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Senior Director, Digital Transformation at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Reduces hours-long processes to minutes, but high-availability is an issue we need resolved
Pros and Cons
  • "The general features, that we can automate a task that takes hours into minutes, are valuable."
  • "In high-availability, we have two Control Rooms acting as a cluster so if one fails the other one will take over. But that's not our environment operationally, and the latest information we have is that they identified another product bug."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for financial back-office functions, things like fee information, balance information, and account aggregation information.

How has it helped my organization?

It has been able to save us time in our processes from hours to minutes. Something that might have taken anywhere from two to eight hours now takes 20 minutes.

What is most valuable?

The general features, that we can automate a task that takes hours into minutes, are valuable. But as far as an individual product feature goes, there isn't anything more specific.

What needs improvement?

Operationally, there's room for improvement, especially in the area of high-availability and deployment.

In high-availability, we have two Control Rooms acting as a cluster so if one fails the other one will take over. But that's not our environment operationally, and the latest information we have is that they identified another product bug.

We have come through a number of issues with them and they've been very good at fixing them, but we've gone through four different patches to get things working, and currently, we're not working in a clustered environment.

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October 2024
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For how long have I used the solution?

We have had it in production since January of 2019, five months ago. We had it in beta for two months before that. We actually onboarded the product in September of 2018. That was when we started with the product but it was all PoC.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We're not really there yet, in terms of scaling, but based on the high-availability issue, right now I'm not too confident. From everything I've heard, though, it seems like people are running hundreds of processes on a Control Room, but we haven't really done enough to know about scalability.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is the one thing that has been fantastic. Initially, when we had all these issues, we had some issues trying to get to the right people. But since we escalated and got the right people involved, they've been fantastic. They've had people come out to our site. We submit tickets and let them know the error and they see and pretty much turn them around right away. Unfortunately we do have a number of issues, but support has been really great.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We haven't used any other RPA product.

How was the initial setup?

In the initial setup, we had difficulty in our environment. We actually had to have them come onsite for two days to get us deployed, and even then it took another month before we were finally operational. I think our environment was a factor, but we also did find product failures.

We installed it but it was not operational. Everything from the way things were configured to our license not being set up accurately was an issue. So we had configuration setups such that we couldn't process and it took a while to get that figured out. To be honest, one of the issues was that it was around the holidays and the right people weren't available to help us out. It took us a week-and-a-half just to resolve the fact that there was a button that had to be un-clicked.

And we've been continuing to have issues along the way. They had actually settled down quite a bit until we hit this high-availability issue.

What about the implementation team?

In terms of our implementation strategy, we used a development partner, professional services, that had knowledge of Automation Anywhere. This is a brand-new program for us, our first foray into RPA, so we had a professional services partner who took us all the way from business process through implementation. We don't have technical resources here who did the implementation. We totally relied on them, initially.

Our strategy was to have an experienced professional services partner help us get onboarded and develop bots for us as a PoC. Then, after the PoC and we declared complete, we would move them into production. Our longer-term strategy would be to start building some in-house talent that could do some of the bots as well.

The partner we used was independent of Automation Anywhere. They did a really good job in the upfront work, telling us what RPA can provide and about the process for determining if something should be automated or not. 

Where we struggled a bit is when it came to implementing. We implemented what the business did but we didn't implement what was needed from an operational point of view. In other words, what happens when there's an issue? What happens when there's a scenario that the bot can't handle? How will people get notified? Things like that weren't factored in initially. Some of that might have been because it was a pilot, but ultimately the vendor said, "Yeah, we're going to productionize this." But we've had delays in getting our bots into production because that aspect of usability wasn't factored in.

We're in the process of trying to get our last bot into production, and then we'll start trying, in 2019, to develop some more bots. But it has delayed our bot development. We're tracking about two months behind what we expected.

Our biggest lesson learned is that we need to factor in usability right from the beginning, not only that the business does these ten steps, but what happens if those steps fail?

What was our ROI?

It's too early for a return on investment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are about $80,000. We bought a package and when we tried to get this high-availability to work we bought some extra Bot Runners. I know that if we buy IQ Bot there's an additional cost for that but we haven't gotten there yet.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Blue Prism and UiPath. We chose Automation Anywhere - both our technology and business sides, as a partnership - because the business and technology agreed with them. They felt that it was something they could more easily understand with some of their tech-savvy people. They felt they would ultimately be able to use the product, once it got rolled out. Whereas, with some of the other products, they didn't feel they were as easy to adopt.

What other advice do I have?

Make sure that you not only look at what the business needs are, but how the business will use the product when it becomes operational. It's relatively easy to get a bot developed to do what the business wants, as long as they have a good process laid out. But what is more difficult is that when you go into production you have to understand how you can schedule it if it's attended. Our three bots are unattended. You have to understand the scheduling aspect, you have to understand what happens if it's not happy path and there's an issue. Who does it go to? How is it going to get monitored? And you have to understand how your infrastructure is supported. Our infrastructure is kind of complex which is, I think, why we're running into some of the issues we are.

The users of Automation Anywhere in our company are all business users who support our clients in the back-office, whether that's trying to do fee calculations or account calculations. We only have three bots and the number of business users is probably less than 20, in total, who will be using it once we go live. It may be more as we get further along but right now it's less than 20, probably closer to 15.

We're trying to get it out to different departments, so ultimately there could be 50 users, maybe even 100, but that's more long-term. We might get up to 20, but I think that's as far as we'll get this year, unless we start having a lot better success.

Part of our problem is that for maintenance we require at least two people. Deployment is actually pretty straightforward, but we need about two people for that as well. The people involved would be CM, configuration management, our technology architect, our operations infrastructure, and our database team.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Founder at Predikly
Real User
Object cloning and screen scraping are key features, but there are challenges with settings when changing between environments
Pros and Cons
  • "Among the most valuable features that we've been able to utilize are the screen scraping and object cloning."
  • "Even though the product is easy to use, there are some challenges when we move across different environments; there's a lot of setup needed."

What is our primary use case?

As a partner, we've been serving a lot of customers with primary use cases in BFSI, healthcare, and oil and gas. 

We have automated some 30 or 40 processes including ERP, Financials, manual data scraping from various websites, offloading data from Excel into an application, etc. We've done quite a few.

How has it helped my organization?

It improves productivity, it improves efficiency. But most of our customers are automating processes which were taking way too long for them to execute. In some of these cases, as a result of what we have done, they are saving more than 40 hours per person, for multiple people. That's been great.

What is most valuable?

Among the most valuable features that we've been able to utilize are the screen scraping and object cloning. These are two features we have used so far. We are also utilizing the API integrations.

We are excited about the solution's cognitive document processing, IQ Bot. That's an interesting one and we have at least a couple of customers who are looking for those features.

What needs improvement?

There have been a lot of nuances in the technologies that are missing. Being a tech company, where the technology is moving forward, I'm excited to see what is coming in the near future.

At this point in time, the installation is one of the biggest challenges in terms of being on a particular instance.

Also, we've been working very closely with Automation Anywhere on some of the integrations. There are some workarounds we have had to do, but I think in the newest features of version 11.3 there are things like callback, especially for the API integrations. We are looking forward to that.

There is room for improvement in that it is still on Windows and there is no self-service. Even though the product is easy to use, there are some challenges when we move across different environments; there's a lot of setup needed.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There is room for improvement in the stability of this product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In terms of scalability, we haven't been in a situation where it has been a challenge for us. We've been able to scale to what we need. Having said that, we haven't deployed thousands of bots yet, but for the bots we have done we've been doing great.

To scale from pilot to the number of bots we're currently using, took us between eight and 12 weeks.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is pretty good. They are reachable and they've been able to solve the problems.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We work exclusively with Automation Anywhere.

How was the initial setup?

The setup has been okay. We haven't seen many challenges.

What was our ROI?

We do automation ROI using three dimensions:

  • absolute time-savings
  • efficiency improvement 
  • reduction in manual labor.

In some cases, we see savings on the order of $100,000 and, in the newer processes that we are trying to do, it may be up to $1,000,000.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The cost is anywhere between $10,000 and $100,000.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I invested a lot of time in evaluating the different vendors but because of our relationship with Automation Anywhere, it was a clear winner.

What other advice do I have?

My advice is to go for Automation Anywhere.

In terms of the bot creation process, it depends on what you're trying to do. The simple bots are easy, the complex bots have their challenges. The biggest challenge is when the settings change between environments. That's when we have faced a lot of challenges with things as simple as screen resolution.

I've taken courses at the Automation Anywhere University and they have been pretty good. It's been really impressive.

I would rate Automation Anywhere at about seven out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Automation Anywhere
October 2024
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Technical Lead at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
We have integrated it with everything from standard off-the-shelf products to custom apps
Pros and Cons
  • "The flexibility: If there is anything the tool cannot do, we have the ability to make a MetaBot to achieve that functionality. The overall flexibility of the tool makes it very useful for us in our landscape."
  • "I would like more integration into the entire Microsoft Suite of products, not just Excel. Companies use all of Microsoft products at the same time, and being good at just one Microsoft tool is a limiting factor. Being able to use Microsoft Excel, Access, and Outlook together and have them integrated (as standard) into the tool would be very useful, especially when you go into attended automation."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for every aspect of our company: Financials, purchasing, HR, etc. 

How has it helped my organization?

It has taken a lot of manual Excel manipulation that we have previously did, and removed that work away from people who did that for ten hours a day, five days a week. We now have a robot doing this manual work, allowing us to refocus those our resources into more value-add activities, simplifying our landscape.

What is most valuable?

The flexibility: If there is anything the tool cannot do, we have the ability to make a MetaBot to achieve that functionality. The overall flexibility of the tool makes it very useful for us in our landscape.

We have integrated it with everything from standard off-the-shelf products, like SAP and Oracle, to custom apps that we built within our landscape. The integration to other applications is very good and easy.

What needs improvement?

I would like more integration into the entire Microsoft Suite of products, not just Excel. Companies use all of Microsoft products at the same time, and being good at just one Microsoft tool is a limiting factor. Being able to use Microsoft Excel, Access, and Outlook together and have them integrated (as standard) into the tool would be very useful, especially when you go into attended automation.

They keep rolling out more features in selected areas. They should broaden their scope.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We intentionally took a long time to scale up to our current number of bots because we focused on using large processes, instead of small ones. For us to grow to scale, it took us about a year and a half. However, we have been focusing on processes with tens of FTEs per year, instead of about processes that are one to two hours per day.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is good. Whenever we have issues with the product, the support team gets back to us normally within half a day, or sometimes even sooner, with direct answers of how we can solve our issues. If they don't have documentation for it, they have somebody call us, and we have the issue resolved in a day or two.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not have a previous solution.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was in-house.

What about the implementation team?

We did the deployment in-house.

What other advice do I have?

Do your homework on your use cases. Knowing which use cases are really good for RPA is crucial in getting the program started. If you don't have your use cases identified, or have your functional processes identified, that want to automate, then it makes the scaling aspects more challenging.

I am RPA professionally certified through Automation Anywhere and have taken multiple classes through the Automation Anywhere University. The courses are good. They are just like any other online training courses, which I have taken through other vendors, like Microsoft or SAP. It is on par with those vendors who have been doing this for a long time.

As long as a person has a semi-technical mindset, the product is very simple to use. Even for the traditional business user, with just a little training, we are able to bring them up to speed on how to use the tool fairly easily. The tool is very good, as far as ease of use.

As long as you have a technical mindset or are able to think in a certain manner, the creation of a bot is very intuitive, especially since the tool is drag and drop. For example, I am able to take any of the commands that I need and put them in the right sequence of orders. This makes it very intuitive to create a bot from start to finish.

We are evaluating the cognitive document processing as something to use in the future, but are not currently using it.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Technical Project Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Integrates well with SAP and API-to-API, but complex processes are difficult to automate
Pros and Cons
  • "The integration of RPA bots with other processes and documents is good. We don't have any issues there. We could have more connectors, but it's fine. I have used it for SAP and for direct API-to-API, and that went well."
  • "It is good for standard procedures with an SOP. For those, it works well. But there are processes that are tricky and need human intervention and intelligence. In those cases, the process gets stuck."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for processes related to IT operations in the manufacturing industry.

How has it helped my organization?

There are hectic IT processes, jobs that run overnight, weekly, and monthly. We can optimize, rewrite, and automate them. They represent the most important use cases that I have been involved with: IT operations and software for manufacturing.

It has helped our organization increase automation consumption by 20 to 30 percent.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the Control Room.

Also, the integration of RPA bots with other processes and documents is good. We don't have any issues there. We could have more connectors, but it's fine. I have used it for SAP and for direct API-to-API, and that went well.

What needs improvement?

It is good for standard procedures with an SOP. For those, it works well. But there are processes that are tricky and need human intervention and intelligence. In those cases, the process gets stuck. Something that is a straight-ahead process—you do A, B, C, and D—is fine. But when you do A and then have to decide whether to do B or C, where there is a need for logical thinking and human intervention, we find it difficult to automate those cases. We have to break down those processes and do that tweaking.

We would like to see a more seamless UI, and we would like AI help. Wherever we are stuck or there is a logical error, AI help, with prompting and suggestions on what to do, would be good. If I have dragged and dropped something in the wrong logical sequence and it fails during execution, there should be automated AI help.

We use NetBeans IDE where we get something like automated help, but that's a platform for doing standard Java and PHP development. Automated help is coming up more and more in many tools. For example, Microsoft is providing it. We would like to have something like that in Automation Anywhere, with automated debugging and self-help.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Overall, the product is stable for SOP-based use cases. It is not very stable for complex use cases.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is not very scalable for complex use cases.

How are customer service and support?

Their technical support is good overall, not excellent. They can improve the response time and on-call support. We have SLAs, so we need support to be immediate.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not have a previous solution.

How was the initial setup?

Recently, automation has gone to the cloud, and that has been most beneficial because installation was quite hectic before. On-prem was quite difficult, but the moment they launched the cloud version, it became easy.

With on-prem, there were issues with installation over production as well as the setup of the Control Room. Often, the Control Room would go down or hang, and we would have to do restarts. It was not seamless.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing cost could be improved. It costs a lot. At the very least, the developer licenses and the control panels should be made free to enterprises, and the production environment licensed. Production should bear the cost; we would be okay with that, but not the development side.

What other advice do I have?

Business users didn't find it that easy to use, but for developers who are building the use cases, it's quite easy. For the business users, the issues were standard ones, such as navigation, user friendliness, and the terminologies that they needed to understand. They often require training before using it, and not just one training session, but training and retraining. On a scale where 10 represents a low learning curve and one is a large learning curve, Automation Anywhere is a seven. For non-technical people, it's difficult. For them, the learning curve is a four or five. It usually takes four to five months for them to be able to really use it on their own.

We have developed solutions for IT back-end processes, so there are no end-users. These jobs run weekly, fortnightly, and monthly. There are two or three people involved with it, but it's the jobs that we have automated.

We need three to four people to maintain the solutions, but that doesn't take a lot of time—about four hours a week. It's not something that needs to be done every day. Before the jobs run, they check to make sure everything is okay, that no errors or notifications are coming up. The maintenance is very low.

Automation Anywhere is good but not exceptional. It's good because, for simple use cases, we use it with different technologies. For complex processes, automations should perform better.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Solutions Architect at Emids
Real User
Top 5
We have saved our clients a lot of time on operations, but document understanding feature needs to mature
Pros and Cons
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

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

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Automation Anywhere for about six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

How are customer service and support?

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.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

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

What was our ROI?

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.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Enterprise Automation Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Great RPA functionality with good reliability and an easy setup
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution helps with reducing operational costs, which can be reduced by up to 30% to 40% in savings in terms of operational cost."
  • "Their OCR is a bit expensive."

What is our primary use case?

We are in services. We are consultants and we use these automation tools to automate processes for clients. I'm not using it for my own organization, however, I'm using it for clients' organizations.

Use cases are largely cross-business process automation, back office automation. It could be used in finance or accounting. It could be in underwriting, if it's an insurance client, for claims processing.

We have done automation largely in the lending space, including wealth management and customer onboarding. 

How has it helped my organization?

The solution helps with reducing operational costs, which can be reduced by up to 30% to 40% in savings in terms of operational cost. That's your basic benefit, which is delivered quite well.

What is most valuable?

It's usually the RPA functionality that I prefer, which is more widely used. They also have an IQ Bot for document processing, which is a bit of advanced OCR. That's not used as frequently as their RPA tool.

The stability is good.

As it is on the cloud, it's quite scalable. 

What needs improvement?

Their OCR is a bit expensive, meaning the IQ Bot. There are a lot of customers who don't want to use it due to the price tag. Maybe if they price it more aggressively, it could be widely used as well. Otherwise, it has pretty much industry-leading functionalities, similar to any other RPA tool. 

In general, their roadmap is well defined and we are pleased with its offering. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for about two years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is pretty stable. It's good. Whenever there are issues, there are frequent platform upgrades provided by the vendors. It's very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is great as it is on the cloud. It can be scaled up pretty fast.

On average, I would say, per company that we've seen, there are close to 50 to 100, users - depending on the size of the organization. If it's a small bank, they have somewhere around 20 to 30 users, however, if it's a large company, it's closer to 100 to 200 users. We work with the solution on a daily basis.

How are customer service and support?

We tend to contact technical support once a month. We deal with them pretty regularly. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I'm also familiar with UiPath. UiPath and Automation Anywhere are often used in many organizations. UiPath can be on-prem or on the cloud, however, AA is basically now on the cloud. 

What we've largely seen is clients more using VBA or .NET-based automation solutions. Before moving into these platforms, either an Automation Anywhere or UiPath was used.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is pretty simple and if any issues are noted, the vendor can assist.

The platform can be set up in two to three months. I have not seen clients directly start on the cloud version. Usually, people have had on-prem which they have migrated to the cloud. Basically, the on-prem setup took two to three months. Maybe if there are new clients who are starting directly with cloud, it could be lesser, maybe a month or so. 

From then on, subsequent automation of processes can take anywhere between two to four months, depending on the complexity. If you have a simple business process, for example, invoice processing or claims payment, that can take one to two months. If you have something more complex, that can take anywhere between two to three months.

In terms of the amount of maintenance, it depends on how many processes have been automated. Usually for a small-scale setup, if there are 50 bots or there are 50 automation, there could be maybe 5 FTEs required to maintain it. If the operations are large, with thousands of bots, the team size can vary anywhere between 30 to 50 FTEs. The larger the operations are and the larger number of processes that have been automated, the bigger the support team requirements are. On average, 1% should be able to support 6 to maybe 10 automations.

What about the implementation team?

There's support from the vendor, so I don't see a major challenge in setting this up.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

While the RPA is still competitively priced, usually IQ Bot is expensive. That's what we have seen.

For the OCR, my understanding is that it's a one-time cost. I've seen instances where it's $15,000 or so and on top of that there is some cost on every document processed or maybe a bunch of documents. Per every 1,000 documents processed there is a cost that is recurring. That said, the initial one-time cost is quite high.

What other advice do I have?

We are AA partners. 

I would recommend the solution based on its scalability and stability. 

Generally, people who adopt these tools do a tool assessment between multiple vendors. Usually, we have seen that it's either UiPath or Automation Anywhere that is shortlisted. These two seem to be the most preferred options.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
reviewer1462716 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager at Deloitte
Real User
Tremendously improved the efficiency and accuracy of processes
Pros and Cons
  • "Improved Efficiency : Post RPA services, the efficiency and accuracy of the processes have increased tremendously and now the employees can focus more on important research and analysis work."
  • "AA sometimes poses compatibility problems with new web browser versions like Chrome."

What is our primary use case?

The AA architecture was as suggested by the AA technical support team. We had one server dedicated each for the control room, bot creator, bot runner, and DB server. The servers were hosted on cloud services offered by Microsoft Azure.

Our primary use case included mostly the internal operations orchestrated by the IT team. It included processes like automation of AD ID creation, updating, and deletion.

Other services were offered to the Business and Finance groups, Human Resource department, and marketing department.

How has it helped my organization?

Automation Anywhere has played a pivotal role in expanding the current portfolio of the company by integrating with new Aae technologies like AI and ML and increasing the efficiency of the existing processes.

Some of the changes the organization has observed and appreciated the RPA services implemented by AA are listed below:

Regulatory and Compliance Standards: Prior installation of RPA services, there used to a lot of transcription errors through out the processes which proved quite fatal during periodic audits and in meeting compliance standards. Plus, detection and rectification of these errors was quite time and resource consuming.

Improved Efficiency: Post RPA services, the efficiency and accuracy of the processes have increased tremendously and now the employees can focus more on important research and analysis work.

Customer satisfaction: RPA has automated the repetitive and time consuming tasks which has eased off the pressure from the employees. Now the employees can concentrate on client specific requirements and in order increasing the client satisfaction by responding quickly in a periodic manner.  

What is most valuable?

Automation Anywhere is fairly easy to use and understand. It requires no prior coding experience. Personally, I started my RPA journey with AA learning about RPA as a technology and AA tool from Automation university and found it quite useful.

The bot store feature is quite useful since it provides pre-built bots for complex systems and it helps a lot when starting the RPA journey.

The AA commands provide a drag and drop option which is quite easy to use.

The Bot insight provides a lot of information ranging from bot deployment, success, and failures, and bot efficiency. This is quite informative and easy to understand which can be directly presented in front of business leaders too.

IQ Bot provides AI and cognitive capabilities that prove extremely useful in extracting texts from scanned images and unstructured invoices and documents.

What needs improvement?

Automation Anywhere provides more than 300 commands but it lacks in certain areas like Excel automation. For eg: there is no command to add, rename, or delete sheet. However, meta bots can be utilized for the same.

AA sometimes poses compatibility problems with new web browser versions like Chrome.

The AA control room is fairly difficult to understand and maintain initially.

Integration with new technologies and scripts like Python. However, I have heard that A2019 supports Python scripts.

The license prices vary drastically depending upon the partnership with the client.

Debugging of SQL queries is hard. The error description is not accurate. I have to initially test the queries on Access and then only I paste them on AA.  

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for more than two years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Automation is quite stable even with Citrix environments. However, it posed some problems when in the production phase. We encountered some random errors which used to come on a random basis.

AA was quite stable when used with Window applications and other applications like SAP, proprietary software, and databases.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is quite scalable and best suited when used for processes involving a high volume of data.

The existing infrastructure can easily be migrated to the cloud and upgraded to a higher version too with minimal effort.

The configuration can easily be scaled up when being used in a cloud environment. A lot of bots can easily be run on the same bot runner server while being maintained by the control room.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support team was cooperative and quick to respond to any query. I am highly satisfied with the AA support team. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I started with AA v 10 and switched to v11 later on.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was provided with installation documentation which was detailed. It posed no problems and in case of queries the support team was there to help.

What about the implementation team?

I implemented it through a vendor team who were fairly new to both the RPA domain and AA tool. 

What was our ROI?

The ROI of AA is best when utilized for processes involving a high volume of data. 
It plays a pivotal role in cost saving by replacing the existing time and resource-consuming project with a fast and efficient RPA solution.

Since it can be utilized 24/7, the ROI is pretty high with minimal efforts and resources by using unattended automation.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Automation anywhere is best suited for processes that have high volume and are repetitive.
They offer good discounts when purchased in bulk or they provide extra bit runner runners with the existing prices. 

The setup cost basically depends on usage. They can be installed both on-premises or on the cloud depending upon the user's requirement.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Not specifically. We were already AA partners by the time I joined the practice.

What other advice do I have?

I have been using the IQ bot and the latest A2019 version and still exploring new features. I personally liked replacing the various recorder and object cloning command with a single recorder command.

The solution sometimes poses problems in the production phase.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1457205 - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Consultant at Capgemini
Real User
The availability of the number of commands helpful to do automation within a small time frame
Pros and Cons
  • "We use AA Client, Bot runners, Control room, IQ Bot, Bot insights. With the AA Client, we are able to automate almost all kinds of automation requirements without any big challenges. We found the availability of the number of commands provided by AA is really helpful to do automation within a small time frame."
  • "While using IQ Bot we found that data extraction accuracy is a bit weaker in semi-structured documents compared with structured documents. We would like to see improvement in the data extraction part of Automation Anywhere IQ Bot."

What is our primary use case?

We work for a credit card client. There are a number of manual processes that can be done with Automation because the processes are truly rule-based and absolute for Automation. We delivered 10+ end-to-end solutions using AA version 11. 

A few examples are managing customer surveys, managing credit limits for a card, commission payouts, tax recovery, insurance claim documents, etc. In the above solutions, we worked with web applications, desktop applications, databases, Excel sheets, and other file formats. Automation Anywhere is easy to maintain and works well for years without any issues in production. We achieved good ROI and STP with AA in the last two years. We are happy to use AA as an enterprise version.

How has it helped my organization?

We are working for a credit card supplier client and there are a large number of manual processes that are rule-based and need a large human workforce to do the process which requires a large number of investments. By automating those processes we achieved high ROI, great customer satisfaction, better STP, reduced manual work, reduced processing time, high accuracy, and 24/7 working capacity with the AA bots. Our customer is highly satisfied with the given solution and they are ready to invest more in the near future to automate a number of tasks.

What is most valuable?

We use AA Client, Bot runners, Control room, IQ Bot, Bot insights. With the AA Client, we are able to automate almost all kinds of automation requirements without any big challenges. We found the availability of the number of commands provided by AA is really helpful to do automation within a small time frame. We used IQ Bot to extract information from the structured documents and we achieved better accuracy with IQ Bot for field extraction and we did the process in less time compared to manual efforts thanks to AA providing such a business-centric solution.

What needs improvement?

While using IQ Bot we found that data extraction accuracy is a bit weaker in semi-structured documents compared with structured documents. We would like to see improvement in the data extraction part of Automation Anywhere IQ Bot. In version 6.5 handwritten data extraction capabilities were not there so if we can get it in upcoming releases then it will be great opportunity to automate tasks which are working on some handwritten documents. 

Another additional feature we are looking for is logo matching and signature matching capabilities with IQ Bot.

In addition we would like to see more compact version of AA which can be controlled over mobile devices.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Automation Anywhere Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: October 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Automation Anywhere Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.