ITSM tools: BMC Helix and ServiceNow

Modern organizations rely on their information technology (IT) infrastructure. If core IT systems and services are unavailable for a short period of time, chaos may occur.

Your IT team is responsible for end-to-end management of any technology you use in your workplace, whether it’s a laptop, an application installed on it, or a printer. Given that the scale of enterprise IT infrastructure continues to expand to meet growing consumer demand, it is almost impossible to provide these IT services manually.

Most organizations implement detailed information technology service management (ITSM) tools to manage, support, deliver, create, and design the life cycle of IT services, and to ensure that these services remain online and fully functional.

Some organizations use help desk software to perform some ITSM functions, although the software is not specifically designed for ITSM; because modern IT services are usually quite complex, today’s ITSM tools provide more than 600 unique function points to support them.

The functions of ITSM tools include:

• License management
• asset Management
• IT service model ready
• Ticketing
• Problem and incident management

In this guide, we will investigate everything you need to know about BMC Helix and ServiceNow.

Please also read: The increasing importance of hyper-automation in ITOps

BMC Helix overview

BMC Helix ITSM can help you take action, forecast, prioritize, and innovate through intelligent automation to increase productivity, work smarter, and continue to provide high-performance, uninterrupted services and digital experiences.

With ITSM tools, you can drive innovation through agile service management, modernize user experience, reduce business execution risks, and quickly deliver required business results.

BMC Helix features

• Quickly create and resolve incidents through intelligent, proactive, and context-aware incident matching. You can implement advanced service analysis to identify where to improve efficiency. The modern, role-based user interface (UI) is easy to use and helps maximize productivity.
• Authorize natural language, intangible data entry of tickets.
• The ITSM solution uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect clusters of recurring events to simplify problem management and visual analysis. This allows you to focus on high-value problem areas and automate the tedious manual problem management process while reducing costs.
• The fully integrated intelligent knowledge management function helps to provide accurate and timely service and support.
• BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker provides a seamless and secure service experience across multi-cloud infrastructure.
• You can create custom dashboards and reports, and visualize data about capacity, events, metrics, chat box conversations, service requests, changes, and events. ITSM tools include more than one hundred visualizations out of the box.
• BMC Helix ITSM ensures governance and compliance, and enables Agile Development and Operations (DevOps) organizations to maximize the overall quality and delivery of services.
• The BMC Helix digital workspace enables organizations to unify and connect systems through a flexible, consumer-like UI, thereby improving customer experience, employee productivity, and workforce agility.
• The ITSM solution provides complete life cycle management of IT resources, from purchase to end of life cycle.
• BMC Helix ITSM also provides service request management (SRM) and service level management (SLM).

ServiceNow overview

ServiceNow ITSM is a modern, cloud-based, island-eliminating ITSM tool that enables you to integrate local legacy tools into a single cloud platform in a cost-effective manner. You can take advantage of automated workflows, platform native AI and machine learning (ML), and natural language virtual agent chatbots on Now Platform to analyze and share data.

The capabilities of ITSM tools enable you to reduce and increase the productivity of IT staff.

ServiceNow features

• Using incident management ML, you can automatically assign incidents to the correct solution group.
• You can use DevOps features to automate common changes, and use the Change Advisory Board (CAB) workbench to automate complex changes.
• Using problem management, you can prevent problems and quickly restore service.
• You can integrate IT data islands into a single system of record, allowing IT staff to view the operation of all systems and services.
• Use data visualization to prioritize resources, predict trends, and drive IT to align with your business goals.
• With the continuous improvement management (CIM) structured framework and workflow, you can prioritize and collaborate on business goals, people, and data to manage strategic IT roadmap investments.
• With Service Portfolio Workspace, you can use data from ServiceNow and third-party applications in a unified view to analyze and track service performance.
• Using Vendor Manager Workspace, you can analyze and track supplier performance in a unified view.
• Natural language virtual agents and agent workspaces help reduce the burden on IT staff and improve their work efficiency.
• Predictive Intelligence’s AI-assisted recommendations enable you to identify, track, and resolve high-impact events and improve efficiency.
• With SLM, you can understand the performance of your IT team and set business expectations.
• You can use, manage, and share knowledge across the organization, and make it easy for IT staff and employees to use it privately or shared.
• Other features include mobile agent, request management, Now Mobile, embedded experience, door-to-door experience, process optimization, workforce optimization, dynamic translation, asset management, benchmarks, reports, and dashboards.

BMC Helix and ServiceNow

We directly compared two IT service management tools:

feature	BMC Helix ITSM	Serve ITSM now
Incident and problem management		✔
IT knowledge management		✔
Self-service/request fulfillment		✔
Reporting and service level agreement (SLA) management		✔
Workflow design and flexibility		✔
Change and release management		✔
Configuration Management (CMDB)	✔	✔
Intelligent Automation ITSM (AITSM)		✔
cooperate		✔
Elevated	✔	✔
user experience		✔
Development integration	✔	✔
IT Operations Management (ITOM) integration		✔
Easy to deploy		✔
Ability to understand needs		✔
Pricing flexibility	✔
service and support		✔
Comprehensive ability score		✔

Compare BMC Helix and ServiceNow

It is obvious from the above table that ServiceNow ITSM is a better ITSM tool. BMC Helix ITSM is an IT service management tool for modern enterprises. It implements intelligent automation to provide predictive, intelligent and innovative service management.

The functions of ITSM tools include incident and problem management, proactive problem management, knowledge management, BMC Helix Multi-Cloud Broker, insight, change release management, digital workspace, asset management, CMDB, SRM and SLM.

ServiceNow ITSM is a complex and siloed cloud-based service management tool that can improve employee and customer experience to achieve successful digital transformation. The solution features include incident management, change management, problem management, CMDB, performance analysis, CIM, service portfolio workspace, supplier manager workspace, virtual agent, agent workspace, predictive intelligence, SLM, and knowledge management.

Learn more about the functions of these two IT service management software, and purchase the solution that best meets your organization’s needs.

Read the next article: Top ITSM tools and software in 2021