Automation Anywhere Reviews

The use cases depend on the group functions that are in our business units. They are related to finance, procurement, and marketing spaces. This is where we are heavily utilizing it for productivity gains in terms of FTE realization.

It is an enterprise-grade tool for us. At the COE level, we are using it for automations related to the group functions. We have a comprehensive team of around 30 to 40 people supporting it. It is not used for one or two use cases. It is a proper enterprise-grade automation mechanism for us for different areas. On average, we do a couple of million dollars of automation engagements annually with it.

It meets the productivity targets that we have set for ourselves. The customer service that they provide is also quite efficient. They try to keep a close eye on our key problem areas and how they can be a partner in solving it. It has always been a very positive collaboration with them.

The integration of automation into our workflows, APIs, business applications, and documents with Automation Anywhere is quite good. It is quite seamless and scalable. They are certified. We can only adopt it if it is a certified integration.

Automation Anywhere has helped save time and cost. The savings are tangible and recorded with us.

The core RPA service that it provides and the stability that it has in maintaining that as a cloud service solution is a key enabler for us. Its stability is good, and the low-code/no-code setup that it has is very user-efficient.

The AI centricity is a bit behind compared to the way we see Microsoft and AWS doing it. This is the feedback that I have also given to them. They need to expand themselves to provide more services than just RPA. Only RPA may not be enough for us, and it would not be our preferred choice for an automation tool.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for around three years.

It is quite stable. I would rate it an eight out of ten for stability.

Its scalability is quite good. It is much better and improved now. I would rate it a seven out of ten for scalability.

It is being used by multiple departments at one location. It is being used purely at the group functions level such as finance, supply, and marketing, but not for the asset-centric operations with mining and other things.

They are quite good. I would rate them an eight out of ten.

Positive

We are using both Automation Anywhere and Power Automate Desktop for different purposes. Automation Anywhere is our COE tool, whereas Power Automate Desktop is our citizen developer tool. We have good experience with both of them, but we are trying to make a switch from Automation Anywhere to Power Automate Desktop as a part of our cost-efficiency drive. We are doing a competitive analysis to see whether we are ready for it or not.

Overall, Automation Anywhere has been stable, especially the latest versions, but its usage is expensive for us. Power Automate Desktop is our preferred tool.

Our business users who are not technical are more comfortable with Power Automate Desktop than Automation Anywhere. Automation Anywhere is a COE-grade tool. It is not for citizen developers. Automation Anywhere is easy for professional developers or someone who has experience with automation technology. It would take a non-technical person a month of hands-on experience to learn it.

The deployment was good, but the migration to the cloud was a bit tedious. It was an extensive engagement.

The upgrades are quite seamless now because it is now in the cloud, so the effort is quite less. We have a team set up for maintenance.

A team of around 20 people was needed because it was a big-scale implementation. In migration, 25 to 30 people were involved. We have a DevOps team for operational support with almost the same number of people.

We have seen ROI for our original automations. They were mostly low-hanging fruits with savings of a few FTEs, but the moment any automation has an ROI of only one FTE, it is not an economical solution for us to use. Power Automate Desktop is cheaper for us to use.

Its usage is expensive for us because my user base is mostly in Manila and KL. The unit cost of labor is cheaper there than in the U.S. or Australia, which puts a bit more stress on how to get a positive ROI while continuing to use it.

I would rate it a six out of ten for pricing.

I would absolutely recommend Automation Anywhere. It has great potential. The people who provide services are quite professional. They want us to succeed in our journey. They are not only interested in profits. They want us to do well. 

When it comes to automation and AI, there is a huge appetite at the group functions level but not much on the asset side of it. We are more focused on health and safety, and from the functional or transactional aspect, we have a keen interest in the overall automation and AI.

Overall, I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten.

There are many use cases for Automation Anywhere. One of these involved reconciling numerous financial reports in the company I work for, which deals in consumer products and goods. Specifically, we handle credit notes and debit notes from various customers. These notes serve as certifications of transactions, indicating whether we owe something to the customers or they owe something to us. The challenge is that these notes come in different formats, all in PDFs. Consequently, someone has to manually go through each of them, input the data into Excel, and compare it with an existing Excel report. After verifying the information and ensuring it matches, we input the data into the SAP system. This process is a part of our monthly activities and involves a considerable volume of documents, given that we are a multinational company focusing on AMEA markets. 

To streamline this process, we utilized Automation Anywhere, making use of OCR technology to extract data from the PDFs. Another use case for the automation tool involved generating aging reports. As a company, we deal with numerous customers who haven't made payments yet, and we need to monitor the time they have left to pay or identify if they have exceeded the due dates. This information is available on our SAP system and needs to be created daily and distributed to all our sales teams.

If someone without technical skills wants to learn to use Automation Anywhere, it's not very difficult. However, if we simply want to use the solution without any prior experience, it may not be possible, but with proper training, someone can learn it in a month.

The learning curve is relatively easy, and it just takes time. Getting comfortable with the tool is, in my opinion, quite feasible; it can be done. The other aspect of the problem is understanding the use case and how to design it. How will we design our system? How will we design our process? Because it's never just one process that someone wants to automate; it's usually a bundle of processes. When we obtain a bot from automation anywhere, we cannot get just a fraction of a bot. We have to get a full bot. And if we have a process that does not consume all of that, then our cost-benefit ratio doesn't work. So we need to have a bunch of processes and then figure out how to schedule each bot, and how to process it. There are multiple ways of designing the flow of a bot. We should look for the optimum way considering the context, it depends on our context. The templates keep changing, and the sales keep changing, so we would have to define it in a different way where we have templates that can be replaceable. But if we are dealing with something related to compliance, then we would prioritize reliability and robustness, and we may have to compromise on flexibility while designing a solution with robustness in mind. 

All of that comes with expertise, and all of that comes with experience. However, just understanding the product and the tool to a good, fairly okay level where a business user can create a small automation and do something with it even if they don't fully maximize its value can be achieved in a couple of months. But becoming a true expert and being able to call ourselves an RPA expert will take a lot of time and further exposure to various use cases.

By using Automation Anywhere, we observed a reduction in paperwork costs and the implementation of a reliable bot. When we require manual report generation, workflow execution, and other tasks. Its efficiency is contingent upon the availability of the person overseeing the process. With Automation Anywhere, the reporting, workflow executions, and other tasks are automated and thereby enhancing overall reliability. Additionally, a notable advantage is the development of a digital mindset within the company. Exposure to automation fosters a digital way of thinking among employees, leading them to identify opportunities that can be automated. These benefits are just a few among several others, including financial gains and improved compliance.

The benefits are seen typically after three to four months per process, depending on its complexity. For processes of low to medium complexity, it usually takes about three to four months for the board to start functioning correctly. The payback ratio varies depending on the number of products or processes we have and their complexity. If we have many low-complexity processes that can be completed within six months, we will see returns on our investment within that time frame. However, it's important to note that the payback period ultimately depends on the complexity of the process. I have observed instances where processes have not yielded returns even after several months, as changes were required at three or six-month intervals, leading to additional expenses. So, the success of the process is contingent on its specific characteristics.

Automation Anywhere is able to provide automation at scale.

Integration is truly beneficial; it serves as a significant advantage of Automation Anywhere. The level of integration is highly commendable.

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization increase its automation consumption by around 50 percent.

The way templates can be configured is quite simple - it's a matter of drag and drop. Within the console, which is easy to navigate if we've seen it before, we can understand how things work. This allows business folks to join calls if needed, and I comprehend what happens within the console. 

The Board Control room is a centralized place where we can monitor all our bots and see how they are running when they are scheduled to run, and how our CPU and CB usage are looking - basically, the entire orchestration. 

I noticed that they opened up to other service providers like Accenture and Avaya, which is not a platform feature, but it was very helpful for us. Automation Anywhere, being a product company, might not excel in service, so partnering with companies like Avaya or Accenture provided us with a reliable service operation. 

The capability of understanding and extracting documents is not very good. Therefore, automating unstructured documents or any structured documents that we want to automate on Automation Anywhere is not a good idea.

The UI is not intuitive and doesn't come across as smooth.

I would like the licenses to be transferable. Currently, we are unable to transfer a user license.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for three and a half years.

I give the stability of Automation Anywhere a six out of ten.

I give the scalability of Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

We saw a return on investment with 50 percent of our automation processes. 

I give Automation Anywhere a six out of ten.

It depends on the specific capabilities you require. When we started out as a team at Mondelez we were setting up all the necessary components. At that time, we were primarily focused on basic capabilities such as having a good service partner, efficient bot operations, and a manageable console. Figuring out the licenses was crucial, as some companies were unwilling to share their licenses with others. So, if you had the license, you were the one responsible for using it, and it couldn't be transferred to someone else. Certain software had this complexity, and we were also not considering advanced features like OCR back then. 

Our focus was on basic RPA without many complexities. About four years ago, we believed Automation Anywhere was a well-established player in the market, so we chose them. However, later on, we realized that automation had much more to offer than simply configuring and automating certain processes. We discovered the concept of hyper-automation, which includes low-code and no-code applications that business users can build themselves. Document-related automation became crucial, and we found that Automation Anywhere lacked proper support for structured documentation and didn't leverage artificial intelligence or natural language processing effectively. Consequently, we had to explore other software options. As time progressed, we recognized the need for more capabilities. Therefore, we adopted two approaches to address this. Firstly, we sought a solution that offered modular usability. Consequently, we included Power Platform and are currently exploring the UI part. Additionally, we ventured into using newer technologies like Blue Prism, experimenting with various possibilities. Ultimately, our aim is to stay on top of advancements and adopt the best-suited tools for our needs.

The preference for API integration over a robust process automation solution depends on the capabilities of our in-house tech team. If we have an in-house tech team, then API solutions are significantly better than an automated bot. Additionally, our cost-benefit analysis, in terms of tech capabilities, also plays a crucial role in the decision-making process.

We did not perform any maintenance on Automation Anywhere.

Primarily we use it for automating back-office operations processes. Some of the most frequent use cases are:

1. Invoice processing and proofing.

2. Reconciliation

3. Automating Timesheets

4. SOW invoice creation.

5. Creation of Credit memos

6. Pulling data from SAP and generating a report.

We use VDIs to deploy. Client & runner environment is mostly Win 10. Most of the bots are scheduled. 

Some organizations still use the manual click on the run button method instead of scheduling or running from CR.

It has definitely helped automating a lot of processes, but it is very difficult to build resilient bots. It is very difficult to find skilled developers in the market, who actually build resilient bots with appropriate error handling. Maintaining the bots is another challenge as the applications keep changing.

It is even more difficult to support a bot than build from scratch. No matter how much you document, things do turn haywire if someone new has to make changes to an existing bot. 

Documenting the AA Solution SDD, PDD is another pain point. It is very common to miss out on a lot of things. 

I feel that in places it is better to create a system to automate rather than use RPA.

Most of the features are valuable. 

1. SAP GUI commands in the latest update is helpful as a lot of processes have SAP involved. 2. APIs are helpful too, but they certainly need more improvement. APIs help in building resiliency.

3. Queues are great but need improvement. They are helpful because most of the automations are transaction-based.

 4. Good old object cloning is always helpful as it is versatile.

5. Metabots help in working with many of the legacy applications. But needs improvement there as well.

6. Credential Vaults are helpful, but needs improvement there too.

1. Excel commands should include more features.

2. Need more variable types for eg. date, amount, number, etc

3. Better API support and more APIs.

4. Queues should be enabled to directly connect to DBs.

5. Managing so many variables is a pain. Some kind of variable initialization mechanism like how Blue Prism has it will be helpful.

6. Input-output variables should be defined for taskbots as well.

7.There are a lot of glitches in AA not fixed since Ver 10. Reach me to know more about them.

8. The commands should help evaluate the current state of variables(like how in Blue prism)

10. Metabots should have command to stop the task. Basically should have all commands of a task bot.

11. No one uses "WorkFlows".

12. The user roles and the Credential Vaults administration, sharing and the whole thing in action is very confusing.

13. Automatic technical logging option should be given by default in all commands like how we have in BP.

4

When it comes to RPA, for every step things should be in the right way at the right time. It is very difficult. So I would rate it as a 5 out of 10 on scalability.

It is scalable, though, in an organizational setup where teams work in silos, I have never seen any organization truly using the scalability to its full potential.

Technical support is okay. At times it takes a lot of email exchanges involved before actually setting up a call and getting help.

AA is all I am using. Blue Prism is used but I prefer AA. Though Blue Prism is better in certain aspects mentioned earlier.

It is the same as how enterprise applications should have in terms of complexity.

We develop RPA solutions for clients.

Costs are ok. IQ Bot is too expensive. Bot Vision should come for free as one can easily use a number of other visualization options for free. There is no point in paying too much for too little.

I have evaluated Blue Prism along with AA

We need some support of documentation methodologies so that the knowledge is easily transferrable through the documents.

Our primary use case is anything that is structured data and highly repetitive. We also see a lot of gain right now in paperwork, so AR, AP, and record to report. The cognitive product seems to be doing a really good job, and the pace of that going fantastic.

We have done a little bit of everything: 

• Oracle
• Salesforce.com
• Using Citrix, we did an order to cash.
• In the IQ Bot world, we seem to be doing a lot of AR and invoice-to-pay (those are the two that we see the most). 

We will be moving into medical billing next. Since we have done some really good prototypes with medical records, I think we are ready to go there next. 

One of the largest use cases that we have about a $10 billion company which does something like 20 thousand AR invoices a month. They had a solution in place. We actual replaced that IQ Bot, and we are hosting it out of San Jose right now. We are getting some phenomenal straight through processing. So, we took what would have taken 30 to 35 people and are able to do that little bit more accurately with about six.

Believe it or not, the first client that we ever did was a Citrix client. We cut our teeth on Citrix around the RPA product. It has some quirks to it, but it is becoming much better. So, we have quite a few instances of that Citrix machine in production at the client. 

The most valuable feature of our solution is the cognitive computing because that is coming onto stream a lot faster than you would think. What used to be in the middle of, "Can this be done or not?", is becoming, "It can be done." We are getting some incredible straight through processing rates with AR around healthcare and financial services. 

Integrating RPA and cognitive with other solutions is relatively straightforward. Originally, it came out that Automation Anywhere did screen scraping, but the technology is way beyond that now, where you can do object cloning, even moving into API. We have even coded a couple of APIs into the applications that most people will use. We actually do that now instead of going through a screen. 

Our impressions of IQ Bot are that it goes relatively fast at the pace that it is being advanced every six months, which is good. I believe that we have a couple of the largest installations of it in the U.S. right now. So, we are processing somewhere in the neighborhood of tens of thousands of AP and AR invoices. We actually have robotic operation centers on the West Coast and the East Coast. 

The IQ Bot has room for improvement. It is not that it doesn't do a lot of things today, it is just that it can do so much more. I think that that product is going to go crazy.

The next big thing that you are going to see is the analytics engine. I think people finally realize that you can do analytics on what the bots are doing. I think that you will see that come alive in the next six to nine months.

If you write them correctly and have good architectures internally, then scalability is relatively straightforward. This also applies to reliability. However, you sort of need to write a few before you get to this point. As more of these go to production, these are going to be the two big drivers.

Probably one of the faster scales that we have done is we did a prototype with IQ Bot that had about 500 invoices and a 1000 vendors. In about two and a half to three months time, start to finish, we went from the original amount to 15,000 invoices and 2500 vendors. I would suggest in that 90 to 120 day time frame, if you have done things properly and your architecture is good, that you should be able to scale at any pace that you care to.

We have seen both straightforward and complex initial setups. If you are behind a firewall, it is relatively easy to setup. When you are hosting the application, that is when it is a little more complicated (we actually host applications for people). You need to talk to the IT department, as you are actually outside of their firewall, then you are coming back inside their cloud. 

Depending on the architecture, it can be relatively straightforward, and it can be put up in just a day or two. Whereas, if you are hosting it and coming back in, it is a little more complicated.

What we did was we took the Automation Anywhere ROI calculations and added quite a few things to it. We actually ask 15 to 18 questions around process time, number of systems used, how people, and how many hours. Ultimately, we can stack rank those ROIs on a process, then we typically try to start with the largest ROIs first. So far, with what we have done, we have seen has been relatively close (as it is almost impossible to hit the ROI exactly), but the ROI on the product is good.   

No one is balking at the cost. They are market rates and will change, but no one is saying, "That is ridiculous or impossible." They are saying, "Show me the ROI and prove that the cost is accurate."

One of the things that will be good for the community will be to get the free version to download, which came out just a month ago called Community Edition. So, you can actually download it and try it for yourself. 

Ease of use is something that you need to get trained on. Once you have gone through the proper training, it is relatively straightforward to use. There is quite a bit of online training on their website, as well as in the Community Edition. After 30 to 40 hours with it, you should be pretty good with it.

One of the promises that we made to Automation Anywhere when we started was that everyone in our company would be trained and certified. Even as a Board Member, I am certified. 

Bot creation is relatively straightforward. Probably within 20 hours, you should be pretty good at it. There are some nuances around it though that I think separate first time developers versus seasoned developers. What you will see in the marketplace is how easy it is to develop one compared to how easy it is to develop one that runs in production 99.9 percent of the time.

Across the board, I would give it a nine out of ten. There are some areas that they can move up into, but they are working on it right now. I am assuming that everybody is working on it, so we will stay in that nine range.

Go do your homework. Call some of the larger clients because they seem to face the largest problems. Automation Anywhere has five to ten gigantic accounts that you can just talk to. Ultimately, I would just be careful in the way that you implement it. It is like any tool, if you know what you are doing, "Great," and if not, then you can make a mess. Therefore, be careful and know what you are doing.

I have used Automation Anywhere in various industries, including banking, telecommunications, retail, and oil and gas. In such clients, there's often a mismatch between systems, needing more integration. Creating new integrations from scratch, like calling APIs, is complex. Automation Anywhere bypasses this by integrating systems through their user interfaces. For instance, inserting data into an SAP database typically requires knowledge of connection strings, database design, and tables. This information isn't readily available. With Automation Anywhere, I observe users performing tasks like creating clients. I note the screen and information used, then load that into an Excel file. Automation Anywhere processes numerous transactions using Excel data and screen interactions. This accelerates digital transformation. While APIs are the ideal engineering solution for integration, robotics provides the fastest results.

We have installed Automation Anywhere on AWS, Azure, and GCP, which works well.

Automation Anywhere is user-friendly with its concept, even C-level executives can try automating tasks in five minutes, which is a great marketing strategy. However, for professionals in sectors like banking who design critical mission bots, deeper knowledge is necessary, including logging, API calls, etc. Automation Anywhere's best features are sufficient for newbies or those needing quick implementations.

Copilot is a good feature for those using machine learning and AI.

Copilot helps increase the productivity of new users.

Typically, extracting information from transactional systems requires tools like Automation Anywhere. For less structured tasks, generative AI is a great option. One area where these tools can improve is web scraping. For instance, if a website changes, traditional bots fail. However, with generative AI, we can create bots that understand page context and adjust accordingly. For example, if the input field for a flight code changes its location or ID, a generative AI-powered bot can still identify it by understanding the context of the surrounding labels, like "flight code". I believe we'll see a significant evolution in the coming years, with computer vision and generative AI enabling bots to understand the location of information on a screen and adjust web scraping strategies dynamically.

One of the main concerns with Automation Anywhere is the lack of a robust feature for capturing and managing information from the user interface, something competitors like Blue Prism already offer. In Blue Prism, you can create an "application model" to capture every control on a screen and assign them to variables, making it easy to reference and update them in your code, even if the screen layout changes. In Automation Anywhere, however, you must manually search and update capture instructions within the code, which is time-consuming and error-prone. Implementing a similar feature in Automation Anywhere would be critical for improving efficiency and maintainability. While this idea has been discussed with the company, it has yet to be implemented.

For experienced developers, there's room for improvement. For instance, code refactoring, a valuable feature, is currently impossible in Automation Anywhere. While Automation Anywhere is excellent for beginners, it could benefit from enhancements for advanced users.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for eight years.

Automation Anywhere is scalable. One of my clients, the largest bank in our country, is also one of Automation Anywhere's biggest clients. We have Automation Anywhere running on over 9,000 computers at the bank.

The technical support team is an excellent resource. We are a long-standing partner of Automation Anywhere in our country. My team possesses a deep understanding of the platform, but when we require assistance, the support team is always helpful.

Positive

The initial deployment of Automation Anywhere is straightforward. We use the bot model and deploy bot runners through the Automation Anywhere cloud, simplifying the process. While using the Automation Anywhere cloud is convenient, we've also deployed an instance in a private cloud environment like Azure or AWS, which works well. However, deploying in a private cloud requires knowledge of clustering and related concepts, so it's not suitable for everyone.

On average, a bot runner in Automation Anywhere can cost $5,000, while in Microsoft Power Automate, you can get most of the same functionality for $100. However, when you factor in the materials, support, and ecosystem of Automation Anywhere, it proves to be a more cost-effective solution overall.

I rate Automation Anywhere ten out of ten.

Typically, they release hotfixes, and if you're using Automation Anywhere's cloud platform, you receive these hotfixes automatically and at no cost. However, in my situation, as a system integrator partner of Automation Anywhere, they inform us of available hotfixes, which we then download and implement without issue.

We use Automation Anywhere to process our collections. 

We couldn't hire more people, but we had some information stored in Excel that we needed to distribute. The sales information was centralized in one area, so we automated the process of putting the information into Excel so everyone could help themselves. The benefit we get from this is increased efficiency. The bot performs the tasks four times faster than a human. Our goal is efficiency, not replacing bots humans with bots. We wanted to do more with the eight people we had and allow people to focus on what was important.

We got what we wanted, but the implementation took slightly longer than expected because we changed our methods and partners. We had some issues with our partner at the beginning, but we implemented the software in one or two months. It was fast.

I think the person in charge over there has the same mentality now, but we wanted to automate everything that is transactional or everything that impacts the client at the end of the day. We were looking to use AI to make development or programming more efficient, like finding some codes. I know Automation Anywhere has some kind of AI incorporated in it that can read PDFs and stuff. That would be nice to use, but I haven't had a chance to implement it.

We were working on a system called AS 400. Automation Anywhere performed well on that old system. It handled complicated processes. I had to review different menus and screens and give resources, storage, and databases. That's complicated.

We found a local Automation Anywhere expert and then trained someone inside the company to be a developer. This person had technical skills, so it was easy for him to understand the things in Automation Anywhere. The learning part was kind of quick, but I don't think that would be easy for a normal business user. I think it would be more complicated for a normal business user. I won't say that I learned all about Automation Anywhere, but I know how to automate simple tasks I learned by watching some videos and checking the community forums.

The Insight feature could be improved. I don't think there's a lot of information about how to use Insight, so you have to try different scenarios to understand that feature better.  

If I compare Automation Anywhere with UiPath, which has something cool that lets you automate a workflow. We have no positive response when we try to use it with Automation Anywhere. We are doing everything by code and the drag-and-drop component.

I don't think it's easy because Automation Anywhere is marketed as a low-code solution, but it isn't low-code at all. It requires some programming skills, and I don't think it would be easy for a non-technical user to program something on Automation Anywhere. 

One challenge the company faced while integrating Automation Anywhere was people. The IT department is big and has been divided into different areas, including databases, infrastructure, and support. To adopt automation anywhere, you have to put everything on the table and see what you want to do.  I also require resources with the capabilities and technical skills to program in Automation Anywhere.

We have used Automation Anywhere for four years.

I rate Automation Anywhere support nine out of 10. The support is good. The team from Colombia responsible for selling in Latin America can provide whatever you need. I don't have any complaints about that. They are always willing to offer you proof of concept in case you have to use it. I talked to somebody in Colombia because we wanted to do something in terms of proof of concept about document automation because we had so many processes that included PDFs. 

Positive

Automation Anywhere is deployed on the cloud, so I think it was very straightforward and fast. It took around one to two weeks.

Automation Anywhere is somewhat expensive. The prices are slightly higher, but if you need something, you must pay for it.

We also evaluated Blue Prism.

I rate Automation Anywhere 10 out of 10. I would recommend It for a medium-sized or enterprise business. Because of the cost, it isn't appropriate for a small business. The solution itself is good, but it isn't a low-code product.

I am striving to provide individuals with more time to focus on value-add tasks due to widespread headcount reductions. For instance, in finance and accounting activities, we use Automation Anywhere to replace individuals in maintenance tasks or those that were previously unknown to be time-consuming. This is where we witness the greatest utilization of bots. 

Moreover, we employ bots to handle fines associated with individuals driving company cars. With hundreds of fines occurring each month, it used to be a nearly full-time responsibility for one person to receive the fine, identify the driver at the time of the incident, and ensure the fine was directed to the appropriate person for payment. Such activities lacked significant value and consumed a considerable amount of time for someone, but now the bot handles these tasks on our behalf. I believe that finance is the primary area where we extensively utilize Automation Anywhere.

When we began deploying the bots, we established Key Performance Indicators to assess the return on investment. For instance, if a bot could save one-third of an individual's time, we would evaluate the amount of time saved and dedicate it to value-add tasks. However, evaluating the exact monetary savings facilitated by the bots is challenging because the funds are not directly spent on low-value activities. Instead, they can be utilized differently. 

It is important to note that the bots never completely replaced human workers. No job was entirely taken over by a bot. Rather, it was an assessment of how effectively we spent money with the assistance of bots, as they enabled individuals to perform tasks more efficiently. Although I don't recall the exact details since it was in the past, we would reassign the equivalent of full-time employees to these value-added tasks instead of low-value ones. At the time of my departure from the RPA topic, we had 150 bots in production, and we had a clear understanding of how many full-time employees would be dedicated to higher-value tasks as a result.

The ability of Automation Anywhere to provide automation at scale is commendable. We have indeed achieved tangible business benefits. That is certain. I am no longer aware of the metric used to evaluate this, except for the fact that we have eliminated various mundane activities from the workday of numerous individuals.

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization increase its automation consumption.

From what I recall of the type of issue we had to deal with when we started implementing Automation Anywhere, it was the integration with the identity and access management system that the company might use. This is because Automation Anywhere has a vault where we store all the information related to the bot, including the password it will use to connect to the system. The feature, which might be interesting for companies that don't already have an identity management system, was a bit tricky because I would have preferred the system to directly rely on our corporate identity and access management system to manage the bot's credentials. This way, we wouldn't have to store this information in the bot as well. It's something to consider in terms of integrating with an existing IT landscape.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for almost six years.

We did not encounter any stability issues with Automation Anywhere during the time I worked with the solution.

Automation Anywhere is scalable.

The technical support was helpful and responsive.

Positive

We had previously been using UiPath, and in late 2017, we acquired an organization that was already using Automation Anywhere, which belonged to a much larger organization. Consequently, we began to explore that tool and benefited from our colleagues' positive experiences with Automation Anywhere.

They were able to provide suggestions on the setup and deployment of the solution. As a result, we ultimately decided to discontinue the use of UiPath and transitioned to Automation Anywhere. Without the acquisition, we might not have implemented Automation Anywhere and instead would have continued with UiPath or explored other alternatives. Due to the acquisition, we were able to recognize that Automation Anywhere was one of the market leaders and swiftly create a proof of concept.

The initial setup was straightforward. Although I was involved in the deployment project, the actual installation was carried out by those responsible for implementing the Windows servers.

We needed to acquire the hardware because we had an internal cloud at that time, so we still have it. I would say that we managed to allocate the servers. It didn't take long. We provided training for the people who would deploy and customize the product with the assistance of Automation Anywhere in France. The global deployment infrastructure was ready to be used within a few weeks.

The implementation was completed in-house with the help of the Automation Anywhere team.

We obtained benefits from the original price prior to the acquisition and had to engage in negotiations due to the expansion of the usage scope. We were required to purchase licenses and bot runners, which determined the permissible run times for the bots. We successfully achieved a fair price worldwide. 

I rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten. 

We primarily utilize an attended bot, meaning they are not created by users. We have made efforts to retain control over IT in bot creation to prevent it from becoming a new avenue for shadow IT. When we started in 2018, the final department had a dedicated team responsible for bot development. However, they eventually hired contractors who developed C-Sharp programs that interacted with SAP through APIs. The bot would simply launch these programs, which is not the ideal method for automation, as we believe the bot should directly interact with the application instead of relying on a separate program to communicate with SAP through an API. I believe the team responsible for this no longer exists. Presently, we have a process in place to identify relevant use cases, and we are collaborating with a subcontractor who creates the bots for us based on specifications provided by the business.

We utilize Automation Anywhere with an attended bot. This implies that after receiving the specifications from the business and creating the purchase, we establish an agreement on the bot's scheduling for execution. However, the user never directly interacts with the bot; they only observe the results of its actions. Therefore, there is no need to provide training for users to utilize Automation Anywhere. We maintain IT control over it, while the development itself is outsourced. Consequently, the issue of the learning curve is not applicable to our situation.

We didn't use a lot of APIs with Automation Anywhere. Instead, we simulated the user's actions on the application's user interface. I can't recall any instances where we relied on APIs to initiate actions in the systems we were connecting to. However, I am aware that APIs can be utilized. There was a point when we wanted to employ APIs to retrieve the password or the bot from our identity and access the financial system just before the bot was about to commence its task. Additionally, we intended to trigger an API to reset the password once the bot had completed its job to ensure that there were no potential security threats associated with the user IDs used for the bots.

For those who prefer using API integration instead of a comprehensive process automation solution, I would like to emphasize that it's not exactly the same approach. Integrated APIs require developing a program for them to interact with. In my opinion, RPA offers a more straightforward approach as it simply replicates user actions within an application. We already have a ready-to-use bot. However, I wouldn't recommend using bots for everything, especially when we encounter use cases that resemble interfaces. 

Essentially, it involves manipulating the user interface of an application to extract data and then sending that data to another application on a daily basis. This approach doesn't seem logical. I'm not sure about the usage of APIs in the context of actual IT program development, where we need to retrieve data from various source systems that provide APIs. In such cases, we genuinely desire bots that faithfully mimic the actions of real users within an application. Our intention was never to replace any kind of deployment with bots, which is why we wanted Information and Communication Technology to be involved in the decision-making process. We wanted to ensure that the distinction was made between tasks that should be handled by bots and those that should be treated as interfaces or programs, aligning with our understanding of process automation.

We have a team of three people in Spain who are in charge of the daily operation of the Automation Anywhere platform. However, deploying our new bot is a quick process. There is a test environment where the bot is validated, after which it is transferred to the production control room and the bot's schedule is updated.

The team responsible for the data operations of the platform, taking everything into account, including the intrusion of the new bot into the production environment. They also handle the platform's maintenance. I believe we have three individuals dedicated to these tasks.

I use Automation 360 as an RPA developer to automate BPS processes. I have developed over 12 to 15 bots that handle back-office tasks. 

My current project is a UK-based water project. Previously, they would take the meter readings and send them to us for quarterly billings. We used to manually enter them in the system, whereas now, we have a bot to help us enter meter readings.

We have also developed a bot to open accounts for new customers. The bot takes all the input from the customer, creates an account, and sends a welcome letter.

Automation Anywhere has significantly helped my organization by automating tasks that were previously done manually by the back-office staff, resulting in increased efficiency.

A technical user can see the benefits of Automation Anywhere within a few days. After developing a bot, there might be some issues that need to be fixed in the bot. After resolving those issues, the benefits are immediate.

In terms of integration, I have integrated Automation Anywhere with some desktop-based applications, web-based applications, CRM applications, and Excel. I have also integrated Outlook where the bot sends an email through Outlook.

The recorder capture tools, specifically the AISense Recorder and Universal Recorder, are valuable. We use these tools in almost every automation. These tools are very effective in capturing data from various applications. We can get data from a web page or an application.

The integration of Generative AI is promising, though I have not yet developed bots using this new capability. It will be helpful for us in the future.

Automation Anywhere is a simple and easy-to-use solution with drag-and-drop activities. Automation Anywhere is easier to learn than any other tool. They also have Automation Anywhere University for learning. They upload all the videos there. They also have a good community.

Automation Anywhere has newly integrated the Generative AI feature. It should be more customizable. Currently, we can change certain parameters, but we would like to have the ability to do modifications within the LLM for better outputs. We would like the ability to fine-tune it. It would be better if Automation Anywhere could add some extra features for us to use the Generative AI feature.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

We are not facing any issues related to stability, lagging, or downtime.

Automation Anywhere handles scalability well with features like workload management, which helps in distributing tasks across different machines and bots. With workload management features, we can manage and distribute our workloads.

We have been facing an issue with the bots for the last two weeks. We have developed 15 to 20 bots for a client. After making any changes, when we push a bot in production and run it, the bot gives a preprocessing error. We were not able to find the reasons for that error, so we contacted their support and created a ticket. They got back requesting the log files. We need to take those log files from the client and provide those log files to Automation Anywhere support. They have been responsive so far and are working on resolving our issues.

Positive

I have used other tools such as Selenium, UiPath, and Power Automate to automate processes but have not extensively worked with them. I primarily work with Automation Anywhere.

Currently, we are using it for one client, and for that client, it is deployed on-premises. The initial setup was quite straightforward, but I was not responsible for the deployment. My role is focused on bot development and testing, while other team members handle deployment and maintenance.

I have not worked a lot with earlier versions or migrations of Automation Anywhere, but I have experience in migrating a bot, which was easy. I could easily migrate a bot from version 11 to Automation 360.

I recommend learning one RPA tool thoroughly before moving to another. With advancements in AI and ML, it is crucial to look into how to integrate these technologies into your automation.

A person without any technical knowledge can learn Automation Anywhere within one or two months. When a new employee joins our organization, our internal trainer gives them training for four to five weeks. Every week, there are two to three sessions of two hours duration. After about 15 sessions, our employees are ready to use Automation Anywhere to develop bots.

I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.