BMC FootPrints is an IT service management (ITSM) solution featuring workload automation.
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Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
Score 7.2 out of 10
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Cherwell Software was a full suite of service management tools competing with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, and IBM SmartCloud. It was acquired by Ivanti, and has reached EOL.
ServiceNow was administrative heavy and required more than one admin. Also expensive for smaller customers. Remedy was scaled more for enterprise customers where we are small to mid-sized. FootPrints - we replaced FootPrints with Cherwell due to a lack of BMC putting any further …
Cost is the number one reason most use Cherwell versus the FootPrints and ServiceNow platforms out there. Not all orgs can afford millions for an ITSM solution and the cost of Cherwell means they can. Also the code less interface means you don't have to shell out additional …
BMC Footprints is so well suited to keep the documentation easy to read and find, as same as typification. You can find specific documentation for an audit so fast and export a report using the specific criteria that you need to comply with your boss or audit needs. As I told before, BMC footprints need to be more friendly to the end users because they get lost many times trying to track some ticket or typing documentation.
Well suited in an IT environment where you have limited staff. It can be managed by one administrator. Reliability of the SaaS environment has been excellent. Flexibility in developing automated workflows to open, manage, and close Incidents. Change Management due to ability to modify OOB to meet the needs of our staff. Contract Management allowing us to be notified when a contract or license is up for renewal and setting reminders. Integrations are not easy to create and manage.
Documentation. We try to reduce the amount of paperwork needed for staff to do their job, so by automating certain tasks, we are able to speed up the resolution process for trouble tickets.
Reporting. We'll use the reporting tool to get the number of tickets opened, response times and can go into granular reports.
Surveys. When tickets are closed, we automatically send out surveys to end users to get valuable feedback on how we did and what we can improve.
Cherwell's email handling automation works flawlessly. The only time that I have ever needed to reset the automation service that drives it is when my own server that houses the small connecting agent has some kind of problem and disconnects us from our hosted Cherwell instance. It just works. Emails to a certain address always result in a new ticket or update to an existing ticket.
Cherwell is literally 100% customization in so many ways that it would be pointless to try to enumerate them. There is a very sizable list of already-created customizations (called "mApps") that you can download and apply to your instance. If you don't like them you can roll them back in seconds. But you can add and configure entire modules using one of these pre-defined, completely free, add-on packages. It's so easy to add features this way that I check the list of available mApps every month or so just to see what functionality I can add.
Purpose based configuration- It would be beneficial to see a more purposed based, out of the box, configuration option. For example, if you need PCI compliance, more intuitive reporting would make managing compliance much easier.
Initial design and implementation- Don't think that your experience as an IT professional will allow you to stand this system up on your own. To properly configure Footprints and set yourself up for success down the road, get Professional Services with this one.
Somewhat behind the times- Service Core is making a huge leap forward with the latest version, 12, but Asset Core is far behind. There are quite a few quirks to how the application works and how it is used.
It has been the business decision to go with them and that is what we will do. Going back, this would have not been the choice, but nothing can be done about it now. We are stuck with this application for years to come. Wish there were other possibilities that could be done.
Cherwell is still the best tool for the job in the market. Even though Ivanti bought them and are trying to convince everyone to move over to Neurons for ITSM, they have stated Cherwell will remain supported indefinitely and have a roadmap for future Cherwell development. Unfortunately, ISM is not as flexible as Cherwell (and the UX is atrocious), hence why many people are sticking with Cherwell (and why many Cherwell customers never purchased ISM originally)
It's so simple to use and customize however you want. You can create new workspaces and workflows with ease, set up new users, incoming email rules, customize the layout of the forms, and even change the colors and logos. It's just very easily customizable overall. It's also really straightforward to figure out how to use, you really almost don't have to show somebody how to use it. If you just sit them down in front of it and let them look it over, they could figure it out themselves easily.
I enjoy the layout and configuration of our Cherwell Service Management instance. It did take me a bit to get used to, as with any new ticketing system, but now that I understand the system more, I thoroughly enjoy it! There are just so many options and the UI is very intuitive.
The browser client is mostly acceptable in terms of performance, but still lacks parity with the rich client. The rich client is not very performant at all. It's built on old architecture and relies heavily on a fast internet connection, good caching and database indexing. There are several unwritten rules with form design (and form arrangement) which most users are not aware of, but can severely impact performance in the rich client. This is where the flexibility of Cherwell can come back to bite you if you step outside the boundaries of these unwritten rules
I've had no issues with the support for FootPrints. We haven't really had to use them all that much over the years, but when needed they have always been prompt and knowledgeable at dealing with any issue. I've worked with a lot of different support teams over the years, and they have been one of my favorites to work with.
We generally have a good time with Cherwell support, however, there are the few niche cases where I have to explain how Cherwell works to the customer support agent on the other end. A little more product education for tier 1 support could go a long way in helping expedite support requests from SaaS customers.
I didn't partake in the in-person training, but it was available. I preferred the online method instead, which was a great experience. It was nice to have someone available to bounce questions off of and demonstrate how certain functions worked.
The training was great! We got together to review the system, its UI, and how to perform basic functions. Then there was plenty of time to ask questions and test out the system while there was someone available to assist.
Implementation is a breeze. Each time I've implemented it, we had an outsourced vendor overseeing it & assisting where needed. However, Cherwell OOTB is ready to go, and configuring it for LDAP/SAML, etc. for authentication and user-imports is really straight forward. The infrastructure needed for Cherwell is extremely simple too - and installing the server & database takes no more than 20 mins
I was not involved in the selection process but in my opinion either SQL or Access databases would have worked just as well without the same amount of cost. These two systems would have been much easier to manage and would have tracked the same information in a less convoluted process and expense.
Much more customizable than other products, especially when ran in a self-hosted environment. Cherwell [Service Management] allows for greater flexibility of custom development and integrations to allow for automating tasks that traditional ITSM apps are not well suited for. Cherwell [Service Management] gives you the freedom to develop your own objects with minimal licensing costs.
We have never had any major show-stopper issues with Cherwell itself - more so with the infrastructure it sits on. Moving from in-house cloud (on Cherwell's side), to AWS then to Azure has caused multiple problems over the years (some still on-going), however the product has remained fairly stable
As mentioned, they were always great to work with (minus the project management side). My only feedback would be to push back on requirements that don't make sense
As with any standard ticketing system, it helped decrease the time before first contact with clients.
Our department was always concerned with keeping a low budget, and it was cheaper than most.
My supervisor could easily tell how many resources were being put into each employee, so we had more visibility of our team's capabilities at a given time if we needed to take on something complex.
