We performed a comparison between ConnectWise PSA and IBM SmartCloud Control Desk based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC and others in Help Desk Software."I like the search function up top where if you know what you're searching for, you can find it pretty quickly. Because you've got the option to change what the search parameters are, whether you're searching for a project, quote, ticket, or an invoice, you can kind of pick and choose what you're looking for."
"The search function is really good. To have a single place where we have the account information stored is probably most valuable."
"Contains every feature that a VAR or MSP would want."
"The most valuable feature is the management of projects from start to finish."
"It handles ticketing pretty well, and it's not something I have many critiques for."
"It's a nice ticketing system."
"It's a pretty simple web interface. The rules engine was really easy to set up, and it ingests emails very well."
"I also like ConnectWise's ability to set up queries. I can set up all these different queries that look for specific things and end up with a list of results, like feedback from the client or the ticket status."
"The brand name is the most valuable aspect of this solution for me. It's IBM. It's a global company that supports this product, it's not something open source or something like that."
"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."
"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."
"SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable."
"In the early stages of our company, all requests were done in notebooks, and none of it was centrally managed. But now we have a central tool which is an entry point for all requests that come in."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"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."
"The solution has been stable."
"The speed could be better, and the reporting could be a lot better."
"The tracking inventory or the way it tracks the products is not very good."
"Has a very outdated 90s interface and not all features are accessible via the mobile app."
"If you've got 40 tickets that come in, that get generated, that don't get properly tagged with the company, you can't just check them all and reassign them to another company. You have to individually reassign each one of those tickets to a new company."
"There should be some improvements to the interface. It is not completely intuitive. When you click in a blank area of a screen, you'll find some options."
"The custom reporting needs to be improved."
"ConnectWise PSA’s graphical interface is a little old."
"It needs to be easier to share tickets between users who need to work together."
"The reporting in relation to updating could be improved upon."
"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."
"Support has been the biggest problem for us. I understand that because we use the product of a global company, some changes are not quick to deploy."
"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 solution lacks a graphical user interface."
"Overall the user experience, as opposed to the system and databases, could be improved. It does work as it should and it's good, but they should invest more in the user interfaces to be less data oriented and more appealing for the user."
"It could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool."
"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."
ConnectWise PSA is ranked 15th in Help Desk Software with 19 reviews while IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is ranked 22nd in Help Desk Software with 9 reviews. ConnectWise PSA is rated 8.2, while IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of ConnectWise PSA writes "Its macros, shortcuts and custom queries are really helpful ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk writes "Stable but clunky and lacks a user interface". ConnectWise PSA is most compared with ServiceNow, Datto Autotask Professional Services Automation, JIRA Service Management, ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus and Kaseya BMS, whereas IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is most compared with ServiceNow and SymphonyAI IT Service Management.
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