My team has had SCSM experience because we moved the entire workflow of SCSM into ServiceNow, but it was part of largely a transition from one tool to the other. So it was not evaluating the capability and the value that SCSM brings to the table, but because a customer was choking on SCSM, the request was to move to ServiceNow. So our focus was more on understanding the current workflows and the setup and moving them into ServiceNow.

With ServiceNow, we largely set up the entire platform for our customer base. We have our in-house COE and a larger team who drives most of the ServiceNow implementation, and we drive the delivery in the managed services.

Within the last 12 months, while we don't collect reviews for ServiceNow Platform at the moment and I had very limited experience with SCSM, I've been working with Freshdesk and other ServiceNow products. We have not gotten too much into the BMC or Remedy, but we are largely focusing on our AI automation ops to be more established in the market, and we have our in-house developed platforms as well. So we are heavily focusing on establishing ourselves there.

With Freshdesk, we have just started to integrate with it, again with ServiceNow, in one of our client's cases. It is largely for taxation and audit. This is being used by one of our customers, so we are integrating that with ServiceNow also so that for a cross-view, ServiceNow is a common platform for them to look at how their IT service delivery is happening.

While using Freshdesk for their ticket management solution for reaching out to the end users, we are transferring a large part of that to the central team which is operating through ServiceNow. So everything which is flowing there ultimately flows into ServiceNow to give a 360-degree view of how well the support is running. Freshdesk self-service portal is efficient, but I don't think the level of customization is too great. When you consider the amount of customization, and more importantly, the underlying workflow complexity that you can integrate with the front-end customization, the feasibility you get in ServiceNow is far more than Freshdesk. It is quite standard and it has its own challenges. Having said that, with the overall theme of all the service management toolsets, I still see that ServiceNow leads that on top of all.

Freshdesk's scalability could be improved for larger businesses across departments. Its intuitive interface is appealing for small to medium-sized businesses. However, when you look at larger enterprise levels, ServiceNow operates more efficiently. This scalability is an area where Freshdesk could expand its offerings.

Additionally, I don't have too much hands-on experience with Freshdesk ticket routing. I need to check with the service desk team if they've used it. Similarly, for analytics capability, I haven't explored much on Freshdesk, but I have done it for ServiceNow. I have seen a lot on ServiceNow and the BMC Remedy, so I can speak better for them. I haven't had the chance to look at it so much that I can do a comparison. I haven't had much experience with Freshdesk's reporting.

Within its paradigm of customer service management, Freshdesk is quite scalable. But I've said that inter-department and the interoperability is better off in ServiceNow than in Freshdesk.

For Freshdesk, I would say a couple of months.

Freshdesk is largely established in the customer support business. We can do the implementation a lot more efficiently, while if we compare with ServiceNow, we see the integration capability across the various departments and IT services. I'm sure it has its own value and benefit in terms of driving it in a customer base for enhancing their capabilities on the integration side. But if we have to pinpoint exactly the degree of how much improvement it has done, we haven't done a Freshdesk implementation; we have done Freshdesk with ServiceNow implementation. So, I won't have too much detail regarding how much of a value gain the customer had on it. Ultimately, they are moving everything to ServiceNow, so you can imagine that we also see it from that perspective largely. It's mostly stable.

Freshdesk has been quite stable in the market. I don't see that stability-wise there are many challenges. Of course, you have to utilize it within the setup it advises. But otherwise, stability-wise, I don't think there are too many challenges with this. Having said that, I haven't run an infrastructure on Freshdesk, so I would not be too confident in saying that stability has been 99.9% or 99.5%.

Scaling is an area for improvement in Freshdesk for larger businesses across departments. Its intuitive interface is something I find good. For small to medium-sized businesses, you can look at Freshdesk, but for larger enterprise levels, you look at ServiceNow. It has its own scale in which it can operate more efficiently.

I don't communicate frequently with the technical support of Freshdesk. My customers, the OEM, do. My team has the line to log any cases with Freshdesk when they do the integration, but we don't get directly into it. We prefer leveraging our customers' existing contracts. Because our scope is not managing Freshdesk; our scope is more about integrating them to ServiceNow. And with ServiceNow, we have a direct engagement.

I have had a very limited solutioning engagement with SCSM because that was for one of our customer bases, and we have moved them from SCSM to ServiceNow because of the limited possibilities of expansion and integration with the existing system. The idea was addressing all those challenges; we have replaced it with ServiceNow. So, of course, we predominantly drive the engagements on ServiceNow, so I can speak at length about it, but with SCSM, I have a very limited understanding because there's only one account where we have engaged on SCSM. My team has had SCSM experience because we moved the entire workflow of SCSM into ServiceNow, but it was part of largely a transition from one tool to the other.

Each one has its own challenges. Largely, whenever you're transitioning or migrating from one tool to the other, it's always about understanding what's existing. So when you're doing it from Freshdesk to ServiceNow, what customization has been built in? Do you have better documentation to refer to, up-to-date documentation to understand the workflows end to end? To understand that the entire setup is documented well for you to be able to move it to the new platform in a more efficient manner, you end up knocking multiple doors than needed to just get the design right. That is a common challenge I have seen. As long as the customer or the entity from whom we are taking over understands their toolsets to some extent while we also prod, we get somewhere. There is always a version of the platform you go for. Version one goes first, and then two with more integration, and three towards more stabilization. That's the standard journey you take. Each program, of course, has its own flavor of challenges. But what I have always seen, especially in the platform journey, is that what is always helpful is how thorough and how clear the strategic, functional, and technical documentation is, and that SMEs are there for them. Because sometimes a lot of hands change, people do not capture the knowledge or keep it at a certain place, and then you struggle to figure out who is the right person that can give you the right information you're looking for from that IT services department. That's what I was saying; you end up knocking more doors than needed. But ultimately, you get there, with its own challenges.

It's largely on cloud.

My team does the integration of Freshdesk in our customer's companies.

I think it is to each its own. If I have a certain requirement for just a customer support service management, and it suits my IT budget, then even Freshdesk will not be too much for me. If I'm looking at cross-teams integration through the common platform, and I'm running a large business, I would look at ServiceNow and budget for it accordingly. So I wouldn't say it is too high or too low. People who initially find ServiceNow to be on the higher side, but when you do the value gain comparison in the next few years, you see that it does give you the returns, with the AI capabilities and everything it brings. The same goes for Freshdesk. But it is all about the scope in which you are implementing something. And if that qualifies, then that's what a customer goes by. Cost is something that is in your mind, not high or low.

It's worth the money that you have to pay for it.

ServiceNow ITSM setup, including Incident, Problem, Change, and ServiceNow service delivery.

When we do a platform delivery, we don't only do that. As I said, we drive the entire IT services, including all the cloud data migration, DC, workplace upgrades, AD, O365, Win11 upgrades, network transformation and transition, to cyber-sec transition and transformation; to platform transition and transformation. That's all entirely our business. Integration is just a very small part of the use cases. We do it a lot, but it is just one; you can say it's 10% of the portfolio.

I did not have hands-on experience with SCSM.

I participate in the initial discussion, in terms of this is what we'll go by, but I align more toward the strategy than actually the implementation now because of my role. My team generally gets into the nitty-gritty of understanding the workflows and one tool over the other and engages with others. They're quite standard, actually. You can call it a CSAT or faster resolution. But the overall theme of all the service management toolsets still shows that ServiceNow leads the pack. It aligns to more extended features with AI abilities. My overall rating for Freshdesk is 7 out of 10.