ServiceNow Reviews

We use it for ITSM and ITBM.

The area where we have benefited a lot is that, initially, it was very difficult to have end-to-end visibility into what was happening. We didn't have any kind of top-down or bottom-up approach to CMDB and ITSM processes across it. We were able to establish that with ServiceNow. Our other ITSM models are pretty dependent on CMDB elements, so that gives an overall picture of what is happening and where it is happening.

• Request module
• Orchestration
• The PPM Module is pretty important in our organization

The workflow is something we use on a day-to-day basis. It's pretty handy the way it is in ServiceNow. 

As our ServiceNow implementation focuses on Healthcare domain which is highly regulated , Hence we are unable to follow the full agile way to develop/implement application enhancement or new requirements , Hence we follow a hybrid delivery model where  we have integrated following servicenow modules Demand-Requirement-agile Developement- Test Management -Defect Management- Change Managementto bring our releases/changes in a regular basis , enables us to practice CIP & also helps us in having an end to end tracebility.

Also, in the Service Portal, use of Angular JS gives a very good look & feel & a lot can be done with OOB widgets - By modifying existing widget which is pretty simple, We can leverage a lot on top of it. 

Finally, I also like the architecture for collaborating between business logic and client interaction on our client interfaces.

For healthcare, which is a pretty audited environment, there are no concrete solutions for digital signatures, apart from our license with Adobe, so it requires orchestration. That is one area for improvement.

Apart from that, initially, we struggled with financial forecasting and financial management in the PPM module. That needs improvement along with the IntegrationHub which came out in a recent release. It's still in its initial stages. That could grow into a more solid solution that could be more helpful.

It's pretty much a stable product.

It has good scalability.

There is a version upgrade every year, which ServiceNnow pushes, so it remains pretty scalable if you remain pretty close to out-of-the-box. It becomes less scalable if you go in a direction where you want to use ServiceNow as the platform and build your own solution with complex logic behind it. Then, that's an issue.

I would rate the support they provide us, at above three out of five. If they do not come up with a solution or our request is out of the scope of their support, they do help us with a direction for how to get it done.

To start with, we wanted a global planning platform for all our ITSM activity, throughout the business, for internal IT. That's the reason we started migrating ITSM from different groups to ServiceNow. We did some homework on that, such as what was the market position of ServiceNow and how we could integrate with other third-party applications. After doing that analysis we came up with the ServiceNow as our option.

The setup, on a technical basis, was not that difficult. But if I want to involve different businesses into using change management, it becomes a challenge to understand the process and implement it on a platform which is standard for everyone. So it's not really the technical aspect, it's more the procedural aspect.

It took us about eight months to roll out ITSM. But after that, we have had other instances where we use a custom solution, out-of-scope applications for our customer service area, and we were able to implement it within three months.

Initially, the deployment was done by a solution partner and, to be honest, they came up with some functions that activated a lot of things which were not needed. But at that moment, it was very necessary for us to quickly jump into the ITSM module and make it available for everyone.

Later on, we realized that there were many things implemented which were not needed. Many approaches were customized but were not required. For example, Incidents is the table where we are currently doing requests, and that was introduced by the solution partner. But when we involved request-management with Incidents, we somehow missed out on a lot of process automation. There is a powerful workflow with this solution and you can do a lot of process automation, depending on different services. 

We looked at 

• BMC Remedy vs ServiceNow
• Micro Focus Service Manager vs ServiceNow
• JIRA vs ServiceNow
• and Cherwell vs ServiceNow.

You can get the most out of ServiceNow if you align your processes more towards the out-of-the-box solution, and not over-customize it to create a solution.

We have 3,000 users hosted on it but not everyone has write-access to the system. There are users who are end users who get Portal access to manage their tasks. Apart from that, there are a few fulfillers who are using the write-access: the support staff, such as the change manager or change coordinator. And then we have admins.

In terms of extent of use, currently, we have more than one instance of ServiceNow. We have three different instances for three different areas, and they have their own sets of uses.

Maintenance is mostly outsourced to a vendor who provides elemental and entry support. We are keeping more of the architectural and solution-designing work in-house.

I would rate ServiceNow at eight out of ten. It could be a ten if we had a more central way of connecting ServiceNow with different systems. They have taken initiative with the IntegrationHub and I'm really looking forward to that. Also, virtual assistance is something that has started, but we have so many requirements regarding intelligent agents being integrated with it. I'm looking forward to that. If ServiceNow rolled those solutions into it, it would enhance our end-user experience and I could probably rate it a ten.

We are consultants. We use ServiceNow to develop ideas and solutions for our customers.

It has definitely improved operations at the customer end. There are some key metrics which users have wanted and they are able to achieve them through ServiceNow solutions.

The main feature would be ITSM, as ServiceNow initially started with ITSM software. That is something which is important for all our customers. HR Case Management and Customer Service Management are two of the key areas which clients are also using.

HR Service Management is one module that needs a lot of improvement because it's a pretty new module. It was introduced in the last two years. It's becoming more mature day by day, but there is a lot of scope for improvement in that module.

The stability is really good. As I mentioned earlier, the HR area has a lot of room for improvement in terms of stability. We are trying to customize a lot of things. But overall, in terms of being a stable solution, that is what comes from ServiceNow.

I would rate scalability very high, compared to competitive tools. It is highly scalable.

If we implement it for large enterprises they could have 10,000-plus end users. We have implemented it for small organizations as well, where they have just 1,000 end users.

Out of ten, I would rate technical support at seven. Sometimes, it seems to me that even though we are looking for a simple solution, if something has to be customized, ServiceNow technical support doesn't look at it and they simply say that we have to go with Professional Services. They won't look at any custom script or any custom implementation. Where we have done a small customization to something out-of-the-box, even in those cases there are times when ServiceNow is not able to support us.

Before ServiceNow, I had worked with BMC Remedy and worked with and compared Micro Focus Service Manager vs ServiceNow. We switched our services because ServiceNow is really easy to configure and it's a cloud tool. In terms of the performance and the implementation, it is really easy to configure.

From an initial setup perspective, it is very simple. That is why ServiceNow is the market trend, compared to Remedy or compared to HPE tools. It has already captured close to 60 or 70 percent of the market. The initial setup is really very user-friendly and very easy to set up in customer environments. Just drag and drop. You really don't need any technical skillset to deploy ServiceNow at customer sites.

Deployment time depends on what a customer is trying to implement, for example, the number of modules. If a customer is going with the basic ITSM module, it does not take more than two to three months to implement that complete ITSM suite.

In terms of implementation strategy, first we try to go with the out-of-the-box features and try to follow ServiceNow guided setups, which are available on the ServiceNow Wiki. A lot of information is there. We can blindly follow that for the initial setup and for the configuration.

The staff required for deployment and maintenance depend on the customer's requirements. If the requirements are really complex and they want a custom solution, then the timelines and the staff increase, based on that. There's no standard staffing, as such, in terms of implementation. It completely depends on the complexity of the requirements and, obviously, the size of the requirements.

Initially, the licensing model ServiceNow came up with was very good. But now, from a licensing perspective, they are changing their model day by day. It is becoming a bit expensive for customers.

The licensing is changing drastically. Especially for the Orchestration piece and the HR piece, the pricing is pretty high. Initially, when ServiceNow started, the licensing was very nominal and that's why customers adopted the tool. But now, in terms of replacing other tools with ServiceNow, they could probably work on the licensing part. Doing so will obviously increase the ServiceNow market and customers will start using it for that.

We directly migrated from Remedy to ServiceNow because of the growing market for ServiceNow vs Remedy. We got quite good feedback from some of our competitors and customers that ServiceNow is really good in terms of its integrations. In 2011 we called ServiceNow to demo the product. They came to our organization and we had the demo and we really liked the tool. Then we switched over to ServiceNow.

The configuration is very simple. I would definitely recommend it from a maintenance perspective and from a scalability perspective. It is a really good tool. You can replace your existing Remedy or HPSM with ServiceNow.

Regarding how extensively the solution is being used, it's no longer just an ITSM product. It's a platform, as such. Customers have started moving all their custom applications - in addition to ITSM, their non-ITSM - to the product. They've started building everything on ServiceNow. Slowly, customers are liking the tool and they are very happy to move everything onto ServiceNow.

I rate ServiceNow at eight out of ten. For the two missing points, as I mentioned, there are some new modules which need a lot of improvement. The HR Service Management is not very straightforward right now, in terms of the security rules. We have to spend a lot of time implementing the HR module. It is not really simple the way it is with the ITSM modules.

We use it for ITIL/ITOM catalog of services. ServiceNow is the CMDB for our organization, and we use the Discovery, Incident Management, Change and Project Management tools within ServiceNow to keep a centralized view of our enterprise. We have recently begun implementing the Governance and Risk (GRC) features as well.

Discovery has reduced, on average, the time to build/deploy devices within our environment by one hour. This may not seem like much but it adds up over time. It also reaps additional time savings with its ability to capture changes through subsequent discoveries over the life of the device. Discovery is the first piece in the CMDB chain for our organization, making sure that the device appears in the CMDB before it is needed (for, say, a change request).

ServiceNow Discovery is very valuable. It does, however, come at a steep cost of time and effort to implement it correctly. Do not be fooled into thinking it will "just work." Discovery, within any platform, requires meticulous planning and management to have it work for you. No discover solution is ever the "silver bullet" either, so plan to have more than one discovery engine implemented to cover your enterprise.

Where it could be improved is Discovery. This may sound odd since I just praised the value of ServiceNow Discovery, but improvements to its automatic detection, the breadth of devices, and the depth of devices covered, as well as keeping up with new technologies, are all essential.

Microsoft has caused some issues recently with its decision to move away from SNMP and WMI in favor of PowerShell management. ServiceNow will need to make changes to move away from these deprecated services and to discover these devices. Discovery engines universally rely upon SNMP to detect, at least at an initial level, what type of device they are talking to. Without SNMP, some other platform will need to advertise the device and its capabilities. Most applications offer API (ideally REST-based) connectivity and ServiceNow should expand upon its use of these connections.

The SaaS platform has been very reliable. ServiceNow has been one of the few SaaS solutions that we have chosen that has not had major issues. The agility to provide test/dev instances, and the seamless access provided by their support team, have been essential in allowing us to work with the solution.

As designed, the solution is incredibly scalable. It is possible for a customer to create logic, processes, or other rules that will hinder or limit this scalability, but that is not the fault of the platform. Having a knowledgeable staff and/or partner will reap huge dividends in the scale of the implementation.

Technical support is very good. Like in any support organization, there can be technicians who do not meet your requirements, but the vast majority of the ServiceNow support engineers have been helpful. As a side note, support is delivered via predominately Indian personnel. This is common in the IT industry, but we have seen it almost exclusively with ServiceNow support.

We used the CMDB that is offered within the product that we make/sell ourselves (Plex Online). It was not designed to meet the needs of a software company and we took the opportunity to move to something that was a better fit.

The initial setup was incredibly complex. I would pity any customer who decided to self-implement ServiceNow, unless they have experienced, dedicated staff for the length of the implementation. I was largely dedicated to the implementation of the CMDB, Event, Incident, and Discovery pieces of our implementation, with the help of an outside consulting firm, and it still took up a massive amount of my time to implement.

Many parts of the ServiceNow solution do work out-of-the-box. Being flexible also means being complex. Rarely can you just apply a change to all areas or systems. Screens (or forms) are unique to just about every part of the system, so if you want a uniform look and feel you will need to touch a lot of places.

Even if you do not think you will need an on-staff ServiceNow developer, you will want one. Many of the changes to the system are too involved for a standard admin to make (confidently) and there will be no shortage of ongoing work to keep this person (or persons) employed full-time.

We deployed in stages, bringing certain modules online as we were satisfied with the functionality. We are truly still implementing. The core of the system necessary for day-to-day operations was deployed in about one year. But changes and features are still being implemented. We continue to add and subtract from the system as we use it and as ServiceNow offers new or enhanced functionality. We also continue to develop integrations with other business systems.

In terms of our implementation strategy, we took on the system in phases. CMDB was first. This was perceived as necessary for all other functions for our organization since we are using it for ITIL/ITOM. The CMDB was manually populated and maintained at first, while Discovery was implemented. Project came next, along with Time Tracking. After that was Incident, Problem, and Change.

We kept to an Agile deployment methodology focusing on the small pieces needed to keep moving the larger whole along. Customization was kept to a minimum (where possible).

We did use a third-party service provider but it did not go well. I still could not imagine attempting to do it without them, but two years later, we are still replacing much of the work they did. There is a cautionary tale here of not going with the lowest bid.

The biggest failure on the part of our partner was with Discovery. They did not have the depth of knowledge necessary to get this delivered on time or, in fact, working in general. The level of effort needed to implement Discovery, in the end, dwarfed the rest of the platform. The partner absorbed the cost since they failed to understand exactly what it would take to deliver.

We have not done an actual ROI evaluation at this point. We determined that it was necessary from a business standpoint to change to a scalable SaaS solution and ROI was not necessary as part of the project scope. I believe that through Discovery and Automation we could likely create an ROI case. In other aspects, systems like Change and Incident may have introduced some toil to our process, but this may eventually become less of an issue as we continue to refine our process.

Isn't pricing always too much? We really do chafe at the ITIL licensing. ITOM is also pretty expensive.

We evaluated Service Cloud and ScienceLogic. ServiceNow really seemed to have the most complete offering.

If you plan on using Discovery, double whatever hours/manpower/money you had planned that it would cost. Do not let sales convince you that any part of the system "just works." You will ultimately end up modifying absolutely everything. Definitely look at using a reputable partner for implementation, unless you have a dedicated knowledgeable staff of ServiceNow users who have done it before (and not who just went through training).

We have 60 users for ITIL. We have provided limited access to our development and external management users.

For maintenance, we have two full-time employees. One is a dedicated ServiceNow developer tasked with customization and managing version upgrades. The other maintains the CMDB and Discovery process. I could see adding one more of each.

Deployment was an entire team effort, with different teams championing different modules of the application. At any given time, there were ten to 15 internal employees working on implementation with the assistance of five partner resources.

ServiceNow manages and maintains our ITOM/ITIL daily operations. It is a core piece of our environment that will only continue to grow. We have thought about removing the ITOM piece as we have not been able to implement or leverage it as we had initially planned, but we are still working on understanding what other tools we would need to replace the features and functionality. The primary limit we have on increasing usage across our company is the cost to license ITIL users.

We are trying to bring some ServiceNow projects to our team. We are trying to upgrade our ServiceNow knowledge by learning the modules and building our own application. We are presenting the application that we develop to our management. We can then market ourselves, showing that we have some ServiceNow capabilities so that we get some ServiceNow projects.

We have used almost all the features of ServiceNow within this application. Almost all the reports, data evaluation, dashboards, widgets, all the workflow-related stuff, integrations, etc. We have used each ServiceNow topic in this application.

We are building an application, as I mentioned. We are trying to build an Agile management application where we can track Agile projects, along with some traditional processes. We were able to build that tool in a controlled and better way in ServiceNow, when compared to Remedy. We can provide this application to our company for different projects.

For that, they will have to buy the ServiceNow instance. That is our aim. Once they start buying the ServiceNow instance, ultimately, we'll be getting our own support ID, so that we'll be able to work with ServiceNow very closely and become full-fledged, ourselves, on ServiceNow.

I have found many features that are important and that are easier when compared to Remedy; for example, the Scripted REST APIs and the Flow Designer. These all look like features at the configuration level. But in Remedy, there is coding to do, while here it's just a drag-and-drop. I found that very useful. Also, the Client scripts are simpler when you compare with Remedy. 

And finally, the upgrades. The upgrade in Remedy is a project. But here, it is zero downtime for any code changes in an upgrade. 

These are all things which really are advantages ServiceNow.

Earlier, ServiceNow had the ability where you could build your own UI. The standard UI is very restricted. It doesn't look as good, compared to Remedy. Building your own UI requires some additional coding, but the standard UI is not that good when compared to Remedy's UI.

When it comes to reference fields, there are some limitations where you aren't able to use them, like in relationship queries. In Remedy, when you click a menu, you get options directly, whereas here, if you use a reference field, it points you to a different form. So the UI experience totally changes for the end user. 

These are some of the ways ServiceNow could improve the UI, out-of-the-box.

Currently it's stable.

Many customers are choosing ServiceNow as their ITSM product and that is the reason we are planning to switch. ServiceNow is the trending tool for ITSM. Many customers have been migrating from Remedy to ServiceNow.

I have training on Cherwell which can be used as an ITSM software tool. Demand for Cherwell is very limited.

ServiceNow is a very good tool. The one challenge is that it involves scripting. Many things can be done through configuration and that is a very good part of ServiceNow. If you have some basic scripting knowledge, you can build your own application which can be used at any company or organization.

Considering the issues which I mentioned earlier related to the UI and the reference fields, out of ten I would rate ServiceNow an eight. To make it a ten they would have to come up with a better way of implementing UI.

We use it for ticketing.

We haven't been using it long enough for me to say how it has improved our organization.

Creating a ticket is much simpler in this tool. That is one big advantage. Also, the simplicity and ease of use are much better. I've used HPSM and it is very complex in comparison to ServiceNow.

Change Management is the area I have found that this tool can be improved because there are so many fields which are missing, such as urgency of the customer request and how the priority is defined. These are some of the areas in which I found that BMC Remedy is much better than ServiceNow.

I haven't found many stability issues in this tool. The uptime is relatively good.

Scalability is not a big issue for this tool. It's good.

Technical support is an eight out of ten.

I was not part of the team or a decision maker for using this tool. I am an end user. It was purchased by our organization.

Other tools I have used and evaluated are BMC Remedy vs ServiceNow and Micro Focus Service Manager vs ServiceNow.

I would recommend looking into all aspects of ticketing tools and I would advise people to use BMC Remedy because of the scalability and the features available. If you are not very technical then I would recommend ServiceNow.

Most of the users of ServiceNow in our company are Level 1 and Level 2 engineers, and some of them are problem managers. We have more than 200 people using the tool.

I would rate ServiceNow at eight out of ten. The two points off are for some features which are not there in Change Management and in the ITSM software. The rating is as high as it is because of its simplicity and ease of use.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As a developer, I have mostly work on agent management and service catalog items, to create business tools. I write scripts to satisfy customer requirements.

Year after year they have implemented more functionalities and come out with more enhancements, as well as new modules.

The Service Portal could be improved. There are some things in it which are somewhat difficult for me to understand.

It is a stable product.

I have not encountered any issues with its scalability.

If there is an issue we raise a high-level ticket. We usually get a response within a day or, if it a priority, within two or three hours. They have provided us solutions that we've implemented in our company.

I started my career with ServiceNow only. I haven't used any other tool. I have a little bit of knowledge about Remedy, but I don't have any practical experience with it. My practical experience is only with ServiceNow.

The process of loading everything into ServiceNow is very straightforward. It is not complex.

ServiceNow is great. It's flexible and it is very simple for process flow or idea flow.

I'm a consultant, so I primarily work on projects implementing Service Now inside of different organizations.

The biggest improvement I see is that unstructured work, which would primarily be worked on within spreadsheets or within emails, is able to be centralized, managed end-to-end, and have that visibility and structure in ServiceNow. That provides enormous productivity gains. 

In addition, it provides the ability to meet internal IT assurance around audit trails.

Finally, the improved visibility helps in decision-making for senior leaders and executives.

One feature of ServiceNow that is important is the workflow engine. From my perspective, the power to be able to structure processes, represent workforce management for organizations, and the visibility provided by the reporting are additional top features.

ServiceNow is divided up into a lot of modules, so I'll give an example, instead of going into every single module.

For me, there's a real opportunity, especially within the IT Service Management suite, to give a much better overall view of the workflow that individuals have across the different applications. At the moment, a lot of information is quite siloed in the different tables in ServiceNow. There is a real opportunity to present, in a centralized way, some form of universal work list, to give better ideas around demand and supply of resources, and then help prioritize that work.

The only other thing that I'd say about ServiceNow, in general, is commercially related around licensing, and it's a big inhibitor for a lot of our customers, especially those who are innovators on the platform. I've got a couple of really good example clients where they are limited in what they can do with the product. If they were to do what they wanted to do, the licensing that would come about, from a platform runtime licensing perspective, would mean it wouldn't have the same value proposition.

An improvement area, to summarize, would be better licensing for when clients are trying to be innovative on the platform.

The stability of ServiceNow is excellent. I've never had any issues around its stability, scalability, availability, or any of those metrics.

ServiceNow technical support has always been excellent. They are quick to respond, they have good, strong technical capabilities, they're good at communicating and getting in touch with you.

I have used BMC Remedy previously and the primary reason for switching to ServiceNow was around the fact that ServiceNow is cloud-based, scalable, and easily configurable.

Overall, the setup is fairly simple. You have to have a point of reference to compare it to. If I think about other cloud-based tools that I've worked with, by comparison, I would say it is most definitely simple.

Myself, being a consultant and implementing ServiceNow multiple times over in different organizations, an average implementation, which would result in a minimum viable product - standing up ServiceNow to achieve some form of business value - would be 12 weeks.

I typically see a 12-week implementation of ServiceNow achieved with approximately six individuals for the deployment. Ongoing maintenance of ServiceNow will typically involve the equivalent of four FTEs.

I don't have any data points at the moment, but I know some of our clients have articulated ROI as part of the benefits they have realized. The ROI is definitely positive for clients that we've worked for.

ServiceNow pricing is an art, not a science. The deal depends on how commercially savvy you are, which does make it something that is quite difficult to get right. It is most definitely an opportunity area for ServiceNow to improve and have more visibility around pricing of the different products within the platform.

Other options would be BMC Remedy and Cherwell, from an ITSM perspective. For HRSM, alternative solutions are Workday and SuccessFactors.

My advice would be to engage with an implementation partner that has good experience and definitely not to underestimate the organizational-change activities, like training and communication, that are required. ServiceNow shouldn't be treated as purely a technology solution. People, processes, communication, and training need to be factored in when implementing.

We've implemented ServiceNow in government organizations with up to 9,000 people, in a couple of scenarios, using it for either IT service management or HR service management, predominantly. The roles of the users varied within the government.

In terms of how extensively ServiceNow is used, every client we work with has a roadmap of additional functionality that they would like to use in ServiceNow. To generalize, there are different extents of use but each definitely has a roadmap of continuous improvement and use of more features or modules of the product.

I would rate ServiceNow a nine out of ten. Some of the points that I touched on above would make it a perfect ten: more visible and consistent licensing around the cost of licensing; better ability to innovate on the platform without incurring licensing that isn't representative of the innovation that's being created.