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Espressive Barista vs ServiceNow comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 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)
Espressive Barista
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (37th), AI-Powered Chatbots (9th), AI-Agents for HR (4th)
ServiceNow
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (1st), IT Asset Management (1st), IT Service Management (ITSM) (1st), Rapid Application Development Software (4th), No-Code Development Platforms (1st)
 

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.
Jim Lobao - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager for End User Support Services at Five9
Has helped enhance our support ability, reduced our resolution time, and reduced our service desk costs
Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement. We haven't yet found anything that resembles true AI that can learn autonomously without human intervention. However, Barista does help us identify and address some of these areas, allowing my team to step in and create intents and responses to questions. When a user asks a question that Barista doesn't immediately understand, we can recognize the pattern, capture it, and link it to a common intent. This is highly beneficial for acquiring such data, but it's a reactive approach and still requires curation. Natural language processing still has some way to go. One of our challenges is that our internal employees haven't yet adopted a natural way of interacting with Barista. Getting people to be concise and to the point, rather than being verbose as if they were interacting with a human, has been an ongoing challenge. While they may feel comfortable being conversational in Slack, expecting a human-like response, Barista is a different entity. Barista isn't interested in their recent vacation; it just wants to know they're locked out of their account. So, some users may assume Barista understands their intent when they say, "I'm back from vacation and locked out of my account." Barista, however, may interpret this as a request for the holiday schedule. Therefore, we're gradually educating our users to adapt their communication style for better success with Barista. Conversely, we desire Barista to adapt its behavior based on the interaction, the language used, and the way people communicate. I wholeheartedly desire an AI that can continuously learn and adapt to our organization's evolving needs. This is the most challenging aspect, as it involves understanding our organization's terminology, procedures, and toolsets. We've made significant progress in this area. However, from an NLP standpoint, we still face challenges with our nearly 3,000 Slack channel users, each with their unique communication styles. People ask questions in various ways, and sometimes there are misunderstandings. They want to interact with us naturally. However, we still struggle with natural language processing. People don't always realize that the bot is a virtual agent designed to be concise and efficient. Sometimes, less is more. It's been a difficult transition for people to grasp that they're conversing with a virtual agent, not a human. They still expect human-like interactions, such as discussing their weekend or holidays or simply pasting screenshots of errors. However, the bot can't interpret screenshots. If they provide the error code and some context about the application, the bot can better understand the issue. So, the key challenge is bridging the gap between human expectations and the bot's capabilities in terms of natural interaction.
Hemanthreddy Vakiti - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Structured workflows have improved SLA compliance and now support prioritized incident handling
I think the licensing and pricing of ServiceNow is quite expensive compared to other tools. For large organizations, it is acceptable, but specifically for small and medium organizations to track incidents or change requests, ServiceNow is quite expensive. Sometimes performance can be slow when workflows and integrations are configured for complex tasks. For advanced customizations or advanced features which we rarely use, the documentation is not up to standard. The documentation needs to be improved for advanced customization features. However, the platform is stable overall and the features are quite good. The user experience and performance concerns I mentioned are areas I want to be improved. When many workflows and interactions are configured, performance is slow. For the features it is providing, it is quite expensive. If these performance features are improved, we can easily pay that price and get the return on investment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Automation Anywhere stands out because it has brought productivity to the organization, improved customer service, accelerated business growth, and allowed for faster innovation."
"Automation Anywhere has surely helped our organization to shape its Digital Journey - It was our first RPA tool which helped us to perform basic automation which created Point solutions but has added tremendous value at the early stage. We were able to scale-up fast using Automation Anywhere due to its user-friendly AI and later on IQ Bots provided the required edge to handle the unstructured data."
"Automation Anywhere has significantly improved our organization's efficiency. Across various processes, we have achieved a 90% time savings for each use case, making our workflow much more streamlined and productive."
"The scope of automation by using Automation Anywhere has become wonderful."
"We mostly used the Database commands in order to make the process faster and more secure, rather than using Excel or a CSV for reading the input files."
"Automation Anywhere is the best among all other automation tools available in the market such as Power Automate and UiPath."
"The IQ Bot is very impressive to us, as we have tried several tools in the industry and we have not been able to automate to the same level as provided by this solution."
"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."
"Our developers have used the Barista Control Center to extend the platform by adding content, and they've found it fairly easy to do and manage"
"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."
"Its ability to recognize phrases has gotten smarter over time."
"Given the out of the box content for common industry applications, we got good value out of the solution right from day one."
"With respect to its natural language processing capabilities, it recognizes things that you wouldn't think it would recognize. Even in cases where it doesn't, it's pretty easy to go in and make the adjustments that are needed."
"This is one of the few tools that live up to the sales reps' hype when it comes to integrating with ServiceNow."
"When it comes to neutral language processing and conversational AI, it's very good, very solid... We all have different ways of speaking or writing in English and the application does a very solid job of recognizing what's being asked regardless of how it's being asked."
"Our department received about a 70% deflection rate, so that was really great."
"ServiceNow has been implemented to streamline team workflows across different departments in our company. Users, including traveling leaders, were able to approve requests and authorize additional rights through the mobile platform."
"It is a very promising product. They have a new release every six months. They're investing quite a lot, and you can do many creative things with the product. If you know how it works, you can have stricter rules in the product."
"It has more extensive features as compared to the other competitors."
"ServiceNow is easy to use."
"There are lots of modules around IT service management such as IT business management and human resource management (HRC)."
"If you're looking for a flexible tool that's going to grow with you, that's going to expand your flexibility, or expand your team, or expand how you do things and streamline things, I would do it."
"ServiceNow provides us with a platform that we can develop the tools that are necessary for just about any function on campus."
"The Idea Portal and the PPM platform are most valuable. Their out-of-the-box dashboards and reporting are fantastic. I use them almost on a weekly basis. I have developed a couple of PMO dashboards for reporting. It is user-friendly. Everything is done through a navigation bar, and it makes things a lot easier that way."
 

Cons

"They are working on scalability, but I'm expecting them maybe a faster pace for the thing already in place. They need to improve the extraction and accuracy. It's a sort of a journey that we started with a few fears that may end up with a 100 or 200 fears. These are our expectations from IQ Bot. We are quite hopeful that a future release will solve this problem."
"There is a dependency issue around the control room. If the control room is not working, the bots will not work."
"Excel, Outlook, and Word automation are very difficult with V11."
"The Automation Anywhere University courses have helped us, but it could improve some things, like how the courses are designed."
"For smaller teams and during the onboarding, it takes a little while to figure out how to make things work."
"Currently, Automation Anywhere's debugging functionality is minimal."
"The mobile application can be improved by adding more functions and capabilities because right now, only a few features are enabled for mobile users."
"This solution could be more stable because sometimes I see some bugs."
"Expressive Barista could improve by adding native integration with WhatsApp, one of the top communication channels in South Africa. When we're trying to sell Barista to customers, we have to tell them that the solution doesn't have out-of-the-box support for WhatsApp. We can develop it, but then we need to have a conversation about how much that will cost."
"The reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"The knowledge management could definitely be improved."
"My only comment would be if they wanted to use this as an IT service management tool, maybe they could think about Barista making tickets and having change management and problem management capabilities."
"I would like to see the continued expansion of all of the automation capabilities."
"Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement."
"What would make things easier is more detail, out of the box, about what is helping out of the box. We're struggling a little bit to get that data. We want more information about what Barista has brought in that the employees are using, out of the box. We want more visibility into the things that we ourselves haven't done the interaction for."
"Although they've done some work on their metrics dashboard, there is some fine-tuning to do for people that just want to go in there at a glance and see their metrics."
"The solution could improve by being more stable."
"What's not so good for us is also the support for problems and regressions."
"ServiceNow can improve by being customizable based on the different needs of companies, such as infrastructure and security requirements."
"We had ServiceNow’s in-house team for “Quick-Start Implementation”, but it was very basic, and the custom things we asked him to do from scratch were not engineered very thoroughly or using best coding practices."
"There's always a room for improvement in terms of the ServiceNow UI. For customers, the UI is something that is a continuous improvement."
"Reaching beyond IT asset management is the biggest challenge to ServiceNow right now."
"There is a need to learn scripting because as in the case of all the ITSM tools, scripting is needed for customization. If you're not very comfortable with scripting, then you may feel that you cannot do everything in ServiceNow without learning scripting."
"I would say there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to technical support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While calculating the setup cost you should account for the server, virtual machines, product licenses, maintenance costs, and running costs."
"Regarding the price, licensing, and maintenance, Automation Anywhere provides its customers with its best and affordable value."
"Considering the cost, it is a bit high, but worth the price because the output accuracy is high."
"Annual licensing costs would be about $100,000."
"It's very good in terms of cost and pricing."
"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."
"We are restricted to use one license on one PC. However, if my license is not working, I want to be able to use it somewhere else. This would be a nice improvement to the licensing, as other competitors in the market have better licensing terms."
"It's cheaper than other similar solutions."
"User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant value from it."
"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"The price for the licensing is fair."
"The solution is affordable."
"The pricing isn't overly burdensome. It's going to be interesting to see how new models come in with new capabilities but, as it is, as a base system, it's pretty good."
"The product cost is higher than that of other vendors."
"Isn't pricing always too much? We really do chafe at the ITIL licensing. ITOM is also pretty expensive."
"For the modules we use, we found it competitive. I can't think of any costs in addition to the licensing fees."
"The license model is based on a number of fulfillers (active users who play some role within the ServiceNow functionality). Therefore, you can serve as many end-users as you want, without additional costs."
"It is an expensive platform."
"The price of this solution is expensive."
"ServiceNow is a leader and its pricing is quite good, quite competitive... Sometimes some plugins are not priced reasonably but, generally, the platform itself, its modules, are priced reasonably."
"We are happy with the pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Construction Company
10%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

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 Business3
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business57
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise179
 

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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Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?
The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into t...
Would you choose ServiceNow over Microsoft PowerApps?
Hi Netanya, I will choose ServiceNow because ServiceNow is a very good tool compared to Microsoft PowerApp. Because ...
What is the cost of implementation and maintenance of ServiceNow?
Nobody can give you a clean percentage without knowing your license tier, but here’s how I’d budget it, based on what...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
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Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Information Not Available
AAA, AstraZeneca, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Broadcom, Christus Health, Epicor, Equinix, GE Capital, Intuit, KPMG, Loyola Marymount University, OshKosh, Quantas, RedHat, Royal Bank of Scotland, Swiss Re, U.S. Department of Energy, Safeway, Yale University, and Zillow    
Find out what your peers are saying about Espressive Barista vs. ServiceNow and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.