Automation Anywhere Reviews

I am working with an integrated resort. It is a hotel with a casino in Singapore. There are about 130 manual processes that we have automated touching the front office, call center, back of the house, finance, facilities, and casino areas as well. We have automated scheduling and workforce planning. 

My business is divided into what we call gaming and non-gaming space. It is an integrated resort. We started out by automating use cases from the non-gaming area. In the third year, we started venturing out a little bit into the gaming area. We did not go into the heavy gaming areas such as on the casino floor. We went for support processes at the back of the house, which included scheduling and things like that. We are also doing reporting. 

Most of what we have is for attended and unattended bots. We have just started to use Co-Pilot or what used to be known as AARI. It is something new for us, and we have only one process using that. It is a pilot project. It is something new that we started now in our fifth year.

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization increase its automation consumption. It has helped the business address some of the pain points. It has helped the business understand that there are other ways of doing things and getting out of the manual processing. We come from a heavily people-oriented industry. We are into hospitality where you need the human touch for our business. We are not a bank. We are not a financial institution. The mindset change that I have seen with my business stakeholders because of the automations that we are doing for them is a plus. It is a game changer. In our first year of doing this, we started out very small. I had a team of myself and one developer, and now, in our fifth year, we have over 130 bots touching over 40 business units. I now have a team of four people, so we have grown. We now have a culture or ecosystem where the business stakeholders know that if they are still doing something heavily manual and highly repetitive, and it is not adding any real value to the time of the team member, there is a team within the organization that they can approach. This team will help with whatever pain point they have or take that task out of their day-to-day work so that they can concentrate on higher-value activities. This whole mindset or this whole culture or ecosystem is now there in the company. Automation Anywhere has helped elevate the consciousness of the organization by realizing that there is an automation world out there, and we can bring solutions to the table for their problems and use cases.

When it comes to integration, we have been lucky so far. We use many applications. The processes that we have automated touch 30 to 40 applications that we have in-house. It is seamless. It is fine, but some of the third-party applications that we are trying to integrate with are not necessarily very automation-friendly. The objects of those third-party applications are always changing, and therefore, we constantly have to rescript, but that is not necessarily Automation Anywhere's problem. That is just the nature of the other third-party applications that may not necessarily want you to be automating or layering on top of their systems and get behind their applications. I have been lucky so far. We have not had to go back to a business and say that we cannot automate their process because Automation Anywhere cannot integrate with a particular application. I have not had that experience as of now.

The learning curve of Automation Anywhere for my own team was pretty good. If you are a full-on developer, it is one of the easier tools to learn in the market. It is pretty good as long as this is something that you are using regularly. If you are a dedicated person doing the development and working with the tool, it is very easy to use. As far as my developers are concerned, it is very easy. We are able to turn around projects or use cases in three to four weeks. For even complex ones, there is a fairly good turnaround time in terms of delivering to our stakeholders. We do not train nontechnical people on its use. Businesses only receive automation from us, so they are not trained on it. If they are going to be trained on it, it is only on how to run their bots, and that is a part of our production development checklist or lifecycle that we give them. It just takes a day or two because we only teach them how to run their bots. It is delivered to them. We do all the installation on their machines. We set up their machines, and then we teach them how to run the bots.

When we first engaged with them, we thought that we could easily go into what we refer to as a citizen developer type of framework, but that did not go too well. We rely heavily on the CoE team, which is my team, to do automation. We have a build and support model for our business users. Business users are only taught how to run their bots. We do not teach our business users how to build a bot. We tried that and did some training with some key business stakeholders. It was a three-day training, but it did not prove to be too successful. After the training, they go back to their business units, and if it is not the core or what they do on a day-to-day basis, it is very hard to sustain, so the main building and the heavy lifting came back to the CoE team. Our team delivers to business units. From that perspective, I would rate Automation Anywhere a three out of five. Business users cannot just go ahead and build their own bots without really learning and understanding the tool.

The whole suite of RPA modules that they have is very good. They have three environments in which you can do your automation. You have development, staging, and production environments. These are run by licenses as well, which is very good. There are a lot of ways of automating processes with this application. I am not a developer. I run the RPA CoE team. I have a team that does the actual development, so I cannot speak of features per se, but the whole RPA module that they have is one of the best in class.

It is easy to use. When you need to make changes to your automation, it is quite quick. You do not need to go through the whole script. You can do it in modules or subtasks.

There are several things. They can improve their billing. I have had issues with their billing.

Their license model needs to be improved. The biggest issue for me is that the license is tied to a person, and it is not something that I can pass if I want to use it for the first five hours and pass it on to you for the next five hours and so on. When we automate, the license is tied to me, and if you or somebody else needs to use that license, as a COE administrator, I need to transfer the license from person A to person B. This is something that I have always told them that should not be this way because you want to utilize your licenses effectively. You want to ensure that your utilization of licenses is maximized throughout the organization because you are paying on a per-license basis. If it is tied to a person or to an AD account, how can you pass on that license to others to use if they are from other departments? If there is one big thing that they could change in terms of the subscription model for a license, it would be that it should be concurrent and not tied to a user.

In terms of the product, they can improve the upgrades. They are in A360, which is the cloud version. They went from version 11 to A360, and there are new updates and features all the time. Sometimes, these upgrades break other things that were working previously. We have found out that there are some bugs that are going on with the updates. Because they are on the cloud now, they do every quarter some kind of upgrade or patch.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for the past five years. We started out in 2018. I was scouting around the market for an RPA vendor. I am based in Singapore, and after doing a study of top vendors at that time, I decided to go with Automation Anywhere. We are now in our fifth year of engagement with them.

Automation Anywhere is very good at providing automation at scale. We have about 130 bots. They absolutely have the ability to scale for me. Their platform is geared towards that. It is all license-driven, and it is quite easy to scale using this tool. The infrastructure is dependent on us as a company, and making sure that our environment is ready for all the builds that we need to do, the development that we need to do, and the rollouts that we need to do, so there is a handshake between the company and the tool. It is not very complicated once you get the rhythm and once you get your governance going. It is quite good.

I contacted their technical support when some of the functionality broke because of an upgrade or the functionality did not seem correct. In some of those cases, as a client, we were the ones who told them about an issue or a bug in a particular feature. We appreciate that they came back and said that it is correct, they are aware of it, and it is going to be fixed in the next release. We have had a couple of those kinds of instances.

I would rate their support a seven out of ten because we had issues with them in terms of response and in terms of trying to get to the root cause of a problem. We had just migrated to A360. We were on version 11, and we had to switch over because it was going to be end-of-life or end-of-support. They were pushing all their clients to move to A360. In the beginning, my team had to tell their team that these are some of the issues that their A360 tool has and these are some of the bugs. They were a bit slow to react and get to a resolution or root cause.

Also, in the beginning, we were communicating with so many people. There was no continuity in terms of the person handling the ticket. They might have been changing shifts, but when you leave clients to repeat themselves to a new set of people they are talking to overseas, it gets a little bit annoying. I did highlight this point to their management team, and ever since I did that, their support team started handling the account a little bit better, but that is the reason why I am giving them a seven out of ten.

Neutral

We were not using any other solution previously. It was our first foray into robotic space. We have been with Automation Anywhere ever since.

Our setup is hybrid. Our control rooms are on the cloud. We are on A360, so our control rooms are on the cloud, but our bots runners are on-premises.

I was involved in its deployment. When we did this at the initial stage in 2018, it was pretty straightforward. They provided great support. We started out by doing eight processes as a pilot. 

Their team provided the developers because I had no developers on my end at that time. Their team did it remotely. They were probably doing it from India. They gave us the requirements. They educated us on what was needed and how we needed to set it up so that they could connect to whatever systems they needed for the eight processes or use cases that I had chosen. They did deliver all those processes within two weeks, so it was pretty straightforward.

Their professional services team was top-grade. They knew what they were talking about, and the people that they gave me in Singapore at that time were very good.

In terms of maintenance, it does not require any maintenance from my end. They do a quarterly patch of it. They announce that they are doing a patch, and it gets done. There is no maintenance on my end for the tool. What I need to maintain are the bots that we have built for the business. That is where the maintenance is, but that is more on our end. That is mostly because the bots break because of the change in third-party applications. 

They had about two or three developers doing the work remotely. There was a salesperson who was based in Singapore, and then they had sent two people from India to come over to Singapore to handle the account in terms of education. We had a program manager as well as a solution architect.

Five years ago, we looked at UiPath, Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, and WorkFusion. We did the scoping in terms of SWOT analysis, and we found Automation Anywhere to be a better partner to work with and a more stable one in 2018. 

To those evaluating Automation Anywhere, I would say that make sure they give you somebody who really knows the tool and they explain the RDLC and the delivery method to you clearly in terms of what you need to set up within your company before you engage. You need to ask the questions because it sounds simple, but it is not that simple, so you need to ask what are the things that you need to have in place in your own organization so that it is a successful rollout.

I was sold on the idea that it is an easy tool to use. Anybody can do it. They do not need to be full-stack developers. Our regular team members can pick it up, but as I got into it, I realized that is not true. Not everybody can do this. You need to have a developer mindset. You need to know how to code. It is not something that anyone can do. That was one thing that I had to learn the hard way. I realized that this model is not going to work for my company, so you need to ask questions. Understand the tool, and make them do a deeper demo in terms of how to build a bot or a complicated process. Do not go with a simple and easy process. If it is of medium complexity, find out how a regular person would do that. Ask them, for instance, what would you need to get this going. Understand the tool and spend more time with the tool before committing.

To someone who wants to use an API integration instead of a robotic process automation (RPA) solution, I would say that if you are doing it through API calls, it is a better way to go. It is more stable because you are doing it from the backend. You are getting connections there rather than using RPA from a front-end perspective.

Overall, I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

We are currently using it for a lot of projects, like repetitive or manual tasks. We are building bots to free human beings from boring jobs/tasks. We are working daily on Automation Anywhere to automate our processes.

We are using it on-premise. We are not using cloud for deployment. As of now, we are running it on our client machines. We develop automation on our desktops, then deploy our automation on our physical desktop using Automation Anywhere.

We have automated web scripting, downloading documents from particular websites, scraping data from websites, and extracting the data from PDF files. We are also updating the application with some user inputs. E.g., if you have an Excel sheet to update into a particular application, we can use Automation Anywhere tool and automate the process.

We have built some Java applications in Automation Anywhere. I have also coded macros and Python scripts to include in our Automation Anywhere tool.

The Automation Anywhere tool is very handy to use since I have some programming background, like I previously worked on Java. It's very easy to use Automation Anywhere because there is not much of coding involved. We just need to drag and drop the commands, then we can do the job.

Automation Anywhere is good for integrating other programming languages and other tools. The ease of use is very good, as we can directly code other programming languages, like Java or JavaScript, into our application and get output.

I have done work using a VPN, connecting via a remote desktop. The good thing about Automation Anywhere is if a client works without Internet, e.g., if we deploy on a client mission and the network is off, then a bot will still run offline.

If we want to read a scanned PDF, we use IQ Bot. Using the cognitive detail of IQ Bot and some machine learning abilities, we can train the IQ Bot to process all scanned PDF documents and give the results in an Excel file. This is a very good feature introduced by Automation Anywhere. IQ Bot is doing well.

The Bot Store is like a marketplace for bot developers. We already have some utility bots that are simple bots from there. We can download the bots from the Bot Store and use them in our current process. That's very helpful for the bot developers, especially for beginners who have just started with Automation Anywhere developing bots. There are a lot of bots deployed in the Bot Store. If you find any interesting bots, we can also upload bots to the Bot Store, making them available for everyone to download and use.

With attended automation, we need human intervention to provide input for bots. We make sure files are presented in a particular folder to pick up those files and feed it to the bot. Attended automation sometimes might go into exceptions, thus we need to monitor it in-between, then check whether it is working properly. This way, we ensure the bot is working properly.

Currently, I have developed between 20 to 25 bots. From when I started, we have deployed as a team between 30 to 40 bots. Their status is as fully running on our client machines.

We collaborate as a team if any face roadblocks or issues, discussing among our colleagues. Then, we involve the Automation Anywhere support team. They are very good. We can raise a ticket and get knowledge from their team. They help us resolve any issues.

The bot creation workflow is pretty simple. We check for feasibility, and if it is feasible, then we go about creating bots for the task. We have some measurements for ROI. We check the return on Investment to determine if it's feasible or not. We check the typical measurements, then go for Bot creation. After creating the bot, we don't have a production environment after creating the bot. We just deploy and run that bot.

If the process is huge and involves 10 to 20 steps, then it might take from creation to production three to four weeks of time. If it is a simple bot, it involves just launching a website and scraping data from the PDF, then putting it in Excel. For that type of bot, we can build it in one week and deploy it in seven to 10 days.

The return of investment on Automation Anywhere very good because I have automated some processes, like scraping the data from websites and updating some applications, and if we deployed full-time employees on these tasks, it would take more than a year and a half. However, if we automate the process and deploy a bot, it can be completed in just a month of time. The ROI is very good because the output is very accurate and the speed is very fast.

Our company is investing a lot of money in Automation Anywhere. They have saved money wherever humans are working. They invest a lot of money in FTEs and other logistics, so the money saving is very pretty good with Automation Anywhere. While I don't know the exact figure, the tool is saving us millions of dollars as well as saving about 40,000 hours in the last year. 

Currently, we are using attended automation. We do have unattended bots but are in the process of procuring some other licenses. In future, we will make a few bots unattended as well.

I did the Advanced Certification on Automation Anywhere University. I have also done IQ Bot learning. I am currently doing a Masters Certification. The courses are very clear. Any user can understand the content. If you are a beginner, go with Automation Anywhere. If you have some basic programming knowledge, that is enough. You can easily learn Automation Anywhere. It is not a big deal, and you can learn with the certification.

If a person doesn't have a programming background or skills, they can use Automation Anywhere and build bots. It's not a big deal. It's easy for business users to use. You just need some basic programming skills, like Ethernet and loops. 

I heard from Automation Anywhere that version A2019 will be released in either November or December. It is completely cloud-based and contains two IDs. One ID is a flowchart diagram and another ID has some commands. Therefore, any business user who has some basic knowledge can develop bots as well.

Version A2019 will be adding a lot of new features.

I haven't had a chance to work on Citrix automation.

We use Automation Anywhere for product SLAs on the finance team. We are also using it for a difficult automation project. 

We have automated a lot of processes, e.g., claim processing and payments.

It is currently deployed on-premise.

We are helping to automate some of the manual tasks and help to achieve the SLA.

We have some products, like Clubcard, which is a shopper's card that we're using in the Star Market. We are using Automation Anywhere for that validation, raising requests, tracking the Clubcard, and when users get new Clubcards. All these things are done through Automation Anywhere. We use the API to get the status of card numbers. 

IQ Bot is great. We recently implemented two IQ Bots in our finance sector. Manually, we had one person doing a task that took five minutes minimum. With IQ Bot, we are able to do that one particular task in one and a half minutes. That is a huge time savings.

We have done some Citrix automation with MetaBots for claim processing. We use it for validation. It is working well.

We have a credential manager. We have the ability to store in an encrypted way. Whenever we create any bots, we also have bot IDs. Without the bot ID, we are not going to deploy in production. We have the option for the support team only to get access and share their screen with users. If there is a critical password, the user will only put down the password. If we have the bot ID and password, then our support team can directly get that from the application IT team. That support center of excellence team will put in the ID password and credential and see the bot ID and password.

The API feature is the most valuable feature for some process, especially for the Clubcard. It helps us with validation of databases.

We are able to do a lot of things with MetaBots.

The management works well.

One of the great things about Automation Anywhere is that it is a developer friendly. If someone doesn't know the technology, but is logically strong, they can easily learn the tool. This is very good for us. We can train anyone in a short amount of time. 

If someone is not technical, they can also easily learn the tool. You do not have to write in syntax.

We have a situation where the system is not capturing data properly. It is clicking on the UI but it is not able to expand.

We have trouble with large volumes of data in Excel and are not getting good results. I want all the functionalities that they have in the Excel added to our existing version or an upcoming version of the product, e.g., Macros and VLOOKUP.

We have had connectivity issues, such as the reporting of a bad gateway.

We have integrated Automation Anywhere with our SQL database. I heard in version A2019 that we can easily integrate Python too, which is great news. Up until now, I have not been able to implement Python in our Automation Anywhere task bots. Though, we can integrate with other applications, like artificial intelligence, and this is better.

We have not implemented this tool with our AI. We have AI and IBM Watson. We would like to get information (or services) from the Automation Anywhere team on how to connect and implement the AI, as this is a great thing in the market. I'm looking for what to do.

Sometimes, we are facing issue in unattended. If unattended mode is not working, sometimes it will work in attended mode. However, I don't want anything in attended mode. The process is rule-based and logic-based. We just have to schedule, then if the user wants to run from the Control Room, they can. To run attended mode, we have to login into the VM to start it and human activity is required.

The version we started with is not as stable as the current version. We are trying to move to version 11. We are also in touch with our CSM regarding the A2019 version, which Automation Anywhere should release in the next year

We have 50 bots live in our organization.

We have three environments: staging, pilot, and production. In staging, the developer creates and tests their bot for internal testing. After that, we deploy into the pilot environment. That is hypercare which is for User Acceptance Testing (UAT). It is there that we run the bot in unattended mode for one and a half weeks at least with huge volumes. If we have no issues nor errors, then we create a ticket to deploy into production, our center of excellence. This is what our support team does. They will deploy into the production environments. We keep an eye out for at least 10 to 12 days as hypercare. At 12 days in hypercare mode, if we are not getting errors, then we run it in unattended mode as much as we can.

We are using Automation Anywhere in our business units. We have plans to increase the level of the tool's use.

We are planning to move onto the cloud, but first, we have to see if it will work with our business SLAs. If it is good, we will move over. We need to do a test first to determine whether the bots work well or not, which will take about three to six months. Then, we will make a decision on whether to move over to the cloud, the A2019 version. My team is excited for this version.

We would move over to Microsoft Azure because our company is already using it.

The technical support team is supporting us well.

We needed a support guide from Automation Anywhere for the initial setup because we had standalone and a lot of clusters. We needed help from a support guy during our setup to determine whether to go with a standalone or cluster setup.

For the bot creation process, we first check the requirement. Then, we check with each application, whether it is applicable through the Automation Anywhere tool or not. Some applications, like Oracle, do not work correctly. We make a feasibility report and advise the developer to use certain commands only. We provide a process map, e.g., how to create the bot according to Automation Anywhere guidance and what are the coding standards provided. We deliver everything. Then, the developer will start building our bot.

In our organization, we are focusing on continuous improvement through this tool. We are improving day by day, but not focusing on the elimination of any employees. We are just focusing in our improvements and accuracy in our SLAs. Therefore, there are three things that we are focusing on:

1. Implementing our SLAs on time. 
2. Focusing on accuracy.
3. Focusing on our continuous improvement.

Automation Anywhere is profitable for us. As volumes increase and we have a lot of data, this takes time to complete manually. Bots can complete the work without impacting the business. 

We are saving time. Some processes that have taken 24 hours for our guys to do, now take seven to eight hours for our bots. That's our achievement. It also brings accuracy.

We save money indirectly. We are also improving the accuracy of our SLAs. 

I am using that Automation Anywhere Master Certification for version 11. Recently, this has been updated in Automation Anywhere University. Until this month, it's free to use. There are no charges. That's why I would like to complete it this month.

We are waiting for them to release version A2019 version of Automation Anywhere University.

Use the standard guideline that Automation Anywhere provided. Build a dry model for each bot. This will be useful for debugging. I give these diagrams to my developers.

When automating Citrix, we can install on the client. It can easily access objects, we can click anywhere and it can take data from anywhere.

We have a scenario where one process is working, but in another case, it is not able to capture everything.

This is a good product. This platform is great, but there are a lot of issues to resolve, including the Excel features.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to follow the instructions and the standards that are specified.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The primary use case is hard to say. We have used it in a number of different areas in our company. We've used it for HR, IT, and our business partners on the front lines using the application. Therefore, our primary use case is hard to say, but basically what we try to do is automate the drudgery out of our business partners' lives.

We have automated some of our HR applications, where there are certain courses. Because we're in a financial industry, we have to maintain certain certifications, etc. Some of that is automated where we help generate reports back to HR. In some cases, there are some very front-end, which are CSRs. We have processes automated for them so they have a less manual work effort. 

We have worked with our compliance area. Some of the things that we have automated there, because we are a financial industry, are political contributions where we have to be very careful. There are a pay-to-play laws in the US, so we've actually automated, which were very difficult because you had to go to all 50 states to download all the information. Trying to do it manually was probably over 8000 hours a year, and now, we're doing it with automation.

What is important to us is continues improvement and learning. We want everyone to be able to look at what they do with a critical eye towards how can improve and get things better? By introducing the solution and working closely with our business partners every time, we create a bot, then their mindset shifts. 

Now, they are looking at everything else they do, and saying, "Hey, wait a minute. Maybe I can do this in a different way." Whether it's using a bot, some other solution, or sometimes even just improving the process as it is without automation, the company in different parts of organization is really starting to adopt the idea of continuous learning.

Probably ease of use has been its most valuable feature. It's been very easy for us to use. We like to operate in a sort of a federated model. So, when we originally started, it was just our vendor partners who were doing the development. Now, we have our own set of core developers at my company. Since 2017, we now have about 23 different people, most of whom are certified developers, a lot of them didn't have a developer background when we started.

With the user interface, a lot of the parts of it I really like, but there are some things that could be made a little simpler. A little less clicking around here and dragging over there to use.

My impressions of the Bot Store are I really love the idea of it. We've actually downloaded a couple of them and used them. One of the more recent ones was interesting. It required a license key, which kind of confused us. If it's freeware, why do you need a license key? But we got around it.

What has also been nice, with the most recent bot from the Bot Store that we downloaded, it was developed by a vendor partner who we are partners with as well. So, when we had some issues with it, we were just put in contact with the developer at that same firm, then we were able to work through any issues. Subsequently, they have made updates to it and uploaded it back to the Bot Store, so it's actually great.

The stability is pretty good. In all fairness, I know we went from version 10.5, where we thought we were fairly stable, and we did have some issues. Then, we migrated to version 11.2 and encountered some other stability issues around scheduling things. But, after talking with some Automation Anywhere techs who were extremely helpful, we have recently, as of last week, upgraded to version 11.3.2.1, and that seems to have solved some of our problems.

We are still testing it. I still need to do some checkups. Obviously, I'm here this week, so I'm not doing it right now. Generally speaking, it is stable. Knowing what it's trying to do, I think 100 percent stability with everybody will be different. Architecture and environment are going to be pretty difficult, but they do a good job.

The scalability is easy. Installing license keys, bringing up new Bot Runners, and all that stuff from the Automation Anywhere side of it are easy. It's very easy. I've had little-to-no difficulty doing any of that. I have to go through the paperwork of hardware, VDIs, etc, and that's all on our side. But, from an Automation Anywhere standpoint, it's been very quick and easy to scale.

The technical support, from my experience, has been very good. Granted, sometimes there has been a little slowness, but if I deemed it critical, or whatever, then I've had conversations with our customer service manager, or anyone, and they've been able to get me with somebody in architect, which has been phenomenal.

When we did the upgrade to version 11.2, it was sort of complicated, because we had to start all over. We had to bring in new hardware and a new set of new databases, but the gentleman who helped me out was great. He fully documented the process for us, which was awesome, because I didn't have that from the original installs of version 10.5. Because he documented it, I was able to go through the upgrade from versions 11.2 to 11.3 very simply and fast. I would say the technical support is very good.

Why did we want to invest in an RPA solution? This was our first solution, so we weren't with someone else first. We did do some evaluation, looking at how and what we wanted to do with bots. Did we want to just use it purely on the back-end? Did we want to use it on the front-end? 

Some of the leaders at the time in the strategy and innovation team at our company just saw the need for it. We knew there was a lot of manual redundant processes that were just right for automation, so we said, "Hey, let's bring it on." The PoC sort of proved the concept, then we just brought it in-house and kept going from there.

The initial setup was somewhere right in the middle. It wasn't super simple. We could've probably done things a little better than we did, but it also wasn't horribly complex.

We used an integrator and reseller for the deployment, originally. We worked with HCL Technologies, but we found some gaps in our knowledge because of this. We didn't fully understand the architecture and how it was built. 

During all the process of the installs, we didn't get all the documentation. This made some things a little difficult for us, especially when we ended up parting ways with HCL. 

Then, we signed with a different vendor for both development and reselling, OPTIMIX. So, going through with the Automation Anywhere architects and getting it installed was great.

One of the first steps that we do before automating anything is we determine if it is a process where there is enough ROI involved to dedicate development resources or a bot to? Sometimes, in all honesty, the use case is we want to learn something, so we do it anyway. But, generally, we do a time and motion study, so we understand how much time we are saving somebody. We measure that. Additionally, we measure cost. That varies depending on the department that we're doing the automation for. But, we can measure that, and usually that is a straight hourly rate times the time saved.

Cost avoidance is something that we do, too. In other words, there was a process that we automated where a department was considering hiring someone just to do some file transfers and copies, etc. We automated that process, and they just didn't have to hire somebody.

It definitely saves us a lot of time and money.

It looks like it will be right around $115,000, not counting IQ Bot, which we won't renew until later.

We looked at Blue Prism and UiPath, but we felt that Automation Anywhere was a good mix of both the front-end and back-end, whereas UiPath seems very front-end only and Blue Prism is very back end only. We needed a mix for what we wanted to do.

We don't use it as attended as much. We have had a few cases where we were going to use attended, then just decided that for the rarity of those types of uses that we didn't want to have a Bot Runner just sitting and waiting for someone to chime in five times a day. Instead, we've created more scheduled. Right now, all of our bots are running unattended.

It's really easy to use. Again, going back to something that I mentioned earlier, we have a number of people at our firm who are now certified RPA developers that had no development background. They did that just by the online training in some cases. In some cases, it was the online training, as well as a three day class that we brought in-house and had taught. However, the only part where you want to get experience and learning are around error handling.

I've been in software for a long time. I've never seen a perfect piece of software, yet. I've seen some that are very good. With everything this is trying to do and the complexities of the environment, I'm going to give it an eight (out of ten) because it's very good. I think me giving something an eight is pretty high in this space.

Coming from a startup background, we lack a formal administrative structure. This means we operate without established procedures and often tackle daily tasks, such as Excel updates or attendance tracking, on an ad-hoc basis. To address these challenges, we develop internal proofs of concept and present them to clients. In my previous role, I automated approximately ten web- and Excel-based processes using Automation Anywhere.

We implemented Automation Anywhere to address the challenge of manually entering data, such as transferring thousands of rows from Excel to a web application. When performed manually at a rate of 200 records per day, this process typically takes five days. By utilizing RPA technology, we can drastically reduce this timeframe to a matter of hours. Our primary goal is to minimize labor hours and enhance efficiency, enabling employees to focus on higher-value tasks like logic and content development instead of repetitive data entry.

The generative AI is helpful for jobs that fail. It will try to redo the same operation by implementing different numbers, and if it succeeds, it will automatically continue the process.

The task process, before and after Automation Anywhere, requires a series of actions performed by either a human or a bot. Previously, without automation, the process was identical. Rather than having employees sit at computers inputting the same data daily, automation allows for their redeployment to other areas such as administration, cash flow management, or payments. The goal of RPA is not job elimination but to enhance efficiency. While automation platforms can handle many tasks, they are not infallible and require human oversight. Regular maintenance and monitoring are essential for any automated process.

The initial learning curve for Automation Anywhere will be challenging because the drag-and-drop interface differs significantly from traditional coding. While packages are used, the underlying logic is expressed visually rather than textually. This transition may take one to two months as users acclimate to the new terminology and approach. Once familiar with the platform, developers will find it easier to construct automation processes due to their existing programming knowledge, which includes concepts like string operations, conditions, loops, and other programming language constructs. Although the terminology will be unfamiliar, the underlying logic remains consistent, making the platform more accessible over time.

The training takes at least four months for technical employees to learn, understand, and implement what they learn.

Automation Copilot is a valuable tool for streamlining daily tasks, but human oversight is essential during execution. For instance, if a sales representative quotes a package requiring managerial approval in a tourism scenario, the process should automatically route to the manager for confirmation via email, message, or another preferred method. While Automation Copilot is beneficial, it's crucial to incorporate a mechanism within the process to handle this manual intervention.

Organizations can benefit from Automation Anywhere's document, web, and Excel automation capabilities.

Automation and AI used to be a frightening prospect for our clients, who feared job displacement. However, they have embraced the idea after experiencing how these technologies can free up their time for more critical tasks.

Our organization has integrated Automation Anywhere with Epicor, Aurora, Dynamic 365, SAP, and Power BI.

Due to the numerous internal teams and domains, Automation Anywhere has been implemented across various IT departments within our organization. Multiple processes within each team have been automated using Automation Anywhere, from account management to application maintenance. These automated processes often involve handling documents, APIs, Excel files, or web-based interactions.

The most valuable feature is the back-end process automation. I primarily encountered this issue in back-end operations. To illustrate, consider the medical industry where I previously worked. ICD codes, a critical component, must be mapped by the administrative department. Traditionally, reconciling a single report was a manual, ten-hour task. Automation Anywhere offers a clear advantage over other market solutions by streamlining these time-consuming back-end processes.

Although the UI and elements are user-friendly, it is still difficult for business users without experience to understand how to use Automation Anywhere.

Automation Copilot has generated a strong foundation, but its analytics capabilities lag behind competitors. While Automation Anywhere offers numerous built-in dashboards, its data visualization options are limited. In contrast, Microsoft Power Automate provides extensive data manipulation and visualization flexibility, allowing users to create various chart types and formats. To remain competitive, Automation Anywhere must significantly enhance its data visualization features.

Licensing fees could be a barrier to entry for many potential customers interested in using Automation Anywhere.

A major drawback of Automation Anywhere is the lack of notification for all customers when upgrades occur. Without any information about these upgrades, it is difficult to determine specific details.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for five years.

I contacted technical support for problems related to the in-progress tab. In 2021 or 2022, numerous tasks appeared in the in-progress tab despite not running on the machines in real time. This led to the development of an API to address the issue. However, a new problem arose: when triggering the bot on runner machines, the bot was not actually triggered on those machines, yet it still appeared in the in-progress tab. This discrepancy persisted despite multiple reports, but the issue was resolved recently.

Neutral

The initial deployment is straightforward.

BotCity is a newcomer to the RPA market, currently holding ninth place on the top ten list. They are rapidly expanding and offer a unique advantage: no additional software is needed as long as the system supports Python.

I would rate Automation Anywhere seven out of ten.

Maintenance is required for server-based environments but not for cloud-based architectures since Automation Anywhere is self-hosted and managed by them.

Our customers have a large variety of use cases. It varies from financial processes, R&D processes, IT processes, services, and service desks. Most customers implement the solution for business processes. From a vertical perspective, we have pharmaceuticals, transportation, logistics, the public, defense, and banking sectors.

Some of our customers see growth in sales. Some see streamlining of the processes or removing errors from the process or rework. For others, the tool provides better usage or upscaling for the employees. All the customers can see benefits from the product. We do not implement any platform without a clear ROI to the customers, especially for the customers in Israel who are very ROI-oriented.

The product’s ability to have everything in one place is valuable. It's a web-based application so, our customers do not have any overhead from the maintenance perspective. 

The solution is very easy to implement. Developing something on it is very easy because we don't need to work on different screens, applications, and clients. It's the most user-friendly and developer-friendly RPA application in the market. It’s very, very easy to understand.

The product is not really intended to integrate with web applications. However, almost all enterprises use web applications, low-code applications, or advanced applications that use webhooks to trigger events. The product falls behind in working with webhooks.

Automation Anywhere has invested in the service desk, however, the first tier of the service desk, especially chat, is not really helpful but the second tier is very knowledgeable and professional. The product can do better in the service desk area. The tool must also add some of the more innovative features. 

I have been using the solution for the last six years.

The application is pretty stable. The on-premises system’s application doesn’t crash. It is stable as long as the infrastructure is stable.

On the SaaS version, we do not have any scalability issues. It’s 100% perfect. Since 2019, I haven't experienced downtime with the cloud systems.

The technical support depends on the tier. The first-tier support by chat is low quality. The whole process can take a long time for the customer. 

Neutral

The initial deployment took us less than one hour. If everything is prepared, all infrastructures are in place, and all the relevant people, definitions, and Active Directory are available, it can be deployed in less than one hour.

Automation Anywhere’s implementation is a click-through process. Mostly, it's a decision process within the system. There is a built-in bot distribution system if we need to scale up. We define the servers, and the system fires out the add-ons to the servers. Since it's a web-based system, we don't need to install almost anything. Just install the control rooms, and then everything else is done through the browsers.

The defense sector customers prefer to deploy the product on-premises. Half of our customers are on the cloud, and half are on-premises. The customers do not care what cloud provider we use since it’s a SaaS application. It is very transparent for the customer.

Usually, we need three people to deploy the solution. We need one person from our side and two from the customer’s side, including a system administrator and a DBA. The tool requires maintenance once it's on-premise and there is no connection to the cloud. However, if there is a connection to the cloud and the servers are intact, we don't need to maintain anything.

The pricing model can be a bit more flexible. It mostly has the option for bundles. There is almost no possibility of adding single licenses to the bundle. I rate the pricing a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is very expensive.

Our customers are aware of automation. Most of the processes are implemented in the areas where regular business automation with integration will not apply. Where people are currently applying manual work, our customers would like to automate those processes fully, but there is no possibility of any integration. Our customers also use the product in service areas where they need someone to work in two teams, like integration and screen scraping.

Once business users who don’t have tech skills understand how to use the solution, it's relatively easy for them. It's easier than using an iPad. However, the tool is not filtered to enable the business user to see what they need to see. We need to educate and train the users to use it. On the flip side, this ability is not present in other applications or is more difficult for business users to understand. Automation Anywhere is an easy application to learn.

The time taken to train non-technical employees on Automation Anywhere depends on which level we train them. They would need one week of training to implement basic processes based on desktop applications or Excel files.

Some of our customers use Automation Co-Pilot at the service desk. Automation Co-Pilot is only on the front with the business user. In the back, the core product runs on the business applications. It's the same integration and the same screen scraping. It's like an extension of the capabilities and translation of the graphic interface to the business user. If someone clicks on the screen, both aspects run on the back end of the different applications.

Automation Co-Pilot increases productivity because everything done in 50 clicks before is done in one click now. Processes where a user must follow the instructions and run through the processes, including the decision metrics and decision junctions, Co-Pilot provides all the best practices within it. No one needs to open any applications and learn the processes. All the decisions are made on the application. It's a tremendous improvement in the time spent and efficiency achieved.

Automation Co-Pilot freed up some time for staff from a business perspective, but mostly, it improved the response time to the customers. Whatever someone needs to do on ten screens in five to ten minutes, it's done in one click in a few seconds.

Automation Anywhere’s ability to provide automation at scale is pretty good. It depends on the scale and how large the company is. It's very easy to see in an enterprise. The top three RPA platforms are not intended for SMB users. It's mostly for enterprise companies or at least for the companies with large operations, not necessarily from the headcount perspective but from the operation perspective. In such companies, it's very, very successful.

Automation Anywhere works well with API, but it lacks API management capabilities. Automation Anywhere could be better in integration. Integration between core Automation Anywhere applications with other core business applications can be better.

Automation Anywhere has helped all our customers to increase their automation consumption. Our largest customer in the pharmaceutical area had an exponential increase in their automation consumption, and they are still growing. We started in 2020. Now, they have hundreds of processes. Smaller companies are increasing on the center of excellence side. We implement at least 10 to 20 processes every year if companies have a small center of excellence. Some customers implement 40 to 50 processes a year. It's scaling up really quickly.

My advice to someone who wants to use API integration instead of robot process automation depends on the use case. There is an automation paradigm, and we need to know what to automate and how to automate it. Some processes are not intended to be automated with RPA. Some processes are intended to be automated only with RPA. So if a company doesn't have any API management tool, then automating with API can be very challenging because they can do it right but not manage it. Then, they would have a spaghetti of API connections that they cannot maintain or manage. However, if a company has an API management tool, API capabilities, and applications, it's probably better to automate using APIs and not screen scraping.

If a company with limited IT capabilities is keen to implement business processes that require RPA, I would suggest they configure Automation Anywhere because it's very easy to implement. It is user-friendly and developer-friendly. It is pretty business-user-friendly. It is very, very easy to maintain. It's a great application to implement.

Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

I have numerous use cases for Automation Anywhere. One of these use cases involves retrieving data from the Etimad portal and inputting it into an Excel sheet, which generates reports for me. This is one of the tasks I have accomplished using Automation Anywhere. Additionally, I utilize Automation Anywhere in the Business Intelligence solution for SFDA. This platform generates reports regarding available medications or food items for purchase, whether from vendors or suppliers. I have several more use cases as well.

We have implemented Automation Anywhere to eliminate repetitive tasks for humans and enable them to concentrate on more relevant tasks that enhance customer engagement.

Automation Anywhere is designed for business users, providing a user-friendly UI that enables them to create and access reports quickly.

The learning curve of Automation Anywhere is brief. The solution permits drag-and-drop commands, and the documentation is straightforward to understand and follow.

Non-technical individuals can begin using Automation Anywhere within two months of training.

Integrating Automation Anywhere Co-Pilot with our organization's day-to-day applications is straightforward.

Co-Pilot has contributed to a 90 percent increase in productivity, as humans are now able to concentrate on tasks that provide greater value.

Co-Pilot assists in freeing up staff to engage in value-added projects. We employed this solution for an organization that had 3,000 employees working on repetitive tasks, thus allowing them to dedicate more time to relevant assignments.

Automation Anywhere has enhanced our clients' organizations by accelerating their tasks.

Automation Anywhere helps to increase automation consumption. Presently, we are implementing the solution in over 3,000 automation projects. In comparison to the manual execution of tasks prior to employing the solution, we now witness a sevenfold increase in automated tasks, a number that continues to grow each quarter.

The most valuable feature of Automation Anywhere is the automation that frees up time for our employees to engage with customers.

Automation Anywhere could enhance its services by establishing a local office in our region to provide better support.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

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

I would rate the scalability of Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten.

I would like the technical support to respond quicker to the assigned tickets.

Positive

The initial setup is easy. The deployment usually only requires me and one programmer from the client's end.

I am a consultant and help implement the solution for our clients.

Our clients do experience a return on investment through the reduction in costs for tasks that were previously carried out by humans and are now automated. Automation Anywhere is five times faster than humans and more efficient.

The Automation Anywhere license is affordable and not complex. In our region, we have the option to implement the solution on-premises or in a sandbox since nothing is in the cloud. This aspect makes the license even more cost-effective.

I evaluated UiPath, which is exceedingly expensive but offers superior support in our region. When considering the cost, support, capacity, integration, and overall value, Automation Anywhere emerged as the more economical and superior option.

I also evaluated IBM, but I found that they were imitating UiPath, which is not advantageous for me.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten.

I have integrated RPA with various applications such as Excel sheets, Oracle systems, SAP, Salesforce, DTS, the corresponding tracking system, Enterprise Content Management, as well as some of the business processes from Camunda.

Robotic process automation is crucial for maintaining operational efficiency in a business while eliminating human errors.

We have many endpoints using Automation Anywhere.

Maintenance is completed by the support engineers as per the license requirements.

I recommend Automation Anywhere. The solution is cost-effective and offers significant value. It is recognized as one of the leaders by Gartner.

We use it for backoffice processes. We are part of a shared service, so we do billing, credit, collections, and those types of processes.

We have done close to 50 projects in the last three years. AA improves our speed as far as moving files goes. It also helps in getting people prepared to work on a daily basis. We have a lot of jobs that run at night so that when people come in in the morning, everything's ready to go for them.

For example, we have two very separate systems which need to talk to each other. It sounds very simple, but we have a job that takes a file from one system and loads it into another. But it has to do that close to 1,500 times in the middle of the night. It's a job that used to be done manually by 150 people in 150 different markets. Now, it's something that's done during the night, and when they come in it's all completed. So it was a very simple task, but there was a lot of volume. It has saved everybody a lot of time and it has saved a huge amount of manpower. It saves us thousands of hours a month.

It's also very useful as far as interacting with employees. Employees can kick off jobs on an as-needed basis rather than scheduling them. It's always very helpful to have a tool that's interactive with the employees.

One of the most valuable features is object cloning, the ability to get into websites and do things faster.

I also like its usability. It's pretty easy to learn, pretty quick to get things taken care of with it. Our average developer is up within 30 days. We have our own training program. We don't use anything from AA for training. We've been doing it long enough that we created our own.

In addition, the user interface is easy to use. It's fairly user-friendly when you don't know anything about it and open it up for the first time.

The scheduling is a little difficult at times. Rather than setting up individual instances, it would be really nice if we had the ability to set repetitive jobs easily. Right now, if you want a job to run every 15 minutes, you have to schedule it a lot of times. I'd rather have the ability to just say 'run every 15 minutes.'

There could be some improvements made in the Control Room. I really like the concept of the application that they've got, so you can now access the Control Room from a mobile device, but there's only a lot of potential, there's not a lot of functionality there yet. That would be a great place for it to be able to expand, so you could have full functionality of the Control Room through a mobile device.

And in general, I would like to the solution to get into more machine-learning/AI. I know that the IQ Bots are looking to go there, but there's definitely a lot more potential there as well.

We haven't had any problems with the actual application going down. We really haven't had any issues. We have issues with third-party products going up and down, but we've never had AA just stop.

We're a small user, so we haven't had any problem with scalability. We've talked to a lot of people who have used it on a much larger scale. For us, it's very easy to add TaskBots. We're more than satisfied with the scalability.

We're always looking for expansion of the solution within our company. We use most of the commands available. There are very few that aren't applicable to what we're doing. We're always trying to get the solution into other departments within the organization itself. We use it a lot within the shared services, the area which we own. But outside of the company, we have several projects that are not within the shared service and we're always looking to talk to the other departments and get them involved.

We have 25 bots, meaning 25 licenses. Our core team that does development has four people plus a project manager.

Tech support has greatly improved. Three years ago we didn't necessarily have the best experience, but over the years they've gotten better.

As a side note, we go through a third-party first, through ISG. That's through how our service model works. Then ISG gets AA involved if they can't answer the question. We don't necessarily directly contact AA. Most of it's through the third-party provider, and then AA eventually.

ISG is great. We really haven't had a lot of problems. When we implemented version 11.3, we went so quickly - we went with it right when it came out - that there were a few questions that ISG wasn't aware of yet because it was so new. We went to AA through ISG and they were able to answer the questions right away. But for the most part, ISG is very on top of it, and we don't need to engage AA.

This is our first go in the RPA world. We had an internal resource, somebody within the company who had seen Automation Anywhere used in other companies. That person introduced us to the concept and, from there, we did some research and saw that that's where the market was going.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. I did it myself and I'm not an IT guy, so it wasn't super-difficult. It took me a couple of hours, including configuration. Our IT team set up the actual virtual machines themselves, but the installation was done completely by me.

Our implementation strategy was that we started super-small. At that time, we started with five bots and the Control Room. It wasn't overly difficult. I just followed the documentation provided to install the service and configure everything.

Our initial project had to have an ROI, and that's why we started small. We have never not had a yearly ROI. We've always greatly exceeded the cost of, or the investment in, the tool. In terms of how much it's saving us, I don't want to be quoted on the exact amount, but it's more than millions of dollars a year.

We purchased AA through ISG and have done both annual renewals and a multi-year renewal, the latter recently. It has been very easy to add bots on an as-needed basis.

There are no additional costs from Automation Anywhere, but there is obviously the infrastructure costs for the VMs.

We definitely evaluated lots of different options at the time. Of course, it came down to Blue Prism or to AA. We went with AA because of the feature set, the way that the development was laid out. And support was also a factor. We were much more interested in States-side support.

Any company in today's environment would be foolish not to implement RPA. There are definitely different types of use cases where you could spread it out amongst the organizations and let them do their own thing. We have chosen to keep it centralized and have been pretty successful in doing it. But everybody should be using an RPA in some capacity.

I would absolutely recommend specifically Automation Anywhere.

Our experience with the solution has been a ten out of ten. I can't speak to the other tools because we haven't used them, but we're very satisfied with what we have.