ServiceNow Reviews

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:

As a technical specialist, the features that are most valuable to me are:

• Facility for doing customizations
• Very quick time to business
• Good support
• Availability time
• Some nice development tools
• Facilities for building integration

At the moment, we have implemented Incident, Problem, Change, Catalog and a bit of Asset Management. As we had a terrible system before ServiceNow, we did not have any kind of KPIs. Now we have all the processes integrated between each other and with some good KPIs.

The number of improvements is big, but we are still doing changes on the platform so we can get even more. At this point, we have already done almost 1000 stories (each story represents a change) with improvements.

They improved, a bit, the Reporting part of the product, but for sure it could be improved a lot more. I think they also should re-think the way they license the tool because it’s too expensive to automate all of your business, but you’ll need lots of licenses. If they did this, it would be an awesome tool. People go for doing some dirty integrations (with JIRA for example) just to reduce the number of licenses needed in ServiceNow.

I worked for a ServiceNow partner for some years before being a client. As a client, I have used the solution for one-and-a-half years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

I really like it. They answer quite fast and provide good solutions.

It was straightforward because we had a clear idea of what processes we were implementing and how they would be (Workflow). The complex part of it is basically map your processes; implementing the tool is the easy part.

At my current company, we did it with ServiceNow and in-house (me). But I worked at a ServiceNow Partner before, and I would strongly recommend a vendor implementation unless you already have some experts in-house.

We did an extensive evaluation to choose this product. It’s confidential and I cannot give details of it.

As a technical specialist, I can see that the product is really good and has lots of enhancements with each version. It’s a really good (but expensive) product. As it’s very easy to customize, it’s also easy to break it. I would recommend just to have a really good specialist (who knows some of the business as well) and it should be pretty straightforward to succeed.

ServiceNow comes as a set of pre-built ITIL processes as well as a platform that can be used to build a variety of custom business applications.

Even though there is a huge freedom in what you can customize, there are still plenty of areas for improvement regarding non-documented APIs and hard-coded functionality.

We've been using the solution since 2014 (Eureka version).

No, deployment is very smooth and your production instance will be up and running in no time.

There were a couple of issues on ServiceNow side which were promptly addressed by ServiceNow support.

I would say there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to technical support. There are times when I feel that a person working on a ticket is able to only direct me to the relevant WIKI articles (which I've usually read already before deciding to contact support).

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.

Its integrated process data-model is a feature that's valuable for us.

It's provided a platform to provide Process as a Service.

The usability and user experience is a really big issue and needs to be improved.

We've used it for five years.

We encountered no issues with deployment.

We encountered no issues with stability.

We encountered no issues with scalability.

In our experience with technical support, we found that first-level support is pretty mediocre and second-level support is just adequate.

I used a custom solution in the past, but switched to ServiceNow.

The initial setup was straightforward. The only complexity was in the business requirements given by those trying to customize it to do something outside of the native configuration.

We used a mixed team of in-house and vendor.

Vendors tend to do what the customer wants, which is the wrong approach. Always start out understanding the native function of the tool, then you adapt your process to fit the tool, not the way around.

We are still waiting for ROI to be realized, and are unsure yet of the value due to adoption issues.

You should focus on the adoption more than configuration.

One of the biggest features is its flexibility. It has out of the box functionality (incident, problem, change, etc.) that can be tailored to fit your organization.

With this tool we have been able to see what some of the most common issues are and then automate them. This helps out the help desk by reducing the number of calls they are getting. We are also using Discovery with our CMDB to help us manage our assets. We also utilize our CMDB for our Incident and Change process with the relationships that we have configured between them.

The biggest issue that I see is the way that they license some of their add-on products. We spend a lot of money, so they should have a better pricing model for customers that want to take advantage of some of the new offerings.

I have used the product for about five years in different capacities including as Tech Support at ServiceNow, a Solution Consultant for a ServiceNow Partner, and Administrator as a customer.

There were no issues with the deployment, but some were encountered during upgrades.

No, their support staff helps out by monitoring the instance and recommending action. We have some slowness from time to time but it usually due to issues on our ent.

We have not encountered any issues with scalability.

Customer Service:

7-8/10. They have a difficult task, since they have to handle a wide variety of calls coming in to them. But, they work together with their team and development to help get a response to your question or issue.

Technical Support:

This I would group with Customer Service.

It was implemented prior to me joining the company.

I was a consultant previously, so the initial setup is pretty straightforward, plus you have an implementation partner there to help you take your business requirements and configure it in the system

They started out with a partner, but they were not happy with the service. So they let them go and implemented it on their own.

When you purchase the tool, do not try to make it behave or look like your current system. Remember, you purchased this product for it’s ability and you should take full advantage of that.

The flexibility of the product in regards to configuring and customizing it to meet the company needs within a few clicks.

The ability to quickly customize and configure integrations for a centralized source of information has improved automation capability and overall SLA improvement.

The configuration capabilities of the end-user facing portal, although this issue is due to be addressed in the next release.

I've used it for four years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Customer Service:

8/10 - the vendor used to be really good, but with the massive growth of product use it’s deteriorated.

Technical Support:

4/10 - the vendor used to be really good, but with the massive growth of product use it’s deteriorated.

We previously used BMC Magic, Remedy, and CA ServiceDesk, but their lack of flexibility moved us to ServiceNow

It was very straightforward.

We utilized a ServiceNow partner, and we they were fantastic overall.

It's positive but I don't have anything specific.

It’s higher than most, but the licensing is $X/User/Month, so try to limit the users working tickets. The submission & approval parts do not require licenses.

Ensure you have basic processes in place instead of having the tool guide your process. Within ServiceNow, the saying is “The good and bad side of ServiceNow is that you can do anything.” So while you can customize everything, I recommend streamlining as much as possible.

The Service Now product is very configurable to meet your business process, which is very important. The web interface is clean and fast and the product works on iPad and smartphone devices. Changes are easy to make and update throughout the environments. The visual workflow editor is simply amazing - we were able to create an online purchase process in less than 12 hours. The Service Now product development is very active with major updates a couple of times a year. The Service Now community is extremely committed to the product as evidenced by postings on discussion groups as well as attendance at the Knowledge conferences. If you can afford it, this is the premium Service Management suite out there.

I mentioned that the tool is very customizable, which is both good and bad. You can make the tool do anything, which may not always be a good thing. There is a mix of old and new technology in the tool that you will run into at times.