Not All ITSM Tools Are Created Equal: Key Features to Compare

Most ITSM tools weren’t built for how teams actually work today. They’re often clunky, overly complex, and force teams to juggle between tools just to resolve a simple ticket. If you’re stuck in a system that feels more like a burden than a solution, it’s probably not your process—it’s your platform.

Whether you're re-evaluating your current setup or building an internal help desk from scratch, choosing the right ITSM platform matters more than ever. The right tool doesn’t just handle tickets—it helps your team move faster, collaborate better, and keep employees happy.

The 6 Most Important ITSM Features

Here’s what to look for when you’re comparing ITSM platforms:

1. Slack or Teams-Native Experience

Your employees live in Slack or Microsoft Teams—it's where they ask for help, follow up on tickets, and collaborate across departments. So why make them switch tools just to submit a request?

A truly modern ITSM tool should embed natively into these environments, turning everyday messages into actionable requests without any friction. This means no more "please file a ticket" replies, no more toggling between browser tabs, and no more confusion about where things stand.

What to Look For:

• Request creation and tracking directly in Slack/Teams
  
  
• Real-time updates and approvals in chat
  
  
• Shared request history and visibility for users and agents

Siit transforms Slack and Teams into your support center. Employees can submit requests with smart forms, follow up via thread, and even get status updates—all without ever leaving chat. It's built for how people actually work.

2. Flexible Workflow Builder (No Devs Required)

Workflows change. Roles shift. Approval chains evolve. If every tweak requires a Jira ticket to your engineering team, your system isn’t serving you—it’s slowing you down.

You need a flexible, no-code workflow builder that puts power back in the hands of ops and IT leads. Build approval flows, automate escalations, and trigger actions based on request data—all without writing a single line of code.

What to Look For:

• Drag-and-drop builder or visual flow designer
  
  
• Conditional logic (e.g. “If urgent and request type = hardware → escalate to manager”)
  
  
• SLA-based triggers and auto-routing
  
  
• Ability to test workflows before going live
  

3. Cross-Department Collaboration

Most internal requests don’t belong to just one team. Onboarding touches HR, IT, and Facilities. A software access request might need input from Security, Finance, and Ops.

Legacy ticketing systems often silo teams or force everyone into the same bloated queue. That’s where things fall through the cracks.

What to Look For:

• Multi-team or shared queues
  
  
• Internal followers and collaborators
  
  
• Request routing based on department or service type
  
  
• Visibility controls so the right people see the right info
  
  

When departments can collaborate without stepping on each other’s toes, requests move faster and employees get better support.

4. Smart Automation & AI

Internal teams are slammed. If they’re spending hours each week categorizing, assigning, and chasing down low-value requests, they’re not focusing on the work that actually moves the needle.

AI and automation should do the grunt work for you—from classifying requests to recommending next steps or deflecting tickets entirely.

What to Look For:

• Auto-triage based on request content, requester profile, or past behavior
  
  
• Suggested responses or knowledge articles
  
  
• SLA-aware escalation rules
  
  
• Smart routing to the right team or person
  
  

Qonto uses Siit’s AI workflows to handle 28% of requests automatically. SLAs dropped by 50%, and the IT team got hours back every week. Less manual sorting, more strategic work.

5. Integrated Knowledge Base

Self-service isn't just a nice-to-have—it’s a productivity multiplier. But if your knowledge base lives in one system and your request form lives in another, you're not really helping anyone.

A great ITSM tool surfaces relevant articles in context—as users are typing out their request. That way, employees help themselves before ever hitting “Submit.”

What to Look For:

• Real-time knowledge suggestions during request intake
  
  
• Native integration with tools like Notion, Confluence, or your internal wiki
  
  
• Ability to embed articles into forms or workflows
  
  
• Searchable, accessible content inside Slack or Teams
  
  

It cuts ticket volume, empowers employees, and speeds up resolution times for everyone.

6. Reporting & Analytics

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. But most ITSM tools only offer basic stats—or worse, make you export CSVs and build your own dashboards.

What you need is instant visibility into performance, bottlenecks, and trends.

What to Look For:

• SLA tracking (met vs missed)
  
  
• Request volume by source, department, or type
  
  
• Time-to-first-response and resolution rates
  
  
• Drill-downs into team workload and queue health
  
  

With Siit, you get real-time analytics, right out of the box. See what’s working, where tickets are piling up, and which workflows need optimization—without digging through logs or bugging your data team.

Legacy ITSM Tools Often Miss the Mark

Old-school ITSM systems weren’t designed for the way modern teams work. Here’s where they typically fall short:

• Outdated UX: Clunky interfaces and forms that feel like spreadsheets from 2005.
  
  
• Disjointed Channels: Employees submit requests via email, chat, or a buried portal, and IT has to manually pull it all together.
  
  
• Inflexible Workflows: Need a new approval path or SLA? Get ready to file a ticket with your own vendor.
  
  
• Limited Integrations: Good luck getting it to play nice with your HRIS, asset management platform, or Slack.
  
  
• Siloed Collaboration: Most legacy tools are ticket-centric—not team-centric.
  
  

And when systems are this painful to use, what happens? Employees bypass the process completely—pinging IT in Slack, DM’ing Ops, or tracking things in spreadsheets. That’s how tickets fall through the cracks.

What Makes Siit’s Approach Different

Most ITSM platforms were built for a world of email tickets and siloed help desks. Siit isn’t one of them.

Siit was designed for how internal teams actually work today—collaboratively, asynchronously, and directly inside tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams. And not just IT. Siit supports HR, Finance, Legal, Ops, and every team that fields internal requests.

Here’s what truly sets Siit apart from traditional tools:

And when it’s time to switch? Switching to Siit Is smoother than you think!

It’s a fast, well-supported process designed to fit your team—not the other way around.

We’ve done this with fast-growing startups, global teams, and companies coming off everything from Halp to Jira Service Management. Wherever you’re coming from, we’ll make the transition feel less like a migration and more like an upgrade.

Here’s what the full switch typically looks like:

Step 1: Prepare

Scope it out, clean it up.

We start by getting familiar with your current setup. Our migration team will review your workflows, tools, custom fields, and pain points to build a clear migration plan and timeline that works for your team size and structure.

This is the perfect time to retire clunky workflows or request types you no longer need.

Step 2: Set Up

Move in with minimal lift.

Next, we configure your Siit dashboard and use our Migration Assistant to import historical requests, dynamic forms, request types, and custom fields. We’ll help map your old system into Siit’s structure—accurately and without the headache.

Whether you’re coming from Jira, Zendesk, Confluence, Notion, or a mix of tools, we’ll make sure everything lands in the right place.

Step 3: Test

Catch issues before they go live.

Before you roll out to the whole team, we’ll help you test everything in a safe sandbox environment. Together, we’ll:

• Validate imported data for accuracy
  
  
• Test routing, approvals, and automations
  
  
• Ensure SLAs, visibility rules, and request flows behave as expected
  
  

If anything feels off, we adjust. No surprises on launch day.

Step 4: Communicate

Bring your team along for the ride.

A successful rollout hinges on communication. We’ll help you:

• Create a simple rollout plan
  
  
• Use pre-built email and Slack templates to explain what’s new
  
  
• Share timelines and feature overviews
  
  
• Answer FAQs before they even come up
  
  

Whether you’re switching from Halp, Jira Service Management, or something custom-built, we’ll frame the change in a way that feels exciting—not overwhelming.

Step 5: Rollout

Launch with hands-on support.

Once you go live, our hyper-care phase kicks in. That means:

• Dedicated support from Siit’s team
  
  
• Fast answers and fixes for early questions or quirks
  
  
• Real-time monitoring of adoption and performance
  
  
• Guidance on how to fine-tune workflows or forms as feedback rolls in
  
  

We don’t just drop the keys and disappear. We’re here to make sure your switch to Siit is a success from day one.

Time to Upgrade?

If your current ITSM tool is slowing you down—or forcing your team to work around it instead of with it—it might be time to switch.

With Siit, you’re not just replacing a ticketing system. You’re giving your team a faster, more collaborative, and AI-driven way to work together across departments. From Slack-native request handling to self-service support, dynamic workflows, and powerful reporting—Siit is the platform modern teams actually want to use.

Ready to see how it works? Sign up for a free trial today.