BMC Helix ITSM Reviews

I'm a service management specialist and I'm in partnership with BMC.

I like the digital workplace, it's an appealing feature for me. 

One of the issues with the solution is the requirement to provide a lot of information in order to log a request. I'm not talking about end users, technicians or engineers need to provide too much information to initiate a work order or an incident. It doesn't flow; access should require minimal effort. They should consider using ITIL principles and not just IT. 

The initial setup required an engineer for configuration, to load data on the system. The datasheet form isn't user friendly, a client wouldn't be able to fill it in, a tech savvy person is required.

I like the tools BMC offers but it's very expensive.  The pricing model needs to be revisited.

BMC is definitely not for small businesses, especially those in Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. It's difficult to get small businesses onto BMC because of the cost. For functionality, I would give this solution an eight out of 10 but I have a serious problem with the pricing and that brings my rating down to a six.

Helix ITSM has several great features. One of them is the chatbot — the artificial intelligence solution that BMC has. Secondly, Digital Workplace Advanced is important for the end-users — it provides great flexibility. Also, the end-users can manage all requirements and all of the information that they need related to IT services. The chatbots are also integrated with this. The workflow solution is another great feature for the end-users, as part of the engine. It has the power to automatize several different tasks in the ITSM world.

In fact, BMC had a business workflow — this is a solution that is out of the ITSM environment. This solution helps you solve business-related problems. You can automatize a lot of activities related to human resources, finances, production, and so on. It's very useful, it's another feature to emphasize. The presence of BMC in the market of ITSM has been around for more than 20 years. The maturity of ITSM processes has been very good. I think it's excellent. In fact, over the past several years, BMC has begun changing the idea of interfaces for end-users, users of ITSM, and IT people.

Nowadays, the interface is very modern, clear, and practical. It's very easy to use. The user interface is one of the best features. Also, it has a very advanced model of reporting. It's very powerful when it comes to managing metrics, in order to manage APIs. This process is constantly improving. In this arena, I think BMC has very good solutions.

Some parts of the solution are using the old interface — the contracts and contract management part of the solution. It needs to mature a little further in order to become more user-friendly. BMC has been a leader for several years now. In fact, it's a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, along with ServiceNow. I believe BMC is actually on par with ServiceNow in terms of critical capabilities. For this reason, I don't see many areas for improvement.

BMC not only has ITSM solutions, but it also has solutions for asset management — they are really powerful. Discovery, for instance, is a very good solution. It complements ITSM because it's autodiscovery. It's very powerful in terms of discovering all assets connected to the network and the cloud. This capability not only shows all of your infrastructures and relationships in mass, but the connection with CMDB is very strong. It takes all of the information that has already been discovered and transfers it to CMDB. From an ITSM perspective, you can manage your CMDB and the construction of different services more efficiently because all of the information is updated and the relationships between assets are clear. 

When you have to use ITSM processes, you can assign incidents, requests, or changes for the right assets. For instance, in the case of a change in management, you can perform a very efficient impact analysis. This is another reason why Discovery is a very good complement to the ITSM solution. Of course, I am mentioning this as a complement to the ITSM environment, but all the solutions are related and work together very efficiently.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give BMC Helix ITSM a rating of eight.

The solution is for all IT management. It takes care of the day-to-day operations and customers' policies. The initial implementation was to start creating a knowledge base and capture information as it happened. Then by using that knowledge base analysis and see what trends are occurring within the systems.

The most valuable features I have found to be the activity logs. Additionally, the other features where you are able to continuously address issues and are able to annotate notes inside to convey them to the customer. The customer can read the notes and are able to know where you are in the procedures and process of fixing the problem for them. It has a good interactive piece for dialogue with customers where you do not have to interact with them personally but they can do it on their own just by going into that activity log. This is great for the customer to have the ability to find out how things are being progressively taken care of.

The reports need improvement, it is not a good functioning tool. No one in my organization seems to be able to use the reports properly. I think it is a dysfunction in the product because there has to be a more simplistic form for building those reports to allow the extrapolation of information for trend analysis and other operations. You want to be able to pull information from a variety of sources to see how you are providing support to the customer, this is what your performance base is. This is why those reports are a significant piece of the equation. You need to be able to produce those right now. People would rather create spreadsheets on their own and just thumb through all kinds of time-consuming tasks, why not use the actual databases that are there to produce that information.  

I have been using this solution for many years.

When updates come out I am very hesitant when they put out a patch or an update because it disrupts some operations or functionality that is important. It makes it harder for us to readjust the solution and have to start implementing things all over again because the patches are not properly vetted.

I have found the solution to be scalable. However, other competitors products such as ServiceNow are more robust and scalable. We have many people using the BMC solution in the organization, service managers, individual managers, problem manager, vendors, and individual tiers 0-3. The amount of people is needed as we service over 60 thousand people.

The tech support is not consistent. You might get a good person to help you out and actually knows what he is doing or you get somebody who is trying to figure out a solution on their own. You both are left trying to figure out a solution together because you get the feeling you do not have the expertise that you should have for the product. When you initially make the calls, you have to break down the issue to such a deep level of explanation when it should be simplistic for them to understand. This causes some difficulties for the customer. This type of inexperienced customer service devaluates the product, this needs to be improved.

The maintenance of the solution is overseen by a staff of approximately seven people.

I am not sure the exact price we pay for the solution but I know it is in the high seven-figure amount annually.

I was trying to get my organization to use ServiceNow because it is more cloud-based. I have seen several demos of ServiceNow and I like the features that it has. It is more intuitive, easier to implement, define roles and manage.

I would advise others to consider other options before choosing this solution such as ServiceNow. 

I rate BMC Helix ITSM a four out of ten.

We mainly use it for service requests and incident management. It is being used for all problem tickets and change requests. We are using the latest version. 

We find the incident management module the best. The reporting part is also useful. We use a feature called smart reporting, and it is very beneficial for us.

Its performance can be improved. Sometimes, there is a performance issue, and it is a little slow and difficult on the usage side. It would be beneficial for us if there is a lighter version of this solution. 

There is also a limitation on the number of columns and memory for extracting a report, and this functionality can be improved.

We would like to have better integration and UI in this solution. The user interface should be easy to navigate. Its integration with other tools, such as SharePoint or Jira, can also be improved, which would be beneficial for us.

In terms of new features, there should also be a mobile version. The desktop version is available, but the mobile version is not available, which is one of the challenges that our team has. For users who work on Remedy and who raise the ticket, it would also be very beneficial to have some chatbot features.

I have been using this solution for the past four years.

Its stability is good.

We have around 7,000 users.

Their support is sufficient and fine as of now. Our interaction is currently minimal. We generally use the community portal to contact the BMC team. We are also looking for other tools, and we are mostly connecting with the technical team.

We used a tool called HEAT. We were also using the VPN version of Remedy that had to be installed on a system. We were not using the web-based version of Remedy.

We migrated to this solution because it is available on the web, and it is easy to access. The previous one had to be installed on a system. If you wanted to raise a ticket and work on the ticket, the user had to raise a request for installation. There were a lot of other things that had to be taken care of before using the solution. That is the reason we moved to BMC Helix ITSM.

The initial setup was simple. It took around six months to one year.

We took the help of a vendor. For maintenance, we have a separate Remedy team. The maintenance of the cloud part is taken care by the vendor team.

It is not very expensive and not very cheap. It is somewhere in-between. Some of the features are more expensive. 

There are also additional costs. If you want to use most of the features, you need to pay more.

I would recommend this solution because it includes all the best practices of ITIL and ITSM used across the industry. It is a good product.

I would rate BMC Helix ITSM an eight out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution for individuals calling into the help desk to have a ticket created over the phone, which becomes an incident. If the incident gets upgraded then it becomes a problem and then they work on it.

The most valuable feature is knowledge management.

All products can be improved. For this solution, the customization could be improved.

BMC has its own community where we can go in and suggest ideas and changes to the products, which is great, but at times BMC is not very responsive. There have been suggestions that were submitted five years ago and still not delivered. BMC has indicated that it was in development.

They could be more responsive to feedback from their community board.

I have been working with BMC Solutions from Remedy since 1994.

I have used it since it was released.

This solution is stable, it's very good. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.

This solution is scalable and I think that it's the best that you can get. I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten.

The current project has 140 people, which excludes the users. There are approximately 20,000 users for this project. This site is quite large.

I have worked on sites that have a couple of hundred users to many thousands.

This solution is suitable for medium to large-sized companies.

The technical support is very good and I would rate it a nine out of ten.

At times, you have a critical issue and you need an answer very quickly. Even if it takes half an hour or a day to get an answer, it takes longer than you expect.

There is always room for improvement, although BMC has improved over the last couple of years.

I have worked with other competing products for integrations. I focus on BMC solutions.

The initial setup is complex. If you know what you are doing and what you want then it's straightforward. Most clients don't know what they want and it becomes complex.

I have worked with three or four consultants where you have small teams, and I have worked on larger teams where there is a huge undertaking to implement it.

I implement this solution for my clients.

BMC Helix is a marketing term. The name changed from BMC Remedy ITSM to BMC Helix a few years ago. It's also linked to BMC's CMDB, where they have an image of all of the assets in the company.

In BMC, you can do absolutely anything. You can customize, you can configure, and you can customize and develop pretty much anything.

It might take some time and it may have some consequences later on when you are upgrading and you want to install a newer version, especially when you are on-premises.

Other solutions may have a better BEB Cloud interface or better sales organization, but BMC is a trustworthy company and they keep their promises. Some other competitors make promises but don't always honor them.

My advice to others would be the following:

1. Get a support contract directly with BMC. 
2. Pick your BMC partner or reseller.
3. Get in-house resources and knowledge, and train your employees, or employ someone with the BMC Remedy skills.
4. Get external contractors to top it up with contractors and consultants from the partner.
5. Set up a good project team that communicates with BMC contract partners, your employees, and the contractor.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

The solution supports our supporting processes. My responsibilities include reporting on the services we offer to end-users, primarily through channels like email. I focus on coordinating arrangements for the services we provide.

The valuable feature for me is that it's a tool that allows me to track processes right from the initial user request. It helps in updating the solution throughout the workflow. I use it to gather information about the people involved, track time, and more.

Working with numerous processes can be complex, and the processes are not always transparent in the solution. At times, users may not be aware of the meaning behind various processes when receiving certain information. The most frequently requested change for the solution is integrating the latest technology to facilitate interactive resolution.

I have been using the solution for the past 20 years.

The solution is stable. I have several servers working together in a cluster.

The solution is scalable.

We haven't needed customer support extensively. However, we did encounter some delays, waiting for several hours to receive a satisfactory answer. Fortunately, there have been no issues with the technical components.

I have worked with SentinelOne and ServiceNow.

The solution is best-suited for medium-sized companies. I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use Helix to manage incidents and requests. 

The user experience could be better. 

I have used Helix for one year.

Helix is stable.

Helix is scalable.

Setting up Helix is complex, and it takes about a day to deploy. 

It's a help desk software. It is an ITSM system. We are an MSP. We use it in-house and then we use it for a bunch of our other customers.

It's a stable, reliable product.

The solution can scale and expand well.

It's one of the top solutions on the market for ITSM capabilities. 

We used to use it and we don't want to use it anymore. We're actually now replacing it.

The interface isn't that great. Also, it just doesn't integrate with as many systems as ServiceNow.

The initial setup is complex. 

I've been using the solution for 11 years or so. 

The stability is very, very good. I'd rate it four out of five in terms of reliability. It doesn't crash or lag on us. There aren't bugs or glitches. 

It is highly scalable. We have lots of users. We've never had a problem expanding it. It's not a problem.

Their support is not really good yet. Due to our scale, when we work with their support, it's not very good.

Neutral

We are actually on the way to phasing this solution out. We are replacing it with ServiceNow. ServiceNow integrates with more solutions. 

The initial setup is pretty complex. 

We had the competency to handle the setup in-house. 

The cost is high and going up. Part of the reason why we're changing products is that the pricing actually went up recently by a lot.

We're an MSP. We resell it for BMC amongst other things.

This solution is a SaaS, a Software as a Service, solution. 

It's probably the second-best solution out there. It's just that, as an MSP, we just need to work with a bunch of other toolsets. When that happens, then you run into more support issues and run into more integration issues. That said, I would still say it's the second-best ITSM solution out there.

I'd rate the solution five out of ten.