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 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."
"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 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."
"SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable."
"The solution has been stable."
"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 is very easy to work with."
"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's initial setup process is easy."
"ServiceNow is a cloud solution. That fact was very important for us, that it is not an on-prem solution, as it reduces our internal cost of support."
"The most recent addition of SAM Premium is a game changer for many organizations."
"There are many expansions available."
"ServiceNow is easy to use and has a user-friendly interface."
"It is robust and very user-friendly."
"ServiceNow is easy to use."
"I find almost all the features valuable. It can do nearly everything except make your coffee, as my colleagues always say. It's got pros and cons, like every software, but the good thing about it is that it has a very structured approach."
"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 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."
"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."
"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 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."
"It could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool."
"Its setup is tough. It takes a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience."
"In an upcoming release, there should be more administration tools."
"It became kind of complex to set it up without a general lack of knowledge of the particular feature-function capabilities. Features and capabilities could have been explained better to the end-users."
"It should enhance its offerings by providing the chance to obtain course certifications at an affordable fee."
"Transparency in the pricing model needs to be improved."
"The customization that we are doing for the needs of our organization are difficult to do and could be improved."
"We find it good in general. Obviously, there are areas of improvement for every capability. As they evolve more, if they keep on adding more intelligence into the capabilities, it will improve. The improvement areas are more integration across the landscape and more intelligence for the overall capability of the solution."
"Local solutions have lower costs."
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, Appian and IBM Maximo. See our IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. ServiceNow report.
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