Lifecycle Management

  • 10 min read

Freshservice Vs. Jira Service Desk: Which ITSM Tool Is More Suitable?

Team Zluri

4th April, 2023

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Jira service management and Freshservice are two renowned IT service management platforms designed to help your IT team provide on-time support and services to enhance customer/employee experience. These leading ITSM solutions offer many features, including service desk management, SLA management, self-service capabilities, and more. 

Though they share similar key features but they function distinctly. This comparison between the Jira service desk and Freshservice aims to assist you in selecting the most suitable tool that aligns with your IT team's requirements, which will further help streamline the IT service management process.

To determine the most suitable choice between Jira service management and Freshservice, it's important to thoroughly analyze each tool's key features and how they align with your IT team's requirements. So, before we compare the key parameters of both tools, let's get a brief overview of their overall functionality and capabilities. 

What Is FreshService?

Freshservice is a cloud-based IT service management (ITSM) software solution that helps your IT teams streamline IT operations and improve overall customer support. It offers a range of features, including ticket management, asset management, change management, problem management, service catalog, knowledge base, and self-service capabilities.

With Freshservice, your IT team can seamlessly automate routine tasks, such as ticket tracking and assignment, reducing response time and improving efficiency. The platform also provides real-time insights and analytics that help your IT teams monitor performance, track metrics, and identify areas for improvement.

Furthermore, Freshservice is designed to be user-friendly, and with its intuitive interface, your team can easily customize and integrate with third-party tools. As a result, it's suitable for organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises, and is used by IT teams, HR teams, facilities management teams, development teams, and customer support teams.

What Is Jira Service Management?

Jira service management is an IT service management software solution from Atlassian.

Jira service management solution is designed to help your IT teams streamline their IT service delivery and improve customer experience. It offers features such as incident management, problem management, change management, service request management, and a self-service portal.

Furthermore, one of the significant advantages of Jira service management is its integration with other Atlassian products, such as Jira software and confluence, allowing your IT teams to collaborate more effectively and streamline workflows. It also has various automation features, including rule-based workflows, notifications, and SLA management, which can help teams improve efficiency and reduce response times.

Additionally, Jira service management is used by many businesses, from small-sized to large enterprises, and is popular in the IT and software development industries.

Now you have a brief overview of Freshservice and Jira service management and what they do. Let's move on and differentiate both tools based on different parameters to help you decide which ITSM platform will best cater to your IT team's needs.

Jira Vs Freshservice: Comparison based on 5 different parameters

Below, we have compared the functionalities of the Jira service desk vs. Freshservice in detail. With the help of these insights, you’ll be able to select the most suitable platform for streamlining IT service management and improving customer satisfaction. 

1. Unique Category & Suitable For Which Business Size 

• Freshservice is categorized as customer self-service and enterprise IT management. This tool is primarily suitable for IT teams that manage IT assets, automate workflows, and provide customer support. Furthermore, it is useful for small (50 or fewer employees) to mid-sized (51-1000 employees) businesses that require a comprehensive and easy-to-use ITSM tool.

• Meanwhile, Jira service management is a help desk for IT teams that manage different projects, including software development, marketing campaigns, and HR tasks. Furthermore, Jira's flexibility and customizable features suit businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large (1000-plus employees) corporations.

2. Service Desk Capabilities

Both the ITSM tools provide complete service desk capabilities, which allow IT teams to handle requests such as any queries related to apps, track current tickets, resolve incidents, and request assignments. In addition, they emphasize adapting to the evolving IT landscape and are easily accommodated in any organization.

• Freshservice provides communication flexibility in incident-related situations, as this tool has multiple communication channels, like real-time chat, online portal, email, and call. Based on the severity of the issues or incident, the problem will be prioritized, and accordingly, the communication route will be set. For example, communication can occur over the phone if an urgent matter needs to be resolved.
  
  Its capabilities don't stop here; your IT admins can automate incident tracking, allowing you to quickly identify critical events and take immediate action, such as repair measures to resolve them. It safely stores all the incidents in a database with solutions so IT teams can refer to them if they occur again.
  
  Also, Freshservice includes advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology that can find and pinpoint negative trends and underlying problems. It can also link incidents to these patterns and issues automatically. This way, incidents can be reported to the right people or groups, who can investigate and fix the root causes. 

• On the other hand, the Jira service management software is a middleware between incident management solutions like chat tools, monitoring (software and hardware), logs, and tickets. Furthermore, it adds features that are connected to IT processes, ITIL-approved setups, and templates that Jira currently offers. With it, you can automatically track incidents via communication protocol or workflow.

3. Service Level Management Capabilities

• Freshservice allows you to define multiple SLA policies with different response and resolution times for different request types. Your team can also set up escalations and notifications based on SLA breach criteria. 
  
  It also offers built-in automation rules that can automatically assign SLA policies based on criteria such as request type and priority. Whereas Jira service management allows you to define SLA policies, but has fewer customization options and doesn't provide built-in automation rules.

• Furthermore, Freshservice offers a range of pre-built reports and analytics tools that help you track SLA performance and identify potential issues. You can also generate SLA performance reports for individual customers or service teams. Meanwhile, Jira service management also provides some reporting and analytics features, which are less robust than Freshservice.
  
  When compared between Jira vs Freshservice, it comes out that Freshservice provides more comprehensive and advanced Service Level Management features than Jira service management.

4. User-Friendly Interface 

Both Freshservice and Jira offer user-friendly agent and customer self-service portals that provide a seamless experience. These portals promote self-service and offer insights into current and past tickets.

• Freshservice's customer and agent portal is described as highly user-friendly. Customers can easily submit tickets, track their progress, request services, and access a repository of best practices to find answers to their questions. The introduction of the global search feature allows users to efficiently search for solutions within the knowledge base, service catalog articles, and even their previous tickets, reducing the workload on agents.

• On the other hand, Jira service management's portal provides immediate information and options when your employee/customer engages with the search bar. Furthermore, your team can decide how services and alerts are organized and presented. Also, with its search recommendations, inline suggestions, and knowledge-based articles, your employees can find answers to their common questions. 

5. Pricing Model 

Both services offer multiple packages and trial periods. Freshservice provides a 14-day trial period, while Jira service management offers a shorter seven-day trial. However, it's important to note that Jira offers a free plan with support for up to three agents and limited features.

• Freshservice provides four service levels, each with its own set of features: Starter, Growth, Pro, and Enterprise. Additionally, they offer various add-ons like the Orchestration Transaction Pack, Assets Pack, Virtual Agent Suggestion Pack, and more, available at different price points. Freshservice also offers Day Passes, which provide extra support during periods of increased service demand, making it ideal for events like product launches.

• On the other hand, Jira service management offers Standard and Premium versions in the cloud. The Premium version includes Premium Support, Asset & Configuration Management (Insight), full automation, complete incident management (Opsgenie), and unlimited storage, among other features. The Standard versions do not include Premium Support. 
  
  However, both tools, i.e., Jira service desk vs Freshservice, also provide additional features, such as asset management capability, and have their own ways of managing assets. However, you can opt for one depending on the business-specific asset management requirement.
  
  Freshservice provides dedicated asset management capabilities that allow you to track and manage all your IT assets in one place, including hardware, software, and other organizational equipment. Meanwhile, Jira service management doesn't have that capability, but you can use its Configuration Management Database (CMDB) feature to track assets.
  
  There are other differences as well, such as Freshservice provides built-in tools for automatically discovering and scanning your network for assets, which can save a lot of time and effort. It also integrates with various third-party tools, including network scanners, remote management, and asset discovery tools. But Jira service management needs those discovery features, and though it supports integrations, it has limited options for Freshservice.
  
  Furthermore, Freshservice provides comprehensive tools for managing the entire asset lifecycle, including procurement, deployment, maintenance, and retirement. On the other hand, Jira provides fewer tools for asset lifecycle management.

Jira Vs Freshservice Comparison Table 

Here is a comparison table of Jira vs freshservice that will help you decide which one is more apt for your organization. 

After comparing the two (Freshservice vs Jira service desk) closely, you must have an idea of which will be more suitable for streamlining your IT service management processes. However, it's not mandatory to stick to one tool to manage your IT services, you can always search for the better alternative that will meet your IT team’s specific requirement. One such tool that you can use as a substitute for Jira service management and Freshservice is Zluri. So what is Zluri? What functionalities does it offer? Here's a quick guide.

Streamline Access Request Management With Zluri

Zluri is an efficient SaaS management platform that offers a range of functionalities to help your IT teams manage your IT service management processes. Let's take a real-time situation example to clarify how it practically works.

Organizations, on a regular basis, hire new employees. When the employees are onboarded, they are given access to a few applications to start with their work. However, with time, they need access to other applications because of changes in their roles, promotions, or geographical changes.

For example, content writing interns who previously had access only to Google Docs now get promoted to full-time and require access to Grammarly to check their content thoroughly. In this situation, the interns will raise a request for Grammarly access. But now, they have to wait for a couple of days to get the approval as the access request will go through multi-step processes.

So, to reduce this waiting period, what Zluri does is, it offers your employees an immediate solution, i.e., Employee App Store, a self-serve model. 

• Employee App Store: The Ultimate Ticketless Access Request Management solution 

EAS is a collection of all the SaaS applications present in the organization that are verified and approved by the IT admin. This feature gives your employees the flexibility to choose any app from the organization’s SaaS stack and gain access to it within no time. 

• Gain Quick Access To Requested Applications 

Employees need to raise an app access request, and the IT admin will verify their identity, role, or position, whether your employee requires the requested application or not. After successfully verifying their identity, the IT team will grant the app access right away or reject it if the app access is not necessary for the employee.

• Improves Overall Employee Experience & Productivity 

Zluri’s EAS not only cuts down the waiting period for employees but also improves their overall employee experience and productivity by granting them quick access to required apps. So that there is no interruption in their work process.  

• Your Employee Can Request For Apps Which Are Unavailable In Your Organization’s SaaS stack 

If the app required by the employee is not available in the EAS, they have to raise a request for the same. Once the request reaches the IT teams, they will verify the application details, including threat level, risk score, compliance, and more, to check whether or not it is secure enough to procure.

The request will be forwarded to the procurement team if the application meets the checklist. With Zluri's SaaS buying capabilities, the procurement team can negotiate for the best offer and procure the application. Now, the procured app will come back to IT teams, and they will ultimately grant the employee app access.

However, IT teams will only accept the request if the application is secured enough to procure, or if it's too pricey, they will notify the same to employees. Also, if IT teams reject the request, they will suggest the best alternative for the already available app in the SaaS stack.

• With Just A Few Clicks, Your Employee Can Submit An App Access Request 

Now that you have an overview of how Zluri works let’s see how your employees can submit an access request in EAS: 

• Step 1: Your employees will receive an icon on the Zluri main interface's upper right corner; click on that, and a drop-down menu will appear; from there, click Switch to Employee View. 

  

  

• Step 2: The Overview dashboard will appear by default. 

  

  

  Now click on 'Request Access to an Application.

  

  

• Step 3: Your employees will see a dialogue box where they need to enter the application name they require access to. Then, click on Continue. 

  

  

• Step 4: Some applications will not be used in the organization. However, your employees can still request that application. Click on continue, and another dialogue box will appear, showing similar applications that are being used in the organization. 

  

  

  If your employees want to opt for a similar application, they can simply click on the application or click on Ignore and Continue to proceed forward with your request. 

  

  

• Step 5: Further, they have to fill in the required details like selecting the license plan, subscription duration, and description of why they need the application and attach supporting documents. Once filled, click on Confirm request. 

  

  

  Note: However, your team retains the authority to reject application requests based on concerns regarding pricing or security risks linked to the app. The employee will receive notifications regarding these decisions through comments. Also, if your teams propose modifications to the request or recommend alternative applications, these will be viewed in the "Changelogs".

  

  

• Your Employees Can Easily Track The Request Status In Zluri’s Employee App Store

Also, Zluri provides a centralized view that enables your employee to easily track the status (which app access request has been approved and which ones have been denied), promoting  transparency. 

• Zluri Provides A centralized View Of All The Raised Tickets 

Zluri benefits your IT teams as well that too in several ways. For example, earlier IT teams had to manage tickets manually, and at times, they lost track of requests as they had to deal with multiple app requests. However, with Zluri, they can view all the raised tickets in a centralized dashboard, and with just a few clicks, they can grant access to multiple employees at a time.

Also, they can track, prioritize, and assign tickets to the appropriate personnel and automate repetitive tasks such as ticket management, saving time and effort. Furthermore, it sends IT teams real-time alerts whenever a request has been raised so they can immediately respond to it without making the employees wait to proceed with their work.

• Customize The View Of Application In the Employee App Store 

Your IT teams can restrict the application view or customize which apps will be visible in the EAS as per specific requirements. This helps restrict employees from viewing and accessing apps with high threat levels, risk scores, and compliance.

Now, how is your IT team going to monitor the approval workflow? Zluri conducts timely audits and generates reports and analytics on ticket resolution rates, time taken to approve requests, and more, helping streamline the approval workflow process.

Zluri has other exquisite capabilities, such as user lifecycle management, data recovery, asset management, and more, which can be a bonus point for your IT teams to improve productivity and efficiency. now and check for yourself; you never know if it can perfectly fit your organization.

Also Read: Freshservice vs Zluri - 2023 Comparison

About the author

Team Zluri

Team Zluri