As a developer, I work on ServiceNow for HR solutions and a few other Service Portal functions.
Provides a centralized, fully managed, solution with everything in one place
Pros and Cons
- "There are features included in the new release for intelligent software, like the chatbot. For HR services, the HR agent which is in that chatbot has been fantastic."
- "There are a few things that it needs to improve, like automation of most things out-of-the-box. For example, when it comes to cloud management, we are still going with manual intervention. Instead of that, if we had an out-of-the-box feature available, that would be great."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
Other solutions are integrated with different applications and tools, but ServiceNow is quite centralized, fully managed, and you can find everything in one place.
What is most valuable?
There are features included in the new release for intelligent software, like the chatbot. For HR services, the HR agent which is in that chatbot has been fantastic. There have been advancements in ServiceNow.
It gives you all the APIs out-of-the-box and you can directly write code with them.
What needs improvement?
There are a few things that it needs to improve, like automation of most things out-of-the-box. For example, when it comes to cloud management, we are still going with manual intervention. Instead of that, if we had an out-of-the-box feature available, that would be great.
Also, the first time we looked at the Service Portal, it was quite hard to understand its interface. People were looking for things, like the email functionality in Service Portal. That was not available and there were other things in Service Portal that were not up to the mark.
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For how long have I used the solution?
More than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's stable and it's improving. You can't compare ServiceNow with any other tool.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I have seen many changes in it. Previously, it was limited in its functionality, only for configuration management and the like, but now you can see it has many applications in it.
The scalability depends on how you utilize the tool.
As for the number of users on ServiceNow, I have been involved in a project where it was to be utilized by almost two million users. That was the biggest project I have worked on. There were internal users and outside users.
There were issues during the migration. They have certain locations, certain countries with different data, with different languages. We usually do the migration according to the country in which it's operating. We were doing certain migrations and, all of a sudden, when it reached a level above one million users, the nodes were very full and ServiceNow was unable to respond. We thought maybe it was due to our scripts. We checked everything first but it was working fine in the dev environment and the test environment. But when it came to production, there was a big risk and a big impact on the business.
We reached ServiceNow, even though it was not business hours. They said they had certain things on a low infrastructure and they told us that they would be migrated to a higher infrastructure and that we would have access again. We implemented it on a Sunday morning and we thought it would be working but on Monday we had a huge number of emails and calls and it was a day full of pressure. But we were able to solve it and get it back within an hour.
How are customer service and support?
Usually, we don't reach out to ServiceNow until we know the problem is not in our hands. As a gold partner, our company has access to on-call support and direct access to ServiceNow's experts. We are able to contact people there, at the business level, and get things done.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We recently had an application tool that was supporting certain tasks in HR case-management. That tool has certain capabilities but it's not up to the mark when you compare it with ServiceNow. It provides you details about the task, but it does not have the basic functionalities like chat and email. It has to be integrated with other tools for those things.
How was the initial setup?
As a developer and partner, most of the time the setup is customized. Right now, I'm working on a module called "Ask your HR." There are different sets of modules available and inside each module there are different sets of reports and functionalities, such as drag-and-drop, etc. It's full of customization. Whatever you're building, it has to be done from scratch. It's not like the functionality is available out-of-the-box.
We do follow certain documentation and steps. Whenever we do a migration or implementation, we check for the available system capacity. We have a team that allows us to do testing on it and see what kinds of things can be done, or how we can migrate directly to ServiceNow.
We usually don't go with a full-fledged migration, we do it in phases, Wave 1, Wave 2, and Wave 3. Each wave has certain things in it. We will plan it accordingly and, once the wave is successful, we'll do regression testing of certain scenarios and check whether it is up to the mark or not.
What other advice do I have?
Back in 2011, BMC Remedy was at a peak and people were focusing on it. But starting in 2014 and 2015, ServiceNow came on and its competitors were watching. It went from about ten to 20 percent of the market to almost 40 percent of the market.
I would rate ServiceNow at nine out of ten. It is all about improvement, about getting things from your legacy system to the latest one.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
IT Systems Analyst Lead with 10,001+ employees
Trend reporting helps us focus on issues that come up, but better workflow would help
Pros and Cons
- "I like the reporting aspect of it. It helps us know where we stand regarding the types of issues we're receiving... It also shows us trends. That enables us to possibly predict an issue that might come up in the future as well as what is happening right now. We will like that feature. With it, we can either avoid certain issues or know where we need to focus more regarding the service we provide."
- "I would like the reporting aspect to be better, including the graphs. It could have some way for us to easily to export to a csv or spreadsheet so that if a graph cannot be provided by ServiceNow itself, we would be able to use other applications to create them. Also, if there was a feature that enabled us to interact with end users directly from ServiceNow, like an instant-messaging type of feature, that would be great."
What is our primary use case?
We use ServiceNow mostly for our IT ticketing business. Recently we set up the Request portion of ServiceNow and we're using it as well.
How has it helped my organization?
It enables us to interact with our end users and helps us resolve whatever incident they might be having. We get incident reports and it helps us get set up with trends so that we'll get resolutions to those incidents.
What is most valuable?
I like the reporting aspect of it. It helps us know where we stand regarding the types of issues we're receiving, the types of incidents that come in.
It also shows us trends. That enables us to possibly predict an issue that might come up in the future as well as what is happening right now. We like that feature. With it, we can either avoid certain issues or know where we need to focus more regarding the service we provide.
What needs improvement?
I would like the reporting aspect to be better, including the graphs. It could have some way for us to easily to export to a csv or spreadsheet so that if a graph cannot be provided by ServiceNow itself, we would be able to use other applications to create them.
Also, if there was a feature that enabled us to interact with end users directly within ServiceNow, like an instant-messaging type of feature, that would be great.
Another nice feature would be a way to easily to assign tickets and incidents to the techs who will be working on them. That could be better. Other than that, the system seems to be working just fine.
For how long have I used the solution?
Three to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've had no issues with the stability of the solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We are okay with the scalability.
How are customer service and technical support?
I would rate technical support at seven or eight out of ten. They are pretty much on time. They're willing to help.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
When I started with the company, we outsourced our issues. When we brought IT in-house, ServiceNow was the first system we used.
How was the initial setup?
The setup was straightforward, easily understandable with the training we did. There might have been some kinks but everything was worked out in due time. It was fine.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
There were a few other options we evaluated but I don't remember the specific product names.
What other advice do I have?
Learn anything you need to know direclty from ServiceNow. It's a good product. I can't really knock it. Go ahead and give it a try. As long as it fits your environment, I think it's a fine product.
I would rate ServiceNow at seven out of ten. I would like to see a little more automation. It may just be the type of license we have which doesn't give us full automation, but that would be one of the things that I would like in ServiceNow. That would make things easier for both the techs and the end users. In addition, I would like to see a better workflow setup within ServiceNow.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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January 2025
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ServiceNow Engineer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The ability to create applications that follow a standard workflow is key for us.
Valuable Features
I would say the ability to create applications that follow a standard workflow as well as record producers. We handle a lot of requests from our entire university. The biggest thing is giving our users a service catalog with a bunch of simple items, most of them are record producers, some of them need a workflow, just allowing them to go in and very simply submit request. For us that's probably the most valuable feature.
Room for Improvement
They've gotten to a pretty good place with where they are right now. I think a lot of it is going to be that citizen developer, making things a little bit easier to interface with. I really like the new rest messaging they put in there that allows for much easier integrations. I like most of the new application stuff and the IDE. I'd say from here, just smoothing out that whole IDE development process, making it easier to make changes to global in the IDE if that's where they really want us. Some improvements are probably needed there but I don't have anything massive on my list that ServiceNow needs to do.
Use of Solution
I've personally used it for about four years.
Stability Issues
I had no issues. When there is potential for a downtime, they always email me and let me know. Even when I get those emails, I've experienced mild hiccups but beyond that, I've never been locked out for more than maybe 30 seconds in 4 years.
Scalability Issues
When we started, we had about 35-40 IT folks inside of ServiceNow, plus probably about a thousand end-users logging in for self-service. Now we've probably about quadrupled that at this point and run into very little snags. I would say the biggest thing with scalability for us from a ServiceNow perspective is just make sure your user data matches whatever you're using elsewhere. We use single sign on and we need to make sure that the user data in ServiceNow matches that so that users can actually get in when they're supposed to get in.
Customer Service and Technical Support
It's mostly good. I would say there had been times where it's taking a long time for a resolution. Sometimes that's probably just due to the fact that whatever I'm submitting is not that important. I'll happily admit that.
I've had some issues that have taken four to five months to get fixed. Again, we're not talking the show stoppers. When I needed something, I've had probably two cases in the last few years where it's just been absolutely integral, like I'd get an answer right now. They were pretty good in those situations.
Other Advice
I would tell you that for me and for what our business uses, I highly recommend it, but that you should look at their business case and see if you need a product as fully-featured as ServiceNow is because it comes at a cost. Depending on what your needs are, it's possible to look at other products. There are a lot of similar products out there. ServiceNow is probably not the cheapest but if you have a specific set of needs particularly the ease of building applications, request forms, stuff I mentioned earlier, I think it's the best product on the market.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Program Manager at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We initially got on board because it's a single system of record, and we're trying to centralize a lot of different apps.
What is most valuable?
We initially got on board because it's a single system of record, and we're trying to centralize a lot of different apps. It's enabled us to decommission a number of different systems that we were using such as incident change, problem management, asset management, financial etc. and it's enabled us to pull them all together so now we can develop an entire portal inside of ServiceNow. We just enabled it last month, to bill out catalog items and we have been able to use the financial element to then cross bill all to our lines of business, so it's been huge success for us so far.
How has it helped my organization?
There's are a lot of benefits, and it depends on our audience. In the department I work in, Technology Portfolio Business Management, the biggest benefit was the ability to do asset management in a centralized place and to do the financial elements of that together. I also work with the Infrastructure Team and their key element right now was to centralize incident problem and change and build those functions out of the company. We're now expanding it to another audience which is our global Network Operations Center, and for them the biggest benefit is going to be a centralized dashboard of all their event management. Then we have another infrastructure team that would say the biggest benefit is probably the business process mapping element and the ability when there is an incident to be able to drill down and understand exactly where those problems are in the environment.
What needs improvement?
It's so new to us, everything is shiny and everything works well so it's hard to state that right now. We are pretty much loving everything, especially at Knowledge 16 where we got all kinds of new ideas to expand our footprint in the company. I'd say we don't have a lot of negatives, quite yet. There's a few little limitations that we run into with each of our implementations but they're very minor. Drill down capabilities and reports maybe or I think one of the bigger ones we ran into with our financial management implementation was that there weren't enough layers in the hierarchy to do all the split costing that we were trying to do but we worked through it. We just managed it a different way. Part of it was how we did it beforehand and trying to bring that in versus what ServiceNow says is the best practice, so we're still adapting.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using Geneva in-house for about six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's been beautiful. We spun the thing up as soon as we signed the contract. Right away they asked us what they names were. We had development tests and production instances. I can't speak to how fast it was bit to was pretty quick. We've not had any system interruptions whatsoever. It's been available 24/7.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We had some homegrown tools, and for incident management itself we had a multi tenant instance with a vendor called Compucon. We shared an instance which wasn't going well, so we brought it in house and then decommissioned our internal apps.
How was the initial setup?
It was incredibly easy. We had the vanilla version and then we used a professional services vendor to kind of help us weed through what was there, to help us understand it, do some initial workflow set up, so it was very simple.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Our current challenge, because it's a little bit of a rub right now is we're going through re-negotiations on contract because absolutely you're going through the big sales pitch, it can do everything at a cost. We were given all of it, and we purchased a small amount and now we're saying, "Oh yeah, we want to do that." Well, more fees for that, more fees for that. So it's been a real challenge to understand what that pricing structure looks like.
That's one thing how they bill off of nodes and CI's and stuff for some of the capabilities and then we've had a challenge with. Getting to a steady state with our IT users, understanding what capabilities they can truly have with the matrix that was provided to us, and then given a sufficient amount of time after go-live to really reconcile and get to a steady state before we go through and re-calibrate the contract to include whatever. So that's an active conversation that's happening right now but we're working with some great people so we're confident we'll get through it.
What other advice do I have?
So far the people we've been working with are great. The system is available all the time, and we have high hopes for the single system of record concept where everything is linked together. We love the user experience concept that we're starting to roll out. That's a huge piece for us as our big disconnect from our business slash end users in IT, the way they communicate, throw things over the fence. We see this as a great opportunity to kind of bridge that gap and kind of bring both players together.
One of the reasons we're moving over financial management in addition to system of record is we use VMWare and we're shutting down for very specifically to that container or that tool. I think we're paying VMware three, four, or five times what we're paying with ServiceNow so, we have a huge desire to get off that in short order plus we're already seeing more features in ServiceNow for value add then what we had in VMWare.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Technical Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Streamlines task tracking, enhances communication transparency, and facilitates efficient issue resolution, making it a valuable tool for organizational workflow management
Pros and Cons
- "It facilitates the monitoring of major incidents and provides insights into the effort expended to resolve each incident."
- "It should include information on navigating various user interfaces for creating diverse requests directed to different teams."
What is our primary use case?
When we need to request a task from another team at my client's organization, we typically submit a request in ServiceNow. We provide all the necessary details through the ServiceNow platform, and any communication related to the request is documented in the form of comments. This approach ensures transparency by recording what was requested, actions taken by the assigned person, and the time taken to resolve the request. Using ServiceNow, we can easily track the progress of tasks, review the history of actions, and assess the workload of a specific individual over a given period, be it a week or a month.
What is most valuable?
It proves invaluable in tracking significant incidents within your work environment. It facilitates the monitoring of major incidents and provides insights into the effort expended to resolve each incident. This capability adds substantial value by allowing a comprehensive understanding of the incident resolution process and the associated resource allocation.
What needs improvement?
It should include information on navigating various user interfaces for creating diverse requests directed to different teams. Enhancing usability involves providing easy access to interfaces tailored for different types of requests across teams.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with it for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is proven to be reliable; we have not encountered any issues with it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have nearly one hundred to one hundred fifty users.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is relatively straightforward.
What other advice do I have?
It's effective, indeed. If you aim to monitor the number of issues you're handling and wish to understand the effort required to resolve them, this serves as an excellent ticketing tool. Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
UNIX and DevOps Team Leader at ALEXBANK
A highly stable solution that can integrate with other products to automate workflows
Pros and Cons
- "ServiceNow is one of the few easiest platforms you can integrate with products like Ansible to automate your workflows."
- "The solution’s user interface could be improved and given a better design."
What is our primary use case?
We use ServiceNow for help desks.
What is most valuable?
ServiceNow is one of the few easiest platforms you can integrate with products like Ansible to automate your workflows.
What needs improvement?
The solution’s user interface could be improved and given a better design.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using ServiceNow for more than three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
ServiceNow is a stable solution, and I haven't experienced any downtime with it.
I rate ServiceNow ten out of ten for stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Around 500 to 800 users from the IT team and some of the business teams in our organization use ServiceNow.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I rate ServiceNow an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
TM at Tech Mahindra Limited
A versatile platform with efficient workflow automation and extensive customization capabilities that streamlines business processes, enhances collaboration, and offers comprehensive IT service manage
Pros and Cons
- "It's a straightforward and effective approach that minimizes the need for extensive explanations."
- "It should enhance its offerings by providing the chance to obtain course certifications at an affordable fee."
What is our primary use case?
I have been exploring the wireless designer service on ServiceNow.
How has it helped my organization?
Although verbal explanations may be challenging, I can provide detailed comments and notes in the code. This facilitates collaborative learning in the catalog domain, making understanding various efforts and products simpler.
What is most valuable?
It's a straightforward and effective approach that minimizes the need for extensive explanations. It streamlines business processes, enhances efficiency, and fosters collaboration through its comprehensive platform, offering notable advantages in IT service management, automation, and customizable applications.
What needs improvement?
It should enhance its offerings by providing the chance to obtain course certifications at an affordable fee. The functionality of the mobile application is still not entirely clear or optimized. The UI of the mobile application needs improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with it for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It provides good stability. I would rate it eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The technology is growing rapidly. I would rate its scalability capabilities ten out of ten.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was fairly straightforward. I would rate it nine out of ten.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The cost is quite high. I would rate it ten out of ten in terms of pricing.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate it ten 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.
Senior Services Manager at a tech services company with self employed
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
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Service now has the facility to store the asset management system and if there is an facility to integrate with the server monitoring tool then it will add more benefits for the product.