Automation Anywhere Reviews

My use case essentially involves in-house projects centered around invoice automation. They have their own mailbox where the client uploads invoices and payment information. My responsibilities include downloading, storing, and reviewing these invoices using automation. Additionally, I am tasked with automating scenarios that were previously manual processes. I am responsible for structuring the tasks, handling exceptions for efficiency, and ensuring automated email notifications are sent to clients if there are any discrepancies or missing values.

Previously, I worked with hospital automation. I had to create automation for hospital care to store patient data in some databases.

I have also designed a solution for document or file transfers and backups, as well as intelligent document processing, where I had to extract meaningful data from unstructured or semi-structured invoices. I had to train my bot to extract the required details from the invoices and store them in a database or a CSV file.

Going forward, I see a potential use of AI for automation related to chatbots, websites, and data visualization. I also see potential in doing repetitive tasks in a more thorough and error-free way.

It is pretty simple to learn. It is user-friendly, so people can learn it quickly. A person without a basic knowledge of IT or programming logic would need at least a month to understand how it works and how to code in Automation Anywhere. An experienced person would just require about 15 days.

I was previously a backend software developer, so I am good with coding. I work with multiple RPA tools such as UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Power Automate. I find these low-code or no-code solutions to be very easy. Automation Anywhere is pretty simple. It is UI-based with just the drag-and-drop functionalities. If I want to use any of the functionalities, I just have to search for that functionality and drag and drop it. After that, I only need to take care of the logic. It has been very helpful for me. It is very easy to use.

Automation Anywhere allows us to create unattended bots. These bots can work 24/7 with high accuracy and reduced costs. Last year, we made significant advancements with IQ Bots processing financial documents. It offered cost efficiency and reduced the errors typical of manual processes.

For our use cases, I integrated Automation Anywhere with Salesforce and some CRMs such as Zoho CRM. I also integrated the ChatGPT API. Automation Anywhere and other RPA solutions do a great job when it comes to integration.

They have done a good job in terms of licensing and cloud performance. They keep evolving with new technologies such as Generative AI. It works very well for processing any unstructured or semi-structured data. With OCR, we can extract meaningful data from hundreds or thousands of invoices.

The recorders are highly beneficial when automating web scraping or web automation tasks. With the recorder, I can capture all the XPath and HTML data, which can be selected in different forms like a dropdown list, radio buttons, or a click event. In Automation Anywhere, the recorder is one of the most valuable and used functionalities. 

Additionally, it includes features supporting PDF handling, Advanced Excel, Basic Excel, and XML Path. In a recent project, I integrated ChatGPT APIs with Automation Anywhere to manage email responses, enhancing communication with clients. 

Automation Anywhere has done a pretty good job with Automation Anywhere Academy. There are some certifications and basic courses in the academy. If you are working as a developer, as a business analyst, or as an RPA lead, there are separate courses for that. 

There are occasional technical issues, particularly with cloud operations. Sometimes, the bot struggles to initiate on the cloud, even when everything appears in place. This issue occasionally requires uninstalling and reinstalling a component on my PC, although I cannot recall the specific component involved. I often need to stop and restart system services to get the bot process working correctly, which can be frustrating.

I have four years of overall experience, including two and a half years as an RPA developer.

Occasionally, there are initial startup issues. Other than that, the platform runs smoothly, and the deployment process is user-friendly in both UAT and production environments. Assigning tasks to runner machines and developers is efficient.

The platform excels in scalability. 

Automation Anywhere community support is helpful. They are not always quick to respond, but they provide solutions.

At times, some issues require additional research due to inadequate documentation. Some errors were not yet encountered by others, so I could not find any solutions in their community. It required extra effort on my part to find a solution.

I use Automation Anywhere, UiPath, and Power Automate. I have good hands-on experience with Automation Anywhere.

Drawing on my experience with UiPath and other RPA tools, Automation Anywhere is user-friendly and less complex. It ranks second or third in the RPA market, while UiPath holds the top spot. Automation Anywhere is effectively capturing market share through favorable licensing terms, and it continues to expand.

It is deployed in the cloud. 

The initial setup was handled by the system team in my current company. In my previous company, I manually set up the system, assigning roles like bot runner and creator through the control board. The process is easy. You just need to remember the steps.

In terms of bot deployment, you can deploy a fully functional bot in less than 15 minutes if you have a clear understanding of which machine is the bot runner, which machine is free, and which machine is already logged in. You also have to take care of the credentials. After deployment, you also need to test the bot.

Automation Anywhere has an advantage in terms of licensing. It is more cost-efficient compared to all other RPA platforms. It is a recommended solution when clients need a cost-efficient automation tool to perform unattended automation. 

When it comes to user experience, Automation Anywhere scores a nine out of ten for ease of use, even for those new to the tool. Non-technical staff can quickly learn it with the help of Automation Anywhere Academy. However, improvements are needed for lagging issues and undocumented problems. 

Overall, based on my experience with Automation Anywhere, I would rate it a nine out of ten.

I am an assistant professor in a DMI institute in our country. In our institute, we have to manage a lot of invoice billing. I have been using the bots to automate and maintain invoicing in our institute.

We have also been using AI. I have created many projects, such as a virtual assistant, to automate tasks in our institute.

Automation has been playing a significant role in every aspect of our institution. In our institution, it is very difficult to manually manage more than 1,000 people's data. I like the ability to automate and the bot feature in Automation Anywhere.

Previously, we were doing everything manually. We needed a lot of people to do the work manually. We need 20 to 30 people to manage invoice billing every day. With Automation Anywhere, it has become very easy for us to do invoice billing. It has saved us about 80% of the time. We only need 10 people now. Financially, it has helped us a lot because we can manage tasks very easily with few people. The workload has been reduced by using automation.

I like to make use of Co-Pilot with every task because it is very reliable. They have improved it a lot. I like to use it every day and integrate it with my software. A task that takes months can be done in weeks with the help of Co-Pilot. It helps us save time and do other tasks. It saves a lot of time for employees to do or prioritize other tasks.

In terms of integration, some of our staff have been using the integration of Automation Anywhere with Microsoft 365, but I have not integrated it.

The interface is really nice and user-friendly. Anyone can start right away. 

I have been using IQ Bot, and its accuracy can be improved. It could be more accurate. 

Managing all the bots in the control room can be a difficult task for a large organization. The control room features could be enhanced for better performance.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for around one year in my institute.

At times, I faced some issues with Internet connectivity, even though I had a good Internet connection. This happened at the initial stage, but over the last five to six months, they have improved a lot. Other than that, everything is perfect. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

It is scalable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.

The automation is used by 60 to 100 people on a regular basis. Around 50 to 100 people use it at intervals. They are not using it regularly in our institute. Overall, there are about 200 to 250 users.

Around 30 to 40 people are involved in maintaining the bots that we have been using. We usually assign them tasks to maintain the bots weekly. It takes a few hours. It is not a big deal.

Support is really good and genuine. I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We have not used anything other than Automation Anywhere. We were introduced to this by an employee of one of my friends, and we have been using it. We have not used any other solution.

For a non-technical person, it can be a little bit complex, but it gets easier with time. A couple of days are enough to learn and deploy it.

We have five to six people involved in its deployment.

It has helped us save a lot of time and money. It helped us a lot financially.

It is reasonable and affordable. If you consider the tasks that we can get done using this, the pricing is reasonable and affordable.

Overall, it is not very difficult, but initially, it can be a bit difficult to understand how the bot works. Over time, even a non-technical person can manage it. A week or ten days would be enough to learn everything and start using Automation Anywhere.

I would suggest starting small for anyone new to Automation Anywhere. I would also recommend learning and gaining experience from those who are already experienced. Other than that, it is fine. I would definitely recommend Automation Anywhere to everyone.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a solid eight out of ten.

We obtain use cases from the business and optimize their solutions by implementing Lean Six Sigma methodologies to eliminate process waste. We then follow this with end-to-end automation that requires no manual intervention. Automation Anywhere is the tool we employ to achieve this.

Our goal is not to solve problems but to automate manual tasks previously performed by humans. Rule-based processes require minimal human decision-making and are ideal candidates for automation. By using Automation Anywhere, we aim to replace repetitive human labour with machine efficiency.

For example, a business user performs the same routine daily: logging in, analyzing Excel data, and responding to customer emails. This repetitive manual work is ideal for automation. We use the Automation Anywhere tool to build a bot that mimics these human actions. The bot logs in, processes emails, responds to customers, and completes the entire process autonomously, from start to finish.

We use generative AI to process emails by determining customer sentiment and intent: happy, inquiring, dissatisfied, or angry. The AI makes decisions based on email content and automatically generates requests or tickets in ServiceNow, assigning them to appropriate users. This automation replaces the manual task of sifting through thousands of daily customer emails, allowing employees to focus on higher-value work. The combination of generative AI and Automation Anywhere automates this process efficiently.

Automation Anywhere increased productivity by 30 percent.

Automation Anywhere has significantly re-emerged in the industry over the past few years. The platform has introduced numerous features and a robust cloud deployment pipeline. The initial focus is on a cloud-based architecture and a new structure supporting third-party coding languages like Python, VBScript, and VBA. Document Automation, formerly IQ Bot, simplifies document automation development. Additionally, Automation Anywhere acquired Shibumi, rebranded as CWE Manager, to provide a pipeline for automation and offer detailed performance metrics, including ROI, savings, and bot health for business users.

AI is the future, and automation is a crucial component. Our healthcare organization, which manufactures products like gloves and masks and provides in-house hospitality to patients across the US, has significant opportunities for automation and AI implementation. With six data centres globally and a new CIO focused on cost reduction, we're aggressively pursuing cloud migration to Azure and have partnered with Google for AI integration over the next five years. These initiatives aim to streamline operations, reduce costs, and enhance patient care.

Throughout my experience, I have integrated nearly 600 applications with Automation Anywhere, encompassing a diverse range of software, including desktop-based, standalone, and web-based applications.

Automation Anywhere has significantly reduced costs in my organization. For example, a team of 20 employees previously spent six minutes manually entering 20,000 Excel records into an Oracle application daily. This process consumed valuable time and resources, including Oracle licenses and employee wages. Automating this task eliminated the need for one Oracle license by accessing the database directly. Our automation solution processes 10,000 records in just 15 minutes, drastically improving efficiency and accuracy.

Integrating workflows requires careful consideration of automation complexity, determined by the number and type of applications involved and the number of interactions within each application. We assess applications based on web-based vs. standalone, legacy vs. automation-friendly, and the number of fields requiring input. A complexity score is assigned. Zero to ten is low, 11 to 20 is medium, and 21 to 30 is high, and corresponding timelines for development, testing, QA, pilot, and handover are established. Once timelines are set, we focus on securing application access for developers, providing necessary test data, and coordinating with business stakeholders for UAT testing. After successful UAT, the bot is deployed to production for a monitored pilot phase before full-scale implementation. This approach is standard workflow management practice in our organization.

The savings from automation depend on the specific automation implemented. Some automation may provide minimal benefits to the business. For example, if a new automation is introduced and the business user spends only two percent of their time per day on the related task, the savings may be insignificant. To evaluate the ROI, we calculate the costs over five years, including development, support, licensing, and infrastructure setup. In the first year, the focus is on investment and implementation. While savings may not be fully realized in the second year, from the third to fifth year, the business can expect significant returns due to reduced human labor. The automated process can be continuously enhanced to adapt to changing business requirements. My organization has achieved savings of approximately one point five billion over the past year and a half through automation.

Automation Anywhere's most valuable features include generative AI, similar to Copilot, which will significantly benefit developers; low-code or no-code technology; and document automation capable of extracting data from structured and unstructured PDF formats, presenting it clearly and easy to follow. An upcoming feature will also provide graphical representations or dashboards to illustrate cost savings, ROI, and FTE benefits achieved through process automation.

The Copilot recently integrated into Automation Anywhere requires significant refinement and additional features. Essentially, it still necessitates manual review, which is inefficient. For example, instructing Copilot to write code for opening and reading an Excel file generates necessary commands but still requires developer input to specify target data, column numbers, and desired data. This indicates a need for further training to enhance the bot's capabilities.

Integrating Automation Anywhere with existing systems often proves challenging due to the prevalence of legacy applications that are not automation-friendly. Unlike modern applications with easily identifiable elements, these older systems require creative problem-solving to develop reliable and error-resistant automation. This challenge is common across the RPA industry, necessitating innovative approaches to data extraction. For instance, utilizing software development kits, XML files, or APIs can be more efficient than navigating through multiple application pages. Additionally, implementing fuzzy logic scripts is crucial for handling data entry errors, such as name variations, to ensure accurate matching and process success.

The learning landscape for Automation Anywhere offers various certifications and training materials. While the community provides a platform for interaction and resource sharing, not all training content aligns with the specific needs of developers. Additionally, the community forum, though helpful, doesn't always provide timely or comprehensive solutions to user inquiries. The company's internal structure, with multiple product teams, can also complicate the process of obtaining support and resolving issues.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for one year.

I would rate the stability of Automation Anywhere nine out of ten.

Automation Anywhere is a highly scalable tool, particularly evident in its ability to handle user concurrency, as demonstrated in document automation. Its scalability is supported by robust hardware and software requirements, high-performance document and file processing benchmarks, and the capacity to increase or decrease resources to match fluctuating demands flexibly. Essentially, Automation Anywhere empowers businesses to adapt efficiently to changing needs.

Automation Anywhere offers tiered support levels based on partnership status. Gold, silver, and platinum partners receive varying degrees of assistance, including dedicated support teams and prioritized ticket resolution. While their services come at a premium, the benefits include timely responses and efficient problem-solving.

Neutral

I have worked in various industries and have experience automating processes using different automation tools available on the market, including VBA, VBScript, and Python.

Automation Anywhere, while a formidable RPA tool, currently ranks second behind UiPath. Both companies are industry leaders, continually innovating to enhance scalability and reliability. While Automation Anywhere has made significant strides in recent years, UiPath maintains a slight edge in overall market performance. Compared to other available options, Automation Anywhere remains a top choice due to its robust features and reliability.

The deployment process in Automation Anywhere is relatively straightforward. We export the package from one environment and import it into another. However, each organization has its own unique deployment standards, often involving processes like change advisory board approvals. Therefore, the actual deployment method will vary depending on the specific organization's guidelines and procedures.

The overall deployment time for a robot is five minutes. A team was involved in this process. As the developer, I was responsible for obtaining the necessary approvals and moving the robot code from enrolment to deployment. Other organizations may have specific teams dedicated to these tasks. For example, they might have their own Centre of Excellence team that handles all deployments. Therefore, the deployment process can vary depending on the automation and the specific organization. In my current organization, we handle deployments ourselves, while in my previous organization, there was a separate team dedicated to this task. Prior to that, a support engineer typically performed these duties.

Automation Anywhere's pricing is significantly higher than other RPA solutions. We recently conducted a small proof of concept with their generative AI integration and received a quote of $75,000 for one year. In comparison, Microsoft offered a similar solution for only $20,000. This substantial price difference makes Automation Anywhere one of the most expensive RPA options on the market, second only to UiPath.

I would rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten.

I would rate the ease of use of Automation Anywhere as a six out of ten for someone without any technical expertise.

The learning curve for non-technical people is two months.

There are several areas for improvement in the implementation of Automation Anywhere. Many employees are reluctant to entrust their tasks to automation due to concerns about job displacement. While this is a common misconception, automation is designed to streamline processes and free up employees to focus on more complex and strategic tasks. From a development perspective, Automation Anywhere continually introduces new features, but there is often a lack of effective communication and training. To maximize the benefits of automation, developers should adopt a proactive approach, seeking creative solutions and considering the user-friendliness of automated processes.

My entire organization has close to 27,000 employees worldwide. Our enterprise team, consisting of 15 members including me, handles automation work for the entire organization. My team consists of six members dedicated to support activities, monitoring and assisting the robots. The remaining members are part of the development team, solely focused on development tasks.

Upgrading Automation Anywhere is a moderately complex task due to the numerous dependencies that must be carefully considered and planned for during any migration or upgrade. Yesterday, we successfully migrated our Automation Anywhere Control Room from version 32 to version 33. Prior to the upgrade, we underwent extensive preparation, including reviewing Change Advisor Reports, obtaining necessary approvals, and coordinating with the database team to create a backup of the Automation Anywhere database. Once these prerequisites were fulfilled, we proceeded to the server, uninstalled version 32, and installed version 33. The previously created backup was then integrated to ensure accurate data reflection in the latest version. While proper planning is essential, the upgrade process is neither overly complex nor excessively straightforward, making it a medium-level task.

We have a team of six dedicated to support and maintenance activities, managing approximately 250 automations across our organization. The level of maintenance required varies depending on the developer's experience and the complexity of the automation. Junior developers may create bots that are more prone to errors, leading to increased maintenance. However, senior developers or well-designed automations typically require less maintenance. In addition to support and maintenance, our team is also responsible for minor enhancements, bug fixes, and upgrades or downgrades of our automation systems.

We don't need to constantly monitor the bot as it runs according to its schedule. It performs its tasks autonomously, but manual intervention is necessary in certain situations. For example, if an expected input file fails to arrive at the scheduled time, the automation process will stop. In such cases, a support engineer must contact the business to address the missing file. Additionally, manual intervention might be required for downstream automation tasks, such as when a front-end UI changes on an application. These situations depend on the specific downstream application, business needs, and other factors.

I would highly recommend Automation Anywhere as a technology solution. I've been involved with it for nearly twelve years and have witnessed its remarkable evolution. From its early stages to its current state, I'm impressed by its potential for future innovation and problem-solving. Moreover, I've seen first-hand how Automation Anywhere has significantly benefited businesses by reducing costs and saving on full-time equivalent labour. In one instance, I observed how a single automation process could accomplish the work of ten people in just one hour.

I was working for an airline client that had their processes in the mainframe. The application Sabre that they had was all terminal-based. It was very difficult to navigate and capture everything. We automated a lot of tasks related to validation. For example, when someone booked a flight ticket and tried to cancel it, they needed to give some reason. We had rule-based validation, so we had to validate the reasons and assess them. Previously, it was all manual and terminal-based, and then we used Automation Anywhere to automate.

We also used Automation Anywhere to do a lot of PO manipulation. It was done in an application called Coupa. We used to do that automation with APIs. API automation was very easy with Automation Anywhere. We used it to automate such tasks.

Automation Anywhere was introduced as an RPA tool to facilitate the digital transformation journey of the client organization. They wanted to eliminate a lot of manual tasks and provide quality work for their employees rather than them doing manual activities. They also wanted to make sure that a process was in place. They wanted a very low code or no code automation so that even business people could upscale themselves and automate. They wanted to free up their employees from such manual tasks and have a lot of bandwidth to do some other research.

In the use case related to the cancellation of a ticket, a lot of things have to be handled. When you cancel a ticket, the airline has to make an update at a lot of places. Only then you would get the refund. It involves a lot of processes. They could be related to the meal or something else. Even if you have not subscribed to any add-ons, all the checkboxes have to be ticked, and only after everything is cleared, you get your refund. Before automation, the refund process was very tedious. When they were doing it manually, any mistake could lead to incorrect transactions. For example, they might end up transferring a different amount. It was a very tedious process, and it was handled with the Sabre application, which was not very user-friendly. It was mostly a terminal-based mainframe application. It had a user interface, but a person with good experience was required for it. A fresher or somebody less experienced could not do it. You needed to know where exactly to go, and there were a lot of things that you had to learn to do this process. It was always done by an experienced engineer, and it was very manual involving navigating different screens. During COVID-19 times, there was a shortage of employees, and the airline was handling a lot of regulations, so this manual process became more problematic. At that time, we introduced Automation Anywhere. We were targeting only 50% automation, but we were able to automate 80% to 90%. It significantly improved the time to process a request and reduced the dependency on a senior engineer for the process. The robot could handle the process. We had programmed the robot. It was a very good experience. It helped the client navigate through tough times.

When you decide to automate a process, you try to understand the process in and out. You try to understand the exception scenarios and how to solve them. You prepare a process discovery document. While doing this documentation, you try to streamline the process because Automation Anywhere, as a tool, needs to be configured to automate that process. It forces us to ask a lot of questions, such as what if the file to be downloaded is not there. You come across all such things at the initial phase. That helps a person to restructure the process and fine-tune it more strategically. It saves a lot of time. It has plenty of features to do Excel operations. It has a lot of capability for querying. You can read data from Excel and process it using a query. You do not have to do Excel operations one by one. It is very quick. If a person is taking 30 minutes to do the operation, it takes only seconds or minutes to finish it. It provides a lot of efficiency.

You also have a lot of traceability. You have a lot of logs. You can see what happened after a process. When you have an audit, you have some traceability. A person doing a task does not always document each and every step. He or she would just do the task and finish it off. When you automate the process with Automation Anywhere, because the robot is doing the tasks, you get a lot of logs and a lot of traceability for auditing.

At the initial stages of automation, you also redefine and optimize a process. Instead of downloading 4 Excel files at different places, you try to standardize it. You give a standard name and a standard path. Everything is standardized, and a lot of focus is put on security and data privacy. We are very conscious of not saving it at any location that is accessible to anybody else. Subconsciously, we do all these checks. It improves the security and data privacy aspects. It also leads to process optimization. Like any RPA tool, it saves a lot of time, and it is efficient, and then logs are there as a good source of tracking.

Automation Anywhere is easy. It takes one to two weeks to introduce a non-technical person to this solution. They already have good domain knowledge, and they just need to know how to work with the tool. In about a week, we will be able to train them in basics. We can show them the interface. We can show them what goes where, but they will not be able to develop full automation or know about full RPA coding. They can get the basic knowledge in one to two weeks. Full training will require building a use case. It could be a small use case. If a developer would take four weeks, which includes development, testing, and other things, a non-technical person would require eight weeks. Only then a person will be able to learn completely and become a very good developer.

In terms of integration, there was SAP integration and Sabre integration. There was one more application. I worked only with these applications. If there is a component available, the integration goes smoothly. When you want to go for something customized and you try to build an integration, it is very challenging, but that is common with all the tools. When you try an out-of-the-box integration, it is very easy because they would have already tested that it is working. When you try to build something or customize it, that is when the challenges come. I have seen plenty of challenges with Automation Anywhere when you go for something that is not there in the package. You need a lot of support from the team and a lot of effort. The security restrictions from the organization were also stopping the integration. It was not happening. A lot of errors came, and we had to reach out to the network team and the security team. There were networking and security issues that had to be resolved.

Automation Anywhere has saved time and costs, but I do not have the metrics.

I have not used the recent versions, but it provides a great way to automate. Excel automation is quite valuable. Initially, it was only there in Automation Anywhere. It was not very popular with other automation tools. Excel automation is a very good feature. A lot of back-office activities happen in Excel. It is a very needed feature that Automation Anywhere provides.

In 2021, Automation Anywhere switched from on-premises to cloud. They renamed it as A360. They brought the required changes with this version. Before that, they used to have a line-by-line code view. They did not have a flowchart diagram, but it was very much needed. Because it was low code, a pictorial representation of the code was something that was missing in Automation Anywhere. It was there in UiPath and Power Automate at the time. Automation Anywhere then introduced two views. That gave people the option to use the view that they were comfortable with. That was a very brilliant move. Having two options made it very accessible.

It is very user-friendly. The AI capability that nowadays I am seeing in Automation Anywhere is very good. They have plug-and-play AI solutions. You do not need to know a lot about coding or AI to implement AI in your automation. You can just use their plug-and-play solutions. That is where its real strength is.

Automation Anywhere is easy, but the Automation Anywhere courses are not so easy. All RPA tools have their own academy where business users can go and learn the solution and do things themselves. Automation Anywhere courses are a little bit complex to understand. You need a little bit more time, and accessibility is also a little bit of an issue. They should focus a bit more on the academy and learning materials on their portal. The content should be easy to understand. It is not easy to grasp for a non-technical person. It should be easy for citizen developers. Also, their certification is very costly.

There should be more visibility as an RPA product. Every organization is trying to stick with certain tools. I like Automation Anywhere, and I would like to work with it, but I am not getting an opportunity. Automation Anywhere is not promoting itself to other organizations. Organizations are moving towards Power Automate and UiPath. It could be because Automation Anywhere is not reaching out to companies.

Their community events are also less. There are not many developer events in the cities where IT is there. In Bangalore, India, most of the IT companies are there, so we get to go to a lot of conferences. We get to hear a lot from other vendors, but Automation Anywhere's events are very limited. They should take care of their presence in the community and companies.

They should introduce videos for the new features. They should promote new features. They should be known to people. They should be accessible to people. Only then developers or companies will know about it. Only then, it will get used. There are probably plenty of good features, but they are not known or explored.

I worked with Automation Anywhere for 2 years.

It is a stable product. I would rate it a 7 out of 10 for stability. It is not a perfect product, but it is improving every day.

It is not very scalable. I would rate it a 6 out of 10. After you have built your robot, if you want to make some changes, you can do that, but if you built a robot and you want to make it an AI-enabled robot, it is quite a challenging task.

There were many users of this solution. I was a part of the Center of Excellence. The finance team and HR team were also trying to use it. There were more than 50 people for this solution.

I was getting good support from them. I would rate them a 9 out of 10. They were always very helpful to me. My colleagues have had a bit of a bad experience, but I did not. I have raised a few tickets, and every time, the person was attentive and helped me out. They were very patient. They were straight to the point. They knew the technology.

Positive

I am working with UiPath and Power Automate. Automation Anywhere has got its own benefits and its own strong points, and the same is applicable to other vendors. It is just about which one your organization is aligned with and which one your organization has chosen to go forward with. However, other vendors are better in terms of reach. Even if I am not working on Power Automate for six to seven months, I get to learn about it. I see a lot of things on LinkedIn. There are communities where I can go to learn and keep myself updated, whereas, about Automation Anywhere, I do not see much information. I have to exclusively go and spend a lot of time to find the information. That is where I see the difference.

It was on-prem before, and then we migrated to A360. It was already deployed when I joined, so I do not know about it, but migration took 4 to 5 months.

There were 4 people mainly focusing on migration. It was a bit complex because it was new, and there was not a lot of material available online. It was a little complex, but later, it became smooth. We reported a lot of bugs, and other people also reported them. It was very smooth.

It is cost-efficient in terms of licensing. I found their support good when I was working for the airline client. However, I hear from my managers here that the support price for Tier 3 or premium is a little higher. That is why we are not going for Automation Anywhere. Its price was okay for our client, but for us, it seems expensive.

Automation Anywhere was a tool that was decided by our client. They were very much satisfied with how work was progressing. It gave them faster results, and it helped them navigate through the Covid-19 situation.

I would recommend Automation Anywhere. It is a very solid product. I have always vouched for it. I see a lot of potential because it is very easy and it was a stable product when I was working with it. They were very careful about their releases. They were not releasing a lot of things, which is something I see in other products. With Automation Anywhere, each release is very carefully tested.

They introduce new features, but I have noticed that in India, the market for Automation Anywhere is not very big. I am not getting to work on Automation Anywhere because companies are moving to Power Automate and UiPath, so I am not able to learn it more. It is difficult to get hold of this solution.

In terms of our organization’s perspective when it comes to automation and AI, specifically Generative AI (GenAI), we want about 50% of the income coming from IT and services. Automation and AI are placed at the top of the strategy. We are moving towards RPA plus AI and ML. It is almost like hyperautomation or intelligent automation. This is one focus area, and another one is Pure Generative AI and data. The data part is handled by a different organization. We are looking into how to drive insights from data analytics and how to leverage the GenAI technology outside and derive value from it. These are highly focused areas.

I would rate Automation Anywhere an 8 out of 10. I liked working with it.

I am the manager of our intelligent automation COE within HR. We operate in a federated model. I lead the HR team, and there are similar teams that exist across the company in five or six other areas.

We have plenty of use cases within HR specifically. We have automation for candidate-facing opportunities before people join the company. We especially have a lot of automation opportunities for our recruiting. The human capital management platform that we use is an SAP product. We use SAP SuccessFactors, so naturally, a lot of our automation opportunities come through that platform. There are a lot of emails and notifications to managers for talent management, talent acquisition, and all the way through to payroll, or anything that falls underneath the HR function. Nothing is off limits, and we have pretty much touched most of the functional areas within the department.

In terms of comparing the processes and tasks automated using Automation Anywhere versus how they were done prior to implementation, a lot of the processes had remained the same, especially in the early years. A lot of people were leveraging RPA platforms to recreate processes the way a human was doing them, so the look and feel were very similar to how a human was doing a process, going across applications over the UI, whereas now, there is a heavy focus on process improvement. A lot of people are leaning into process improvement or re-engineering a process before it is automated and making sure that we are automating the right thing. 

It allows for more reliable dynamic automations if you can leverage something out of the UI. You can leverage a database or an API versus automating something similar to how a human would click through a screen. There is definitely a heavy emphasis on design requirements or completely changing a process from a functional perspective, which takes a lot of work, but your automation is easier to create and maintain in the long run.

Before Automation Anywhere, I have used other RPA platforms. From comparing it to others, it is very intuitive. I do not have a development background, but I lead a team of developers. I am trying to manage and teach them how to use the tool as well. I find that it comes across as very easy to use. I have seen a handful of new developers pick it up within a couple of days. They are able to understand the UI and create their first couple of automations within a few weeks and then they get running with very complex things within the first year. It is very intuitive to use. There are definitely a lot more capabilities coming out, but it is all within the same platform. If you know how to go through the platform, they make it very easy to deploy technical solutions.

Automation Anywhere is one of the easier platforms to learn. There are a lot of online resources, and they also have a community forum. If there is not a video on how to do something explicitly and you have a question, in their developer community, people are quick to respond. You can also simply Google something or look at their website, and you will be able to find an answer for it. Especially after you go through the first couple of days of their university's online training through the community version or get your hands on automation, it clicks pretty quickly. When you see it once and learn everything that is in the platform, everything comes pretty quickly after that, so the learning curve is pretty shallow. 

In terms of the tools that are integrated with Automation Anywhere, we are doing a lot of work within ServiceNow. I just became aware they have a thing called Connector Builder, which basically allows us to build connections right there within Automation Anywhere with ServiceNow. There are other integrations with SAP or Active Directory right there in the developer's toolkit so that they can build automations with it. This makes integrating with your system of records or whatever systems you are automating a lot easier.

We have not done any integrations with document automation. That is a big use case that we are looking at. I know intelligent document processing has come a long way, so I am very interested to see how seamless that integration works out. In terms of being able to integrate and leverage any of our SaaS platforms or on-prem applications that we are automating, we have not seen any limitations to it. We have been able to automate everything. Being able to use API task paths or just expose more endpoints from an API perspective makes the developers' lives a lot easier. It is technically a little bit harder, but if you are able to use APIs, then integrating that way will alleviate future maintenance for automation. It is definitely useful to have that in the platform.

Automation Anywhere has had a big impact on the business. I can speak mostly from an HR perspective. All of our automations that are currently running in production save about 2 million dollars annually, both from a cost savings and cost avoidance perspective. Certain things have a dollar amount. There is a dollar amount associated with a transaction that we can automate, and then we can also inject that time back into our employees' days. Freeing up that capacity allows them to go use their human decision-making skills on more advanced and complex projects and allows automations to do that manual, repetitive, and mundane work. Hours-wise, I do not have a metric, but we are able to save 2 million dollars with our portfolio. We are continuing to add new automations, which makes that number go up and up. 

In terms of time savings, it has been super helpful. We are able to give employees their time back.

We have not had any issues with scalability. Everything from our licensing structure and being able to deploy bots across the enterprise is pretty efficient. Being able to get the most out of our bot runners and start looking at bot performance and utilization across those machines has enabled us to get the most out of it. We are able to deploy everything that at least HR needs right now. I know some of the other companies or departments might need more bot runners to keep up with that scalability. When it comes to end-to-end automation and working across COEs in a federated model, that is a different story. We have not tackled that yet, but in terms of being able to deliver work for HR at our company, Automation Anywhere has been a huge help, and there were no issues in terms of getting the job done.

Automation Anywhere offers a lot of programs to get involved. I recently became involved in their MVP, the Most Valuable Pathfinder program. That is a smaller group in the Pathfinder community that allows us to see early access to what is coming and things that will be showcased at Imagine or the products clubs. We sometimes will be able to get early access to dev environments to go poke around and see what is coming. That helps leadership also see what is coming and be able to make a decision on whether or not to buy new features or capabilities. It gives us a little bit more time to go out to our business stakeholders and the people we are automating processes for and say that there is a use case here. Could we apply some new technologies? 

Four or five years ago, we looked at everything in terms of whether we could automate a functional process, but now, there is a lot more coming with Generative AI and intelligent document processing. There are product clubs and community forums to see how others are leveraging the same tools. It is super helpful to see how other people are applying the same technology. It may spark some interest throughout our company.

The most valuable feature of the platform right now for us is just getting the most out of the tool. When I first joined the company, we were on version 11, which is the on-premise version of Automation Anywhere. Getting over to the new cloud platform A360 has enabled us to get the most out of general RPA or robotic process automation. There are plenty more tools that we are looking at, but just being able to automate functional processes, whether through the UI or APIs, to alleviate that manual work from the department has been really our bread and butter. That is where we see a lot of the value for the company right now.

From a platform perspective, our model has been getting operational data back out to our automation owners. We are a pretty small team. We have about 70 automations in production. Everything that we automate, we naturally own a fraction of that just from a technical perspective. Having a team of developers, you want them focused on building new things. We are at an inflection point where we have automated so much that just keeping the lights on certainly takes 20% to 50% of the time, depending on the time of year. Being able to enable the stakeholders is one of my main focuses. If we are automating their process, I want them to continue owning that as much as possible. We are just expanding on the bot insights. From a security perspective, there have been some challenges for us getting our customers in there from a role-level security perspective and making sure that they have full access to the control room and their automation after it is automated. Being able to manage a digital worker has been a big focus. That is what I am looking to get the most out of the tool right now.

I have been in automation for about seven years now. This is my second or third year with Automation Anywhere, specifically. I just went over my two-year mark. This is the beginning of the third year using the platform.

The stability of Automation Anywhere is fantastic. The platform itself is very reliable. Automation, in general, can be finicky sometimes, and it will break. That is business as usual, but in terms of the platform, reliability, and uptime, it is good. If there are patches, by being on the cloud, we get them faster. Fixes and new features are constantly available to us. We have no complaints there. It has been a great journey.

I have not had any issues being able to deploy solutions for all of HR. The platform has everything to offer that we would need to automate for our company.

Their customer support is very good. There are very few times when we have to go out and open up a ticket, but every time we do, we get very timely support. We seem to be getting connected to the same reps, which is super helpful to build that relationship. If we cannot find a knowledge article or something online, they point us in the right direction or let us know if there is a patch or something else coming that will fix it for us.

I have used a competitor. I worked with UiPath for about four years before Automation Anywhere. There are a lot of similarities in terms of conceptual robotic process automation and similar trends in terms of intelligent document processing, process mining, and task mining. I am sure they all have features around Generative AI.

It was deployed before I joined. In terms of the deployment model, it is probably fully on the cloud, but I am not too sure. When I joined two years ago, we were on version 11 on-prem. One of the biggest things I had to do was migrate us from version 11 to the cloud version.

Even if we do not automate anything and just keep the automations that we have running, that is going to save around 2 million dollars year over year for our HR group. Continuing to expand into new automations will drive higher ROI. So, year over year, even if we do not continue to automate anything, those savings and those hours continually go back into the business.

I do not have any experience with pricing and licensing. We have an admin team and IT team that handles a lot of the infrastructure and technology, so I would not be able to speak too much about that.

Automation Anywhere was evaluated before I joined my current company, so I cannot speak much about that. I know they worked with an implementation partner, and that Automation Anywhere was obviously the chosen one.

We do not use Automation Co-Pilot. It is definitely one of the items or features that I am very interested in. I was excited to get my hands on it during the bot games today at the Imagine event and see how it works. You can give it a string of text, and it will generate code for you right there in the control room. That is super helpful. I am looking to see how my developers react to that as well. I am sure that would save some time from the developer aspect. There is another aspect for business users. I certainly think there are some use cases there that they would be interested in looking at.

My favorite aspect of the Imagine event has been connecting with everyone in person. I work remotely, so it is nice to see people in person. We get to sit in a room and do the bot games again. We get to see some cool new features and everything around Generative AI. I do not hear the term RPA so much. The big focus in the world is Generative AI. There are a lot of keynotes, and we are able to see how people are starting to apply it early. There is a lot of excitement. It is an exciting time, and I am very interested to see how we will be able to leverage Automation Anywhere with the new technologies.

The Imagine experience is energetic. The world of Gen AI feels like a bit of a playground. It is generating a lot of buzz all the way up at our executive level, and I am sure it is the same for a lot of people. I see the wheels spinning for everyone. There are ideas, and it is good to see everyone saying to start small. It felt a little bit daunting how we are going to apply this, but it is nice to see everyone reiterating the same thing, "It is coming, and you have to be careful. Start small, and it is a journey." It is nice. It is a good pivot.

If I were to invite people to the Imagine event, I would say that it feels like a tight-knit community. There are probably a couple of thousand people here. Seeing familiar faces and being able to meet everyone and talk about some of the same struggles that we might be seeing is good. We get to know how others are thinking through it. Being able to see the new technologies is awesome. That was one of the main reasons I wanted to come. It forces you to take a look at what is coming next and how others are applying it and start thinking so that you can make a decision on where you can help your customers with it.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a solid eight out of ten. It is not perfect. There are probably a couple of little things, but being with the tool for two years, I have seen so much being changed. It is a playground. There are plenty of features and capabilities. We are just scratching the surface, so I am excited to see what is next. It is very good.

We have a pretty big shop nowadays. We have 324 automations in production. Our use cases were concentrated on loan services. Most recently, our initiatives have been targeted in the control space - automating the things that make the bank go around and seeing that the bank is in a good position every day. 

We have a backlog in the hundreds, automation is not something that we'll finish anytime soon. It's definitely a marathon to finish all the things that we need to do.

In 2017, there was a lot of hype around RPA. They paved the way for us to see those benefits, and we continue to grow every year. 

In those early days, we had 28 automations in our first year. We thought we were pretty proud of that number. In 2023, we created over 100 automations in a single year and moved those to production. The volume and the increased capacity for our businesses improved. The employee engagement, when we talk about bots now, is much better. It's "how can we help?" There are no real concerns of "They're going to replace our jobs." Over seven years, our automations have grown, and we've matured with them. 

There are several aspects that we value. The control rooms, monitoring the performance, and making sure everything is up and running has been a great feature. From the design and capacity of the developers' perspective, the intuitive interface is excellent. It's a workflow-driven design session. Following the flow of the users alongside the code makes for an easy automation that everyone can understand.

Automation Anywhere brings in and changes the way we do process automation. Everything was very manual beforehand. We'd have to do batch processes where integrations of systems were pretty costly and took a lot of time. Mapping database fields from screens down to the next system was more difficult versus with Automation Anywhere, you get the visual input of the screens. You can click on those fields and not have to do the data mapping or extract them. You can correlate them to other systems almost instantly individually. 

Automation Anywhere is easy to pick up for business users. Initially, we trained 45 people. Whoever raised their hands, we said, "We'll train you." About 65% of those initial trainees were from the business side. A couple of years later, we noticed that the people who created the automation did really well. They were receiving promotions. Then, all of a sudden, we didn't have the people to support our automation needs since those original trainees moved up. We made a shift and said, "Hey, business users, you want to come to technology? We're going to centralize development." 13 said yes, and we kept building out. Now we're a team that's 40-strong.

The learning curve is pretty quick. Automation Anywhere provides a lot of training courses to support you and there are individuals assigned to your account. The learning curve is short from our standpoint. We spend two weeks with anyone who comes in, whether they're a previous developer or a business person. We find that simple automations can be completed within that training period. Within six months, some of the most complex items people are able to handle.

Right now, our 324 automations touch around 120 different systems. Our core platforms are integrated. APIs are being used for SharePoint or imaging systems so  thatwe don't really have a reliance on the UI. With the integrations, we just continue to grow. 

The integration of Automation Anywhere into our workflows, APIs, business applications, and documents is great. There are several phases to this one. Automation Anywhere, just the design, the tool, allows you to jump in with workflows initially and lay out the complete automation, and then you can get into the details. For us, it's particularly powerful as it aligns with the different systems that we work with, as well as providing connectivity to the underlying systems, seeing the screens to get into the details of that workflow, making for a great design process for our automation.

Our automation program has positively affected our business in terms of employee capacity and compliance. It's affected all areas. When we think of the capacity, I can go back to 2020 in the early days of COVID and with a payment protection program specifically. We had 9,000 tellers who no longer were going into the bank. We pivoted to an SBA program and had those 9,000 tellers calling a variety of small businesses. We still needed 1,000 more people to do the due diligence. That's where RPA shined. We were able to fill that capacity gap and immediately become one of the top three players in the space. 

When I think of just day-to-day employee engagement, we're focused on the controls of the bank. Those happen maybe once a month, once a quarter, once a year. So those are activities that you really have to prep for and document really well. RPA does the same thing over and over really well, and those controls are assured to be done and executed in the same fashion over and over.

Automation Anywhere has helped us save on both time and cost. When we think of we run around 750,000 hours of runtime on bots per year. That would be a significant amount of employees. That's about 450 to 500 employees' worth of work done every day. Just the overall capacity provided by automation would be hard to replace.

Automation Anywhere's ability to provide Automation at scale is impressive. We've obviously pushed that limit. We're at 324 automations. That's over 4200 tasks executed every day. From a scale and monitoring perspective, we know which bots are running, which ones may be going slow, and which didn't run. The ability of the control with room to monitor allows us to jump in and help out when necessary. That is paramount to our success. 

Automation Anywhere helps us find value. We do use professional services from time to time to augment both our capacity and capabilities while finding new ways of doing things. This is a very fast-moving environment. The things that we did five years ago are gone. We threw them away. We upgraded to new versions and have new capabilities. Keeping up with the latest and greatest is always a challenge. There are also new ways of development and sharing those findings, whether it's a webcast or part of the Pathfinder program; we're always curious about what's next with the product.

The tools are fundamentally solid. However, when I think of self-healing, such as automation with a new prompt or a new Windows patch occurring, being able to handle those kinds of things on top of what Automation Anywhere already does and that automatically click through and do the reboots that are necessary to just have a clean run would be ideal. That way, no one has to wake up in the middle of the night and adjust something. That would be amazing. 

Our company has been using Automation Anywhere for seven years. I've been using Automation Anywhere since 2017.

From a stability perspective, whether it's servers or virtual desktops with agents, we have very few issues. We have multiple servers and have never experienced downtime. We have had one or two nodes go down based on hardware issues, however, it's resilient. 

We're now at 324 automations, and it definitely scales. The screens prioritize things, and you have dashboards that say what's working and what isn't. Those types of activities help drive us to where the problems are and show us what we need to resolve them.

Technical support is solid. We pick up the phone and call and create tickets. We get responses almost instantly. We've had many nights trying to figure out how things work on our network or looking at logs. They've been great about jumping in any time we've asked for help. 

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution.

Throughout the history of development, people have tried to automate things. We've never used a tool that had the control room and the features, the scheduling, and the complexity that it could handle. When Automation Anywhere packaged the whole bundle together, that was the differentiator that really drove us to it.

When we think of ETL, all the standard tools, whether it's SQL or Oracle, we still have all those. However, for speed and simplicity and getting things to production fast, we'll leverage Automation Anywhere.

Many other options often require a data expert. You have to go to database tables to do automation or ETL-type activities, and you have to schedule that and know if there are conflicts within other systems. Plus, if there's downtime, you may not be able to run pieces. It's true coding. There is testing that's also required and the delivery time is not measured in weeks. It's measured in months. We'd all like everything to integrate seamlessly. That said, the real world comes into play, and I'm glad we have Automation Anywhere to fill everything out. 

Setup for us was probably the longest lead time. We're a bank, so we always have to scan the code base. We want to jump in, understand the connectivity, and understand how things are going to happen. There are a lot of planning-type activities before the install. We started in 2017 with version seven of Automation Anywhere. We went through version ten, then moved on to the A360. Each experience became better and better.

We have a PCI-compliant installation as well as our normal normal network.

Our experience deploying Automation Anywhere was seamless. From a server perspective, we run about a dozen servers in four dev IT QB production environments. We'll continue to do the first servers in dev and move to migrate them all the way through production. For any issues that we have along the way, customer service is right there with us to troubleshoot.

We've seen an ROI via hard saves. We define a hard save as someone having to leave the bank or a contract has to leave. We are net positive in our spend. We've managed to prioritize the highest use cases from a cost-saving perspective.

We find it comparable to other products out there. I wouldn't say huge differentiators from that perspective. 

We looked at autoIT to look at for specialty use cases. 

The very first bot that was rolled out was on my team. I've been able to see the control room and the code in progress and evolve over the years has been a pleasure. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

From an RPA perspective, it has all the core functionality. We can automate the bank's systems. The reliability, performance monitoring, and development time are excellent. In 2017, it used to take us six to nine months to develop. That was slow. Fast-forward to 2024, and it takes six weeks, plus or minus two weeks depending on complexity, to deliver an automation. 

Our primary functionality is built around screen scraping applications. We collect data from one application and either generate reports or use it to complete a user transaction or a customer transaction. For example, I have automation that handles bill pay. A request comes in, we verify it, and then we execute a bill payment transaction.

When we first started, the motivation was not wanting to be left behind in the latest and greatest opportunity for automating desktop applications that are boring and time-consuming but are still very important for the company's business operations.

We were able to see its benefits immediately during our proof of concept five years ago. We were able to take five users of daily work and reduce it to one user of support work. It was very significant.

Prior to implementation, these processes were done by the business units manually. Post implementation, the solutions are IT-based. As a result, IT now has additional responsibility for the business automation, just supporting the business function. It is one thing to build the software. It is another thing to maintain it and keep it running in production. There is a pretty significant lift or burden on the IT side that was not there during the manual executions.

I like the diversity. Every year, maybe even every six months, new modules are introduced to the program, and module enhancements are added to the toolbox to make automating various applications or situations easier. For example, the email module has been enhanced over the years to support all the latest authentication technologies. That is very important as we move away from username and password and embrace multi-factor authentication. Without the ability for these modules to stay in sync and up to date, we would not be able to use them. 

On the document automation side, the document learning features are not as robust as one would expect them to be. When I am doing document automation and a document fails due to low confidence in populating a field, it requires manual correction. Automation Anywhere states that if I correct enough documents, over time, the automation tools will learn where those error situations are and automatically fix them. We have not seen that feature work as advertised.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for roughly five years.

We have not had any issues. I am very impressed with its availability.

It scales quite well. I have not found an application that has exhausted the capacity of the system to execute. If we need to handle more transactions, we simply need to add additional bot runners. We currently have three bot runners in production. If we needed five or ten, I could have five or ten in a couple of days.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rank their technical support group a nine.

Positive

We have two other solutions in-house other than Automation Anywhere. They are very specific to the tasks they are handling.

It was pretty easy. I took a proof of concept that took nine months to build. Since I could not copy it from the proof of concept environment to our brand-new tenant or control room, we had to reprogram it. The reprogramming and testing took three months. Now, if you put all those numbers together, you probably could say it took us a year to build that first application.

It requires operation execution maintenance by my company and my IT group, but it does not take any Automation Anywhere resources to maintain it now. They maintain it at the cloud level and do a good job.

Two people were involved in the implementation.

The pricing is fair. My company is part of a big organization, so the pricing is very advantageous.

Five years ago, we evaluated four products, and Automation Anywhere emerged as the top choice. It offered the best cloud solution compared to the other vendors or providers. Now, if I took those same four vendors and evaluated them today, I might come up with a different answer. The industry has changed drastically just in the last three or four years, and if we did a reevaluation and could start over, chances are everyone, including Automation Anywhere, is on much better footing today than they were five years ago.

In terms of our AI approach, we are very cautious with AI. We are a Microsoft shop, so we are limiting our AI exposure to an Azure tenant-based AI resource. We are probably building our own LLMs to manage the intelligence or the exposure of intelligence to the AI engine. I do not see us ever using external AI modules.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine. 

I utilize Automation Anywhere for automation purposes. Recently, I completed a project for a client in the telecom sector. The project involved automating their monthly bill review system for customers. Previously, this system required on-site employees to check millions of invoices each month manually. A dedicated department then verified these invoices, sent them to customers, and verified payment status after payment. This process was time-consuming. We used Automation Anywhere's RPA and OCR capabilities and the AI document processing module to analyze document structures and verify tabs. We then automated various steps like accessing the portal, applying checks, and sending invoices via email. Now, the entire process is automated, triggered by a robot each month.

The main challenge which organizations want to address through any implemented RPA solution is the repetitive nature of their tasks. Instead of having ten employees perform the same monotonous task from nine to five every day, a single RPA robot can handle the workload, freeing those employees to focus on tasks that require human intervention. Automation is ideal for repetitive tasks, such as processing millions of invoices monthly, which can now be managed by a few RPA robots working around the clock. This allows employees to explore new opportunities, which is the primary goal of automation and the main reason for using RPA or any automation technology. Most automation technologies have features that enable this shift. However, automation is not suitable for all tasks; tasks requiring approvals or human judgment cannot be automated.

The deployment model varies depending on the client. In Pakistan, I worked with several clients using ABL who opted for cloud deployment. However, clients dealing with highly confidential and sensitive data, such as banks and telecommunications companies, prefer on-premises solutions. In contrast, clients in sectors like healthcare might be more open to utilizing cloud infrastructure.

Automation Anywhere has enabled repetitive tasks previously done manually to be automated.

Regarding RPA, ever since generative AI was introduced, we have ChatGPT and Google Gemini. The advent of these generative AI models has shifted the automation landscape. Automation has moved from Robotic Process Automation towards Intelligent Process Automation. The difference between RPA and IPA lies in their ability to handle changes. For example, if a website form changes its layout, a traditional RPA bot might fail because it can't identify the fields or buttons in their new positions. However, with IPA, the bot is intelligent enough to understand the fields' requests and can still process the data regardless of UI changes. Besides this, numerous other IPA use cases leverage Large Language Models and generative AI. For instance, a company could have a trained dataset monitored by an RPA bot, which then uses generative AI to create and send daily reports to top management, analyzing current numbers concerning past performance. This is a fascinating area that I've been exploring and working on lately.

For business users without technical skills, automation is achievable depending on the complexity of the task. Simple processes like sending custom emails from an Excel list can be easily automated with basic tutorials. While time and practice are necessary for mastery, basic automation can be initiated with just a few introductory videos.

We recently started using Automation Anywhere Copilot, so we haven't had the opportunity to integrate it with many of our automations. However, we have integrated it with SAP, where the bot reviews SAP data and provides the user with the required information at runtime. I have utilized this feature, and it's quite interesting. They also offer integrations with many other software, so the integration level is relatively high. Regardless of the type of features the business uses, whether they are using Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, or even AWS, integrations are available. They provide custom APIs that can be used for integration.

Automation Copilot helped increase our productivity by 60 percent.

Copilot has enabled staff to focus on other tasks by automating processes. For instance, the business department aimed to automate 350 processes this year, but by September, they had already surpassed that goal with 370 automations. Similarly, last year's target of 250 automations was exceeded, reaching 300. This increased efficiency has significantly improved workflows.

Our primary application of Generative AI for our telecom client is to detect service outages, such as when an area experiences a loss of service. We've been strategically planning our Generative AI approach for this year and the next, focusing on utilizing RPA to identify potential solutions and valuable insights within our data. For instance, in the context of outages, we aim to pinpoint the areas with the highest outage frequency, understand the reasons behind those outages, and correlate that information with customer complaint data. By analyzing metrics like complaint resolution times and outage resolution times, we can create a benchmark that helps us identify areas where we can enhance our customer service.

The amount of time Automation Anywhere helps save is dependent on the automated task. For example, the bill review task we automated helped save 10,000 hours per month.

We have several custom ERPs used internally but primarily rely on Microsoft Dynamics. We have a BCRM portal built on the Dynamics portal, hosting both our BCRM business-facing and CRM customer-facing systems. We also utilize Excel with VBA macros and other platforms, including Kofax for OCR. Kofax's Arabic language detection capabilities are crucial for processing UAE ID cards containing Arabic text. Kofax is our organization-wide OCR solution, integrated with Automation Anywhere. Overall, we have integrated Automation Anywhere with various software solutions.

Integrating Automation Anywhere into our workflows, APIs, and business automation is simple. RPA functions like a digital employee, and we can instruct them to perform tasks. Any activity currently done by a human employee can be done via RPA. However, the crucial question is whether it should be automated. If a task is performed infrequently, such as once every six months, creating an automation is inefficient. The time spent developing the automation could be better used to complete the task manually. Automation is ideal for repetitive tasks performed frequently. If a task isn't repetitive, automating it might not be beneficial. Regarding the capabilities of automation, nearly any work an employee performs on an organization's system has the potential to be automated.

Automation Anywhere has a persistent click-related issue that can make automation difficult, particularly in unattended environments. Even the Automation Anywhere team is aware of this problem, which has existed for several years. When automating tasks on a website, clicks may not work as expected in an unattended environment despite functioning correctly otherwise. The Automation Anywhere team has had numerous meetings to address this issue, but a solution remains elusive.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for almost four years.

Automation Anywhere's ability to provide automation at scales is dependent on how well it can integrate with every platform. I would rate the scalability seven out of ten.

I compare all other RPA tools to UiPath, which has excellent support—I'd rate it ten out of ten. In contrast, I'd rate Automation Anywhere's support six out of ten.

Neutral

In addition to Automation Anywhere, we also use UiPath, and Power Automate.

It ultimately depends on the client's preference for an RPA solution. In my opinion, UiPath remains the leading option in the market, unmatched by any competitor. Automation Anywhere currently holds the second position, but I anticipate Power Automate surpassing it in the future. However, UiPath is considerably ahead of the competition, leaving Automation Anywhere as a distant second. While Automation Anywhere is a suitable alternative, UiPath's high pricing can be a factor in the decision-making process. A lot of our clients choose Automation Anywhere because it is cheaper than UiPath to implement. Power Automate is the solution often chosen by businesses that already have other Microsoft solutions integrated into their environment.

The primary distinction among these RPA tools lies in the connectors and capabilities offered by Power Automate. Many businesses already utilize Power BI and Microsoft Dynamics, with most BI-related software relying on Tableau or Power BI. While some smaller-scale operations may still use Excel for dashboards, it's becoming increasingly uncommon. Power Automate's built-in custom connectors for Microsoft products provide a significant advantage. Overall, Power Automate has proven to be a game-changer, exceeding expectations with its features, custom connections, and level of support. While not currently the case, it's conceivable that with further enhancements, Power Automate could eventually surpass Automation Anywhere in the market.

While I wasn't involved in the initial deployment, I contributed to the migration from version A11 to A360. This was a major undertaking, spanning six months and presenting numerous challenges. Despite encountering various issues, we ultimately achieved a successful migration.

Cloud deployment is straightforward, while on-premises setup requiring server configuration can be challenging. A cloud deployment typically takes no more than one business day.

We have two teams: the operations team and the development team. The operations team handles deployment and typically consists of one or two people. The development team's size varies depending on the number of processes requiring automation. For fewer processes, one developer may suffice; however, we may engage five or even six developers for numerous processes.

Automation Anywhere provides good cost savings.

Automation Anywhere's price is considerably better than UiPath's.

I evaluated Robocorp from a POC point of view.

I rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten.

Challenges in implementing Automation Anywhere depend on the process being automated. For instance, if your organization adopts Automation Anywhere, infrastructure won't be the primary concern as their cloud setup is straightforward. The real challenges lie in the processes themselves. RPA automates processes, so if, for example, in bill review, some invoices are unclear due to being scanned images, the robot might struggle to process them correctly. This is a process-related challenge, not an RPA implementation issue. To address this, instead of incorrect automation, we set a confidence threshold, say 80 percent, below which invoices are flagged for manual review. Thus, RPA implementation focuses on the process itself. Businesses have numerous processes across operations, products, clients, and consultations. The key is to identify these processes and determine suitable solutions. RPA involves instructing the robot on the required steps, which it follows diligently. However, even if ten employees perform the same task, each might have their own approach. Therefore, understanding the process from the user's perspective is crucial to identifying the optimal workflow. This ideal process is then programmed into the robot, ensuring consistent execution. It's important to remember that RPA, including Automation Anywhere, has limitations and cannot deviate from its instructions or make independent decisions.

Automating more complex processes requires a deeper understanding of coding concepts like loops, regardless of the automation scale. I teach UiPath Studio X, which is designed for business users without a coding background. It is a good starting point. Training in Studio X includes teaching basic coding concepts, emphasizing their connection to familiar Excel functions. This approach helps users understand the logic behind automation and bridge the gap between their existing skills and new concepts.

The learning curve for RPA automation, depending on your desired level of mastery, is manageable. It is key to understand all the features and how they work, including the AI-powered ones. Basic RPA automation can be learned in about four to five months, allowing someone to start working as an RPA developer. However, working on an actual project for a year or a year and a half is recommended to become a true expert. This provides ample time to learn the ins and outs of Automation Anywhere, understand the challenges, and develop solutions.

Upgrading Automation Anywhere to a newer version on the same platform is straightforward, but our migration from the obsolete on-premise A11 to the cloud-based A360 required moving every single business process, which was time-consuming. Apart from that specific migration, version upgrades are generally not complex.

Bots running on a cloud platform require continuous maintenance. While the cloud platform can monitor the bots, human oversight is essential to identify and troubleshoot issues like crashes. Large clients may necessitate a dedicated maintenance team working shifts to provide 24/7 monitoring and support. These teams typically monitor the bots' control room on a separate screen while performing other tasks. In the event of a crash, they investigate the cause and, if unable to resolve it, escalate the issue to the development team for further assistance.