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.

Our journey started with the migration initiative. We had to migrate some processes from our legacy RPA solutions. Next, we started expanding to finance and HR, including integration with other platforms like ServiceNow and Salesforce. There are multiple teams within Paramount, like CBS News, CBS Studios, and Paramount Plus, so we've worked with them to find opportunities to build automation. We've explored multiple use cases that deliver a solid ROI, with a focus on low-code and now-code solutions. 

We have hundreds of application systems at Paramount, including legacy platforms. The merger required us to consolidate many of these systems, so there were many opportunities to use automation. One challenge we faced was that this process required someone to integrate the systems manually. It involved a lot of repetitive, mundane tasks to bridge those gaps. Automation Anywhere helped us accomplish those tasks. 

The framework that previously existed was an on-prem solution. The transition to the cloud was a huge change. The second change was redesigning and refining existing processes. While we were undergoing migration, we talked to various customer groups and decided to revisit the processes and maybe remove some things that were unnecessary. We optimized processes and took the opportunity to revise what was on the existing legacy platforms.

There's a lot of buzz around generative AI, so we are considering that on an organizational level. At the same time, we are focusing on orchestrating end-to-end processes, not just the AI. We are having conversations with tech and business groups about solving enterprise-wide problems, and we can add AI into the mix when necessary. 

I think there are many opportunities to add AI to existing use cases like legal, corporate, finance, and AI. Hopefully, we will start bringing more AI use cases to production, but we are still in the review and proof of concept stage. Still, the leadership is interested, and they've done a lot of research on AI, and we have a separate InfoSec team that must review everything. The VMware team also must review the technology. All of these AI technologies must undergo a stringent vetting process. I'm not part of that, but we share ideas and try to understand what's happening. Data analysis is a critical part. We must ensure that our data doesn't go outside the model, but we're open to any opportunity to improve our solutions and test out what makes sense. We'll try that and see how the end users respond.

Before switching to the cloud version of Automation Anywhere, I worked with v10 and v10, so I appreciate the core functionality and the fact that it's a low-code solution. That is one of the key elements that differentiates Automation Anywhere from other platforms and one of the reasons we have been able to achieve success. 

It's accessible to business users with few technical skills. We've been able to add on to our current framework and build on our existing library of reusable components, allowing developers to build their automations quicker.

The time needed to learn Automation Anywhere has varied, depending on the user. We've taken on a large number of Cylance and Cisco developers. Some can pick it up quicker, but others take a little longer because of their prior project commitments. It's all over the place. It depends on how much time they can devote to learning the solution.

Many requested improvements are already on Automation Anywhere's roadmap, like a better governance model for AI systems. We also want to see more releases for autopilot/co-pilot from a generative AI perspective. We're expecting Automation Anywhere to release those in future updates, and as long as they maintain consistent improvement in their core functionality, I believe that will lead to success.

We have established connectivity with so many applications, so we build reusable components. We identify an application that business users might want to build, so we have a framework ready by the time they're ready to get onboarded and start developing. Automation Anywhere provides a seamless experience for utilizing those packages. They need to keep adding features so the solution doesn't stagnate. One example is email automation. There need to be multiple options for authentication available. 

Automation Anywhere could add more tools to track the processes and ROI, so we can get a better understanding of the cost savings and compliance. We heavily track those metrics and make them available to the leadership for review. 

I have used the cloud version of Automation Anywhere since 2021, but I worked on the previous versions before that in past roles as a consultant. 

Automation Anywhere is highly scalable. That's one of the most significant advantages. We usually build a process on a smaller scale and then extend the capabilities. The scaling is relatively seamless.

I rate Automation Anywhere support eight out of 10. We've had a great experience with tech support. They've helped us with significant challenges we've faced and worked with us on feature requests and bugs. We've had lots of collaborative discussions.

Positive

Automation Anywhere is easy to deploy. Some processes can be deployed in a week, while the more complex processes may take four to six weeks. We have release controls in place, so everything is streamlined. All the deployment testing is handled before the automations go live. 

Upgrading is simple because we're on the cloud platform. We don't need to upgrade anything. Maintenance takes place on the partner's side because the bot engine is installed and maintained there. We only need to install the latest packages to test the new features when they are released. That takes a little time. 

I rate Automation Anywhere eight out of 10. They have a lot of expertise with ERP solutions, and the core features are keeping pace with the market. Automation Anywhere is incorporating new components like generative AI and planning to release a new governance model, so there is constant innovation and the company is working to make things better for business users and developers. It's a competitive product that's easy to deploy and maintain. 

We have implemented Automation Anywhere for 2 finance use cases: recurring collections and payment forms processing. To achieve this, we leveraged the platform's invoice-tracking capability and built our bots around it.

We implemented Automation Anywhere to explore more automation possibilities.

We are happy with Automation Anywhere and the good experience it has provided. Automation Anywhere has successfully allowed us to implement our use cases.

We have identified several areas where we could potentially optimize the AI within our automation processes. However, the ultimate decision depends on the cost-effectiveness of automation. While we have a couple of significant use cases that seem well-suited for automation, others involve lower volumes that may not justify the investment. Currently, we're considering Microsoft's automation solutions due to their existing integration with our other Microsoft products. However, we might also explore Automation Anywhere for specific, complementary automation needs.

Someone with little automation experience can still create a bot using Automation Anywhere.

The learning curve of Automation Anywhere is adequate.

The time it takes to train someone to create a bot with Automation Anywhere depends on their existing technical background. For individuals with no prior technical experience, the learning process can take two to three months. However, if someone simply needs to become a casual user of a pre-built bot, a few weeks of training might be enough to get them comfortable navigating its features.

Automation Anywhere has significantly reduced our error rates, particularly in areas like allocating payment receipts and collections. Before implementing it, human error was a major issue. Automation Anywhere has effectively addressed this problem. Of course, reducing human involvement is a natural consequence of automation. However, a surprising benefit we've observed over the past two and a half years is that data quality has also improved significantly. Allocations have become much more accurate, which is an incredible advantage. Initially, the existing data was riddled with errors. Consequently, the automation rate was far lower than anticipated. However, as we progressively corrected the database, the automation rate steadily climbed, and error rates began to decline. It took roughly six to eight months to see the benefits.

Our organization has a defined AI automation strategy. We recognize its importance and have prioritized its development over the next two to three years. This focus on AI, particularly in customer service, will help us gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Automation Anywhere is integrated with our ERP, human portals, supplier portal, and CRM.

Automation Anywhere has been instrumental in saving us both time and money. It serves as a core strategy in our efforts to streamline operations and reduce our reliance on manual labor. This has allowed us to handle multiple workloads with increased stability. We are committed to continuing on this path of automation to further optimize our processes.

While we initially implemented Automation Anywhere due to its inherent strengths, the software landscape has evolved significantly in the past two and a half years. Several competing products now offer superior functionality compared to Automation Anywhere's current capabilities. Microsoft's automation solutions are particularly compelling. They integrate seamlessly with the wider Microsoft product suite, which is often the core software environment for many businesses. This integration advantage isn't present with Automation Anywhere, which operates independently of Microsoft products.

The price has room for improvement.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for 2.5 years.

Automation Anywhere is a stable product.

Automation Anywhere is known for its scalability. This means that financial institutions can leverage it to automate large processes without worrying about the platform's ability to handle the increased workload. In simpler terms, Automation Anywhere can grow alongside our automation needs.

In the past, we relied on other automation applications. However, these applications lacked the flexibility and adaptability of a bot.

The deployment process was successful thanks to the contributions of the third-party implementation team.

The full deployment took eight months to complete.

For the implementation, we leveraged a third-party vendor with expertise in Automation Anywhere.

The positive return on investment for Automation Anywhere is clear after two years of successfully automating a few business processes.

Automation Anywhere, once a competitively priced option in the RPA market, has seen a shift in its pricing strategy. Currently, it stands as one of the more expensive RPA tools available.

In our evaluation of RPA tools, we've considered Microsoft Power Automate and UiPath. Automation Anywhere, while a strong contender, appears to have a steeper technical learning curve compared to the other two options.

I would rate Automation Anywhere six out of ten.

We rely on an external company to handle the maintenance of our Automation Anywhere software.

Companies considering an Automation Anywhere solution should approach it with a long-term perspective. Ideally, they should be prepared for a ten-year commitment. This allows them to understand how the product will evolve and adapt over time. A ten-year timeframe, or at least eight years, provides a significant advantage compared to a two to three-year outlook. By taking a long view, companies can ensure they are well-positioned to benefit from the ongoing development and reshaping of the Automation Anywhere platform.

Vale is one of the largest mining companies in the world and Automation Anywhere is our primary process automation tool. We're using it globally across several branches and locations. There are multiple processes involved in mining, transporting, and shipping iron ore that benefit from process automation. We can also automate our corporate use cases, such as finance, HR, and back office processes. Automation Anywhere is integrated with our core company systems, including SAP solutions and some in-house applications we've built. 

Automation Anywhere enables us to standardize and replicate operations and processes. We have a lot of repetitive processes that are time-consuming to perform manually. We aim to increase productivity and save time for our business users. Over five years, we've saved about 68,000 hours. Automation Anywhere integrates well with our workflows and business applications. We haven't had any issues.

We see some cost savings, but we also tend to think of cost avoidance. We have some compliance and regulatory processes that need to be completed in a timely fashion to avoid fines and taxation on top of that. Our CoE is responsible for a critical portion of the automation. In addition to thinking of how we can automate existing processes, we create new processes. When you automate something that isn't optimized, the results aren't as good. 

We like Automation Anywhere's Citizen Developer program. We've been doing this for a while now. It helps to expand platform adoption within our company and encourage more people to use it. It has been good to see the engagement. We've done some events and hackathons and hope to do another one in November.  We like having an easy tool to share with our business users. 

It isn't hard for business users without technical skills to use Automation Anywhere. We've received positive feedback from them, saying it was an easy tool to learn, especially with the latest version. We set up a training program, and new developers can learn the basics in around a week and start programming bots in three weeks to a month. 

We are currently doing some PoCs for generative AI and trying to see if it fits, but we're also concerned about the safety of our users and information security, so our approach is always conservative. We don't want to do anything that creates unnecessary risk for the company. 

Our users would like more online community forums where they can exchange information. I would also like a better way to monitor and manage all the automations we have running within our systems because our CoE governance must be robust so we are always aware of what's happening.  

We have used Automation Anywhere since 2018.

There have been some changes in personnel over the years, but they have always been great people who provide excellent service and solve problems quickly.

We previously used Microsoft Power Automate.

The platform was not hard to deploy, but each company has its own security protocols to deal with. Once we worked through all the security requirements, it was straightforward. Automation Anywhere requires some maintenance. 

In the first year, we needed to adjust the size of the machines and optimize the bots. However, it hasn't required much maintenance since then. We developed some better processes in CoE governance to develop and track the bots, so it's much easier now. We set up alerts that send us messages when the bots have errors. 

In 2018, we looked at some other products on the market, but Automation Anywhere was a perfect fit. We didn't have any issues that Automation Anywhere couldn't solve. The critical factor for us was its ease of use. We liked the drag-and-drop interface and the low-code capabilities.

I rate Automation Anywhere eight out of 10. 

We use Automation Anywhere to automate tasks throughout the company, enabling our employees to be more productive and conduct more analysis.

We can save money by implementing automations. Before implementing Automation Anywhere, we had a lot of repetitive tasks that weren't adding value. It improved morale by automating some of the boring, repetitive tasks, allowing our employees to focus on more creative, meaningful work.

I like Automation Anywhere's development interface. Our developers love it because it's easier to learn, and they can pick it up quicker than the other tools. We can integrate Automation Anywhere with Slack to get alerts from our bots. 

It's also integrated with our core banking application and many legacy applications that we could not integrate without the Automation Anywhere platform. Around 70 percent of our environment is integrated with it. The integration is fast and seamless. Integrating tools through the APIs is simple, reliable, and efficient. 

We have a lot of ideas for leveraging Automation Anywhere's AI capabilities. For example, we use it to conduct analysis for our clients. We can use it to check a lot of documents. It can not only read but write documents. Using AI, we can run checks to see if a customer has been approved for credit. 

It can help this process go faster, and we can enhance our employee's potential by augmenting their analysis with AI. We are already using generative AI. It has been a huge success because we are using it like a copilot to improve our employees' potential. We can scale it faster with another process in the automation manager. 

We have developers, so all of our team has technical knowledge. However, Automation Anywhere's learning platform is comprehensive and it's easy to learn things on your own. Many of our developers didn't know anything about the platform, but it was easy for them to learn and become fully productive. 

I think there are some opportunities to improve integration with monitoring tools already on the market to make this even faster. We struggle a little when applying the upgrades because the control room has some flaws. That's one advantage of migrating to the cloud. If we do that, then we don't have to upgrade manually. There is a SaaS option, but we decided to opt for on-prem and perform the upgrades ourselves. We're thinking of choosing the cloud options in the next version to make it easier. 

We have used Automation Anywhere since 2022.

Automation Anywhere is highly scalable. That's one of its advantages. It's easier to scale than other solutions. We are a financial institution serving around 26 million clients with only 3,000 employees. We need automation to attend to our operational tasks. Otherwise, it would be challenging to manage all of our clients

I rate Automation Anywhere support nine out of 10. The local support in Brazil could improve. While it has gotten better in the last few months, we've struggled as a global company trying to contact them sometimes. 

Positive

The initial deployment took three months, but it took a year to change the legacy bots to Automation Anywhere. We decided to automate new projects that would yield more ROI before finishing the migration of our legacy bots. 

We get a significant ROI even though the licensing cost is higher than average. The gains we realize from the initial development make up for it. In the last three years, I estimate we have saved around 2,200 hours of labor. To date, we've saved almost $6 million. 

The cost of Automation Anywhere is fine. 

We looked at two other solutions before making the decision to choose Automation Anywhere. One reason was reliability. When we implemented it, Automation Anywhere was already a widely used and popular tool. It has high availability, which is one requirement for a banking solution. It's also easy to learn, use, and implement. We looked at the leaders in Gartner's, such as Blue Prism and UiPath. Automation Anywhere stood out for its development interface. 

I rate Automation Anywhere nine out of 10. 

In the banking, financial services, and manufacturing domains it is used for process automation and OCR.

For example, it is used by banks for large-scale reconciliation. A group of companies often has multiple bank accounts. We have to do the reconciliation with multiple currencies. On a daily basis, there can be more than 10,000 transactions.

We have implemented Automation Co-Pilot in our organization. Suppose a business head needs to check the details about a customer, such as order history, payment clearance time, how many invoices have been sent, and how many of them have cleared on time. They may also need information about how many projects they have executed with that customer, how many of their resources have been used, and how long that customer has been associated with their organization. I get all this information in one portal by using Automation Co-pilot.

It is talking with Monday.com, our CRM, as well as with our in-house project management tool, and SAP, where I get all the account details. It gets all the information needed and more, such as how many times we had discussions with the customer about multiple projects, and which salesperson is assigned to that customer. All the details required for business management are presented on one page, using Co-Pilot.

An example of how Automation Co-Pilot has affected our productivity is that in India the taxation system differs from that in the UK. Everything is on a government portal. If I want to deal with new customers and need data about their previous taxation, I obtain all the details from the government portal using Co-Pilot.

We also use Co-Pilot for customer support. We are the number-one partner in India for Tableau and data analytics and we have many projects where we provide Tableau support. We've configured Co-Pilot to gather all the necessary background information from our support system about a customer who raises a ticket. This information is displayed on one screen from our project management systems, repositories, and accounts. All the details are presented in our ticketing software, Jira. Based on this information, we understand the customer's scenario, and what kind of dashboards and RPA processes they have implemented. Initially, a customer support ticket is opened by a chatbot, not a human. The chatbot communicates with the customer and registers the ticket. A bot then opens the ticket and triggers Co-Pilot to gather all the details. With all the details collected, a bot will then assign that ticket to a specific person. This process, which used to require three people, is now done completely by bots.

Another benefit is around approval processes. You can build one using Automation Anywhere Co-Pilot when multiple levels of approvals are involved. Initially, we didn't have an approval process. Multiple people were in approvals. Now, with all the details in a ticket, when it is resolved, it is approved by the manager. That wasn't integrated into Jira, so we automated that in Co-Pilot. A solution should be verified by a senior person. Now, when tickets are approved, it helps us provide a good customer experience and customers will renew their contracts.

And in banking, where you have thousands of loan applications each day, assessing each application involves getting the applicant's credit score and details from multiple portals and government websites. Making a decision for one applicant used to take half an hour. But by using Co-Pilot, the decision-making time is reduced to just five or 10 minutes. It is genuinely helping people speed up operations and decision-making processes.

It has also helped us increase automation. Every day we are sending the "overdue" report to everyone in sales because they do the recoveries. The salespeople update all the details in the database and a reminder is automatically sent to the customer as well as the salesperson if the payment has not cleared within the payment terms. Initially, there were three people generating the reports and sending them to Salesforce, updating SAP, et cetera. Now, there's only one person who is handling the exceptions, because there are exceptions that are not handled by the bot.

Now, our salespeople are focusing more on business opportunities and not worrying about payments. Most of the time, payments are taken care of by the bot.

After we implemented that process, we then implemented vendor invoice processing, customer invoice processing, customer payments, PO processing, and bank reconciliation. We have implemented multiple processes.

The most valuable feature, which was launched last year, is Automation Co-Pilot. Microsoft has a co-pilot, but it's only for Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. But Automation Anywhere offers a co-pilot that is suitable for Salesforce, Genesys, Atlassian, and other contact center and standard applications. This is a game-changing feature for Automation Anywhere compared to the market. We are also getting good responses from customers about this product.

Automation Anywhere is easy to use. In my experience with more than 100 customers, coding is not a big deal nor is writing the bot. Understanding the process and providing optimized workflow, and fitting RPA properly for their processes are important.

In terms of the learning curve, Automation Anywhere provides detailed resources through their portal, including instructor-led training, prerecorded sessions, and exams. When training my team, I initially recommend that they go to the Automation Anywhere University. Then, for two days, I provide high-level training, covering the use cases and overall process. We then give simple use cases to the team and they are ready to implement them. Within three months, I have trained a team of over 20.

I hire people who have worked with other technologies but who want to shift to RPA. They already have knowledge of processes and their logic is strong. Others don't know about logic or how to apply algorithms.

I'm impressed with the solution's OCR and document automation because I've worked with multiple OCRs and Automation Anywhere has built in most of the document formats so you can easily get results. You can easily and quickly extract data from a PDF and it's faster than other tools.

I would like to see a low-code/no-code platform, similar to Zoho Creator or Joget, for process building, so that we can build applications within Automation Anywhere itself. Right now, we need some kind of portal that supports these types of activities. We would like to give a 360-degree solution to our customers without needing to get help from other technologies, like Joget to build processes, or Java to build custom portals.

If Automation Anywhere included these features, I would be able to include all these processes. There are features in place in Automation Anywhere right now, in AARI and Co-Pilot, but they have limitations. They do not match the development capabilities of platforms like Joget or other applications like that.

I'd like to see the stabilization of Co-Pilot and integration with multiple products. Right now, it is integrated with Genesys and Salesforce, among others. In the future, I will require integration with SAP Oracle, Atlassian, and Service Now. The contact center vertical is important and ticketing comes into the picture. We can build integration with Atlassian, but I have to do the coding and use extensions on everyone's laptops. Integration of Co-Pilot with Atlassian and other products will help the user.

For instance, if a big bank wants to automate loan application management with Co-Pilot and I need to use their CRM, if the CRM is not supported they won't do the project. And if a bank has over 3,000 loan agents, I have to install the extensions and integrations on each of their laptops. Instead, I could add one line of code inside Atlassian and get all the results automatically on everyone's laptops. This would save a lot of time for both developers and customers.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for more than four years.

Technical support is related to the product only. We receive good support from them because they respond within one hour. They even have chat support.

Customer environments aren't the same. Sometimes they block the reverse proxy or other things. That's when I need help from Automation Anywhere because they are the product experts, while we are implementation experts. If we have an issue with the product, we get help from Automation Anywhere. 

For example, if there is a problem with communication between the server and client and the bot is down, I need to contact Automation Anywhere to resolve the issue. We reach out to Automation Anywhere for these kinds of problems, but we handle process-related or implementation-related issues ourselves.

Positive

I worked with UiPath for about two to three months.

Co-Pilot is not free. It has a user-based cost. If I have 100 users, I need to purchase 100 licenses. But for practice purposes, you can get the Community Edition where you can understand all the details for implementing Co-Pilot.

The pricing is reasonable.

Automation Anywhere is the only RPA tool that is developed using something other than .NET technology. If you go for UiPath, Blue Prism, AutomationEdge, or Pega, they are all built on .NET, and only support Windows. But Automation Anywhere is developed on Java and Python entirely, and is totally web-based. Other tools are desktop-based. That means I can install their server on Linux too. Most banks and many other enterprise organizations require servers on Linux, not Windows. That's an advantage for Automation Anywhere.

We are working with one of the top-three banks in India. They have a policy that all servers have to be Linux servers. Because of that, UiPath and other tools were eliminated in the first stage of the deal.

We did build our own product related to OCR but not RPA, but Automation Anywhere is the biggest product. We also looked at Power Automate, but cost was a factor. Power Automate charges per process, not per bot. For example, it doesn't take more than 10 minutes to close the last month's General Ledger. One of our customers was paying $600 per month for this process with Power Automate. He went with Automation Anywhere, where he only had to pay $3,000 to $4,000 in total for an unattended bot, which was able to help 24/7.

And to get all the components in UiPath that are similar to what you have in Automation Anywhere, a customer would pay more than $37,000, while an Automation Anywhere customer would only pay $25,000. That is a game-changer.

As for using an API integration instead of RPA, API is faster than desktop automation, but it depends on the scenario. If you want to work with standard applications like SAP or Oracle, you can use APIs or desktop automation. I faced an issue with one of my customers who said that to do an API ABAP integration for SAP automation, he would have to pay for automation and ABAP development. I suggested he not pay for ABAP and just do desktop automation. What will be cost-effective depends on the scenario and the automation.

If a customer has to spend $10,000 on ABAP and another $30,000 to $40,000 for Automation Anywhere, they will kick us out. But if we go with Automation Anywhere and there is no need for ABAP, and instead we'll do desktop automation, the customer will be much happier because they are saving costs.

I have replaced existing portals for multiple customers. For one of my customers in Dubai, when we came into the picture, multiple things were not in their portal. They had developed the portal in-house. We started by understanding all the requirements. Before we started with RPA, we redeveloped the portal and then applied RPA OCR and pushed the data where it needed to go.

People develop their portals according to their convenience, but they don't know the standard processes and how to implement them. When they have to provide reports to management, or they have to do an audit, or they have to check details of particular transactions, they don't get the details from their existing portal or process. We standardize their process and then we implement RPA. If their process is not standardized, RPA will be a failure for the customer.

A simple process, from requirement gathering to production, takes about one month. Solutions don't require more than two or three people. For smaller projects, we don't assign a dedicated project manager. Instead, we use a shared project manager. The business analyst is also shared, because the costs of these roles need to be recovered. If the cost isn't recovered, there's no need for us to assign this role. The business analyst will do the final testing of the project because they're involved from the initial phase of the project.

The time spent maintaining bots depends on the bots, the situation, and the customer. A critical process might have 40-plus unattended bots and might take two resources during business hours for project support and monitoring. But I recommend support on an hourly basis.

An enterprise with multiple licenses should have at least one dedicated support person. That resource will provide reports to management. For instance, when discussing future projects, management will require all the information to approve the budget. We can present all the information: the number of transactions over the last month, and how much time or money was saved. Support will also provide training to business users if required. When AARI is part of the picture, we have to train people.

We mainly use Automation Anywhere to automate or mimic manual business processes. We use Automation Anywhere to develop bots that mimic human interventions in business applications such as SAP and web report applications. We use Automation Anywhere to automate human actions in the applications.

By implementing Automation Anywhere, we mainly wanted to automate business processes.

I am a developer, and I am using Automation Anywhere to develop automated tasks for business users. I am not a business user. Before automation, business users were manually updating the data into the portals or desktop applications. The business required more time and resources.

Automation Anywhere helps save time and resources for the business. For example, an e-commerce website wants to create purchase orders for its client orders. They get the information regarding the clients in an Excel form, and the bot picks up the data one by one and updates it in the desktop or web application. They get hundreds of records daily, so updating the data manually can take more than a week. The business would require at least two to four resources. To save time and resources, we automate such tasks. With a bot, the process is done within minutes.

We are a service provider for business people. So far, our business people are very satisfied with our bots. They are getting huge outputs as per their expectations. It is beneficial for our clients.

There are multiple features. About three to four years ago, they introduced IQ Bot which helps to get data from documents with different structures. We receive bills, invoices, or purchase orders from different vendors in multiple formats. Each vendor uses a different format. IQ Bot automatically scans all the documents, extracts the required data from all unstructured documents or PDF files, and provides it to the business user. It is a very helpful feature of Automation Anywhere. They have recently introduced Automation Co-pilot which is very helpful for developers doing automation or automating the business process. Automation Co-pilot is very useful to create tasks.

Its user interface is very understandable. Even a non-technical person can understand it. Everything in the user interface is self-explanatory. It is quite good.

To use Automation Anywhere, no technical knowledge is required because it is simply a drag-and-drop type of tool. Each and every action is available in the tool, and we can easily automate a task. Business people can also easily run the created bot and monitor a particular task. They can easily monitor the results based on their business criteria. Automation Anywhere is a very good tool. It is easier than UiPath. A non-technical person can learn it very quickly.

I have experienced the issues of UI getting stuck. There seems to be an issue with server stability. This is something that can be better.

At times, the created tasks start failing randomly or intermittently which affects the business. They are failing at the runtime because of the bot launch crash issue. Business people are impacted a lot because of these failures at the run time.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for four years.

We sometimes have issues with server stability. There are also run-time failures of bots. I would rate it an eight out of ten for stability.

For scalability, I would rate it a ten out of ten. Automation Anywhere is moving with the current technologies. It is scaling day by day. 

We are a large organization.

We have used UiPath. It needs technical knowledge. You must know the C programming language to automate with UiPath. As compared to UiPath, Automation Anywhere is better. A non-technical person can easily understand Automation Anywhere.

We are also learning Power Automate. As a service provider, we need to learn the latest technology. We are looking into Power Automate. Our business people are interested in Power Automate because it comes along with Microsoft Office.

Automation Anywhere also keeps on introducing the latest technologies. In the future, there will be good competition between Automation Anywhere and Power Automate.

Previously, it was on-premises, but now, everything is on the cloud.

Its deployment is very easy. Because it is a cloud platform, you just need to install a single file. It does not take more than two minutes to download. Within two minutes, the cloud license will appear. One person is enough for the deployment.

It gets updated automatically because it is a cloud version. There is no need to update it manually. Everything is done automatically. If auto-update is not working, we can update it manually, but that also does not take more than five minutes.

In terms of maintenance, regular maintenance is required because there are issues related to stability and tasks failing at the runtime because of unknown reasons. These things need to be fixed, so regular management is required for Automation Anywhere at the backend.

I am a service provider for business people. Business people will have a better idea about the ROI. From what I understand, there are time savings. 

My understanding is that the license cost of Automation Anywhere is more reasonable than UiPath and Blue Prism.

I would recommend Automation Anywhere for all business people. Automating a business process is easy with Automation Anywhere.

We have not yet used Automation Co-pilot. From what I know, if we are reading from an Excel file, it helps to generate each and every action for a task. What usually developers do is done by Automation Co-pilot automatically based on the information that we give it. Automation Co-pilot will improve productivity for a repetitive task. It will save 40% to 50% work for developers. We are currently not using the AI capabilities of Automation Anywhere.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a ten out of ten.

Automation Anywhere is used to elevate the customer experience for our financial advisors. We aim to improve our interactions with them in terms of their requests for updates to their banking instructions or anything else related to their accounts. 

Automation Anywhere has helped us improve our service. Our financial service professionals gave us some feedback that they are spending a lot of time calling our home office to check on the status of requests and doing other things that I would describe as administrative activities. That takes some time that would be better spent building their businesses and growing their relationships with their clients. It allows us to automate and streamline those administrative tasks for our financial professionals and employees.

We did everything manually before we implemented Automation Anywhere. When a financial advisor initiated a request, someone had to input that information into the appropriate record system and communicate with the advisor to update them on the status. Someone needed to follow up on the request and ensure it was completed. 

Automation Anywhere has challenged us to rethink the art of the possible. We're still considering how to leverage AI. Our attitude toward AI is evolving, but we know that it's something we must address. We believe that a delay in adopting could have an exponential effect on our ability to compete and remain among the industry leaders. We are evaluating a few use cases. In particular, we see content and knowledge management as a huge opportunity. We're exploring ways to leverage document understanding and natural language processing to quickly process the information and take the appropriate action. 

We have the unattended bots running in our environment and recently launched our first document automation use case. We are also excited about the automation copilot. These use cases are crucial in the wealth management industry, which is paper-intensive, so it's essential to leverage automation for document-focused tasks. Co-pilot allows us to streamline that process while improving the accuracy of the information entering the system record and ensuring efficiency. 

The unattended bots are working behind the scenes so that employees don't need to do work that they had done previously. Our tests of the document automation and copilot features have received a positive initial response.  Employees like the UI and how it brings out the information for them to validate.

We've integrated Automation Anywhere with our internal homegrown systems and a couple of third-party applications through APIs and UI interactions. The integration has been smooth, especially from an API perspective. We can quickly pull together API endpoints for our development and leverage APIs from third parties. It's been pretty easy to bring it all together using some basic Python coding. We spend more time ensuring we have the correct information from the API owner, so we get the right connections. 

From the product side, I like the minimum viable product approach, where the first generation of a new product is released and tested in the market, but it would be great if some of those pieces were a little bit more thought out from a user experience perspective. They could take a little more time to get some insights from their customers like in a beta test or something like that. 

We have used Automation Anywhere for the last 15 months. 

Automation Anywhere's ability to automate at scale is very impressive based on what I've seen internally and heard from subject matter experts. We're starting to see what we can do with it. When we developed a rudimentary proof of concept with co-pilot coupled with document automation, it was eye-opening for our leaders and stakeholders to see how versatile and accurate it was. 

I rate Automation Anywhere support seven out of 10. I would also like to see better communication with their customer success teams. It often takes longer than expected when we submit requests for help or come across a problem we want to resolve. While I can appreciate that it sometimes takes a while to get the appropriate answer, it would be nice to be in constant communication about where they are in the process.

Neutral

Deploying Automation Anywhere was relatively easy. We implemented our first bot last year as a proof of concept. We tried various things to give us a bit of a different flavor. Whether we're using an API, UI, or doing a physical task within a third-party application. Our first bot took 10 weeks to deploy, and the rest took between eight to 10 weeks. The development time is about half of that. Most of our use cases were simple, but it took time to coordinate with various teams, like infrastructure, security team, risk management, and other IT departments. 

My role is in the center of excellence. We're on the business side, not the IT side. The company is a little different in how it sets up its CoE programs. We focus on business processes and engineering. I rely on our technology and security partners for those other pieces. There's a little bit of trial and error. We have to think of security first and foremost. We're protecting our data and our client's data.  

We needed to figure out how it fits into our ecosystem because we had never done it before. We needed to set up virtual desktops, servers, and those sorts of things. We needed to create an Active Directory account for our robots to interact, receive email, use Excel, etc. Early on, we had to learn the nuances because we would need to replicate the processes going forward. We created some reusable runbooks and IDs to set access to the system with different privileges for employees and contractors.

There is some maintenance for bots that utilize UIs, but not those that use APIs. We face more challenges when working with third-party applications because they have scheduled updates. If the bot is scheduled to run on Thursday at 2 pm, but suddenly, a pop-up window appears to run the update. We've mitigated a lot of that. If we don't have APIs, those use cases require a little bit more handholding. 

We leveraged a consulting firm to partner with us on that proof of concept. They brought expertise and ensured we were set up for success. They helped us configure our control room and enabled us to perfect the concepts, so we could see the results and realize how successful we could be with Automation Anywhere's product. 

We looked at some other solutions initially, but one of our sister firms was already an Automation Anywhere customer, and they gave the solution glowing reviews. We saw how successful they had been in leveraging Automation Anywhere's platform, so it made the decision easy for us. 

I rate Automation Anywhere nine out of 10. They're passionate about the product and want to see us succeed as customers. They will go to bat and contact the engineers to help us achieve what we want. We have on-site visits with them and business reviews where they will talk about our roadmap and potential use cases.

We've had many sit-down conversations with the Automation Anywhere team when we were testing out the document automation. We gave them feedback about potential enhancements, so when we launched our most recent document automation use case, the capabilities were already there. We didn't need to come up with a workaround or put the project on hold because the things we needed were unavailable. That commitment to customer success stands out because they know that without us, the product won't succeed.