No contest. Remedyforce required a full time investment to understand the use of cryptically named variables, so all changes needed to be made by a specially trained administrator. Remedy had terrible problem handing capability. ServiceDesk Plus is a polar opposite - most …
[BMC Helix Remedyforce] is probably best suited for an MSP who needs to keep multiple clients separated. If you were an internal IT department I think the additional features it has would be lost. When dealing with an MSP who needs to know what software and what issues have effected specific clients it is very well suited to do that.
ServiceDesk Plus is very easy to configure at the start, and then adjust the categories and rules as the implementation is refined. Its greatest strength is the ability to program without requiring a full time administrator. There is very little jargon involved. Reporting not so much. The canned reports are useful but do not always cover some of the basics. Fortunately, the user groups freely share report definitions so one could springboard from something close to your desired result.
An admin user is able to quickly create a request definition with all of its components from one screen. We use to have to go to the 7 or 8 different screens to create each piece of the request definition.
Ability to update multiple Incidents/Service Requests at once with the update button. This allows essentially an inline edit functionality within Remedyforce.
Change management schedule is a great feature as well to be able to see how changes align and what there expected start dates/times are.
The ability to monitor/regulate the volume of tickets when you integrate with your monitoring software. We have so many items that trigger alerts, creating a ticket for each is somewhat overwhelming. Would like to be able to better control when an incident should be created.
Being able to report on Service requests and tasks together would be nice. Right now I have to do it separately as they are in different buckets, so to speak.
Remedy console is an improvement from where it started but can still be a cleaner interface for a tech to be able to work out of for their day to day work.
Reporting tools; the report features can be a little limited, it can be quite tricky to get the information you want displayed in detail
You can set required fields within the ticket template, which should mean the user has to complete them before they can submit the ticket, however this often doesn't enforce correctly
The total amount of time spent from installation to configuration for a minimal ticketing system was 2 hours. Maintenance and customization for the application can be completed with a great amount of ease. In addition having a customer portal is an added benefit that pays for itself
we are looking at other tools like Zendesk which may replace ServiceDesk. We are currently evaluating both tools to see which one would serve our needs better
As any other feature-rich software package, starting out with ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus has a little bit of a learning curve, but it usually doesn't take very long until you can use the basic features. Training new technicians on the use of the software does not take very long, and for users to submit tickets it is as easy as sending an email.
Our network administrator usually gets a good response when contacting ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus customer service. They are quick to respond and so far have been able to eliminate most of our issues. We have been through several upgrades of the software over the years and have no issues to report in regards to customer service.
Learning industry best practices or gaining insight on them from either BMC or an implementation partner would have saved some headaches we faced after roll-out.
I previously worked with tools like Service Manager which were difficult to configure, administer and maintain. The support options were very limited. Remedyforce has local US support, dedicated reps, and a more developed infrastructure to work from to support an organization. This runs on the Salesforce platform so worrying about server failures and unscheduled outages was no longer going to be an issue for us. Self service, knowledge base, and change control were just a few highly utilized features that helped employees support themselves and automate very manual processes.
Spiceworks was free, which obviously had both benefits and limitations - I will say that the community around Spiceworks has always been great. If we could replicate that experience with the ME user base, it would be terrific.
Remedyforce has allowed us to eliminate other solutions that provided similar features. By now using one true ITSM we have been able to save money which in higher education is always a concern.
The reports and dashboards allow for a birds-eye view of our daily operations and provide managers and executives the information they need to make important cost saving decisions.
The tool does not scale well from an ROI perspective. As you add a customer, you must add a new instance, hence a new license.
The tool is probably on the expensive side (34,000 USD per 130 technicians per year).
There is no usage beyond incident, change, and problem management. The CMDB feature is extremely limited and cannot generate additional ROI. There is no knowledge-base or integration with other software (other than ME Desktop Central).
