Jira Service Management (JSM) vs. Service Now: A Comparative Study for Business Owners

Jira Service Management (JSM) vs. Service Now: A Comparative Study for Business Owners

Author: Vidscola Blog 

Reviewed by: Dina El-Mowafy,  Atlassian Technical Lead

Are you looking for the perfect ITSM software for your business? With so many options on the market, it can be overwhelming to choose the right one. Two popular options in the ITSM space are Jira Service Management (JSM) by Atlassian and Service Now. Both of these platforms offer powerful tools for managing IT services and processes, but they also have their own unique strengths and advantages.

Understanding ITSM Software: JSM vs Service Now

Understanding the features and capabilities of these ITSM software platforms is crucial in making an informed decision for your business. While both JSM and Service Now offer tools for managing IT services and processes, they have their own unique strengths and functionalities.

JSM, developed by Atlassian, is a robust and versatile tool, that focuses on providing a seamless user experience with its intuitive interface and integration with other Atlassian products.

On the other hand, ServiceNow offers a comprehensive suite of ITSM solutions, catering to the needs of larger organizations with complex service management requirements.

Features Comparison between JSM of Atlassian and Service Now

When comparing JSM and Service Now, it’s important to understand the core technical functionalities and features that set them apart and weigh their respective strengths and limitations.

JSM

JSM is an advanced software application offered by Atlassian designed to facilitate the efficient management of various aspects of a business, particularly Dev, IT, and other business units. It is meant to accelerate and streamline service delivery across a wide range of departments within an organization. If simplicity and integration are top priorities, JSM is an excellent choice.

1. Integrated Platform for Dev and Ops Teams: JSM unifies the functions of Dev and Ops teams on a single platform, enhancing cooperation and coordination across various tasks like changes, incidents, and requests while managing the inherent risks.
2. Service Management across Multiple Business Units: This software is designed to make it simple for various departments, including HR, Legal, and Facilities, to manage requests, centralize knowledge, and adopt working methods best suited for their operations.
3. Customizable Feature Set: JSM offers a set of features that users can customize to meet their unique business requirements. Features such as dynamic forms and templates are flexible and scalable, meaning you can adjust and enhance as your business needs change.
4. Cost and Time Efficient: This solution not only provides a significant reduction in license costs but also offers report automation that saves countless hours each month.
5. Pre-configured Request Types, Workflows and Other Capabilities: Templates within the software are pre-configured with various request types, workflows, and other out-of-the-box capabilities, enabling any team to adopt a service experience that aligns with their working methods quickly and effortlessly.
6. Management of Various Requests: JSM offers tools for managing an array of requests including, incidents, changes, contracts, budgets, marketing, design, and sales. This diverse suite ensures that any department’s specific requirements are catered to within a single system.
7. Integration with Atlassian Marketplace: Atlassian Marketplace’s integration provides over 1,000 trusted applications, giving users the ability to customize JSM according to their unique use cases.

Service Now:

Service Now offers an extensive suite of IT service management (ITSM) solutions to meet the needs of larger enterprises with more complex service requirements. ServiceNow’s comprehensive features include incident management, problem management, service catalog, and IT asset management. However, the more advanced capabilities come at the cost of complexity, as Service Now can be difficult to implement and navigate. If comprehensive functionality is required, ServiceNow is the go-to option.

1. Powerful Platform Capabilities: ServiceNow offers robust platform capabilities to streamline your processes, offer seamless experiences and spur innovation. It is an optimal solution for digital business transformation, allowing businesses to reduce costs and promote innovative solutions while improving their IT services.
2. Versatile Package Solutions: Tailored to meet specific business needs, ServiceNow provides a package of essential tools to boost team productivity and efficiency. This versatility is crucial in enhancing the quality of IT services across different business levels.
3. Resourceful Agent Resources: The platform provides a plethora of resources, from alerts to recommendations, to empower agents and shrink response times. By expanding IT services in this way, agents can efficiently manage tasks and promptly respond to queries.
4. Unified System of Engagement: By synthesizing shared data and analytics through the trusted IT service workflows, ITSM promotes effective use of resources, unifying disparate tools under one cloud-based system. This promotes collaboration and maximizes operational efficiency.
5. AI-Assisted Intelligence: The system uses artificial intelligence to enhance productivity and identify, track, and resolve incidents. AI-backed virtual agents allow for instant resolution of repetitive IT service tasks, allowing staff to focus on more complex problems.
6. People-First Approach: ServiceNow places people at the center of its operations, ensuring adaptability in the face of rapidly changing business needs. This strategy drives real results, fostering a high-performance culture across organizations.
7. Generative AI Experiences: By harnessing the power of generative AI, businesses can spur productivity on the Now platform. These capabilities help transform and adapt business operations for better service delivery.
8. Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration: The platform supports easy sharing of knowledge and collaborative working, crucial for improving business efficiency. It offers a space for exchange of ideas, thus driving innovation.
9. Continuity Maintenance: ServiceNow helps track dependencies and relationships of supported IT services, maintaining continuity and ensuring consistent quality of services.

Key Business Benefits of Jira

Jira is a powerful project management tool that offers numerous business benefits, including:

1. Increased Operational Efficiency and Effectiveness: Jira Service Management provides a single platform where IT incidents can be quickly reported, recorded, tracked, and resolved. It makes sure nothing falls through the cracks and greatly reduces resolution time, boosting operational efficiency. Jira Service Management’s integrated knowledge base allows easy access to common issues and solutions. This reduces service desk load by promoting self-service and enables faster resolution. It’s service request management feature enables efficient tracking and resolution of service requests, thereby increasing overall service delivery speed and effectiveness.
2. Improved Customer Service: Jira Service Management enables a proactive customer support system where requests can be managed and prioritized effectively, leading to higher customer satisfaction and retention. It enables businesses to identify, track and resolve problems systematically before they affect services, hence preventing recurring issues and improving service quality.
3. Enhanced Collaboration and Productivity: By integrating various business processes, Jira Service Management significantly reduces manual workload. Its automation tools and customizable workflows facilitate a smooth process flow and efficient completion of tasks. With Jira Service Management, collaboration between different departments, teams, and individuals is seamless and transparent. This fosters a positive working environment and helps deliver high-quality results.
4. Data-Driven Decisions: The platform provides real-time insights and reporting features, giving complete visibility of service desk performance, project status, team productivity, and customer service effectiveness. This allows businesses to make data-driven decisions and plan strategically.
5. Cost-Effective: Jira Service Management helps in reducing overhead costs by streamlining business processes and minimizing human error. It provides high return on investment (ROI) due to improved productivity and efficiency.
6. Scalable Solution: It is designed to support growing organizations. It’s easy to add new users, projects, or teams and to adapt to changes as your business expands.

Contact VIDSCOLA to find out more about Jira.

Key Business Benefits of Service Now

Service Now, as a comprehensive platform for project management and IT service management (ITSM), offers several key business benefits that make it a valuable choice for businesses. Some of the main advantages of using Service Now are:

1. Increased efficiency and productivity: With features like incident and problem management, change management, and service catalog management, businesses can automate workflows and reduce manual effort. This automation leads to increased efficiency and productivity, ultimately resulting in cost savings and better resource utilization.
2. Faster problem resolution: Another significant business benefit of Service Now is its centralized knowledge base. This feature allows businesses to store and share important information with their teams easily. By providing a centralized repository for knowledge and documentation, Service Now enables businesses to enhance collaboration, improve knowledge sharing, and facilitate smoother workflows. This, in turn, leads to faster problem resolution, reduced downtime, and improved customer satisfaction.
3. Meeting Customer Expectations: Service Now also offers robust reporting and analytics capabilities, providing businesses with valuable insights into their project and service performance. By accessing real-time data and metrics, businesses can make data-driven decisions, identify areas for improvement, and drive continuous growth. These reporting features also help businesses track service levels, monitor SLAs (service level agreements), and ensure that they are meeting customer expectations.
4. Drive Continuous Improvement: Additionally, Service Now promotes business innovation by providing customizable workflows and integration capabilities. This flexibility allows businesses to adapt their processes to meet specific project or service requirements, enabling them to stay competitive and agile in today’s rapidly changing business landscape. By embracing Service Now, businesses can foster innovation, optimize workflows, and drive continuous improvement.
5. Risk Mitigation: With ServiceNow, businesses can predict, prevent, and manage risks more effectively. It offers robust security operations and governance, risk and compliance (GRC) capabilities, making it easier to identify and address issues before they cause damage.

6. Increased Flexibility: ServiceNow’s cloud-based platform can be easily scaled up or down to match business requirements, providing increased flexibility. This elasticity enables businesses to adapt quickly to changes and grow at their own pace.
7. Continuous Improvement: ServiceNow’s performance analytics allow organizations to monitor and measure their performance continuously, paving the way for constant improvement and growth.

Overall, by implementing Service Now, businesses can achieve higher returns on their investments, stay competitive in the market, and establish a strong foundation for long-term success, and by implementing Jira of Atlassian, businesses can achieve efficient project management and seamless collaboration within their teams. The utilization of Jira can also significantly enhance the transparency of workflows and aid in bug tracking, ultimately boosting the overall quality and efficiency of projects. These technological tools serve to maximize productivity, reduce operating costs, and foster a culture of continuous improvement within the organization, all of which contribute significantly to business growth and profitability.

Comparing Costs and Implementation of Jira and Service Now

Costs and implementation can greatly impact your decision, as they directly affect your budget and timeline. Here’s a comparison of costs and implementation factors for Jira and Service Now:

1. Cost: JSM offers different pricing plans to cater to businesses of all sizes. It offers a flexible subscription-based pricing model, allowing you to choose the plan that aligns with your needs and budget. Service Now, on the other hand, follows a different pricing structure and typically requires a consultation to provide a quote based on your specific requirements. It’s important to consider not only the initial cost but also the long-term cost of maintenance and any additional modules or features you may need in the future.

2. Implementation: JSM is known for its ease of implementation and user-friendly interface. It doesn’t require extensive technical knowledge and can be set up relatively quickly. Service Now, being an enterprise-level platform, may have a more complex implementation process. It often requires the involvement of IT professionals and may take longer to fully configure and integrate into your existing systems. Consider your resources, timeline, and the level of technical expertise available in your organization when evaluating the implementation process.

3. Scalability: Both JSM and Service Now are scalable solutions, but the scalability process may differ. Jira allows you to add more users, projects, and features as your business grows. It offers various add-ons and integrations to expand its functionality. Service Now, as an enterprise-level platform, is designed to handle large-scale deployments and can accommodate the growing needs of your organization. Consider the scalability options offered by each platform and choose the one that aligns with your long-term growth plans.

4. Training and Support: Another important factor to consider is the availability of training resources and customer support. Jira provides extensive documentation, online resources, and a vibrant community where users can learn and troubleshoot. Atlassian also offers training courses and certifications to help users maximize their JSM experience. Service Now offers comprehensive training and certification programs for its users and provides dedicated support for technical issues. Consider the level of training and support you require and choose a platform that offers resources suitable for your team’s needs.

To find out more about Jira’s license costs or to avail of professional services offers, contact VIDSCOLA at support@vidscola.com

Making the Right Choice for Your Business: Factors to Consider

Choosing the right ITSM software for your business requires a thorough assessment of your specific needs. Consider factors such as growth plans, budget, available resources, the size and complexity of your organization, and the specific IT service management requirements you have.

Take into account the features, functionality, and pricing structures of both JSM(JSM) and ServiceNow. Evaluate which platform aligns best with your business goals and objectives. Additionally, gather input from key stakeholders within your organization to ensure that the chosen ITSM software will meet the needs of all departments involved.

By considering these factors, you can make an informed decision about whether JSM or Service Now is the best fit for your business. Ultimately, choosing the right platform will help you streamline processes, improve productivity, and drive long-term business success.