ServiceNow vs. Remedy: Choosing the Right ITSM Solution
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ServiceNow and Remedy are two popular ITSM platforms. According to Apps Run The World, ServiceNow has a 40.01% market share in the IT Service Management sector. BMC Remedy, on the other hand, has a market share of 16.7% (Source: enlyft).
Collectively, ServiceNow and Remedy held 56.71% of the market share in the ITSM industry.
These ITSM tools can help you manage all aspects of the ITSM lifecycle. However, when choosing between ServiceNow vs Remedy, organizations often need help.
In this blog, you will learn about how ServiceNow ITSM and Remedy stack up against each other, so you can make informed decisions about which one is best for your business needs.
Let’s get started with a brief overview of these two.
ServiceNow and Remedy: An Overview
ServiceNow ITSM is a cloud-first platform that brings processes, practices, and tools needed to manage and deliver IT services in one place. It was introduced in 2004 by Fred Luddy with the vision of simplifying work experience for regular people.
Fast forward to today, more than 3,514 companies including 85% of Fortune 500 companies are using ServiceNow. (Source: Apps Run The World)
BMC Remedy is an on-premise IT service management platform. It has evolved into BMC Helix ITSM, a modern service management solution that can be used in both on-premise and cloud configurations.
Remedy was founded in 1999 and later acquired by Peregrine Systems, Inc. in 2001. Peregrine Systems sold Remedy to BMC Software in 2002 and since then it has continued to work as a subsidiary of BMC Software.
Currently, BMC Helix is used by more than 270 companies worldwide. (Source: 6Sense)
ServiceNow vs Remedy: How are They Similar?
As said earlier, the most common similarity between Remedy and ServiceNow is that both are powerful ITSM platforms. Both have a single CMBD (Configuration Management Database) that is a single source of reference for all the IT services.
Here is an overview of the similarities between BMC Remedy and ServiceNow;
| Features | ServiceNow ITSM | BMC Helix ITSM |
| ITIL 4 Certified | Yes | Yes |
| Generative AI | Yes, Now Assist for ITSM allows you to leverage the generative AI capabilities. | Yes, it also leverages generative AI capabilities. |
| Knowledge Management | It allows the creation, reviewing, categorization, and approval of knowledge articles to help users find answers to their queries more rapidly. | It also has an easy-to-access knowledge base to help users create, publish, review, or receive articles to resolve the issues they are facing. |
| Incident Management | Its incident management capabilities include identification, logging, and response to restore the services at the earliest. With configuration capabilities, it allows you to configure the incident form, and other features aligning with your organizational goals. | Helix ITSM Service Desk is a centralized platform handling incident lifecycle from creation to final resolution. |
| Problem Management | It follows the ITIL processes and manages the entire problem management lifecycle. You can configure the forms, create a custom problem management model, prioritize problems, and more. | It uses BMC Helix ITSM change management processes to identify the root cause for problems and fix them following the best-recommended actions. |
| Self-Service Capabilities | It has a clean, and simple front end to its IT support to allow users to assess the service catalog, and knowledge base, work with incidents, participate in surveys, and more. Additionally, it offers self-service analytics capabilities to collect information about user’s activities. | BMC Helix Virtual Agent can be integrated with the Helix Digital Workplace Advanced to help employees browse the knowledge base, find procedures, and interact with virtual agents to find the answers to their problems on their own. |
| Change Management | It has dynamic approval policies, data-driven flows, and AI to improve the change velocity and success probability. | Helix ITSM change management application helps in assessing, evaluating, and implementing change management within the organization. |
| Drag-and-Drop Workflow Customization | Available | Available |
| Asset Management | ServiceNow has a standalone application, called IT Asset Management that can be integrated with ITSM to have one platform for all the needs related to IT. | Helix ITSM Asset Management allows you to manage the IT assets lifecycle. |
| AI Agents | ServiceNow has AI agents called Agentic AI that can be integrated with its wide range of products like ITSM, ITOM, CSM, and more. These pre-built agents can be easily customized to align with your unique business needs. They work autonomously or alongside human agents and are driven by deep contextual comprehension ensuring personalized experiences for employees. | BMC also has agentic AI powered by the HelixGPT. They can work with human agents to improve their productivity. These agents can automate the tasks, help with insights, and more. |
| Release Management | Yes | Yes |
| Service Level Management | Available | Available |
| Mobile App | Yes | Yes |
ServiceNow vs Remedy: What’s the Difference?
Let’s find out how ServiceNow and Remedy are different from each other. We have compared these ITSM platforms on different aspects to help you choose the right ITSM for your business.
Deployment
As said earlier, ServiceNow is a cloud-first platform that supports only cloud-based deployment options. It also allows on-premise deployment which is reserved for organizations with strict security protocols, or operational requirements.
BMC Helix ITSM offers both on-premise and cloud deployment models. This enables you to select the ideal deployment model that best aligns with your business needs.
User Experience
User experience is the most important factor in ServiceNow vs Remedy comparison. An ITSM platform with good experience is more likely to be adopted by a team. Additionally, it boosts productivity as users spend less time learning how to use the platform, and more working on it.
According to Gartner Peer Insights, ServiceNow scored a 4.2 rating in terms of user experience. BMC Helix ITSM has a 3.9 rating.
ServiceNow has consumer-like self-service portals enabling users to request IT services, track progress, and find solutions for level-one issues themselves. Also, ServiceNow’s portals are designed using a modular UI that emphasizes eliminating the complexities involved in IT services.
BMC Helix ITSM also provides seamless and intuitive user experiences. It has a micro-service-based portal that enables the users to find the solution for level-one problems on their own.
Customization
Every organization has unique processes and workflow, thus customization enables you to ensure that the ITSM tool you choose is in perfect sync with your business.
In this BMC Remedy vs ServiceNow comparison, we’re going to compare different customization opportunities available with each platform.
| ServiceNow ITSM | BMC Helix ITSM | |
| Customization opportunities | ServiceNow has a wide range of customization possibilities. It allows the customization of ITSM solutions to meet your organization-specific needs without changing their baseline coding. | BMC Remedy also allows the customization of solution behaviors according to your business needs using the Developer Studio. It uses AR System Overlays to implement customization to objects without changing the original code. |
| User interface customization | With the help of UI policies, Flow Designer, and other capabilities, ServiceNow allows you to customize the workspace experience to meet audience-specific needs and deliver a personalized experience. Furthermore, it has WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) enabling the users to make customization and see the results immediately. | It allows you to customize Helix ITSM service’s color scheme, icon, company logo, and background to meet your organization’s needs. It also allows complex customization through the Developer Studio. |
| Customization guidance | It provides comprehensive guidance to promote business smart customization. With best practices and recommendations for customization mechanisms, it reduces the customization complexities, and technical debt associated with it. | BMC Remedy also provides guidelines around the customization of ITSM solutions. |
| Low-code/no-code customization | ServiceNow has been recognized as the leader in low-code or enterprise no-code development platforms. It has low-code or no-code tools to allow you to customize the platform with drag-and-drop functionality to meet your needs. | Helix ITMS also offers you both codeless and code-based methods for customization. However, complex integration requires knowledge of programming languages. |
| Responsibility | Any customization made to ServiceNow is the responsibility of the user to maintain it. | Helix ITSM also doesn’t hold the responsibility of customization. |
Integration
Integration capabilities of ITSM software ensure that all the IT processes and infrastructure are connected enabling informed decision-making.
Here is a detailed comparison of BMC Helix ITSM and ServiceNow ITSM to find out which one has better integration capabilities;
| ServiceNow ITSM | BMC Helix ITSM | |
| Integration capabilities | It is known for its wide range of integration capabilities it offers. | Helix ITSm also enables the integration of the various systems with the platform. |
| Ease of integration | It has a simple process for the implementation of integration. Also, it guides for successful integration. It receives a 4.1 rating from Gartner for its ease of integration | The ease of integration varies per the complexity of the integrated system. It receives a 3.9 rating from Gartner for ease of integration. |
| Technologies and methods | It uses different tools and technologies for integration such as; • REST API • LDAP • JDBC • Excel, CSV, Email • SOAP | It uses the following tools and technologies; • APIs • Web services • C and Java APIs • LDAP • ODBC |
| No-code integration | ServiceNow allows integrations with various systems and platforms using GUI (Graphical User Interface) instead of coding. | It also has no code integration capabilities, with limitations. |
| Custom integration | It enables you to develop custom APIs to integrate ITSM with third-party applications. These custom integrations are highly customizable to tailor integration to specific business needs. | Helix ITSM also enables custom integration capabilities but lacks support REST API support |
| Pre-built integration | ServiceNow has IntegrationHub which has more pre-built integration spokes that facilitate the seamless integration between ServiceNow and other systems. | BMC Helix ITSM also has pre-built integration for integration with platforms such as Jira, AWS, Salesforce Service Cloud, etc. However, these pre-built integration has limitations. |
| Integration support | ServiceNow offers support for integration. | BMC Helix ITSM also has a support system for integration. |
Automation Capabilities
Automation reduces the manual labor involved in IT services, ultimately reducing the operational cost. Here is a detailed comparison of ServiceNow vs BMC Helix ITSM automation capabilities to help you find out which one is better.
| ServiceNow ITSM | BMC Helix ITSM | |
| Cognitive automation | It uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to automate essential business processes. | It also uses machine learning and AI, but it is more centered on predictive service management. |
| Auto classification | It automatically classifies the items based on predefined rules and criteria such as type, price, vendor, or any other custom criteria. | It classifies the incidents, tickets, and incoming emails automatically. |
| Routing | Using machine learning it can automatically route the requests to the correct group. | Helix ITSM also automates the routing of incidents to the right agent. |
| Change management | It integrates with DevOps to automate the change management process, eliminating the manual efforts, and scope of errors. Furthermore, it also automates the advisory board meetings with the CAB workbench to speed up the change management process. | It integrates with TrueSight Server Automation to automate the process of creating and approving change requests. |
| Virtual agent | ServiceNow has a virtual agent powered by generative AI that can automate the resolution of issues. It automatically routes the customer queries to chatbots that understand the issue and provide appropriate responses. | Yes, BMC Helix ITSM also has a virtual agent |
Scalability
As your business grows, the need for IT grows. Therefore, an ITSM tool should be engineered to be adept according to your business needs.
ServiceNow is a cloud-based platform that supports a range of deployment sizes. From Startups to large enterprises, ServiceNow can be used by all sizes of businesses. Furthermore, ServiceNow has modules (building blocks) that can be added as per the needs. This means you can start with the module you need, and add more modules as your business grows.
BMC Helix ITSM on the other hand is offered in four different categories according to system usage such as compact, medium, small, and large. According to your usage, you can choose a category that best meets your needs. If your usage exceeds these categories, you can discuss with the Helix ITSM support team to seek help.
Price
Pricing is one of the most important factors to consider when choosing an ITSM tool. ServiceNow ITSM has three different pricing plans; Standard, Pro, and Enterprise. The pricing for each plan is estimated based on the business requirements. You can have discussions with a ServiceNow consulting services provider to get an estimate of the cost.
BMC Helix ITSM pricing is also determined by the careful evaluation of your business requirements. So when it comes to ServiceNow vs Remedy cost, they both have custom quote options specific to your business requirements.
ServiceNow vs Remedy: Which One to Choose?
The best approach to selecting between ServiceNow and Remedy is evaluating your requirements. For example, if you’re looking for an ITSM tool with on-premise deployment, then BMC Helix ITSM is the best option. The other way around, if you’re looking for a platform that has easy scalability, and modular architecture that supports your business growth at every stage, then ServiceNow makes the right choice.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Both ServiceNow and Remedy have feature-rich ticketing systems. ServiceNow with a user-friendly interface enables easy ticket creation and tracking. BMC Helix ITSM also enables the creation and resolution of tickets promptly. So the selection completely depends on your business requirements.
