Jira Service Management vs. ServiceNow: Comparison and Differences

Many enterprises prioritize strong IT service management (ITSM), so it’s no surprise service management tools originally viewed IT support teams as their primary target audience. The ITSM market is now valued at $5.9 billion and rising. However, the use case for service management platforms now extends far beyond IT to encompass legal, HR, and other service teams as ITSM has transformed into enterprise service management (ESM).

Jira Service Management (JSM) and ServiceNow are two of the most popular service management solutions on the market. If you’re wondering which platform can best take your organization from ITSM to ESM, read on for a detailed review of the features of JSM and ServiceNow, their relative benefits, and the key elements that make each stand out.

What is Jira Service Management?

Jira Service Management is a service management platform built on top of Jira, Atlassian’s agile project management and issue tracking system. Originally called Jira Service Desk and positioned as an ITSM tool, it was rebranded as Jira Service Management in November 2020. Atlassian has extended its functionality to support all types of service teams through custom-built workflows and templates. While an IT team may rely on JSM for its incident management capabilities, a legal department might instead use JSM to coordinate between multiple parties while collecting the information required to get a contract approved.

What is ServiceNow?

ServiceNow offers a cloud-based tool that consolidates all its ITSM applications. This platform-as-a-service (PaaS), called Now, automates all enterprise workflows with a centralized data model and architecture. The idea is to have one common platform that optimizes business processes and reduces siloing. While the platform has other capabilities such as portfolio and operations management, ServiceNow has its foundation in ITSM functions.

Comparing Jira Service Management vs. ServiceNow

Both Jira Service Management and ServiceNow include a wide range of features — workflow management, reports and dashboards, and more — that cover the entire service management lifecycle. Let’s take a look at some of the core capabilities of each tool.

Jira Service Management Features

Here are some of JSM’s most valuable features that your organization should be aware of.

Incident Management

Jira Service Management helps development, operations, and customer service teams collaborate during every stage of the incident lifecycle, making it easier to keep end users up to date and resolve issues quickly. Team members communicate with each other through Slack and other channels directly in JSM, so they always have the relevant context available and don’t need to waste time switching platforms. You can also automatically escalate and assign issues as needed so the right team members are alerted immediately.

Service Request Management

Service request management involves routing requests to the right parties and fulfilling them efficiently. JSM streamlines every part of the service request process with easy-to-use online customer portals, customizable forms, and automated workflows.

Problem Management

Jira Service Management includes a built-in problem management workflow that supports ITIL-recommended activities and can be easily customized to meet the needs of any organization or business unit.

Reporting and Analytics

Dashboards with customer satisfaction metrics give teams better insight into service quality and how to improve response times and service-level agreements (SLAs). After an incident, you can create a post-mortem report to analyze response efficacy and take preemptive actions to avoid future incidents.

Knowledge Bases

Customers can troubleshoot problems on their own — and internal users can save time resolving common issues — using a knowledge base filled with relevant articles and FAQs. Related articles automatically show up when end users make requests thanks to machine learning algorithms, making self-service that much easier.

Contextual Data with Traceability

JSM lets team members keep relevant items connected so the entire picture is apparent to everyone working on an issue. For instance, if there are multiple tickets raised during an incident, you can link them all together. Or you can create a new issue linked to an incident to perform a root cause analysis.

DevOps Integration

All code commits and deployments related to a change request can be tracked directly from the JSM interface thanks to integration with Bitbucket and other DevOps tools.

Alerts

You can use JSM to create alert notifications from different systems and customize them by tweaking routing rules based on criteria such as urgency and on-call schedules.

Asset Management

JSM enables tracking and managing all your company’s assets. It lets you tie assets to incidents while improving asset quality and minimizing downtime.

ServiceNow Features

As a pioneering service management platform, ServiceNow’s features run the gamut from incident and problem management to change and request management.

Incident Management

ServiceNow offers streamlined workflows to address incidents. Built-in machine learning capabilities add contextual help and accelerate resolution.

Problem Management

ServiceNow acts as a central repository for all tickets, providing visibility to stakeholders about outstanding issues. With automated notifications, role-based dashboards, and real-time analytics, it becomes easier to identify issues quickly and perform root cause analysis.

Change Management

ServiceNow makes change less painful and more productive with customized change workflows, automatic approval of changes algorithmically evaluated as low risk, and integrated scheduling views.

Self-Service Requests

ServiceNow features portals with smart chatbots, equipped with natural language understanding to help users quickly find answers using relevant keywords.

Workspaces

Role-based workspaces enable customized UI layouts for different ITSM players. Agents’ workspaces, for instance, might include a consolidated view of all assigned issues, whereas service owners should have instant access to reports and metrics to keep their finger on the pulse of emerging trends.

A Head-to-Head Comparison

Make the Jump to Jira Service Management with a Trusted Partner

While both JSM and ServiceNow are established names in the ITSM space, JSM scores with its attractive and flexible pricing options and ability to offer strong integration with the Atlassian suite of products. Many enterprises use Atlassian products such as Jira and Confluence not just for their IT operations but also for other business processes. This makes JSM onboarding smoother and quicker.

However, many organizations fail to take full advantage of JSM’s features. As an experienced Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, Contegix can help your company tap into the complete potential of JSM and its integration with other products in the Atlassian marketplace.

Contact us today to learn more about how Contegix can help your organization get the most out of Jira.