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Cherwell Service Management [EOL] vs IBM SmartCloud Control Desk comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Automation Anywhere
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
669
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (2nd), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
Cherwell Service Management...
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (32nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Nadeem K. - PeerSpot reviewer
Rpa Developer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Automation has freed teams from repetitive finance and supply tasks and supports global operations
In the current organization, we had trouble initially because I think the documentation and support could be better than what it is now. This is one difference between Automation Anywhere and other RPA tools such as UiPath. In UiPath, if you have an issue, you go to the UiPath website and search for it, and you get lots of help materials. In Automation Anywhere, you do not get exactly what you are looking for. You get a very large number of results when you search for something, and from this large result set, you have to filter out what you need, or only partial information will be available. User handbooks are available for each product. In that regard, I would say Automation Anywhere is lagging compared to other RPA tools. It is difficult to get hold of their customer support team. I want to clarify that it is not a matter of us building logic on Automation Anywhere and it failing. When it is a product-related issue, they have to give us support because we only know how to develop within Automation Anywhere. We do not know how to fix Automation Anywhere itself. Whenever we have an issue, trying to get in touch with them always takes three to four business days.
Thobile Moeketsi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Sasria SOC Ltd.
Having everything in one location has significantly improved our efficiency and reporting
We need to be on VPN in order to set up and access the solution, and that has created some challenges. Even though it uses our Windows login, we still have to be on VPN. The product should be able to log tickets directly from system to system. We haven't got there yet and I'm not sure it's possible but it would determine the product's capability to integrate with other systems.
KM
Computer System Engineer at Informatika d.d.
Has centralization and asset management features, and a helpful and knowledgeable technical support team
What needs improvement in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is its graphical interface because it needs to be more user-friendly. IBM is a big company, but this solution is a little bit outdated. The most common comment I get from customers is that IBM SmartCloud Control Desk looks old and needs a refresh. Its frontend needs a little bit of work. The solution needs to be more modern. In the programming world, you see a lot of new technologies, but this particular solution is still on Java. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk isn't like web-based service request tools, and that's an area for improvement. What I'd like to see in the next version of the solution is a more upscale technology. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk has small issues with document links and attachments, and those could bother you when you're using it for a long time. A more user-friendly GUI is also another improvement I'd like to see in the next version of the solution, plus a better user experience, and it would be great if IBM could resolve the current issues I've noticed in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It can be used for customer service support, data extraction, data migration, and software installation."
"What I appreciate the most about Automation Anywhere is that the tool is very robust."
"We offer them a cost and time-effective solution for repeated and time-consuming processes, which surely help a lot in terms of improving quality."
"There are instances where use cases and opportunities have arisen as a result of having Automation Anywhere and RPA in place that have come about through very casual conversations and have actually resulted in increased revenue opportunities that we didn't realize."
"The initial deployment is not difficult at all for someone doing it for the first time."
"Tasks or activities that were taking almost six hours a day have been reduced drastically to 30 minutes, which saves time as well as business costs."
"Our ROI has ranged from thousands to hundreds of thousands, depending on the type of process being automated."
"Our workforce has limited capacity, and by adding this solution we can increase the amount of work coming in without adding to our workforce."
"Implementing CSM has made us very efficient and we're now able to plan changes and the steps required for implementation."
"Its integration features, orchestration features, and discovery tools are the most valuable. It is also pretty stable, and it can be as scalable as you want."
"The best feature is the ability to create functional dashboards, where the IT manager can interact with its data through the dashboard using the drill down feature."
"Clear processes with transparent responsibilities led to more efficiencies within the teams."
"The most valuable features are problem management and change management."
"We use the solution every day and quite extensively."
"All our activities are carried out in the one place."
"The dashboard and the reporting functionality are the solution's most valuable features."
"A feature I found most valuable in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is the service request. Another feature I like most about the solution is IT asset management, which tells you who owns a specific asset in the company and from which date."
"What I like about the Control Desk is that everything is centralized, you have all the requests in one place, you know which ones are for whom and who is working on them, so you have one big package and nothing is lost."
"The solution has been stable."
"SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable."
"Overall, it has helped us continuously improve our business processes."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"The most valuable are its flexibility and agility. It's quick to change it, to adapt it to your needs. That's the most important for us."
"The workflow capability is useful. It's not a manual helpdesk operation. It's fully automated, even when an alarm has occurred. It covers the complete cycle of initiation to resolving the events. This is its most strong feature that is easily integrable with a monitoring solution. It creates tickets, and the workflow feature is the most important one."
 

Cons

"Since Automation Anywhere's Japan office was only recently opened, it seems the support has not been as good as support for other package applications."
"To achieve a perfect ten, I would want to see new features working as expected and further advancements in automation."
"I would like more integration into the entire Microsoft Suite of products, not just Excel."
"When you are hosting the application, that is when it is a little more complicated to set up. You need to talk to the IT department, as you are actually outside of their firewall, then you are coming back inside their cloud."
"I would like centralized orchestration and better exception handling in the next release."
"They could improve the learning curve."
"You could improve the tools for reading CSV/Excel, also providing wizards or detailed guides, otherwise, it is quite complex to use them, especially at the beginning."
"Most clients use systems which use old Java versions, trying to automate on these systems is really difficult since most features/commands are not supported."
"We need to be on VPN in order to set up and access the solution, and that has created some challenges."
"Areas for improvement would be the service catalog and customer catalog, which is not very user-friendly. The shopping cart experience is also terrible - you submit and go straight to the cart, you can't continue shopping or see your overall cost."
"They need to improve their mobile interface, as well as features regarding the extension of the mobile access to the end user."
"Agile delivery should be supported."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"Access is only available if we're on VPN."
"The support from the actual manufacturer is poor."
"The stability, specifically in the on-premises deployment model, could be improved."
"What needs improvement in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is its graphical interface because it needs to be more user-friendly. IBM is a big company, but this solution is a little bit outdated. The most common comment I get from customers is that IBM SmartCloud Control Desk looks old and needs a refresh. Its frontend needs a little bit of work. The solution needs to be more modern. In the programming world, you see a lot of new technologies, but this particular solution is still on Java. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk isn't like web-based service request tools, and that's an area for improvement. What I'd like to see in the next version of the solution is a more upscale technology. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk has small issues with document links and attachments, and those could bother you when you're using it for a long time. A more user-friendly GUI is also another improvement I'd like to see in the next version of the solution, plus a better user experience, and it would be great if IBM could resolve the current issues I've noticed in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk."
"The main issue that we hear from our customers is that the self-service user interface is a little bit old, possibly due to the fact that IBM is such a large enterprise company. People say that they think they're in the year 2004, because you can very clearly see that the technology is lagging behind modern trends."
"The user interface is not very interesting."
"The product is kind of clunky to use."
"What needs improvement in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is its graphical interface because it needs to be more user-friendly."
"The user interface is not very interesting. If you look at other products like JIRA and ServiceNow, they have made it much easier for the end-users. Maybe not ServiceNow, but JIRA is quite flexible. From a presentation point of view, IBM should make more user-friendly interfaces."
"The reporting in relation to updating could be improved upon."
"It could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If it is saving FTE and Generating a good ROI then it is Worth Investing."
"We have established a CoE and we take our bot opportunities based on their ROIs. The best ROI opportunity goes to development first. Our ROI opportunities are compliance, profitable growth, productivity enhancements, productivity gains, number of hours the productivity saved, and resources not available that the work can be done by the bot. However, the single most important criteria that we use to measure ROI is how much time does the bot cut down from an analyst's work, as this has the best ROI. E.g., if an analyst is spending a 100 hours of work that a bot can do in one hour, we calculate the 99 hours saved as ROI."
"The control room access gives the ability to create different roles, which helps when purchasing additional licensing."
"From my experience, I can say that the initial setup cost is easily recovered over a period of time once the bots start running in production."
"They have a ridiculously expensive bot licensing structure, especially for the Asian region."
"This is a comprehensive automation offering with a scalable architecture and flexible pricing models."
"Automation Anywhere is expensive, making it more suitable for enterprise organizations."
"When you compare the cost of Automation Anywhere with UiPath and Blue Prism, those others are much less. Licensing-wise, UiPath wins the deal."
"For an ITIL user, the cost is probably about 50 bucks a month."
"The license for IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is paid yearly and is on a per-user basis. You buy the product and pay for its license yearly. IBM is changing the licensing structure, but for now, it's a yearly license. There's no additional cost. It's just the license that you need to pay for to use IBM SmartCloud Control Desk."
"It's basically for a big company because of the costs. A small company can't afford the licensing cost. For medium and large companies, it's the best product. The price of the license is on the higher side compared to others."
"The licensing we have for IBM Control Desk is on a yearly basis. They have a concurrent license and an administrative license. And with these, you get all the products. There aren't any additional fees for extra add-ons or anything like that."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Healthcare Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Performing Arts
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business162
Midsize Enterprise86
Large Enterprise566
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
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Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
No data available
SmartCloud Control Desk
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Ausenco, Highlights for Children, B/E Aerospace
St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, Zendesk and others in Help Desk Software. Updated: October 2026.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.