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IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs IT Care Center comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 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
668
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)
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (32nd)
IT Care Center
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (39th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (35th)
 

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.
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.
YA
Technology and Infrastructure Manager at Colmobil
Simple and quick to implement, easy to use, saves us time and money
This is a very flexible system, which is why I chose the platform. It is flexible with respect to our company processes and workflows, and this is something that is very important to us. The system allows us to configure simple forms and flows, and we use it when new employees are hired, when one transfers from one unit to another, or when one leaves the company. These are the main reasons that I use the functionality of the forms. IT Care Center has very much helped to simplify our IT service management. I have an SLA that commits me to 85% with the company. This platform allows me to provide services at almost 92%. It is very useful from this point of view. This product has helped us to reduce the number of IT tickets because after we have worked on a problem and closed the ticket, we send the user information on what steps we took to solve the problem. With the explanation, a user knows how to deal with the problem if it happens again. The reports also help us to reduce the number of tickets that we have. We look to see what the main reasons are for incidents and look at whether the same problem is recurring. This allows us to fix the problem in basic maintenance, and it has been very successful in helping to reduce the number of related tickets. Using this solution has helped us to reduce costs in two ways, both as a result of having fewer tickets. The first is that we have fewer employees; we have reduced our staff from five people to only three. Second, we have reduced the related hardware costs. We do not need to pay for as many PCs or laptops.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Be it a Windows application, a web application, or a legacy tool, Automation Anywhere is able to achieve automation on these technologies seamlessly."
"The ability to create automation itself is a benefit that reduces human error and enhances efficiency. Technical support is unsurpassed."
"The impact of Automation Anywhere on our organization has been significant; it has helped us save a considerable amount of time, approximately 30% to 40%, in repetitive processes and has improved automation accuracy."
"It has been able to save us time in our processes from hours to minutes."
"It helps in improving employee productivity, morale, and retention, as automation removes the tedious parts of work and frees up often stretched-thin employees for more meaningful and creative work."
"It removes demotivating, repetitive work from our teams."
"The impact on efficiency from Document Automation is significant, as it has given us approximately 70 to 80 percent of savings, with almost close to 90 percent efficiency and cost savings of approximately 70 to 80 percent of an FTE per person."
"Within one minute we can view more than one thousand students and their results."
"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."
"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, so you have one big package and nothing is lost."
"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."
"Overall, it has helped us continuously improve our business processes."
"SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable."
"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."
"It also enables us to configure simple forms and flows. The fact that the system is very flexible for adding fields and other forms assists our customer service, as well as myself as the CIO, to easily view my SLAs and KPIs."
"It provides the ability to view all information relevant to a task. When you open a task, you can see all sub-tasks and the relevant information underneath it. You don't have to search for all the tasks and cases that are relevant to the same issue. The sub-task listing is the most valuable feature of this solution for us. We are also able to create workflows for things such as new hires and purchase requests. We are using it for onboarding new hires in multiple departments, and we are able to create workflows with IT Care Center. We have subsidiaries, and for every subsidiary, we have different rules. It allows us to put the name of the new hire and the computer and software needs for that subsidiary. Around 30% or 40% of our processes are self-service now. We have additional work to do, but we're getting there. I like the flexibility that IT Care Center provides for creating the forms. I can put the fields, values, dropdowns, etc. It makes things much easier, which is another advantage of this solution. When a user opens a ticket, there are certain values that he or she must enter in order for us to solve the ticket faster. For example, a user must enter his or her email. So, I can create a form with all the things that he or she must do, such as provide an email, phone number, etc. These are required fields. A user can't create a ticket without providing that information. So, it saves time and makes the work efficient."
"All of my staff is quite familiar with the usage and we customize based on our daily needs and based on different profiles. As a manager, I require diagnostics on a weekly or monthly basis. diagnostics. There needs to be some reporting for management and for my customers' management as well. So we created our own template. All of our different staff were required to do their own tagging or own tracking of cases. We create our own templates. I create my own template for my own weekly and monthly reporting to management. It's quite flexible in the sense that we're able to add our own customized views. We are able to easily export all this information into a proper reporting structure."
"It has reduced our costs by about $15,000 a year."
"It runs smoothly and all of the components are very easy to work with."
"For customer service, IT Care Center has helped us to centralize our daily IT activities in one platform; it has made our operations easier to use, more efficient, reliable, and available."
"Overall, the solution has helped to simplify our IT service management, with fewer calls giving us more time to work without distraction, better efficiency in the IT department, and cost reductions of 33 percent along with a 30 to 35 percent reduction in the time it takes to manage tasks."
"My advice for anybody who is looking into this product is not to think twice."
 

Cons

"Because I am using an older version, I am rating the scalability as a seven out of 10. I feel a lack of convenience when I try to scale it."
"In Automation Anywhere, the logging process is manual."
"We run these bots in multiple environments from staging to development to production. We find usually in the production environment when we run the bots for them to be stable for a week or two. After a week or two, we see some glitches here and there, though the application doesn't change much. This is one feature which I want Automation Anywhere to work on: Increasing stability."
"Technical support needs to be worked on as the turnaround time can be around a week, even though we are just using the solution on a pilot basis. We are working in real-time with realistic data. While the process of a logging a ticket is good, the process from logging a ticket to closure needs faster support time."
"The pricing is a little bit high compared with other tools."
"For improvement, I would like to see Automation Anywhere integrating with multiple other technologies."
"For any tool, we have to consider that the evolving AI space is rapidly changing, and I believe Automation Anywhere can enhance its offerings to keep pace with developments in the AI sector, which presents a lot of room for improvements, but overall it is working well for us."
"There are many bots available on the Bot Store. However, my developer told me that he was unhappy with the quality of the bots available."
"The reporting in relation to updating could be improved upon."
"Their technical support can also be improved in terms of response time."
"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."
"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."
"Technical support can be slow in terms of resolving issues."
"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."
"What needs improvement in IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is its graphical interface because it needs to be more user-friendly."
"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."
"IT Care Center has some room for improvement in regard to mobile. It doesn't have an application, there is only an adaptable web page, and that is less convenient."
"There is no such thing as a perfect solution and in the past, I have contacted support to implement new features."
"Our business is quite interesting because we actually look at our staff based on their productivity. So if a case is created where we want to track the productivity of the user, sometimes we look at how many actual hours they clocked in to solve the case. We realized that it would take quite a lot of hours, which was unusually high. We want to look at how we can measure that against a baseline. For example, every user should resolve the issue within three hours. We want a certain baseline where they have to resolve the issue within certain times and if they don't, I would get alerted."
"The UI screens could be a little bit more modern."
"They should have full integration with SSO services, like Okta, creating a full service solution."
"There is no global support. With our previous system, we had 24/7 global support. We need much faster support. When I have an issue and raise a ticket, someone should call me back. They can also think about having object-oriented APEX so that the agents can easily create dashboards instead of having to learn the complete APEX language. This is something very important for us. We are using Oracle APEX for creating certain dashboards with KPIs. This is the visual platform that we use to see all the data, and it is very important for us because we get all the BI and data. Currently, we have a vendor who helps us with that because we don't know how to use it ourselves. We want to use it to make more dashboards with more KPIs for every department, but we cannot because we don't have the knowledge. We are very dependent on the vendor and the time he has for us."
"There is no global support. With our previous system, we had 24/7 global support."
"If there is such a feature, it would be very good for us to track how long it takes to resolve issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Automation Anywhere is costlier than the general competition. That is aligned with the share of the market it has."
"We have a three-year contract with Automation Anywhere."
"Our annual licensing costs are around $100,000 a year."
"This solution costs approximately $3,500 USD per license."
"There is a free trial so that they can get an overview, and there are different licenses that are very affordable and can suit every business model."
"It saves on the quality of work, because the quality can be bad when somebody's doing it. If a bot does the work, it's faster and comes with good quality. These are two important things along with the cost saving in the long run. That's where the value is."
"In terms of pricing, it's not at all cheap, and that's a concern. The licensing cost is very high. While I don't know the exact prices of other tools, Microsoft offers the lowest pricing for its RPA platform compared to UiPath and Automation Anywhere."
"We would like to use Citrix going forward. We use Bot Runners to scale up, and it gets to be expensive. Using Citrix, it can mitigate costs."
"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."
"We reduced our costs compared to our previous solution, which was really expensive. We managed to reduce costs by half by switching to IT Care Center, not including any professional services."
"Compared to other products in the market, pricing is reasonable. It does meet our usage and requirements."
"With SysAid, we paid for every end-user. If we had 100 end-users, we had to pay for each one of them. With IT Care Center, we can have as many users as we want. We only pay for the end unit. We have the asset manager and different models that we can use for the same price. So, it reduces costs."
"This product is very cheap when compared to other platforms."
"The licensing model is very flexible."
"Buy it as one package, not as modules. That is from my knowledge and experience. Most of the time, it has better pricing. They have flexibility by price size in the negotiation."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Performing Arts
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business162
Midsize Enterprise86
Large Enterprise565
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise2
 

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)
SmartCloud Control Desk
IT Care Center Asset Management, IT Care Center Analytics, IT Care Center Application Delivery, IT Care Center Service Catalog
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
St Vincent's Health Australia, Kalibrate Pty. Ltd., Cognizant Technology
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Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SmartCloud Control Desk vs. IT Care Center and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.