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Cherwell Service Management

Cherwell Service Management

Overview

What is Cherwell Service Management?

Cherwell Software was founded by the former CEO of FrontRage Solutions and is a full suite of service management tools competing with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, and IBM SmartCloud.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Cherwell is a versatile IT service management tool that has been widely adopted by various organizations across industries. Users have …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

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  • Organize and prioritize service tickets (52)
    10.0
    100%
  • Self-service tools (51)
    9.8
    98%
  • ITSM reports and dashboards (51)
    9.7
    97%
  • ITSM collaboration and documentation (48)
    9.6
    96%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Unavailable

What is Cherwell Service Management?

Cherwell Software was founded by the former CEO of FrontRage Solutions and is a full suite of service management tools competing with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, and IBM SmartCloud.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://pages.cherwell.com/pricing.csm.…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Alternatives Pricing

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ServiceNow is a fast-growing service management provider that went public in 2012. Built on the ServiceNow Now Platform, the IT Service Management bundle provides an agent workspace with knowledge management, and modules supporting issue tracking and problem resolution, change, release and…

What is Atera?

Atera is a platform that enables IT professionals to gain access, visibility, and control over all their networks and devices from anywhere. Users can manage their IT operation from patch management, IT automations, advanced reporting, alerts, helpdesk, ticketing, and it features dozens of…

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Product Demos

Cherwell 8 Overview

YouTube

Cherwell Service Management 10.0 Demo

YouTube
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Features

Incident and problem management

Streamlining ticketing and service restoration processes

9.7
Avg 8.1

ITSM asset management

Managing all IT assets and enforcing policy rules

9.8
Avg 8.2

Change management

Ensuring standardized processes for making changes to IT infrastructure

9.9
Avg 8.4
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Product Details

What is Cherwell Service Management?

Cherwell Service Management is designed for organizations seeking large reductions in software license spending, IT overhead, and software audit risk. By integrating all the data related to hardware and software inventory, application usage, license entitlements, and IT purchases, users can track and manage IT investments from purchase to retirement and abandon Excel spreadsheets.

Cherwell Service Management Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Cherwell Software was founded by the former CEO of FrontRage Solutions and is a full suite of service management tools competing with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, and IBM SmartCloud.

ServiceNow IT Service Management, IFS Assyst, and CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager are common alternatives for Cherwell Service Management.

Reviewers rate Organize and prioritize service tickets highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Cherwell Service Management are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(107)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Cherwell is a versatile IT service management tool that has been widely adopted by various organizations across industries. Users have reported positive experiences with the software, citing its customizable GUI and flexible reporting capabilities. One of the key use cases of Cherwell is in the realm of ITSM and ITIL initiatives. It is utilized for incident management, problem management, change management, configuration item management, and knowledge management. The software helps organizations streamline their IT processes and improve service delivery by providing a centralized platform for managing tickets, tracking incidents and problems, and facilitating knowledge sharing among team members.

Additionally, Cherwell extends beyond ITSM to address other organizational needs. It is used as a ticketing system for various departments such as HR, facilities, and IT support. Users leverage Cherwell to handle service requests, facilities management tasks, new hire requests, and even training participation tracking. The software's highly customizable nature allows it to be adapted to different workflows and business processes, making it a valuable tool in areas beyond traditional IT functions.

Another notable use case of Cherwell is its role in improving communication and collaboration within organizations. Users have highlighted how Cherwell serves as a central tracking system for IT issues, replacing inefficient methods like email-based work assignment. By providing real-time tracking and metrics, Cherwell enhances accountability and promotes institutional collaboration among different departments.

Overall, Cherwell's ease of use and wide range of applications have made it an essential tool for organizations seeking effective IT service management, streamlined workflows, improved communication, and high-quality customer service across various departments.

Extensive Customization Options: Many users have praised Cherwell's extensive customization options, allowing them to personalize dashboards and move touch points according to their preferences. This flexibility has been appreciated by several reviewers who value the ability to tailor the system to their specific needs.

Efficient Automation Capabilities: Several users have highlighted Cherwell's automation capabilities, mentioning that it has allowed them to automate various tasks in their support department. From ticket creation and classification to responding with specific attachments, this automation feature has helped eliminate wasted time and improve overall efficiency.

Easy Configuration Process: Numerous users have mentioned that Cherwell's configuration process is easy to navigate without requiring expensive consultants for every adjustment. They appreciate being able to make minor as well as major enhancements on their own, giving them more control over the system's configuration.

Web and Mobile App Issues: Users have reported various issues with the web client and mobile app, including frequent locking up and clunkiness. These problems significantly hinder their workflow and productivity.

Lack of Apple Client: In environments that use a mix of Windows and Apple devices, some users have experienced difficulties due to the lack of an Apple client. This absence creates compatibility challenges and limits their ability to effectively utilize the software.

Issues with Active Directory Integration: The built-in remote control capabilities on tickets do not work well with active directory, causing problems for users. This issue disrupts their ability to efficiently manage tickets and collaborate with other team members.

Users commonly recommend the following when using Cherwell:

  1. Utilize all the available features, such as workflows and customizations, to increase productivity and resolve IT and system-related issues effectively.

  2. Take time for proper implementation and customization by conducting a hands-on proof of concept (POC) to understand customization needs, considering the implementation process and ease of system configuration, and allowing enough time for implementation and user acceptance testing (UAT).

  3. Seek support from the Cherwell community by attending user groups and seeking guidance during the implementation process.

Overall, users recommend fully utilizing Cherwell's features, dedicating sufficient time for implementation, customization, and training, and seeking advice from the Cherwell community for successful use of the software.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 43)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cherwell is used at our company for not only the IT department, but HR, Marketing, Facilities, and other teams to support our users in the different departments.
  • Highly customizable
  • Easy to use
  • Easy to obtain stats and metrics
  • Quicker turnaround on upgrades and bug fixes
  • Needs a better web version
  • Performance on hosted versions
Cherwell is the best ITSM platform in the market. It's unfortunate that Ivanti is stripping it for parts for their Neurons toolset and the going to sunset it.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Cherwell CSM is our first true ITSM solution. It has it's "Cherwellisms" but, it lived up to and exceeded our expectations for the cost. The flexibility in the One-Steps, Searches and Automation allows us a lot of flexibility. The User Groups are a huge help and knowledge share. We're looking forward to the convergence platform where Ivanti incorporates both products to bring an elevated value. I'd recommed (and have) the CSM product.
  • Automation
  • API's
  • One Steps
  • Searches
  • Reports
  • Losing values in one-steps after publishing
  • Form layout improvement
I have recommended. We were able to consolidate all of our ticket systems in to Cherwell CSM and eliminate the archaic systems and some money. Additionally, it improved our reputation by implementing a solid and fluid customer facing portal. Along with the CMDB, that assisted our employees to work more efficiently and professionally.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cherwell Service Management for our ticketing system, inventory system, asset management, and change control system. The system is used throughout our entire environment and is the backbone of our support architecture. It helps us analyze our workload and govern our assets in an efficient manner. Our implementation is by far the best service management product I've seen in my decade in IT, it truly is an amazing product. The customization is amazing!
  • Incident Management
  • Inventory Management
  • Change Control
  • Problem Management
  • Assest Management
  • Kanban Board Implementation, specifically the ability to manage Change requests
  • CMBD searching capabilities
  • Task journals
Cherwell Service Management is well suited for organizations that run their own internal IT departments and want to have control and insight into their operations. I wish that I would have had the opportunity to work with Cherwell sooner in my career as it is an excellent system. As with any ticketing system, it took some getting used to, but it was a short learning curve. I wouldn't recommend using something like Cherwell in a small organization that doesn't plan to manage its workflows and assets within a single system unless there is a plan for growth and expansion.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Cherwell Service Management as a plattform to manage our ~4,500 tickets per month for all our IT service management related processes as well as some non-IT processes. Based on ITIL v3, we have implemented mature processes for all relevant ITIL processes, including Incident Management, Request Management (including RfC), Change Management, Problem Management, Service Level Management, to name just a few. Having approximately 350 active supporters who are supporting around 9,000 active end-users and managing ~30,000 configuration items. Our ITSM processes are linked to some non-IT processes such as a billing and sales as well as HR. We have been using Cherwell Service Management with a complete custom implementation since 2016. A team of 2–4 developers is implementing everything in-house.
  • Allows us to implement our workflows with low-code approach, so that you do not need true developers (writing code) but only tech-savvy process designers
  • Excellent flexibility in the plattform to implement whatever topic we require
  • Very good licensing model (easy to comprehend + manage)
  • Bad web components: web portal and browser client are not up-to-date with modern web technologies
  • Large “codebases” become very hard to refactor after growing to a certain size
  • The promise of zero-hassle upgrades has not worked once for us over the years (it’s still okay, though)
Especially for companies looking to implement their processes in-house with a small team of tech-savvy people, this can be a real asset. Use it if you have already bought it. I would not start using CSM at this point in time, though, since Ivanti is actively pushing customers towards the new Neurons for ITSM platform.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cherwell Service Management as an enterprise service management solution - where our IT department is actually NOT the largest consumer of the tool! We have branched out from the typical ITSM processes in Cherwell to use it for managing new store openings, DC safety incidents, and numerous finance-related workflows unique to our organization. We are able to consolidate more and more of our organizational functions within a single pane of glass, which is precisely the reason (and one of the many benefits) of purchasing Cherwell.
  • Workflow Management
  • Automation
  • Integrations
  • No-code/low-code content development
  • Flexibility to use on multiple operating systems
  • Updated web UI/UX
  • Standardized form creation
  • Improved machine learning
  • Built-in AI chat bot
Cherwell is a well-rounded product that can really be utilized as far as one's imagination can stretch. I've used the product in both a corporate and medical environment, where the tool was used for vastly different reasons (i.e., ITSM, business & retail functions, vs hospital orderlies & medical equipment tracking in a CMDB, etc.). Cherwell is so versatile that you can really use it to develop any workflow or process that is unique to your line of business - there are more than enough functions and tools available within Cherwell to effectively manage any enterprise solution your organization needs. The major drawback of flexibility is supportability. Given that you can essentially develop anything you want (content-wise) in Cherwell, it can quickly become highly complex and difficult to support by anyone other than the original developer. Documentation is key (F-spec & T-spec especially!) when developing larger solutions in Cherwell.
Steve Clime | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our IT department had no Incident Management system until July of 2020. Everything was done on white boards, note pads, and spreadsheets. No real collaboration between the help desk and other departments like systems administration, networking, security, programming.

Implemented Cherwell to begin tracking and managing Incidents for our retail support team and 130 mid-west grocery stores. Have since expanded to managing assets (endpoints, mobile devices, network hardware, servers). CMDB's are configured for all teams with some automation.
Worked with a third party to implement a contract/license management system to track all IT based service contracts, Microsoft licenses, etc.
Converted our old change management system to Cherwell in summer of 2022 and streamlined the process with automated approvals and calendar entries. Service Management metrics have helped identify problematic areas where training can be applied to end users.

The only real negative is the current administrative console is client based not web. When Ivanti rolls out the converged platform with Neurons, I will be glad as the interface will be HTML5 and easier to use.

  • Incident and Problem Management
  • CMDB endpoint tracking
  • Change Mangement
  • Automation with one-steps
  • Administration Console is legacy
  • Self Service Portal hard to set up without outside assistance
  • Integrations with external applications like SCCM, VMware, AD
Well suited in an IT environment where you have limited staff. It can be managed by one administrator.
Reliability of the SaaS environment has been excellent.
Flexibility in developing automated workflows to open, manage, and close Incidents.
Change Management due to ability to modify OOB to meet the needs of our staff.
Contract Management allowing us to be notified when a contract or license is up for renewal and setting reminders.
Integrations are not easy to create and manage.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cherwell Service Management is the solution if you are looking for a user-friendly ITSM tool. We use it for service requests/incidents, change, and problem management. The GUI is user-friendly and is easy to modify as per the company requirements. Data stored, can be extracted in all forms of reports and dashboards in order to showcase the trends for the last few months.
  • Logging Tickets.
  • Creating Dashboards.
  • Knowledge Database.
  • Analytical Reports.
  • Reporting Charts can be better.
  • Web portal has issues in seeing journals which is better in Cherwell client.
  • Web portal and Client should have same features.
It is best suited for companies day to day ITSM needs. It is user-friendly and modifications in the tool are much easier as compared to others in the market. Also, it is cost-effective.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use cherwell for change management in our company. It has very useful features for tracking the support tickets and the changes going in deployment. However the workflow of the change process once the change is submitted needs some more user friendly screens. Creating a change ticket is very much user friendly but after change is submitted and navigating the change to different state is bit cumbersome.
  • Support ticket
  • Change ticket for deployment
  • The UI screens can be enhanced for the tool to be more user friendly
Great tool for change management and support tickets for deployment process
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We utilize Cherwell as our central IT ticket tracking system across the entire organization. Optional services we employ via Cherwell are Cherwell Service Management(CSM), Cherwell Asset Management, Change Management, Problem Management, Facilities Management, Housing Management, and Safety Management. Cherwell Service Management allows us to work intermittently across all IT Departments. This allows us to keep to ITIL Guidelines and best practices. We use CSM for Front and Back end development, providing services for our customers via Customer Service Catalog, keeping all users informed of any service interruptions, reporting and audit purposes, and ticket management to meet SLA's. As a Technician in our in-house IT Service Management team, I primarily manage Cherwell for Help/Service Desks and implementing mAPP's/developing services for our organization.
  • IT Service Management
  • IT Change Management
  • Facilities Management
  • Constant Enviroment Updates
  • Bug Fixes
  • Admin Training
Cherwell, [Service Management], as an ITSM tool, is effective at executing user management and change management. Cherwell is very powerful and adaptive to meet your organizations personal needs.
Megan Hartz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Cherwell Service Management for our main IT workflows including Incident, Service Request, Customer Self-Service, Change Management, and Asset Management. In addition, IT supports the use of Cherwell for Enterprise Service Management in core functions like HR, Finance, and Student for service desks and customer self-service. Finally, Cherwell is used as a business process engine for a variety of unique workflows that support all the areas already mentioned but also research services, auxiliary services, and healthcare customer service. We use Cherwell in many situations where the business function needs a quick turnaround on digitizing a workflow, setting up a business unit for service ticketing, or the business function is so unique that a custom application is required.
  • Low code solution development for business processes
  • Fantastic customer support and customer community
  • Exceptional value for the price
  • Highly usable out of the box for traditional ITIL processes
  • Cherwell lacks modern UI capabilities such as responsive forms and CSS styling for web portals.
  • Built-in reporting engine is hard to use and resource intensive to run.
  • No patching model for small platform fixes, must upgrade to receive platform code changes.
Cherwell [Service Management] is the perfect tool for any organization big or small that needs a solution to handle inter-departmental and customer facing business processes and services. Cherwell offers a complete suite of tools that allow you to maintain a robust service catalog, publicize those services through a web portal, and gives your end users a way to engage with self-help and self-service. In addition, Cherwell's low code architecture makes configuration and customization a breeze without a concern of rendering the system unusable and un-upgradeable. Cherwell is designed for change and we find that we are able to easily manage ever changing workflows with ease. If you are a small organization, you can set up and maintain Cherwell with minimal staff. If you are a large organization with complex business needs, you can leverage Cherwell to solve a wide variety of business problems rapidly.
Rand Habegger | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization uses Cherwell as a white-labeled ticketing system for all IT-related needs, facilities needs, and specific things like new hire requests that involve HR, Facilities, and/or IT support. As a user in our in-house Marketing team, I primarily interact with Cherwell for IT tickets (usually issues that demand a quick response).
  • Consistent, timely notifications of status changes with a request or ticket.
  • Logical workflows can be be customized to guide the user through a specific request or ticket submission.
  • Fairly modern UI (though not entirely consistent throughout the product).
  • Difficult to find the right category of request or ticket type (possibly more of an internal or setup issue than with the platform itself).
  • Lack of a clear menu structure (Again, possibly a setup issue).
For common ticketing or request types, our instance is set up very well for efficient, intuitive submission by non-technical users. For less common issues, however, you either need to know the right terminology or stumble across the right items in the complex cascading menus or search results to find the right way to request what you need.
Chris Meunier | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it to manage it, finance, facilities, onboarding. it has reduced the amount of time it takes for us to onboard and to manage the creation of new users.
  • Customizable.
  • No code.
  • Powerful
  • Software is buggy.
  • It's quirky.
  • Hard to predict if something you think should work, will work.
It's great for automating processes but hard to work with.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it as our primary ticketing system between our different IT departments to allow us effectively communicate and pass along problems.
  • It has a lot of flexibility in terms of dashboard customization.
  • You can customize ticket workflows to send them to particular teams in order.
  • Effective use of metrics to make sure you are hitting your deadlines.
  • It isn't the best looking application overall.
  • It can be finicky when it comes to customization. You have to spend some time to get the results you are looking for.
  • Some of the navigation can be a bit confusing, using search function can sometimes be more difficult due to the level of granularity they want.
I think if you have the time to spend making this product into what you want and adapt it to your environment you will be in a really good place. If you are looking for a purely out of the box solution it might not be the best product for you.
July 21, 2021

Cherwell Review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cherwell is used extensively throughout the organization so that users can log service requests for Human Resources. For the Information Technology department, it is used for service delivery and asset management.
It is able to direct requests that are made to the correct team and manage massive inventories of stock with most of this being done without the need for any programming skills.
  • Service requests.
  • Incident management.
  • Process scheduling is fiddly.
  • Word wrapping during text entry sometimes does not happen properly. You need to pop out the text box to see it properly.
Managing stock is great. We control the whole asset life cycle with Cherwell. Complex automation is possible by combining PowerShell and one step, although a fair degree of expertise is required to do this. For instance, our HR system will now create user accounts in Active Directory and applies the correct privileges. It will so expire the accounts when a member of staff leaves the organization. The person's equipment will be delivered to the correct location with the appropriate tickets sent to correct teams to facilitate this.
Aidan Wick | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cherwell [Service Management] is used for IT Service Management, as well as Facilities Management, Pipeline Regulatory Management, and HR Service Management. Cherwell [Service Management] allows the company to work on tasks across departments, and keep end users informed of any service interruptions. Cherwell [Service Management] is heavily used for audit and regulatory purposes, and for recording historical work for any problem remediation.
  • IT Change Management
  • Facilities Management
  • IT Incident and Service Fulfillment
  • Better Enterprise Service Management (ESM) Support
  • Better Bug Reporting Processes
  • Better Security
Cherwell [Service Management] is well suited out-of-the-box for all things IT Service Management, from Incident and Service Request management, to Change, to Asset and Configuration Management. With Cherwell's official FSM module, it is also well suited for Facilities Management. I see Cherwell's vision with the HRSM module, but more work needs to go into it for it to be able to compete with existing HR solutions. With custom development, Cherwell is also great at custom webpages using a WYSIWYG style.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cherwell Service Management is used to track all the tickets created for incidents, change requests, and service inquires within the IT and Tech related sectors of our business. Anyone in the company has access to it from a ticket submission standpoint and managers and above have more in-depth access to the software to manage all of those requests in one place, get reporting, and monitor status/progress.
  • Manages all issues and changes in one place..
  • Great job of tracking and time management to resolution.
  • Allows managers to quickly and easily see what is assigned to all members of their team and who's responsible for what.
  • The user interface could definitely use some improvement.
  • Lacks areas for descriptions of what teams handle which problems.
As a manager of 8 engineers who frequently create or have tickets, changes, or requests assigned to them, Cherwell Service Management does a great job of helping us manage all of that work in one place. I can easily see what's assigned to my team and who's responsible for it. It also does a good job of time tracking from start to finish and alerts us as to when items have gone past their required response time that the company sets. It can be a little overwhelming from a UI standpoint to those that are less technical but it works well.
July 20, 2021

Cherwell - ITSM

Keene Marin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The Wisconsin DNR uses Cherwell as an Agency underneath the primary organization - the Wisconsin DOA. It is used throughout enterprise IT, but implemented only in that capacity, and is not used by all technology support groups within the DNR. We are striving to get to full usage of all available implemented features, but are not quite there yet.
  • Automated workflows are done very well. There is a broad and configurable set of automations available, which allow for effective incident routing.
  • Reporting is very flexible with all the options available, dashboards and graphing in an automated manner can be an effective delivery or ITIL reports.
  • Web based clients allow for some good basic functionality, which are good for customers, or end users.
  • Within our deployment model of Cherwell, there are core functional pieces that have to be configured at the top level, rather than the sub levels, which make some areas difficult to manage. For example, if one agency wants to use feature x in one way, but another agency wants to configure the same feature in a different way, then consensus has to be gained first. Its not as fully flexible in the base configuration space as would be ideal.
  • Automated email processes, especially in the volumes that the State of Wisconsin goes through require some tweaking to allow them to fire in an effective way. We sometimes see problems with backlogs of these.
  • Licensing based on concurrency and usage is a very modern approach, however, it leads to challenges in how customers use it. For example, we have automated log-off's in place for the local clients in order to manage our own usage, to maintain reasonable costs.
Change Management approval processing is a good example. Cherwell, as an ITSM tool, is effective at executing the different change configurations, and requiring distinct approvals to proceed forwards.
April 29, 2021

Cherwell Service Desk

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This is being used across our 200 sites and all departments to log tickets. All services requests and computer/software issues are tracked.
  • We are able to help parents at home thru the remote help feature.
  • Ticket creation is simple.
  • It can be a complicated interface for the technician.
  • Updating and logged information can be done in a number of places so training is important.
Users can create tickets even if they are not employed by the organization.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Cherwell SM across the organization to address all the operational tickets that we will be receiving on a daily basis. The support team and all the other high-level engineers using the CSM as a one-stop portal to have a clear outline of the organizational ticketing dashboard and also to access all the knowledge-base articles.
  • Easy to navigate.
  • All-in-one console.
  • Multiple sequences.
  • Connectivity issues on the back end system (for on-prem installations).
Though the Cherwell Service Management offers multiple benefits to the organization, it's pretty slow in response while comparing it to the other competitive service management systems out there. Since we are using the on-prem hosted version of Cherwell SM, we are experiencing frequent service outages as well as user login issues to the portal.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cherwell Service Management tool is used by our entire corporation for two reasons:
1. Service Request/Incident management
2. Change request management

It allows users to log IT service requests/incidents and track their statuses.
  • Allows users to submit structured and clear service request or incident report tickets.
  • Easy to see all updates and track work done on the ticket.
  • Slow overall performance.
  • Not all search parameters available in dashboard creation option.
If you have multiple support teams in your organization, this tool is great for incident/service request handling. Tool also great for dashboard and reports creation.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Cherwell is the framework for the ITSM/ITIL initiative in the organization. It's being used a the system for Incident, Problem, Change management and it is expanding as the Configuration Item and Knowledge management.
  • Incident Management.
  • Change Management.
  • Integrating with other systems.
  • Web front end.
  • Unified client.
  • Support for web technologies.
It is well suited for the Customer Service Portal and Customer Service Fulfillment along with Change Management. The framework allows you easily to grow out of IT.
Richie Ritter | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cherwell Service Management is used as our ITSM tool to support clients of the Division of IT. We utilize Cherwell for may functions including Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Knowledge, and CMDB. Over the years we have continually expanded the use to cover new organizational needs.
  • Customization: Cherwell allows us to create custom solutions that address the specific challenges we face. From a very simple "feedback" form with a single text field to a more complex process with approvals allowing users to update information about their Configuration Items.
  • Integration: We pull data into the Cherwell system through various sources and different methods. We might use API calls to a web application to retrieve data, or directly connect to a database.
  • Cherwell currently has a sort of split system with an "Application" on one side and "Content" on the other. This is one of the greatest strengths because it enables deep customization to the "Content" while allowing new features and upgrades to the "Application" without causing disruption. Over the years, Cherwell has added great improvements to the Out-of-the-Box "Content" and the "Application" and while you can easily upgrade the "Application" side to gain the new features it provides, upgrading the "Content" is a much bigger challenge. Cherwell is very aware of this challenge, and is working to solve it, but the more you customize your "Content" the more difficult it is to pull in new features.
Cherwell is great for logic and process-based situations where you want "X" to occur when "Y" happens to "Z".
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are using Cherwell in one department fully now, implementing in another. We are Working towards full implementation across all departments, including Billing, HR, Sales, Help Desk, Software Support, Backup, Security, etc. We have problems with disjointed departments all using different platforms in order to service our customers and partners.
  • Ease of development.
  • High level of customization.
  • Great training platform.
  • Ease of implementation.
  • Some system performance and stability issues need to be addressed.
Cherwell would work great within the managed services space, as well as internal departments. It has the ability to be highly customizable between different types of users and departments, so there are a significant amount of issues that it could address. Overall, the home-run hit is in-house usage within an organization.
Jane Updegraff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cherwell Service Management is our ITSM solution for the entire enterprise. We don't use the user-facing portal but we make use of the rest of the product as our primary IT help desk management and service management tool. We needed a help desk product that could be hosted outside, that could create tickets from emails and that could automate work flows for common IT support tasks and routine operations. We had tried using a home-grown solution and trialed a couple other solutions and ended up with Cherwell mostly due to my attraction to its "middleware" architecture and the way that architecture makes it easier for me to manage. When Cherwell applies version updates on their hosted server, things don't break because its only the underlying middleware layer that updates such that all of our customizations are unaffected.
  • Cherwell's email handling automation works flawlessly. The only time that I have ever needed to reset the automation service that drives it is when my own server that houses the small connecting agent has some kind of problem and disconnects us from our hosted Cherwell instance. It just works. Emails to a certain address always result in a new ticket or update to an existing ticket.
  • Cherwell is literally 100% customization in so many ways that it would be pointless to try to enumerate them. There is a very sizable list of already-created customizations (called "mApps") that you can download and apply to your instance. If you don't like them you can roll them back in seconds. But you can add and configure entire modules using one of these pre-defined, completely free, add-on packages. It's so easy to add features this way that I check the list of available mApps every month or so just to see what functionality I can add.
  • Cherwell's sales staff could use some improvement in the "paying attention to the little guy" area. It's true that sales people are focused on their larger potential commissions, and that is understandable, but as a small business, we were treated less than well by our Cherwell salesman. I would go so far as to say that he neglected us after we made the purchase and had a very serious complaint about what he sold us. We were sold a product without any implementation plan or package. I found out that we were probably the only customer that had this happen, but I wanted to mention t because it was huge headache to implement the product without any implementation help from the vendor.
  • I think Cherwell could do a better job of keeping their USA-based hosted server farm in better working order. Their infrastructure maintenance is improving and it doesn't affect Cherwell customers that host their own on-prem Cherwell servers, but for a long while they had a lot of failures at their on-demand server farm in Denver where they host instance for the US market. We would show up in the morning and our help desk technicians couldn't login for a couple of hours. They got these issues resolved quickly enough I suppose, within a few hours. And they did upgrade their Denver datacenter about a year ago and done better at maintaining it. But we literally can't do our jobs without Cherwell working as it s our primary help desk and end-user management tool.
Cherwell is a good choice for any sized enterprise that needs an extremely customizable IT help desk solution that triggers (again, entirely customizable) automated actions, spawns workflows (and auto-spawns tasks and sub-tasks for them) for multiple IT technicians and multiple tiers of technicians. It can do project management, change management, asset management, all the same things that the others can do and far, far more. If you do NOT need a highly customized help desk solution and if you don't need automated workflow creation and task tracking, then you could buy a less expensive solution that you can use out of the box without any of the frills. But as I said, Cherwell can do a lot more than just IT help desk, and it has a huge array of "plug-in" / "add-on" features, most of which are free, that make every Cherwell implementation completely unique to the enterprise that uses it. Cherwell is just right for a company that wants to manage and customize the help desk application with a PTE resource. I manage it myself at my company, and I spend very little time maintaining it now that it's solidly established ... although it's so much fun to customize that I wish I had more time to add new features and play with it. I do strongly advise some training for the admins ... your Cherwell admins MUST take the online, instructor-led introductory admin class to kick you off, and you MUST have implementation help from Cherwell to setup your instance, especially their hosted offering, over which you don't have database admin control (you can't even turn it on to get it working without their help). But after that, there is very little support needed from your own in-house Cherwell admin resource, unless, of course, you are constantly growing the solution to make it do more. I can see how that could happen because Cherwell can do almost anything. I can imagine some departments wanting to make it into the swiss-army-knife of IT .. and HR .. and facilities .... and physical security ... and you could spend many hours down the rabbit hole doing that if you wanted to.
October 02, 2019

Cherwell Review

Catherine Stevens | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Cherwell is used within the IT department, across Service Desk, Desktop Management, IT Business Services, Information Security, Infrastructure, and Systems Administration. It tracks service requests, incidents, and changes.
  • Customization - if you can think it (and have time to develop it) you can do it.
  • Good ITSM solution OOTB and can be implemented quickly for most common needs.
  • Good user group and customer engagement.
  • Mobile app.
  • Responsive design/ADA.
  • Calling customer support.
Cherwell is suited to routine workflows, service request management, and HelpDesk management.
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