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

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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

"Automation Anywhere has transformed the financial, healthcare, and automobile sectors to a great extent by automating backend office work."
"I have been using Automation Anywhere for the past five years and it is one of the best tools to automate manual tasks."
"This solution allows for the letter generation to take place within seconds, improving the experience for the employees."
"Automation Anywhere has a great learning curve, and we have automated processes through bots that ease our work by handling repetitive tasks and minimizing effort and work inefficiencies."
"With automation, you can reduce that effort to half an hour or an hour, so it will improve your efficiency and save you a lot of time, so you can improve your time in other work."
"With RPA, specifically with Automation Anywhere, it has really helped us engage with those clients and achieve the results that they want."
"We are using it for scripting, and it is end user based with screen captures. It is a bit easier to use than any of the other tools out there."
"I have not seen a customer who says they want to get rid of Automation Anywhere and get something different or evaluate something different until today, and the last three to four years, I have not found a single customer who does that."
"The dashboard is very useful to get a quick overview of current tasks."
"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."
"We use the solution every day and quite extensively."
"Clear processes with transparent responsibilities led to more efficiencies within the teams."
"All our activities are carried out in the one place."
"Implementing CSM has made us very efficient and we're now able to plan changes and the steps required for implementation."
"The most valuable features are problem management and change management."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable."
"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."
"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."
"Overall, it has helped us continuously improve our business processes."
"Overall, it's a good product that I would recommend."
"In general, it's been pretty stable."
 

Cons

"Room for improvement is more on the IQ Bot side: How quickly we can adopt and deploy it?"
"I would wish for a greater focus on citizen development, which is a priority for our company."
"AA should include more features in the mobile app, such as monitoring and debugging bots."
"One way Automation Anywhere can be improved is in ticketing."
"I want the tool to be more stabilized. After three or four hours, the navigation keeps changing. We will be running error handling for 8,000 process and the system will fail. We need it to be more stable."
"The quality and response time of the support, even on Sev-1 tickets, is not satisfactory."
"We would like to have more ease of use for the operations team."
"Better use case management to prevent each development from scratch would be an improvement."
"Application service mapping, GRC, SecOps, and things like that need improvement."
"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."
"Agile delivery should be supported."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"The support from the actual manufacturer is poor."
"They need to improve their mobile interface, as well as features regarding the extension of the mobile access to the end user."
"The stability, specifically in the on-premises deployment model, could be improved."
"Access is only available if we're on VPN."
"Support has been the biggest problem for us."
"The time calculations can be improved. While working on reports, it was taking the time only in seconds, which was hard for me to work out. While creating some dialogs in the service portal, you have to use certain data types in some fields. It was very tricky to make them work. I was testing a certain type of input, and it didn't work. It didn't show me the domain that the fields have to show. I had to make the change to the database, and only then it worked. It was a tricky thing to make them work with the dialogs. Their technical support can also be improved in terms of response time."
"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."
"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."
"Their technical support can also be improved in terms of response time."
"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."
"Technical support can be slow in terms of resolving issues."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With the rebate processing automation that we did, it has provided us a savings of around an hour or two a person on a daily basis, which is quite a lot of savings."
"The solution is costly and the licensing is very confusing."
"This solution costs approximately $3,500 USD per license."
"We're on a license package with Automation Anywhere (AA), paid yearly. What would be better is for them to have different packages for different types of organization."
"The pricing is a bit higher."
"Its usage is expensive for us because my user base is mostly in Manila and KL. The unit cost of labor is cheaper there than in the U.S. or Australia, which puts a bit more stress on how to get a positive ROI while continuing to use it."
"Annual licensing costs would be about $100,000."
"Subscription for Automation Anywhere (AA) is paid yearly."
"For an ITIL user, the cost is probably about 50 bucks a month."
"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."
"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."
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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%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Performing Arts
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
 

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
Demo not available
 

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.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.