2021 Top 7 ITSM Solutions
What are the Solutions?
Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) enables technology organizations to better manage the service and maintenance of their IT stack. This article provides a list of ITSM software solutions that aid technology teams in the processes and best practices needed to harness the fullness of the ITSM framework. Before going through this article, if you are unfamiliar with ITSM, it is recommended that you read through the blog ITSM and Why It’s Important to get a better understanding of what ITSM is.
Through extensive research, Golden Source Consultants has compiled a list of what we would consider the Top 7 ITSM solutions available for the Healthcare Industry. Our review considers the functionality offered, licensing costs, reported customer satisfaction scores, and vendor experience specific to healthcare. While GSC believes all of these to be relevant criteria, we also encourage readers to take time to consider the goals and needs of your IT department.
Out of the Box Functionality Review
In the table below, leveraging vendor details available GSC has compiled the core out of the box (OOTB) functionality provided.
| Functionality | SolarWinds Service Desk | Freshservice | SysAid | Servicenow | Cherwell | Zendesk IT Help Desk | BMC Helix |
| Incident Management | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Problem Management | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Knowledge-Based Management | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| IT Asset Management | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Change & Release Management | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Request Management | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Configuration Management | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |||
| Continual Improvement Management | ✔ | ✔ | |||||
| Service Level Management | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Service Portal | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Service Catalogue | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Work Queue Management | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Risk Detection and Notification | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |||
| Chat Availability | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Reporting | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
*See full table click here
ITSM Tool Summary and Comparison
The table below provides a summary of the OOTB feature count as well as other variables deemed useful for narrowing down a list of best-in-breed ITSM solutions for healthcare. Each variable was summarized as follows for a rank order.
OOTB Features + Customer Satisfaction Rating + Healthcare Fit (Binary) – Cost of License = Tool Score
| Metric | SysAid | Cherwell | Servicenow | SolarWinds Service Desk | Freshservice | BMC Helix | Zendesk IT Help Desk |
| OOTB Features (1-15) | 13 | 14 | 15 | 13 | 12 | 13 | 9 |
| Customer Satisfaction Rating (1-20) | 18.8 | 17.4 | 17.9 | 17.7 | 18.3 | 17.4 | NA |
| Fit for Industry | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Cost of Tool | $$$ | $$$ | $$$$ | $$ | $$$ | $$$$ | $$ |
| Score | 29.8 | 29.4 | 28.9 | 28.7 | 28.3 | 26.4 | 24* |
*See full table click here
* No publicly available score for Zendesk was provided, so a score of 16 was used assuming that the score would be no lower than 4 out of 5 on each of the four metrics used in the Gartner study.
Notes:
- OOTB Features – the sum of all OOTB features identified through vendor websites using the standardized list in Table A. The score they got means that they had # out of the total 15 that were accounted for in Table A.
- Customer Satisfaction Rating – a summation of the Ratings Overview scores received for each product on the Gartner page referenced here. The sum is of 4 subscores are customer submitted are in Evaluation & Contracting, Integration & Deployment, Service & Support, and Product Capabilities. The score they got means that they had # out of the total 20 that were accounted for in Table A.
- Healthcare Fit – references if a vendor has publicly indicated they have a tailored ITSM solution specifically for the Healthcare industry.
- Cost of License – indicates the costs of licenses for the tool based on available information. Note total cost of ownership varies by vendors on many variables not researched in this summary.
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