PinkVERIFY®

The Industry’s #1 Stamp of Approval for IT Service Management (ITSM) Tools

"On behalf of (our team), we would like to sincerely thank you for your collaboration during this assessment. Your insights and constructive feedback have been extremely valuable in helping us further improve our product.

We look forward to meeting you again early next year for the renewal and certification of four additional processes. Until then, please know that we truly appreciate all the ideas and contributions you shared with us during this process.

It was a pleasure working with you, and we hope to have another great experience in our next engagement."

– From a happy PinkVERIFY customer

The PinkVERIFY® Legacy

As IT Service Management (ITSM) capabilities became more and more popular in IT organizations around the world in the 1990s, the number one question asked by IT practitioners became “Which tools will support these new ways of working with ITSM?”

PinkVERIFY, the world’s original and de facto IT Service Management (ITSM) tool certification scheme has been a highly trusted source to answer this question. Since it was launched by Pink Elephant in 1999, there has been two primary goals:

  1. To provide IT practitioners with a quick checklist of tools that meet the functional and terminology requirements of working according to industry best practices for specific ITSM processes.
  2. To provide software vendors with an independent and public verification that their tools meet the functional and terminology requirements of working according to industry best practices for specific ITSM processes.

The scope of the original version of PinkVERIFY was limited to just a few of the more ubiquitous ITSM processes, such as “Incident Management”, “Configuration Management”, “Problem Management”, and “Change Management”.

Over the years more ITSM processes were added, and the criteria for assessments underwent a number of updates to reflect evolving standards and practices.

PinkVERIFY Today

IT practitioners are more reliant than ever on their software toolkit. New techniques and technologies boost functionality, productivity, and – inevitably – dependence on tools.

Not long ago, it was unrealistic to expect best practices to be deployed simply by installing a new tool. But times have changed. Today’s leading software vendors are ahead of the game, delivering tools that go far beyond a shared lexicon or standard definitions for “incident” and “problem.” Modern ITSM is now integrated with enabling practices and technologies such as Lean, Agile, Value Stream Mapping, Scrum, DevOps, machine learning, AI, workflow automation, XLA, and organizational change management.

Through this evolution, PinkVERIFY has fully transitioned to reflect a practical, real-world approach. Pink Elephant’s ITSM subject matter experts have refined assessment criteria, set new benchmarks, and adopted a more flexible interpretation of terminology – removing unnecessary prescriptiveness. The result is a PinkVERIFY that truly reflects how IT practitioners work today, aligned with multiple ITSM frameworks as well as ISO/IEC 20000.

To explore the ITSM best practices that underpin this modern standard, read the paper Real-World ITSM Starts Here: integratedITSM™.

If you are a practitioner looking to ensure the tools you are using or plan to use meet the PinkVERIFY requirements, check out the list below. Also, you may contact Pink Elephant with questions using the Chat window at the bottom of this page or at [email protected]. We are happy to expand further with more details about our assessment criteria.

If you are a software vendor looking to present your product to practitioners as PinkVERIFY-certified, then please contact Lisa Lyons at [email protected]



PinkSELECT

As described above, PinkVERIFY is an assessment and certification process for software vendors. The table above can be very useful and used by IT practitioners to view a list of certified tools and vendor organizations.

But, what about the practitioner community? No worries, we have you covered too! If you are asking how to go about selecting an ITSM tool for your organization, PinkSELECT helps you answer that question.

A service offered to IT organizations, PinkSELECT comprises a toolkit made up of many components used to evaluate and assess the IT service management tools deemed to be compatible with specific ITSM processes, using a systematic approach of mandatory and customized criteria.

The goal of PinkSELECT is to support an IT organization by providing an objective, vendor-neutral, and cost-effective methodology. In addition, it offers a set of templates for conducting a tool selection process while leveraging Pink’s vast industry experience that covers more than 40 years.

Read more about PinkSELECT here.