Buyer's Guide

Choosing the right ITSM software in 2024

In This Guide:

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Introduction

You can’t get fired for buying ServiceNow
-Ancient IT proverb

You’ve probably heard this or even felt it yourself. And it has been true to a large extent. The breadth of possible use cases that ServiceNow offers is truly amazing.

If you have the budget and the time and the resources and access to certified consultants, you might as well stop reading, go over to servicenow.com and sign up.

That said, not every organization can afford to shell out millions of dollars for one platform that they know they won’t fully leverage. If you can, your choice is simple. ServiceNow has been the market leader for decades and provides a gamut of capabilities.

But if you want to put in the research work and explore other options, this guide is meant to help you understand and evaluate them.

Disclaimer: This guide has been put together by the team at Atomicwork. But other than the last couple of slides, it aims to provide an objective and valuable analysis for IT professionals looking for a new ITSM solution without a disguised sales pitch :)

Chapter 1: Evolution of the ITSM software market

The introduction covers the ServiceNow monopoly in ITSM. If budget and access to development resources are not major concerns for you, quite frankly ServiceNow is your safest choice.

Since it looks like you’re up for a nuanced exploration of the larger ITSM marketplace, let’s start by looking at how this space has evolved over the last decade or so.

Most ITSM software vendors have incrementally improved their offerings, but for a technology space, there haven’t been any radical innovations. Completely new enhancements have also been few and far between.

There have been a few broad trends:

1. Consumerization of IT

About ten years ago, ITSM vendors started opening up to the idea of “consumerization of IT”. The rationale was that employees of a company – or IT end users – were consumers in their day-to-day lives. They were used to a certain level of ease while using consumer products.

These products became even more efficient in the digital era. Digital-first apps, like Uber, DoorDash, etc. were highly intuitive. In their personal lives, users could book a cab, or order food, or get products delivered to their doorsteps, with the click of a button.

When these users came into the workspace, the enterprise tech they needed to use made them feel like going back in time.

New ITSM tools that emerged during this time were optimized for ease of use and used that as a selling point. We moved from clunky interfaces to smoother UI that both end users and support agents loved.

2. Enterprise service management

The other thing that changed, was that these vendors started talking about enterprise service management, or ESM.

ESM, in a nutshell, refers to the practice of extending ITSM principles beyond the realm of IT – to areas like HR, Finance, Legal, Facilities etc. We would argue that that was a natural next step and wasn’t disruptive from a product perspective, since what these departments got, was a scaled-down version of the IT product.

ITSM vendors, almost unanimously, built the ability for multiple teams to co-exist and manage their support and services within a walled space. HR agents, for instance, had access to just HR tickets and could set up HR-related automation workflows without being overwhelmed by an org-wide view of these features.

3. AI

Truth be told, the world of ITSM hadn’t seen any radical changes despite these broad themes and smaller trends. That is until the AI revolution.

To be fair, AI has existed for a while but was limited to a few large or innovative companies and some early adopters. Then OpenAI launched ChatGPT and everything changed.

GenAI – and, by association, AI – gained mass popularity. AI adoption among IT end users skyrocketed* thanks to its practical value. This was perhaps the first major technological trend where the business caught on first and IT needed to play catch-up. But there was just no putting the genie back in the bottle.

*A study conducted by Atomicwork and ITSM.tools found that 75% of IT end users had used free AI tools, like ChatGPT, for their work."

In our opinion, we’re at a technology inflection point and AI has the potential for unforeseen innovation. Thoughtful application of AI will not just incrementally improve IT processes, but will push us to reimagine what they could (and should) look like.

Despite all this, the IT world seems to be divided into two separate camps when it comes to AI adoption. We’ll break them down in the next chapter.

Chapter 2: The AI in ITSM conundrum

There are folks in the IT space who think that the hype around AI is just that – hype. Some of them are even worried about their employability or are too wary of taking the leap.

Camp two wants to adopt AI because it seems to be the flavor of the year. Or because their C-suite or board is breathing down their necks to adopt AI.

While it’s important not to give in to the hype around AI, or any trend for that matter, you need to be pragmatic about it.

You also need to realize that your competition might be exploring AI and its applications to improve operational efficiency, user/customer experience, productivity etc. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to catch up, especially because of all the learnings that they would have amassed. Suffice it to say that we’re in the third pragmatic camp when it comes to AI in ITSM.

If you’re looking for a new ITSM software solution in 2024, your timing couldn’t have been better. And for you, AI is no longer a nice-to-have – it’s a no-brainer.

Chapter 3: Traditional ITSM vs Modern ITSM

Since you’re reading this guide, you’re probably past the decision of building vs buying AI, at least for ITSM. So we won’t go into how incredibly expensive it is to build AI capabilities in house.

That brings us to the next question – should I go for a traditional ITSM tool that recently added AI capabilities as an afterthought or a new-age one built from the ground up with AI capabilities?

In other words, “Should I and my team go for a tool with bolt-on AI capabilities or one with built-in AI?”

To truly understand the difference, imagine buying a phone just before the first iPhone was launched. Now imagine that you also bought a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), a GPS navigation device, a digital camera, and an iPod a few weeks before they became obsolete.

Enterprise software saw a shift from on-premises to the cloud or SaaS. In 2024, SaaS products in general, and ITSM software vendors in particular, are at a similar crossroads. Apple, under Steve Jobs, was bold enough to cannibalize the iPod, among other products.

But most ITSM vendors will think long and hard before completely rewiring their product for a new way of doing things. This is especially true for modules that are currently being used by their customers and entrenched within hundreds of IT organizations.

Aside from the bolt-on vs built-in approach to AI, traditional ITSM tools are different from modern ones in a few different ways:

Traditional ITSM
Modern ITSM
Department focus
All about managing IT services while sticking to fixed structures and traditional processes
Business focus
Contributes to business success by minimizing friction and maximizing IT and end-user productivity
Portal-centric
End users are asked to visit a web-based portal or send an email for all issues – big and small
People-centric
Brings the AI assistant to Slack or Teams where users generally go for internal collaboration
Ticket-based support
Follows a linear process where issues and requests become just another number in the queue
Context-based support
Leverages business and end-user context to foster meaningful interactions
Keyword-based KB
The knowledge base is designed with the expectation that users can articulate IT issues
Intent-based conversational KB
The assistant can access the KB and respond to a natural-language prompt with a natural-language answer
Focus on IT support relief
Designed primarily for IT teams but failed to solve the underlying adoption problem
Focus on operational excellence
Solves the adoption problem by putting employees at the center and successfully scaling IT operations

Chapter 4: Assessing your current situation

You’re likely using some product or service to manage your IT operations. Hopefully, you have a crystal clear understanding of:

  • What’s working and what’s not working
  • Why you’re looking for a new tool
  • What would you use it for

If you don’t, before you make a list of potential ITSM tools and dive into their websites to understand their features and capabilities, start by getting a thorough understanding of the current state of things. This would include your processes, use cases, and other connected platforms in your tech stack.

Let’s unpack these:

1. Processes and practices

What IT processes or practices do you currently use your ITSM solution for? How does information flow? What does the end-user experience look like? What happens after the ticket is raised?

Are there documented processes that work like clockwork or does it vary based on the user or IT professional in question? Are there workflows to automate ticket routing, approvals, assigning priority, etc?

TASK:
In this phase, list down answers to these questions by talking to the people closest to the experience. Ask users what they like about their IT experience and what they’d like changed. You can use a combination of org-wide surveys and 1:1 interviews. Ask agents, admins, and managers what process changes they would make if they had a magic wand. This simple question will uncover the most painful frustrations.

2. Use cases and users

Are 80% of the tickets about 20% of the issues? What are these issues? How are support agents – across IT, HR, Finance, etc. – handling these? Are there any tasks that they routinely follow?

Who will be using the new software as an admin/agent? What’s their current level of skill and which tools have they used previously? Is the permission and access to information clearly defined for each user depending on their business function, seniority level, geographical location, and other relevant conditions?

TASK:
Just like the previous phase, find out what inefficiencies you can remove within the most common tasks your ITSM tool is being used for. Look for a tool that uses similar terminology, nomenclature, UI, etc. because a stark difference would mean a longer training and onboarding period.

3. Tech stack and integrations

Are you a Microsoft ecosystem that uses Teams or a Google ecosystem that uses Slack? What other tools does your team use?

Look at your entire tech stack and see where your current ITSM platform fits in. Where does data flow in from? Where does the data flow out to? Which is the central system of records? Which is the customer or end-user database that you use? Where does your knowledge base live?

Do you use a different tool for asset discovery and management? Do you have an AI assistant or co-pilot that helps users with common queries?

Do these tools have a native integration with your current ITSM solution? Is the integration hacked together, or worse, requires intensive manual work?

Make another list of tools that are currently not integrated due to technical limitations but should have a seamless integration. Again, which integrations (from both lists) are must-haves and which you can live without?

TASK:
There’s a reason this section is longer than the others. Any new change is met with resistance. If your new ITSM platform fits into your current ecosystem like a custom-made glove, you minimize the resistance to change. If it doesn’t check all boxes immediately, what trade-offs can you make in the short term? Is the new vendor willing to work with you and build them or at least give you the tools to do it yourself?

All this will give you a baseline understanding of your goals and requirements with the new tool and what gaps you’re looking to close.

By the end of this exercise, you should have a list of must-have and nice-to-have capabilities. You would also have a better understanding of the budget that would make sense based on your requirements.

Chapter 5: Key features and capabilities to consider in 2024

Let’s assume the platforms you’ve shortlisted check all the must-have (and quite a few nice-to-have) boxes for process enablement, use cases, and integration with important tools. Great start!

But your business will likely grow over time and so will the complexity of your IT infrastructure. The new tool you get needs to provide a lot more sophistication, so it can scale as you scale.

Let's look at some of the capabilities and features you need to look for in the ITSM solutions you evaluate, especially in 2024.

A few general capabilities to look for are:
1. AI Assistant
2. AI-powered Automation
3. Service Request Management
4. Incident Management
5. Problem Management
6. Change Management
7. Asset Management
8. Predictive Analytics

1. AI assistant

A GenAI chatbot or virtual assistant that learns from your knowledge base (across multiple sources) and synthesizes responses to user queries will soon become table stakes.

This seems to be the go-to feature for any ITSM platform that wants to market itself as “AI-powered”. But we would urge you to dig a little deeper and understand how deeply ingrained the assistant is within the platform.

A bolt-on GenAI assistant might provide a broken experience. In case it fails and the user needs to follow the ticket creation process from scratch, their patience (and trust) will start to wear out. After a few such experiences they might start bypassing the assistant and going back to sending emails or calling in when they need to contact IT support.

Disclaimer: Atom is Atomicwork’s AI assistant. The vendors you evaluate might have their own AI personas.

A couple of key questions to ask:

  1. Where does the AI assistant live?
  2. Does the assistant provide citations to the knowledge source?
  3. What happens when the issue needs to be escalated to an agent?
  4. Can I specify questions where the AI provides a pre-defined response?

Your users use a tool for internal communication and collaboration, like Microsoft Teams and Slack. Contacting IT or HR support should be no different. And this is the perfect place for an AI assistant to live and provide L0 support.  It also needs to make escalation easy without the need to repeat context.

2. AI-powered automation

Workflow automation should be a given for any ITSM platform you pick.

AI can make the system more intuitive. With the help of AI, ITSM software vendors will be able to go beyond manually built workflows that need precise conditions to be set in motion. It will understand natural language and infer from context.

Here, the assistant intuitively got that “time off” needed to trigger Workday, understood the exact dates that “next week” implied, and applied it on Emma’s behalf.

It goes without saying that for workflows that can potentially cause disruption in other services, assets, or other areas of the business, there should always be a human in the loop. This can be included in the workflow as a request for approval or acknowledgement from the right stakeholder before the system executes the tasks.

3. Service request management

End users might not necessarily know what services they want exactly and what services they might have access to. The assistant can help there as well.

For instance, let’s say someone wants to request for a laptop. The AI assistant can ask probing questions to help them pick the right one. This conversational experience of service request creation can be leveraged to drive efficiency and improve the user experience. And similar to incidents, it can be assigned to the right person. Whether the assistant lives on Slack or Teams, make sure approval requests are sent over the right platform.

4. Incident management

Despite an AI assistant and automation, some tickets will still come through to the service desk. They need to be triaged and routed in a relevant manner.

AI can help here as well based on:

  • Who raised the ticket?
  • What is the asset in question?
  • How important and urgent the issue is, and thereby, how to prioritize it?
  • How many issues have been requested about the same underlying problem?

A solution where AI has been built in from the ground up would be able to intelligently assess each query or ticket and recognize whether it's an incident or a service request. If it’s an incident, AI can identify the impacted service, asset, and user context and route it to the right team and assign the right priority.

5. Problem management

While the primary goal of incident management is to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible with minimal impact on the business, it sometimes requires you to use a temporary workaround.

Ensure that the platform has a provision for problem management, which aims to identify, document, and ultimately, resolve the root cause of repetitive incidents. AI can recognize whether other incidents have been reported with the same underlying problem and link them to a new/existing problem record.

6. Change management

Changes, of all kinds, need to be carried out in a systematic and orderly fashion. See to it that the platform comes with robust change management capabilities.

There are a few things that you should look for, like documenting the context behind the change (attaching relevant incidents, problems, and assets) and the change plan (including a rollback plan in the event something breaks). Look at how stakeholders and their mutual relationships are managed – assigning and tracking tasks and getting the change plan reviewed and approved by the CAB (Change Advisory Board).

A powerful AI system can assist during change creation. It can alert you of any additional assets that could potentially be impacted by the change or any other changes that this one might clash with, so you can reschedule or reprioritize them.

7. Asset management

Whether your current ITSM tool has sophisticated asset management capabilities like asset discovery, tracking, MDM (Mobile Device Management) or integrates with a different platform you use, the new system should support it.

Look for a CMDB (Configuration Management Database) to maintain a centralized repository of all your software and hardware assets and effectively manage the asset lifecycle.

8. Predictive analytics

Oftentimes, reporting on IT metrics is a manual process and feels like paper pushing, involving a bunch of spreadsheets, “vlookups”, and SQL queries.

Ironically, the sheer amount of data makes it hard to do anything meaningful with it. Enter.. AI. With a smart system, you can ask a natural language question, like “What was the issue escalation rate last month?” or “Which of the L1 agents need to be trained on Employee Satisfaction?” and get actionable insights.

AI can also predict future issues based on trends that humans might miss. It can help you assess the assistant’s performance with accuracy reports, helping you improve it over time to adapt to your organization’s data, culture, and taxonomy.

Chapter 6: Evaluating and choosing the right ITSM solution

Once you’ve made a list of potential platforms that measure up to your feature requirements, here are some additional things that would help you narrow it down.

Security and compliance Ask the vendor for their security certificates. Look for SOC2, ISO27001, and CSA STAR. If your industry or regions of operations mandate specific compliance – like HIPAA for healthcare and GDPR/CCPA if you have employees or customers in EU/California – ask for those too. Additionally, find out where your data would be stored/hosted.
For AI systems, ensure that your org data will not be used to train their language models and that it can recognize proprietary data/PII and handle it appropriately.
Customer reviews and feedback Most vendors will provide reference calls with their existing customers. Ask for the ones most relevant to your industry or business context and on these calls, ask questions specific to your IT operations and challenges.
Innovation appetite The biggest leverage you get from buying a solution rather than building it in-house is the amount of innovation it brings to the table. A dedicated team of engineers and product managers focused on keeping the platform cutting-edge is generally a worthwhile investment. Ask the vendor what they’re doing that isn’t simply based on the competitive landscape but uniquely based on customer problems.
Scalability and flexibility The system needs to scale up as your organization scales to handle the increased load without performance degradation. Look for flexible pricing models that make sense today and will continue to remain viable in the future. If your organization spans regions with varying languages, cultures, time zones, etc, check if the platform can accommodate and account for the nuances.
Cost-benefit analysis It’s possible that all the tools you shortlisted fall within the budget you secured. It’s also possible that some, or all, of them require you to stretch the allocated budget. Nevertheless, compare the pricing of the tools with the benefits they offer, especially the ones that lead to operational efficiency and cost savings.

Checklist

Here’s a handy checklist that you can print out and use to make sure you don’t miss anything:

1. Assessing your current situation

Processes and practices

Document the current IT processes supported by the current tool.
Map out the end-user experience for incidents and requests.
List down the issues and inefficiencies with the current tool.

Use cases and users

Document the most common use cases of the service desk.
List down the ones that could and should be automated.
Put together a team of stakeholders who would be involved in the tool selection.
Gather feedback from the IT team and end users to understand their likes, dislikes, and frustrations.

Tech stack and integrations

Make a list of the tools that your current ITSM tool integrates with for screening out incompatible tools.
Make a list of the tools you wish it integrated with, including the internal collaboration tool (Slack or Microsoft Teams, etc.), the HRIS, ERP, and any other central system of records.
Note down the data ingress and egress systems for the ITSM tool.
If you use a different tool for asset discovery and management, make a note of that as well.
Ensure that your knowledge base is well-maintained and consolidated.

2. Key features and capabilities to consider in 2024

AI Assistant

Check whether it understands natural language and provides a conversational experience as opposed to a keyword-based chatbot.
Demand citations to the original source for AI-generated answers and the option to specify questions where AI will provide a pre-defined response.
Asses integration with your knowledge base and learning from conversations for continual performance improvement.
Ensure that it supports multiple channels that end users prefer (Microsoft Teams, Slack, Email, etc.).
Evaluate how closely it integrates with the service desk and how easy it is to escalate to a human when required.

AI-powered Automation

Check if the tool comes with workflows to address your most frequent issues.
See if both the default and custom workflows function across tools like your HRMS and SSO platforms (to fulfil requests like time-off and password reset without agents’ involvement).

Service Request Management

Evaluate the self-service flow for submitting and tracking service requests.
Ensure customizable service request templates and workflows.
Look for access control based on eligibility, automated approval processes, and escalation rules.

Incident Management

Ensure seamless escalation if the AI assistant is not able to help resolve the issue.
Look for automated incident categorization, prioritization, and routing.
Ask for an agent assistant to help with fact-checking, accessing the KB and troubleshooting history, and summarizing notes for ticket logs.

Problem Management

Evaluate the tool for identifying and documenting root causes of recurring incidents.
Look for features that facilitate problem detection, diagnosis, and resolution.
Ensure a close integration with incident management to track related incidents.

Change Management

Assess the tool for managing and documenting change requests.
Look for automated workflows for change approvals via a Change Advisory Board (CAB), task assignments, and notifications/alerts.
Ensure mechanisms for risk assessment and impact analysis of changes and for documenting the plan to roll it back if needed.

Asset Management

Evaluate comprehensive asset tracking capabilities, including hardware, software, and licenses.
Look for real-time visibility into asset status and lifecycle.
Ensure integration with configuration management databases (CMDB) and other ITSM processes.

Predictive Analytics

Assess the tool’s ability to analyze the accuracy of the AI assistant, track historical data, and identify trends.
Look for features that predict potential issues and suggest proactive remediation measures.
Ensure customizable dashboards and reports to visualize predictive insights and ensure visibility across the IT organization.
Check if the tool supports natural language queries like “What was the issue escalation rate last month?” or “Which of the L1 agents need to be trained on Employee Satisfaction?”.

3. Evaluating and choosing the right ITSM solution

Security and compliance checks

Ensure core regulations like SOC2, ISO27001, and CSA STAR.
Look for other relevant regulations like GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, etc.
Find out where the data will be stored/hosted.
Make sure that the AI system will NOT use your org data to train its language model.
Understand how it will handle proprietary data/sensitive data/PII.

Customer reviews and feedback

Check if the vendor has customers from your industry/region/context.
Get a reference call with them.

Innovation appetite

See if the vendor merely follows competitors or builds features and capabilities based on customer problems.

Scalability and flexibility

Ensure sufficient load handling capacity to avoid performance degradation as your organization scales.
Look for flexible pricing models that make sense today and will continue to remain viable in the future.
If the organization spans regions with varying languages, cultures, time zones, etc, ensure that the platform can accommodate and account for the nuances.

Cost-benefit analysis

Calculate the total cost of ownership (TCO), including licensing, implementation, training, and support.
Estimate the Return on Investment (ROI) from the cost savings it would enable through automation, ticket deflection, and operational efficiency.
Compare the TCO and ROI of the solutions you’ve shortlisted.

About Atomicwork

Thanks for putting in the research and not simply going with the safest choice. We hope this guide provided valuable insights and that you feel better prepared to make an informed decision.

At Atomicwork, we want to change the way IT organizations run ITSM. With decades of experience building ITSM platforms, we’ve now built an AI-first solution, rather than adding AI as an afterthought. It’s different from what came before in a few different ways.

Stop making users go through portals or send emails to access support

Having built multiple ITSM platforms, this has been a persistent annoyance – both for us and our customers. Thanks to the advancements in AI, we were finally able to build a system that takes service management to where users are.

Don’t just bolt on a GenAI chatbot on a legacy system and call it AI-powered

The core difference between a built-in approach and a bolt-on approach to AI is the mindset shift from incremental improvement to radical innovation. The next generation of ITSM software will be fundamentally different from legacy systems.

Reimagine the way ITSM works from the users’ perspective to truly innovate

When we say users, we mean end users, as well as IT support professionals. The way we think about IT is to reimagine the best experience for users and build it out, leveraging AI where it can drive the most impact and efficiency.

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If you align with our product philosophy and feel that this will be the future of ITSM, schedule a demo to understand how all this looks in practice.
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