What is our primary use case?
We use Automation Anywhere to automate all back-office manual tasks, including service case management, support cases, and financial reconciliations between multiple spreadsheets and source systems.
We faced challenges because we were running the on-premises version. It was too demanding on our physical system architecture. Last year, we moved to the cloud, which has improved our landscape. It's better now, but it was tough before. Anyone new to Automation Anywhere will find it much better now.
How has it helped my organization?
Before we implemented Automation Anywhere, all of our tasks were manual. Automating them has saved us a lot of time and eliminated a lot of risk. As of now, our run rate is around 15,000 manual hours saved per year.
Automation Anywhere helps eliminate our daily manual tasks, allowing our staff to focus on more valuable tasks.
We have integrated AA with Salesforce, our homegrown platform, ServiceNow, and PeopleSoft.
Our workflows, APIs, business applications, and document automation integration with AA are well-integrated and efficient.
AA has helped us save time.
What is most valuable?
The code automation platform is the most valuable feature.
What needs improvement?
Recently, Automation Anywhere acquired FortressIQ, a company that specializes in discovery automation. Discovery automation is the process of sitting down with businesses and documenting their processes and all related information. It is a very human-intensive process. Automation Anywhere acquired FortressIQ to do this work, but the two platforms are not yet seamlessly integrated. This is a pain point that we are currently working on.
I hope that Automation Anywhere can improve its capabilities in the areas of sophisticated unstructured data parsing, contextual routing, and long-running process orchestration. These are areas where AI can be especially helpful. For example, AA could use AI to suggest the next best action in a process and to configure everything in one shot. It should also be smart enough to adjust and move on.
The process discovery side needs improvement. Before we can automate, we must document the current process map and create a process design document. This is a time-consuming and painful process. We have to go to the line-of-business people who perform the operations, sometimes multiple times, to get an understanding of the problem. Automation Anywhere is improving in this area, but it's still not perfect. So, we're relying more on other reliable platforms. The platforms they acquired are not yet fully integrated into the core RPA design platform. This is a big gap. If they can close the gap between discovery and bot development, it would eliminate many manual hours of discovery, allowing the automation team, or COA team, to scale faster.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Automation Anywhere for four and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
At first, we had issues with the stability, but it has significantly improved in the last six months after we migrated to the 360 version.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Automation Anywhere can scale vertically, but not horizontally. This means that it can add more resources to a single machine to handle increased load, but it cannot distribute the workload across multiple machines. This is a limitation for long-running, complex processes that require state maintenance. However, Automation Anywhere has a roadmap item to release a horizontal scaling solution in 2024.
In other words, Automation Anywhere can scale up, but not out. We can add as many small bots as we want to a single machine, but we cannot distribute the workload across multiple machines.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is decent. We were previously on a lower level of service support but realized we needed better support and were upgraded to top-level service. It's been better since then. We have a dedicated account customer success manager and architect assigned to us, so we can ping them anytime and they'll chase it for us internally.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
The initial deployment was straightforward. It took six months to deploy ten bots.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing of AA is similar to UiPath.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated UiPath but AA is more resource friendly and has a shorter learning curve.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten.
Our organization's approach and strategy will be to accelerate cross-cutting capability across all technology solutions, including automation. We expect vendors like Automation Anywhere to step up their game to compete. If they cannot compete in the United States, they will not be able to compete in the rest of the world and will be left behind.
We tried to get business users to build bots. We have reports of business users who have built bots. It is easy to get them started, but it is very difficult to get them to build production-quality bots. I am sure that this is a common challenge with any tool or platform. All the solution developers and concepts are theoretical. In reality, they do not work. Business users can build whatever they want, but their bots will not withstand the production infrastructure. Therefore, we need to step in and do the job properly. I do not believe in the concept of business users building bots. It just creates more problems down the line.
The learning curve is around two weeks.
We are starting a POC for Co-Pilot which was formally ARI. At the time when it was ARI, it was not a good feature.
Runners in our local landscape require maintenance.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.