Best ITSM tools of 2018

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These days, just about any business has a host of tech that is used in just about every activity, from the computer on a worker’s desk, to the software that is being used, and all the peripherals in between, as well as a slew of mobile devices including the omnipresent smartphones.

While all this technology is essential to businesses, supporting such a menagerie of devices - and keeping them all running 24/7 - becomes a challenge that encourages many companies to turn to an outside service.

ITSM refers to Information Technology Service Management, which covers a variety of activities in terms of delivering, managing and supporting the use of technology across the organization. While workers may call ITSM “tech support” or “IT support”, they are the folks who are relied upon to keep everything working in an efficient manner, and to manage all this diverse technology across its lifecycle.

Keeping this background in mind, we’ll take a look at some great choices for ITSM services to support the tech used across your organization.

• We've also highlighted the best helpdesk software of 2018

ServiceNow IT Service Management

ServiceNow IT Service Management is the ITSM offering from the ServiceNow family of support products. This product endeavors to aggregate IT Services into a single cloud-based platform, and has plenty of heavyweight customers including GE Digital, Broadcom, and Overstock.com.

It features the ability to aggregate those essential, but often difficult to work with legacy applications into a single cloud location, with manual processes becoming automated along the way. The firm also claims IT productivity increases via implementation of features such as incident management with automated routing, asset and cost management which can track costs and contracts for assets, and a modern, self-service portal for consumers to access.

ServiceNow IT Service Management can also be integrated into real-time performance analytic dashboards, with the proficiency to benchmark how you are performing among peer industry averages.

While the website provides plenty of information on how this can benefit your business, the company is unfortunately rather opaque on pricing. With no offer of a free trial, there are two plans with descriptive names, the lower being “IT Service Management,” and the higher “IT Service Management and Performance Analytics” which adds features, true to its name, for performance analysis. 

• You can sign up for ServiceNow IT Service Management here

Freshservice

The folks at Freshworks bring us Freshservice, a cloud-based ITSM which promises to standardize processes in a “slick, modern and efficient manner.” This ITSM software package offers an array of features including opportunities for collaboration between agents, proactive problem management that can reduce service desk incidents by 40%, support for root cause analysis of incidents via a visual timeline and coordination for new releases with standardized start and end dates. There are also available mobile apps for iOS and Android.  

All tiers offer a 21-day free trial to see if Freshservice fulfills your organizations needs. Plans start at the Blossom plan, which costs $29 (£22) per agent monthly for the basic feature set. Stepping up to the most popular Estate plan adds additional features including software license management, analytics and customizable agent roles. 

• You can sign up for Freshservice here

GoToAssist

GoToAssist is remote support software that offers a robust support platform to cover the gamut of ITSM needs. With such a mature product, the features are well developed, and include two-way screen share so technicians can take over a system remotely including keyboard and mouse control.

There's also the ability to use file transfer to send updates to remote systems, support for customers using multi-monitors, annotation tools for technicians to draw on a customer’s screen, and multi-session support for techs to be able to handle up to eight customers simultaneously.  

The single user plan is available for $69 (£52) monthly, and includes chat support for up to 100 unattended machines. The higher tier GoToAssist Concurrent Plan is designed for teams, and can support up to 1,000 unattended machines, costs $119 (£90) per month. 

• You can sign up for GoToAssist here

Samanage

Samanage is a cloud-based ITSM solution which is Information Technology Information Library (ITIL) ready. Users can submit their tickets through either email or the self-service portal, and Samanage helps to move the ticket requests through the “Lifecycle of problems, changes and releases.” The feature set is rounded out with a service level management, automations, benchmarking, automations and IT asset management. 

There is also a tool for risk detection. It is OS agnostic as it works from any device - desktop, laptop or mobile - with a web browser offering flexibility in use.  There is a 30-day free trial, which is longer than competitors. After that, the pricing is opaque, although it is based around an annual subscription. 

• You can sign up for Samanage here

InvGate Service Desk

InvGate Service Desk is a comprehensive ITSM tool to support IT; it is available as either on-premise software, or SaaS. The list of organizations that use this solution includes Burger King, Nike, Toyota and Starbucks.

The features include ticket management with assessment of customer satisfaction, self-service capabilities with a predictive knowledge base and news broadcast capabilities, and ‘gamification‘, which refers to the use of game-style mechanics to support and motivate employees with a positive reinforcement model.  There is also multi-department support, and integration for asset management with InvGate Assets. 

As with some other ITSMs, unfortunately the pricing is opaque, but the firm does offer a 30-day trial. 

• You can sign up for InvGate Service Desk here

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