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.
Information Systems Computer System Controller at a insurance company with 11-50 employees
The solution has helped track processes and provide support
Pros and Cons
- "The valuable feature for me is that it's a tool that allows me to track processes right from the initial user request."
- "Working with numerous processes can be complex, and the processes are not always transparent in the solution."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for the past 20 years.
Buyer's Guide
BMC Helix ITSM
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about BMC Helix ITSM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable. I have several servers working together in a cluster.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
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.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have worked with SentinelOne and ServiceNow.
What other advice do I have?
The solution is best-suited for medium-sized companies. I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Project Manager at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Development team is quick to address bugs or shortcomings in their product
Pros and Cons
- "BMC offers excellent customer solutions, and they're quick to address bugs or shortcomings in their product."
- "I would like to see the BMC add advanced DWP features and customization to the standard package. Furthermore, BMC does not have any leverage for non-IT services, so it would be nice if BMC could integrate something like HR Change Management into ITSM itself."
What is our primary use case?
Most of our customers use ITSM for incident, problem, and change management, and BMC gives them a complete solution.
What needs improvement?
It would be great if BMC could integrate some new solution — something like DevOps — and improve the smart reporting features. Plus, I would like to see the BMC add advanced DWP features and customization to the standard package. Furthermore, BMC does not have any leverage for non-IT services, so it would be nice if BMC could integrate something like HR Change Management into ITSM itself.
For how long have I used the solution?
Our company is a BMC partner, and we've been using and promoting BMC products to our end customers for the past 20 years. Also, we install and customize BMC products.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Version 20.02 was stable, but I don't think 20.08 is quite stable because we have identified many bugs and reported them to BMC. So currently, BMC is working on that.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I think most BMC products are scalable. I have somewhere close to 125 customers, and the number of users per client varies. Some only have a few hundred. Others have a medium-sized user base in the 3,000 range. At the highest end, our customers have upwards of 30,000. The only issue is the DWP catalogs or the DWP. We should be able to customize the DWP more.
How are customer service and support?
BMC's technical support team needs to improve. Right now, the problem over here is we are not getting the exact answers on time. Their engineers are mainly based in the US or Israel, and we get comprehensive dedicated support. Some of the Indian customer service representatives are also outstanding. Unfortunately, in the past six months or seven months, I've been getting brand-new engineers. Either they're not entirely aware of most cases, or they don't know how to troubleshoot further. So for any product to be stable and work correctly, BMC must ensure that customer service is excellent. Even though if your product is a hundred percent, we'll have problems marketing it to our customers.
How was the initial setup?
Installing and upgrading are relatively straightforward even if the customer is updating from a really low version, like 4.1 or 7.6. So a customer should be able to upgrade to 20.02 or 20.08, but would need to do it step by step. For example, you would have to upgrade to either 9.1 or 18.05 and then from 18.05 to 20.02. That entire process will take around six months to one year for the customer to come up to the scale or start utilizing the new version. So if I get a database and it's the proper version, BMC should be able to handle it. When I do a fresh installation, it should be competent enough to identify the entire workflows or whatever has been designed in the database and start the process. It should be a quick start rather than taking a year to come up with all the integrations and everything.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The license that we provide to our customers is yearly. We don't offer a monthly license because we only sign yearly contracts with our customers. So you would need to get the customer's side of the story to answer whether Helix ITSM's price is fair because ServiceNow is currently capturing the ITSM market. BMC is a little bit cheaper than ServiceNow, but BMC doesn't have the same capabilities in its entry-level product at the moment. The basic version does not have the DWP features that most of our customers are requesting. When we do demonstrations, BMC uses the premium version, but customers can't afford the license for the advanced version. So they're missing some of the features they want, especially the ability to change the banners.
What other advice do I have?
I would BMC Helix eight out of 10 because I have been working with BMC for almost 20 years now, and it's one of my favorites. BMC offers excellent customer solutions, and they're quick to address bugs or shortcomings in their product. I will definitely recommend the solution to other users.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
BMC Helix ITSM
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about BMC Helix ITSM. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
IT Consultant at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Helpful linking of parent and child tickets, and automatically calculates SLA
Pros and Cons
- "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."
- "To raise any ticket, there are too many fields to be filled and it makes generating tickets very time-consuming."
What is our primary use case?
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.
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using BMC Helix ITSM for six years.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
BMC ITSM Remedy Administrator / Developer / Architect with 1,001-5,000 employees
Using Service Request Management creates a Change Request and then sends, via a web service, a request to start a job on VMware to automatically create a server.
What is most valuable?
- CMDB is very useful and it is used to manage client and non-client CI
- Freedom to use your ow way to integrate other systems with BMC Remedy
- Not too difficult to customize workflows
How has it helped my organization?
Using Service Request Management creates a Change Request and then sends, via a web service, a request to start a job on VMware to automatically create a server. When the job is finished and server is created it send back the name of the server back to remedy and automatically creates the CI in CMDB and create relationships. In this way we created an automatically way of requesting a server.
What needs improvement?
In 8.1.02 the Atrium core in the Midtier should be improved. It is using flex technology which is not so reliable. I think in v9 it was changed the technology.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this product for almost eight years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
There were no major issues with the deployment.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There have been no major issues with the stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
There have been no issues with the scalability.
How are customer service and technical support?
The first level is not so skilled . If you manage to go to second level they are good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
There was no previous solution in place.
How was the initial setup?
It was a complex one, because our company was bought by another one and both companies had different versions of remedy installed which needed to be unified. The complexity was from the level of customizations each instance of Remedy needed.
What about the implementation team?
We did it via a vendor. It would be good to create a knowledge in hour which knowledge should be transferred from the vendor side.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I'm not involved in this area.
What other advice do I have?
The BMC Remedy products are reliable and cover all the ITIL processes. An advice would be to try to keep as low as possible the level of customizations.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Service Assurance Manager at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
Stable and scalable, but is difficult to deploy
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is already aligned with the framework, so it is easy for us to proceed with any ISO 27K certification."
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
We use BMC Helix ITSM as a managed ticketing solution for the telecom industry.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I give the stability an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I give the scalability an eight out of ten.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Lead, Tools implementation & Project Management at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Simple to use with a nice user interface, but it needs a richer text editor
Pros and Cons
- "It provides a good user experience."
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
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.
What is most valuable?
The interface is nice and it's simple to use.
It provides a good user experience.
What needs improvement?
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.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have not faced too many issues with stability. It's fairly okay.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
This product is used enterprise-wide, with between 600 and 800 users.
How are customer service and support?
Our administration teams are the ones that have contact with technical support. As such, I have not had any experience with them.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to using BMC Helix, we used CA Service Desk.
I prefer using BMC.
What about the implementation team?
We used a system integrator for the deployment.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate this solution a six out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
IT Software Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The versatility and customizability of the product is what I like most
Pros and Cons
- "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."
- "The interface is one major complaint about this product."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What is most valuable?
The versatility and customizability of the product is what I like most. It provides a strong customization platform in the AR System.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Sr. BMC Remedy Lead Developer (PM) at a transportation company
The main valuable feature is the flexibility of the product -- the ability of being able to make it do almost anything we need it to do to adjust to our business needs and to do it very quickly.
What is most valuable?
The main valuable feature is the flexibility of the product -- the ability of being able to make it do almost anything we need it to do to adjust to our business needs and to do it very quickly. The time to deliver a finish product is fast.
How has it helped my organization?
We have been able to provide several fairly complex and deeply integrated fully customized applications within the different systems throughout the company in an extremely quick delivery time which is impossible with other products.
What needs improvement?
It has improved the life cycle of the development making it a lot shorter to go from the concept phase (requirements gathering) to the deployment portion.
We also have been able to provide a lot more applications to the businesses within to service them better. Improve their processes by automating a lot of their sticky notes and spreadsheets and other paper trails that they were using prior to the application being created.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been developing on ARS platform since 1998, but on this version since 2013.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Like any product/new versions there are always issues. The main ones are the undocumented features that comes with the customized applications. We are not using the out of the box application (ITSM) therefore we are thinking "out of the box" and BMC did not document all of the changes made in their different upgrades. So each time you upgrade from one version to another, you always run into these issues. You need to always make sure you do thorough testing of all the functionality you have in your different applications especially if you are "outside of the box" type of business.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We did and still have stability issues that we are working on. The issues are all linked to the BIRT reporting tool which was the solution recommended at the time by BMC. But we are now totally disconnecting from this tool. We have identify this as being the 100% culprit and are using other methods for doing what is required within our web applications.
But beside the reporting issue no. This is a solid system. We do however have a weekly scheduled reboot of our servers (Windows farm) just to be safe. But that is just because they are Windows :-)
But in all honesty, we need to always keep an eye on the amount of Handles being generated by all the services from the BMC AR System. They do from time to time run out of control and will require you to restart the services. But that is not a regular occurrence.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
None. I haven't seen any limitation at all on this product. It is as good as the hardware will allow it to be. you just need to ensure you have the proper hardware/architecture to support what you need.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
The Customer service is the same as always. It hasn't changed much. They will always be there to help you find the product to help you grow in your business.
Technical Support:BMC needs to keep improving their support. It is still far from what it was back in the days of Remedy. It is very sad that you still are asked for you logs when the logs are already been provided and that you are asked the same questions when those are already answered in the tickets. It is as if they are reading from a script like drones. They need to learn to be more proactive and less robots. When the tickets being raised already have all the details of the issues, and all the diagnostics have been done by us please send the details to second level or 3rd if necessary instead of asking us to repeat the steps we already repeated. we don't have time to waste, especially when a server is down. That is why we do not use BMC support at the moment.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have been on BMC AR System platform here since the mid 90s. We keep adding more applications, modifying/updating the old ones.
We have retired some too. It is an easy platform to grow and adapt
How was the initial setup?
I was not at this client site when the implementation was done. But from experience, I would suggest that anyone embarking in this adventure does get at least the basic training
What about the implementation team?
BMC ARS was implemented back in mid 1990's . I was not at this client site when the implementation was done.
What was our ROI?
BMC ARS was implemented back in mid 1990's . I was not at this client site when the implementation was done.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I keep a close eye on license usage and balance them. The cost of license is always an issue in every company and needs to be evaluate every Quarter/Year.
A report is provided with the recommendation to each business units on what needs to be done.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
BMC ARS was implemented back in mid 1990's . I was not at this client site when the implementation was done.
What other advice do I have?
This is based on the older version of the product as we are slowly moving all our thick client apps to the Web. This has been a pain stacking process due to amount of applications we needed to move and to the multiple of "old" code we had to drag along with us. The next move will be the upgrade to version 9 which will be another huge and exciting step. This is an amazing powerful product, but like any product that has so much multi possibilities, it has its "quirkiness" that you need to learn to work with.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
i agree with you completely. BMC Remedy is a special “beast”. I play the role of BA helping the BA understand how the platform will serve their needs. I design and architect the solutions, write up the technical requirements for the developers, develop the most difficult parts of the design when need be. And if time allows it, it will code too. Training the rest of the team is a big part of Remedy. Experience is what makes you a better developer
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Updated: November 2024
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Hi there,
Yes, 9.X version has removed the Flex UI which proved troublesome from various perspectives as far as I know.
I partially agree with your comments about first and second level support people. It depends to whom you get routed to - varies a lot from agent to agent.
First level support is not necessarily technically weak but their mandate unfortunately seems to be to obtain a bit more time by asking variety of logs and once shared, then identify some more gaps in logs or config files and again ask for more logs or to reproduce cases etc.
Once this initial stage is crossed then only the next level of experts will look at you. This isn't such a desirable thing.
Basically, BMC has a separate relatively much more responsive and higher quality support service which is called as PREMIER SUPPORT. So ideally they would want any large customer to take such service and immediate response is key feature of that. In Normal service, you are just one among several customers in a queue while Premier is like dedicated priority service just for you. So normal support can never be as responsive as that - otherwise there can be no point in Premier!
Having said that, I would also like to say that support given by BMC is still far more responsive than many top tier software vendors in my experience!