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reviewer896733 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Channels and Alliances at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Real User
Cloud-based so we're always current, and the features continue to grow and improve
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "Some enhancements to the self-service platform would be helpful. That part is still a little barebone... Also, the mobile app is not bad, but it's limited."

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and support?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
it_user459045 - PeerSpot reviewer
End User Support at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
We can make sure all the hardware is being utilized, so we're not keeping backlogs or whatever.
Pros and Cons
  • "The analytics - we like to keep track of how much work everyone is doing."
  • "Most people are discussing UIs, but I'm a developer. I would say 80-90% of the people would appreciate that, that's easy for them, but from a developer perspective, it's hard for me, because for me it's clunky"

What is most valuable?

The analytics - we like to keep track of how much work everyone is doing. We need to make sure that everyone is being efficient and being utilized. At the same time, regarding hardware, we want to make sure all the hardware is being utilized.

The other valuable feature is the asset management. It is the same thing, but with hardware. We want to know how much hardware - computers and anything else that we have in stock before we actually order them. Again, it probably boils down to the cost.

How has it helped my organization?

We're getting a good cost-efficiency. In my line of work, we deploy between 50 to 80 computers per day, break/fix new computers, laptops, you name it, we have it. We want to keep track of whether or not we need to replace a whole laptop, or just replace a hardware component that's failing on it. At the same time, we also want to make sure that we're keeping on par with the new technology, so that way we don't get left behind.

What needs improvement?

Most people are discussing UIs, but I'm a developer. I would say 80-90% of the people would appreciate that, that's easy for them, but from a developer perspective, it's hard for me, because for me it's clunky. Just give me a spreadsheet or give me a Notepad and I can write it down. For me, I would rather have that - give me an option to do that, maybe a CLI, instead of a UI.

Earlier today we were doing things such as merging data. What happened was I tried to merge one company to another. It's the same company, it's just a misspelled name. There was a bug - that there was supposed to be an undo button, but it wasn't there. It's one of those things, but then I asked a person how to do it, and they can't figure it out.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

ServiceNow is such a complex piece of software. It's trying to be everything. The way I look at it, sooner or later, it's going to fail, because it's trying to do a lot of stuff. I can't say what or where, but it will. We've seen it a lot of times already with other products. You can't be everything, and that's what they're trying to do.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We don't really use much of ServiceNow except for the ticketing system, for now, so we don't have any issues. If there's a new hire we can add them fine, and it's quick. If there is new hardware, our admin just creates a new hardware form, and it's there, so I don't see any problem with that.

How was the initial setup?

From my standpoint it's easy. As long as you attend an event where they teach you how to do it, you'll pick it up right away, because before I attended one, I had no clue how ServiceNow worked. I went to one for three days and now I at least have, about 25% knowledge of how ServiceNow works. I guess if you attend an event, you'll pick it up right away.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Right now we use ServiceNow, we use SCCM, we use Case. It's three different bits of software but basically what we use them for is as a reporting tool, like I said for the analytics of how we need hardware or tickets are coming in, but ServiceNow is mostly just for tickets.

What other advice do I have?

Granted there's pros and cons in being everything that it wants to be. In our experience, we have Case, we have SCCM: sure, you're generating a report in SECM, and then you're generating another report in Case, there's a slight chance that the result will be different. If you have one thing, one software that's doing everything for you, the reports and the results will be consistent. I see that it's not done yet, it's not complete yet, but in the long run I also see it coming up with a bunch of problems.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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November 2024
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it_user459054 - PeerSpot reviewer
ServiceNow Admin at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
It's pretty straightforward to setup and every now and then we make some changes.

Valuable Features

The ability to get in there and create stuff without worrying about setting everything up first. I like that we can get in there and kind of start developing right away, we don't have to worry about getting instances set up, we don't have to worry about getting everything provisional, all the networking stuff done, just get up and go.

Improvements to My Organization

Everybody can access it, and that's great. They take care of security.

Room for Improvement

They seem to be answering a lot of our problems that we've been having in trying to control the development, trying to control our other developers, and it sounds like they're giving us that. I definitely want to see Scoped get built out more though, it's great that they've got the Scoped functionality but, I want to make sure that we're able to do all of the same things we're able to do in the global inside the Scoped applications as well.

Use of Solution

I've been using ServiceNow for about three or four years, but I've really been developing in it for about two years.

Stability Issues

We've never really had too many issues and anything we have had has been self-inflicted, so it's not ServiceNow's fault.

Scalability Issues

I don't even know that we've had too many issues with trying to scale anything, it comes right ready for everybody to access it in the company. The only thing I would say we've encountered, we've come up with our own creative ways to kind of prevent certain people from accessing things. It's really scalable, it comes ready to go for the whole enterprise.

Customer Service and Technical Support

I think they're pretty decent. Sometimes you have to finagle their help best to get the right answers. We've had to escalate some issues before but for the most part we've gotten everything taken care of.

Initial Setup

It's pretty straightforward, and every now and then we have to go in and make some changes, but really it's not that big of a deal and it kind of helps us keep modernizing our stuff too, so not so bad.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user459072 - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
The fact that it's cloud based is important to us.

What is most valuable?

  • The way it can integrate with other applications.
  • How it can be a central hub for anything we need to do
  • The fact that it's cloud based. That's huge for us.

What needs improvement?

It'd be nice to maybe have some help features or some nice how to's to where if you need something, this is what you do. If something broke, this is what you do. Have that more readily available and more straightforward.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've personally used it for about a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I haven't had any problems. No latency. No issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I believe so. We're going to use this as our central point for so many things.

How are customer service and technical support?

Very knowledgeable and very quick. The questions that we've had to have, or issues that we've had, we've had them answered extremely quick. I'm very happy about that.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We're slowly integrating it. They're still using Heat for incident management. They had nothing for project intake, for onboarding, or service requests so we're bringing those on now as well.

How was the initial setup?

Our initial setup was not the best. We had some issues with it with the company that implemented it for us. We're with a different company now and it has been just fantastic. They've taken us through the whole thing, they've helped us out and they've worked with us step by step.

What other advice do I have?

I would highly recommend it. I would say first thing you need to do is sit down and figure out how you're going to start with it and then, where do you want to expand from. Obviously, you don't want every module to start with. Start off with what's your biggest need or what's the easiest to implement and then go from there.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user459132 - PeerSpot reviewer
ServiceNow Developer and Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
We are using ServiceNow to replace some applications on systems that we're hoping to be able to retire.

What is most valuable?

The platform as a service and the capability to build our own custom apps. Also, the built in work flow engine as we're able to create our own work flows, but that the engine is already there and it speeds application development.

We are using ServiceNow to replace some applications on systems that we're hoping to be able to retire. It's helpful to be able to get new applications up and going quickly, and the work flow engine helps a lot with that.

How has it helped my organization?

Using it as our ITSM solution, it has helped us to move a lot of our different processes onto the same platform, which helps with reporting and tracking and that sort of thing.

What needs improvement?

We still have some issues with some of our ITIL users, like some things aren't as intuitive as they could be. Related to being able to see things, like what tasks are assigned to them. Service Catalog and request fulfilment is the main module we use right now, or effects the most people, and so the learning curve for some of our ITIL users is a little higher than we would like in some cases.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have had some issues over time. I think at times, they've ramped us up or given us more processing power. A few times we've had outages lately here too. Sometimes it does seem slow. We've kind of learned not to bring up a list with a thousand items in it. Sometimes there's something that you run that you expect to get a response in a couple seconds and the counter counts up to 45 seconds before you get your response back, so there's certainly some issues. We've seen a few bugs, but no show stoppers.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We're on the small side of ServiceNow installations. It's just for our plant, so it's not like our whole operation. So, we haven't had any scaleability issues other than we've seen some latency sometimes. I don't know how much of that might have been related to needing to scale up a little bit.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We had a custom Lotus Notes database that we were using for request fulfilment before, but some of the other pieces that ServiceNow fills in we had various solutions for. We switched because ServiceNow gives us more capabilities as far as giving us one platform to be able to have a lot of our systems on and it has a lot of functionality there just out of the box. A lot of plug-ins you can just turn on and have some functionality, which of course, we want to customize. But, being able to roll out something like that so quickly helps.

How was the initial setup?

The initial implementation did take a while. It was fairly complex. We engaged ServiceNow to help us with that. Our ServiceNow also engaged a business partner to help us with roll out initially. Going through that process did take a while, but we had the workshops and training in place to help make that easier.

What about the implementation team?

It was through ServiceNow, but they were busy at the time, so we had a ServiceNow project manager. To help, ServiceNow also brought in a third party and the third party was stronger than our ServiceNow program manager or project manager was, and wasn't nearly as strong as the business partner was.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

ServiceNow is not cheap, especially as we continue to pay for it year after year, but it is helping us be more efficient from the perspective of taking less time to make sure that our requests are fulfilled and to bring out new features and functionality.

What other advice do I have?

It would help to know more about a specific situation to give advice, but it is nice that there's a decent sized ServiceNow community and Wiki that you can find what you need. If you see a demo or see some of what ServiceNow can do, it's certainly worth looking into. However, to give more specific advice, I'd need to know more.

I think there's some things about that that ServiceNow could have implemented better, but the software in general is good and solid.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
JoseQuintero1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Services Manager at a tech services company with self employed
Real User
Multifeatured cloud-based platform for automating work tasks; offers good technical support and a straightforward setup
Pros and Cons
  • "ServiceNow is a cloud-based platform, so people won't need to worry about investing on hardware to host it. Being on the cloud, it is available 24x7. It's scalable, stable, and multifeatured, with a straightforward setup and good technical support."
  • "There's always a room for improvement in terms of the ServiceNow UI. For customers, the UI is something that is a continuous improvement."

What is our primary use case?

ServiceNow can be deployed for everything, in terms of ITSM, CSM, facilities management, HR, financials, CMDB, asset management, and orchestration. You name it. It's really used for everything.

What is most valuable?

What I found most valuable in ServiceNow is that it's a cloud-based platform, so people won't need to worry about investing on hardware to host it. Being a cloud-hosted platform also means ServiceNow is available 24x7 on any internet-connected device. You can also try the platform for free by grabbing a free developer instance from the ServiceNow website.

Customization, data import and export, and data backup are also features I found most valuable in ServiceNow.

What needs improvement?

There's always a room for improvement in terms of the ServiceNow UI. For customers, the UI is something that is a continuous improvement, so the UI would be the only thing in the platform that needs improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been a partner of ServiceNow for three years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

ServiceNow is a stable platform.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

ServiceNow is a scalable platform.

How are customer service and support?

I find the technical support for ServiceNow good. It's rock solid.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup for ServiceNow was straightforward.

What was our ROI?

I don't have the numbers on the ROI from ServiceNow, but we have experienced ROIs from some of our customers ranging between six months and one year, depending on the models they have.

What other advice do I have?

I'm dealing with the new version of ServiceNow: San Diego, and I'm also dealing with its previous version: Rome.

I find ServiceNow a solid platform, and I can't think of any area for improvement. If anything, the San Diego version is even better than the Rome version, and Rome has been solid, so I wouldn't change anything about ServiceNow.

The maintenance of the platform is automatic, but for maintenance in terms of fixing or reconfiguring things inside ServiceNow, we offer professional services for that. For maintaining one project, we need 10 dedicated maintenance personnel, out of the 21 maintenance personnel we have within our company.

My advice to anyone looking into implementing ServiceNow is "Go for it", especially because the platform does everything. ServiceNow is a system of record. It's really everything, e.g. everything is a record today. A ticket is a record, an asset is a record, a bill or an invoice is a record. Everything is a record in a giant database.

The platform is also cloud-based, so people don't even need to think about investing on hardware to host the platform. The platform is hosted on cloud, so it's available 24x7, on any device that has an internet connection, e.g. laptops, computers, mobile phones, etc.

If people need to try ServiceNow, they can enter the developer mode in servicenow.com, and just grab a free developer instance for a couple of weeks and give it a try at no cost. ServiceNow is a no-brainer.

I cannot think of anything that needs to be improved in the platform, because if there is something that ServiceNow does not do out of the box, it offers a way or a means for you to build it from scratch in the application builder. Even if the platform would not offer something commercially available to be deployed with no hassle, e.g. without the need for building it by yourself, or programming it by yourself, or hiring someone to do it for you, it has the means to create it almost codeless. It already has sufficient customizations. It has data import and export, including data backup features. I cannot think of anything that ServiceNow cannot do at the moment.

I'm rating ServiceNow nine out of ten, only because I never give a ten to anything.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
reviewer1745262 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Analyst at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Useful for incident management, stable, and has remote access
Pros and Cons
  • "Remote access is most valuable."
  • "There should be greater integration with other enterprise applications. We're using Microsoft, Oracle, and other applications, and it would be good to have a greater integration on some of the immediate hiccups that you have with these services. It doesn't mean that when we have a problem with using another application, ServiceNow should be able to fix it, but ServiceNow should be able to alert us to things. There should be a bit more automation or integration."

What is our primary use case?

I use it for incident management. For the part of the business I'm in, it is used for end-user incident management. There are other parts of the business where it is also used for customer data collection or customer engagement data collection.

What is most valuable?

Remote access is most valuable.

What needs improvement?

It needs a more intuitive interface for identifying issues. A bit more natural language processing or something like that would be helpful in understanding my queries.

There should be greater integration with other enterprise applications. We're using Microsoft, Oracle, and other applications, and it would be good to have a greater integration on some of the immediate hiccups that you have with these services. It doesn't mean that when we have a problem with using another application, ServiceNow should be able to fix it, but ServiceNow should be able to alert us to things. There should be a bit more automation or integration.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for at least five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

We had minimal tech support.

How was the initial setup?

I am using it in a managed IT environment. As far as I know, it was satisfactory, but our department manager would know more.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution because I make good use of it. I would rate it an eight out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
PeerSpot user
SENIOR THIRD PARTY RISK ANALYST / SECURITY CONTROL ASSESSOR at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Real User
Close to perfect ticket tracking
Pros and Cons
  • "Makes ticket information easy to access."
  • "An area for improvement would be the accessibility of downloaded and compressed files."

What is our primary use case?

My primary use case of this solution is for tickets.

How has it helped my organization?

ServiceNow has helped us a lot because it helps us track our tickets, and rather than having to take notes of changes and updates, we can access all the information with a TP number.

What needs improvement?

An area for improvement would be the accessibility of downloaded and compressed files.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There are no issues with stability that I know of.

How was the initial setup?

I found the initial setup to be straightforward, and it should be relatively easy for anyone to navigate it with a little help.

What other advice do I have?

ServiceNow is close to perfect, it delivers exactly what is needed in terms of keeping track of information in our records. I would give it a score of eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free ServiceNow Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: November 2024
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