The Top Open Source Ticketing System Analysis Complications
Executive Summary
- Open source ticketing system analysis is often a process that just declares the company is ready for ticketing system software analysis.
- This article explains the top complications when trying to obtain an unbiased outcome.
Introduction
Support software analysis is fraught with complications. In this article, we cover these complications and how we surmount them.
Complication #1: Selecting a Conflicted System Selection Advisor
This is normally not a mentioned item. However, there is a greater probability that the company will select a financially biased system selection advisor for their readiness assessment that has financial relationships that it does not disclose to you. This means that they will most often rig the software analysis to state that the company is ready for helpdesk or ticketing software. And of course, if the software vendor recommends the advisor, then the advisor will simply recommend that specific vendor’s ticketing system. It is really just that simple. An open source ticketing system will very rarely be recommended because of this. Consulting firms normally align with commercial vendors as commercial vendors then hand over the implementation business. That is the normal trade that creates a partnership between the IT consulting firm and the vendor.
Complication #2: Not Evaluating the Claims of Vendors in This Area
Ticketing system software was developed to allow the tracking and management of support tickets. Ticket system software means being able to control and perform a detailed analysis of one’s open issues and organize, categorize, and check the history of the issues, all within the system. However, while there are many options in the marketplace, they lock a company into a specific process flow. In testing creating ticket systems, I found that in some cases, I found it more advantageous to create a database that allowed for customization I could not obtain from SaaS ticket system software. The help desk vendors often make it appear as if they have determined the best possible support flow. However, the problem with this is that there is no one ticket flow.
Open source ticketing system vendors will not have the exaggerated claims that come along with being a commercial vendor. And as just discussed, there will be much less push from IT implementation consulting firms. This can mean commercial vendors will often overshadow open-source ticket management systems.
Complication #3: Listening to Whom on Support Software?
Software Advice and G2Crowd have coverage of ticketing system software. However, they mix in systems like pure chat software, which should not be in that category, most likely because of the influence of these vendors or because they are just sloppy. Chat software can be part of the overall ticket software, but some of the vendors I saw listed in the Software Advice and G2Crowd sites were not this type. These companies use reviews from outside, and there is little evidence that they know that much about the software on which they write articles. Remember, most of these online advisory websites like G2Crowd serve as marketing front ends for vendors and are compensated by generating leads.
And it’s not just the advisory firms. According to Google, we reviewed all of the top articles on helpdesk systems, and they all fit into the pattern of repeating mindless assertions. There were no independent articles in the top results. These are the articles potential buyers are reading to determine if they should buy a company’s ticketing system for their company?
Complication #4: A New More Sophisticated Support Process
Most companies that buy help desk software tend to accept the idea that each vendor has optimal help desk software. When looking for help desk software, the options open up to expand the functionality footprint greatly. I would not accept simplifying the requirements to fit within the constraints of the available software without first considering the implications of having things not covered and what offline systems might spring up to the lack of coverage of important support requirements.
It is much easier to extend an open source ticketing system by adding custom development. Cloud proprietary help desk software offers little in the way of customizability.
Conclusion
The software industry is designed to get customers “on the ramp” to implement systems and extract the most out of customers. In nearly all cases, the software analysis provided is just a fake process where the advisor states that the company is ready to move to a system. This is then followed by an exposition of the benefits of that software. This does not have to be the case, and there are many ways of changing this. But the first one is the advice that you obtain.
How We Do Things Differently
Our ticketing system analysis focuses on what the company is ready for and is not designed to simply onramp people to this software. And unlike all the software advisors, we are a true research entity, and we have no connection to any software vendor. Being dedicated to research means focusing on what is true and using evidence to draw conclusions.