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Espressive Barista vs Serviceaide ChangeGear comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

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
666
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)
Espressive Barista
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (38th), AI-Powered Chatbots (9th), AI-Agents for HR (4th)
Serviceaide ChangeGear
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (26th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (24th)
 

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Management Consultant at Accenture
Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions
Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.
Jim Lobao - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager for End User Support Services at Five9
Has helped enhance our support ability, reduced our resolution time, and reduced our service desk costs
Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement. We haven't yet found anything that resembles true AI that can learn autonomously without human intervention. However, Barista does help us identify and address some of these areas, allowing my team to step in and create intents and responses to questions. When a user asks a question that Barista doesn't immediately understand, we can recognize the pattern, capture it, and link it to a common intent. This is highly beneficial for acquiring such data, but it's a reactive approach and still requires curation. Natural language processing still has some way to go. One of our challenges is that our internal employees haven't yet adopted a natural way of interacting with Barista. Getting people to be concise and to the point, rather than being verbose as if they were interacting with a human, has been an ongoing challenge. While they may feel comfortable being conversational in Slack, expecting a human-like response, Barista is a different entity. Barista isn't interested in their recent vacation; it just wants to know they're locked out of their account. So, some users may assume Barista understands their intent when they say, "I'm back from vacation and locked out of my account." Barista, however, may interpret this as a request for the holiday schedule. Therefore, we're gradually educating our users to adapt their communication style for better success with Barista. Conversely, we desire Barista to adapt its behavior based on the interaction, the language used, and the way people communicate. I wholeheartedly desire an AI that can continuously learn and adapt to our organization's evolving needs. This is the most challenging aspect, as it involves understanding our organization's terminology, procedures, and toolsets. We've made significant progress in this area. However, from an NLP standpoint, we still face challenges with our nearly 3,000 Slack channel users, each with their unique communication styles. People ask questions in various ways, and sometimes there are misunderstandings. They want to interact with us naturally. However, we still struggle with natural language processing. People don't always realize that the bot is a virtual agent designed to be concise and efficient. Sometimes, less is more. It's been a difficult transition for people to grasp that they're conversing with a virtual agent, not a human. They still expect human-like interactions, such as discussing their weekend or holidays or simply pasting screenshots of errors. However, the bot can't interpret screenshots. If they provide the error code and some context about the application, the bot can better understand the issue. So, the key challenge is bridging the gap between human expectations and the bot's capabilities in terms of natural interaction.
Umair Akhlaque - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Solutions & Services Head at Duroob Technology
A fairly stable solution that’s highly mature, but has a poor user interface
The solution does not align as modern service solutions do. Seamless integration is no available among the processes. Their service management application needs a lot of work. It’s in a really bad state right now. They brought on a new interface that clumped all the processes and features of the solution into one. Still, it’s not really compatible with other solutions. Because of this, its rating has dropped in Gardner. The solution needs to improve its reporting features. The user interface needs a lot of improvements. The product needs to implement a cloud platform solution, which is lacking so far. Their workflow engine is still segregated. It’s not embedded. If you need to do some workflow approvals, you cannot do them directly on the service desk. You have to go into Outlook and do an approval or you have to go in through another screen to handle the approval because the workflow engine they have is a separate product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With Agentic capability, you can actually do those things; it has memory, it has access to tools, and it can do the job on our behalf as opposed to just telling us what to do."
"From my perspective, the most valuable features in Automation Anywhere are the ability to connect to different systems of records."
"Scalability is good. There is no question about its scalability."
"We have increased our productivity internally by using RPA with our employees who are completing the same tasks every day."
"So far, we have seen that a valuable feature of Automation Anywhere is the ease of integrating it with multiple systems. It can very easily integrate with an environment of an organization. It helps in a quick go to access and implementation. You don't have to spend days implementing Automation Anywhere software. You can quickly go drag and drop and do an ease of configuration. You can actually get your bot up and running very fast, which is one important advantage."
"It really does have a great dashboard. It has Bot Insight, it has MetaBots, and IQ Bots. It has so many features where it can read a file and loop."
"The integration of Automation Anywhere into our clients' workflows, APIs, business applications, and documents was seamless, but it was a bit of a struggle until we realized that it has a built-in integration platform."
"The best features in Automation Anywhere that I really appreciate are found in the basic module for pure RPA, such as the recorder function, which helps in making automation even easier; no coding is required, you are just doing things, and the recorder records your movements and actions, creating the code out of that."
"With respect to its natural language processing capabilities, it recognizes things that you wouldn't think it would recognize. Even in cases where it doesn't, it's pretty easy to go in and make the adjustments that are needed."
"We have the ability to alter phrases, create new phrases, or enhance phrases, or change paths. From the dashboard, we are able to get a lot of information we need about what people are asking, where they are dropping off from conversations, and where they do not get the information they need."
"When it comes to neutral language processing and conversational AI, it's very good, very solid... We all have different ways of speaking or writing in English and the application does a very solid job of recognizing what's being asked regardless of how it's being asked."
"Given the out of the box content for common industry applications, we got good value out of the solution right from day one."
"Our department received about a 70% deflection rate, so that was really great."
"I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams."
"Given Barista's out-of-the-box content for common industry applications, the value is pretty good right from day one."
"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."
"Essential service management solution all in one, like 100- for service request, 200- for change request, 300- for incidents, 400- for problems."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to easily create service catalogues for our customers, something that we didn't have previously with the other tool we were using, which was SDM."
"The support is pretty good, the follow up is great; it is 24 hours, so that’s been useful, and it has a good escalation path, which is essential."
"The most valuable features for me are scalable architecture, customization potential where the UI, background, and data movement allow you to tailor to the nitty gritty details of what you might need in your environment, and advanced workflow management."
"Improved the effectiveness of my Service Desk Team and improved the SLA timing."
"It's quite a complete entry into the SaaS ITSM market with a reasonable price point."
"The ability to add Additional Information Screens on the fly."
"This is the best product for Large Infrastructure companies/organizations to monitor their infrastructures/servers etc."
 

Cons

"Additional features should involve the Cognitive Section where we need more Advance solutions involving ML & AI."
"Automation Anywhere has to be integrated with machine learning and AI systems to read images and videos, then put the information into another format."
"Automation Anywhere could benefit from more in-person support, as they currently maintain only a virtual presence."
"Setting up Automation Anywhere is a bit complex."
"Even though the product is easy to use, there are some challenges when we move across different environments; there's a lot of setup needed."
"I have seen that the South American support is not as good as it should be."
"The bot scaling process was painful, when you go beyond a few bots, and because we had stability issues. We had to work through the issues, and they took us a long time."
"Automation tools have a lot of dependency on the environment, particularly on machines. Reducing this dependency could increase success."
"I would like to see the continued expansion of all of the automation capabilities."
"The reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"I would like to see improvement to the out-of-the-box verbiage, with the questions going to the right place."
"The knowledge management could definitely be improved."
"Expressive Barista could improve by adding native integration with WhatsApp, one of the top communication channels in South Africa. When we're trying to sell Barista to customers, we have to tell them that the solution doesn't have out-of-the-box support for WhatsApp. We can develop it, but then we need to have a conversation about how much that will cost."
"Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement."
"There aren't very many things that this product needs improvement on."
"Although they've done some work on their metrics dashboard, there is some fine-tuning to do for people that just want to go in there at a glance and see their metrics."
"I would love to see better two-factor authentication as that would really help us and make a big difference."
"Few probes need improvement in their function and the way they get deployed for monitoring."
"Their service management application needs a lot of work."
"It loses points because it’s not GUI enough, too code-y."
"Usability for IT analysts could be improved."
"When tickets are closed occasionally, it is quite hard to reopen it, which will cause lost-tickets."
"Actually this product and its limitations reduced the Service Desk effectiveness compared to the product we were using."
"The solution needs to improve its reporting features. The user interface needs a lot of improvements."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Automation Anywhere is expensive, making it more suitable for enterprise organizations."
"Automation Anywhere might have a higher upfront cost than some competitors, but its extensive features and seamless integration with other tools can save organizations money in the long run."
"The licensing cost is approximately $4,000 USD, which is a seed license."
"The starting price, which is a one-off fee is a bit high and this may deter mid and small-sized companies from acquiring and decide to shun the platform."
"The solution itself is free unless we want to add the support option but we have to pay for the bots we use."
"We just did a round of price comparison on a global scale and found it's so hard to compare the license prices. But, Automation Anywhere, in general, is on the same price level as the other vendors, a bit lower in some cases."
"We're just starting to renew our license, and we were quoted $115,000 without the IQ Bot. The IQ Bot is another $30,000. This is with very limited pages, as we go through our first projects. The majority of the cost was for ten days of onsite training."
"The price for the licensing is fair."
"The pricing isn't overly burdensome. It's going to be interesting to see how new models come in with new capabilities but, as it is, as a base system, it's pretty good."
"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant value from it."
"The solution is affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Construction Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Construction Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business161
Midsize Enterprise85
Large Enterprise561
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise11
 

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
Serviceaide ISM (Intelligent Service Management), Nimsoft Service Desk, CA Cloud Service Management , ChangeGear
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Information Not Available
Oakwood Systems Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Espressive Barista vs. Serviceaide ChangeGear and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,938 professionals have used our research since 2012.