Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued) vs. Parature (Discontinued)

Agiloft is a fully GUI based system that requires very little or no coding. That allows for a very quick deployment of a new install and for adding new features. Therefore, it works great for companies that don't want to write a new system from the ground up.

Parature earns a "7" on my rating scale because it fits the bill for a ticketing solution. While it is not the most powerful utility I have come across, it is fairly user friendly and gets the job done. There is quite a bit of room for customizing the interface, but it comes with a learning curve. A score of "7" reflects what I would tell anyone who is looking for feedback on this application; it's better than a majority of the market share, but still has room to grow!

Incentivized

• Agiloft's performance has been excellent. This includes 1) Scalability, 2) System response, and 3) Reliability. We have not had a reported issue with the system for at least 2 years.
• Professional Services. When we had an issue interfacing with an external data mart we brought in Agiloft's Professional Services and got a quick, cost-effective solution.
• Strategic Planning. As we look to the future we are hoping to move to the ITIL model. We love Agiloft's solution and have embraced it as our future direction.
• Flexibility. This includes 1) Custom form design, 2) Routing based on just about any criteria, 3) Addition of attributes, 4) Search capabilities for end users.

• Syncs all support emails into cases that can the be prioritized, monitored, and tracked.
• Provides easy canned responses to common support questions helping save time.
• Provides live chat.

Incentivized

• They could build a slicker look to the graphical charts output for the reports. These look a bit dated, and I would like the ability to customize them more.
• I find that some features of the tool are difficult to find, and aren't necessarily in the most common sense of places. This definitely eases with experience with the tool, but initially it will take some time just to figure out the setup of the tool and where things are located. For example, permissions can be set on many different levels, which is great, but logically finding where to find the differing permission levels is difficult at first. I would suggest attending their admin training session to initiate yourself with the tool at first, so you're not as reliant on Agiloft initially to guide you in building the tool, which can get expensive.

• Implementation- I think they have worked on improving this since we launched
• Custom requests
• Perhaps an interface with other business systems

Incentivized

We have invested a lot of effort in tailoring the solution to our needs. Our users (both internal and external) are comfortable with it and we have aligned it with our workflow. We have also integrated it into our implementation processes and are working to connect it to our SDLC.

We left Parature for Salesforce Service Cloud. While Parature was functional, as our business matured we needed better support, more stability, and a lot more features. In addition, it integrated with our sales, marketing, and finance department, allowing us to all use a single solution and be able to share information across departments.

Incentivized

For the most part, it is an easy and intuitive system to use. There are many small things that could be improved to make the system work even easier. However, overall it is very easy to use if you have a good grasp on computer programs and using them to build things. I do not have any computer science or programming background, and I am able to use this system with few problems.

It was bulky, cumbersome, and didn't allow us to handle the volume of cases we received on a daily basis. Many of our issues were highly technical in nature and we would often need to work on 2 or 3 at once. The poor design choices prevented this, which was unfortunate.

Incentivized

They recently had one very extended outage. It was a data center issue - but they were not diversified enough so in the end the system was down for almost 8 hours. There are also periods of time where for no reason the system simply doesn't respond. This small outages are usually short (just a few minutes), and have in fact been occurring less often, so it appears some corrective actions have been taken.

Incentivized

We often hear back very quickly with answers to our questions. They also support their answers at times with screenshots and videos to help further explain their advice and suggestions. The only reason it isn't a 10 is because sometimes using only the online support system, sometimes things aren't communicated as well as they would be over the phone. However, we know if there is a major issue going on, we can call Agiloft for support.

Nothing ever seemed to get resolved

Incentivized

Agiloft's singular advantage is its ease of customization that allows you to capture automation requirements right at the point of use. We knew our company would always be developing new requirements for its customer-facing processes and any tool that made customization difficult was an inferior choice for us. Other vendors offered similar levels of customization, but when we dug deeper, Agiloft was the only one that delivered it. Our management team came from the IT and development side of NetSuite and we have used it to manage our business almost since inception. However, its support, marketing, and sales functionality was too difficult to modify and built to meet too broad a set of requirements, so we could never get full adoption or utilization, and it stood in the way of delivering the service levels we needed to provide our customers. We still use NetSuite for back-of-the-house financial functions which don't need that level of customization, but for everything else, the way forward has led us to choose Agiloft.

Before choosing Parature we reviewed many of the currently available solutions before building our short list of Parature, SugarCRM, Zendesk, Salesforce, and NetSuite. In the end, the licensing models for Salesforce and Netsuite eliminated them from consideration. The SugarCRM solution was our current solution, and didn't appear to be a key area of focus for Sugar (though we continue to use SugarCRM for everything except the Ticketing feature). Zendesk lacked the Download Module feature which is a critical element of our deployment. In the end, it was Parature that addressed all of the needs we identified and did so in a single, hosted solution. It was also one of the least expensive to deploy and maintain.

Incentivized

• Helps us organize tasks and projects and the data associated with each project
• Helps us organize our resources to meet the demand of issues and events
• This has helped us keep moving forward during times we otherwise would have pulled back.
• Completely revolutionized our way of work life. Upwards of approx 300 percent productivity and complexity..

• Positive: everything is housed in one place, we are paperless and we are efficient.
• Negative: the bugs of this product make the above equally as frustrating. Also, some people don't use it correctly and going back and fixing their mistake is time-consuming. The reporting feature are also pretty flawed.

Incentivized