Breaking New Ground in ITSM: Top 6 ITSM Tools to Watch in 2025

As businesses accelerate their digital transformation, IT Service Management (ITSM) has become a vital business enabler. Whether the demand is to streamline service delivery, maintain seamless IT workflows, or deliver an intuitive customer experience, an ITSM platform is the solution you need to adopt best practices.

Finding the right IT Service Management solution is not only about the functions – it should also align with your business goals and financial plan. Many businesses are now exploring alternative ITSM solutions that offer greater flexibility, cost efficiency, and tailored functionalities to meet their specific needs. 

In 2025, you will have good ITSM alternatives that bring fresh innovations to the ITSM landscape. Here are the top 6 ITSM tools that are worth considering.

Introduction to IT Service Management

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, IT Service Management (ITSM) is the backbone of how organizations manage, deliver, and continually improve their information technology services. ITSM is not just about keeping the lights on—it’s about aligning IT services with business goals, driving customer satisfaction, and ensuring that every service request, incident, or change is handled efficiently and effectively.

At its core, ITSM is a structured approach to designing, delivering, managing, and improving the way IT supports the entire company. By implementing ITSM processes, organizations can ensure that their IT services are reliable, secure, and tailored to meet evolving business needs. This approach helps IT teams and service providers deliver consistent service quality, minimize risk, and support business priorities through end-to-end delivery.

Key ITSM processes include:

• Service Request Management: Handling customer service requests, such as new hardware, software installations, or access permissions, through a streamlined service desk.
• Incident Management: Quickly resolving service disruptions to restore normal operations and minimize business impact.
• Problem Management: Identifying and addressing the root causes of recurring incidents to prevent future disruptions.
• Change Management: Managing updates, upgrades, and changes to the IT environment in a controlled way to minimize risk and ensure business continuity.
• Configuration Management: Maintaining an accurate configuration management database (CMDB) to track the organization’s assets and their relationships, supporting better decision-making and compliance.

Modern ITSM relies on a suite of tools and technologies to support these processes. ITSM software and service desk software provide a central point for managing service requests, incidents, and knowledge management, while asset management tools help track and optimize the use of IT assets. The configuration management database (CMDB) acts as the single source of truth for the IT environment, enabling better control and visibility.

Adopting ITSM best practices and frameworks—such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), the most widely adopted framework, and COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies)—helps organizations manage IT services in line with international standards. These frameworks provide proven guidelines for continual service improvement, governance, and aligning IT with business outcomes.

The rise of AI agents and automation is transforming ITSM, enabling organizations to automate routine tasks, accelerate incident resolution, and enhance user satisfaction. AI-powered service management ITSM platforms can proactively manage service requests, streamline problem management, and support self-service capabilities, freeing up IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives.

Ultimately, ITSM is essential for organizations seeking to deliver high-quality IT services, achieve business priorities, and drive digital transformation. By leveraging ITSM frameworks, structured processes, and advanced tools, businesses can improve productivity, reduce costs, and deliver a superior customer experience—making IT a true enabler of business success.

Top 6 ITSM Tools

HCL BigFix Service Management

HCL BigFix Service Management is a cutting-edge solution for IT service management. Its key strength lies in its no-code, Agentic AI-powered platform. It focuses on proactive problem prevention, AI-supported decision-making and a user-friendly interface.

What makes it a highly viable solution for modern businesses is its relevance, which extends beyond IT to encompass HR, finance, and cross-departmental workflows.

Key Strengths: 

• MicroSkilled agents
  The AI agents work autonomously and in concert to analyze and solve issues, playing roles such as incident managers.
• Cognitive Virtual Assistant (CVA)
  Allows users to request help, create tickets, and resolve problems via an AI-powered chat interface.

• Predictive analytics
  Determines first-call resolution rates, ticket reopen risk, and change success probabilities to avoid downtime.

• Proactive problem management
  Analyze incident patterns to prevent the recurrence of similar problems.
• Multi-supplier governance
  Based on the Service Integration and Management (SIAM) framework, it provides a unique mechanism for managing transactions and governance, integrating multiple suppliers with a Consumer and Master Supplier.
• No-code flexibility
  Enables non-technical teams to create workflows, manage approvals, and build and customize dashboards without writing code.

• Summarization and knowledge creation
  Uses generative AI to create high-level summaries of complex workflows. Automatically creates FAQs and knowledge articles from tickets that come in frequently. 

• Smart workload allocation
  Assigns tasks based on the team's capacity and skills.

• Self-service excellence
  Integrated natural language search and AI-powered writing assistants actively engage users, reducing reliance on IT departments.

Weaknesses:

• Using predictive models as the basis requires good data to maintain accuracy.
• HCL BigFix Service Management is a relatively new platform; therefore, its documentation is continually evolving. Nevertheless, organizations should not rely solely the platform is intuitive and offers a no-code approach.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow is a cloud-based platform that helps companies optimize their IT operations and reduce manual effort in day-to-day tasks. This tool consolidates various. These include addressing problems, handling service requests, managing changes, tracking assets, and enforcing IT policies. By consolidating these tasks into a single system, ServiceNow enables businesses to reduce manual work. This leads to improved operational productivity and provides users with a significantly better experience.

Key Strengths:

• ServiceNow uses powerful automation tools to eliminate repetitive tasks, enabling teams to focus on strategic projects.
• The platform harnesses predictive intelligence to anticipate issues, prioritize tasks, and support data-driven decisions.
• People without tech skills can build custom workflows and apps using its low-code/no-code setup.
• The platform boasts a user-friendly interface, making it easy to navigate and reducing training needs.
• ServiceNow offers customizable dashboards that display live data and performance statistics, allowing users to monitor key metrics.
• It includes reporting analytics tools that provide organizations with detailed insights about operational efficiency and service quality.

Weaknesses:

• Licensing and implementation phases create financial barriers for smaller businesses. According to one user, “ServiceNow can be expensive, especially for smaller organizations.”1
• New users often struggle to understand the platform's complexity. A customer shared that “When we onboard a new member, they take a long time to adapt.”2
• Initial setup and integration require significant technical expertise, and overly customized instances become challenging to update.3
• Users report slow page-load times and delays when managing large datasets or high incident volumes.4
• While flexible, excessive customizations can create technical debt. Tuning the platform to niche workflows often demands developer support.5

BMC Helix ITSM

BMC Helix ITSM is a cloud-native, AI-driven ITSM platform designed for digital transformation, workflow automation, and improved service delivery. Helix includes most ITSM features, including incident management, asset management, change management, and DevOps integration.

Key Strengths: 

• BMC Helix utilizes AI and ML to optimize resource utilization, predict probable future service demand, and identify potential risks.
• Helix is an enterprises, offering flexibility and ease of scaling as the company expands.
• The platform is also compatible with other third-party software as it uses an open API.
• The platform is simple for users to implement and use, as they can build incidents, manage changes, and create reports using a interfacedrag-and-drop.

Weaknesses: 

• Although Helix is customizable, some reviewers complain that the workflow design is not as intuitive as that of other ITSM tools.
• Some users have noted that the Helix user interface appears outdated compared to other ITSM platforms.
• If ticket volumes are large, it can be time-consuming to locate historical data or create comprehensive reports.

Jira Service Management

Jira Service Management, previously known as Jira Service Desk, is a new-age ITSM solution. It implements agile methodologies with ITSM best practices and offers a single-platform approach in request, incident, and change management. It is quite cost-effective and integrates seamlessly with other Atlassian products.

Key Strengths:

• Built on the Jira platform, it integrates quickly with other DevOps tools, promoting effective change management and ongoing development.
• While the self-service portal of IT, highly sophisticated automation tools effectively route requests to the appropriate teams.
• Can significantly enhance service delivery and minimize siloed work.
• It also integrates effectively with other Atlassian tools, such as Confluence, enabling the creation of adaptable workflows tailored to the company's needs.

Weaknesses:

• For non-technical individuals, the interface may appear complicated, making onboarding and workflow automation setup challenging.
• Users have reported delays, particularly when multiple tickets are handled simultaneously.

Ivanti Neurons

Ivanti Neurons for ITSM provides a service management solution that eliminates the need for agents to monitor systems. It provides assets, and streamlining workflows. Ivanti's platform is intuitive and can be easily tailored to meet a wide range of needs. This helps companies enhance their IT.

Key Strengths: 

• Agentless real-time monitoring provides 24/7 monitoring of infrastructure, applications, and processes.
• Drag-and-drop workflow automation makes service management easier, allowing teams to respond to changing business needs.
• It provides comprehensive identification and control of IT assets, from acquisition to retirement, to achieve compliance and optimize resource utilization.
• Enables users to search for knowledge articles and track requests, reducing IT workload and decreasing response time.
• It offers customizable dashboards and reports to improve operations.

Weaknesses:

• This ITSM platform may be overwhelming for new users due to its numerous features, which can steepen the learning curvemake the learning curve steep.
• Some users commented that the interface appears, as some features have been integrated from other tools.

Freshservice

Another popular ITSM solution is Freshservice. It is a cloud-based ITSM solution by Freshworks, a strong contender to ServiceNow. It is a user-friendly platform primarily used by small and mid-sized enterprises. Developed on ITIL best practices, Freshservice streamlines IT operations through automated workflows, AI-powered support, and seamless asset management.

Key Strengths: 

• Freddy AI, the built-in AI solution, enhances ticket resolution by offering self-service, automating processes, and providing valuable recommendations.
• The interface is designed to enable IT teams to categorize, prioritize, and manage tickets efficiently.
• Integrates ITSM with IT asset management to improve coordination and visibility.
• Offers data-driven insights into service performance, ticket resolution times, and SLA achievements.
• Compatible with third-party tools like AWS, Google Apps, and many more.

Weaknesses:

• Automation is robust, but the available digital workflows are somewhat limited.
• Extensive customizations can slow down the platform’s response.
• According to some users, the Freshservice support team responds rather slowly.

Considerations for Choosing the Right ITSM Platform

Choosing the right ITSM platform is crucial in optimizing IT performance and service quality at your organization. Here are the key factors to consider when making your choice: 

Business Needs

Every business has different ITSM needs. While some enterprises seek basic incident and change management, others have complex needs such as automation, AI, and advanced analytics. So, the platform should align with your ITIL framework. However, it is wise to choose an ITSM platform that has new-age capabilities to support your future growth.

Scalability

Your ITSM platform should help your business grow. Large companies need it to handle thousands of users and complex processes. Small and medium-sized enterprises want flexibility without paying for unused features.

Integration Capabilities

ITSM can't work alone. You need a platform that integrates seamlessly with your company's existing systems, including monitoring tools, collaboration tools, and external applications. Checking how well the platform connects with other systems is crucial to making your company's workflows easier and more effective.

Ease of Use and User Adoption

When it comes to getting people to use the system, it allows different access levels based on job roles. Companies should look for platforms that simplify workflows and require minimal effort to manage.

Licensing and Cost-effectiveness

The licensing needs to be straightforward and adaptable. Some have complex pricing structures or hidden fees that can add up to significant extra expenses for the project. Instead, licensing, which costs less and works better in the long run. If you don't, you will end up paying more for the same thing.

Advanced AI and Automation

Due to the increased complexity of IT ecosystems, automation and AI-enabled features are becoming essential. Automated workflows, AI-based analytics, and proactive incident management can alleviate the IT staff of repetitive tasks and enable them to focus on critical business processes. 

Ease of Upgrades and Maintenance

It is well known that frequent updates can cause significant problems and negatively impact an organization's performance. Try to find products that require minimal or no professional services for upgrades, so won't disrupt work or need retraining. 

AI-powered Service Management Solution

HCL BigFix Service Management is a future-ready ITSM platform that is perfect for today’s businesses. Designed for varied business needs, it is scalable for enterprises and SMBs, without incurring extra costs for the features you don’t need. Its native integration capabilities make it easier to connect with other tools, while the no-code interface enables easy use and quick learning. HCL BigFix Service Management features a transparent licensing model with no hidden costs.

What really makes HCL BigFix Service Management different is Agentic AI-powered automation, which significantly reduces the need for human intervention. Isn’t that what you are looking for in your IT service management practices? Features such as cognitive virtual assistants, predictive analytics, and proactive problem management enhance operational effectiveness, allowing your service desk agents to focus on strategic tasks.

HCL BigFix Service Management has delivered satisfactory output. For example, a major managed service provider used HCL BigFix Service Management to simplify the management of mmulti-tenant services. The platform enabled them to onboard customers 40% faster, reduce operational costs by 50%, and lower MTTR by 35%.

If you are looking to enhance your IT operations and are interested in exploring if HCL BigFix Service Management will be the right fit, here is your chance to book your 30-day free trial. 

References:

1. https://www.g2.com/products/servicenow-it-service-management/reviews/servicenow-it-service-management-review-10444313
2. https://www.g2.com/products/servicenow-it-service-management/reviews/servicenow-it-service-management-review-10672600
3. https://www.g2.com/products/servicenow-it-service-management/reviews/servicenow-it-service-management-review-9758749
4. https://www.g2.com/products/servicenow-it-service-management/reviews/servicenow-it-service-management-review-9670134
5. https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/it-service-management-platforms/vendor/servicenow/product/servicenow-service-management/review/view/5645482