Automation Anywhere Reviews

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 Automation Anywhere to automate all back-office manual tasks, including service case management, support cases, and financial reconciliations between multiple spreadsheets and source systems.

We faced challenges because we were running the on-premises version. It was too demanding on our physical system architecture. Last year, we moved to the cloud, which has improved our landscape. It's better now, but it was tough before. Anyone new to Automation Anywhere will find it much better now.

Before we implemented Automation Anywhere, all of our tasks were manual. Automating them has saved us a lot of time and eliminated a lot of risk. As of now, our run rate is around 15,000 manual hours saved per year.

Automation Anywhere helps eliminate our daily manual tasks, allowing our staff to focus on more valuable tasks.

We have integrated AA with Salesforce, our homegrown platform, ServiceNow, and PeopleSoft.

Our workflows, APIs, business applications, and document automation integration with AA are well-integrated and efficient.

AA has helped us save time.

The code automation platform is the most valuable feature.

Recently, Automation Anywhere acquired FortressIQ, a company that specializes in discovery automation. Discovery automation is the process of sitting down with businesses and documenting their processes and all related information. It is a very human-intensive process. Automation Anywhere acquired FortressIQ to do this work, but the two platforms are not yet seamlessly integrated. This is a pain point that we are currently working on.

I hope that Automation Anywhere can improve its capabilities in the areas of sophisticated unstructured data parsing, contextual routing, and long-running process orchestration. These are areas where AI can be especially helpful. For example, AA could use AI to suggest the next best action in a process and to configure everything in one shot. It should also be smart enough to adjust and move on.

The process discovery side needs improvement. Before we can automate, we must document the current process map and create a process design document. This is a time-consuming and painful process. We have to go to the line-of-business people who perform the operations, sometimes multiple times, to get an understanding of the problem. Automation Anywhere is improving in this area, but it's still not perfect. So, we're relying more on other reliable platforms. The platforms they acquired are not yet fully integrated into the core RPA design platform. This is a big gap. If they can close the gap between discovery and bot development, it would eliminate many manual hours of discovery, allowing the automation team, or COA team, to scale faster.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for four and a half years.

At first, we had issues with the stability, but it has significantly improved in the last six months after we migrated to the 360 version.

Automation Anywhere can scale vertically, but not horizontally. This means that it can add more resources to a single machine to handle increased load, but it cannot distribute the workload across multiple machines. This is a limitation for long-running, complex processes that require state maintenance. However, Automation Anywhere has a roadmap item to release a horizontal scaling solution in 2024.

In other words, Automation Anywhere can scale up, but not out. We can add as many small bots as we want to a single machine, but we cannot distribute the workload across multiple machines.

Technical support is decent. We were previously on a lower level of service support but realized we needed better support and were upgraded to top-level service. It's been better since then. We have a dedicated account customer success manager and architect assigned to us, so we can ping them anytime and they'll chase it for us internally.

Positive

The initial deployment was straightforward. It took six months to deploy ten bots.

The pricing of AA is similar to UiPath.

We evaluated UiPath but AA is more resource friendly and has a shorter learning curve.

I would rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten.

Our organization's approach and strategy will be to accelerate cross-cutting capability across all technology solutions, including automation. We expect vendors like Automation Anywhere to step up their game to compete. If they cannot compete in the United States, they will not be able to compete in the rest of the world and will be left behind.

We tried to get business users to build bots. We have reports of business users who have built bots. It is easy to get them started, but it is very difficult to get them to build production-quality bots. I am sure that this is a common challenge with any tool or platform. All the solution developers and concepts are theoretical. In reality, they do not work. Business users can build whatever they want, but their bots will not withstand the production infrastructure. Therefore, we need to step in and do the job properly. I do not believe in the concept of business users building bots. It just creates more problems down the line.

The learning curve is around two weeks.

We are starting a POC for Co-Pilot which was formally ARI. At the time when it was ARI, it was not a good feature.

Runners in our local landscape require maintenance.

We have automated PO processing, PO-to-order booking, and various website flows, such as ticket generation, timely uploads of files on the website, and report generation. We have also automated report delivery to all end-users.

Manual efforts have been reduced and the accuracy has increased. In the processes I have done, the accuracy has reached 100 percent, and manual load and time has been reduced.

Object cloning and Excel operations are what we use most.

The ability of Automation Anywhere to provide automation at scale, on a scale of one to 10, is a nine. Integration of its RPA bots using APIs is an eight out of 10.

More and more innovation is going on, and they'll have to keep adding features to keep up with the market. They have generative AI on their platform, but that's a new part. They are working on it. It's not 100 percent foolproof, but eventually it will get better. They need to work on their AI capabilities.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for four years.

The new version is stable now. When we first started, the platform was not stable, but it became stable when we shifted to A360.

If we are stuck anywhere, their technical team is always available. We have raised one or two issues with them and they were able to help us out and turn them around.

We haven't required them very much, but they are available if we need them.

Positive

I've worked with Microsoft Power Automate, but at a very basic level.

The initial deployment is easy. The documentation is clear. Implementing A360 on-premises, a complete end-to-end installation, takes four hours. We just need the server team for administrator passwords.

I had already tested and tried it on a development server, so I had all the steps written that I had to follow for deployment to production. It didn't take much time. I read the installation guidelines and documentation from Automation Anywhere and it was easy for me to do it.

We have about 25 end-users of the solution in our organization, and three of us take care of maintenance. In terms of bot maintenance, not much time is spent unless and until there's a change in the process or the environment.

For business users who do not have technical skills, it is easy to use the product. They understand what is possible with the tool over time. Within a year, they understood what needed to be automated and what not. Training non-technical employees on Automation Anywhere usage takes three to six months.

I did it myself.

It's an ongoing process. I have done more than 400 processes for our client over a four-year period. The time a process takes to automate depends on the complexity of the process. Within three or four weeks, a process is generally completely done, from development to production.

We tried UiPath at the time, but Automation Anywhere was more promising. It was easy to scale the bots in Automation Anywhere, and the implementation using Automation Anywhere was simpler compared to UiPath. However, I've heard from people working with UiPath that it's faster compared to Automation Anywhere. The execution time for Automation Anywhere might be 10 seconds, whereas with UiPath it might take six seconds.

If someone is considering an API integration instead of an RPA solution, that means the API has to be available. Using Automation Anywhere, you can automate any process completely, end-to-end. It doesn't need an API. We can automate front-end, Excel, Word—anything. That is more helpful compared to an API integration.

We are a partner of Automation Anywhere, and we utilize their software in the manufacturing industry for procurement and administration purposes.

Most of our customers deploy the solution on the public cloud, with some opting for private cloud deployment, and a small percentage choosing on-premises deployment. The majority of our customers are extremely price-conscious.

We deploy Automation Anywhere for our cost-effective customers. These customers prioritize automation for fee optimization rather than productivity improvement. 

Business users without technical skills can still utilize Automation Anywhere with some training. The solution is user-friendly, however, we provide training for individuals before they come on board. Therefore, there is support available in that regard.

On average it takes two months to train someone without technical skills to use Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere aids our customers in enhancing productivity and optimizing workforce size. Typically, we achieve a 25 to 30 percent reduction in time, although the exact results may vary depending on the specific case.

Although Automation Anywhere may not match Blue Prism's scale of automation due to budget constraints, our current clients can still have their requirements met by Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere's most valuable feature is its seamless integration into procurement software, allowing for the automation of purchase orders, billing, employee travel details, and other tasks.

Integrating RPA bots, APIs, business applications, and documents in Automation Anywhere is a challenging task. We have come across a type of YAML application that we use with the APIs, enabling us to get a holistic picture. However, direct integration has always been problematic. For instance, when attempting to integrate with SAP, we encounter certain gaps. As a solution, we can either input the data into the call sheet or create a YAML application for the integration process. Unfortunately, it is not a seamless process where we can transfer everything directly into an SAP system. This presents a double issue for us. I would like Automation Anywhere to work with SAP and improve their interfaces.

The technical support needs improvement. They take a long time to respond, and they are not very knowledgeable.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for six years.

Automation Anywhere is stable.

Automation Anywhere can scale, but it requires significant intervention from the technical team to achieve.

Technical support is difficult to reach and obtain a resolution.

Neutral

We used to use Blue Prism for our customers, which offered better integration and more features. However, we had to switch to Automation Anywhere due to the high initial license fee associated with Blue Prism. Automation Anywhere is more cost-effective.

The initial setup is straightforward. The complexity lies within the interfaces. Our development team handles the internal implementation for our customers.

We implement the solution for our customers.

Our clients definitely see a return on investment because that's how we gain business.

I would rate Automation Anywhere's cost a six out of ten, with ten being the most expensive.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a six out of ten. When compared to other options, Automation Anywhere remains a more cost-effective solution. However, it has integration issues and is not directly compatible with many ERP systems, which forces us to find numerous workarounds.

In recent years, there have been many cheaper solutions that have become available. To a certain extent, I believe these solutions need to meet the current requirements. We began using Automation Anywhere years ago, but with new clients, there is a bit of a challenge to convince them to adopt the solution due to the availability of other options in the market.

With the variety of solutions available in the market today, people are seeking the most cost-effective option. RPA was a viable choice a few years ago when we began in 2017. However, attitudes have since changed, leading people to consider more affordable tools. Additionally, individuals are reluctant to bear substantial license charges, as we faced with Automation Anywhere, where we had to pay significant fees annually.

Automation Anywhere is more commonly deployed across various departments and less frequently in multiple locations. Due to its typical usage, we are employing it as a standalone model for each functional department.

Automation Anywhere requires maintenance due to changes we handle from the client center, as well as the configuration of the solution according to all client requirements. We need more than five people for the maintenance.

We spend one to two months maintaining bots.

For an organization that has a technical team and wants to deploy a cost-effective solution, I recommend Automation Anywhere.

I use Automation Anywhere to automate multiple desktop applications for data filling, data collection, and information downloading.

Automation Anywhere assists customers in building automation to streamline workflows where they require multiple tools, thereby saving valuable time.

The learning curve to train semi-technical people is around one month.

Automation Anywhere saves us costs. To have a human perform the same job would cost four times as much. The solution also replaces humans in repetitive, tedious tasks, thereby enhancing employee satisfaction. We observed the benefits within the initial four months of usage.

Automation Anywhere's capability to automate critical scenarios for delivering scalable automation is absolutely solid.

The integration of RPA bots, APIs, business applications, and documents in Automation Anywhere are integral components.

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization increase its automation utilization. Prior to using Automation Anywhere, we needed four employees to accomplish the work that can now be done by just one with the help of Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere's image reader is the most valuable feature.

AI would enable improved automation and faster training times that would be reduced from one month to one week.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for almost six years.

The stability of Automation Anywhere is the best among all these automation solutions.

Automation Anywhere excels at scalability. We can effortlessly deploy thousands of machines. I give the scalability of Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten.

We provide our own support and do not depend on Automation Anywhere's support.

Neutral

The initial setup is complex, primarily because of the time required for the first deployment. The deployment takes one hour. First, we need to ensure that the infrastructure is correct, install the automation workflow, and then implement each of the workflows on them. Afterward, it should be run for one to two days before handing it over to the employees. Two DevOps administrators are needed for the deployment.

We implement Automation Anywhere in-house.

Our organization has seen up to four times the return on investment.

Automation Anywhere is expensive, making it suitable only for enterprise organizations. Although there are more affordable solutions available, they lack the comprehensive features of Automation Anywhere and cannot scale to meet the demands of large organizations.

I rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

It is challenging for non-technical individuals to utilize Automation Anywhere. Automation flows are authored by humans, making it impossible for non-technical individuals to directly program Automation Anywhere.

I also use Blue Prism and UiPath alongside Automation Anywhere.

For someone who wants to use API integration instead of robotic process automation, it is important to note that APIs cannot be utilized in all desktop integrations. As more individuals transition to the cloud, it is recommended to employ a combination of both APIs and robotic processes.

Automation Anywhere is deployed on 100 hosts, each with 100 users.

We offer a periodic maintenance review for the individuals utilizing the solution to ensure the functionality of the workflows we have implemented. The maintenance process requires the involvement of three individuals.

Five percent of the time is spent on maintaining bots.

There are several scenarios that function well when we design the workflow, but they do not function properly in the production environment due to intermittent issues that may occur with the specific host. Consequently, it is essential to always take into account the type of host and ensure that it can handle special cases automatically, relieving the burden from the workflow creators.

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 Automation Anywhere in our HR department for onboarding and attendance verification. We also utilize it in our Finance department for bank transaction reconciliation, and in our assets department for multiple data entry of assets in the system.

Automation Anywhere has helped us integrate different data entry systems.

It has a low learning curve and can be utilized for traditional automation with minimal training.

Automation Anywhere has saved hundreds of working hours per year for our organization.

It is capable of providing automation on a large scale. The technology is remarkable.

In the latest release of Automation Anywhere, version 360, new features have been included to facilitate connectivity with APIs, RPA bots, business applications, and documents. Additionally, users can now leverage their own language and Python for enhanced functionality.

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization increase the consumption of automation.

The most valuable aspect of Automation Anywhere is its ease of use.

The optical character recognition of various documents and templates, particularly when using the Arabic language, has room for improvement.

The technical support has room for improvement.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for three years.

With the new release, Automation Anywhere is extremely stable.

Automation Anywhere is scalable and capable of adapting to any new requirements and technologies.

The initial setup requires some expertise. We formed a team to handle the preparation, installation, and configuration of the platform internally.

The implementation was completed in-house.

The pricing for Automation Anywhere is reasonable.

I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten. I appreciate their solution, as they continuously improve by addressing the gaps.

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.