ServiceNow vs BMC Helix: In-Depth Guide

In the world of ITSM, ServiceNow and BMC Helix (formerly Remedy) are undoubtedly two of the most dominant players. With comprehensive service management workflows, automation tools, and AI capabilities, they’re two highly advanced, enterprise-grade ITSM platforms.

However, they’re also optimized for slightly different segments of the market.

As such, it’s crucial to have a thorough understanding of each platform’s relative strengths and weaknesses in order to make an informed decision about which is right for your specific needs.

Today, we’re covering exactly that.

Specifically, we’ll be drilling into everything you need to know across functionality, non-functional considerations, and positioning and pricing, including:

• Overview and definition
• Target usage, pricing & implementation
• Managing IT services

Let’s jump right in.

Overview

To kick things off, we’re going to check out what both ServiceNow and BMC Helix are, as well as a broad overview of where they sit in the market for ITSM platforms.

What is ServiceNow?

ServiceNow is a highly advanced, SaaS-based platform for managing all aspects of IT service delivery. This covers ITSM, ITOM, SecOps, ITAM, enterprise service management, and much more.

These various functions are built on top of the shared Now platform. This provides a highly customizable experience for businesses to digitalize workflows across the IT team and other departments.

This includes tools for low-code development, AI implementation, integration management, process automation, and more, with a shared unified architecture for securely connecting and managing workflows across the platform.

As such, ServiceNow is highly popular with large enterprises that need a scalable, secure, configurable platform for handling advanced use cases and service portfolios.

Take a look at our guide to the top ServiceNow alternatives and competitors to learn more.

What is BMC Helix?

Formerly known as Remedy, BMC Helix is a comprehensive ITSM platform, including out-of-the-box tools for ITIL practices, along with ITOM, AI-powered service optimization, and more.

Within this space, it’s one of ServiceNow’s most direct competitors. That is, it also targets large enterprise use cases, offering a highly secure, customizable platform for managing services across multiple environments.

Helix is centered around a clean, intuitive interface for service agents and end users alike. The goal is to provide an efficient experience for handling service interactions.

It’s also released a range of AI-driven capabilities. On the whole, Helix is a strong option for teams that need a modern, effective platform for handling high-volume ITSM use cases.

Target usage, pricing, and implementation

Now that we understand the basics of what both ServiceNow and Helix offer, we can begin to draw out some of the areas where the might differ.

A little later, we’ll be comparing and contrasting the two platforms in terms of specific aspects of their functionality. Before we get to that, though, we want to examine their core positioning in more detail.

Target usage

First of all, we’ve seen already that both BMC Helix and ServiceNow sit towards the enterprise end of the ITSM market.

However, within this, we can still point to some important distinctions across their target use cases.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow is in the unique position of having the majority of Fortune 500 companies as customers. This helps to illustrate an important point about its target use cases and ideal customer personas.

That is, ServiceNow is renowned for offering a huge amount of configurability and customization for teams that need solutions that map closely to their existing workflows and business processes across IT and non-IT functions.

Within this, it offers tools for a few different users personas. On the one hand, there are a range of low-code tools for building interfaces, automating workflows, and implementing AI, that are highly usable by non-developers who need to implement solutions.

On the other, there are also more code-centric approaches to building workflows in ServiceNow, as we’ll see a little later.

ServiceNow is also highly suited to teams with a high level of maturity in their existing IT processes, including strong ITIL alignment.

So, it offers extensive capabilities for implementing AI tools, integrating with external systems, and handling cross-functional service delivery.

Helix

BMC Helix, along with Remedy before it, also has a firm reputation for empowering enterprise teams with the tools they need to build efficiency into their ITSM processes.

It’s well-optimized for teams that need a highly ITIL-aligned solution that can be rolled out with relative ease. This is a highly structured approach which may be attractive to teams with tight regulatory requirements or organizations that need to prioritize time-to-value.

However, this is not to say that Helix doesn’t also offer extensive scope for customization and configuration.

Rather, it’s still a highly customizable platform with a range of tools for creating sleek, efficient workflows, including low-code and no-code options for creating interfaces and automation rules, along with strong AI capabilities.

Like ServiceNow, this positions Helix as a viable option for configuration and administration by developers and non-developers alike.

Pricing and implementation

Now that we understand the core targeting of both ServiceNow and Helix, we can think more practically about what’s involve in adopting either solution.

This means examining both direct and indirect costs, as well as other types of resources that we might incur along the way.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow’s pricing isn’t publicly advertised. Rather, quotes are tailored to the needs of individual organizations. This can take account of user volumes, specific required functionality, and other aspects of your underlying use case.

Different solutions on the Now platform are offered modularly. For instance, we can purchase tools for ITSM, ITOps, or other constituent parts of ServiceNow separately or even with different end-user volumes.

This has the potential to make ServiceNow an attractive prospect for teams in a range of different kinds of organizations - since quotes can be tailored and scaled to real-world needs from the platform.

ServiceNow can be bought directly or through third-party resellers and partners.

Many teams will also opt for implementation services or other consulting, which may incur additional costs. It’s also worth noting that, by some reports, ServiceNow can reportedly have a longer time to value than some other ITSM tools.

Check out our guide on Jira Service Management vs ServiceNow .

Helix

Like ServiceNow, Helix is offered on a custom license model. So individualized quotes will vary, factoring in user volumes, specific functionality, and hosting or support options.

For example, pricing may differ depending on whether we only need core service desk functionality or if we need more extensive capabilities for optimizing service delivery processes.

Again, this provides good flexibility for Helix to be adopted by a range of different org types, although, like ServiceNow it skews more towards the enterprise end of the market compared to some other more affordable platforms.

As with ServiceNow, we’ll have to consider implementation costs for Helix, too.

This can include customization and configuration, consulting, onboarding, and deployment, whether these are taken on internally, by the vendor, or using a third party’s services.

Managing IT services

With a better grasp of the respective market positions of ServiceNow vs BMC Helix, we can now move on to examining the functionality that each one offers in more detail.

That is, we know that both offer similar core capabilities for ITSM and other related processes. In order to compare them, we can break this down into a few key functional areas.

Data

First, there’s how each platform enables us to store, manage, and interact with data across our service portfolios.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow’s Now platform offers a unified database architecture called the Common Service Data Model (CSDM). This is a tabular, relational system that will be familiar to almost all IT pros. In newer versions of the platform, it’s powered by RaptorDB, which is built on top of Postgres.

While it is largely preconfigured, the CSDM also gives us massive scope to define the data schema we need, including mapping the relationships between proprietary and custom data objects across different aspects of the platform.

In large part, we can interact with and manage this visually, using list and table views or report building tools. ServiceNow also offers GlideRecord, a scripting tool for interacting with stored data programmatically.

Among ITSM platforms, ServiceNow is also one of the better positioned tools for teams that need to interact with external data. For instance, JDBC and midservers can be utilized to connect to external databases.

On the whole, ServiceNow is a strong offering for enterprise users who require a high degree of flexibility for crafting a data model around their specific process needs.

Helix

Helix’s database architecture is somewhat different. The platform can be implemented on top of a range of RDMBSs, including Postgres, SQL Server, or Oracle.

This then interacts with the Action Request (AR) system, a flexible data model that allows teams to define custom forms, automation rules, and workflows to suit their own ITSM needs, including custom data object schemas.

Many day-to-day ITSM processes are powered by Helix’s CMDB, which provides a structured yet flexible experience for tracking and mapping the configuration items that make up your service portfolio.

This is highly federated, enabling us to draw on a range of sources for different kinds of CIs across our IT estate.

Like ServiceNow, Helix also offers extensive scope for interacting with external databases via JDBC, mid servers, or other integration tools.

UI design, customization, and app building

Next, we can consider each platform in terms of the solutions we can use to interact with our data within service management workflows.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow offers a comprehensive suite of tools for shipping custom applications, including utilizing low/no-code solutions, or more traditional code-based developments.

For core ITSM tasks, we can utilize the highly customizable Service Portal, Agent Workspace, and UI Builder tools to output a range of common UIs, such as forms, ticketing tools, knowledge base entries, and more, using drag-and-drop experiences.

App Engine Studio is ServiceNow’s proprietary low/no-code platform. This offers extensive scope for non-developers to output custom tools for a range of more advanced use cases.

We can also take advantage of a high degree of reusability across UI elements, widgets, scripting, and app actions.

For developers, ServiceNow also offers a dedicated SDK and IDE for creating applications within the wider platform ecosystem.

Helix

Helix is similarly geared towards teams that require a high level of customization to create end-user solutions.

Like ServiceNow, this begins with a suite of tools for creating UIs to manage core ITSM tasks, including drag-and-drop capabilities within the Self-Service Portal and Dashboards.

These enable non-developers to craft highly effective UIs, including forms and reports, with minimal effort. There’s also the Smart Apps tool, which is aimed at shipping mobile experiences for core service interactions.

BMC also offers its own more advanced low-code development tools in the form of Innovation Studio. This is a highly effective solution for creating custom applications and automations on top of the AR platform.

For more advanced use cases, BMC Helix offers a platform SDK along with a range of API endpoints for traditional developments.

Automations

Both ServiceNow and BMC Helix are strongly targeted at teams that need to streamline a range of business processes across ITSM, ITOps, ESM, and more.

Each takes a slightly different slant on this, however, offering its own distinct set of tools for automating tasks.

ServiceNow

Similar to building custom UIs, ServiceNow is a highly advanced offering in terms of automation capabilities, with a range of tools for different user persona and use cases.

For basic ITSM workflows, we can utilize Flow Designer, a visual solution for creating rule-based automations with event triggers, looping, and branching logic. This is effective for core ITSM decisions, such as ticket routing.

ServiceNow’s Integration Hub also enables us to utilize third-party tools within triggers and actions for automation rules.

Automation Engine is more geared toward end-to-end process automations, including utilizing RPA. For instance, we can configure bots to scrape data from legacy systems.

For more advanced use cases, ServiceNow provides custom JS scripting across the platform. However, we’ll, of course, need the relevant coding skills to take advantage of this for automations.

Helix

BMC Helix also provides a flexible suite of automation tools that can be leveraged by a range of user personas.

We can create visual automation rules using the Flow Designer and Business Workflows tools. These provide a clean, user-friendly experience for automating core tasks, with minimal development skills.

These are particularly effective for self-service use cases, handling omnichannel interactions, or configuring integration solutions within workflows with both rule-based and event-driven automations.

Like ServiceNow, Helix also offers its own set of tools for handling more advanced tasks through Intelligent Automations. This includes RPA, again enabling us to interact with legacy systems or handle use cases where other types of automation might fall short.

BMC also supports scripting for advanced automation use cases across different parts of the ITSM platform.

AI

In the past few years, almost all software vendors have invested heavily in new capabilities leveraging AI and LLMs.

This is becoming a top decision point when procuring new software tools. However, specific vendors can often handle this very differently.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow is, without doubt, one of the leading ITSM platforms when it comes to AI capabilities, including its impressive Now Intelligence Suite.

One of ServiceNow’s big selling points is its Virtual Agents tools. These allow us to set up AI-powered chatbots to help users resolve common requests, such as password resets, or direct them to knowledge articles for more complex requests.

There’s support for a range of external models to power this, as well as ServiceNow’s own dedicated low-code solution for creating our own NLP.

ServiceNow is also an impressive offering for leveraging AI to garner insights into our service delivery, including predictive analytics for forecasting trends and demand. We can even use ML to assign tickets based on previous resolutions.

Similarly, we can utilize a range of internal and external AI tools within process automation tools across the platform.

Helix

Like ServiceNow, BMC Helix is one of the leading platforms for implementing AI tools within service management processes, including the Helix AI and Helix Cognitive Automation suite of tools.

Helix also offers extensive capabilities for leveraging AI tools as virtual agents, either for end users or service desk colleagues, via Smart Assist. Like with ServiceNow, this can be configured to help resolve a wide range of common service requests.

For instance, we can use Cognitive to automatically categorize tickets or route service requests to certain agents.

Again, Helix provides predictive intelligence in the form of Continuous Optimization. This is an effective solution for helping teams make the most out of their IT resources, spot bottlenecks, and avoid overspending.

Out-of-the-box capabilities

Lastly, we can consider each platform in terms of the out-of-the-box workflows they offer. That is, we’ve seen that they offer slightly different levels of configuration options.

Now, we want to put this in the context of how readily we can roll out different ITSM workflows.

ServiceNow

Although ServiceNow has a reputation for requiring a relatively large amount of up-front configuration, it ships with a range of highly effective out-of-the-box workflows.

This includes data structure, UIs, and automation flows for core ITSM, CSM, ESM, and other use cases. While each aspect of these is highly customizable, they are fully working solutions out-of-the-box.

It’s important to note that these are generally tailored to the needs of large enterprises. For instance, ITSM workflows are largely ITIL-aligned, providing a large degree of flexibility and scalability for larger or more complex use cases.

As noted before, ServiceNow then offers a high degree of customization on top of out-of-the-box workflows, which is ideal for teams with more complex or specific requirements. However, some smaller teams may find that other solutions are a better fit for their immediate needs.

Helix

BMC Helix also offers a range of out-of-the-box capabilities that are highly suited to enterprise IT teams.

It provides pre-configured workflows for the full spectrum of ITIL practices, including service management, incident management, problem management, asset management, configuration management, and more.

The goal is to enable teams to implement highly standardized processes with minimal up-front configuration.

Compared to ServiceNow, Helix feels a bit more focused on teams that need a fast deployment, with relatively little up-front configuration. The flip side of this is that some teams might find it somewhat more opinionated or less suitable for more niche configurations.

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