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.

• Logging of incidents
• Work orders
• Purchase orders and change requests

We use this to track all future development requests from our end users.

Provides a clean front-end for our users to log requests and has rich ITSM functionality.

MyIT application for logging and following up of requests. It is much more functional than the old SRM request application. 

The Approval Central system needs to be refreshed. 

It would also be beneficial if there was a text-based editor for the workflow rules instead of using the developer studio, which adds a lot of time when developing quick solutions to problems.

No issues.

No issues. 

Customer support is always fantastic and willing to help. No matter what time of day we have a problem. We always get a friendly, helpful support engineer to guide us through any small challenges that we face.

HEAT. We changed due to the rich functionality offered by BMC Software.

Initial, out-the-box setup was easy with no problems. The gathering of business data to import into the system was more complex.

At first, we used a vendor and then moved it in-house.

Not sure at this moment, as we have not been asked to provide that to the business.

Yes, FrontRange by HEAT.

Look at cloud-based hosting to a provide a stable, easily expandable solution. We found on-premise did have a few challenges.

With a proper well laid out project plan and some good developers, this solution is able to meet any requirements that your organization may have.

Its integration and development capacity. Its ease of use and implementation, assuming you have hired the right kind of resources for that.

It’s a perfect tool to track any kind of event or service. Developing workflow within this application is quick (again with the right resources) and for the most part I have experienced trouble free runs with this product in live environments.

As a developer and a architect, there is very little I might feel a need for to do what I need to do for 99% of the cases. I may wish however for this product to mature a little more on the web front-end which I believe it has on version 9 which I am yet to be exposed to. Also, I would wish for it to remove a limitation I came across with in the past (2 versions ago) on web services on some constructs that the Remedy Web service engine does not handle all too well without modifying the WSDL itself.

Over 17 years ever since it was Remedy Corporation right though its acquisition by Peregrine and then BMC Software.

We had no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

We have had no issues with the scalability.

Customer Service could use some improvement – while they are technically very good, some of the agents have poorer communication skills than others.

I have seen other solutions like ServiceNow which is cheaper than Remedy, but I did not feel that it had the same robust capabilities as the BMC Remedy product.

It's straightforward for someone who knows what he or she is doing.

I have implemented this product at multiple sites.

Remedy has third-party vendor products, some of them even free that can help you manage licensing costs through usage monitoring.

It might cost a few more bucks than its competitors like ServiceNow, but it certainly has a better technological edge over ServiceNow. I have heard of some shops that moved from Remedy to ServiceNow to take advantage of ServiceNow's smaller TCO, but then had several issues and problems with being able to successfully implement and use ServiceNow exactly how they would have wished to use it. Remedy has a motto of your business your way which is very fitting since that is exactly what it gives you.

We use Helix to manage incidents and requests. 

The user experience could be better. 

I have used Helix for one year.

Helix is stable.

Helix is scalable.

Setting up Helix is complex, and it takes about a day to deploy. 

I'm a service management specialist and I'm in partnership with BMC.

I like the digital workplace, it's an appealing feature for me. 

One of the issues with the solution is the requirement to provide a lot of information in order to log a request. I'm not talking about end users, technicians or engineers need to provide too much information to initiate a work order or an incident. It doesn't flow; access should require minimal effort. They should consider using ITIL principles and not just IT. 

The initial setup required an engineer for configuration, to load data on the system. The datasheet form isn't user friendly, a client wouldn't be able to fill it in, a tech savvy person is required.

I like the tools BMC offers but it's very expensive.  The pricing model needs to be revisited.

BMC is definitely not for small businesses, especially those in Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. It's difficult to get small businesses onto BMC because of the cost. For functionality, I would give this solution an eight out of 10 but I have a serious problem with the pricing and that brings my rating down to a six.

Overall, within our company, there are over 15,000 end-users and 400 incident management members using this solution.

You can do some customizing if you want, which is great. It's a very integrated solution. You have incident management, change management, release management, and asset management — all of these things work very well together.

Their customer service catalog (where a customer can order some products) could be improved. This product is not the best, but they are working on it.

It needs to be more comfortable for the end-user. You need to be able to order some products.

I have been using this solution for over ten years.

This solution is very stable.

It's very easy to scale. You can connect one server to another and scale them together if you want.

We have a support partner that handles all of our BMC support-related issues.

For us, the initial setup was complex because we needed a lot of customization done.

We have a team of four staff members, including myself, who look after all maintenance-related issues.

I would absolutely recommend BMC Helix ITSM. There are two solutions to look out for: BMC and ServiceNow. I think both solutions are great solutions but I can't say which one is better.

For a smaller company, a solution like JIRA Help Desk may be better. BCM can be quite complex as there are many modules that are not easy to handle.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of seven.

If they improved the workflow and processes, simplified the initial setup, improved the UI, and the digital workplace catalog for the end-users, then I would give this solution a rating of 10. 

Managing our customer products, problems, and take-ons as well as our IT  operations and change management. We also use it to manage our ever growing infrastructure.

The MyIT product has given our end users a much better perception of Remedy and made the product look more fluid. This has made people more likely to log calls rather than do work offline allowing us to get a better picture of what is going happening on a daily basis and monitor trends correctly.

MyIT is simple to use and its mobility is a big plus for our on the go users.

SmartIT could include PR. This would help us greatly in bridging the gap between Remedy's views and SmartIT. We would love to see this feature in the near future.

From time to time, but I think that is our fault due to extra processes that we implemented to fit our business needs.

No issues.

Its mostly great. Sometimes, it takes a little while on the more complex issues, but generally it is fast.

HEAT. It was a dated product with limitations.

At first, the setup was complex, but we have evolved since then.

We implemented in-house. Our whole team is well-seasoned in Remedy.

It is costly, but it is well worth it. Just make sure you really sit down and look at what you will be using per user, therefore you will not be surprised with a big bill. You do not want every user having every license, it really is not needed.

We did not. We went to Remedy because we knew it was the way to go.

Give it a try. Demos are easy to come by. Speak to others using the product. If you are a medium or enterprise business, it is a great value.

It's a help desk software. It is an ITSM system. We are an MSP. We use it in-house and then we use it for a bunch of our other customers.

It's a stable, reliable product.

The solution can scale and expand well.

It's one of the top solutions on the market for ITSM capabilities. 

We used to use it and we don't want to use it anymore. We're actually now replacing it.

The interface isn't that great. Also, it just doesn't integrate with as many systems as ServiceNow.

The initial setup is complex. 

I've been using the solution for 11 years or so. 

The stability is very, very good. I'd rate it four out of five in terms of reliability. It doesn't crash or lag on us. There aren't bugs or glitches. 

It is highly scalable. We have lots of users. We've never had a problem expanding it. It's not a problem.

Their support is not really good yet. Due to our scale, when we work with their support, it's not very good.

Neutral

We are actually on the way to phasing this solution out. We are replacing it with ServiceNow. ServiceNow integrates with more solutions. 

The initial setup is pretty complex. 

We had the competency to handle the setup in-house. 

The cost is high and going up. Part of the reason why we're changing products is that the pricing actually went up recently by a lot.

We're an MSP. We resell it for BMC amongst other things.

This solution is a SaaS, a Software as a Service, solution. 

It's probably the second-best solution out there. It's just that, as an MSP, we just need to work with a bunch of other toolsets. When that happens, then you run into more support issues and run into more integration issues. That said, I would still say it's the second-best ITSM solution out there.

I'd rate the solution five out of ten.