IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions allow end users to easily communicate with support agents to improve user experience and solve problems. For most cases, this will involve the end user reporting that there is a technical or practical issue that they need assistance with. As well as facilitating the conversation between the end user and a support agent, ITSM solutions will have effective and transparent ticketing features and comprehensive reporting so that support agents can easily understand the context of an event and remediate issues more effectively.
ITSM solutions can help IT or service desk teams deliver a more effective, efficient, or user-friendly experience. They are essentially ticketing services that allow end users to communicate their issues and experience of using a service. ITSM solutions are used throughout the lifecycle of an IT product, from initial design and deployment to incident management and end user experience. They can be set up to register any type of issue relevant to your workplace – this could be physical (like the printer being out of ink), software (an application not running correctly), or hardware (issues when making phone calls).
When looking for an ITSM solution, some key features to look out for include:
- Automated resolution workflows
- Self-service knowledge base
- Ticket prioritization
- Effective ticket routing
- Integration with SLAs and companywide policy expectations
In this article, we’ll explore the top 11 ITSM solutions available on the market. We’ll highlight their key features, before suggesting what type of organization would benefit most from their implementation.
BMC Software is based in Houston, TX, and provides a range of scalable and modular software solutions to improve enterprise collaboration and service delivery. Their ITSM solution – Helix ITSM – is designed to provide a consistent reporting and resolution service across multi-cloud environments. The solution can be used to ensure that security, user experience, and technical service are delivered effectively.
BMC Helix ITSM Features:
- Uses a multi-cloud broker to ensure that experience and service are consistent across cloud environments
- Cognitive automation
- Comprehensive and insightful report generation to monitor key metrics
- Analytics capabilities identify where your own processes can be made more efficient and effective
- Automate repetitive, manual tasks to reduce human workload
- Identify recurring incidents and clusters to improve overall service
Pricing And Plans: For information on pricing and plans, contact BMC directly.
Expert Insights’ Comments: The solution is built around ITIL 4 (IT Infrastructure Library), meaning that your solution will adhere to the most recent workflows and guiding principles. BMC Helix ITSM is a clean and efficient solution that gives admins the ability to customize the platform to suit their business needs. Users praise the reporting functionality due to its valuable insights, and quick generation. We would recommend BMC Helix ITSM for larger enterprises looking for a robust and effective solution that gives them lots of customization.
Based in San Mateo, CA, Freshservice has developed an intuitive ITSM platform that is currently used by 60,000+ businesses. Their platform is a user-focused solution that takes advantage of AI and automation to improve experience and streamline ticket resolution.
Freshservice Features:
- Integrate with workplace collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams to improve user experience
- Use AI to redirect and automatically resolve repetitive or basic tickets
- Implement Freshservice Orchestration Center to manage processes across multiple systems
- Improve workload management with visibility into all tasks assigned to team members
- Comprehensive incident management tools help log, classify, triage, investigate, then resolve issues effectively
Pricing And Plans: Freshservice offers four pricing plans: Starter, Growth, Pro, and Enterprise. The Starterplan costs $19/agent/month, then $49, $95, and $119 for the other plans, respectively. Pro is the most popular plan – it includes problem, change, and release management, service health monitoring, and 5000 orchestration events/month/account.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Freshservice gives you a usable and ergonomic user interface alongside a wide range of features and extensive integrations with third-party apps. Users praise the solution’s flexibility and versatility; you are able to customize much of the solution to suit your organization’s needs. We would recommend Freshservice for small to medium organizations that require a solution that they can customize and make their own.
Established in 1994, HaloITSM provides an effective service delivery and management platform. The platform allows you to streamline your resolution workflow, as well as understand key metrics and analytics about each case. HaloITSM is used by high-profile organizations like Microsoft and The University of Cambridge.
HaloITSM Features:
- SLA creation, customization, and management allows you to rollout a consistent service
- Create a fully branded and configurable self-service portal to improve service for end-users
- Automate workflows to improve incident management and meet SLA expectations
- Upload articles and content to the knowledge base, thereby adding another resolution channel
- Change management features, such as tracking, planning, and executing updates, ensure that all organizational changes are completed effectively
- AI automates processes and improves efficiency
Pricing And Plans: For up to 5 agents, the cost per agent is £75. This cost drops to £59/agent for organizations with 100 agents. Both of these options give you complete access to the HaloITSM tool, without restrictions. Enterprise customers that need a sandbox environment, unlimited licenses, or dedicated account managers, should contact HaloITSM directly for pricing. HaloITSM also offers a 15% discount for non-profit and educational organizations.
Expert Insights’ Comments: HaloITSM can be deployed on-premises or as a hosted service. The solution is ready to run out-of-the-box, ensuring that organizations of all sizes and experience can benefit from HaloITSM’s features. We would recommend HaloITSM for small to medium organizations that are looking for an effective solution that is simple to use and requires little configuration and management.
Based in Argentina, InvGate provides solutions to support organizations as they streamline their digital work practices and modernize their processes. InvGate Service Desk is their ITSM solution. It is highly configurable, whilst ensuring that ticket resolution progress is clear throughout the entire lifecycle.
InvGate Service Desk Features:
- Effective ticket management ensures urgent issues are prioritized and issues that can be resolved with one click are highlighted
- Able to upload “knowledge articles” for issues that can be resolved by the end-user
- Forms are completely customizable, enabling you to get the information you need and that all responses are of value
- Tickets can automatically trigger alerts and contact external parties – such as suppliers and vendors
- Clear workflow checklists can be created for agents tasked with resolving issues – for example, reminding them to check stock levels when responding to a query
- Clear dashboard provides detailed reporting and analysis
Pricing And Plans: For information on pricing and plans, contact InvGate directly.
Expert Insights’ Comments: InvGate’s platform is user-friendly and low touch. Raising a ticket is simple and doesn’t impact on a user’s productivity or ask them to provide information that isn’t relevant to the task. It is easy to add collaborators to tickets to ensure that all relevant parties have the information they need. All the way through the process, progress is made clear. We would recommend InvGate Service Desk to organizations of all sizes, particularly those that need a highly customizable reporting form. There is scope to allow tickets to address technical and physical issues alike.
Ivanti is a Utah-based software provider whose solutions are used by 96 of the Fortune 100. Neurons for ITSM delivers effective and reliable service management and can be deployed in the cloud, on-premises, or as a hybrid solution. With Ivanti Neurons for ITSM, you can automate and streamline workflows, thereby improving efficiency and reducing costly manual processes.
Ivanti Neurons for ITSM Features:
- No-code capabilities allow organizations to configure workflows with ease
- Provides extensive visibility over your assets to ensure that operations are efficient and optimized
- AI-backed chatbots enable your service portal to offer meaningful assistance all of the time
- Role-based dashboards give you actionable insights into service delivery, quality, and outstanding tasks
- Self-service helpdesk enables user to find answers to common problems, without having to log an issue
Pricing And Plans: Contact Ivanti directly for information on pricing and plans.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Ivanti Neurons for ITSM is a versatile solution that can integrate with a wide range of solutions via APIs. Resolution can be automated, or as simple as one click. The solution is fully ITIL compliant, meaning that you are always working with the best policies and practices. Current users suggest that initial implementation can be complex. We would therefore recommend Ivanti Neurons for ITSM to enterprise organizations that have the technical experience and resource to utilize the full benefits of this solution.
JIRA Service Management is a web-based service developed by Australian software company, Atlassian. The company was founded in 2002 and now has 250,000+ customers globally. JIRS Service Management allows users to efficiently report issues they have found with an IT tool. The solution allows reporting and remediation procedures to be granularly configured, ensuring that tickets can be dealt with efficiently.
JIRA Service Management Features:
- Create and install third-party applications to enhance your JIRA experience
- Customize SLAs – you can define which tickets are high priority, for example, and how they should be dealt with
- “Collaborate” platform gives key stakeholders visibility into progress
- Contextualize data with information from other software development tools and integrations
- No/low-code creation
Pricing And Plans: Atlassian offers four pricing plans for different sized organizations. The Free plan allows up to three agents and unlimited customers. The Standard plan begins at $21/agent/month and can handle up to 5,000 agents. The Premium plan ($47/agent/month) provides advanced incident management, unlimited storage, and asset and configuration management. Contact Atlassian directly for information on their Enterprise plan – this provides enhanced data and analytics, as well as centralized security and administration.
Expert Insights’ Comments: JIRA Service Management is a widely used and efficient platform. It effectively streamlines the ticketing and issue management process, whilst prioritizing the user experience – both for the end user, and the agent. JIRA’s pricing model makes this a great solution for organizations of all sizes. Smaller organizations can benefit from three free agents, while the solution has capacity to support thousands of agents for larger organizations.
Based in Austin, TX, NinjaOne allows organizations to manage and streamline their IT operations. They offer endpoint management, patch management, RMM, and backup solutions, in addition to their Ticketing platform. NinjaOne’s product suite is designed to be used by enterprise organizations or MSPs. The Ticketing platform makes it easy for end-users to report issues, then offers a host of tools to automate and streamline the resolution process.
NinjaOne Ticketing Features:
- Effective prioritization and routing of tickets to meet SLAs – improves efficiency for both agents and end users
- Integrates with NinjaOne’s endpoint tools for seamless control and issue resolution
- Customizable response templates allow for automatic condition-based resolution
- Streamlined communications channels to give users ticket visibility, and easily share additional information
- Brandable client self-service portal gives users visibility into tickets and access to knowledge base information
Pricing And Plans: Contact NinjaOne directly for Ticketing pricing.
Expert Insights’ Comments: NinjaOne is a trusted vendor in the remote management and helpdesk space. Their Ticketing platform improves visibility for agents and end users alike – this ensures that issue resolution can be as efficient as possible. The workflow automation and management features reduce the workload of your IT team, enabling them to focus on more complex issues that require human input. We would recommend this solution for medium to large organizations and MSPs.
ServiceNow was founded in 2004 and is based in Santa Clara, CA. Their digital platform empowers companies to organize their systems and technology to improve experience and efficiency. ServiceNow can be fully branded by its host organization, giving it the feel of an internal solution. The platform has ITSM best practices built in to ensure that your support workflows are always optimized.
ServiceNow Features:
- Single platform allows you to consolidate disparate tools, with extensive analysis of how each tool is performing
- Auto-assign issues to speed up resolution
- Automate support for common queries with virtual agents
- Roll out services and changes at scale whilst retaining full visibility
- Employees can use a mobile app to access support and collaborate with other departments
- Able to subdivide tickets to accurately specify ticket categorization
Pricing And Plans: Contact ServiceNow directly for information on pricing.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Through a modern and intuitive user interface, ServiceNow gives you the power to manage and track service delivery, ticket resolution, and change management. The solution itself is highly customizable and can be configured to suit your needs. We would recommend ServiceNow for medium to larger organizations due to its comprehensive feature set, and its ability to subdivide tickets into several categories to improve the management experience.
Based in Austin, TX, SolarWinds is an IT management software provider. SolarWinds’ Service Desk platform is an AI-powered, cloud-based ITSM solution. It is remarkably versatile – the solution can be run with very little oversight and admins can tailor the solution to match their needs. .
SolarWinds Service Desk Features:
- Built around ITIL framework – includes incident, problem, release, and change management capabilities
- Automated ticket classification, correlation, routing, and self-service resolution
- Comprehensive asset management across the full lifecycle improves auditing and license management
- Customizable reporting tools, SLAs, and customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), with strong report generation and comprehensive auditing
- Knowledge base allows users to find common solutions
- Service portal – intuitive UI to make it easy for users to log tickets
Pricing And Plans: This solution starts at $19/month/seat. Contact SolarWinds directly for further pricing information.
Expert Insights’ Comments: SolarWinds Service Desk is an effective solution that requires little management or configuration to run. Despite this, admin can mould the solution to fit their needs and to make the most of the comprehensive feature set. We would recommend SolarWinds Service Desk for organizations of all sizes that need a versatile solution; one that can be set up and left, whilst retaining the capacity to make granular policy and configuration changes.
SysAid was founded in 2002 and uses AI and automation to improve IT services. SysAid ITSM helps to automate and streamline tasks, enabling you to better manage diverse workloads. The GUI is user-friendly, ensuring that it is easy for agents to glean all the relevant information they need to resolve an issue. SysAid also offers an AI integration for Microsoft Teams. This enables users to submit helpdesk requests via Teams, and then receive support from within the communications platform.
SysAid ITSM Features:
- Comprehensive automation reduces human workload
- Out-of-the-box problem management templates
- Integrate with third-party applications like Azure, Teams, and Slack
- Highly customizable – up to 200 custom columns per entity
- Create custom SLAs and gather specific data to monitor progress
- Ticket logging system enables end users to monitor the progress of their queries
Pricing And Plans: For information regarding pricing and plans, contact SysAid directly.
Expert Insights’ Comments: SysAid is an efficient and streamlined ITSM platform. Users can log tickets, then monitor the progress of their query. Organizations can build their own service desk and service manager – focused on the issues that you are likely to encounter – complete with the reporting tools to match. We would recommend SysAid ITSM for mid-sized to larger enterprises, with mature IT departments, that need to automate and improve their IT service delivery and experience.
TOPdesk is a Dutch service management platform provider that was founded in 1997. The TOPdesk platform makes it easier for your IT team to handle tickets, share knowledge, and, ultimately, solve problems faster.
TOPdesk Features:
- Streamlined registration of tickets and assignment to appropriate agents
- Self-service portal allows users to submit and track their own tickets, as well as find answers to common queries
- Publish FAQs and standard solutions with fellow agents to improve efficiency and maintain standards
- Kanban board allows you to prioritize, assign, and share tickets within the IT team
- Integrates with over 90 tools through TOPdesk API
- Graphical overview of assets and company infrastructure
Pricing And Plans: TOPdesk use a “pay-as-you-grow” model to ensure you only pay for the services that you require. They offer three pricing plans: Essential, Engaged, and Excellent. The Essential plan offers incident and asset management, a self-service portal, and reporting dashboard. The Engaged plan adds change management, SLA and contract features, and problem management tools. Finally, the Excellent plan adds 24/7 support, project management, and an annual health check. For information on the pricing of each plan, contact TOPdesk directly.
Expert Insights’ Comments: TOPdesk is a versatile solution that can be used to report and manage technical IT issues. The solution makes it easy to log an issue and begin a transparent conversation with the relevant agents to solve it. Users can “reopen” an issue if the problem persists – this ensures that agents have access to all relevant information, without asking the user to log a new issue. We would recommend TOPdesk for organizations who are looking for a transparent and user-friendly ITSM solution.
FAQs
What Is IT Service Management?
IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions allow end users to log issues or problems so that they can be rectified. ITSM solutions can categorize the type of issue and ensure that the ticket is routed to the most appropriate agent. This ensures that the resolution process can be as effective and efficient as possible.
Who Should Have An ITSM Solution?
IT Service Management solutions are designed to allow employees or users to report the issues they encounter when trying to use a service. This may be a technical issue with a device or application, or a physical issue – such as low stock or a broken AC. There are a few keys use-cases for ITSM solutions, there include:
- Large organizations who need to ensure that all employees can have issues resolved efficiently and effectively
- Organizations with employees across multiple locations and need to ensure issue resolution is simple to manage
- Organizations who work operate in varied environments and could have a range of issues (technological and practical) that need to be resolved
What Features Should You Look For In An ITSM Solution?
There are some key features that you should look for in a strong ITSM solution:
- ITSM solutions need a simple way for users to log a problem and input enough contextual information for it to be of use to the resolution agent. This additional information will differ, depending on what type of problem is raised. It may be practical information, such as notes on which device the problem is occurring, or account details. Alternatively, it may require a brief written account of the problem with accompanying screenshots.
- There should be an automation feature that ensures the ticket is sent to the relevant agent. Your help team will have a diverse set of skills, and you want to ensure that the ticket is sent to someone who can help. This may come down to geographical factors, or technical knowledge and experience of certain problems.
- Once the problem is resolved, the end user should have a communications channel with the resolution agent. This allows them to understand what changes have been implemented, and to confirm that the problem has been resolved.
Other key features include:
- Automated resolution workflows
- Self-service knowledge base
- Ticket prioritization
- Integration with SLAs and companywide policies
