HCL Notes vs. ServiceNow IT Service Management

I often work with teams from other country and regions, hence HCL Notes is a very useful platform for internal company management operations. It standardized organisational work standards in most of the offices worldwide. HCL Notes also enables chat with other team around the world that I find very helpful when initiating conversation or just want to have a quick update rather than sending emails and waiting for replies. However, HCL Notes is not very efficient in web browsing and user still need to use other internet service providers.

Incentivized

In terms of reporting, it has helped us a lot. Very easy to find an audit trail of who did what, when, and how long. It used to take us too long to figure out what was going wrong, and now we have clear monitoring on everything. The splitting of our smaller IT team into a larger one with 2 teams was also made easier with the auto-assignment, categorization, and escalation features. Approval processes take less time now. We have clear permissions set up for the manager and both teams.

Incentivized

• It has a really strong and robust database that's extremely scalable and holds up well to thousands of users and many different environments.
• It has a really good enterprise-grade framework for development custom database applications
• All of the custom database applications along with the email all have a nice uniform look and feel so their easy-to-use.
• I really like how it's developed and supported on every client OS (Windows, OSX, Linux)! The competitors definitely do NOT offer this (M$).

Incentivized

• Integration
• Good search capabilities. Applications are created within CMDB and we can search for the app to see the changes, incidents and problems created
• Reporting. Great store of MIS reports and will let you to create custom reports
• Visual Task Boards - use it as Kanban boards

• Notes' backwards compatibility sometimes gets in the way. Menus are cluttered with extraneous, outdated options and features that modern users will never use, and Preferences are often difficult to navigate for those coming from Gmail or Outlook. We have greatly simplified this via Policies, but users still find it daunting to go through all the options that are available.
• The IBM Notes client for Windows & Mac is essentially the Eclipse Java development platform...so it is HUGE. Performance initially was very slow but IBM has done a good job of speeding things up. As IBM moves more toward cloud-delivered applications, this will not be as much of a problem.
• Notes and Domino can be complex to manage for administrators who are more accustomed to ActiveDirectory, Group Policy, etc. Editing a notes.ini file to add a feature, or working with XML files by hand to create a SmartUpgrade kit can be daunting to those coming from more modern administrative roles.
• Some users claim to "hate" Notes mail. While I have heard this less and less over the past 10 years, we have had 3rd party software offer plugins to Outlook and it's rare to see any for Notes.
• The client update process should be automated more. I would like to see the Notes client update quietly and quickly more like an Adobe software update. If an update fails it should automatically try again without prompting the user over and over.
• Notes multiple language spell checking is a downloaded add-on Java-based resource that has to be deployed in a convoluted way that is difficult for users to grasp. Therefore any foreign language spell check updates must be done individually per Notes client by IT, which is unfortunate. I would prefer to see that be a "live download" update option for users to get directly from IBM (don't make me download it and put it on my network).

• Finding requests that I opened and have since been completed by the assigned group/individual is very difficult to accomplish unless I've written down the request numbers somewhere.
• Requests that I opened and are subsequently closed, often continue to appear in the list of "My Open Requests" giving the appearance that they were not completed when in fact they were.
• It may exist, but if it does I haven't found it yet, which makes it less than intuitive, but I would like to see the ability to recall a request in ServiceNow.
• I believe our firewall rule change request for is a custom form, but it has a serious drawback. If I submit such a request and need to make a correction to it before it is approved, there isn't anyway for me to do so. The request has to first be rejected with the creation of a sub-task in order to edit it before it is resubmitted for approval.

Incentivized

I've been in IT business and as a Programmer/Developer for 20+ years with too many programming languages experiences/back ground (C/C++/Visual Basic/Basic Program/Unix/COBOL/Java). Also with 18+ years with Lotus Notes/IBM Domino, I am still and always think Lotus Notes is the best RAD platform available!. When the time where resource is very limited and the expectation is very high and the turn around is too short, IBM Domino/Notes is the platform to use and it's the only choice available.

To be completely honest setting up a new ticketing system can be a pain in the ass. Once you have it setup and customized the way you want it, you don't want to switch unless you're unhappy with the product. Unless future releases and updates really muck the system up, I wouldn't change.

Easy to use for the user, most of the apps we developed, there is not much need for user training. Most of the times, we just do a demo to the users group and they can pick up from there.

The dashboard is so confusing, [there are] many clicks to open a task and search by a ticket. The Enterprise customisation [we did] has finished to kill the software and creates a really bad experience on a daily basis. [It is] So slow, and so many clicks to process a ticket. Works only on IE so, that [should] make you realize that [it] is a bad idea.

We have never had any issues with ServiceNow's availability that I am aware of in the two years I have been using it.

Incentivized

For a massive system, page loads are reasonably quick, including searches.

Incentivized

I've been using the production for a very long time and very happy with it. Also, all the online resources and forums for notes is very friendly and easy/quick for getting help. I found out that compared to Microsoft or Oracle or any other platforms, IBM Notes online forum is the best I have seen.

I would give it this rating because we have had no major issues with the support for ServiceNow after we implemented it at our organization. They seem to respond promptly and efficiently if we ever do need to open a support case with them about an issue we are having.

Incentivized

To type in what should be a text box, you have to click an empty cell, a tiny text box pop up opens with a check box and an X. You the. Type in the text box and have to click the check mark. If you have a bunch of fields to fill out, doing this is very annoying. Absolutely know thought went in to this. I'm sure somebody in marketing thought it was a good idea. It wasn't.

Implementation is easy and smooth if the requirement is well gathered/documented. Notes is a RAD platform, all projects in Notes is simple in the implementation step.

Without exception, every client I have worked with has been very happy with their resulting product. While this is partly due to my work, I must point out that the platform is the winning decision, not the implementer.

Incentivized

Outlook has been considered for years as a replacement platform. Pricing and support staff made it prohibitive. Our long-time use of Microsoft Office productivity suite naturally led us to consider the adoption of Office365. A recent investigation told us that Azure Cloud services propel an O365 solution to the forefront. Early adopters in international divisions have paved the way for Azure and O365.

Incentivized

We used to use Jira to handle service tickets but it's way too robust for something this straightforward. Due to the nature of Jira, you needed to already have a lot of documentation and knowledge about who should be assigned the ticket, so the lift of creating a ticket was time consuming.

Incentivized

ServiceNow works as an enterprise solution.

Incentivized

• Over the years, we have lost countless hours of productivity from the thousands of crashes we have experienced.
• One benefit of IBM Notes is that it is very simple to train a new user on. Many people prefer and are familiar with Google tools, but those that use IBM Notes have very little trouble acclimating themselves.

Incentivized

• We don't currently have a CMDB, so we are leveraging ServiceNow to build one using their ITSM and ITOM tools. This is a huge gap for us as a company and it will be a big win once this is in place.
• The core help desk functions are comparable to most other tools on the market, but SN does a great job of integrating that data with other modules like Problem, Change and Event Management to provide a truly integrated solution.
• The tool is expensive, so you will need to try to do as much as you can with the platform. We currently use other systems for HAM and SAM but will be including these in our ServiceNow instance in the future to help maximize our ROI.

Incentivized