We performed a comparison between IBM SmartCloud Control Desk and ServiceNow based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Help Desk Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."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."
"The solution has been stable."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"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 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."
"SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable."
"SPM and ITSM features are the most helpful."
"The solution has very good automation tools."
"In the Service Portal, the widget concept - and the way we have developed our widget - is pretty simple. We can leverage a lot on top of it."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the possibility of the application development cap so that we can digitize workflows."
"ServiceNow has also enabled our Management Consulting business to provide Digital Transformation services for our clients the world over, as we use the platform as an accelerator for doing IT Target Operating Model transformations."
"Makes ticket information easy to access."
"The flow designer for application development is the most valuable. The newest version of flow designer allows us to develop applications quite fast. We can have custom and mobile applications. It has an interface for mobiles, and it also has a good reputation."
"The pricing of the product is quite good. It's not too expensive."
"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 reporting in relation to updating could be improved upon."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool."
"The interface can be a bit more intuitive."
"The contract module is quite rudimentary and doesn't support contract line items."
"There should be greater integration with other enterprise applications. We're using Microsoft, Oracle, and other applications, and it would be good to have a greater integration on some of the immediate hiccups that you have with these services. It doesn't mean that when we have a problem with using another application, ServiceNow should be able to fix it, but ServiceNow should be able to alert us to things. There should be a bit more automation or integration."
"From an HR standpoint, if users can have a very integrated onboarding or offboarding process between ServiceNow and Workday, then it can give a very good employee experience."
"Creating service catalog forms could be made easier."
"The capital expenditure neeed to get the tool up and running is extensive."
"The pricing of the solution could be better. It's a bit high."
"Data access is a bit difficult, where you sometimes wish you had a relational database for some queries. The flexibility of data access in general is a bit on the low end. Of course, there is flexibility in some ways, but when I need a certain combination of data for some report, it can become a challenge."
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is ranked 22nd in Help Desk Software with 9 reviews while ServiceNow is ranked 1st in Help Desk Software with 212 reviews. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is rated 7.6, while ServiceNow is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of IBM SmartCloud Control Desk writes "Stable but clunky and lacks a user interface". On the other hand, the top reviewer of ServiceNow writes "A stable and scalable solution that has excellent features and is useful for collecting data and building KPIs". IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is most compared with SymphonyAI IT Service Management, whereas ServiceNow is most compared with BMC Helix ITSM, Microsoft Power Apps, Pega BPM, IBM Maximo and Appian. See our IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. ServiceNow report.
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