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BMC FootPrints Service Core vs Espressive Barista comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC FootPrints Service Core
Ranking in Help Desk Software
28th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
30th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Espressive Barista
Ranking in Help Desk Software
15th
Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)
14th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
AI-Powered Chatbots (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of BMC FootPrints Service Core is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Espressive Barista is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Help Desk Software
 

Featured Reviews

CW
Supports the convergence of ticket management, IT, and customer services
I would give this product a rating of 8 out of 10 because it's a good system and it meets most of our requirements. It still has a lot of space to improve because the service desk function is changing all the time. This solution has to continually be innovative. It should also generate more user-friendly reports utilizing a collaborative framework. Additionally, I would tell anyone looking at similar solutions to first figure out their most important requirements. Then compare their requirements with the function of the ITMS to ensure compatibility. While at the same time they should look ahead at future requirements such as the cloud configuration, along with other vendor capabilities before making a decision.
Jim Lobao - PeerSpot reviewer
Has helped enhance our support ability, reduced our resolution time, and reduced our service desk costs
Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement. We haven't yet found anything that resembles true AI that can learn autonomously without human intervention. However, Barista does help us identify and address some of these areas, allowing my team to step in and create intents and responses to questions. When a user asks a question that Barista doesn't immediately understand, we can recognize the pattern, capture it, and link it to a common intent. This is highly beneficial for acquiring such data, but it's a reactive approach and still requires curation. Natural language processing still has some way to go. One of our challenges is that our internal employees haven't yet adopted a natural way of interacting with Barista. Getting people to be concise and to the point, rather than being verbose as if they were interacting with a human, has been an ongoing challenge. While they may feel comfortable being conversational in Slack, expecting a human-like response, Barista is a different entity. Barista isn't interested in their recent vacation; it just wants to know they're locked out of their account. So, some users may assume Barista understands their intent when they say, "I'm back from vacation and locked out of my account." Barista, however, may interpret this as a request for the holiday schedule. Therefore, we're gradually educating our users to adapt their communication style for better success with Barista. Conversely, we desire Barista to adapt its behavior based on the interaction, the language used, and the way people communicate. I wholeheartedly desire an AI that can continuously learn and adapt to our organization's evolving needs. This is the most challenging aspect, as it involves understanding our organization's terminology, procedures, and toolsets. We've made significant progress in this area. However, from an NLP standpoint, we still face challenges with our nearly 3,000 Slack channel users, each with their unique communication styles. People ask questions in various ways, and sometimes there are misunderstandings. They want to interact with us naturally. However, we still struggle with natural language processing. People don't always realize that the bot is a virtual agent designed to be concise and efficient. Sometimes, less is more. It's been a difficult transition for people to grasp that they're conversing with a virtual agent, not a human. They still expect human-like interactions, such as discussing their weekend or holidays or simply pasting screenshots of errors. However, the bot can't interpret screenshots. If they provide the error code and some context about the application, the bot can better understand the issue. So, the key challenge is bridging the gap between human expectations and the bot's capabilities in terms of natural interaction.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Implemented system-wide process for approving and tracking "employee move" requests for over 15,000 employees."
"We have found the reports and the lockdown on a ticket valuable, so only one person can update issues."
"I have used Tier II BMC support a few times. They were very responsive and recreated my environment in their lab to support me."
"I think the most important feature is the ability to receive valuable ticket status support in a timely manner with little to no downtime interruptions."
"Having a one stop shop for linked assets and tickets has improved end user adoption and led to a reduction in phone/email tickets."
"We can track issues easier and run reports on issues to see if there are patterns."
"Technical support is good."
"It has helped the help desk team. We get our tickets in and are able to support our customers, the end-users, with this solution."
"I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams."
"The bot is pretty easy to update and keep up to date. Espressive itself is pretty easy to work with."
"Its ability to recognize phrases has gotten smarter over time."
"We have the ability to alter phrases, create new phrases, or enhance phrases, or change paths. From the dashboard, we are able to get a lot of information we need about what people are asking, where they are dropping off from conversations, and where they do not get the information they need."
"The most valuable feature is its scalability."
"With respect to its natural language processing capabilities, it recognizes things that you wouldn't think it would recognize. Even in cases where it doesn't, it's pretty easy to go in and make the adjustments that are needed."
"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."
"Our developers have used the Barista Control Center to extend the platform by adding content, and they've found it fairly easy to do and manage"
 

Cons

"The workflow should be made to be more user-friendly. It should also have more granular scalability."
"The pricing could be a little lower and the product should cover more iTel versions."
"Hyphens are not allowed in the quick search bar. This has created a problem in our environment where we use hyphens in our asset names."
"Reporting could be improved along with the option to create more fine tuned reports and to create specific fields for each type of ticket."
"The mobile version of this product does not support asset management."
"It is pretty clunky and not very intuitive. Even though I have used it for many years, I don't think it is a very good ITSM platform in general. In the telecom space, a lot of telco providers use this solution, but from my perspective, it is not very user friendly. It is a bit more laborious. There are still too many human touchpoints. There can be a little bit more automation. It would also be good to integrate it with other tools. Integration is quite difficult, especially in the telco space."
"We need more customizable reporting functionality. We could also use more collaboration of service desk tickets. This will allow for two departments to share the same information, track the progress of the total task scope no matter how complex the request is."
"It would be better if it were more user-friendly. The reporting part in the version we have is a little complicated. It takes too long to build and report. It would also be better if there were another way to manage notifications."
"The knowledge management could definitely be improved."
"The reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"What would make things easier is more detail, out of the box, about what is helping out of the box. We're struggling a little bit to get that data. We want more information about what Barista has brought in that the employees are using, out of the box. We want more visibility into the things that we ourselves haven't done the interaction for."
"My only comment would be if they wanted to use this as an IT service management tool, maybe they could think about Barista making tickets and having change management and problem management capabilities."
"I would like to see the continued expansion of all of the automation capabilities."
"I would like to see improvement to the out-of-the-box verbiage, with the questions going to the right place."
"Expressive Barista could improve by adding native integration with WhatsApp, one of the top communication channels in South Africa. When we're trying to sell Barista to customers, we have to tell them that the solution doesn't have out-of-the-box support for WhatsApp. We can develop it, but then we need to have a conversation about how much that will cost."
"Although they've done some work on their metrics dashboard, there is some fine-tuning to do for people that just want to go in there at a glance and see their metrics."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution has good pricing."
"The licensing for FootPrints is a perpetual license with an annual support fee."
"Cost was on par with other service desk products, and well below Remedy, while still being a BMC product."
"Our costs are well over $250,000."
"The price for the licensing is fair."
"The solution is affordable."
"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"The pricing isn't overly burdensome. It's going to be interesting to see how new models come in with new capabilities but, as it is, as a base system, it's pretty good."
"User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant value from it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Educational Organization
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
51%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Retailer
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about Espressive?
The most valuable feature is its scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Espressive?
Espressive has been very accommodating in trying to meet our needs and adapt to our current situation. User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant ...
What needs improvement with Espressive?
Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement. We haven't yet found anything that resembles true AI that can learn autonomously without human ...
 

Also Known As

FootPrints Service Core
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cast & Crew
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Espressive Barista and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.