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Hornbill Systems Supportworks vs IFS Cloud Platform 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
6.9
Number of Reviews
636
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 (1st), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (1st), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
Hornbill Systems Supportworks
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (34th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (31st)
IFS Cloud Platform
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
CRM (33rd), Customer Experience Management (9th), Field Service Management (2nd), Help Desk Software (21st), ERP (20th), Activity Based Costing Software (10th), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (3rd), Local Government CRM (13th), IT Asset Management (13th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (18th), License Management (2nd)
 

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.
it_user1262703 - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Desk Team Leader at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Excels in call logging and call flows but is limited in terms of scalability
I'd advise others to map their processes out before starting with the solution. Hornbill has recently generated a new version of its product and it meets some of the requirements that we would have been looking for. It's a bit more scalable, a bit more responsive to a customer-focused model for support, and they've improved a lot of things like process flow and self-service. In terms of rating the solution, it's difficult to grade. It really depends on the size of the organization that's trying to use it as that tool. One of the reasons why we're looking to shift is because we've grown quite a bit over the years that we've had it, which makes it difficult for it to meet our demands. However, for an organization the size of what we were when we started our journey with it, I'd rate it ten out of ten. Where we are now, with our company size and needs, I'd rate it six out of ten.
Thangaraj Ramasamy - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at Arcwide
Has supported project management and business customization through strong modular flexibility
The cloud feature in IFS Cloud Platform is predominantly valuable, especially the enterprise asset management module, which IFS has very good business into, along with strong finance, project management, and supply chain management modules; these are the major modules that are performing well with IFS, and the cloud options along with user-friendly customizations for any technical developments are additional advantages. The integration of IoT with IFS Cloud Platform is performing well, enabling us to integrate with predominantly any third party through the standard inbuilt connectors that are readily available, and if we need to customize the integration, we can certainly do that too.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The IQ Bot is unique. It is not available in another RPA tool that I am aware of, like UiPath or Blue Prism. IQ Bot converts unstructured data to structured data."
"Value for time: with the help of Enterprise A2019, we can get instant value."
"I also very much like the integrating of this solution with other applications. We have some old web applications that we've been using, and we've been writing some of our own DLLs to integrate with it. It has worked really well."
"Automation Anywhere greatly improved our processing time since robots can execute process steps faster than human resources do."
"The support team responds quickly."
"Automation Anywhere has presented us with a platform that is easily accessible from a web interface, enabling us to write code for RPA scripts without having to download a dedicated software application."
"One thing that I want to highlight AA for is their security standards."
"By implementing processes using Automation Anywhere, we can save up to 3,000 euros within two weeks of development."
"We've definitely seen an ROI; we've had the system in place for eight years, and it's provided a solid platform for us to deliver our services during that period."
"The solution's business process flow is quite strong. Its reporting is quite good. The standard, basic ITSM functionality like call logging and call flow, for example, are areas the solution really excels in."
"It is quite user friendly to use and has a lot of very useful features that makes the analyst/technician's life easier."
"Apart from the pressures of meeting 14 go-live dates, this has been a very positive experience and has led to a streamlined and effective business."
"All the modules are valuable in their own right, but everything has to go through the ERP. IFS has done an excellent job integrating the various modules to complete these processes. My expertise is in the finance module, but I have used the other verticals. It's an all-around good product."
"The product is quite flexible."
"Field Service Management is definitely a wonderful product that IFS has developed because it caters to field services."
"The most valuable feature to us was the capability to quickly identify the tickets we have open with people and follow up them."
"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."
"IFS Applications is very user-friendly and easy to deploy, and it's suitable for small and medium enterprises."
"We could quickly understand what was going on and what the customer wanted to do."
 

Cons

"The biggest challenge that I have with Automation Anywhere is the pace of upgrades that they do. We are not an IT company, we are a mining company. We are very conservative in doing our upgrades and moving from one platform to another. Upgrades are one of the challenges we are having with Automation Anywhere."
"Especially while using v11, I often experience freezes with OCR extraction from PDF files."
"There have been many instances, particularly in my previous organization where we did a lot of development in Automation Anywhere, catering to clients like CPA firms in America, where we raised tickets for solutions but did not always find a satisfactory resolution, despite connecting over a call."
"Regarding the UI, once you're in some of the screens there are fixed dialogues. They are a set size, so there's a lot of horizontal scrolls and vertical scrolls."
"New versions keep coming up. The challenge for us is to have the downtime to do the migrations. This could be improved upon. We would like fewer version changes and upgrades happening to the application. While the downtime is not that much, depending on the business processes, there are times few critical processes are running on a daily or hourly basis. We would expect the downtime to be even less for them."
"One key feature for improvement I have been providing feedback on through the MVP program is enhancing natural language conversation to action. The Automation Anywhere product team is actively putting this feature into their roadmap, which I believe is crucial."
"With the PDF command, you can only read structured data. If your data is in an unstructured format, there is no command for it in Automation Anywhere. Then, people need to use Python coding if their data is in unstructured format. Therefore, Automation Anywhere needs to improve in the PDF area."
"Regarding the UI, once you're on some of the screens there are fixed dialogues, they are a set size, so there's a lot of horizontal scrolls and vertical scrolls. If I want to do something that is purely business-related and is somewhat complex to write or is nuanced, I sometimes have trouble implementing that inside of the Automation Anywhere script."
"Customer Service: I'd rate it as a 5/10 or 6/10."
"It's worked well for us for a significant period of time. However, we are kind-of outgrowing it at the moment. We're struggling a bit with making it meet our requirements."
"Some kind of bot assistance, some kind of artificial intelligence to help people solve the problems, would be interesting."
"The pricing could be a bit better. It's a little high."
"Sometimes from the sales perspective, clients don't always fully understand how large a task or a project they're getting involved in when they decide, "We're going to switch across to IFS." They could probably do a little bit more, maybe around preparing people for these projects."
"The next version has already been released, and some of the technical things are a little bit behind the curve in development. This is specifically security, maintenance, security role maintenance, and creation. This is in their new product, called IFS Cloud."
"The integration is a bit complex, and post-implementation support services need to be improved."
"IFS uses Crystal Report mostly, which isn't too user-friendly. Developing reports isn't easy and requires a lot of dev time. Since SAP bought it, Crystal Report has become more complicated to use on IFS. You have a dashboard for reporting that is good, but it's incomplete. Most of our clients use Power BI or some additional tooling for BI."
"The integration is a bit complex, and post-implementation support services need to be improved. They have a service center based out of Sri Lanka. The support aspect is good, but the response time is a little slower than we anticipated. In the next release, it would be better if Warehouse Management could be improvised. They have a product line that's a data warehouse management system, but it's still premature and requires a bit of enhancement."
"The initial setup or implementation was a little more complex than I expected."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are a partner of Automation Anywhere and find the pricing to be reasonable."
"We were required to purchase licenses and bot runners, which determined the permissible run times for the bots."
"As far as costs, it depends on your use. We started with a basic department pack, which is over 10K. The additional costs depend on the scale of the engagement and how it pans out. We customize to our needs on the go."
"Automation Anywhere is affordable."
"It's justified because we have saved quite a bit of money at the company and many manual hours. Overall, it justifies the cost."
"It's somewhat pricier than some of the other tools that we've used, and the breakout between the different applications is also somewhat costly. If they can make it a little more cost-effective or bundle packages a little bit more, that would be beneficial."
"They sell it by license, but if they could charge by case or by interaction, that might be better. Right now, it's expensive when you want to scale or use them for simple processes."
"They give us a good deal on the licensing because we bundle and customize things. If you ask to get a bulk business deal, you will receive more benefit. If you take other products from the suite, like IQ Bot, you can also receive a deal on the licensing."
"Our organization pays about $40,000 annually. There are ongoing consultancy costs and if we want to change anything, we're charged a day rate. Other than that, there are no other extra costs involved in working with the solution."
"Licensing is on an annual basis, with no additional costs."
"We pay for a license to use the solution, which is not very expensive."
"There's an additional yearly cost for support."
"Ask for all-inclusive pricing, as they are pretty flexible if you ask for custom models."
"IFS Applications are competitive in terms of pricing compared to other vendors, such as SAP, Oracle, and Epicor. They are generally cheaper, especially for licensing costs."
"IFS Applications is expensive software, but it's on par with SAP and Oracle. It's for large enterprises and government entities and not for small and medium-sized enterprises. They have one licensing model, but if you want to have a module-specific license, they provide component-based licenses. Unlike SAP and Oracle, it doesn't have different levels of licensing. It's one level of licensing."
"It is better to buy implementation services from IFS than from partners"
"The product is reasonably priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business152
Midsize Enterprise82
Large Enterprise535
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise10
 

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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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IFS Applications?
The product is reasonably priced. The costs are justified by the value provided, considering the comprehensive featur...
What needs improvement with IFS Applications?
When it comes to AI, I feel that is the area where we expect something more from IFS Cloud Platform. They are working...
What is your primary use case for IFS Applications?
Currently, I am working with Arcwide, which is a service industry that predominantly focuses on IFS consulting, inclu...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
Supportworks
IFS Applications, Assyst, IFS Cloud
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Aylesbury Vale District Council
China Airlines, Electrolux Group, Babcock, Cimcorp, Sky, Multiplex, Veolia. 
Find out what your peers are saying about Hornbill Systems Supportworks vs. IFS Cloud Platform and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
899,125 professionals have used our research since 2012.