. 

In addition, it provides the ability to meet internal IT assurance around audit trails.

Finally, the improved visibility helps in decision-making for senior leaders and executives.

One feature of ServiceNow that is important is the workflow engine. From my perspective, the power to be able to structure processes, represent workforce management for organizations, and the visibility provided by the reporting are additional top features.

ServiceNow is divided up into a lot of modules, so I'll give an example, instead of going into every single module.

For me, there's a real opportunity, especially within the IT Service Management suite, to give a much better overall view of the workflow that individuals have across the different applications. At the moment, a lot of information is quite siloed in the different tables in ServiceNow. There is a real opportunity to present, in a centralized way, some form of universal work list, to give better ideas around demand and supply of resources, and then help prioritize that work.

The only other thing that I'd say about ServiceNow, in general, is commercially related around licensing, and it's a big inhibitor for a lot of our customers, especially those who are innovators on the platform. I've got a couple of really good example clients where they are limited in what they can do with the product. If they were to do what they wanted to do, the licensing that would come about, from a platform runtime licensing perspective, would mean it wouldn't have the same value proposition.

An improvement area, to summarize, would be better licensing for when clients are trying to be innovative on the platform.

The stability of ServiceNow is excellent. I've never had any issues around its stability, scalability, availability, or any of those metrics.

ServiceNow technical support has always been excellent. They are quick to respond, they have good, strong technical capabilities, they're good at communicating and getting in touch with you.

I have used BMC Remedy previously and the primary reason for switching to ServiceNow was around the fact that ServiceNow is cloud-based, scalable, and easily configurable.

Overall, the setup is fairly simple. You have to have a point of reference to compare it to. If I think about other cloud-based tools that I've worked with, by comparison, I would say it is most definitely simple.

Myself, being a consultant and implementing ServiceNow multiple times over in different organizations, an average implementation, which would result in a minimum viable product - standing up ServiceNow to achieve some form of business value - would be 12 weeks.

I typically see a 12-week implementation of ServiceNow achieved with approximately six individuals for the deployment. Ongoing maintenance of ServiceNow will typically involve the equivalent of four FTEs.

I don't have any data points at the moment, but I know some of our clients have articulated ROI as part of the benefits they have realized. The ROI is definitely positive for clients that we've worked for.

ServiceNow pricing is an art, not a science. The deal depends on how commercially savvy you are, which does make it something that is quite difficult to get right. It is most definitely an opportunity area for ServiceNow to improve and have more visibility around pricing of the different products within the platform.

Other options would be BMC Remedy and Cherwell, from an ITSM perspective. For HRSM, alternative solutions are Workday and SuccessFactors.

My advice would be to engage with an implementation partner that has good experience and definitely not to underestimate the organizational-change activities, like training and communication, that are required. ServiceNow shouldn't be treated as purely a technology solution. People, processes, communication, and training need to be factored in when implementing.

We've implemented ServiceNow in government organizations with up to 9,000 people, in a couple of scenarios, using it for either IT service management or HR service management, predominantly. The roles of the users varied within the government.

In terms of how extensively ServiceNow is used, every client we work with has a roadmap of additional functionality that they would like to use in ServiceNow. To generalize, there are different extents of use but each definitely has a roadmap of continuous improvement and use of more features or modules of the product.

I would rate ServiceNow a nine out of ten. Some of the points that I touched on above would make it a perfect ten: more visible and consistent licensing around the cost of licensing; better ability to innovate on the platform without incurring licensing that isn't representative of the innovation that's being created.

As a developer, I work on ServiceNow for HR solutions and a few other Service Portal functions.

Other solutions are integrated with different applications and tools, but ServiceNow is quite centralized, fully managed, and you can find everything in one place.

There are features included in the new release for intelligent software, like the chatbot. For HR services, the HR agent which is in that chatbot has been fantastic. There have been advancements in ServiceNow.

It gives you all the APIs out-of-the-box and you can directly write code with them.

There are a few things that it needs to improve, like automation of most things out-of-the-box. For example, when it comes to cloud management, we are still going with manual intervention. Instead of that, if we had an out-of-the-box feature available, that would be great.

Also, the first time we looked at the Service Portal, it was quite hard to understand its interface. People were looking for things, like the email functionality in Service Portal. That was not available and there were other things in Service Portal that were not up to the mark.

It's stable and it's improving. You can't compare ServiceNow with any other tool.

I have seen many changes in it. Previously, it was limited in its functionality, only for configuration management and the like, but now you can see it has many applications in it.

The scalability depends on how you utilize the tool.

As for the number of users on ServiceNow, I have been involved in a project where it was to be utilized by almost two million users. That was the biggest project I have worked on. There were internal users and outside users.

There were issues during the migration. They have certain locations, certain countries with different data, with different languages. We usually do the migration according to the country in which it's operating. We were doing certain migrations and, all of a sudden, when it reached a level above one million users, the nodes were very full and ServiceNow was unable to respond. We thought maybe it was due to our scripts. We checked everything first but it was working fine in the dev environment and the test environment. But when it came to production, there was a big risk and a big impact on the business.

We reached ServiceNow, even though it was not business hours. They said they had certain things on a low infrastructure and they told us that they would be migrated to a higher infrastructure and that we would have access again. We implemented it on a Sunday morning and we thought it would be working but on Monday we had a huge number of emails and calls and it was a day full of pressure. But we were able to solve it and get it back within an hour.

Usually, we don't reach out to ServiceNow until we know the problem is not in our hands. As a gold partner, our company has access to on-call support and direct access to ServiceNow's experts. We are able to contact people there, at the business level, and get things done.

We recently had an application tool that was supporting certain tasks in HR case-management. That tool has certain capabilities but it's not up to the mark when you compare it with ServiceNow. It provides you details about the task, but it does not have the basic functionalities like chat and email. It has to be integrated with other tools for those things.

As a developer and partner, most of the time the setup is customized. Right now, I'm working on a module called "Ask your HR." There are different sets of modules available and inside each module there are different sets of reports and functionalities, such as drag-and-drop, etc. It's full of customization. Whatever you're building, it has to be done from scratch. It's not like the functionality is available out-of-the-box.

We do follow certain documentation and steps. Whenever we do a migration or implementation, we check for the available system capacity. We have a team that allows us to do testing on it and see what kinds of things can be done, or how we can migrate directly to ServiceNow.

We usually don't go with a full-fledged migration, we do it in phases, Wave 1, Wave 2, and Wave 3. Each wave has certain things in it. We will plan it accordingly and, once the wave is successful, we'll do regression testing of certain scenarios and check whether it is up to the mark or not.

Back in 2011, BMC Remedy was at a peak and people were focusing on it. But starting in 2014 and 2015, ServiceNow came on and its competitors were watching. It went from about ten to 20 percent of the market to almost 40 percent of the market.

I would rate ServiceNow at nine out of ten. It is all about improvement, about getting things from your legacy system to the latest one.

It's used for a helpdesk.

It really hasn't improved the way our organization functions. I don't really like ServiceNow.

I don't think any of the features are important. I'm not really a ServiceNow fan.

It's not very secure, it's web-based, and I prefer Remedy. Both the security and the web interface could be improved.

It is stable. It seems good.

There have been no issues that I know of with scalability.

It's sold as a less expensive solution, but it has to be highly modified. That's where you get into the cost.

Make sure to look into all the configuration costs and the customization. Be aware that it's web-based. You're probably going to have to put holes in your firewalls and need to do a complete security review.

As an end user, I would rate it a seven out of ten. I don't think it's very secure, and it's web-based, and Remedy is really the standard that it's judged against.

We use it as a service desk solution, for ticketing.

First of all, we had several tasks that were performed manually by the service desk and infrastructure teams, but now we have been able to automate those processes and reduce the manual intervention. For example, when an employee from one of those teams goes on vacation, we can block the account and, when he comes back, we can unblock access and reset the password, and everything is done automatically.

The most valuable feature is the flexibility of development for customization.

For example, we are starting now to expand the tool for HR and some other departments. They need applications or processes to improve their tasks. For instance, right now we are discussing, with the Internal Risk team, creation of an application inside ServiceNow so they can open a ticket and follow all the steps according to their process. One of the nice things about ServiceNow is that, if you have your process, you can design the ticket and the form according to your process. That is very useful and can be done quickly.

There's one that I would like to see improved to reduce the cost of our ServiceNow, related to the resetting and unblocking of passwords for users who forget their passwords. We had a conversation about this with ServiceNow. We don't have a huge amount of password reset requests, but the minimum package of resets that ServiceNow offers is much more than we need. In conversations with other companies that have a similar profile to ours, they complained about the same thing: "Why should I have to buy a minimum number of password resets, when that amount is much more than I need?" They should have some kind of scaling of the reset package, like zero to 100, 101 to 300, etc. That would be a little bit more useful for us. That package is very expensive. It's more expensive than if I were to have someone in-house who was dedicated to doing those tasks.

It's a very stable product, it has a very good SLA and RTO. So far, so good, and I expect it will continue like that.

I haven't had any issues with scalability so far, but we're a medium-small company with about 300 users. The most active users are the service desk, infra, and development teams. Overall, we have 50 or 60 heavy users.

Here in Brazil, we have local support from a company called Fast Lane. They are the enterprise that did the development and implementation of the solution in our company. We don't have any issues with them. They are very fast and very helpful. They help us with the design of our processes and the tools.

We had a simple tool with which you would just open a ticket, without SLA, no features. But we had internal issues and realized we should improve our processes. That's why we went to ServiceNow.

The initial setup wasn't so easy, but it wasn't a ServiceNow issue, it was an internal issue. Because it was new for the organization, setting up a cloud solution, we needed to open some ports in the firewall.

One detail we didn't explore so much during the negotiations with ServiceNow was related to Edge Encryption. That is a feature that encrypts all the information that is saved in ServiceNow. It was requested by information security here in our company. We bought it, but the setup for that tool was new here, in Brazil, from what I understood from the vendor. It's a little complicated to have all of the information and all the details set up for it. It took a little bit longer than we expected, but it was a management situation. There was no impact to the business.

We know that ServiceNow is not cheap, it's more expensive than other solutions. But we are trying to increase our ability to handle tickets so that the cost per ticket is less. ServiceNow is a little bit expensive for us, here in Brazil, due to taxes, etc.

We talked with HPE and IBM, but both are on-prem solutions, whereas ServiceNow is a cloud solution. That fact was very important for us, that it is not an on-prem solution, as it reduces our internal cost of support. 

Also, the development time for each process is much shorter than with an on-prem solution. For example, with on-prem, I would have internal processes like change management, open a ticket, fill out all the information, and get the request approved. After that, it would need to be implemented. That would take a long time.

It is very good having this tool. Getting it going went much faster than I expected. We did the setup and had it in production in six months.

The biggest problem for me was our internal process and not Service Now. For example, convincing people to go to a cloud solution, and getting engagement with the solution from information security, were challenges. If you don't have engagement from information security, the project is going to take longer than you expect. The big change for the company, with this solution, is that you're not going to host your data internally, on-prem. You are going to put all your data in a cloud solution. When we spoke about the solution here, within our company, some people said, "Wow! Are you crazy? You are going to put customer information in a cloud that you don't know?" So there are a lot of questions. ServiceNow has all the answers, but if you don't have engagement from information security, it will take you longer.

We have a lot of things we can improve internally, regarding information security, but because we are just starting out, we need our process to mature. I believe ServiceNow can help that a lot. All the features can support us in the future if we expand the tool. We have new models to improve on the automation of our processes in our data center.

My only concern is that when we started to talk with ServiceNow, we received very good attention from them but, after we signed the contract, I didn't know who, in ServiceNow, was taking care of my account. The person sent me an email but he had never been here to ask, "What do you need? How is it going? How is your project?" We didn't get any attention from ServiceNow. We had very good negotiations in the beginning, they were very attentive. But after we signed the contract, they changed my account manager and, today, I really don't know who that guy is.

I would very much like to have him here to discuss the roadmap of the solution or to see what else I can buy. I would like to negotiate some issues that we have, like password resets. I would talk with ServiceNow but, if they are not going to be close to me, I'm not going to spend time running after them to talk with them. I talk with the suppliers and they are helping me, instead of ServiceNow.

I rate ServiceNow at eight out of ten. Why eight and not ten? The relationship with ServiceNow is important for me. I would like to have more engagement from them, to have them here, at my company, so we can talk more strategically. But compared to the other vendors, it gets an eight because it's a cloud solution and I don't have any issues with technical parts or its performance. The tool is very reliable.

We use ServiceNow mostly for our IT ticketing business. Recently we set up the Request portion of ServiceNow and we're using it as well.

It enables us to interact with our end users and helps us resolve whatever incident they might be having. We get incident reports and it helps us get set up with trends so that we'll get resolutions to those incidents.

I like the reporting aspect of it. It helps us know where we stand regarding the types of issues we're receiving, the types of incidents that come in.

It also shows us trends. That enables us to possibly predict an issue that might come up in the future as well as what is happening right now. We like that feature. With it, we can either avoid certain issues or know where we need to focus more regarding the service we provide.

I would like the reporting aspect to be better, including the graphs. It could have some way for us to easily to export to a csv or spreadsheet so that if a graph cannot be provided by ServiceNow itself, we would be able to use other applications to create them.

Also, if there was a feature that enabled us to interact with end users directly within ServiceNow, like an instant-messaging type of feature, that would be great. 

Another nice feature would be a way to easily to assign tickets and incidents to the techs who will be working on them. That could be better. Other than that, the system seems to be working just fine.

We've had no issues with the stability of the solution.

We are okay with the scalability.

I would rate technical support at seven or eight out of ten. They are pretty much on time. They're willing to help.

When I started with the company, we outsourced our issues. When we brought IT in-house, ServiceNow was the first system we used.

The setup was straightforward, easily understandable with the training we did. There might have been some kinks but everything was worked out in due time. It was fine.

There were a few other options we evaluated but I don't remember the specific product names.

Learn anything you need to know direclty from ServiceNow. It's a good product. I can't really knock it. Go ahead and give it a try. As long as it fits your environment, I think it's a fine product.

I would rate ServiceNow at seven out of ten. I would like to see a little more automation. It may just be the type of license we have which doesn't give us full automation, but that would be one of the things that I would like in ServiceNow. That would make things easier for both the techs and the end users. In addition, I would like to see a better workflow setup within ServiceNow.

• Work intake 
• Project management 
• Project for a 30 person marketing and communications team at a Big 4 professional services firm.
  

• It helps improve service levels and reduce team stress.  

• It provides internal clients with greater transparency about their projects and deliverables.

• Ability to configure a service catalog with defined SLAs.

• Single window for all work requests.
• Ability to bundle various deliverables into a single project work request.

None.

None.

We used a homebrew solution developed by (and for) our IT department. It was far too complex for marketing users.

The setup was time-consuming and required a lot of internal resources. 

We used an in-house team.

The IT department conducted a vendor evaluation, but I am not aware of which solutions were considered.

It is a very robust tool. We use it for all back office teams in the firm, resulting in a common interface and intake process across HR, IT, Marketing, and Finance.

We build out video knowledge bases, how-to knowledge bases for self-service support and agent use. We integrate into a number of different ticketing systems, service management platforms, helpdesk platforms, and call center systems.

We are a ServiceNow partner and we have a ServiceNow instance. We use it for ticketing support, ticketing systems. It has worked really well for what we do.

We have set a standard around the way we build content. We have found that if we build for ServiceNow, it will pretty much import anywhere. The format is very similar. ServiceNow seems to be more of a standard interface and their knowledge import specs are pretty consistent with everything else. We have had a few we have had to tweak but, generally, if we build it for ServiceNow, in a lot of cases we can take a ServiceNow file and import it into any other system and it will work fine. That's the biggest benefit.

The biggest feature is that it is cloud-based, so it's always updated, it's always current. We don't have to worry about patches, revisions. We're always working with the latest version.

The features continue to improve. We get new features and we can choose to turn them on or not, but we're always getting them. That is part of the program.

Some enhancements to the self-service platform would be helpful. That part is still a little barebone. There are some things that they could do better that we have suggested to them.

Also, the mobile app is not bad, but it's limited. They are going to be working on that, I'm sure, over the years.

It seems to be very solid. We have not run into any errors or problems, although we're not a very heavy user. If somebody was processing thousands of tickets a day, maybe they would run into something, but for us, it's solid. There are no issues at all.

It seems to be able to accommodate any number of clients, agents, admins. We're a small company, so we don't stress it very much with the number we have in the platform. But everything that I see there, I think it will go. They have large, global corporations working on it, so I think it's pretty solid. That is what I've seen, but not what I've experienced.

Their technical support is very good. We're in the partner program so we have a different development program. We access a different group within support compared to the support a regular client would access. When we need help, the people we work with are very good. Things get resolved, things don't linger.

First, decide what your processes need to be. Determine what your environment needs, what's important, what your priorities are, what your process methodology is, and find a platform to fit that. If you are trying to find a platform and you don't go through that exercise first, you're just tying yourself up in knots. If you choose the platform first, then you are going to match your processes to the platform. If you haven't been through a process, an internal system environmental analysis, to see how things work and what you need, you'll never be happy and you'll wind up changing platforms every couple of years or every time your CIO changes.

When selecting a vendor the most important criteria for us are that they

• are cloud-based
• have ongoing development
• provide API capability so we can integrate whatever we need.

There has to be the ability to write APIs as you need them, so you can hook in whatever you need to connect to it.

I would rate ServiceNow at eight out of 10. They're good but they can get better. From what we've seen, they are making improvements, they listen to feedback. They're not sitting still, they continuing to evolve, continuing to develop, add features, add capacity.

The primary use case is IT service management. It encompasses quite a few things, such as incident records, change records, etc.

It uses a common base of data and allows different types of records to pull from that same base of data.

The ability to link different types of records with each other.

• The ability to embed help information onto the screens.
• The scalability needs improvement.

On a scale of one to 10, I would rate stability as a seven.

On a scale of one to 10, I would rate scalability as a four.

On a scale of one to 10, I would rate technical support as a seven.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

The most important thing to have in place is the face of the configuration data.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Scalability
• The development model: How are updates made and promoted to production.
• Ability to embed user help information directly to the interface.