PeerSpot user
IT Security Consultant and Platform Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Stable solution but the security and web interface need improvement
Pros and Cons
    • "It's not very secure, it's web-based, and I prefer Remedy. Both the security and the web interface could be improved."

    What is our primary use case?

    It's used for a helpdesk.

    How has it helped my organization?

    It really hasn't improved the way our organization functions. I don't really like ServiceNow.

    What is most valuable?

    I don't think any of the features are important. I'm not really a ServiceNow fan.

    What needs improvement?

    It's not very secure, it's web-based, and I prefer Remedy. Both the security and the web interface could be improved.

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    For how long have I used the solution?

    One to three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It is stable. It seems good.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    There have been no issues that I know of with scalability.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    It's sold as a less expensive solution, but it has to be highly modified. That's where you get into the cost.

    What other advice do I have?

    Make sure to look into all the configuration costs and the customization. Be aware that it's web-based. You're probably going to have to put holes in your firewalls and need to do a complete security review.

    As an end user, I would rate it a seven out of ten. I don't think it's very secure, and it's web-based, and Remedy is really the standard that it's judged against.

    Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user788922 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Needs additional software titles and easier normalization. However, it identifies better ways to license software or eliminate unused software to save money.
    Pros and Cons
    • "Identifies better ways to license software or eliminate unused software to save money."
    • "Needs additional software titles and easier normalization."

    What is our primary use case?

    Microsoft and Oracle Software tracking and management.

    How has it helped my organization?

    • Maintains a real-time view of license position. 
    • Compies with contract terms to avoid penalties and the impact that an audit can have on day-to-day activity 
    • Identifies better ways to license software or eliminate unused software to save money and maintain a choice between buying more licenses or reclaiming licenses to stay within compliance. 

    What is most valuable?

    Oracle and Microsoft license software catalog. 

    What needs improvement?

    Needs additional software titles and easier normalization.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    Trial/evaluations only.
    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partners.
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    PeerSpot user
    Global Command Center Analyst at AstraZeneca
    Real User
    Scheduling reports has decreased manual effort.

    What is most valuable?

    Reporting

    Incident

    Configuration

    Visual Task Boards

    Scheduling

    Evanios Operations

    Easy integration

    Customized Dashboard as per user requirement

    How has it helped my organization?

    Scheduling reports has decreased manual effort.

    Integration is possible with almost all monitoring tools and auto-ticketing functions properly.

    What needs improvement?

    A duplicate ticket option should be enabled - this feature can help to take the same information from a close incident thus decreasing manual time.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    4 years

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    No issues.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    Customer Service:

    Excellent (9/10)

    Technical Support:

    Excellent (9/10)

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    In my previous organisation we used LanDesk which used to have less options. Hence switched to ServiceNow.

    What about the implementation team?

    In-house one

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    No others were evaluated.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user532776 - PeerSpot reviewer
    it_user532776ITSM Administrator at a real estate/law firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Real User

    Koustuve, I would be glad to share the method we used. And me a message on LinkedIn and I will converse with you about it if you wish.

    See all 5 comments
    it_user458955 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Production Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Vendor
    It's given us one pane of glass to look at a lot.

    What is most valuable?

    The development aspects within it are valuable. Incident, change and problem. It's given us one pane of glass to look at a lot of stuff, which has opened a lot of eyes to our IT department.

    What needs improvement?

    I did some app training and and got to see Helsinki. It was a little buggy, but I realize it's the next thing coming out, so it was good. I like the direction they're going.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I've personally used it for a little over two years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Everything that we've had has been stable. We haven't had really any issues or anything.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It's very scalable.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    I'd say they're proactive. Any of the tickets I've had open with them, they've gotten back to me in a timely manner and taken care of things.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We were using something before that was supposedly an ITIL platform, IncidentMonitor. As we expanded and got bigger it just wasn't an enterprise solution that we were looking for, so we looked at ServiceNow, and I can't remember the name of the other one we looked at. ServiceNow by far was the one to go with.

    How was the initial setup?

    I think because we were so new and not knowing what the tool could do we really didn't have anybody that knew much about the product. We brought in a third party, and they had some quick starts that we used to get us up and rolling.

    What other advice do I have?

    If they're coming into it new and they don't have any experience with it, I would say that they need to find a third party that can help get that tool rolling quickly. I would say that we didn't know enough. We went with a company early on, that I had mentioned earlier, that we weren't a hundred percent satisfied with. We switched over to a different company now that we're using, and it's better. It's not perfect. I would say that you need to go and you need to find somebody that can help get you started. If it's not another company that you can look to, third party come in and help out.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user459123 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Project Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Vendor
    Get everybody on it, don't do it piecemeal.

    Valuable Features

    In my role it would be Demand and Project because I'm a project manager.

    Room for Improvement

    I attended some of the sessions about Helsinki and I think some might be addressed there - reporting and Gantt charts. Calendar views - there are no nice calendar views and I think I'm just starting to learn about resource management but it would be nice for them to have the roadmaps so you can see an actual calendar view to see where from a project, (not necessarily resource but project) wear you are. Calendar views would be a huge addition.

    Use of Solution

    Our company's been using it about two years, myself I've been using it about a year and a half.

    Stability Issues

    No downtime that I know of.

    Scalability Issues

    It's a scalable product and we see it scaling for us.

    Customer Service and Technical Support

    I haven't been involved a lot with the support. I think that's going to change and I think I will get involved more but for right now I don't know that we've had issues. I haven't heard of any so I'm assuming we haven't.

    I'll go out on the Wiki and look for answers and I might jump over to the community to try to find information.

    Initial Setup

    For the first portion of it, I know we had a lot of internal change management so it took a little bit longer but they rolled it out all at once. I think it took about six months but I wasn't here for that. We rolled out Project and Demand and we did it in two months.

    Other Advice

    Go for it. I actually said that to someone who's nervous about doing it. Get everybody on it, don't do it piecemeal.

    One of the gals that did a presentation [at Knowledge 16] said they're using demand and project but still using Microsoft Project. Don't do that, put it all in Servicenow. Even though it may be a little clunky in certain places, it helps to have one tool and everything in one place.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user459087 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Engagement Manager at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Consultant
    It can be taken out of the box and used with minimal custom configuration.

    Valuable Features

    It's ease of use, extensibility and just the ability to take it out of the box and use it with minimal custom configuration.

    Room for Improvement

    The documentation needs work. The wiki is woefully inadequate. I support federal customers, there's a separate US government approval process to use instances, and we're behind the rest of the public community. For instance, we don't even have permission to use Geneva yet, and Helsinki is already out. I know they're working on it and it's going to be faster, but right now it's a challenge. You see all these new features and we can't go out and use them until the government says we can.

    Use of Solution

    I've been using it since 2009.

    Stability Issues

    We've had no issues with the performance.

    Scalability Issues

    It's been able to scaler for our needs.

    Customer Service and Technical Support

    They're inconsistent. Depending on who you get, they may or may not be able to immediately provide the kind of response you need and sometimes they take a while to do it.

    I wouldn't say that I use the community a lot. I think our developers do, and I'm not a developer. They go out and use it more than I do.

    Initial Setup

    It was easy to set up.

    Other Advice

    I would recommend it. I think the biggest challenge with all of the functionality that exists in ServiceNow today is to figure out where to start, and having a narrow strategy so that when you do buy it you don't try to do everything at once and get nothing done. A lot of the sessions around here [at Knowledge16] have done a good job in outlining that and driving their experience. I definitely recommend it.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user459021 - PeerSpot reviewer
    Sr. Developer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
    MSP
    It's a simple platform to get up to speed on.

    Valuable Features

    It's very easy to customize and build off of. It's a simple platform to get up to speed on. Every company I've worked for has enjoyed their idle focus. The usability is a valuable feature, a lot of customers just enjoy the usability of it.

    Room for Improvement

    Since I've been working with the product for a long time, it feel like in the old days it was kind of a smaller, cult-like following. You had a more family-like community. Now it's gotten so big and it's kind of lost a little bit of that. I guess that's good for their business.

    They seem to be trying to branch out and do a lot more than just ITSM which is usually what the core focus is, so sometimes there might be a little bit less emphasis on that. Personally I haven't seen that, but other people have mentioned it. It'll be interesting if they try to be all things to all people. They've gotten more polished, more professional, larger and a lot more sales-oriented when they went public. I don't really have many bad things to say about them.

    Use of Solution

    I've personally used it since 2007. I worked at a company called Progress Energy. It was in Raleigh, North Carolina. They were an early adopter and we luckily fell into it at the right time.

    Stability Issues

    It was never bad, but in the early days there was definitely more outages, and we had an SLA. I think initially we even got some money back from them in the early early days in Progress. I'd say over the past five years or so that the reliability's been excellent.

    Scalability Issues

    I've had no issues with scaling, especially in the last five years. Availability seems to really have helped. We still have some performance issues, but sometimes those could be network related and not vendor related. Sometimes it's our development which is causing the trouble. I would not blame ServiceNow for any kind of performance issues that we've had.

    Currently, we're not really scaled up at this particular point, so I don't foresee that being an issue, but we could encounter that later.

    Customer Service and Technical Support

    I'd say it's fairly good. The bigger they've got, the more I guess standardized their high systems become. Usually if we have something that really shows up on our radar, we can get a hold of somebody and get it addressed. In the earlier days when we had more of those, we also had pretty good luck at being able to get some senior engineers on problems that we had, even if they were self-inflicted problems.

    Implementation Team

    We've used ServiceNow professional services and I've really enjoyed working with them and some of the other high-level partners, but to be honest with you, my current company isn't big on contractors. It's kind of an act of parliament to get them to bring somebody in from outside.

    Other Advice

    Being more technical myself, would say that having a clear and consistent view of your requirements, what you want to do, and to try to stay out of the box at first as much as possible. This is the third company I've worked for who uses ServiceNow and we always try to over-customize it at first, because everybody has very defined processes. Over-customization of the tool will hamstring you in how you can take advantage of stuff that they release. They always seem to release something that you're wanting to build right after you build it.

    It's been a challenge because a lot of people think they know better, and everybody does it their own way. Staying out of the box initially is really helpful. Any tool can be made bad if you put garbage in. That's the biggest issue I've seen.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    it_user458949 - PeerSpot reviewer
    IT Support at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Vendor
    From my standpoint the process flexibility is one of the key aspects of the solution.

    Valuable Features:

    From my standpoint, it's the process flexibility. We're at a really low maturity level, especially for the age of our company - we're about fourteen years old. From a service and support standpoint we're still in that one maturity level, idol-wise. It's been a blessing with ServiceNow to be able to nail down our various business processes. The support ones we weren't working and they were all over the place. 

    ServiceNow was need to get everyone working the same way through tickets and requests. The ability to have something consistently flexible enough for us to put some structure in and get folks all working the same way across multiple departments, but still have the flexibility for them to feel like they're getting what they want when they're getting what we want.

    Room for Improvement:

    We're anxiously awaiting setting up Helsinki for the health service portal. I think we were originally Fuji, and we did some custom branding and it was a nightmare. Designers got involved and it made it horrible. We've gone back to stock because we had seen what's coming with Helsinki. That's what I'm looking forward to with the customization.

    Use of Solution:

    We've been using it about a year and half now. My role is mostly as a sys admin and some development of the forms, requests and business rules.

    Stability Issues:

    Rock solid. We have a dev instance where only a couple of us work in development of a few things and ideas. Then in our production instance we do not yet have a mid-server or anything implemented. We're about to, but we are integrated with Centrify for some of the sign-on. From our support desk folks, it's been solid for them. Everybody gets what they needs. It's one of the things in our organization that always works.

    Scalability Issues:

    I don't see it really being an issue. We probably have 80 odd idol license users from about 10 or 12 actual support desk folks, but there's also some folks doing project management and ERP. We have 3,500 odd employees, but they're not all going to be licensed users. We've got a lot of support corporate users. Scalability hasn't been an issue and I don't see it being one.

    Initial Setup:

    Very straightforward. It's almost point-click-done. You have to think a little bit, but that's mostly planning.

    Other Advice:

    I recommend it to anyone to do any service management. 

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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    Updated: April 2024
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