ServiceChannel provides facilities managers with a single platform to source, procure, manage, and pay for repair and maintenance services from commercial contractors across their enterprise. The company aims to deliver transparency and data-driven analytics of service quality, across all trades, locations, and contractors, allowing facilities managers drive significant brand equity and ROI for their organizations without outsourcing or investing in new infrastructure. …
N/A
TOPdesk
Score 8.7 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
TOPdesk is the flagship highly-modular cloud-based or installed ITSM service desk and asset management solution from the Dutch company of the same name, for enterprise companies.
N/A
Pricing
ServiceChannel
TOPdesk
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ServiceChannel
TOPdesk
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
—
The TOPdesk license model:
- Modular: Organizations purchase only the modules needed
- Saas or On premise
- Supports unlimited number of assets.
- End users OR service agents based. For flexibility in the number of agents for e.g. extra busy times of the year, the end user license allows adding agents without any restrictions, no day passes needed.
ServiceChannel is well suited for companies that have multiple locations or a few very large buildings. In my experience the system allows one person to manage 150 to 200 small retail locations but when you add restaurants and buildings with lots of equipment then it gets more complex and the number of locations that one person can effectively manage is greatly reduced. You can effectively manager 50 or 30,000+ locations with this system if you have the personal. There are several free or cost-effective programs available if you are only looking to manage a dozen or so locations.
I think TOPdesk is best fitted in small to medium businesses, if there is someone capable of programming the rule sets. Those can be hard to create properly or maintain over time. The knowledge base and Self Service Portal can provide users with some insights and help, even if the SysAdmin is unavailable at that time. I don't think it is suitable for larger companies, because I personally think it will get quite messy then.
ServiceChannel listens to me the user more than any other product I have ever been involved with. It seems like every few months there are some upgrades and improvements to an already great system.
They have some great folks employed who are very accessible and very knowledgeable in this system, they are eager to help out and jump in, and they are never trying to up-sell me during these times.
I believe they have some of the best practices around for helping out new vendors, who have never been exposed to any CMMS system, they help to ease the fear that contractors/vendors have from the onboarding process thru system training.
TOPdesk provides a clean and modern interface for all of its modules. Many of the modules have a similar look and feel, which makes it easy for users to utilize each one.
Its workflow system allows administrators and developers to define what needs to occur when certain events happen. This can ensure that processes happen in the correct sequence.
TOPdesk includes a vast API system to allow for external systems to integrate with it, and for TOPdesk to communicate with external systems.
Sometimes the functionality of the software is slow.
Example...I insert a WO# into the home search box and it comes up with "nothing found". I return to the home screen and repeat the exact same process and it takes me to my WO. This happens at least 50% of the time.
They just finished up with a system upgrade (I think), and during the 3 week period I could not pull mass approved invoices for my AP department. That was a real hindrance.
I am not particularly fond of the new dashboard format. It's not as easy to move around in. However it's new and I'm sure I will get used to it quick enough.
The requirement to fill out certain fields before a ticket can be closed can be cumbersome. This could be a requirement for some organizations though.
The field mappings from Azure AD to user data could be a little more precise. Some of the fields just don't translate.
When setting up the system to intake emails as trouble tickets, it can be tricky when people reply after a ticket is closed. It will create multiple tickets from this.
As the project manager for the system, I find it to be intuitive and helpful to keeping our technicians in the field and working rather than running back all the time for paper copies of work orders. I think once we have a solid year under our belt there are things that we can work to expand on. The technicians like it because they can look back at old work orders to see what we did in certain locations to make repairs. All the notes are contained on the system rather than relying on someone else to put them in and dig them back out. The system benefits the technicians when they use it to their advantage. We are also finding reduced calls to the office asking about work order statuses. The customers are getting real-time updates on their requests.
Sometimes I think some things are hard to find. I often do not know if I have to search in Settings or in Modules. In some cases the user has to do a lot of clicks for example to link a key to a user. Something could work a little smarter.
Like I said somewhere else in this review: the helpdesk of TOPdesk is top of the bill! In the Netherlands, that is. I can not plea for the helpdesks in other countries, but I guess the TOPdesk organization will make sure the quality of the helpdesk is the same in every country.
Although being a SAAS solution, TOPdesk performs pretty fast. One can imagine that any SAAS solution is slow or has hiccups, but we have not experienced such with TOPdesk. Pages load quickly, logging in goes smoothly. We have made reports on premise in the past - that always took some time, as you might expect with such complex tasks. It seems that in the SAAS solution TOPdesk somehow has managed to make it even faster!
TOPdesk is easy to use and affordable with all the major features required for any organization to smoothly manage its services. We were not quite sure at the beginning if we should go with the TOPdesk for IT service management but we started getting used to it in just a few months. Now, after using it for 3 years, it has been a backbone tool of our organization. The customer support provided by TOPdesk is fast and reliable.
We had Topdesk in-house here training staff for almost a month (2-3 hour meetings 3x a week.) It was invaluable and we were able to take that training and share with the rest of our IT staff. Once implemented we were able to fly from there. The challenges we found were in how to get started. Once started the knowledge base offered from Topdesk has been invaluable.
Online training documentation is easy to access and consume. There is no real challenges with finding information on how to use the product and some really helpful knowledge base items that show us how valuable these options are in our own implementation of it. The online training we've used has been self driven
It is very easy to set up ServiceChannel but the one thing I believe they could make easier is the vendor portion of ServiceChannel. We get a lot of complaints on how difficult it is for them when trying to get set up.
It was a challenge to port over years of the same thing and we ended up keeping old ideas in Topdesk that we will eventually weed out as time passes and we learn how users view categories and flows of tickets. Planning is key but bear in mind that just because you used to do it this way doesn't mean you still have to
Service Channel bridged the gap for us to issue work orders directly to vendors. Maximo Asset Management did not have a user-friendly way for us to do what Service Channel does on the vendor side. Also, at the time of our selection, Maximo was missing the site portal but has since developed a solution of their own.
TOPdesk was picked as our new Helpdesk solution due to the Asset Management module and the ability to integrate to Active Directory. When we work with the product demo we enjoyed the way TOPdesk does its work flow. Just about any field in the system is customizable. I have found their knowledge base of the product to be well written and up-to-date.
TOPdesk is very flexible and scalable. Every department in you organization can you the software. Perhaps some persons need some training, but that can be provided by TOPdesk ot some keyusers.
It increased visibility on how much we were spending on HVAC repairs/replacements and allowed us to make changes to reduce costs
Before we were using paper invoices from the vendors, which creates a scenario of losing/missing invoices into AP. Then we start using the Service Channel invoicing and reduce errors to below 1%.
Gives you the capability to add trades and adjust to your needs, so you can get better tracking of specific items.
The self-service portal has allowed us to shift left massively. Students can find the solutions themselves very often.
It has allowed easier collaborative working between teams.
We are more efficient as we do not have to ask the student to repeat their question and we can record everything necessary in the incident. This provides an improved student experience as well as improved staff efficiency.
