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PeerSpot user
Senior IT Service Management & ServiceNow Consultant at Independent
Real User
The tool is SaaS and customization is minimized in the critical early design phase by its "out-of-the-box" approach

What is most valuable?

ServiceNow's out-of-box process configurations and service-based CMDB data model have revolutionized IT Service Management transformations. Leveraging out-of-box configurations and using frequent small-scope improvement releases (DevOps) has proven to be an effective approach for ensuring timely, lasting improvements to the core service management process.

The traditional ITIL "gather all process requirements 1st" approach to tool design never worked well. In fact, organizations attempting this "Define all Process Requirements" approach would frequently customize the tool to be similar to the process/tool that they were replacing rather than adopting the proven ITSM best practices embedded in ServiceNow. This approach extends the time to value by limiting the focus on ensuring the critical process integration points that drive rapid quantifiable process improvements.

With the right expert guidance facilitating the effectiveness of a strong executive sponsor to ensure the successful adoption of a true service-based culture, a SeviceNow implementation can drive quantifiable process improvements in three to six months in core processes, such as Incident, Problem, Change, Release, Knowledge, Asset and CFG management.

With these core processes integrated and effectively automated, an IT organization is able to transform infrastructure monitoring activities into a true service-based and proactive Event Management capability. This in-turn drives rapid and sustained improvements to service Availability, Capacity, and Demand management processes. Quantifiable service levels may then be negotiated and aligned to meet actual business process requirements.

Bottom line: ServiceNow has shattered the "Five years to a successful Service Management transformation" limitation. With the prerequisite guidance and sponsorship, measurable, and sustainable service level improvements, cost efficiencies can be achieved in 12 months or less!

Note:

  1. The importance of acquiring qualified an ITSM expert and their guidance can not be overemphasized. This is preferably to someone outside the current organizational culture.
  2. The need for a skilled and charismatic executive sponsor is a proven success-critical requirement for rapid sustained improvements. The right leader will recognize the need for a compelling vision and formal sponsorship strategy for the entire IT leadership team, which they will be accountable for, will ensure the culture change from the traditional siloed infrastructure, and component management focused and heroic effort based culture to a true customer focused and service based culture.

How has it helped my organization?

A three phase IT Service Management transformation project resulted in achieving a first year target of less than 4% sustained monthly improvements in true customer experienced availability (based on Incident MTTR metrics) for three key IT Services (three business process automation solutions with formal SLAs). Results obtained were within six months of the project start date.

  • Phase 1: Formal process 'maturity' assessments and detailed recommendations. Service Mgmt. Org. restructure with dedicated Process Owners and Service Mgrs. aligned with newly defined IT services (business process related Services). Vision and Sponsorship workshops for IT leadership team resulting in formal Sponsorship Strategy and communications plan.
  • Phase 2: Rapid Process Design/Improvement workshops with process owners for Incident, Problem, Change, Release, CFG (ServiceNow PM), and Knowledge Mgmt. designing "to-be" process documents, and integrated, coordinated three month implementation plans. Tool design and implementation plan documented.
  • Phase 3: After three month implementation of Phase 2 processes, Rapid Process Design workshops started for Availability, Service Level, Capacity, Demand, and Event management processes. Process documents with detailed process integrations and tool/CMDB requirements spanning all 11 processes. Formal implementation plan deliverables. Coordinated implementation projects initiated.

What needs improvement?

Primary areas of inefficiencies and delays were related to change resistance and lack of support from the IT Team Lead and IT Manager level staff for involvement in ServiceNow design and training workshops, and lack of support for governing new process policies.

Bottom line issue: Not agreeing in strategy workshops for the recommendation to base performance measures for all IT staff and bonus potential for IT leadership staff on the key process maturity improvement metric targets.

For how long have I used the solution?

This basic three phase, rapid process design workshop methodology, using an out-of-the-box solution, then the weekly ServiceNow release schedule approach to evolve process designs, has proven successful in meeting target maturity improvement metrics in all cases

Buyer's Guide
ServiceNow
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about ServiceNow. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Deployment issues were very rare in all projects that had a dedicated ServiceNow Development lead (with a team of Dev and DB skilled staff assigned to the project) involved as a team member with the combined process owners in Rapid Process Design workshops. These workshops involve more than five process owners designing each other's new processes, based on ServiceNow out-of-the-box requirements, guided by the Dev lead and the ITSM expert facilitator (a seasoned facilitator with ITIL Expert certification and ServiceNow bootcamp credentials is recommended).

This approach ensures all process owners and the tool design expert understand the complex integration points between all processes; a key to CMDB relationship requirements insight.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

As the tool is SaaS and customization is minimized in the critical early design phase by the Process Workshop's "out-of-the-box" approach, stability and scalability are optimized.

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service:

It is excellent, always. This tool and the ServiceNow organization is a class act.

Technical Support:

It is excellent, in all cases.

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

Have experience with BMac software, HPE, IBM and other leading ITSM tools.

ServiceNow has nailed the basic ITIL process integration requirements and the CMDB model is service-based out-of-the-box.

This approach using out-of-the-box and frequent small revisions only works with ServiceNow's quality underpinning best practice framework.

What about the implementation team?

Expert vendor facilitator.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Jeevan Chaukar - PeerSpot reviewer
Jeevan ChaukarPrincipal Consultant at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant

Dear David,

I am highly interested in understanding what key advantage you felt in using Service Now compared to BMC Remedy ITSM?
What are the areas that Service Now struggles compared to Remedy?

As per my experience, Service Now is great where a given organization is willing to sacrifice some of their nitty gritty processes that have been built over a long period and have become divergent with standard ITIL model.
But if you want to customize to great level and want to twist the tool whichever way you want, BMC Remedy is far more customizable. Of course, then customizations cause upgrade issues if not handled carefully.
Service Now has recently changed their pricing model and if you are touching their core objects (or tables as they might call) then their fees go on increasing. BMC on the other hand has higher initial cost but they don't increase fees due to customization.
A detailed study of costing (without revealing any key organizational information that can't come to public domain) would be appreciable.

Thanks and Regards,
Jeevan

it_user459060 - PeerSpot reviewer
Unit Manager at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Some of the best things the tool brings to us revolve around the ability to manage all of our work.

What is most valuable?

I'm the unit manager of the network operations center so I'm a core user of the tool. I don't get involved in the development, deployment or support of it, but we get a lot of tickets in the network operations center. I think probably some of the best things the tool brings to us revolve around the ability to manage all of our work. The intake of the work, tracking it and helping it move through the different processes so tracking incidents, then times they turn into a problem that we have to follow up and come up with a root cause.

For me as the manager of the network operations center, it's mainly around being able to track our work, know who is working on what, what our work volume is, how it ties to the different services that we support.

The reporting is one piece that's a lot of interest to me in the network operations center. We don't have a ton of metrics today mainly because we haven't put the effort in that direction, but we want to. I poked around on the reporting a little bit and I went to a session [at Knowledge16] on performance analytics. I thought, gee this looks like what I'm after but we have yet to purchase that module. I don't know if we will or won't so I guess I don't have enough experience to say. I see the potential there.

How has it helped my organization?

I think it's bringing a lot of stuff that's been handled by a lot of different applications and a lot of different areas in one place. We grew up with a few different areas which had their own tools for a long time for ticketing and managing assets. Basically bringing it all into one place I think is very beneficial.

What needs improvement?

I would say there really isn't anything I found that I really dislike. Now the caveat to that statement is we've been going at the deployment for a while. Again, I'm the user, the consumer side of the tool. What I'm waiting and watching to see is, as these new modules roll out, as we implement change and knowledge base, I've got myself and my group, we've got a lot of work to do yet just to learn the tool as it is today. We haven't really gotten into it far enough to say, "Gee I really don't like this."

The sense I get just from some of the classes that I've taken where I've been poking around in some of the tools that we don't have yet, I do see there's definitely a learning curve involved. Now I look at it like there's a learning curve involved in any new tool you bring into your organization. I think the overall pain of the learning curve maybe less when you have a common tool like the ServiceNow. If I get over the learning curve for problem management, for example, I'm probably halfway there with change, incident and the rest of them. A lot of things you're going to learn and want are applicable together. I think overall the total learning curve will probably be less.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I haven't had any issues. As a matter of fact since we've been using it, I can't think of one time where it was unavailable or had an issue. I haven't seen that as an issue from an end user perspective. I have it up periodically. The folks in my unit have it up all the time to monitor the queues and I haven't heard any issues with it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I really haven't been involved in that side of it, we're the development side. From an end user, I think just as I've watched them enable more modules, bring on more things, I haven't noticed any kinds of performance issues.

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

We used BMC Remedy for ticketing system. We never really had a CMDB as we had various databases that housed different information so BMC Remedy, is the main one that comes to mind that we used prior to ServiceNow, that we'll be sun setting. We actually had some in-house tools as well that we developed.

We did so to manage things like our change records and actually that really was the formal IT CMDB if you will. We had some home-grown tools as well that we're working on sun setting.

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

There's another group in our organization that's responsible for the purchasing decisions. One of the things I heard that was maybe of concern to me, is that we had our in-house system that we used to communicate to our end user groups around change. I have some concerns about the ability in ServiceNow and the capability to notify end users of changes. I think if I was not mistaken that's in part due to licencing. We have about two thousand IT people versus total of about sixty thousand employees.

I believe there was a licencing cost issue around if I want all those people to be able to subscribe to change notifications. I don't quite understand how that works fully but I get the sense that there was maybe some cost challenges with that. From an end user perspective and the network operations center, we make a lot of changes that have the potential impact, large geographical areas and try to figure out how do to notify our end users. That's what I don't really know yet, how that ServiceNow tool is going to help us do that. We're still trying to figure that piece out.

What other advice do I have?

One piece of advice I would give you from my perspective is that if you're going to deploy it, make sure you put the appropriate amount of effort into training the end users. I think there is some complexity learning how to navigate it and I think for a lot of people having a document to follow is challenging sometimes. Make sure you put the appropriate amount of emphasis on training. I've been in IT for about 26 years, I've seen a lot of this stuff grow up in pieces.

It's filling a niche I think a lot of people have really, really wanted which is bringing a lot of this information into one central location. The various areas of IT can no longer operate in a vacuum, it has to operate as one large cohesive IT department that aligns with the business. I think a tool like this helps bring a lot of that stuff into one place.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
ServiceNow
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about ServiceNow. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user459114 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Software Engineer at Southwest Airlines
Real User
We've been able to finally implement a CMDB.

What is most valuable?

There's pretty much nothing that I have found yet that I couldn't accomplish within ServiceNow if I wanted to. I think for us, we tried several times to implement a CMDB, a configuration management database, and it failed for various reasons. With ServiceNow, we were able to finally do that. My boss refers to that as the pink unicorn, the mythical creature that did not exist.

We finally made that happen with ServiceNow. I feel that CMDB is actually my license plate.

How has it helped my organization?

I think historically we have had a real warrior spirit. We would get in there and do it and sometimes that meant we would write something in house. I think that we would invest a whole lot of time on something, and we would get real attached to it. Then the next thing you knew, you blinked your eyes, and we were behind the times. I think that we've made a giant leap or two in the last year, year and a half or so, that we've been using ServiceNow, that I've been involved with.

Now we have invested the time in the CMDB. We've invested the time in a portal and catalog items and now we're moving towards automation and things. We moved from Eureka to Geneva and now we've got this whole fresh look and all these new features. We're able to stay a lot more current a lot faster because ServiceNow is doing the work to keep the platform updated, whereas we can just continue to provide value that is specific to us and what we're trying to do.

What needs improvement?

There's some platform code that is compiled and its Java code on the server side. There's no documented API on what the functions and properties are of that code, and we're not able to reflect that code to get it to make our own API. I think some of the platform devs have met with me in the developer hub and said that they are working to provide that because they can see why we'd want it. I'm excited to hear that that gap will get closed soon.

Also, some of the way that the patches would break the catalog and the catalog items would cause unnecessary changes to the lay out in the UI. Like moving a field label from the left to underneath. If you have 30 items on a page, or more, that's going to offset everything. Unnecessary moves and then unnecessary moves back, stuff like that.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's pretty solid. I think that on our dashboard it says 99.8% availability. Now a lot of my customers in the service desk that do our support line, over the phone or through chat, they're telling me that the CMDB look up for config items on the incoming incidents that they're starting, is way faster in Geneva. They've set it, set it, and reset it. It wasn't just a first impression. It's a lasting, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." They sent a special email. We don't normally have people that are raving fans of anything you provide tool wise. We have our customers who are usually raving fans on our airlines. This was kind of surprising to hear.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We add users constantly. We on-board people and they are automatically added. We have a portal that's internal for our users that don't need to do changer class but they do need to request things in the catalog so those people are able to log in and request stuff.

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

We didn't successfully implement a CMDB. I think different work groups were very siloed and they had the problem of, "Where's our stuff?" They each solved that problem on their own because there was no centralized management database. Some people used spreadsheets. Some people used Wiki Documents or Wiki Documents with spreadsheets in them. Other people just had it in their heads and like, "We'll go ask Jim or go ask Bob. Oh, Bob left. I'm sorry. Go ask Tim. Maybe Bob told Tim before he left." It was like that. What we were able to do was use this as the first product that actually worked. We did try a few other products but we weren't able to get that off the ground. I don't know if that really speaks to those products or if it was the lack of support that we had from our leadership to get it done. I wasn't involved so I don't remember who it was, but I don't believe they were home-grown.

How was the initial setup?

We used a tiered approach. We did like five or six release cycles to get to where we are. We started with CMDB and change management at the same time and I think that that really worked well. When we were working in Remedy, our CMDB only kind of had Oracle database names and host names. Windows or Linux host names and that's it. It was pretty flat and people were used to it and it wasn't a whole lot of information to ask people to put in their change request. When we came over, we were able to stand up change and people were satisfied with just having the host names, which was fairly simple. Then we were able to do kind of a crawl, walk, run, run with scissors sort of thing. I think that it went well.

What other advice do I have?

Come to a user group meeting and we'd love to connect, meet and show you what we've done and talk about where you're at and give you some feedback and advice about what worked, what didn't work, what we thought might work better.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
BenjaminFang - PeerSpot reviewer
Solutions Architect at Palo Alto Networks
Real User
Top 10
User-friendly and simple to use
Pros and Cons
  • "It is user-friendly and simple to use."
  • "The solution could be made cheaper. Machine learning and artificial intelligence should be introduced in the next release."

What is our primary use case?

The solution is being used for our ticketing system.

What is most valuable?

It is user-friendly and simple to use. 

What needs improvement?

The solution could be made cheaper. Machine learning and artificial intelligence should be introduced in the next release. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using ServiceNow for two years. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of the solution is good. Presently, ten thousand users are using the solution. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is easy. The deployment was done within a month. 

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate the solution an 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
Senior Desktop Analyst at Tech Mahindra
Real User
Flexible, reasonably priced, and great for handling support tickets
Pros and Cons
  • "ServiceNow is great. You can download the data into Excel and you can basically create reports. It's very flexible."
  • "Making a mobile version would be helpful."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution to support Airbus Helicopters.

It's great for handling support tickets and onboarding employees.

How has it helped my organization?

We have other facilities in the United States with teams in Herndon, Virginia, and Grand Prairie, Texas, and for networking, in Mobile, Alabama. By having our different specialists in different areas, we're able to leverage their expertise over a large geographical area.

What is most valuable?

They have these items called resolver groups that are quite useful, however, it's basically to assign tickets to various teams.

The onboarding of employees is very good.

It's great for handling new hardware requests or new user requests.

They offer standard templates. The more that you customize it, or add additional software requests, the more it becomes usable and powerful. 

The solution is stable.

The scalability is there if you need it.

My understanding is that the pricing is reasonable. 

ServiceNow is great. You can download the data into Excel and you can basically create reports. It's very flexible.

What needs improvement?

That features are already there, however, maybe they could have some tutorials or give more power to the users versus having specialist administrators doing things. There's a big knowledge base. There's a lot of know-how that's saved in there, however, actually allowing people to do their own thing is lacking a bit.

I know there are functionalities for using it on other platforms. However, specifically for iPhone or Android, if there's something where I'm walking around and working in different offices, if I'm able to look up information directly, instead of going back to my laptop, that would be ideal. Making a mobile version would be helpful.

It's pretty customized already. I don't think there's anything that would be an area to fix.

I know that I actually have the special panel for all the features that I use, like creating tickets, managing hardware. Anything that can be integrated into especially our other types of features, such as SCCM, Microsoft SCCM, being able to update hardware, instead of manually going inside there would be good.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for the last year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is pretty stable. The only thing is that it's a cloud version, and therefore, if your network is slow or non-responsive, then ServiceNow becomes slow and unresponsive. That's a network issue. That is not an application issue.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is easy to scale. If we wanted to add other facilities, it would be fairly easy to do. Something that we're going to be taking on in the next year or so is integrating with another facility in Mirabel, Quebec. They do commercial aircraft. We do civilian helicopters. Integrating with that team more will be beneficial. We have around 60 people using it right now.

How are customer service and support?

I personally have never had any issues where I had to raise it directly to ServiceNow. I cannot speak on the topic of support.

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

The company did use a different solution. It was not as integrated with the other parts of the company, which is why they switched.

How was the initial setup?

The company was using another product before. They implemented this, I would say, within six months. It's been in place for two years now and it's matured.

I was not there for the deployment.

We have one SRM, senior relationship manager, that basically maintains the digital workspace. He's in charge of updating the versions or deploying new features. There's one person that does that.

What was our ROI?

There are built-in surveys and we track those metrics, and the metrics have been positive for the last two years. There's been a great improvement.

Due to the fact that we're dealing with different subcontractors, we have a company that does the networking and we have a company that does the desktop hardware. If it's more application support or accounting specific, then it goes somewhere else. Being able to bridge between those different subcontractors is a major selling point.

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

The pricing is reasonable. In terms of extra costs, likely if a company was going to do integrations, they might have to buy the different modules, however, I'm not involved in that.

What other advice do I have?

I'm just a customer and an end-user.

I am currently up to date with the latest version.

I'd advise potential new seers that they'll get good asset management and be able to manage tickets. It's all straightforward and usable. In the past, I've used other products, and they're not that scalable. If you're working in a company that has multiple facilities, multiple countries, the best way to go is with ServiceNow.

I'd rate the solution at a nine 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
reviewer1423485 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
A lot of inherent complexity, but it is stable, powerful, and feature-rich
Pros and Cons
  • "ServiceNow is a very powerful tool that can perform a lot of different functions."
  • "There is inherent complexity with this tool because of the number of things that it can do."

What is our primary use case?

ServiceNow is helpdesk software that I have some experience with. This is not a solution that I deploy. Rather, I interact with it using hooks between it and NetBrain.

It is used for the creation and tracking of tickets and incidents, tasks, projects, and self-ordering. Our parent company uses ServiceNow for ordering and it has been utilized with a lot of different workflows. This is something that we never did but now that we've merged together, and we've merged our instances of ServiceNow, it means more of those self-service tech catalogs now in place and utilized.

How has it helped my organization?

As an end-user, I have not had any real problems with it. I use the capabilities that I have to and it's one of the tools that I have to use because that is where tickets are presented.

What is most valuable?

ServiceNow is a very powerful tool that can perform a lot of different functions.

What needs improvement?

There is inherent complexity with this tool because of the number of things that it can do.

For how long have I used the solution?

My company has been working with ServiceNow for close to 10 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a stable solution. There's very little that I'm aware of in terms of hiccups and complaints.

How are customer service and technical support?

As an end-user, I have not been in contact with technical support.

How was the initial setup?

We did have an on-premises solution until about a year and a half to two years ago, and now we're using the SaaS version. That changes features and then tools, and perhaps other things as well.

What other advice do I have?

ServiceNow is a very powerful tool and with power comes complexity. It's divided up well, and I have experience updating tickets in it. In my opinion, it can do a lot, although some people think that it should do a lot more.

I'm not convinced that it should be the source of truth for everything. Some people promote it as the source of truth, but in networking automation, there are multiple sources of truth. For example, Active Directory is your user source of truth. IPM is your IP source of truth. The ticketing system has access to a lot of things, but does it need to be, and should it be the source of truth for something? I don't think so.

I think that it should pull from other places and be a collection of sources of truth. It's not the source of truth for users, it uses users. It's not the source of truth for devices, as devices are managed elsewhere. However, some people try to force it to you be that source of truth. I think that following such advice can lead to trouble.

Again, it's a very complex system and you can make it do whatever you want. It's just a matter of getting it to react the way you want it to.

I would rate this solution a five 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
PeerSpot user
Project Manager, Manager of ITSM Consulting Team at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Allows us to implement a wide variety of processes for clients, including Scaled Agile Framework
Pros and Cons
  • "It actually has quite a wide list of modules and processes. Currently, we are implementing project management and Scaled Agile Framework for one of our customers."
  • "There are Virtual Task Boards in the tool in the latest releases. There are many of them in the Scaled Agile Framework. There is some room there for improvement. It's really quite promising but, at the same time, it could be improved and I believe it will be improved soon."

What is our primary use case?

We are an integrator. We help our clients to implement ServiceNow for their companies.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features generally depend on our client's needs, but most often it's some type of basic setup like incident management, request fulfillment, SLAs, problem management, change of management, and knowledge management.

In other cases, it can be something like an ITBM suite. Currently, we are implementing project management and Scaled Agile Framework for one of our customers.

It actually has quite a wide list of modules and processes.

What needs improvement?

There are Virtual Task Boards in the tool in the latest releases. There are many of them in the Scaled Agile Framework. There is some room there for improvement. It's really quite promising but, at the same time, it could be improved and I believe it will be improved soon.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is quite stable. It's actually a big platform with a lot of plugins and a lot of things being introduced in each version. Sometimes there is not enough information about releases. For example, right now we have an issue understanding what the roadmap is for the Scaled Agile Framework.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's very scalable. It's good, really good. I have experience working with other IT solutions like HPE/Micro Focus, and ServiceNow, in this regard, is all in the cloud. There are no issues thinking about the physical infrastructure. So it's very good.

Sometimes it limits you. For example, in CIS, they had a lot of issues working with a SaaS, but generally it is good.

How is customer service and technical support?

I haven't had a chance to check technical support myself, but my colleagues say it could be faster. But in comparison to my previous experience with HPE/Micro Focus, ServiceNow is the same. It's good but it could be better.

How was the initial setup?

When I was first assigned to this position and added to the team, and entered the ServiceNow world, this product and its use for clients were already ongoing. It was not new to the other members of the team. I was the newbie here. I checked out some training materials and I had some previous experience in the ITSM world. I just onboarded and started playing this role. It was pretty simple for me personally.

For the company, I can't comment on the initial setup because ServiceNow was here before me.

For the particular client we're working on, I joined the project last summer and it finished this summer. Before that, it had been ongoing for a year or year-and-a-half. But it was a big implementation, ten or 12 modules implemented.

In terms of the implementation strategy, there is most often a need in the client's company and they ask us to do a preliminary assessment and some onsite discovery. After the discovery, we build a prototype and finish the requirements-gathering. Then comes the implementation part which is mostly done through an Agile approach. After that there is testing on our side and user-acceptance testing on the client's side. Finally, it is released.

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

Speaking in light of my previous experience with HPE, at that time, around 2012 or so, if ServiceNow was a bit cheaper it would have had a good chance of our company choosing it at that time.

Now, ServiceNow is a leader and its pricing is quite good, quite competitive. If it were cheaper it would probably be better in this market niche.

Sometimes some plugins are not priced reasonably but, generally, the platform itself, its modules, are priced reasonably.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Long ago, when our company itself was choosing a platform, a solution for the company to support, there was a big analysis effort and investigation of what was on the market. Back then we chose HPE. But that was really long ago and it's not relevant to my activities and my experience currently.

What other advice do I have?

My advice would be not to try to implement it by yourself. You could spend a lot of time without any considerable outcome.

We have ten clients right now and some of them have 1,000 users, all together. They have 20 to 50 engineers.

Deployment and maintenance on the client's size and their requirements: how quickly they want the implementation done, and on how many people create tickets, etc. The basic team is five to seven people who implement Service Now. For support of the solution, it's a maximum of three to five people.

I would rate ServiceNow at about nine out of ten. One of the things to be improved is their transparency in working with partners. Being a partner of ServiceNow, sometimes it's not clear how we should check for new updates; for example, this Scaled Agile Framework, etc. Working with HPE was more transparent for me. I had good communication points to address questions, not on the support level but on a higher level, to get answers to questions quite quickly and informatively.

We are a large integrator with more than 20,000 IT engineers. We work with many vendors including HPE, Micro Focus, Oracle, and some dozen other vendors.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator.
PeerSpot user
it_user458997 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager of Helpdesk at Bloomin' Brands
Vendor
Provides one system of record and you can connect the dots all the way through the lifecycle.

What is most valuable?

For our company, it would be incident management with the ability to track and report on that. Showing trends and then tying that into problem management as well. Also completing the whole circle, so problem management and change management. Having one system of record that everything is all tied together and you can connect the dots all the way around through the lifecycle.

Being at the help desk, we see trends and incidence from which we can create a problem to track a larger issue because it's effecting more than one user or more than one location for our restaurants. From there, we run down root cause of what's actually causing this problem to happen. Then from that the developers will kick off change requests to permanently fix the problem. But if you don't have the incident management to replace or the ability to report and trend, then you never know that problem's happening because we have a really quick fix that we do all the time. So being able to see that trending and get ahead of the problems and get them out of the environment makes everyone's life easier.

How has it helped my organization?

From our perspective, it's the ability to customize it and provide the different platforms. A good example is that within our organization we have incident forms that are tailored to IT and we have incident forms that are tailored to other groups, like accounting supply chain. They're using the exact same incident form, but they're customizing the fields that show up based on their groups so that they get the experience and reporting they need out of the product, but we're all using one system of record and one form to do that in so we can report holistically.

The other part of that is from a customer and restaurant facing standpoint, we can build out those seamless pages, create custom portals for the restaurants, because obviously the IT view or the back end users view is not what a customer wants to experience. It lets us create that front end view for a customer to get what they need and still have that logic to the system for it to flow through and everything.

What needs improvement?

I think some of the areas for improvement are some of the features that get added sometimes and not a lot of help and resources get devoted to them. A good example is inside of my self-service portal, we use heavily utilizing the wizards that will actually walk users through a guided experience, asking questions, giving responses to lead them where they want to go because in the restaurant industry not everyone wants to fill out forms. They just want to be led by the hand. They're hired to run restaurants, not run computers. So, there's very little documentation on how to use them and how to build them. It's kind of one of the features that got put in but never really expounded upon because it's not been used a lot. So, we really taught ourselves how to use them.

The other one would be what I'm looking at now which is coaching loops. Very little documentation. Very little understanding of how it works. Again, learning it on my own because the book explains this is kind of the fields and what they do, but very little as far as actually using it as available. I would say sometimes they're great features, and they're great additions, but if there's not a lot of user adoption, then not a lot of documentation gets written for them.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been on ServiceNow for about four and a half, almost five years, and we've just upgraded to Geneva.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

I think the only issue we've had is our recent upgrade to Geneva went a little wonky. But I think that was partially our fault. We had gotten a little bit behind on patching Fuji and then jumped to Geneva Patch 5. I think there was items missed. Even though it should have been cumulative, I think we had some items that were missed in there.

The other issue we had is when we deployed ServiceNow, we started with domain separation. Mostly because the consulting company we used said that's the only way to do it. It probably shouldn't have been done, but that's not a reflection of the product as much as the consultants we used at the time.

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

We used Altiris. Maintaining Altiris servers was getting very expensive. They were hosted locally. We had a very old version of Altiris. We never kept up with the new version, so it never went to the cloud. So very old, very hard to maintain. The admin we had at the time was retiring. But probably the biggest standpoint was how limited Altiris was. You really could not customize it. If you wanted to build reporting, you had to have a sequel admin do it for you because there was no user interface for reporting. It was the system sped out the sequel queries that it was told to do, but you had to write them in sequel. So, it was not very user friendly.

How was the initial setup?

I think in some ways we probably bit off more than we should have chewed, but we needed the product to replace Altiris. We had to fill that gap because of everything it did. From a stability standpoint, it was probably on the verge of collapse. We had to put a product in place to take it's place.

What about the implementation team?

We worked with ServiceNow directly now, but during the implementation, we found a third party to do it for us. We were involved, but we also relied heavily on that third party consultant because Altiris had been the only thing we knew for so long that this was a complete change. It was our huge step forward.

What other advice do I have?

Don't look at ServiceNow as what it can do for whatever department you're in, but try to get some buy in higher up in the organization because the more foundation and different groups you can get into ServiceNow at the beginning, the easier it is for the adoption. It really can become something for the entire organization. Getting that buy in from the beginning helps it grow a little faster.

If you've got 5 different groups that will be in it from the beginning, then some of the choices you're going to make are going to be a little bit different and they're going to be a little more future planned than, "I just need this for me". So, it's probably the biggest advice I can give is try to plan for the future.

I've seen other products. I've seen some of the stuff that they can do. Really haven't seen one that can, at least in my mind, replace our ServiceNow for everything that we've put into it, everything that we've done. It would be a very hard thing to do.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
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Updated: March 2025
Buyer's Guide
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