BMC FootPrints Service Core vs Espressive Barista comparison

BMC and Espressive are both solutions in the Help Desk Software category. BMC is ranked #31, while Espressive is ranked #18 with an average rating of 8.0. BMC holds a 1.0% mindshare in HDS, compared to Espressive’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of BMC users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Espressive users who would recommend it.

BMC FootPrints Service Core

Read 10 BMC FootPrints Service Core reviews

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347 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Espressive Barista

Read 9 Espressive Barista reviews

1,361 Views
272 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

BMC FootPrints Service Core

Espressive Barista

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

BMC FootPrints Service Core and Espressive Barista are IT service management solutions. BMC FootPrints stands out in flexibility and integration, while Espressive Barista’s superior AI-driven automation appeals to those prioritizing advanced technology.

Features: BMC FootPrints Service Core offers customizable workflows, advanced reporting tools, and extensive integration capabilities, making it ideal for complex IT environments. Espressive Barista provides natural language processing, impressive automation capabilities, and seamless integration, particularly with platforms like ServiceNow, enhancing efficiency in service management.

Room for Improvement: BMC FootPrints could enhance its AI capabilities and improve user interface aspects to compete more directly with AI-focused solutions. Additionally, optimizing mobile access would benefit remote users. Espressive Barista could improve documentation for advanced feature utilization, expand the range of self-service scenarios it fully supports, and decrease initial deployment complexity for non-technical users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: BMC FootPrints Service Core offers both on-premise and cloud deployment options with comprehensive support and documentation, making it versatile for varied IT setups. Espressive Barista, a predominantly cloud-based solution, boasts rapid deployment aided by AI assistance, which facilitates minimal setup time but may rely heavily on self-service, potentially limiting appeal to those preferring traditional human support.

Pricing and ROI: BMC FootPrints Service Core utilizes a modular pricing model, providing cost control and adjustable ROI based on business requirements. While Espressive Barista has higher initial costs due to its advanced AI features, it promises substantial long-term ROI by improving efficiency and reducing operational costs. The primary contrast lies in BMC’s initially budget-friendly approach versus Barista’s long-term ROI potential through automation.

To learn more, read our detailed BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Espressive Barista Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Espressive Barista

August 2025

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Helped 865,384 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

BMC FootPrints Service Core

Ranking in Help Desk Software

31st

Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)

30th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Espressive Barista

Ranking in Help Desk Software

18th

Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)

17th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

AI-Powered Chatbots (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of BMC FootPrints Service Core is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Espressive Barista is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

reviewer1765752

System Engineer at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

A flexible, comprehensive, integrated IT service and asset management platform with good technical support

We use BMC FootPrints Service Core to manage network issues, infrastructure issues, software issues, and ERP. We also use it to manage our facility. So, we do some work orders and also use it as an extra ticketing system Technical support is good. It would be better if it were more…

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Jim Lobao

Senior Manager for End User Support Services at Five9

Has helped enhance our support ability, reduced our resolution time, and reduced our service desk costs

Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement. We haven't yet found anything that resembles true AI that can learn autonomously without human intervention. However, Barista does help us identify and address some of these areas, allowing my team to step in and create intents and responses to questions. When a user asks a question that Barista doesn't immediately understand, we can recognize the pattern, capture it, and link it to a common intent. This is highly beneficial for acquiring such data, but it's a reactive approach and still requires curation. Natural language processing still has some way to go. One of our challenges is that our internal employees haven't yet adopted a natural way of interacting with Barista. Getting people to be concise and to the point, rather than being verbose as if they were interacting with a human, has been an ongoing challenge. While they may feel comfortable being conversational in Slack, expecting a human-like response, Barista is a different entity. Barista isn't interested in their recent vacation; it just wants to know they're locked out of their account. So, some users may assume Barista understands their intent when they say, "I'm back from vacation and locked out of my account." Barista, however, may interpret this as a request for the holiday schedule. Therefore, we're gradually educating our users to adapt their communication style for better success with Barista. Conversely, we desire Barista to adapt its behavior based on the interaction, the language used, and the way people communicate. I wholeheartedly desire an AI that can continuously learn and adapt to our organization's evolving needs. This is the most challenging aspect, as it involves understanding our organization's terminology, procedures, and toolsets. We've made significant progress in this area. However, from an NLP standpoint, we still face challenges with our nearly 3,000 Slack channel users, each with their unique communication styles. People ask questions in various ways, and sometimes there are misunderstandings. They want to interact with us naturally. However, we still struggle with natural language processing. People don't always realize that the bot is a virtual agent designed to be concise and efficient. Sometimes, less is more. It's been a difficult transition for people to grasp that they're conversing with a virtual agent, not a human. They still expect human-like interactions, such as discussing their weekend or holidays or simply pasting screenshots of errors. However, the bot can't interpret screenshots. If they provide the error code and some context about the application, the bot can better understand the issue. So, the key challenge is bridging the gap between human expectations and the bot's capabilities in terms of natural interaction.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the fact that FootPrints is a relational database, so every item in the database can be linked to another. This helps create history and audit trails for each CI."

"Implemented system-wide process for approving and tracking "employee move" requests for over 15,000 employees."

"I have used Tier II BMC support a few times. They were very responsive and recreated my environment in their lab to support me."

"Ability to auto-generate email messages, process email messages, and approvals."

"The discovery feature is very flexible."

"We can track issues easier and run reports on issues to see if there are patterns."

"We have found the reports and the lockdown on a ticket valuable, so only one person can update issues."

"It has helped the help desk team. We get our tickets in and are able to support our customers, the end-users, with this solution."

More BMC FootPrints Service Core pros

"The most valuable feature is its scalability."

"When it comes to neutral language processing and conversational AI, it's very good, very solid... We all have different ways of speaking or writing in English and the application does a very solid job of recognizing what's being asked regardless of how it's being asked."

"Our developers have used the Barista Control Center to extend the platform by adding content, and they've found it fairly easy to do and manage"

"We have the ability to alter phrases, create new phrases, or enhance phrases, or change paths. From the dashboard, we are able to get a lot of information we need about what people are asking, where they are dropping off from conversations, and where they do not get the information they need."

"With respect to its natural language processing capabilities, it recognizes things that you wouldn't think it would recognize. Even in cases where it doesn't, it's pretty easy to go in and make the adjustments that are needed."

"Its ability to recognize phrases has gotten smarter over time."

"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."

"I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams."

More Espressive Barista pros

Cons

"The pricing could be a little lower and the product should cover more iTel versions."

"Hyphens are not allowed in the quick search bar. This has created a problem in our environment where we use hyphens in our asset names."

"The workflow should be made to be more user-friendly. It should also have more granular scalability."

"It would be better if it were more user-friendly. The reporting part in the version we have is a little complicated. It takes too long to build and report. It would also be better if there were another way to manage notifications."

"We need more customizable reporting functionality. We could also use more collaboration of service desk tickets. This will allow for two departments to share the same information, track the progress of the total task scope no matter how complex the request is."

"It is pretty clunky and not very intuitive. Even though I have used it for many years, I don't think it is a very good ITSM platform in general. In the telecom space, a lot of telco providers use this solution, but from my perspective, it is not very user friendly. It is a bit more laborious. There are still too many human touchpoints. There can be a little bit more automation. It would also be good to integrate it with other tools. Integration is quite difficult, especially in the telco space."

"It would be nice if they added the ability to go directly to a form via a deep link URL."

"Reporting could be improved along with the option to create more fine tuned reports and to create specific fields for each type of ticket."

More BMC FootPrints Service Core cons

"Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement."

"I would like to see the continued expansion of all of the automation capabilities."

"The knowledge management could definitely be improved."

"The reports provided by the solution are not customizable."

"My only comment would be if they wanted to use this as an IT service management tool, maybe they could think about Barista making tickets and having change management and problem management capabilities."

"What would make things easier is more detail, out of the box, about what is helping out of the box. We're struggling a little bit to get that data. We want more information about what Barista has brought in that the employees are using, out of the box. We want more visibility into the things that we ourselves haven't done the interaction for."

"Expressive Barista could improve by adding native integration with WhatsApp, one of the top communication channels in South Africa. When we're trying to sell Barista to customers, we have to tell them that the solution doesn't have out-of-the-box support for WhatsApp. We can develop it, but then we need to have a conversation about how much that will cost."

"Although they've done some work on their metrics dashboard, there is some fine-tuning to do for people that just want to go in there at a glance and see their metrics."

More Espressive Barista cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution has good pricing."

"Our costs are well over $250,000."

"Cost was on par with other service desk products, and well below Remedy, while still being a BMC product."

"The licensing for FootPrints is a perpetual license with an annual support fee."

"User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant value from it."

"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."

"The solution is affordable."

"The price for the licensing is fair."

"The pricing isn't overly burdensome. It's going to be interesting to see how new models come in with new capabilities but, as it is, as a base system, it's pretty good."

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Top Industries

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Computer Software Company

48%

Retailer

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Espressive?

The most valuable feature is its scalability.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Espressive?

Espressive has been very accommodating in trying to meet our needs and adapt to our current situation. User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant ...

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What needs improvement with Espressive?

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Compared 21% of the time

Inbenta AI Chatbot vs Espressive Barista

Compared 10% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IT Service Management (ITSM)

August 2025

Download BMC FootPrints Service Core product report

Buyer's Guide

Espressive Barista

August 2025

Download Espressive Barista product report

Also Known As

FootPrints Service Core

No data available

Overview

FootPrints Service Core integrates IT service and asset management for end-to-end business services, and it's easy to install, use, and support. With configurable capabilities that streamline service delivery, FootPrints improves customer satisfaction and IT's reputation with your business users.

BMC

Barista, Espressive’s innovative virtual support agent (VSA) platform, takes on the role of the service agent, bringing the best of human experience with the best of artificial intelligence. Leveraging a proprietary and domain-specific large language model (LLM), the Employee Language Cloud, as well as integration with generalized LLMs, Barista automates resolution of employee questions, issues, and requests with personalized experiences that result in employee adoption of 80 to 85% and reduced help desk call volume of 50% to 70%.

Espressive

Sample Customers

Cast & Crew

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Espressive Barista

August 2025

Free Report: BMC FootPrints Service Core vs. Espressive Barista

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