Why and How to Migrate to Jira Service Management from ServiceNow

As organizations across sectors look to efficiently manage design, plan, deliver, and support the range of IT services they provide to customers, ITSM tools are helping them manage these services end-to-end. Over the years, the ITSM tool landscape has become extremely crowded, with several vendors launching new features and capabilities periodically to meet evolving IT requirements. 

 

Today, solutions like Jira Service Management (JSM) and, ServiceNow are topping the charts, with each enabling organizations to deliver exceptional IT services: 

• JSM delivers ITIL best practices out-of-the-box, empowering teams to adapt their service management processes to align with the way they work and resolve issues quickly.

• ServiceNow allows IT teams to handle incidents, requests, problems, and changes with increased precision, while continually managing and optimizing the delivery of IT services. 

Introduction to JSM 

A modern and powerful ITSM tool, JSM is built with capabilities that allow organizations to transform their IT and deliver services to customers – quickly and effortlessly. 

 

This flexible, intuitive, and collaborative tool is built specifically for rapid service delivery, so teams can deliver exceptional IT service fast. 

 

JSM helps organizations to: 

• Deliver Provide IT service and support without the cost and complexity of standard ITSM solutions. 

• Get started quickly using the codeless setup and configuration, spin up new services, and deliver value fast. 

• Leverage a rich ecosystem of integrations and marketplace apps to tailor service delivery to specific organizational needs. 

• Use a single, common platform to bring development, operations, and support teams together and speed service requests through to changes and releases. 

 • Enable a seamless experience across the organization through deep integrations with a range of Atlassian products, including Jira, Confluence, OpsGenie, and Statuspage. 

 Why companies are choosing JSM 

In a world where most ITSM tools look to only manage incidents, problems, and changes, JSM empowers the workforce with the services, processes, and technologies they need to continuously win, serve, and retain customers. 

 Trusted by 25,000 teams worldwide, JSM is recognized as a leading service desk software and empowers teams to be more efficient and effective in the IT services they deliver. 

 Taking a lean approach to ITSM, the open platform is agile, flexible, cost-effective, and easy-to-use. It helps IT function as a well-oiled machine, allowing the rest of the company to also operate more efficiently.  

Its rich set of features is what made Digital Media Company DHI move from ServiceNow to JSM – mainly because of how complex the ServiceNow solution was. 

 For mid-sized businesses, the features, built-in processes, and overheads of ServiceNow restricted the company from operating nimbly.  JSM, on the other hand, offers a range of functionality out-of-the-box and allows DHI to drive more value from modern workflows. The company has been able to save almost $200k while reducing P1 and P2 incidents by 70% in the last three years.

 Today, DHI leverages the transparency and collaboration features of JSM, using it as a one-stop solution for Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, and Service Requests. 

 Source: Atlassian

 When to Choose JSM 

ServiceNow, when launched, was hailed as one of the best ITSM solutions to ever hit the market. Over the years, the solution has helped organizations achieve their IT service delivery goals with ease and efficiency.  

But off late, teams are finding the platform too complex and expensive for ITSM. JSM, on the other hand, helps teams drive leaner, and more agile outcomes. 

 Here are some reasons to choose JSM over ServiceNow: 

 • When simplicity is the key: ServiceNow’s complex workflows restrict businesses from driving fast and hassle-free services to customers. The heavy change management and approval processes often result in rigid bureaucracy and impede collaboration and innovation. It also makes customization a Herculean task, requiring teams to waste a lot of time in managing those customizations while limiting them from focusing on what’s most critical. 

 JSM’s open and codeless platform makes it extremely easy for teams to get started quickly and make the most of its many ITSM features right away. The simplified and easy-to-use UI allows people from different ages and backgrounds to come together and collaborate effectively and foster continued business growth. ITIL best practices empower teams to adapt service management processes to match the way they work – driving continued value from their ITSM processes. 

• When cost-saving is important: Although cost should never be a prime consideration when choosing a modern ITSM solution, overpaying for features that are never used is also not a wise decision. ServiceNow’s capabilities are not only expensive; they also come with complicated contracts, lengthy implementations, complex integrations, and more – that add up to overall operational costs. 

 JSM, on the other hand, is an extremely cost-effective solution with prices that are transparent, affordable, and predictable as compared to ServiceNow’s modern ITSM features that come at a price. For instance, for a team size of 120, ServiceNow would cost organizations $12,000/month as compared to JSM’s $1,735/month – resulting in total annual savings of $123,180 or a whopping 86%. Because the solution is quick and easy to implement, it also helps save up on vendor and training costs. 

 • When DevOps is at the heart of your Service Desk operations: ServiceNow’s ITSM capabilities are no doubt impressive, but they lack transparency. Since Service Desk operations and DevOps teams are two separate entities – with little or no integration between them – the tool does not give IT teams the visibility they need into the DevOps lifecycle. 

 JSM allows organizations to bring their development and operations teams in one place, paving the way for more collaborative fixing of incidents and application of changes. Built on Jira software, it allows service desk agents end-to-end visibility into any change that happens while seamlessly linking JSM tickets to Jira software issues and creating permanent fixes. In addition, JSM allows teams to leverage the powerful post-incident review process to quickly close feedback loops and boost learning and sharing. 

 • When you are looking for extendibility and scalability: The scalability of the ITSM solution is one of the biggest aspects that needs to be taken into consideration while choosing a platform. ServiceNow, with its inflexible architecture, makes it extremely difficult for teams to enjoy scalability, often stifling growth and innovation. Although scalability can be achieved, it is not without costly consultants, long training cycles, and a total refurbishing of the underlying architecture. 

 JSM enables IT teams to tailor service delivery to their organization’s specific needs. The rich ecosystem of integrations and 600+ marketplace apps means the solution is easily extendible and scalable, allowing teams to meet evolving service delivery needs with ease. Teams can leverage customizable templates to customize apps, develop their own apps from scratch, or extend out-of-the-box functionality – with simple clicks.

 Key Features of JSM

Simple to use and easy to set up, JSM offers everything IT teams need out-of-the-box including automation rules, SLAs, and ITIL-certified processes across incident, problem, and change management. 

 Listed below are key features of JSM: 

• Self-service: JSM allows agents to use knowledgebase articles to find the right solutions to most common problems. By enabling IT teams to solve problems on their own, it empowers them to have solutions at their fingertips and execute them faster. Since most requests can be resolved through self-service, fewer requests are created for specialists, allowing them to focus their efforts and attention on more complex tasks. 

• Knowledge-centric service desk: Teams can link JSM with Confluence and use it as a knowledge base. They can share their expertise through knowledge base articles and how-to’s and easily get answers to questions. Teams can revisit these constantly updated articles to increase their knowledge as well as learn about new and improved ways to solve issues – quickly and correctly. 

• KPI-driven measurement:  Given how important it is for IT teams to deliver efficient ITSM services, JSM’s KPI-driven measurement helps in better service delivery. Using quantifiable metrics, teams can track the time it takes to respond to tickets, resolve them, and make changes. Such a measurement system ensures customers are responded to quickly and efficiently while ensuring satisfaction all along the way. 

• Tighter and smoother collaboration between teams: The fact that JSM is built on Jira software makes it extremely easy for service teams to connect and collaborate with others. Using JSM, they can share information easily across the organization, and get the visibility they need to work together on issues. By creating a linked issue, teams can also escalate a JSM issue to other Jira products and get the support and assistance they need for a quick resolution. 

• Wider deployment options: JSM offers a wide range of deployment options to meet the needs of different organizations. The cloud option allows teams to host their JSM on Atlassian’s servers and can be accessed via a URL. The server option allows them to host JSM on a server in their own environment while the data center option allows for hosting of JSM on a number of servers in a cluster in their environment.

• Proactive service: JSM allows IT teams to move away from taking reactive approaches to problem resolution and take a proactive approach instead. SLAs help in providing the visibility teams need into service efficiency, empowering them to take steps to improve customer satisfaction and business outcomes. By visualizing how much time they have left to meet service goals, it helps them stay focused on what needs to be done and ensure adherence to SLAs. 

• ChatOps: JSM’s ChatOps functionality allows teams to communicate and collaborate better and resolve incidents faster – while identifying core problems and preventing future incidents from happening. By connecting people, tools, processes, and automation through transparent workflows, ChatOps ensures IT teams have the tools they need to do their jobs and meet their service delivery goals. Tools like Opsgenie allows teams to streamline the incident management process and handle critical incidents – on priority

 

How to migrate from ServiceNow to JSM

Being responsive to the growing service delivery needs requires organizations to consider flexible and scalable solutions like JSM. 

 Migrating from ServiceNow to JSM is a great way to enable higher efficiency in ITSM processes while filling any gaps in out-of-the-box solutions with integrations and customizations. 

 Here are some tips for teams looking to migrate from ServiceNow to JSM: 

• Define the scope of migration and analyze what data, workflows, and processes need to be migrated. 

• Design the JSM system based on the needs of the business, carefully set up the solution. 

• Extract data from the previous ServiceNow solution and map it to the newly configured JSM solution. 

• Cleanse and transform data (if needed) and carry out thorough reviews to ensure all the data that is needed has been migrated. 

• Carry out customizations or integrations as needed by exploring the world of supported apps and extensions.

• Test and review the JSM solution and monitor it for a period of time to ensure users are not facing any issues in using the new system. 

 Conclusion 

As the IT service needs of organizations grow, opting for a solution like JSM can bring about a complete transformation in how incidents are handled and resolved. 

Organizations that have been using ServiceNow need to move away from their rigid ITSM procedures and towards JSM’s agile, efficient, and collaborative processes. If you are considering making the move, partnering with a migration expert like Addteq can result in successful, timely, and cost-effective migration outcomes. As an Atlassian Platinum partner, we have the skills and capabilities needed to set up your JSM environment and bring your IT teams up to speed. Contact us today!