We performed a comparison between IBM SmartCloud Control Desk and IFS Cloud Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow, Atlassian, BMC and others in Help Desk Software."The solution has been stable."
"SLA integrations, reports, and integration with other applications are the most valuable."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 is very easy to work with."
"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 most valuable feature is the distribution module."
"The product is quite flexible."
"There tends not to be a massive weakness in the product itself, as weaknesses can quickly be resolved in the next patch or the next release."
"The most valuable features of IFS Applications in the latest version are the new user Arena interface. It's from Apps 9, but it brings more flexibility in usage, especially around different devices, such as mobile usage, which doesn't restrict you from using a computer. We are it for the HR side, and it's proving quite good. It has a new modern feel to it similar to a standard cloud application which enhances the user experience."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine or ten out of ten since it is an extremely scalable solution that can be used for various use cases with thousands of users."
"Some of the strengths are Enterprise Management Solutions and the series of Management solutions which is number one in Gartner's report and has been for the last five years."
"A high level of ERP can be handled in IFS."
"IFS has been completely rebuilt, modernized, and cloud-based so we don't need bulky software installations."
"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 could use more facility or flexibility for reporting, and business intelligence in the tool."
"The solution lacks a graphical user interface."
"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 reporting in relation to updating could be improved upon."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"IFS Applications is not robust enough to handle high-volume transactions, so it's not suitable for larger enterprises."
"The user interface can be improved. When you're clicking through the screens, there are some icons or symbols that really need updating and would be more useful and noticeable if they are aesthetically pleasing."
"Customization needs to be improved."
"It would be ideal if, in the future, the product could incorporate IoT and blockchain elements. We'd like to explore more of these types of features going forward."
"We have upgraded to the latest version right now. We have issues with the quality. We tried to enroll in their Evergreen program which was meant to help us adopt any service update or anything that the tool’s providers come up with."
"I'm a business analyst, so I do a lot of customer-facing work. I take calls from businesses I have to troubleshoot. One thing that bugs me is the error messages you get from IFS. If I get an error message, I have to dig to find the cause because, often, the error message doesn't precisely describe the problem. It'll hint about where the problem lies, but you have to work to find the root cause. It doesn't help in my situation. You expect an error message to point to the field or what is causing the issue."
"I have seen that one of the areas that my company has identified for improvement might be the rental management capabilities within the solution."
"The CRM was shaky and although this improves in Apps 10, there is room for improvement."
IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is ranked 22nd in Help Desk Software with 9 reviews while IFS Cloud Platform is ranked 8th in Help Desk Software with 29 reviews. IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is rated 7.6, while IFS Cloud Platform is rated 7.8. 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 IFS Cloud Platform writes "Robust, customizable, and modern". IBM SmartCloud Control Desk is most compared with ServiceNow and SymphonyAI IT Service Management, whereas IFS Cloud Platform is most compared with SAP ERP, SAP S/4HANA, Oracle E-Business Suite, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and IBM Maximo.
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