ServiceNow Reviews

I like the adaptability and the flexibility of the tool. We've had a number of ideas, "Hey, I wish there was a way we could do this." and "Oh, well, let's make that happen." Then very quickly we were able to figure out a way to make it work and now there's a way we can make that happen. That's the best thing about it.

I think the biggest thing that I've seen is when we've moved to the knowledge-based version three, which happened relatively recently, there were a lot of new improvements that came with that, but there were a lot of things that actually seemed like a little bit of a step back. What we're hoping is that some of that's just like, "We wanted to present you with this new tool and we're going to add some of these things back in later on." There's a lot of the flexibility that we've come to expect from ServiceNow that seem to be gone in that new version.

I've personally used it for about three years.

We have the occasional problems with slowness, but I can't remember a single instance where it's been completely down.

For the foreseeable future, I think it's what we're going to stick with.

The support's been excellent. Our local rep has been excellent and I haven't personally reached out to technical support or anything, but I have been using the community and that's been great to have. The Wikis is an excellent resource so there's a lot of resources out there.

I wasn't there in our initial setup but our upgrades have been relatively painless.

I would absolutely recommend it. We're a little bit of a unique case in a lot of ways because we were on ServiceNow a couple years ago and we actually moved away from it, because we're running Salesforce for the rest of our university for case management. There was a mandate that we wanted everything to be in Salesforce, so we actually moved away from ServiceNow to Remedyforce. It was a disaster and about a year later we moved back to ServiceNow. I think it's an interesting demonstration of the fact that it's such a good product that even after we moved away from it we came back.

A lot of pain and tears went into that migration. We didn't really want to do another migration eight months later, but it was so worth it to do it. It's absolutely worth the investment of time and effort to do it.

It's easy to get around the platform and understand once you do one application and module. You learn how to use the platform, you can grow and expand it, but it has that same feel and touch no matter what applications you start developing or rolling out.

It's easier to retrain more people. It'll quickly turnover what you've done. If I build something custom I need to be able to turn that over to somebody else and bring them up to speed quicker so I can move on to the next application, having them be familiar with the platform. It makes that transition quicker.

We've actually used some of the orchestration pieces, so for on boarding we're automatically creating user accounts. We're actually taking a feed from our learning management system to know what course they have taken. They can't order something without having taken the class that goes with it. Say like, VPN access, they have to go through the privacy training. What we've done is we've automated looking up to see whether or not they've completed the privacy training. Also, if they're one of our vendors are they going through they're privacy training, look it up through there.

We've basically reduced a whole manual process of validating the course training, 500 hours easily in a month for one person just to do all that validation. We're trying to streamline as many processes as we can. Obviously on-boarding with our HR System is one of our big ones.

I think some of the things we run into is the patching and how often patches come out to fix stuff. Which is a good thing. It's hard to stay on top of that. You've always got to go on and regression test it, so you know if it is a patch that you really need or is it something that can wait. The fourth cycle of the patching makes it hard for us. We have the small team and we've had to regression testing for so many things. We had to partner up with our stakeholders and say, "Hey, we need some of our time. We've got to test this."

We haven't had any issues. Of all the systems in our environment, ours has been the most stable. We're up all the time, so as long as our network stays up, our customers have access. We haven't had any issues or complaints about our performance or up-time.

The scalability is incredible. We had a small team, very small solution. I was able to basically come up with a custom app for them in under 30 days.

We were using an older system. I was an administrator of that when we brought on the ServiceNow platform. That's when I started becoming an administrator.

It's not simple. One of the things I wish we had done is come to Knowledge before doing the implementation. You learn a lot. There's a lot of growing pains. You make mistakes of, "Oh, let’s just have this field," or, "Let's just do this to the table." You find out later it's like, "Maybe we should have done that." About a year into using it you really start feeling comfortable with it. A lot of the stuff they're doing now out of the box is usable, just right there without any customization. The biggest thing would be, "Yes, come here, go through all the training. Don't start tweaking stuff, learn it and then go implement it."

Play with it. Get a demo instance. Play with it. Come up with your use cases and see if it can fulfill all of those needs. Find out where they gaps are and what training you need to be able to use it. The other one talk to everybody else. Find other customers. The biggest thing we've found is other people that have used it, and just bouncing ideas off of them and asking them questions.

I've used Heat, Remedy, all those systems in the past. The way ServiceNow is going with the platform and staying on top of things, and the fact that it is so scalable for your business needs is an advantage. Whether it's the out of the box ITSM or a custom application. We also do the HR Case Management. That's actually been a breeze, our HR Team is a heck of a lot happier than what they previously had.

For me, the most valuable feature is the platform aspect - the ability to create custom apps and even tailor the existing ones to your company's needs. Each organization is a little bit different. We all do ITIL. We all speak ITIL, but ITIL can mean different things in different organizations, and that's really the core power in ServiceNow is you can make it what you need it to be.

I think that the biggest benefit is the ability to consolidate apps. For example, my background is actually in maintenance, so we would have three, four, or five different applications that we had to use for just performing routine maintenance on equipment. ServiceNow allows you to consolidate those apps into a single platform, so you can consolidate your skillsets. You've got a few developers that know the ServiceNow platform. Now those few developers can help you build and maintain all those apps rather than having different skillsets across.

The big area of improvement that I see is in the licensing model for the CreateNow app. There are huge opportunities. Right now, ServiceNow is still largely consolidated primarily to IT. They started expanding to HR. They've started expanding to legal, but developers like myself, I've got lots of ideas for apps. As I said, my background is in maintenance, so I see the opportunity for the platform, and we really need to get the CreateNow licensing simplified to a way that even ignorant little old me can figure out.

I've been using the platform for four years.

Honestly, I've been extremely impressed, especially as time has gone on. I was on the platform before the high availability came around, and so I want to say it was Knowledge 12. I was actually working for a company on the IT operations desk using ServiceNow. I was in the middle of a session and got called out because ServiceNow went down, and even before high availability, we had a backup pretty quickly. I was able to go break back into my session and get back to it, so now, with high availability, I can't recall a moment since where I have actually seen an instance truly down where the instance itself was down.

There have been problems with applications, but even then, we've hot-patched on the fly to fix issues. It's just so agile at getting back to operational.

I think that's part of the problem is that the common answer whenever I'm asked, "Okay. Well, if we do this, how much is it going to cost?" My response to the client is usually, "You're going to have to talk to your ServiceNow sales rep." For a company where so much is based on that, that quick response, jump online, get your service, get the services you need right away, it's a little frustrating sometimes when you're dealing with the licenses, and it's like, "Wouldn't it be great if there was a service catalog for this?"

My advice would be if you're looking, trying to bill, or looking to go with a single niche app and you just want to spend it off and go with it, then by all means, pick whatever app you're looking at. If you're looking for something that you can bring into your organization to be more than just a single purpose, if you are looking to truly transform your organization with the tools that you're using, ServiceNow is the go-to.

As an integrator, I think that what I like the best about ServiceNow is the flexibility that it gives me as an app writer, or a third party developer who can come in and integrate their services into ServiceNow. I think the flexibility and the ease with which I can do it is the best aspect for me. I think it's the way it's architectured. I think it's a very, very, well architectured platform, and that's the strength of ServiceNow. The platform which they architectured in a way which is very open, which is very customizable, which is very flexible.

Cloud is the way to go, and SaaS is the model that is being adopted. It's cutting edge technology with tons of languages which ServiceNow is coming with, and that's what we use. At least from our perspective, there's a lot of similarity in the ServiceNow platform and our platform. We've tried to integrate with other people but it's been very, very hard because they generally are a very closed system that's very difficult to integrate using their APIs or exposing our APIs. With ServiceNow, it's very easy to do that and with the kind of custom APIs that ServiceNow has, especially in the employee space, I think that's a win-win situation for us to be on ServiceNow to actually target these customers. I think that gives us a tremendous amount of value.

I'm not an expert ServiceNow user, as we've only used it for our integration with them. In fact, I have not really come across something that I would say is a problem because I've worked with other people and it's certainly better than that. There always is scope for improvement, and I think most of it is targeted with their Helsinki release. The UI, the UX, the click and drag options to do certain things, it just adds to the more modern feel on the platform.

Since I work mostly on the application development side and I know they're focusing a lot to bring that up. Still there are a lot of restrictions, what developers like to see in an environment they're developing. Such as: you've made a change, I've made a change, can I compare and merge what the change is since we are both developers? I don't have that, I do see what's going on but I don't see. When I have ten developers, it's kind of a little challenge to see who's written what. So there are commercial grade application tools, and I understand ServiceNow is not an IDE, they're not a platform which was built as an IDE but I think that's one idea that if they enhance where I can actually keep track of who's doing what and can I merge two files, can I discard changes from his file and just keep my file? Those kind of changes would really help.

With those of whom I have spoken to as ServiceNow admins or those who manage ServiceNow for the company, they've found it relatively easy just to manage it and from a stability perspective and from a scalability perspective I think it's stood up really well.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

Most of our customers that we go to already have ServiceNow deployed. They have a team that manages it so I don't know how difficult or easy it is for them but they did give us an environment to work on and I think that's where we come in as an integrator with our product on it. If your question is specific to ServiceNow I really wouldn't know whether it's a problem for them to manage it or upgrade it.

There are other commercial products out there, there are home grown systems out there, but they're not architectured to be extensible. They're not architectured to allow people from outside to come in with their offering and say, "I can marry my offering with yours and this is what it looks like". They just don't have that capability so we'd really have to behave like two separate systems even if we offer that service.

First of all, I think you have to really think if ServiceNow is a fit for them. As long as they can define what they're doing and somehow link it to service, because ultimately it's a service. In fact, doing any kind of service then this is the platform to go with because this is a platform that can fit into your business processes rather than trying to change your business processes just to use a platform. The benefit comes from the fact that, are you trying to provide a service and is that service very specific to your organization and does your organization work in a specific way. If it does then this is the platform to go with because now you can tune the platform for your business rather than trying to change your business to somehow use the platform you know. So I would suggest that.

I’m a developer, so I wouldn’t classify the product as valuable to me, per se. However, through the eyes of a client I can tell you that ServiceNow is highly customizable, so when anybody asks, “Can it do this?”, the answer is usually, "Yes, yes it can."

The whole platform has improved our organization, but that is the beauty of ServiceNow. It provides a solid starting point to manage your IT operations, but not just IT operations, but almost anything your organization needs.

I've used it for three years.

It is usually user error rather than system error, and even on the largest deployment that I took part in, that was muddled by an inexperienced admin. I was able to back out and fix within a two hour span of time.

Stability is a complete non-issue. It is all cloud based and I have never experienced down time with ServiceNow.

I really don’t think there is anything out there that even compares.

This really depends on what the issue is. When you start venturing outside of the base system functionality, they will not support it. You essentially become the owner when you start modifying the base functionality.

That being said, the base functionality really doesn’t need to be modified. When customizing this product to suit your companies/organizations needs, developing solutions that lie within the base functionality are nearly always attainable.

I have used Cherwell, and while it works fine, it leaves a lot to be desired as far as user experience. I may be jaded because of ServiceNow, but managing data in Cherwell is nowhere near the capability of ServiceNow.

When an instance is spun up, it’s ready to use. In that case, setup is very simple, but no organization wants to keep the out-of-box-setup though. Why would you buy something so highly customizable and not customize it?

If you keep your customizations light, setup is not difficult for someone with a modicum of experience. If an organization goes all out and wants heavy customization, then setup can become extremely complex.

I work for a vendor, and typically the level of experience of in-house administrators/developers is rather low. We tend to incorporate them into what we are doing so as to raise their experience level, which allows them to support any solutions we implement.

Costs for consultants/developers, as I’m sure some of you know, can be pretty high. It’s not because ServiceNow is hard to configure, it’s because it’s so big that developers with an intimate knowledge of how the system functions and knowledge of the nuances are in short supply.

It is pricey, and for good reason. As far as licensing, I have one word: haggle. I have had clients pay full price for licenses and I have had clients who get lower prices for licenses or a certain amount of free licenses.

Also, for organizations that have busy seasons where additional licenses are needed for a few months, I have heard of those being comped so long as the number of licenses needed is within reason.

You should go play with it and learn how it works. You can get free personal developer/demo instance spun up at developer.service-now.com.

When it comes to the time to get your requirements ready you will be miles ahead and save money rather than blindly coming up with requirements, having a solution implemented, and then finding out you want to change 10% - 30% of what you originally thought you wanted.

Out-of-box end-user portal (this is highly customizable, and I’ve seen some pretty slick interfaces):

Fulfiller home screen:

Some of the base applications and list view of records:

Just an example of a custom application, I commission a fantasy
football league, and I built myself an application that utilizes web services
to pull in external data to help me manage my league as well as provide
statistics to help me set my lineup every week:

It gives us the power to customize any aspect of the solution. They've created a tool that creates itself and give you the keys to spin the tires.

Since implementing ServiceNow, we’ve been able to stop our personnel count from growing. When our company had to go through a restructuring and 10% reduction in workforce, we were able to use ServiceNow to pick up the slack and automate some of the functions that were lost.

Instead of adding more and more modules in every version, I wish they would work on streamlining the underlying functions/methods and update the Wiki with all the inputs, outputs, etc. so that new developers can more easily find their way around the product and create custom applications for their own company instead of paying ServiceNow to do it.

Also update all their training materials, make some guidebooks and videos, etc.

We've been using it for almost three years.

Implementation is always a little rough, but once you have everything up and running the only thing you really have to worry about are the ways in which you modify things so there won’t be any conflicts during future version updates.

They are very quick in responding and troubleshooting. They're great at pinpointing the actual root cause of something, but often the solution is “…our developers are working on fixing this in future versions six-12 months from now."

It was pretty intense, but luckily our implementation package included getting two of us trained and ITIL Foundation certified which really got us on the same page.

We had ServiceNow’s in-house team for “Quick-Start Implementation”, but it was very basic, and the custom things we asked him to do from scratch were not engineered very thoroughly or using best coding practices.

So, I would make sure to have a formally-trained team, and the easiest way to find those are by going to a vendor like Fruition or Cloud Sherpas (now Accenture).

When negotiating licensing, just remember that 'Process Users' are more than twice as expensive as 'CreateNow Users', so if you are comfortable building your own apps instead of using ServiceNows, you can save a lot of money with 'CreateNow Users' in your custom apps.

It's great, but there's always room for improvement. We are pretty good friends with our reps since their office is right down the street and we get invited to hangout with them quite often.

I am a customer of ServiceNow. We use the solution for operations and ITSM.

ServiceNow has a user interface that mimics a web-base and is easy on the eyes however, it is too fluid. Currently, we are unable to audit notes. ServiceNow should be more organized and structured so it enables us to classify notes. 

I have been using ServiceNow for two years.

The solution has good stability.

ServiceNow is scalable.

Due to some of the complexities within our organization, the initial deployment was complex. The tool itself is straightforward.

The deployment of ServiceNow was completed in-house.

We compared ServiceNow with Remedy. 

I recommend ServiceNow to commercial or private companies. I would rate this product a 10 out of 10.

IT Service Management

Agile framework is in place

It is very easy to integrate with other legacy systems. It's really easy to replace obligations. Each employee can develop their own workflow. 

With ServiceNow, you can create your own APIs. It's very easy. This was something that I didn't expect from the tool. It's better than I expected. 

It's easy to integrate. For instance, yesterday we closed the integration with SAP for the IP business management module to manage the forecast of projects. We created an interface between ServiceNow and SAP to control projects for accounting and on the forecast of the project. It was really easy. We don't have any problems with ServiceNow at the moment. As a company, they are improving constantly.

All the screens are similar. It's the same platform for everything and you need to familiarize yourself with it. In the past, you used to have one screen per application. Now, you have everything integrated into one. Everybody can manage the same screen and they need to navigate into the same screen as the Internet Explorer with a toolbar with the categories and look for the things you want to see or the models you want to use. 

This is something that is a little different from a traditional way of work in Argentina when you have different applications, and now, in this case, you have it all in one. It's on the same screen with all the models in a toolbar which does impact me. 

It's a new way of seeing things. In the past, you used to have a lot of publications. Now, in this case, you have the ability to have all in one. It's something new for a lot of people, and it's a change. That means we need to adapt to this change. For some people, it will not be easy. 

I have been using ServiceNow for a year. 

It is very stable.

SN has several releases by year. Each release has innovate features, and suitable components for solving previous issues detected or needs from a particular company that can be used for all...

They already have a plan for innovations that are adopting into the application constantly . It's really scalable  is mandatory to change the way or work for the company....The custumer must transform their way of work....they must change it...they need to convert firt their people to adopt Agile framework...SAFe....IT4IT   etc...., not only for tool perspective if not becasuse they need to convert and transform to a digital company. (ART's...Tribes, matrix structures...etc)

I am a consultant with a focus on guiding my clients through those transformation processes. I advise clients on how to use the product in the best way for them. In Argentina, I worked with medium-sized businesses. 

There is first level support that is supposed to be managed by yourself. It is very easy. With the second level support, in some cases we need to talk directly with ServiceNow. They managed the online chat very easily, along with the ticket, the book, the chat, and so on. I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

The initial setup was easy. You can deploy all models together or model by model. You have different ways to work. You need to understand your customer's situations. The data is the most important part.

If you have a problem obtaining the data, the application will not function properly because you will not have all the functionalities at the right level.

The time it takes to deploy depends on the resources and the time you allocate to it, but if you put all the people, it can be done in seven months. 

Before you move forward with this kind of implementation, you need to make a cultural change in the organization to understand that the way you used to work is no longer a valid way to work and you need to work in an integrated way. If you do not adapt your mindset and make a real adoption of new and integrated methods, I would not recommend moving forward with the implementation of these kinds of solutions because it's totally integrated.

In the next release, I would like to see more Spanish options available. 

I would rate ServiceNow a ten out of ten. I remember when was SAP created, it was the number one of the ERPs. ServiceNow will become the new SAP. The evolution of this solution will be constant, will grow continuously, and will be a product that every company would want to have.