We performed a comparison between Appian and ServiceNow based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: ServiceNow comes out ahead in this comparison. It enables organizations to deliver solutions faster and allows users to track solutions using real-time data to ensure continual progress and positive, effective outcomes. ServiceNow is very robust and stable and updates frequently so users always have the best tools available to them.
"It has very flexible adaptation and the ability to save and automate processes."
"Appian has many valuable features, the first being the ease of development—rapid development. Second, the process of learning the product and tool is faster when compared to its peers in the market. It's closer to low-code, and while it's still not very easy, it's more low-code than other products in the industry. Appian has a good user interface, a seamless model user interface, which comes without additional coding. It can also integrate with multiple systems."
"Technical support is helpful."
"SAIL (Self-Assembling Interface Layer), a scripting language provided by Appian. It is the equivalent of JS and CSS. It allows creation of complex UIs which are also responsive. With SAIL, we have a single language for both the UI logic and its appearance. UI components can be built as reusable components and used in multiple UI interfaces."
"The most valuable features are the low coding and low code data."
"It has good integrations. We were looking for out-of-the-box integration with both on-prem and publicly accessible data sources. We needed integration with the cloud, OData, our REST API feed, and then on-prem passthrough to go to a SQL database or on-prem APIs through Azure local deployment, etc."
"The process models provide self-documenting systems."
"The most productive aspect of Appian lies in its ability to develop interfaces, particularly user interfaces. Creating user interfaces is highly productive, when these interfaces are integrated with the original database. In such cases, using record types proves to be a very efficient method of handling data. The synergy between interfaces and record types enhances productivity."
"The solution is easy to use, simple to make queries, flexible to configure, integrates well, and supports all of our companies needs."
"Being able to have the required information for project management is valuable. I've got multiple people accessing it, and I'm tracking tasks with percentages done. It allows me to have detailed notes and provides the ability to attach documents. I have used a lot of project management solutions, and there were gaps in terms of what was available. ServiceNow has got all the features and functionalities. It is a solid solution. It is also easy to get into and use. It is certainly highly scalable."
"There are many expansions available."
"It gave us professionalized, faster incident turn around times. Improved quality of information shared with our customers. Over time we build an extensive knowledge base that assists in both self-service as in services provided by the servicedesk when handling incidents."
"The workflow capability for easy setup is powerful."
"It enables us to meet SLAs, track issues across the environment, and report those issues."
"ServiceNow is very easy to set up."
"Creating a ticket is much simpler in this tool. That is one big advantage. Also, the simplicity and ease of use are much better. I've used HPSM and it is very complex in comparison to ServiceNow."
"Appian has a few areas for improvement, which my organization raised with the Appian team. One is the Excel output which is limited to fifty columns when it should be up to two hundred or three hundred columns."
"There could be a scope of enhancement for capturing the variety of use cases."
"The solution could improve by being more responsive when dealing with large quantities of data. Additionally, they can make the decision or rules engine better. It cannot handle too many rules or too many decisions at once."
"There is no UI customization possible."
"The tool itself is pretty good, but the main area that we struggled with was the backend. The frontend development is really good, but the backend modeling can be streamlined a little bit. There are good integrations, but tying them through the data layer and then up into the frontend could be improved a little bit. It does read/write on the data source, and you can configure it to just write or just read, but there is a little bit of work involved."
"Authoring tool is slow to use resulted in limitations on how quickly solutions can be built."
"The solution could use some more tutorials to help brand new users figure out how to use the product effectively."
"Something I would like to see improved is an SQL database connection."
"Before implementing this solution, you should have the ITSM model in place for chain management requests. That is a prerequisite because you cannot perform tasks without it."
"There should be fewer clicks and faster integrations between solutions."
"System deployment and automation capabilities could be within the platform, similar to competitors."
"Service mapping could be less complicated."
"Its stability and pricing need improvement."
"A new user does need training or time to learn the solution before jumping in. It was very hard in the beginning to understand everything. I couldn't find the models I needed at the time."
"Change Management is the area I have found that this tool can be improved because there are so many fields which are missing, such as urgency of the customer request and how the priority is defined. These are some of the areas in which I found that BMC Remedy is much better than ServiceNow."
"It's not very secure, it's web-based, and I prefer Remedy. Both the security and the web interface could be improved."
Appian is ranked 6th in Rapid Application Development Software with 58 reviews while ServiceNow is ranked 4th in Rapid Application Development Software with 212 reviews. Appian is rated 8.4, while ServiceNow is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Appian writes "Low resource consumption, easy setup, and stable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of ServiceNow writes "A stable and scalable solution that has excellent features and is useful for collecting data and building KPIs". Appian is most compared with Microsoft Power Apps, OutSystems, Camunda, Pega BPM and Mendix, whereas ServiceNow is most compared with BMC Helix ITSM, Microsoft Power Apps, Pega BPM, IBM Maximo and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. See our Appian vs. ServiceNow report.
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