ServiceNow Reviews

Flexible platform to build applications and to extend our service management. We have the normal idle processes we actually implement and ServiceNow provides good value in supporting these processes.

For us it's beneficial because we are switching from a single provider environment to a multi-provider one. We use ServiceNow as a platform and it's described as really flexible. It supports this transformation for us and now we are in the position to deliver our own multi-provider application platform. They are no longer hosted at our providers, so we can switch the provider in an easier and quicker way, and we are in a better position to discuss prices for different services because we can offer the whole platform and framework to our customers.

Last week, we had a discussion with the support leader at ServiceNow, and what we miss a little. ServiceNow is growing really fast, so they have two versions per year, and for a company (or for a large company), I think it's really hard to switch to the next version because you have to migrate and test things. What's not so good for us is also the support for problems and regressions. If we are using an older version and the next version is coming out, we always recognize if we open an incident, that we get an answer which in most cases is to switch to the next version. That is not so good for us because we know that we could switch to the next version but we have to perform a lot of effort that it's not too easy to do that. So basically we're looking for answers other than just go on to the next version.

ServiceNow supports the two version or three version support so if we are in the actual supported version we know that it's really hard to fix something in the current versions because the architecture is different from the new one but we would wish to have more fixes for our versions.

Also, the wiki is good, but it could be a little bit better. It is lacking all the information and could be more in-depth. We are not on the newest version actually, but we will switch this time because the one we're on is not so good. The information about the included features in the next release is lacking.

They said OK in December and we got access and then I received an email with, "Hey Geneva is available." And we were really waiting for that because we would like to upgrade. Then I go into the support system, try to upgrade, and then I get an email which says that I have to wait three days, then I received an email about an hour later, and they said Geneva is available and they have to wait three days before my upgrade can be done. This process should be better.

There were no issues with the deployment.

The instance is always up and running.

We're not running out of space so the platform is cool and it's running. It's good for us because it's in the cloud. We don't have to put effort in to look for things. That is why we decided to choose ServiceNow as a cloud provider.

We have support and so we bought a service and if we are at the end of the space or something like disk space, then I think ServiceNow contacts us to let us know so I have no need to look into that.

You can do a lot of things in different ways and that is why we define some coding guidelines, because the best practice are not enough to restrict some implementation partners or our self to bring implementation. For us it's really important to do that to the GIF guidelines, development restrictions, as it can be too open for us as a company because we would like to have the same result from different implementation partners. Everything works in a different way, you can do it like that or do it like this, but in the end if you have over 200 service catalog items I would like to have them built all the same way and look the same way.

After they're built and it's up and running, you have to maintain them, and if they are difficult in a lot of ways it is difficult and produces a lot of cost because if you have an incident or something else, you have always go deep inside of that and look, "Okay what is going wrong?" This can be prevented with more restrictions and standardisation.

With such a platform you can easily build and really quickly with new applications to help the business do things. We recognize also that you have to build and not grow too fast, because then it becomes a little bit of chaos. We also recognize from our business groups that say, “Oh ServiceNow, we do not have that, can we build that with this? Or that and that?" And you have a lot of demands and requirements you have to handle and maybe you have to block. We would like to have architecture throughout ServiceNow blocked from before we start building such small instances.

ServiceNow is a very good platform, but do not build up things too fast. That's what I'd say, because the problem is recognized from our companies and they say, "It's easy to throw things out into the business." But if you have a role model or such then you have so much effort to implement or rebuild those things during these things are in operational mode. I would say yeah, do it, but not too fast.

For me, it's management and change management. It allows me to figure out if we have issues and when we need to make changes to solve problems. From my side, it's just reporting. Assets, I mean just analytics and stuff like that so I see if there's a high volume of tickets. If we need to resolve something, etc.

It allows us to have asset inventory, incident change - the standard stuff we need in a corporate environment. 

We have the flow from beginning to end. We know when a person starts at the company to one day if they leave. If they have issues, we could figure out why they have that issue and then just go to make changes. For anything we need to push out company-wide, we have all the information ready, so that's the reason we have ITSM.

Performance analytics could be a lot better. I know that's the big thing, they're pushing collaboration and stuff like that. It's just that portion, if that was better done it would be better for us. I the analytics were better and easier, if it didn't require someone with a lot of technical experience to create the reports, but rather if it was more click and drag, then anybody could create these reports. It would be a lot better.

From my standpoint, because we don't have people who are experienced in doing the performance analytics module and stuff like that, ee can't get the right reporting and it's just a beast trying to get that configured the right way. If it was more simplified and easier for us to generate reports, if it was click and drag, you could get all that information and they could produce reports like that. It takes a long time to produce reports.

We started using it about two years ago.

There were no issues with the deployment.

We have had no performance issues.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

We previously used Microsoft Service Manager. We were on the fence about moving over to Geneva then Helsinki came so we're thinking about moving over to Helsinki. We're trying to get that planned out.

I wasn't involved in the implementation so I can't really say but I don't think it was that difficult. I've not heard any complaints about it, or about the upgrades either.

I would tell you that ServiceNow is a great product to use because just from what we have, what we use, It's highly customizable, there's a lot of features that we like, it's just that performance analytics isn't as great as some of the other pieces that they have.

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.

The ease of use, as for us it's sort of like Lego. If somebody wants something, if they want some automation, if they want workflow, etc. It's cool that if you can imagine it you can probably build it fairly easily.

It's very, very cost effective. We're able to replace traditional FTE dollars and spend on ServiceNow at a fraction of the cost. I believe when it was initially implemented there was an immediate reduction of one to two people.

I'd like to have an offline mode. For us, we do a lot of workforce management. We've got a lot of guys out in the field in remote locations. Getting them into the system is good, it's beneficial for us. Good forms and get that data in. If they're out on site, they can't access the system.

There were no issues with the deployment.

I think that's one of the key things with that tool is all of those considerations and problems go away.

It's infinitely scalable, we've had no performance issues.

It can be both straightforward or complex. Probably one of the easiest ones that I've done was Greenfield. They didn't have ServiceNow at the time. They only wanted a project management solution. That's it. That was very, very small, very straightforward. Then I did one for a company in Australia called TXA. They do a lot of the television transmission equipment and it was end to end automating ticket creation based on an event log. A very, very bespoke and complicated event log.

It was very particular as there are a lot of concepts very particular to their business. It was very, very interesting but it was incredibly complex. They wanted as much of hands off and let the system sort it out as possible. Most implementations are fairly similar.

Some advice that I've heard -  get people hands on with it as early as possible. I find a I go through requirements with a user or with a company that they get, and they'll think that it's solid. As soon as they start playing with ServiceNow they realize "hang on, maybe I can get it to do this, I can change this. "The requirements just completely change.

I think it's excellent in all of the ways that software can be. The only negative that I've got is the one that I said before which is half negative, half positive. That it's being developed so quickly.

• Flexibility to do what I need to do. 
• The ability to automate what processes need to be automated. 
• Makes it easier for my users to be able to do things. 
• By coding you can go in and change it to whatever you want to do. You make it yours. Whereas, I've used some systems that you get it and that's it.

It gives our users the ability to do things they weren't doing before. We can get rid of several other systems, replace it with ServiceNow. I don't know exact dollar amounts for what they replaced with ServiceNow, but it's more than what I make.

Some of the issues that my team has run into are that something one day works completely fine, the next day it does not. If we release a patch, something happens, and it was working fine now. No recollection in any documentation anywhere about changing, but it doesn't work now. It's always something ServiceNow has changed, but neglected to tell anybody of the change. There's a lot of processes that were working when ServiceNow was implemented but aren't really as beneficial now.

I've been using for four years, and are currently on Fuji Patch 10 in the process of upgrading to Patch 12. Then we're looking at two different things right now. We may go to Geneva, but there's also talk of completely redoing ServiceNow and going straight to Helsinki. We might just redo the entire instance, skip Geneva and start with Helsinki.

There were no issues with the deployment.

Every clone release has been pretty seamless. We had one issue with one patch, but that was due to IE issues. It wasn't compatible before IE9 and some of our users were still on IE8, though they weren't supposed to be.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

The last thing I used before ServiceNow was HPE Service Desk and Remedy. Those are the only two other ones I've really used. I've seen other ones demoed and stuff, but they were not as flexible. I guess I've used SAP too.

I currently go to school too, which is at NKU in northern Kentucky and they use a SAP type product. I can't remember what it's called, but it's just not very functional.

I was not part of my current company's implementation, but with a previous one and their parent company, I was part of their implementations and it was pretty seamless, other than political issues.

Try to do as much as you can out of the box. Use as much out of box parts of it as you can. Development does come in handy, makes it scalable, and makes it more usable, but use as much out of the box as you can. That's the best advice I can give you.

The best thing is that when you patch and something's working one day, you patch and it's not working the next after you've tested and tested and tested and it's not working. Also, there's the fact that there are things that are changed that people are not notified about.

The most valuable features at this point in time for me is the ability for tracking changes, for tying changes in the problem tickets together, tying incidents together to the problem tickets. The interaction between our user to IT aspect, from top to bottom, has been fantastic. Whereas users submits a problem because they have a problem, then we've got to find out if it's a bigger problem, or if it's bug, or SDLC, all this stuff. For me in my role at this point in time, which is changing, it's just tracking everything from bottom to top. We're making sure that stuff is getting done and then communicating back to teams, and it's a full loop.

ServiceNow was implemented over seven years ago. When I came on it was already implemented and I didn't have much of a role in getting ServiceNow changed, add-ins, whatever. They weren't reaching out to other companies. I was basically brought in to do monitoring buildouts, and get our very baseline infrastructure more organized.

I actually don't know. To be perfectly honest, I feel that just about any tool, as long as they have the same offerings, can be modified to fit the company that is attempting to use it. Take a look at an ERP solution. ERP has been around for a lot longer, to a certain degree than say ServiceNow and there is a massive amount of offerings. You can go with SAP. You can go with Oracle. I can't even remember the other guys' names. No matter what, you can always make them work for your company.

They may not have been the best choice for you, maybe there are pluses and minuses. Once you actually get into the application, you start figuring it out at that point it's like, "Well, it would have been better if we went with this, if we focus more on this." The thing is once you get an offering, you still have the ability to go in and configure it to your heart's desire. ServiceNow, it's the full suite of offerings. You have a lot more to sit in and actually go in and configure, as opposed to it's just another ITIL based application that I can sit in and configure.

I know there are places that they can do better at. While I'm not an administrator, I'm not sitting there configuring it, I know our person who does configure it does have his foibles. There are certain things that are difficult to get out of ServiceNow, which is why I suggested going to partner companies that are using ServiceNow already in your similar environment. You go to ServiceNow and say, "Hey. This is what we want to do. How can we accomplish this?" ServiceNow says, "You can do it any way you want."

It's like, "That's not an answer." It's like, "What should we do? We need guidance." Well, "No. you can do anything with it." Okay. That doesn't quite help me as a user, and future administrator, or as an executive. I'm sure it sounds great for an executive, but when it comes down to it, when it starts growing in your own environment, executives starts asking questions, "Why hasn't it been doing this?" It's like, "We don't know how to get that matured within our own environment." It really comes down to I think they can improve upon. They are doing that here with the networking, but for as themselves, have their own best practices to a certain degree.

To a degree, yes it's stable, but mostly it's due to data center issues on their side, or it's come down to network issues on our side. Since it's external, it's not internal, you're looking at having to deal with Internet weather, or data center hosted environments, or our instance had the issues, which is pretty rare.

It's been a long time. It's been a very long time. I think mostly they had a roll back of, not a build or an update. It was some type of data change, but I don't recall the details as it was several years ago.

I wouldn't know because I don't actually handle any of that aspect. Again, I'm still pretty new to actually having my hand in helping with ServiceNow. I don't have any of the hands-on experience. I'm more of a user at this point than an administrator of certain degrees.

I've used many other types of applications such as HEAT, or Remedy, any of those guys and a couple others that I can't remember the name of. They're all customizable to a point. Obviously, not many of those previous ones actually had a full ITIL buildout, or full offering as ServiceNow does. From my point of view and my aspect, I'm more concerned about user experience, and more concerned about backend experience as an IT professional coming in and trying to fix issues, and track said issues. ServiceNow has a much bigger offering in the sense that you've got new changes. You've got your problem ticket findings. You've got tracking for CIs, and the CMDB database, and sitting on the backend trying to provide all that data for those tickets, and whatnot, throughout the company. It makes it a lot easier. It's definitely a one-stop shop for being able to actually come in and help your users, but also help your full infrastructure, your backend.

From what I've heard, and all I can go off of is hearsay, it was pretty easy comparatively. I don't know what they were using before for any ticket tracking system, but that's initially what they jumped into was ticket tracking. We needed something to be able to support our IT infrastructure and our service desk. They also wanted to be able to track changes, and do that. It was just like, "Okay, we'll start with this, and start growing more and more." It turned into quite a bit more. We have definitely stepped up using a lot more of the offerings that ServiceNow has, mostly because we have to, to some degree, to be able to make things a lot more efficient. It's worked for us from what I can tell.

You want to sit there and plan. You probably don't want to turn everything on right from the get go either, because then you're just going to overload yourself. The same goes with any type of a larger offering that has hooks into other aspects of your infrastructure. If you turn everything on, you're just going to get overwhelmed, and not actually have proper resources to be able to handle those. It's always start turning things on, start figuring out what the workflow is, and go from there.

Make sure you flesh out what you're doing. Honestly, I see all the pitfalls are the ones where you'll have a misunderstanding, or make a bad choice in configuration. If you believe that the offering is going to work for you, then you need to make sure you reach out to people who are going through similar situations, or rather it's three years in advance in your same situation. Find another partner company that has already gone through the preliminary, but not too far in the future because then you just look and say, "Wow. They completed so much. How are we ever going to get there?" A year or two, maybe three, and talk with them, figure out what their pitfalls were, a similar type company hopefully.

• Change
• Incident
• Service Catalog
• Configuration Management
• Project Portfolio Management
• Knowledge Base

• Improved the globalization of processes and around the clock service delivery to our customers
• Automated repetitive tasks and shifted left simple tasks to the service desk

• Lots of customizations can lead to breaking the system when moving to another release. This should be managed better by ServiceNow
• UI can be busy and complicated for non-IT users
• Difficulty in debugging and testing code output

I've used it for five years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

8/10

8/10

We used a different product, and switched because it was easier to set up and customize to the needs of our business compared to its competition.

A bit of both. It involved more customizations/work than we initially assumed.

Both. Have a dedicated resource(s) from in house that works with the vendor in developing and setting ServiceNow Modules/Applications. It's very important to use an experienced vendor team that has dealt with complexities in implementing a ServiceNow environment. You should also have clear functional requirements/functional specifications from the beginning before any ServiceNow development is done.

For me, the most valuable feature is the flexibility it allows in customization. We're able to set it with the parameters we need for our specific business use cases.

We're now able to use emails in the Request Fulfillment process, instead of assigning roles to an account.

The setup wasn't as straightforward or easy as it should have been. While it wasn't difficult or complex, there was some planning and work involved.

There were no issues with the deployment.

There were no issues with the stability.

There were no issues with the scalability.

I'd rate their customer service an 8 out of 10.

I'd rate their technical support an 8 out of 10.

I am also working with CA SDM and in the process of comparing the pros and cons of each.

The initial setup was of medium difficulty. Though it wasn't the most difficult setup, it could have been easier.

I didn't participate in the implementation as it was done by a vendor.

Based on my experiences so far, I'd recommend it.