Automation Anywhere Reviews

I basically develop automations and also configure and create new scripts. I do user testing and separate testing as well.

We use it for legacy applications. We can automate legacy applications well, even with complexity.

It's very easy to use. It helps streamline manual processes. Manual work can cost the company a lot of money, but with an automation, work can be just a click of a button. That, and the work is more accurate and happens much faster. Any manual processes can be automated.

While it does use AI, we don't use it too much. We're looking at it. However, it's not something we prioritize.

I like that we can customize almost anything. You can create workflows fairly easily.

Even if users do not have technical skills, they can still use Automation Anywhere. It's not hard to learn.

I did training over one or two weeks. However, I did find some of the training challenging, specifically in areas where I didn't have any background. That said, I'm using it with legacy applications, which makes some things more complex. For most users, it would be very easy to get going. 

We did see near immediate results once we started using Automation Anywhere. Within a week or two, once we started testing it, we could see how useful it was. 

It's saved us time and money so far. We were able to do reports both before and after running Automation Anywhere and could compare the results and we were able to see that we did actually record savings on both counts. 

The scripting can be a bit difficult. 

I've used the solution for the past three years. 

The stability is very good. That said, it's not 100% stable. Sometimes it does crash.

I've never contacted technical support. 

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. Our team did not find it to be difficult. our deployment team was pretty small. We only had four or five people working on it. It was easy to upgrade as well. There is some maintenance needed, including the need to take logs. However, it doesn't take too much time. 

The price is a bit higher than other options. 

We did look at other options; however, we needed something that could handle legacy automation, and Automation Anywhere made the most sense. 

I'm a customer and end-user.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

New users should be knowledgeable enough to write scripts, as that's the main issue. However, it's a good solution for automating small processes.

We use Automation Anywhere in a DevOps environment. 

Automation Anywhere helps us resolve some friction between IT needs and business requirements. In an agile environment, the first questions are always: How much money do you have? What is your budget? Automation Anywhere or any other RPA solution can help you achieve your goals within budget constraints by lowering operational costs. It increases productivity and reduces errors.

I like Automation Anywhere's cloud-based nature. You don't need any on-prem infrastructure to host it. If you have suitable infrastructure, you can easily integrate it with Automation Anywhere. The learning curve is reasonable. Automation Anywhere has a user-friendly environment, but digesting all the platform's features takes significant time. 

It's challenging to train users on Automation Anywhere. There should be more organized training sessions. I prefer interactive classes to one-on-one training. You can create super users and organize conferences or workshops where users can learn from experts. Maybe you only have a few of these super users in your organization, so that's why you need to have workshops on a weekly basis. 

I have used Automation Anywhere for three to five years. 

I rate Automation Anywhere seven out of ten for stability. 

I rate Automation Anywhere support seven out of ten.

Neutral

I previously used UiPath at a past job but switched when I started work at my current company. 

I rate Automation Anywhere seven out of ten. 

I have primarily worked in the presales as well as in the sales cycle. I do not have hands-on experience with the tool. I have a team of people who are the continuous improvement folks who work in a particular area. We have developers or continuous improvement people who leverage the tool and go ahead and help to get them deployed. For example, if it is UiPath's process mining capabilities, they basically plug the data and do other things. They do the work, and we ensure that we drive the transformation and build the business connects for the customer. So, my role is very different. I am a management consultant. My core hands-on experience is not with digital tools in itself, but I leverage digital tools to drive transformation for a customer. As part of my role, I understand the features and the value add that it brings to the table. I do quality assurance of the outputs that are generated. I also ensure that teams are able to work in a client environment because they need to be able to access the client environment. I also need to drive transformation because there is a lot of stakeholder management. There is a lot of project management that is needed. I work in that area and that sphere. I am not a technical person as such, but when a tool is deployed, I understand how to execute the implementation, how to drive the discussions, and with automation, how to drive value for my customers. That is my area of expertise.

People primarily use it to fast-track and automate transactional, repeatable tasks. By using Automation Anywhere, people want the execution of transactional activities. It could be the back office. It could be the middle office. I have not seen front office use cases, but I am sure there are use cases for that. I have only seen a lot of middle office and back office activities. For example, in the Procurement area, a typical transactional activity would be PR to PO, where information is readily available. That is the use case where it can be easily applicable. Likewise, in the Accounts Payable area, you can use Automation Anywhere to execute automation for payment processing activities. The finance area has got a lot of use cases. They could be reconciliation-related activities, data-gathering activities from different documents, etc. In some areas of Audit to Cash, it could be even looking up invoices and answering customer queries that are pretty straightforward. These are the high-level use cases that I have seen.

Typically, when you are able to execute any repeatable task in an organizational environment, you enhance organizational AI capability. The reason is that your increased accuracy will improve the predictability of the AI algorithm for getting the job transactional activities completed. For example, if somebody is going to create a purchase requisition and the average turnaround time is five days, with a bot, I can get the purchase requisition created in one day. The organization can check and see what is the rate of improvement or what is the predictability of getting the orders received for producing the finished goods. When you look at the end-to-end view, you get predictability to say when will my goods reach the customer. You get to know that by improving one area with automation and ensuring that the work is done in a repeatable manner, you can improve your predictability by a certain percentage, so any automation of a particular process will improve an organization's AI capability. 

The biggest integration is how it integrates with the system of record. When you automate a process per se, you are extracting information or reading information out of a system of record. It could be SAP. It could be Oracle. It could be Microsoft Dynamics, but Microsoft has its tool called Power Automate. That is one level of system integration. The other level of system integration is where you have a front-facing bot. For example, anything to do with query management or queries that keep coming via mail or shared service portals. These integrations are a little different from the ones that you have with a system of record. Automation Anywhere integrates pretty seamlessly for both types of automation. The system of record integration can be a little bit of a challenge as compared to the regular mail servers or shared service portals because of the permissions and the security checks that are needed. Getting VDI access becomes a little bit challenging because customers sometimes are not comfortable giving full-fledged access during the UAT. It becomes a little bit challenging, but it also depends upon the maturity of the customer and the nature of the business. They are not comfortable giving full-fledged access because it will create problems for them, but after that, when it gets into the live environment, things are a lot easier and streamlined. It has nothing to do with Automation Anywhere. It is just about the maturity and the protocols that a customer has in place. These aspects make it easier to integrate with Automation Anywhere or any other service provider. Based on what my peers have mentioned to me, it is not challenging to integrate with APIs, etc. It is pretty seamless. There are not too many issues. There might have been a challenge in a specific situation, but by and large, in general, the capability it offers is pretty standard for a typical automation tool.

There have been a lot of use cases where we have used Automation Anywhere to save time and costs. Typically, any automation gives you 20% to 30% efficiency. That is what I have seen. That is an average. In some cases, it could be high, and in some cases, it could be low depending on the task and the domain, but 20% to 30% efficiency is typically possible.

Since implementing the solution, the tasks are taking place in a seamless manner. As long as the process is not changed, there is the ease of replicability. Repeatable tasks constantly get done without any challenges. 

There is also an increase in the efficiency of the people. There is reduced turnaround time for responses or getting the activities done.

We work with lots of digital tools, and I have been engaged with teams for the last seven years or so.

They are one of the top service providers for automation. They are definitely stable.

Automations are also pretty stable. Automation works on the fact that you are not changing your process. As long as things are repeatable, every automation software does the same thing. Challenges come when you do upgrades to your ERP, or for that matter, you make one simple change in the process. That is when you have any stability-related challenges.

I believe they can do automation at scale.

It has been a long time since I reached out to them for support. As a service provider, they are always there to provide support. The challenges happen in terms of how the deal was constructed, what was agreed, and where were the gaps in understanding. That is where the issues happen. There are usually many unknowns. I would rate them an eight out of ten based on my experience a while ago.

We work with lots of digital tools. We have leveraged UiPath in the past. We are platinum partners with some of the service providers.

 I know that Automation Anywhere, UiPath, or any other solution has its own specific nuances, but the gap between them is closing up technically. In terms of value, I do see that Automation Anywhere offers value.

The tool selection depends on the partnership deal. It depends on who an organization is considering and the approach for partnership deals. In my organization, we have different partners with whom we work. How you partner with an organization and approach that organization is one of the big differentiators. I know there are not too many players out there in the market. You only have big fours. The key thing is how you are partnering with them and how you are going into the market and taking their support. The second thing is how you are promoting the key capability that you are bringing to the table and how you are comparing it with other people. For example, I know that UiPath has process mining capability, but Automation Anywhere is offering AI capabilities. If I go to a customer and immediately start talking about AI via automation, it is a little drawn-out process for me, whereas with process mining, I can immediately plug and play the data and tell them what are the challenges and for those long run activities, what are my automation possibilities. The positioning is important, but I am not undermining the AI capabilities that Automation Anywhere brings. 

I was not involved in the deployment of Automation Anywhere. I work with the RPA team.

The deployment environment varies. It is dependent on the client's environment. It depends on where your data is and where you are doing the automation. If you are doing automation on the data fabric for reporting purposes and you are deploying a bot to gather the data from specific tables, you might put it onto a data fabric or a data lake. If you are working on PR to PO, that information is going to be on a system of record. It might be on the server itself. It is truly use-case-dependent in my view.

In terms of maintenance, customers typically buy the licenses, but these days, I see that customers prefer to use one main partner for all their licenses because it is easy to manage that one main partner. It could be the largest partner they have in their set of vendors who are supporting them for all IT-related activities. If they buy it from them, they do not need to do maintenance, but if they buy the licenses themselves, they may need maintenance. It depends on whom they are engaging with and what is the purchasing model of licenses.

They all are very competitive today. At the end of the day, it boils down to the negotiations that happen and what type of partner you are. Are you a premium partner or are you a preferred partner or a gold partner? Prices are very standardized. There could be a little bit of deviation, but they are comparable. It is a pretty saturated market because everybody has been doing our RPA for the last decade, so they are pretty competitive in pricing.

Every customer is at a different maturity level. Customers at a high level of maturity of process standardization definitely are looking at the next wave of evolution with generative AI. To do some things in generative AI, there have to be some elements of automation. Companies that are not so mature or the small and medium are not yet there. They are trying to digitize the ways of working. They want to ensure that they have the right framework structure within the organization. They are experimenting with automation, but it is more like a basic level of automation. Mature companies with billions of dollars in revenue have already been doing it for the past many years. They are taking up more of the generative AI opportunity to enhance and go deep into those areas.

I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

We use Automation Anywhere to process data entry from our government website.

We implemented Automation Anywhere to reduce human effort and cut costs.

Automation Anywhere offers a complete solution, encompassing both development tools and a control room for managing automation.

Automation Anywhere's front end is designed to be user-friendly for non-technical individuals, while the back end remains under the management of IT.

Several of our projects incorporate generative AI, and while we are new to this field, it has proven beneficial thus far.

The integration of APIs in Automation Anywhere is easy and works well.

We integrated Automation Anywhere with some of the business applications which was straightforward.

Automation Anywhere has helped save time.

The license cost is high and needs improvement.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for over two years.

Automation Anywhere is stable.

Automation Anywhere is scalable.

The technical support is good. The few times I called them they were able to promptly address my issues.

Positive

We switched from Automation Anywhere to Power Automate because of the price and more functionality with other Microsoft products.

We were not able to migrate from Automation Anywhere to Power Automate. We had to recreate everything from scratch.

I prefer Automation Anywhere to Power Automate because it offers a more comprehensive set of features, performs reliably, and provides deeper insights.

The licensing cost for Automation Anywhere is high.

I rate Automation Anywhere nine out of ten.

While Automation Anywhere offers training and community versions for learning and experimentation, it is not user-friendly for non-technical users.

No maintenance is required.

As our business is a mortgage company that provides loans to borrowers, we use Automation Anywhere to automate business processes to help the end users process loans faster. 

The application's response time is slow when using your desktop and trying to process an application. However, when you apply automation, it can work overnight. You don't need to sit at a desk and watch what's happening. It's all automated. 

Prior to implementation, everything was manual. You couldn't inject other software, like APIs. However, with AA, you can bring in any number of tools that connect right into Automation Anywhere. This makes everything move faster. You save a lot of time and cost involved in processing the applications.

The recent update that included code analysis was very helpful. Previously, we had to go line by line. Now, inside the tool, it shows you which lines are hard-coded. 

We've saved a lot of time. How much time we save depends on the process. It's likely at least 50%. Sometimes, it's up to 70%.

We've saved on costs by about 30%.

It's reduced human error. Using Automation Anywhere, we can eliminate a lot of human error by adding exceptions and identifying what's going on quite easily.

For users who don't have technical skills, it's not that complicated. It defines what every command does. It may take a few months to understand the process; however, going through the documentation and using the community versions and forums will make it easier to learn. You can find answers to any aspect you want to understand. 

We did a POC with the automation copilot. It met some of our expectations. For some of the use cases, it will help in the future. 

The copilot's ability to integrate with our day-to-day is fine. It helps employees working with it. It helps them to make things faster. You just have to provide some information, and the background bots will run. It might help increase productivity in the future if we implement it at the enterprise level. Outside of the POC, it looks like it might help with productivity. 

The solution integrates well with other applications and third-party tools. 

There are great tools inside Automation Anywhere. 

With the automation copilot, if I have any internal tool or application and I want to pass on variables, I don't have it. Maybe the team can work on it to make it more efficient to make it work better across all automations.

I've been using the solution for four or more years. I started with version 10.x.

In the past two to three months, the support has gotten far better. Previously, we didn't have a live agent or live support, and now we do. It's great to have. They can respond immediately, and you can continue with what you are doing. You don't have to wait for support at all. 

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution. 

I was involved in the initial deployment. It took a couple of months.

It's relatively easy to upgrade. It depends on the organization. You need to add more variables and define the standards. However, it's not too complex. 

There is some maintenance needed. When you upgrade versions, devices may be disconnected. Sometimes you need to go and check if the device deployment is happening or not, or a deployment may fail. We have about two people handling the maintenance of the solution. You simply need to ensure the bots are deploying on the right schedules and check errors or disconnects. In some cases, you may need to redeploy the bot. The time spent maintaining bots maybe three to four hours per day per person. 

We also explored Microsoft's Power Automate. However, it wasn't as mature or up to an enterprise level at the time. Automation Anywhere had good standards and excellent support, in terms of architecture, design, and user interface, we chose Automation Anywhere. It also has good community support. Previously, we used to raise a ticket. Now, it's amazing - when you ask a question, people respond to it live. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

We use it in the healthcare domain and automate legacy systems to reduce processing time.

We have given services to clients and automated processes with 30 to 40 bots and their ROI has increased a lot. The turnaround for tasks done by bots is very quick, and, even on weekends, bots are running.

The integration abilities of Automation Anywhere are valuable and so is document processing. 

It is also easy to design and implement, even for business users who don't have technical skills. A little bit of training is required, about five to seven days, and then they can start. The learning curve is low.

The document processing, OCR, needs to be more accurate. Sometimes, when you try it on documents, it keeps on failing and goes to a different queue. It needs to mature.

I would also like to see the solution include generative AI functionality because that would provide a lot of features.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for about six years.

The stability is quite good. There are no major problems there.

The technical support from Automation Anywhere is good. I worked with the Automation Anywhere platform for a long time, and it improved a lot. 

For example, I worked on a migration project and there were some infrastructure issues and dependencies, things that were very hard to catch. The response time of the Automation Anywhere support team was slow. But now, their support has matured a lot.

Positive

It takes 30 minutes to an hour for the initial deployment of the platform.

In health care, providers need to follow up after every visit within 10 days, 15 days, 20 days, 30 days. There are different frequencies with which they need to go back to the patient and come up with personalized communication. For that reason, we have created about 10 bots that have saved our clients a lot of time on operations.

When you compare the cost of Automation Anywhere with UiPath and Blue Prism, those others are much less. Licensing-wise, UiPath wins the deal.

I started off using Automation Anywhere and, since then, I have also used UiPath. The reason is due to the cost. Automation Anywhere's licensing costs and package costs are very high. Most of our clients are being forced to move to UiPath because of that.

Another thing is that switching between versions of Automation Anywhere, for example, from Enterprise A2019.11 to the latest version, is a headache.

From the time of deployment, it takes between 15 days and one month to automate a process. There is a center of excellence for each client. They set the standards and deployment and release procedures. And they have quality assurance procedures as well, before pushing something to production.

Deployment is straightforward because the development is on the cloud, so it's a smooth process of moving from development to UAT, and from UAT to production takes little time.

While deploying, we test the solution. We have a sanity checklist in which we will ensure all the prerequisites are covered and code-based code reviews are done. We run all the test cases and make sure everything is working fine before pushing to production. After pushing to production, we will run smoke tests with dummy data for a production sanity check. We'll ensure proper functionality and, otherwise, we have a rollback procedure.

Bot maintenance includes monitoring in case there are any failures. We have a monitoring team that monitors all 150 or 200 bots. If there is a failure, communication will come from the bot and the monitoring team will create a ticket and a developer will work on it. We have two people dedicated to this task. The amount of time they spend depends on the frequency that bots run. Some bots run every half an hour and others run once a day or once a week.

Regarding using an API integration instead of RPA, if you have a system where you can expose API services, that would be great. But when it comes to legacy systems, like mainframes, you can't expose an API. In that situation, naturally, RPA is the solution.

Overall, I recommend Automation Anywhere. Technically and feature-wise, and in terms of its stability, everything is fine. If they could just make the migration process from one version to another version very smooth, that would be great. And I am not satisfied with the document understanding and OCR. That should be improved.

We use the solution to automate the financial process.

Automation Anywhere has helped improve our organization by automating many processes that used to take us a lot of time.

We see the benefits of Automation Anywhere within one year of launching a project.

Automation Anywhere has been helpful in scaling our organization's automation efforts.

The latest version of Automation Anywhere makes it easy to integrate RPA bots, APIs, business applications, and documents. However, we had a lot of problems migrating from the previous version.

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization increase automation consumption.

The capacity to use Automation Anywhere in the cloud is the most valuable feature.

We have a new feature share in Automation Anywhere, but it does not migrate automatically from the previous version to the new one. Therefore, we had to do a lot of work to adapt the records to the network, which was a problem.

I would like Automation Anywhere to have more integration with for example, with AI platforms.

The technical support response has room for improvement.

Automation Anywhere is not user-friendly and could be improved.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for four years.

Automation Anywhere is scalable. We have 100 end-users and the solution is deployed across multiple locations and departments.

The technical support response time is slow. They are difficult to contact and I am not satisfied with their support.

Neutral

I previously used UiPath, which is more user-friendly than Automation Anywhere. UiPath has many more features, and a better platform, making it easier to learn.

My manager completed the initial setup, but I believe it was complex. The deployment required one person from Automation Anywhere and four people from our technical office, including my manager.

The implementation was completed in-house with the assistance of an Automation Anywhere tech.

I give Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

Automation Anywhere requires users to have some technical skills to use it.

For someone who wants to use an API integration instead of a robust process automation solution, I would say that it depends on the API process. Performance is not the only factor to consider.

We have two people responsible for the maintenance of the solution.

We maintain our bots daily because our processes are complex and ever-changing. We spend around two hours each day maintaining bots.

Automation Anywhere has a steep learning curve and should not be learned on the job.

We are currently working on a vendor bill reconciliation process. It is in production now. We are also working on an incident management process for customer service. Within the customer services, there are four or five different processes that we are working on. All of them are incident management but for different categories at different levels. The next use case that we will be working on is bank reconciliation, and then we are planning to expand into HR for onboarding and recruitment. These are unattended robots. 

We are able to integrate it with other products through APIs, which we may not have thought about. For example, there are some in-house solutions that we have for which we have built APIs, and we're able to integrate those APIs with Automation Anywhere. We didn't expect that we'll be working on that but it happened.

The ease of use for the end user and the very low complexity in trying to build a bot are the big factors for us. We are able to work on a project, identify a use case, come up with a design spec, and execute and build a bot within a span of six to eight weeks. In nine to ten weeks, we are able to go live, which reduced complexity. Once we go live, the user interface and the user experience are extremely good.

Their bot runners could be made to handle multiple payloads at the same time because if I want to run multiple parallel operations, the number of bot runners that I have to buy just keeps increasing. It is adding to the cost. However, there is a possibility that we don't need that many bot runners, and we can run multiple operations in a bot runner. This would be a great addition to have.

I have been using this solution for six months.

You get what you paid for. What it says on the tin is what you'll get inside. As a customer, you will not be disappointed. If you're thinking that you want to build rockets using Automation Anywhere, then you will be disappointed. As long as you know your business needs, the automation that you want to focus on, and you understand the product's functionalities in a good way, you will not be disappointed.

Scalability depends on how many parallel processes you want to run. A bot runner basically runs a bot. How many bots can it run? How many of these need to run in serial? How many of these need to run in parallel? This information will determine how much you have to scale. Now, if you're willing to pay a lot of money and have multiple bot runners, that means for each and every bot runner, you can have multiple processes running at the same time. So, if you are willing to pay, yes, you can scale. It depends on your budget. The product works whether you're on 1 bot or 20 bots. The product just goes off and does its thing. That's not a problem.

If it is 1 bot that you're running once a day at 10:00 in the morning, then you need one bot runner. If you have 20 processes that you're automating and these 20 things have to run throughout the day at different points in time at 10:00, 12:00, or 2:00, you can still run them with one bot runner. In those use cases, scalability is not a problem. Scalability becomes an issue when you have multiple processes. If a reconciliation process needs to run along with the general ledger balancing, month-end closing, and everything else, and all of them need to run at the same time, then you're looking at about 10 bot runners running 10 different bots at the same time. If you're willing to pay, you can get what you want, but it becomes a very expensive affair.

We have 15 to 20 people who are touching the application for various purposes. We have business analysts, developers, testers, and the external implementation team. We also have business users.

I have used both UiPath and BluePrism in my previous organizations. Automation Anywhere gives me the flexibility for both on-prem and SaaS, and the difference is not huge for me in terms of performance, security, and all that stuff. It gives me the flexibility, but honestly, on paper, all these three products pretty much do the same. There is a plus or minus 5% difference here or there, but you'll not go wrong with any of these products.

The initial setup was very straightforward. There are specific things that they ask in terms of the environments that we need to build in our typical Windows server, that is, what kind of memory and what kind of processing capability we require. I can't talk from the SaaS perspective because we have an on-prem deployment, but giving on-prem equipment based on the defined specs is pretty much child's play. There is nothing complex about it. It is very easy for developers who understand the platform. You can quickly roll out something and get it live, but you need to understand a lot of logic and the complexity behind the applications such as ServiceNow, Workday, Salesforce, etc. 

We started off with an implementation partner, and our experience with them was good. They had about three people in their team, and we had our business people who were giving the requirements. We also had our technology people who were basically acting as the bridge between our business people and their developers.

We are expecting a significant ROI by the end of the year. 

From a business angle, understand what is it that you need. Where do you see inefficiencies? If you're going to fix inefficiencies that are going to be fixed as part of a larger company-wide transformation program, then use the transformation program and fix those inefficiencies as part of the existing solution. If you think that that larger transformation program is not going to touch some places or if that larger transformation program will touch some of these inefficient areas but not in the near future, and you want some immediate wins, then going in for an RPA tool is a good decision.

At the end of the day, the business needs to be aligned with why you're making the decision, and where and what is your priority? What is your sense of urgency with respect to the places where you're implementing it. For example, in my office, we are working on customer service. There is a massive transformation program going on right now, but that transformation program is touching sales, marketing, finance, and all those areas. It is not touching customer service at all, but customer service has its own inefficiencies. So, we introduced automation in customer service because it's not being touched by the transformation program, and we don't want to keep waiting to gain the ROI of whatever we can get or the reduced cost we'll get from customer service. For example, if I'm going to implement a massive cloud ERP like Oracle or SAP, then I will fix the process as part of that cloud ERP implementation and not wait for a bot to be developed.

From a technical perspective or an integration perspective, use an API to directly communicate between the apps, if you can. You don't need a bot or an RPA to do what an API can do.

I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.