Automation Anywhere Reviews

We are using MS 2007 Windows OS mostly with IE and Excel operations. Anyone can write code with AA software with basic coding knowledge, we just need to know which command will help to build the next step. We had developed almost eight major processes and a few POCs for different clients. As we worked mostly with Web and Windows applications, we had used most of the commands related to Web and Windows applications. We can say bot accuracy was 95% in the final result. Bot consumes around 12 minutes to process 1 application, where if a human performs the same they would take a minimum of 18 minutes on average.

AA application is very good for running the application on a schedule. But a few times, the client requirements were 24/7 so it stops every few days. We found three drawbacks with the product in production:

1. For 24/7 running applications Bot Insights won't be generated.

2. For 24/7 running bot stops every few days, it might be an environmental issue or something.

3. the Same name of Mebabot cannot be uploaded to CR.

4. We tried to upgrade to 11.3.4 but there were few bugs while performing actions in Excel. (You may have fixed later stages).

WLM & Device Pool, where multiple devices perform the same thing parallel and complete the tasks at the same time. The Credential Manager for security is one of the most valuable features for storing credentials and providing security between the developer usage and future maintenance where passwords expire every 90 days. There is no need to touch the code and just update the CR locker section. CR UI is also user-friendly for creating deleting and updating users, roles, etc within the CR. The Audit Log section is also good for logging all the operations done in CR.

It would be better if they could extend the support for AA version 11 for a few more years, as most of the companies have tasks completed in AA version 11, and A2019 is much slower compared to AA 11. It keeps on downloading dependencies, and time-consuming while running the tasks. In AA version 11, if the bot stops uninterruptedly it's better if it could resolve itself and back to normal and process the applications.

You can give clients some more time to get used to A2019 and find and fix the concerns observed till then. That way you can add more features and easy to implement for the development team. If you ask all the clients to migrate to the latest version. Few are still thinking about the migration of code from the old to the new environment and various other factors.

Bot Insight for 24/7 tasks is limited in the AA 11 version. If this gets fixed a few more clients will renew this license as well.

I have been using AA for the past three years. 

We need to train the bot to handle all kinds of conditions. So it will behave accordingly when that situation occurs.

The technical support team were very responsive, they were available 24/7 and for severity 1 issue's for the production part they used to reply or communicate with us in maximum 45 minutes.

Other than the CR set up with the database will take little time. Client installation and configuration was straightforward.

We are a vendor team and worked with the client's environment along with their in-house team. Our clients are always happy with the product and its performance. There are few scenario's due to system instability they used to complain, we used to check and revert back to them what is the problem.

I don't remember the exact number, in one of my bot runner I had seen a $5million change.

Pricing depends upon the number of licenses required by the company. They can implement using the community version. If their business can be automated based upon the business process workload they can decide a number of Bot runner and Developer licenses are required.

To use other tools you need to have knowledge with VB script. But using AA no need of that.

Primarily we use this to get rid of the time-consuming and repetitive tasks such as sending TDS certificates to the client according to their PAN details, invoice processing, and collecting data from online websites.

Processes related to the invoice, Sales Order, and Purchase Order are commonly used so as to avoid time delay and increase efficiency.

We have also developed bots to browse to share market sites and generate a report on the Top 10 Gainers and Top 10 Losers, which has been scheduled, and the report gets mailed to all at ease and on time.

Automation Anywhere has been a boon for our organization because the tedious task that used to be hectic and made us remain seated for hours is now done with a single click.

The development of bots has helped a lot for every branch in the organization, whether it be financing, HR, or the IT department. Now, employees are not depressed working the same repetitive tasks and that time can be utilized for some other productive work.

While many of the bots are scheduled, reports are automatically generated on time and there is nothing to worry about regarding the time constraints.

There are many valuable features in this product. The OCR for character recognition has helped a lot during the invoice processing and billing, as there are some parts of the documents which are handwritten.

The scheduling of bots is also very important. No matter where you are, you need not be physically present for running the bot at that particular time.

Error handling plays an important role when you schedule a bot because if you are not physically present and something happens, you need to know what has gone wrong. 

We do not have a precise area that needs improvement, but sometimes while running bots that traverse through different websites, the screen hangs or takes time to fully load. This in turn increases the wait time. So, if possible, having saved a screen while the earlier bot runs and comparing that saved screen with the current bot run, so as to get an idea if the screen has been fully loaded or not, would be great. 

Though we can make this happen by adding extra logic to the bot, this would increase the bot size for every new website search.  

We have been using Automation Anywhere for more than two years.

In 2018-2019 it was AA v10.7 and then in 2019-2020, it was updated to AA v11.3.

Nothing as such, as Automation Anywhere keeps on upgrading which in turn makes it easier and efficient to develop bots from the prior version.

I actively participate in doing all the data analysis and robotics things in the company.

I work for a Genpact. Its a Genpact India, which is privately maintained. It's a US-based company. We work for a different type of a client. It's not only about healthcare. We work for a financial domain and financial development domain. We deal with different types of analysis, where we apply all types of robotic automation processes along with machine learning algorithms, if required. It all depends upon the client and what they require to done on their behalf.

This solution is all about robotic process automation (RPA), which we deal with. We know that in real life, we have hectic work day-to-day and the volume is increases. Doing manual intervention leads to error. That's why everywhere it feels like we are implementing robotic process automation. In a traditional way, we used to use that RPA console, but this tool helps us do RPA and saves us time, improving our quality. This is required at any level to get a better ROI.

It's all about the client requirement. About six months back, we received a request from a client who wanted us to automate their process. We gave different solutions to do it. They came up with a solution, and said "Okay I want you to go with RPA using this automation tool".

That is how Automation Anywhere came into the picture. It took almost two to three weeks to first learn because we were not aware of how it works. As a consulting company, you need to take a project first because that is the important part. If you miss the project, it will go to another company. So, we took the project and learned about how to involve all these things. We built a team who understood the process, what needed to be done, and what did not need to be done in this particular process, then we took this project.

Based on using this RPA tool, Automation Anywhere, we delivered successfully. The client was happy because they suggested it and gave us the idea. We didn't have to worry about how it would work. So, it was fine for us.

When you look at the volume to process, it takes time. You have a mindset that you may fall in error. If you want to reduce both those things, you need to come up with a solution that will give you both those things together: One is quality, which you are always looking at, and second, your costs. This also saves the cost because you need to hire 10 people to do VBA automation, that will take time. If you use tools which are already enabled with Automation Anywhere, you can enable and use them wherever you want. I feel good comfortable with this particular tool.

I suggest that they add some features in dashboard, where you can say, "These type of features are things that people like more." You want to add those to your project and showcase them to the client so they will be happier. Because you know what features people like if you give a suggestion, that is good for everyone.

I could not say it's a stable product, because when you move in the market, there are many companies are there. They are coming with the different features about your machine learning algorithm, and we should have something predefined.

We already have in Automation Anywhere something that is giving me suggestions. The moment someone is capturing data or reading data, you might suggest, "Okay, you want to do these things." It means that you are giving a suggestion based on the prior historical data that you have collected from different clients. If that is getting enabled, then it would be good because I would not have to worry about what features I would need to add. We know that the client might be looking for these types of features.

I feel day by day there will be an implementation coming up and we will be adding new features. I will look forward to using their services for this.

A tedious task, they have reduced it to a normal task. So, I feel comfortable because Automation Anywhere (the company) is working toward minimizing our efforts, and we are happy with that.

If the process was totally VBA-driven, e.g., sending a mail to a client and attaching so many document to emails, that's very tedious stuff. Something might happen if you do it by VBA automation. E.g., if you're Excel is not responding or what will happen if your system will get hung. The Automation Anywhere tool is in cloud so we don't worry about that. It's all about Internet speeds and servers that are stalling out. I feel that it save us time and provides ROI as a monetary benefit because it reduces FTE, the number of headcount working for a particular project.

I was just aware of this particular tool apart from using a VBA tool for normal automations, I am happy with this tool. I will not be going with another tool. There is always a market open so people can go and switch. However, I feel this is a good tool for day by day. Everything coming over is new, which is very good.

I feel giving them an eight to nine (out of 10). There should be always improvement for any product which comes out the market because there is also a competitor inline with them.

I started my career in RPA tools. It's five years for me working in RPA. I have automated different type of use cases in different businesses, like finance, insurance, banking, capital marketing, and manufacturing. There are a lot of areas where I have implemented use cases using the Automation Anywhere tool.

If I compare Automation Anywhere with different tools available in market, there are few things which make Automation Anywhere different than the others, like IQ Bot, which is not available in another tool as of now. IQ Bot is a very nice feature in Automation Anywhere, which gets me the structured data from the unstructured data, and we know wise processing is a familiar use case used in any kind of organization. Another one is a MetaBot which allows for doing offline development, using DLL, using screen calibration, and configuration. These are the main features that I've used. It is a great tool.

In terms of development for our developers, it is very easy and quick to learn because Automation Anywhere has provided an online academy where developers can easily learn the features. It is very easy. If someone does not have a coding background, they can also learn from it very easily because it is just drag and drop and very interactive.

It's a very stable product. It has been five years for me working in RPA. I started with Automation Anywhere only. I developed so many processes in different areas. If I talk about the banking sector, security is a must. It is providing all sort of securities here, like Credential Manager. Also, this tool is very stable and consistent.

It is a very good scalable product because the MetaBot provides a feature where we can reuse our code for whatever we have developed. We can use it in different areas with the same code. It is reusable. So, it is a scalable product.

Until now, whenever we required any help regarding technical support, we got it from Automation Anywhere. So, definitely the technical support is 10 out of 10. We are very happy. Today, I'm very excited to be part of these bot games.

We were already using it when I joined the organization.

It is very straightforward. Today, in the learning track, I was looking at the latest feature which is coming in A2019, which is very nice, because it is a web-based. So, we can do our development while sitting from anywhere. We don't need any type of installation. It's a web-based. Nowadays, everyone has the Internet. So, it is very easy.

I started my journey from Accenture, which is service based company. There, I worked on multiple tools, like RPA products, including Automation Anywhere, Uipath, and Blue Prism. So, I have experience in these three tools.

Both Automation Anywhere and UiPath are leaders in the market. Both tools are providing capabilities which are good. For me, the main differentiator here is the IQ Bot, which is not available as of now in UiPath. If you want to do invoice processing and all, we go for the whole CS. IQ Bot, which is already an Automation Anywhere feature, is one very big differentiator from other RPA tools. Another one is definitely MetaBot because it give me a reusable component which I can plug and play anywhere that I can use. MetaBot can also provide inline development because sometimes the interact is not there. We can just record the screen, then we can do our development and deploy it. Sometimes what can happen in an enterprise, a screen may undergo some changes. So, MetaBot is capable enough to detect those changes, which is not available as of now in other tools. There are more AI capabilities here.

This RPA tool is a leader in the market. 

I have had a very good experience working with Automation Anywhere.

We are in the banking domain. We use Automation Anywhere for loan processing to support its journey from each state until the loan is approved. We focus on title commission. We are trying to remove the human repetitive component, bring in automation, and help humans do value-added jobs.

Up until August, we were using version 10.5. Recently, we migrated to the new version 11.3.2.

We have hundreds of cases a day. There were around two to three employees who were just moving a case from one state to another. This was a repetitive, tedious job, which was frustrating for the employees. It helps to have the bot doing this work now. We have immediately seen effects, so this is a good use for it. 

The Control Room is the most valuable feature. This is where I can schedule a task. It runs 24/7, so it's a great feature that I love. If we are not in office, we can schedule something and leave, then the bot will run at the scheduled time.

In the previous version, we were facing auto login failure issues. The production machine would go down on a daily basis. Later, once we had stability, the tasks don't fail because of the object cloning issue. Therefore, all issues have been resolved in the new version. I'm happy with that. 

In the new version, we got options for running the bot in attended mode as well as unattended mode.

Triggers work in the attended mode on Automation Anywhere. I would love it if we could use triggers in the unattended mode too. This way we can use the feature more in our IT sector. E.g., when any service or folder is accessed by unauthorized person, we want to be able to get an immediate trigger, even on "out of office", this would be helpful for my organization.

The stability issue in the previous version has been resolved. So, we are happy and this have improved our trust. We will be happy to build more processes.

We are still near the end of migration. Two of our processes are still running on the older version.

Our scalability has been increased with our new version. We do not see any issues.

We have used the technical support. I am quite unhappy with the support part. The higher priority tickets are not getting resolved within the SLA. Higher priority tickets for production issues should be looked into immediately. However, until they get escalated, tickets are not receiving higher priority. I would like to see this improve.

The initial setup was straightforward. I updated the license files after we got them. I needed to update them in the Control Room. I think a non-technical person would be able to do this.

We are focused on reducing repetitive jobs.

Know your process, design, and how you want to re-engineer everything.

A lot of issues that we were facing in the previous version have been solved in the latest version. We are happy with the scalability and reliability now. We have more trust in the tool and are happy to grow and build more tasks going forward.

Our primary use for this solution is to use bots to automate our accounting reconciliations. So whatever reconciliation does not involve judgment or review and can be done by the bot using a series of steps. For those situations where it is possible, we are now using bots we created. This helps minimize a lot of the time as well as simplifying the reconciliation process.

We have a dedicated system for Automation Anywhere. We deploy it on-premise.

The way Automation Anywhere has helped our organization is that we've been able to evaluate our process of transaction reviews and identify tasks that subtract value from our efforts and automate them. We added automation to a lot of situations where human judgment and interpretation are not required. Our organization does not use as many resources in manual evaluation.

One of the best features of the product is that it eliminates a lot of unnecessary access to transactions. Secondly, it brings in a higher level of security. When the process is totally manual, there is more of a chance of inviting an element of human error. So using bots helps to eliminate these issues.

There are areas where the product can be improved and ways we can get Automation Anywhere to help us in other fields. For example, there are situations where legal interpretations are involved which have the potential for automation. We are not currently using the bots for these situations. So that's definitely one area where I would say there is room for growth for the product. 

Mostly, for my purposes, I'm looking for more support on reporting.

There is too much use of attended automation. I would like to move more toward unattended automation, where bots are capable to handle exceptions and give proper feedback to the users, e.g., how many exceptions we have that we can fix it, so we can make it more aligned.

I have not yet encountered any operating instability. The stability is good. It runs smoothly.

The product is scalable. Obviously, scaling the solution requires some time for development. Whenever you identify something that can be automated or want to work on something that already exists which is similar but slightly different than what you need, it requires time. So there is time expenditure involved in scaling, but the solution is definitely scalable.

We have about 11 accountants working on it.

We are fairly pleased in our experience with customer service. They are pretty good.

For the kind of company that we have, which predominantly relies on processing our revenue streams, it was a no brainer to move more and more towards AI and RPA (Robotic Process Automation) processing.

Genpact proposed Automation Anywhere and we found it to be suitable.

Initially, the implementation was tough. When we started, we were trying to do too much at one time. When we started just playing with small, bite-size pieces, rather than working with big chunks, we started to make more progress. That change in scope kind of helped us to scale things up faster.

We worked with Genpact predominantly to help us implement bots and automation. Our relationship with them has worked pretty well.

We implemented the solution for Genpact but are not users. We have seen the demo and how easy it works, but don't know what happens in the background.

We have definitely experienced an ROI in terms of saving. For example, the costs of service delivery contracts have come down because of our use of automation. 

ROI is determined by how much the account saves versus the cost of licensing that I have to pay to manage the bots. It saves me around $100,000 a year.

The extent of our usage is still quite limited. I think we can do a lot more. We had other priorities that took over and couldn't focus on getting the tool more widely used. In the coming year, we are focusing more on increasing the use of bots.

We are currently negotiating a contract. Depending upon that, we will definitely look at increasing usage.

Our goal in choosing a product was primarily due to an interest in advancing automation to speed processing of transactions. While the company probably evaluated other solutions, that decision did not involve me and was made at a higher level than mine.

My advice to those considering Automation Anywhere would be to be bold and try it out. There is no point in remaining in the dinosaur age and not taking advantage of the possibilities of automation.

Ensure your processes are standardized and exceptions are kept to a minimum. The more standardized processes are, the easier it is to implement bots, then your ROI will go up. You can extend automation to a much larger scale, but the more exceptions in the process, the more changes and tweaks in the process that brings. That makes it more complicated to invest in the bot and you will have to keep checking the deliver of the results being produced.

On a scale of one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere as a seven or eight. In our case, it is closer to an eight. 

We use attended automation. There is some amount of human involvement in running the bots, but it's minimal just to ensure that exceptions are correctly captured, etc. The process works well.

The biggest lesson is to ensure that your processes are standardized, so you can increase the usage of bots. The more your processes aren't standardized, the more complicated it becomes to implement bots.

We're using it across a number of departments. So far we have implementations for finance and cost-control, as well as operational and logistics uses.

Our deployment is a hybrid solution. We have an on-premise component and some portions are in Azure.

We've implemented a few solutions that are helping us out in a couple of different dimensions. One of the big ones for us is cost-control. We've been able to identify certain billing errors and to dispute them or avoid overpaying in certain instances. It's helping us to improve both the visibility of the accuracy of the invoices we're receiving, as well as any instances where there might be disputed amounts. It's also allowed us, for certain tasks that have previously been repetitive or manual-data-entry heavy, to centralize and then automate them and reduce the number of actual employees we need on those mundane tasks. It's been very helpful for that.

The core functionality, the ability to automate these tasks and to interact, both with our own in-house software solutions as well as with our customers' and vendors' solutions and portals, has been incredibly valuable for us.

We're also beginning to dip our toes in the water with the IQ Bots, to do some OCR and some machine-learning. So far that is looking like it will be very valuable to us as well.

One thing about it that we have not found to be exceptionally useful are the built-in bot analytics, the Bot Insights. From our own extensive experimentation, as well as from what we've understood from other people using this solution, we've been able to come up with better solutions using our own in-house analytics and our own systems than through theirs.

Also, we're seemingly plagued with certain technological issues or bugs. In particular, at the moment, we're in the middle of a pretty serious issue that's blocking our further development. We have been working with the Automation Anywhere support team on it, but it's been dragging on for a while now and we still haven't received a solution from them yet. We're hoping to get that resolved and move forward. 

There's definitely some funkiness or some jankiness, sometimes, with working with them.

The stability has been mixed. In fairness, it's hard to say how much of that is issues with the solution itself, versus any issues that we may have had in the setup and integrating it into our own systems. It's definitely taken us a while to get to a point where we're comfortable with it being able to run consistently and smoothly. We've made a lot of progress in that regard and we're seeing a lot of improvements as well.

Our issues tend to be more on the development side. We've had pretty decent success once the solutions are fully developed and deployed, as far as stability is concerned. But, we have definitely encountered a lot of issues and hiccups along the road, while developing.

It seems pretty scalable. We're looking into scaling up in the near term. The pool seems pretty scalable and good to us from what we've seen so far.

We currently have six or seven processes that we've automated using Automation Anywhere and we're looking to increase that number quite a lot here in the U.S. We have a prioritized list of another 50 or so tasks that we'd like to try to automate with the solution. In addition, we're working to generate interest among some of our other agencies and countries worldwide, in using it.

Their technical support is good. Any issues that we've raised, they've gotten right back to us and helped come up with solutions. It has taken longer than we would have liked for some of our thornier problems to reach a resolution. At the moment we're a little stuck, based on a problem that we're having, although tech support has been responsive and has worked closely with us to try to come up with a solution.

This is the first RPA solution that we have used.

The initial setup was definitely complex. It took us and our IT teams quite some time to get everything set up the way we needed it, with our three environments. Part of that was getting the Control Room installed and set up, as well as making sure that the client was running properly on all of our machines. It definitely took us some time to get that all running smoothly, a few months to get everything deployed.

We're a global company and our U.S. offices have been running this as a pilot for global. We've been sitting with different departments and stakeholders to try and understand what processes might be right for automation and for this kind of solution. We've been compiling that list, prioritizing, and trying to get the buy-in of the people who will be most impacted by it. We've also been trying to get some early, big wins as far as ROI is concerned, and as far as demonstrating the value of the technology, so that we can continue to roll out more, here in the U.S. and, hopefully, more broadly later on.

It has all been done in-house.

We are definitely seeing positive ROI on this, between some cost reductions as well as some FTE replacement for the more repetitive or mundane tasks.

Licensing is done on a yearly basis. There are some additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees. There are a couple of add-ons we've looked at: The IQ Bot for OCR and machine-learning were add-ons, as well as the Bot Insights - the analytics.

We got The Bot Insights rolled in immediately, on a trial basis. The Meta Bots, if not immediately, we had added on very early on. The IQ Bot is something that we've been looking into recently. We have not yet purchased that license. We have run a PoC with it and are looking into adding that on.

We did evaluate other options but I wasn't directly involved in the initial screening process. I do know that we examined three or four other solutions before settling on Automation Anywhere.

The biggest lesson I've learned from using this solution is that nothing is as easy as it seems it should be.

One of the things a number of people are looking for out of an automation solution is a reduction in FTEs. I know Automation Anywhere would prefer we not describe its usefulness in those terms, but I know that's something that a lot of people are into. While it certainly can achieve that, the estimates going in tend to be very high and the reality is that you're not really hitting those numbers. So be very conservative when you evaluate it. It has absolutely been worth it for us and has provided us with good value. But the optimism going in - and I've heard this from other people we've met at the Imagine events, etc. - is over-optimistic and the actual numbers are less than what is estimated. Being realistic about that is very important.

Also, if you're using any kind of custom, in-house software, seeing how it interacts with that is important. It can be a little persnickety about interacting correctly, especially if it's an older, legacy system. It runs very smoothly across many different types of software and modern interfaces. But it can be a little challenging working with something that's a little older or more specialized and customized.

Currently, we have five to ten users, ranging from very much involved to just being onboard or peripherally involved. We have a number of developers directly using the technology, as well as project managers. Those are the people who are directly involved. The number is much larger if you include the business users who are impacted by the solution, impacted by the bots that we've created and their results. I would estimate, roughly, 50 users are benefiting from it right now.

In terms of deployment and maintenance, we're getting back to that five to ten people. We have four or five developers who are developing new bots. We have three IT people who are involved very directly in maintaining our servers and the virtual machines that we're running these on, as well as providing technical support for the overall infrastructure and setup. Those are the people who are directly involved at the nuts-and-bolts level.

It's been very helpful. In many ways it's doing what it says it can do. It's automating processes, it's got some good settings for controlling, running, monitoring, and maintaining that. On the other hand, our experience in actually developing with it and making the bots has been rockier than we would like. Also, the setup - getting the infrastructure and the installs set up properly - and updating, when updates roll out, are a bit complex.

It is primarily used for accounting apps. So far, it has been okay. It's for a small implementation.

We have automated account reconciliations.

The most valuable feature is its ease of development.

It's pretty easy for people who don't have a tech background to use. It is one of the easiest tools for them to use. We are using it for scripting, and it is end user based with screen captures. It is a bit easier to use than any of the other tools out there.

There are a few things that could be done better, so we can monitor properly. They need to improve in terms of development and enhancements. We need to get the right feature sets in place as an enterprise.

We would like to use Citrix going forward. We use Bot Runners to scale up, and it gets to be expensive. Using Citrix, it can mitigate costs.

We went through the documentation, it looks pretty easy to scale.

It took six months to scale from pilot to our current number of bots.

The technical support is good.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. The document was good. Everything went as expected.

The deployment was done in-house.

We don't have an ROI in any of our processes. We are just trying it out now to see if it works.

We haven't had any savings yet. We have been putting more time in than saving time at this point.

Our annual licensing costs are around $100,000 a year.

We chose Automation Anywhere through a process of elimination. We evaluated all the RPA products out there and decided on Automation Anywhere mainly based on ease of use.

We also looked at Blue Prism.

We looked at the Bot Store initially and didn't find much. We looked a year ago, so maybe we will take a look again.

I don't have much experience with attended automation.