We have around 400 to 500 bots running on the production server. If any issues arise with a bot, we check and fix them on our end.
We have SOPs for manual processes. We automate based on the SOPs.
We have around 400 to 500 bots running on the production server. If any issues arise with a bot, we check and fix them on our end.
We have SOPs for manual processes. We automate based on the SOPs.
Automation Anywhere helps us perform processes much faster. We have many options in the tool to keep all details secure. Overall, it is very beneficial.
Automation Anywhere is easy to learn for someone who does not have technical skills. Other technologies require us to learn syntax and other things. Many things are there, whereas in Automation Anywhere, we can just select an action. Within one or two months, one can easily understand and work on it. With basic coding knowledge, we can easily automate. Compared to other technologies, it is very easy to learn.
Automation Anywhere is user-friendly for automating processes with accuracy and efficiency. It saves time and offers precise outputs.
Automation Anywhere has saved about 60% to 70% of our time.
The best feature is the Capture action. If we want to capture the whole process, we can do it in a single shot. Everything is added to the code, which is a good feature. It takes us less time to automate. It allows us to achieve what we are doing manually, irrespective of how long it is.
I struggled with understanding the use of different variables during my initial time with Automation Anywhere. We have three types of variables. We have user-defined variables, system variables, and config variables. Sometimes, we get confused about the values stored in various variables. If the tool could show the current value stored in the variable, it would be much easier.
I have been working with Automation Anywhere for the last two years.
Automation Anywhere is a stable product, and I would rate it as one of the best.
It is scalable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.
In my team, we have 30 people using the solution.
Till now, I have not connected with any support member for any issues.
Neutral
Automation Anywhere is my first tool on the automation side. I do not have any experience with other tools on the automation side. Earlier, I worked with Java and C technologies. Compared to those, Automation Anywhere has more features, and it is very easy to do everything I want.
The initial setup is straightforward. If you have knowledge about it, it does not take much time. Within 15 to 20 minutes, it can be installed on a machine.
Its maintenance is easy.
I would recommend Automation Anywhere to others.
I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten. This is my first solution, and I am still learning it. I still have to learn many things about this solution.
We use it for automating Excel sheets and for uploading some data.
By implementing Automation Anywhere, we minimize the manual work and improve workflows.
The benefits depend on how you use it. When standard automation is not supported, you sometimes need to use robots to eliminate the human interface or human interference in the processes.
We integrated Automation Anywhere with ERP. We had Oracle EBS. There are always challenges, but we can overcome all the challenges. We have the technical expertise to do that. Overall, it works fine. It is good.
Automation Anywhere has saved us time, especially in distributing Excel sheets to multiple users and sending emails. The consolidation of these Excel sheets used to take a lot of time. It would take us a day to consolidate them. In case of errors, it would take one and a half days. With a tool like Automation Anywhere, we can do the consolidation within hours. If we have everything in the portal, it will do that quickly.
I am happy with most of the features. Notifications and triggers are especially good.
You can learn it quickly. All resources are available on the web. It is a matter of time. If you want to learn more, there are enough resources available online. You can log in and learn.
It is user-friendly as compared to the other products. The time it takes to train non-technical employees varies. Simple training will take a week.
It is a cloud solution. It is a good platform.
It is constantly improving. It is AI-embedded. They can further improve the AI. It is already at a certain level, but it can be improved.
I have been using Automation Anywhere for three to four years.
I have not worked with any other solution. I have a little idea about UiPath, but I have not worked with it.
It is mostly in the cloud, and it is mostly deployed on the Microsoft cloud. They also have their own cloud.
In terms of maintenance, every software needs to be updated. Before upgrades, you should do stress testing and be aware of the changes. You might have to update the robots as per the changes.
It is subscription-based. They have different schemes. The price depends on how you negotiate with the local partner or local representative in your country.
It is a good product, but it also depends on how you use it. It is all about how you educate and train people. It also depends on your approach and training.
Automation and AI, especially Generative AI (GenAI), is a trend. Everyone is looking for automation. So far, I have not worked on it. In the future, I might work on such a project.
In the beginning, automation is a bit difficult because you need to understand the requirements and other things, but later on, it gets easier. Once you have a deep understanding of requirements, it is easy to do automation. It is just a tool. Before using it, you need to have a good understanding of the process. You need to understand where the gap is, what you want to do with it, and how Automation Anywhere can help you.
It takes time to implement automation. For example, if you are using Automation Anywhere OCR, it takes time to understand different kinds of documents or invoices. It will sometimes fail. In one or two cases, it might fail. There might be a failure rate of 2% to 3%. In such scenarios, some users might have a negative impression. You should be able to address such challenges. It is a matter of time. You need to have patience and a little bit of tolerance. It is not perfect. Nothing is perfect in the world. The users need to be educated on it.
Overall, I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.
We have automated some data entry scenarios. We also have automation for system monitoring. It is being used for data entry, system monitoring, and data exchange with other systems.
We found a lot of processes to automate. We currently have about 80 processes that we have automated.
Automation Anywhere has helped our organization increase its automation consumption, but we are a little short of RPA developers. We are acquiring new talent and new resources for that group, and we are on the right path. We have a lot of work.
Workbench, which is a development tool, is very friendly. It is complete. Compared to Power Automate, Automation Anywhere is much more comprehensive and easy to understand.
We use APIs for some bots. It is not too common, but we use APIs in some processes. The integration at the moment is easy.
We work with version 11, and we have some problems with some applications. Automation Anywhere's software does not recognize them properly. The recognition of web applications is not good. The software does not consistently recognize all the controls and objects. We are in the process of migrating to a new version. We are migrating to Automation Anywhere 360, and I hope that in the latest version, the recognition model can be better. On the Internet and various forums, many people say that Automation Anywhere 360 appears to be much better, but we have not implemented it yet. I hope it is better and consistent. The main problem is consistency. If I make a bot today and tomorrow if the application changes, the bot stops working.
Similarly, in terms of the ability to provide automation at scale, the new version is more focused on that. The version that we have is not that capable. The development is not too easy. We need to put in too much effort, but Automation 360 appears to be easier. Development takes less time.
Automation Anywhere is a technical application. It is not so easy for a regular user. It requires technical knowledge. The new version is more user-friendly from an ease-of-use perspective.
I have been using this solution for three to four years.
I would rate their technical support a nine out of ten.
Positive
We are still using Power Automate, but we are not using their RPA model. We only use Power Automate for other automations. When we chose our RPA tool, Microsoft had not released the RPA tool for Power Automate. Microsoft released it a year or two years later.
We have some processes to analyze the ROI, but right now, we are not focusing on knowing that information. Our main need is automation. ROI is important, but it is not critical at the moment. We are still automating projects in the company.
It is expensive. I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten in terms of pricing.
They bill for every IQ bot that you have. We do not use IQ Bot, but we have a license, and they bill for every thousand pages.
We evaluated one or two other options, but I was not a part of the evaluation.
We did a little bit of research, and we found that Automation Anywhere was recommended at that time. It had better reviews on the Gartner website, so we decided to go with it.
It takes about three to four months to learn it. Some of the things are easy, but because we are trying to do automations, we need to make sure that we understand the application properly. We need to know how it works internally in the structure of the code because sometimes, we make a programming change that works today but stops working tomorrow. That is because the application can change, so we need to understand how the controls work between the changes and have the logic that allows a bot to run smoothly irrespective of the application changes. It is challenging to analyze the changes in the application and find a way to program the bot to recognize the changes.
To someone who wants to use API integration instead of an RPA solution, I would say that API integration is more recommended, but sometimes there are issues with this type of integration, so we have to finish the project in Automation Anywhere. The first option that we always try is to create our own integration between the systems with APIs. The RPA tool is the last option for integration.
In terms of maintenance, we need to install the updates or patches. Our infrastructure team is in charge of that. We have technicians to install patches. We have people with different roles. They are technical leaders or system administrators. We also have an information security team, and we have a network team, as well as an operating system team. Every department makes a little contribution to the whole environment.
For managing the bots, we have only three people. Maintenance of bots is different because we have bots scheduled all day, so we still need to monitor them on a daily basis, but the update process is monthly. We verify what is pending. Overall, the maintenance takes about eight hours a month.
I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten.
Automation Anywhere is used by our customers for automation support.
Developers can easily utilize Automation Anywhere. For individuals with no prior knowledge, there is a university website available for training, and I also provide assistance in training my customers.
Automation Anywhere has a short learning curve. It takes five days to train new users.
We have seen the benefits of Automation Anywhere right from the start.
Automation Anywhere ability to provide automation at scale is good.
Automation Anywhere can quickly and easily integrate with RPA bots, APIs, and business applications.
It has helped our organization increase automation consumption.
The dashboards are excellent.
The regional distribution in Turkey can be improved.
I have been using Automation Anywhere for six years.
We have two customers who use Automation Anywhere on the cloud and two customers who use it on-premises.
Automation Anywhere is highly stable.
Scaling Automation Anywhere on-premises is difficult, but in the cloud, it becomes easier.
The technical support team is extremely responsive.
Positive
The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment can be completed by one person within an hour.
The implementation is completed in-house.
The cost of Automation Anywhere is high in Turkey due to the weak economy.
I rate Automation Anywhere a ten out of ten. I recommend Automation Anywhere to others.
APIs are easy to connect, and I highly recommend integrating APIs over robot process automation.
Automation Anywhere is easy to maintain and update.
We maintain 50 bots, and each of them requires five minutes to install.
I am a Digital Transformation Consultant & my role revolves around suggesting, recommending & implementing the best automation solution across to my clients. Some of them also include:
a) Lower operating costs
b) Faster ROI
c) Ability to be more competitive
Giving the right automation solutions can reap major benefits. Understanding these benefits—and some obstacles—will help us develop support for an operations automation project. The primary benefits of operations automation cited most often were cost reduction, productivity, availability, reliability, and performance.
Automation Anywhere (AA) has helped me in suggesting, recommending & implementing the best automation solution across to my client
AA is a better and more intelligent approach to cost containment and reduction. The greatest opportunity is to increase service to the customer (end-user) while systematically reducing costs. Management often overlooks this potential for savings. Most modern servers have a low operating cost and the total cost of ownership has been declining. AA solution has helped to streamline operations in businesses of all sizes.
The benchmarking scores, the latest technology improvements & the use cases are the most valuable aspects.
AA allows you to create processes using 3 types of robots: Task Bot, Meta Bot, and IQ Bot. Instead of rewriting redundant code for processes, a meta bot can be used instead. This type of robot is best used for complex scalable processes. IQ Bot: The most powerful of the 3 types of robots is the IQ Bot.
With more demo recordings and positive real-time reviews from the clients. AA should provide a free evaluation period so it is easy to attract new customers. It is not able to use OCR effectively and has limited usability. Handwritten documents are still a drawback.
It is also difficult in terms of control room management. The debugger is also a weakness of the tool, forcing the developer to use error handling or message box to map errors. Few applications take more time for loading when integrated.
I have been using AA since 2017.
They are always up to mark and ready to help out when in need.
The initial setup was straightforward.
We used a vendor team, they were great !
It has been fair to be honest.
The setup cost, pricing and/or licensing of AA sounds reasonable considering its capability.
Keep up the good work & keep improving as you grow.
We have ITMS (IT Service Management) and there are a lot of support tickets which are coming into that service site. As an enterprise application, there are too many tickets to handle live. This system is being used by service desk employees to enable them to address all the issues that customers are facing which they are tasked to resolve.
Because the number of tickets is huge, managing those services and change requests is complicated to handle manually. We use Automation Anywhere now to process these tasks wherever it is not necessary to use the API to process the handling of requests.
If, for example, I have an application which does not have an API, but there is one activity where a user may need to be registered in that particular application for it to function, we use Automation Anywhere for that to supply the access. We get the data from the source data and use an Automation Anywhere bot to do the registration of the user into that application. This was being done by the service desk manually in previous instances, now it is automated using Automation Anywhere.
We have had about 300+ live tickets at the end of every month before using Automation Anywhere. We just went live last month using Automation Anywhere bots to take care of processing some issues. The total number of tickets that remain live has come down to around 80 as of the end of this month. It might touch around a hundred at peak times right now. But over a short period of time, maybe around six months, these unresolved issues could become zero at the end of the month. We are just evaluating the numbers from the date when we went live, so it is not so accurate. Definitely, the goal is that the count will become zero, and that is the target. It seems to be working well so far.
The other use cases that we have are open-ended right now. There are a lot of potential uses. For example, if a request comes into the service now to create a VPN account, we can automate that using Automation Anywhere. That work is in progress. Today that is a manual task where the service desk people raise another ticket to another team who will go there and create the VPN accounts.
We are in the process of identifying certain processes that can be automated through a bot, as there are other services for internal support functions, like HR or IT. We are trying to take some of those services to automate them. In terms of the extensiveness, we have just started with that. We have around 10 new sketches that we have automated right now but we have around 13 to 14 sketches that we wanted to automate through this process.
We are using the on-premise deployment model.
As far as how the product has helped us improve our organization, we may be a bit premature to just to say that it has already decreased the workload. But looking into the decrease in the ticket counts, it suggests that it is helping process customer service requests and that it definitely is going to help us more in the future as we utilize the solution better.
There is one user registration process in one application where there is no API which has been published by that framework. This is a very proprietary in one application by a third-party. So, there was a help desk, and whenever a call went to the help desk, they had a front-end where they created these user registrations. Now, this is completely automated for all employees who are onboarded. We receive the data, it is put it into Excel, and from Excel, it will update it into the particular tool where the registration happens.
On the service desk, they are using ServiceNow with a VPN connection. Now, they are logging using Automation Anywhere as a bot, which logs into a ServiceNow. It will then take that VPN request and create it on the server.
To be very honest, I've not had the opportunity to go through all the features of Automation Anywhere. This feature where it can use a bot to go between a user and into other systems as a robot and do that work is very valuable. It can do whatever humans can do and still provide a level of security. That model is a good one.
Developers don't have any challenges using it. We are still in the early stages of use, but it is working well. It is very easy to use for our developers.
One of the challenges that I think should be resolved — from what my team was telling me — is that Automation Anywhere is not able to connect to a database directly. I have not evaluated this myself. There may be good security reasons for this, but it should be possible.
For example, generally what we do now is to write scripts to push the data from the database and into the automation event. The direct access feature — which is not available according to my team — could solve the issue with the scripts. There's room for improvement in making more flexible solutions.
As of now, because I have not used the new version very extensively, I don't have any reference to say what features should be added to the next release of the product. My one thought is that I don't know about the possibility of reading from unstructured data and if Automation Anywhere has any features to access unstructured data sources. It would be good if it can read the data and build some intelligence over that to push data to the right application. We do have some requirements from clients in other organizations where invoices will come in to be scanned. Based on the analysis of the data, copies of the data can be sent to different, appropriate applications. We are using different tools to do this now. If this kind of feature for reading unstructured data is there, then it will be easier to incorporate in processes. That is good to add if it is not there already.
There can be some options to connect to the database directly where we should be able to add some data.
There was a limitation where we were supposed to login remotely to one server and carry out some actions. That integration was not possible.
In the Indian market, there are a lot of other service companies like us. In the market, there are other products competing with Automation Anywhere like UiPath. My team has technical experts in their technology and these experts also work with Automation Anywhere. When they are comparing the products, they say that the modules or the functionality in UiPath can do a better job overall compared to Automation Anywhere.
From a stability perspective, we run into an interesting issue. Somewhere in the licensing — especially for the Indian market — there should be some different pricing packages. For mid-size companies like us in our market situation, having multiple bots really costs a lot as a percentage of revenue. Instead of adding costs, we are trying to run with one or two bots which run about seven processes in all. It may not be the most efficient or optimal way to get the most from the product. From the cost perspective in the Indian market, if you want to grab the majority of the potential users, you will want to be considerate on the pricing side. A lower price may bring greater market share, user familiarity, and recognition.
Otherwise, stability seems to be good.
From the scalability standpoint, I don't think there will be any issues except for the increased costs which could prohibit some companies on a limited budget from scaling. So technically it is pretty good, but there may be some restrictions or interference in budget or integrations.
We are using one or two bots that are running continuously.
Support wise, I think the company is doing great. When we hired support staff to help us with the installation the support was very good.
Right now, we are just at the beginning of our implementation as far as what we envision it will be in the future. So far the support that we are getting is normal support. It is just okay. When we place a ticket, there is nothing bad, but also there is nothing extraordinary about the support like we were getting during implementation. What we receive now is just a normal support experience compared to the specialist who was very good.
We have not taken Automation Anywhere University courses.
One of the major reasons why we went with Automation Anywhere is that our company could have a global MSA (Master Service Agreement), where we could use this particular tool for our end customers also. As an organization, we had a global implementation with Automation Anywhere where the clients wanted to deliver this solution to the end customer also as part of their solutions. That's why — because that option was there — we just went with Automation Anywhere.
The initial setup for the program was not straightforward. It was definitely complex. As a layman who is unfamiliar with the product, I do not think people can implement it easily. Even people with a little bit of knowledge about the type of robotic engineering and applications are going to go through some challenges where they need help from Automation Anywhere.
So far in this installation, we have had to integrate with some internal processes. Also, we needed to incorporate solutions for the respective firewall openings to the internet. It has taken almost one-and-a-half months to do the basic installation of the software. It is not like pushing a button.
We initially deployed everything on server. However, the permission required Excel to also be a part of our process to be automated. So, we received some complaints on it this. This particular thing cannot be deployed on the server because of the license that we were holding. What I came to know is this feature is not available.
We hired a dedicated person from Automation Anywhere who supported us at the time of the initial installation. Because we were installing this on the cloud infrastructure, we had to go through a lot of challenges. Because we had a dedicated person helping us to do this insulation, it saved us a lot of trouble, experimentation, and effort.
We are still in the process of deploying and evaluating both the solutions and the benefits. However, I definitely think we will see a return on investment. Looking into the number of tickets and seeing that they have decreased now because of some implementation of the solutions we intend to deploy is a good sign. We have around 40+ such use cases that we still need to deploy. Definitely, we are going to see some ROI using this product. It will develop more over time.
In one of the use cases, we use to have around 300 tickets per month which has been reduced to almost zero now.
We evaluated Softomotive and UiPath.
With Softmotive, the performance was a concerned. It was breaking in many places. That is what we observed.
With UiPath, it was good. It has got a lot of integrations and can directly talk to the database as well. All those details are there.
The major reason that we selected Automation Anywhere was the licensing model.
The primary advice which I would give to someone considering automation tools, in general, is don't just go for any RPA tool (Robotic Process Automation). You want to be sure that the tool you choose will solve some issues and resolve your problems. I've seen people just take any RPA tool just to say that they are using some RPA. It is not a status symbol, it is a tool for business. You need to define the problem and that RPA is the way to go to resolve the issue and improve business function.
If there is a process which cannot be completely automated using any scripts, and human intervention is very much required, consider going for this solution.
I will give an example. There was one use case where we had to read information from an Excel table and generate a report out of that. People might decide they need to start using Automation Anywhere or some RPA tool for this solution. But reading an Excel file is not really a commonly necessary use case for any of the RPA tools. Basically it can be taken care of in programming scripts or some small database script application. An easy solution would have given the proper output with less effort and they would still get what they were expecting as users. The point is to evaluate the problem and how complex it is before going to purchase any RPA tool which may be unnecessary. If it can be done through something else, it may be a more efficient process.
Business users are not using the tool. They are just using the direct outcome.
We have not used IQ Bots, but might in the future.
We have not used the Bot Store. I would like to explore that in the future.
On a scale of one to ten where ten is the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight. It is an eight because I'm seeing some results in the use case even early on whatever we are trying to automate. It has really helped our process so far and we will expand on that.
We have processes in our company that are manual and redundant. We need to reduce the time and improve the efficiency simultaneously. These will be the best use cases for automation.
We picking processes that are more manual and consume more time. We pick a case where it consumes more time when an individual does it. When an automation platform with a bot does it, less time is needed and it is more efficient. This way we have reduced manpower on these manual tasks. Individual workers can then pick up other work instead.
It is very user-friendly. Nobody has to sit down and work on coding. We have a drag and drop option where anybody can understand it. That is the advantage of Automation Anywhere.
We don't foresee any issues with the stability. The support team has given us their guarantee.
The processes that we have chosen in the initial phase are limited to certain regions. We have categorized them to phase one, two, and so on. Once phase one is good to go and we get good results out of it, we have plans to scale up to phase two, then so on. We have categorized the processes into regions, like Asia, US, EU, etc. Going forward, we will be implementing globally.
We are getting good support from the Automation Anywhere team. We have not found any cases or issues until now. They have been implementing and supporting us is in a very good way.
As of now, we have developers who are supporting us from Automation Anywhere. They are very knowledgeable enough to understand our process requirements and build a solution for us. They interact with our SMEs on a regular basis. Once we implement the process into production, we will need continuous support from the technical team. We look forward to working with the same support going forward.
The initial setup was straightforward.
Giving access to our internal websites was not simple during the initial setup, but we could track the issue. After sometime, everything was streamlined. We now know for our next automation project with Automation Anywhere what has to be done because we have better clarity.
We have seen ROI in terms of cost and time with a couple of our projects.
We have a couple of projects with UiPath and Blue Prism. We also took Automation Anywhere as an option. When we compare other projects on other platforms versus Automation Anywhere, the technical support we are receiving in terms of efficiency, and even that they are giving us good price. This is what we are looking for. Therefore, we have plans to move our other projects, which are on UiPath and Blue Prism, onto Automation Anywhere.
We are an IT services firm. We use it for simple processes, but also for complex. We usually take up simple processes for manual tasks, which are easy to automate.
We have mostly done financial services: finance and accounting processes. That has been for the most part. We have also used it in HR and recruitment to find resumes online, and in other processes.
Its ease of deployment is the most valuable feature. We have found with many customers that it's quite easy to deploy. The other valuable feature, which is not from a technology perspective, is how Automation Anywhere collaborates with us. So, it has made our journey much easier than with other partners that we have.
Room for improvement is more on the IQ Bot side: How quickly we can adopt and deploy it?
Another area which I feel would help is how the business can adopt it:
It's more on the change management side, but includes all of the tool enabler.
It has been quite good in terms of making changes. As we are working on the process, it's much easier to make changes.
In terms of scaling up, we have not had issues with bots which are in production. In UAT, there have been scaling issues. But in production, as long as a solution is good, then it works.
It was a strategy from our company. We were looking to reduce the cost of operations for our existing clients. We were looking at different ways in which we could reduce our business, in a way, by reducing costs and get more business from the same clients. So this is where we started, by looking at automation as a major thing for Hexaware itself. It starts from our visions, which aligns very well with what Automation Anywhere provides, as a platform. That is where we started, then we have obviously grown and been able to automate many processes, which helped us to get many deals where we are upfront and able to tell clients how much optimization is possible. This is sort of my role, to showcase to the clients how much automation is feasible, in a particular process. We are quite good at that and have been able to do multiple engagements in this space.
We have automated one process, which was running with 109 people. We reduced it down to 69 with automation.
We looked at Blue Prism, UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and World Fusion, and we struggled. Initially, we worked with other firms, but we have seen a great synergy with how Automation Anywhere integrates with our team and how we are getting support from Automation Anywhere. When we are going to a client with Automation Anywhere, it's much easier. That collaboration with their support team, and their advice to us, is extremely good. That's why we end up referring Automation Anywhere.
I would like to use IQ Bot a little bit more and understand more about what is offered, as to what features are there. One of the key challenges that we have had, in implementation, is for complex processes, especially where the input is not standardized. So, IQ Bot seems to be a good tool to use there. Hopefully, it will address everything, but mostly on that.
I would rate the product around eight to eight and a half. Mainly, because there is always room for improvement, and we're happy with the tool. There are areas which we need to understand more, as well, like IQ Bot for instance. We did one engagement with IQ Bot, but we need to mature ourselves into how we can utilize it. As the product matures, I'm sure it will be easier for us.
My advice will be to get a partner who is wiling to work with you and is willing to collaborate. This will make your life easier in the automation journey. There will be initial hiccups when you are getting into this journey, and that's just part of any journey. You need to look internally as to how you can improve, and work with a strong team, to deploy the solution.