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Cherwell - ITSM
Updated July 20, 2021

Cherwell - ITSM

Keene Marin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cherwell Service Management

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.
  • We've been able to implement more easily many ITIL related items such as change management, integrated ITSM, configuration management, and others
  • The centralized nature of these tools allows for extended functionality, like downstream and upstream impact assessments
  • Asset management has become a little easier, especially with the opportunities that Cherwell gives us.
Cherwell was selected over many other competing products because it scored well in comparison tests, and offered extended functionalities that other tools did not.
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.

Cherwell Service Management Feature Ratings

Incident and problem management
7.8
Organize and prioritize service tickets
7
Self-service tools
8
Subscription-based notifications
8
ITSM collaboration and documentation
8
ITSM reports and dashboards
8
ITSM asset management
7.5
Configuration mangement
8
Asset management dashboard
7
Policy and contract enforcement
Not Rated
Change management
8.3
Change requests repository
9
Change calendar
9
Service-level management
7

Using Cherwell Service Management

250 - Technology (mostly); HR Support; Facilities Management. There are some back and forth components - i.e. HR was using it for a while, but reverted back to using their unmanaged solution (email only). Facilities is now using Cherwell for their facility management activities (HVAC etc).
Our primary provider has a 3 person team dedicated to supporting the entire organizations implementation. Internally, we have one person that supports the configuration from our perspective. The support environment is dedicated, and those individuals only work on managing and maintaining this application suite, nothing else.
  • IT Service Management
  • Asset Management / Configuration Management
  • Change Management
  • Reporting
  • We implemented a configuration for our Facilities Management team to use to manage their requests and workload
  • Using the upstream and downstream impact analysis has really helped identify some unexpected 'gotchas'
  • We are looking to broaden the usage of our internal portal to add some enhancements
  • We are connecting our Azure DevOps environment to directly create and manage related Change Management tickets
Its a really strong product, and we attach a high value to it. The cost of replacing it would be too high as well. Once we made the bigger commitment to Cherwell Service Management, its hard to back out of it - not that we would want to.