ServiceNow is a cloud-based workflow automation platform that enables enterprise organizations to improve operational efficiencies by streamlining and automating routine work tasks. With roots in IT Service Management, ServiceNow has evolved to become the enterprise service management platform for organizations, uniting all business functions from customer service to HR to security, and more.

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ServiceNow is a cloud-based IT solution for small businesses. The poweful IT management application can take care of every issue and IT process or operation. While the majority of the solutions provided by ServiceNow are geared toward large corporations, ServiceNow is specifically dedicated to enterprises with less than 1,000 employees.

ServiceNow offers a comprehensive selection of integrated tools and applications that help businesses manage IT services. These products have a variety of features and functionalities and can be categorized into five groups: IT Service Automation Applications, Project Portfolio Management, IT Business Management, Shared Service Applications (including Facilities, Field Service, and HR), and ServiceNow Express, an enterprise-grade ITSM solution suitable for businesses of all sizes.

ServiceNow Express is an inclusive ITSM solution created to meet the requirements of businesses, regardless of their scale. It presents a diverse range of features that facilitate effective handling of incidents, such as visual task boards, ticket management, assigning priorities, and continuous monitoring of assets and configurations. Furthermore, it offers extensive reporting functionalities, enabling users to generate informative reports on different business KPIs and metrics using interactive dashboards, graphs, and charts.

That said, ServiceNow still runs on the company’s infrastructure, except it is a more scaled down platform which makes it a more manageable system for businesses with small IT departments. ServiceNow also comes with premium features including a configuration management database (CMDB), knowledge management which helps in automating manual operations and a self-service catalog.

ServiceNow provides a conglomerate of IT features and support for small businesses and developing enterprises. The following are just some of the benefits the system brings to the table.

Know the status of your IT systems, networks, and software from a centralized, connected view.
Create intuitive and interactive dashboards and deliver reports based on specific metrics with just a push of the button.
Build a robust and detailed knowledgebase that provides quick answers, how-to content, and simple resolutions to common queries, as well as links to specific company information.

By utilizing the Single Platform provided by ServiceNow, you have the opportunity to optimize your operations through the integration of all your existing applications into one cohesive system. This consolidation facilitates the effective recording and management of your processes while providing valuable insights into your IT operations. Additionally, the platform promotes seamless information sharing among your various applications, fostering improved collaboration and overall efficiency.
Delegate tasks and determine priorities in real time effortlessly.
Automated ticket routing helps provide users with fast resolutions to problems and issues.

Service Automation encompasses the standardization of service processes and the implementation of automation to replace manual tasks. This entails the development of tailored workflows, applications, and forms.

Project Portfolio Management comprises an extensive array of project management capabilities that cover all stages, from planning and execution to time management, task allocation, and project status monitoring. It encompasses functionalities like Demand Management, Resource Management, and Software Development Lifecycle.
The self-service portal function helps users become more productive and empowered.
Identify recurring IT issues and come up with effective solutions.

Key Features

  • Incident management
  • Change management
  • Problem management
  • Project management
  • Task management
  • Dashboard
  • Asset & configuration management
  • Contract/License management
  • Support ticket management
  • Workflow management & configuration
  • Service catalog
  • Status Tracking
  • Issue auditing
  • Knowledge management
  • Data mapping & Visualization
  • Notifications
  • Escalations/Alerts
  • Asset tracking
  • Client portal
  • Reporting & Statistics
  • Service level management
  • Real time analytics & chat
  • Bi-directional email integration
  • LDAP synchronization
  • Live feed collaboration

1. Scaling Cloud Demands

Adopting cloud is critical to ensure agility and identical user experiences in business applications and service delivery across any device and location. The Cloud is now more of an analogy to the internet. With enterprises introducing multiple-cloud resources, the management of these resources has become of utmost importance. Also, growing IT infrastructure and on-demand services are posing a challenge to enterprise IT management. ServiceNow cloud management solutions foster a competent cloud strategy for the enterprise to meet dynamic enterprise cloud needs.

2. Outdated Legacy IT Service Request Process

It takes more time to complete IT service requests through a legacy, manual process. A manual process may include emailing clients back and forth and in-person questions, which takes up several resources. The Global CIO Point of View reveals that “close to 70 percent of IT budgets are used for traditional service request processing“. Service tasks such as assignment, status notifications, and resolution are the most expensive tasks of service management. On top of that, the complexity of legacy systems grows when the workforce does, or when more locations are added. Legacy processes also lack transparency in the overall project, which can end up demotivating employees.

Key Issues with Traditional Processes:
  • Deprived IT performance
  • Managerial overheads and costs
  • Limits IT efficiency due to lack of transparency and real-time insights
  • Improper utilization of resources and assets
  • To automate and ensure agility in service delivery, the ServiceNow platform comes with fully automated and intelligent IT service management (ITSM) solutions. The ServiceNow ITSM provides businesses with completely AI-powered dashboard integrated tools like mobile app and chatbots to streamline the communication process in the service request processing.

3. Inefficient Project Management Process

Most project management pain stems from calculating whether the project is on schedule, reasons for project disruptions and the effect of disturbances on overall project timelines and cost. Despite having tools in place, project managers are not able to map the results and draft intelligent conclusions. This is due to the lack of alignment of business objectives or goals with the project management strategy.

PMI Research reveals that “those that align their Enterprise PMO to strategy, report 38 percent more projects meet original goals and business intent and 33 percent fewer projects are deemed failures.” Alignment issues are mainly due to the absence of an organized approach in recording and interpreting project management data and get analytics. Analysts spend hours manually searching through project logs to locate where problems have occurred during a given project, where this time could have been spent solving the problem.

To ensure better management of resources and ensure transparency in the overall project management process, ServiceNow Performance Analytics can track, aggregate, and visualize key performance indicators over time, rather than reporting on just a point in time. This allows for in-depth analytics and more visibility.

4. One-Dimensional Customer Service

In the era of experience-as-a-economy and consumerization, just engaging with customers is not what makes a service great. Generating tailored experiences across different platforms is the most important. With the customers’ digital journey largely impacted by smartphones, messaging apps, and chatbots, customers don’t want services to be restricted to a web portal or customer service call. Because of this, the intensity of the issue increases with the increase in service requests across numerous and disconnected engagement channels.

Other issues of legacy customer service processes:
  • Support is hindered by various disconnected systems and manual processes
  • Productivity is strained due to addressing the same issues day-after-day
  • Inability to locate issues and effectively resolve them resulting in low customer satisfaction
  • No analytics for why customers are contacting customer service
  • Complicated cross-company investigation of customer issues, collaborative analysis, and problem-solving
  • In this process, ServiceNow CSM with integrated chatbot and mobile app helps businesses with innovative customer service management solutions, to achieve better customer satisfaction levels and reduce customer retention, at reduced operational costs.

5. Unorganized Data Strategy

Data is crucial to business strategy, but most of the enterprise data is stored passively in data silos due to lack of organization or ability to extract strategic intelligence and make intelligent business decisions. Coupled with the adoption of advanced technologies like IoT which creates even more data, it has become a major challenge for a business is to use data to their advantage, and instead, data has become a burden.

6. Lack of Proper Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC)

GRC is a multi-faceted and inter-reliant application that is aimed to strategically manage the regulatory requirements across the enterprise to ensure proper scaling of business processes to drive business efficiencies. A proper GRC strategy helps us assess the right assets, manage policies, identify risks, create controls, and conduct audits. Legacy enterprise GRC models consist of a group of independent silos working and thinking separately. ServiceNow GRC enables businesses to provide a broader understanding of all GRC activities in a single window with real-time monitoring and alerts of risks before they happen.

7. Weak Cyber-Security Software

The cyber-attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment is believed to be one of the biggest attacks in the cybersecurity industry, which resulted in losses close to $100 million. that “by 2020 close to 5 billion personal records will be stolen and the average total cost of a data breach is estimated to be $3.86 million.”

The IT industry is faced with various types of cyber threats in the form of malware and viruses. These cause damage to devices, prevent users from accessing affected files or data, or taking control of devices. Even the attackers are using advanced concepts of AI to get more intelligent. Traditional cybersecurity practices are becoming obsolete as some of the most devastating attacks aren’t discovered for months and disjointed security tools create more noise (alerts) and there is no centralized dashboard to provide full-scope security analytics.

  • Devices Supported: Windows, Android, iPhone/iPad, Mac
  • Language Support: English
  • Pricing Model: Quote-based
  • Customer Types: Large Enterprises: Medium Business
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Support Options

  • Email
  • Phone
  • Chat
  • Social Networks

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ServiceNow Popular Contenders

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Everything ServiceNow has to offer

Agent efficiency

Agent collision prevention, Auto Bcc, Bulk actions, Edit/hide threads, Email signatures, Filtered Search, Group your agents, Interaction History (Ticket activities), Keyboard shortcuts, Macros, Mobile app, Multilingual (Multiple) content, Personal canned responses, Private Comments within tickets, Responsive, mobile-friendly Help Center, Shared canned responses, Tags, Traffic cop

Collaboration

Collaboration

Customer relationship management

Contact Form, Contacts & Accounts Management, Contacts & ticket history, Customer 360, Customer profiles, Customer satisfaction ratings (CSAT)

Help desk automation

Auto reply, Automatic ticket assignment using Dispatch'r, Custom business rules (triggers & automations), Event-triggered workflow automations, Multi-task workflows with one-touch Scenarios, Time-based Rules, Time-triggered automations, Workflow automations

Help desk management

Business Hours, Custom ticket fields, Set your Time Zone, Ticket file attachment size, Ticket sharing

Incident Management

Auto-suggest Solutions

KB Customization

Branding removal (email), Complete portal customization, CSS customization, Custom domain mapping, Public portal customization

Knowledge base management

301 Redirection, Internal Help Center, Knowledge base, Related articles, Rich text Help Center articles, SEO, Unlimited data

Platform Integration

API rate limit, Cloud telephony integration app, Email integration with Outlook, Google Apps (G Suite), HubSpot Integration, Integration with Atlassian Jira, Integrations, Salesforce integration, Slack integration, Webhooks, Zapier integration

Platform Specific

Beacon builder, Javascript API, Open tracking, Update conversations remotely

Reporting & analytics

Analytics, Custom Reports, Export reports, Google Analytics for Help Center, Helpdesk in-depth report, Performance distribution, Save reports, Ticket drill down in reports, Tickets closed reports, User-specific reporting

Security

Ability to configure for HIPAA, Business rules analysis, Custom roles and permissions, Digitally signed emails (DKIM/DMARC), Disaster recovery, Domain Whitelisting, Encryption: data at rest and in motion, GDPR compliance, Guaranteed availability SLA (1 Hour Support SLA), Independently Tested, Log in with Google, Network access restriction (IP Whitelisting), PCI compliance (Level 1), Privacy Shield and Safe Harbor compliant, Single sign on with SAML, Single sign-on (SSO) for web and mobile, SPF(Sender Policy Framework), SSL encryption, Two-Factor Authentication

Support for organizations

Calling, Live chat, Multibrand Support, SDK

Ticket management

Email forwarding, Mailboxes (inboxes), Merge tickets, Outbound email, Outgoing SMTP settings, Public and private notes in tickets, Spam filtering

Uncategorized

Automatic sitemap generation, Backup, Date comparisons, Notifications, Printer-friendly, Unlimited End Users, Voicemail integration