BMC Track-IT has great flexibility that ManageEngine and Spiceworks don't have, however, Spiceworks is absolutely free and for just a help desk ticketing system is a very solid solution. ManageEngine and ServiceDesk Plus have different modules that could help in different IT …
Track-It! is great for a small-to-medium sized enterprise that has a fairly small IT department but needs far more control of tickets than just email and spreadsheets. It scales well enough as IT departments grow, adding techs is simple enough, as is changing the workflow. A large company would probably be better off with a different solution. The lack of easy customization, and the shortcomings it has in workflow templates (which would be a nightmare for project management) means it won't scale up that far.
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.
Ticket logging for end users, so they can see the progress on their help requests
Asset management; it has an agent that can be installed on machines which can then feed back information on installed software, active times, logged on user etc
Project management; larger projects can be managed within ManageEngine ServiceDesk as well as end user help tickets, where progress/milestones etc can be recorded
Active Directory import of users, so that it automatically updates when users are created/deleted and links their accounts in ManageEngine ServiceDesk with their email address as well to enable email alerts
When trying to select the top row ticket, you have to be careful not to select all tickets. Happened to us twice and we assigned all open tickets to one technician. Took a few minutes to correct.
Site is sometimes a bit sluggish to respond. Don't know if that is an issue with our network infrastructure or the program itself, though.
When users send emails to the help desk, we sometimes experience delays until the tickets appear on the site for the technicians.
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
It is still very cumbersome, lots of data entry on the back end to build how we want it but it is still not completely user friendly. Many functions still dont work and contacting someone for help isnt always easy or we get told solutions for issues we have just arent built yet.
We have rarely needed to use Support for BMC Track-It!, but in the times that we did need to use it, they were excellent. The biggest issue is that after not paying for support for about three years, now that we NEED support, it is too expensive for us to receive. This is due to the way their support is billed. So long as you never drop support, then you should be fine.
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.
BMC Track-It! is much more bare bones compared to ServiceNow products, and if your department has the money, ServiceNow is a much better option. Not only is the Knowledge Base much easier to create and publish articles, but the asset management in BMC Track-It! is practically useless. BMC Track-It! is more cost effective, and with a small amount of technicians there's likely no reason to need a bigger solution, but it leaves a lot wanting.
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.
The biggest positive impact it had on ROI was that the software itself didn't require any expensive ongoing maintenance contracts since it was installed and managed by our organization.
The negative aspect of this is if there was a major problem with the software, then it would require contacting the vendor, at which point it could become expensive for a service call.
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).
