Automation Anywhere Reviews

Our company uses the solution for automations. 

As a portfolio manager, the key responsibility is to determine how to use our latest technologies for use cases. We identify use cases in various functions and buy software licenses for them. 

Once we buy licenses, we use the solution for end-to-end discovery of use cases, onboarding in-house technical staff for ongoing management, and collaborations for training or licenses. 

Our licenses are used by our technical team within our Center of Excellence. The team handles the end-to-end work that includes development, testing, quality assurance, and production. We are using the solution to its full capacity. Bots are at an optimum because we want to extract maximum value from our licenses. 

We plan to increase usage once we finish migrating from on-premises to the cloud. 

The solution has helped us embrace more of a digital transformation footprint, bring in efficiencies, and create an internal infrastructure.  

The solution's architecture is very nice. The three components are a bot, a control room, and a bot developer. 

The control room is quite a good feature. It is easy to use and gives you the power to manage your digital workforce. It gives you a sense of understanding in terms of how the audit trail happens. 

The solution should include an analytics dashboard. As the space is maturing, many vendors sell functionalities as separate components so this is not unique to the solution. If I am buying a license, I should at least get a flavor of my analytics with a dashboard related to operational KPIs. Right now, if you want detailed analytics, you need to buy the dashboard separately. This licensing structure adds to the overall cost. 

The solution should include bot insights instead of selling it as a separate license. From the bot and business perspectives, insights are important for operational agility metrics and managing KPIs. For example, I want to how many hours in a day or month a bot runs for human resources when it performs A, B, C, D, and E and gives benefits across D, E, and F. 

I have been using the solution for three years. 

The solution is stable so I rate stability an eight out of ten. 

The solution is somewhat scalable so I rate scalability a six out of ten. 

We get the right support when we ask for it. Sometimes though, service requests are not handled within the timeframe we expect. Issues move in circles until they are placed with the proper technician. 

There is definitely an opportunity to lessen the response time so I rate support a seven out of ten. 

Neutral

I have prior experience with UiPath to a certain extent. 

The setup takes a good amount of time because you have to develop an infrastructure that includes servers and compliance. A lot of time is spent framing those requirements and signing contracts that are quite detailed. 

I rate the setup a five out of ten because it is not that easy.

We worked with technicians from the solution to implement.

There are some difficulties in migrating to a new platform. There are a lot of internal governance forms or approvals that can delay the process. Lots of things need to be reworked as you go through the process. 

For about four to six months, you can take on the fixed paper side to get all the needed approvals. In some cases, the process might even take eight months because everything takes time and other business activities may take priority. Separate contracts need to be created for automations and they are usually handled by another team. Many approvals are needed at all levels of the organization. 

We currently use the solution on-premises but are migrating to the cloud. This process is also not that smooth and requires nudging. We are going back to the drawing board to take another look at things and rework if needed. Most components should be scalable and reusable but we are having a few issues on that front. 

Ongoing maintenance includes our internal team working with two or three of the solution's technicians to resolve issues. The solution's team routes or allocates the right technician to handle our service request. Our internal team supports and helps their technicians to understand our unique scenario. 

The solution is definitely worth the money. It is up to you to add quality use cases and utilize the digital workforce along with the human workforce. The tools are there, but the actual metrics derived are your baby. There are many benefits to automation solutions. 

I won't give 100% credit to the solution. Perhaps UiPath would have given us the same results. The way you use a solution makes all the difference in ROI. 

Similar to how competing products are priced, the solution has separate licenses for features that should be included in a bundle package. For example, the analytics dashboard and bot insights are sold as separate licenses. 

No one wants to buy a product that is too complex because components are sold separately. Give longstanding customers these benefits as icing on the cake. 

The solution is not the least or most expensive. Pricing is good and in the middle so I rate pricing a five out of ten. 

The options were evaluated before I joined the team, but I believe the company also looked at UiPath, Info Sales, and XCL. 

No tool, product, or technology is 100% foolproof. Each has its own set of pros and cons, including the solution. 

The common sales approach across the solution and other vendors is misleading. They make it look like a utopia where you will increase productivity by 200% in six weeks. This is not possible because organizations can't do magic in six weeks. Some of the claims being made by developers or content providers are creating a false impression in terms of senior management. There is no magic wand. There has to be automation. It looks and sounds simple, but implementation is not that easy. Your program, team, and communications management need to move in tandem to give you the inputs or outputs for sensitivities around people, roles, responsibilities, and training. 

It is important to be realistic when launching a new product or partnering with a player in the market. Be open and honest with customers. Don't make things too glamorous because it will be difficult to achieve that expectation. Stop overselling it and just be natural. A lot of consolidation is happening in the space and customers are aware because they read Forrester and Gartner. You can't fool customers so be honest and let them know that the solution needs to be managed by human beings. 

The biggest lesson is to understand the functionalities you need before you buy the solution. Determine if the solution passes the litmus test. Be cautious about overselling it and instead set the right expectations. 

Ask upfront if some additional features can be bundled because that will really help with your automation journey. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

Currently, our primary use cases are for the automation of medical appeals and charge processing. 

We are currently on the 11.3.4.2 version in our production environment in a HA configuration. We use bare-metal servers for our production Control Room. All of our bot runners are Windows 10 virtual machines. We are in the process of adding A2019 IQ Bot and Control Room servers into our production environment. 

In our Dev/UAT environments, we have added A2019 Control Room and IQ Bot servers in addition to our v11.3.4.2 servers.  

It has allowed us to generate additional revenue without having to hire additional people. Our fleet of bots is able to complete the work of roughly 40 FTEs. Without automating these tasks we would have had to hire additional staff or offshore this workload. 

We have largely targeted processes performed by offshore contractors in order to reduce our reliance on overseas workers. Where we have automated processes performed by onshore workers we have been able to reassign impacted users to more productive work. 

I don't think one feature is more valuable than any other. In my opinion, the value is in the totality of the platform. It is easy to use for our developers with a well laid out UI and many canned tools. The Control Room is very easy to navigate and mostly intuitive to use. 

The AA Client is easy to install and configure. I have found it very easy to integrate into our environment. And with the right vision and direction can be used to automate very complex tasks with plus 95% reliability and uptime. 

I am currently on 11.3.4.2 and the analytics feature of AA, Bot Insights, needs improvement. It is not easy to implement. It is not intuitive for the developer as you have to mark variables for analytics. Because it is very clunky you either have to build "helper" bots to display your bot analytics or use another platform like Tableau. 

I would also like to see improvement in the segregation of roles. I still do not understand the login in not allowing the Control Room Administrator to also be a Bot Insights Administrator. 

I have been using AA for 15 months.

I have found no stability issues with Automation Anywhere.

I have found the platform to be very scalable. We have seen no limitations thus far.

Customer service and tech support have always been responsive, knowledgeable and quick with a solution.

This is our first RPA platform.

I found the initial setup to straight forward. Automation Anywhere has been a great partner through the entire process.

In-house implementation

Our ROI was roughly 10 months.

RPA solutions are not cheap. There will be a large cost to implement any RPA solution but ROI can be huge and very quick if you are not timid. Do not go slow. Embrace the platform and it's huge potential and your RPA program will be a cash cow for your organization. 

We did evaluate UI Path and Blue Prism before choosing Automation Anywhere.

I work for a healthcare company in the pharmacovigilance sector, where we are automating business processes. One key process is case processing, which involves identifying adverse events from drugs, vaccines, or medical devices. These adverse events are reported through various channels like call centers and emails. Currently, data from these sources is manually entered into a drug safety database. We are automating this data entry and the subsequent quality and medical reviews. This automation aims to reduce the workforce from approximately 5,000 to 1,000 employees, primarily by streamlining these processes using Automation Anywhere software.

To reduce maintenance and streamline operations, we have transitioned to a cloud-based subscription model. We are utilizing Automation 360, a subscription-based automation solution, and have also adopted RPA as a service, leveraging pre-built bots offered by Automation Anywhere, some of which are free while others require payment.

Implementing Automation Anywhere has brought significant improvements by automating repetitive processes previously handled by a large team. This automation has reduced the workforce requirement and allowed for attended and unattended bot implementation. Consequently, human errors have decreased, the quality of deliverables has improved, and timelines have been accelerated. Previously, delays in task completion resulted in penalties for the company, but this issue has been resolved. Automation Anywhere has enabled faster processing of cases, marking a significant positive change in the company's operations.

AI is being used to automate the case intake process, which involves analyzing structured and unstructured documents like emails, articles, and scientific papers. Previously, this task was time-consuming, requiring staff to manually search documents for key information. The process has been significantly accelerated by implementing Automation Anywhere's IQ Bot, with its cognitive automation, AI integration, and natural language processing capabilities. The software automatically highlights crucial details like patient information, product specifics, and adverse events, enabling reviewers to assess document relevance quickly. This automation has reduced review time from 30 minutes per document to five to ten seconds, allowing a greater volume of literature to be processed. Furthermore, the NLP feature automatically identifies and justifies the presence of specific criteria within the documents. By integrating Automation Anywhere into their internal tool, the organization has reduced the workforce needed for this process from over 100 people to 12-15, resulting in increased efficiency, faster turnaround times, and a more manageable workload.

Automation Anywhere offers a user-friendly platform with a drag-and-drop interface, making it easy for business users with limited technical skills to implement RPA solutions. The platform provides a complete suite of tools, including task automation, cognitive automation using IQ Bot, and bot insights and analytics. While embedded with AI capabilities, the platform remains accessible to users without deep technical knowledge. Users should familiarize themselves with the available features, including built-in AI capabilities for handling various document types, and explore the Bot Store marketplace for pre-built bots that can accelerate development. Automation Anywhere enables rapid scaling with cloud-hosted architecture and prioritizes security with GDPR compliance, audit trails, and role-based access.

Initially, integrating Automation Copilot with our daily applications proved challenging. However, subsequent updates have simplified the process. While it previously functioned with attended bots but not unattended ones, expanded API capabilities now allow for greater compatibility with third-party applications. This enhanced functionality enables us to emulate various tasks and seamlessly integrate with systems like Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle. We have successfully implemented Automation Copilot for data entry, updates, and, most significantly, report generation, resulting in improved efficiency and productivity.

Automation Copilot has significantly increased our productivity. Integrating our systems will allow for seamless data transfer, eliminating the need for manual intervention and preventing quality issues. Tasks will be completed automatically and in real-time, increasing productivity and reducing the time spent on manual work. This eliminates the need for batch processing and ensures that everything happens instantly.

Over time, we have integrated numerous products with Automation Anywhere, leveraging their REST API for seamless data flow. This has enabled successful integrations with Salesforce, SAP, Oracle's Argus, and five of our seven internal products, particularly with Automation Anywhere's cognitive automation capabilities. As long as Automation Anywhere provides the REST API, we can integrate any application or third-party service, facilitating effortless data transfer between various tools.

The time savings are valuable.

The learning curve for Automation Anywhere is steep, especially for advanced features like IQ Bot and API automation, which require technical expertise. While basic automation is relatively easy, the platform's documentation and training materials are not comprehensive, making it challenging to master the more complex functionalities. Compared to UiPath, which offers extensive resources and support, Automation Anywhere's limited resources contribute to a steeper learning curve for those seeking to utilize its advanced capabilities.

From a business perspective, Automation Anywhere is expensive compared to other tools like UiPath, making it unsuitable for small or medium-sized businesses. It requires robust systems to run efficiently and previously had limitations integrating with legacy systems, though they are improving this with REST API support. Additionally, community support is slow and unhelpful for critical issues. While they offer IQ Bot for unstructured data, it can only automate around 50 percent of such processes, requiring manual intervention. Although Automation Anywhere supports customization, it is limited. These are key areas where Automation Anywhere could improve.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for four years.

Despite Automation Anywhere being resource-intensive, in my four years of experience using it, I have found it to be a highly stable system that has never crashed.

Automation Anywhere offers impressive automation capabilities at scale. From a product standpoint, it is highly effective and achieves its purpose well. Automation Anywhere is a strong choice for enterprise applications due to its robust functionality and cloud-based version. While the portal could be improved, the product itself is excellent and, if chosen strategically, can streamline numerous processes.

Technical support response times are slow. While we can escalate critical issues, their carelessness with other matters, especially those impacting business priorities, is a concern. Their slow pace and occasional irresponsibility demonstrate a lack of respect for our time.

Neutral

As a UiPath certified architect and business analyst with extensive experience in UiPath and Automation Anywhere, I find UiPath to be the superior solution for most companies. While both offer cloud-native capabilities, UiPath boasts a more user-friendly interface, requiring less coding knowledge. Its AI Fabric platform provides extensive machine learning capabilities, surpassing Automation Anywhere's limited AI integration. UiPath also excels in bot management and orchestration, offering a user-friendly approach and robust capabilities. Furthermore, UiPath provides stronger security and compliance features, superior third-party integration, and greater pricing flexibility, making it accessible to companies of all sizes, unlike Automation Anywhere, which is often only affordable for mid to large companies. Although Automation Anywhere offers decent cognitive automation, UiPath's ease of use, AI capabilities, and flexible pricing make it the more versatile and comprehensive choice.

The initial deployment was complex, requiring determining the bot type, attended or unattended and bundle handling strategies for multiple bot deployments. This process, driven mainly by configuration and orchestration, can be time-consuming for those without a technical background. Familiarity with the system streamlines deployment, while newcomers or those with limited technical expertise may find it more challenging.

Automation Anywhere is expensive, making it more suitable for enterprise organizations.

I would rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten.

The benefits of Automation Anywhere projects aren't immediate. Building and implementing a successful automation system involves several stages: proof of concept, pilot process, and finally, production rollout. This process typically takes two to three months due to the necessary development, testing, and refinement. However, once automation is in production, the improvements will be significant and immediately apparent.

In a highly regulated industry with over 10,000 employees, traditional RPA faced strong resistance due to concerns about headcount reduction. To overcome this, we adopted a cognitive automation approach, integrating machine learning capabilities from Automation Anywhere into existing applications. This minimized disruption and ensured a smoother transition. By embedding cognitive automation within familiar and validated systems, we achieved production with minimal resistance. This strategy also allows the system to learn user input through reinforcement learning, adapting to expectations based on feedback and a reward/penalty system. Therefore, we prioritize cognitive automation integrated within our existing products rather than relying solely on a separate RPA suite, especially given the challenges of implementing RPA in a large organization within a highly regulated industry.

Because we use Automation Anywhere in the cloud, they manage all upgrades and provide a defined schedule. We receive regular emails about upcoming upgrades, including the specific date and time. We can communicate any concerns about potential business impacts, and they provide clarity and assurance that upgrades will not disrupt deployed bots. This ensures our work remains unaffected during the upgrade process, which they handle very efficiently.

The bots require maintenance on our end to ensure smooth operation. This includes monitoring their uptime, examining audit trails for failures, and periodically checking their performance. While Automation Anywhere handles regular software updates and maintenance, we are responsible for maintaining the business processes the bots support. This involves ongoing support and ensuring the bots function correctly. If a bot fails, we are responsible for investigating the cause and restoring it to functionality, as we understand the critical role each bot plays in our operations.

To successfully implement Automation Anywhere, prioritize hiring an experienced consultant to provide initial training and guidance. This expert can efficiently onboard other team members, ensuring a smooth transition and maximizing the software's potential. Their expertise will be invaluable in identifying suitable bots from the bot store, even if they require some customization to align with the company's unique processes. This approach saves time and resources compared to developing bots from scratch and leverages existing solutions for faster and more effective automation.

Jersey STEM is an all-volunteer organization, which means that we have interns doing development using donated systems. The beauty of donated systems is they're free. The challenge of donated systems is that there's a lot of data that isn't correlated, and the systems don't talk to each other, so we use RPA to establish some communication between the systems and gather data into a central coherent location.

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization by giving us a relatively easy way to gather all the data we need. We have data from HR, volunteer-matching systems, and grants systems. Automation Anywhere has enabled us to automate data gathering and posting that data into usable forms.

Before implementing Automation Anywhere, we processed these tasks manually by getting data from websites, putting them into spreadsheets, and going from spreadsheets to databases. Attempts to automate that using other tools were pretty onerous. 

Automation Anywhere enables us to simplify the process and see results much faster. Previously, it would take six to eight weeks to get results. With Automation Anywhere, we're getting results in two to four weeks, which makes the business happy. When I say business, I must remind you that these are all volunteers with little time on their hands. They're doing this with full-time jobs. Our goal is to make their lives easier with Automation Anywhere.

Jersey STEM primarily uses Google, so we use tools like Google Sheets and Google Docs. The automations all have to do with the Google ecosystem. Additionally, we must integrate with all donated systems, including HR, volunteer-matching, and grant systems that are donated to us. Jersey STEM is building the data warehouse as we gather all that data.

In a volunteer organization, employee capacity and compliance are not the primary metrics. Because we have an all-volunteer crew, we don't have them eight hours a day. We only have them for a couple of hours a day. We want to do anything we can to better utilize those two hours a day so that they're not spending them moving data around in spreadsheets. 

I have some metrics at the top of my head, but they're a little abstract. Accomplishing what we've done so far with the bots in production would take 40,000. It's not a direct correlation of full-time employees because that's all work that would not have gotten done because they don't have time for that kind of nitty-gritty work. 

Automation Anywhere has saved us a lot of time but not so much cost because everything is donated. If you have volunteers and they're giving you two hours a day, it is better to spend time on intellectual work rather than repetitive mundane work. That's the big bang that Automation Anywhere gives us.

Automation Anywhere's ease of use is the most valuable feature. We have interns doing RPA development, and it takes them about four weeks to get advanced-level certification. And within four weeks, they're productive. It's user and developer-friendly, robust, and scalable. We started in March with four bots in production. We have four more bots about to go online, which is pretty quick in the RPA world.

At Jersey STEM, we haven't put Automation Anywhere directly in front of business users. We don't have citizen developers because most processes we tackle are back-office automations. In the fullness of time, we will put citizen developers to work. I'm confident they will pick it up fast because Automation Anywhere does a great job of simplifying the process of building automations.

The learning curve for Automation Anywhere is quite simple. I had four interns do some basic training online. We did a three-day course with them to get them the advanced training, and they were productive within four weeks. They are in the process of building more bots. At this stage, we may be in danger of having them run out of work because they're working so fast.

Integration is the primary reason that Automation Anywhere process-building is so simple. All the building blocks are handed to us. It removes the guesswork of what has to be connected to where. We can pay more attention to the logic of the process rather than the mechanics and infrastructure of the process.

The only thing I would advocate for is making Automation Anywhere's developer environment Mac-enabled because many of our graduate students are coming out of school with Macs. Everything else in the Automation Anywhere world is built for Windows.

We've only been using Automation Anywhere at Jersey STEM since March of this year.

Automation Anywhere has been rock solid for us. We have had no issues.

We have yet to find out the limits of Automation Anywhere's scalability because we're only starting. We have a control room with one attended bot runner. I can imagine that within the next year or two, we'll need to scale up. Given the way Automation Anywhere is architected, I am confident that scaling up won't be a problem. 

Deploying Automation Anywhere was relatively seamless. I've been using Automation Anywhere since version 10 and was a solution architect for version 10 and version 11. An on-prem deployment requires a computer science degree to understand because there are so many factors involved. With a cloud deployment, everything was done for me. The only thing I had to do was provisioning and configuration. It made life a lot easier. I could complete it on my own in about two weeks.

It's too early, but the ROI will not be measured in dollars and cents. It will be measured in our ability to get data faster. For example, if we have a base of volunteers waiting to connect with us, we can connect with them much faster. If there are grants to be had, we can get to those grants a lot faster. 

The difference between a volunteer organization and a typical business organization is that our funding has to come from outside. We have to find it. Help comes from outside. We have to find it. The return on investment is getting there quicker.

We purchase Automation Anywhere through a service partner that's also helping us with those costs.

I rate Automation Anywhere nine out of 10. It's a solid nine and a half because I don't give out tens. 

The Imagine event has been highly informative and useful for me. It's informative because I'm learning all about the generative AI coming down. That's been the focus. It's useful in that I've made lots of connections this year. When folks find out about Jersey STEM's goal, they're interested in volunteering. I have a whole bunch of new people to talk to who will help us with our future endeavors.

The Imagine experience is a full-on fire hose of automation, but it's a lot of fun. All the presentations have been geared to keep people's attention and to be entertaining. It's a brave new world, and there's a wow factor here.

I would invite folks in my field and other volunteers. It would be self-serving because our volunteers would make more connections, get more people to help, and also learn about the possibilities of where we could take Jersey STEM from a data infrastructure perspective.

Automation Anywhere is an RPA tool we use to automate common workflows that interact with various enterprise applications. These workflows can involve tasks like data generation, sending emails, or completing transactions within those enterprise systems.

We implemented Automation Anywhere to automate our workflows and save time.

In the past, these tasks were handled manually, leading to a lot of repetition. Automation Anywhere has eliminated that burden, making these same tasks much easier and significantly faster to complete.

We implemented AI-based automation that combines documents using intelligent document processing. This involved integrating generative AI to automatically create responses based on the data extracted from the documents. This automation streamlines the process and delivers the desired business output to end users.

Automation Anywhere caters to business users with its user-friendly interface, allowing them to build automation with minimal technical expertise. Our large business user community exemplifies this – after a five-day training program with hands-on exercises, they're empowered to independently develop their own automation within three to four days. This highlights the platform's ease of use from a business user perspective.

To ensure our business users can leverage RPA, we provide training through Automation Anywhere University. This platform offers in-depth coverage of both use cases and technical aspects, along with customized training that helps users directly connect their daily tasks to RPA methods. This blended approach has proven to be very effective.

Non-technical users can overcome the learning curve in four to five days.

While Automation Co-Pilot is a strong solution overall and integrates well with web applications, integrating it with legacy systems may require some effort on our part. However, this effort is typically minimal, taking just a few days to achieve successful integration. We're currently testing Automation Co-Pilot and exploring its potential for AI integration, which reinforces our belief in its overall value.

Based on our POCs, we project that Automation Co-Pilot will add value to our projects.

Automation Co-Pilot helps free up our staff's time on projects.

Automation Anywhere's service and customer support are improving. Their management prioritizes strong relationships with customers, evidenced by frequent collaborative meetings. This focus on customer solutions, along with other efforts, contributes to a clear upward trend in their overall support effectiveness. They've been a valuable asset to our organization.

Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize how we implement automation. Our organization sees a significant opportunity to leverage generative AI within the Automation Anywhere landscape. As a bot-focused organization, we have achieved a 30 percent automation feasibility rate. By combining automation with AI, we can achieve a 70 percent rate. This represents the kind of scalability we envision for our organization.

Our organization is expanding its use of Automation Anywhere. We have two main approaches: governance is handled through a dedicated platform integrated with Automation Anywhere, while bot deployment utilizes a separate web platform built with XTML or Java that interacts with Automation Anywhere for bot execution and deployment.

Integrating automation and APIs with Automation Anywhere streamlines workflows significantly. Users save time and effort since most integrations come with clear documentation readily available before the standard setup process, ensuring immediate functionality. Automation Anywhere's documentation serves as the primary resource for all integrations, and users can find most information there. For any remaining questions, support channels are readily available for further assistance.

Automation Anywhere has significantly reduced our operational costs and freed up employee time. With thousands of automated processes running on our platform, we're saving thousands of hours of work every month.  

Automation Anywhere offers a complete suite of development tools to empower developers for various enterprise automation needs. These tools include packages specifically designed for SAP integrations and other commonly used enterprise applications, making them highly efficient for building automation across different use cases within large organizations. Additionally, the web-based nature of the platform adds further value by enabling easy access and collaboration.

Automation Anywhere risks falling behind by focusing solely on Robotic Process Automation when competitors offer more versatile and adaptable solutions that integrate AI for a more intelligent automation experience.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for three years.

Automation Anywhere offers a 99 percent uptime, ensuring a reliable and stable platform for its users.

Automation Anywhere is capable of automation at scale.

The technical support team is knowledgeable and efficient, readily guiding users toward automated solutions. While some complex issues may require additional data validation, they consistently deliver resolutions within established timeframes.

Positive

Getting started is easy - the initial deployment follows standard procedures and can be completed in as little as two days for a simple use case. Complex setups may take up to a month, and the number of personnel required varies from two to ten people depending on the specific needs of each project.

Automation Anywhere falls within a mid-range price point when compared to other RPA tools on the market.

After considering UiPath, Microsoft Power Automate, and Automation Anywhere, we chose Automation Anywhere due to its ability to handle growth in our automation needs and its strong data security measures.

I would rate Automation Anywhere nine out of ten.

Upgrading Automation Anywhere can be challenging, especially when migrating from a client-server architecture to Microsoft's. However, within the Microsoft architecture itself, upgrades are significantly smoother and can be completed within a four to five-hour downtime window.

While Automation Anywhere itself doesn't require application-specific maintenance, we still need to perform regular maintenance on the server it's running on. One person is enough for the maintenance.

The time to maintain bots varies depending on their purpose but typically ranges from one to four days on average. 

Automation Anywhere is best suited for enterprise-level deployments due to its robust features. However, for smaller-scale needs, other options might be more efficient. If you're dealing with a large organization, Automation Anywhere is a strong choice. I recommend trying it to experience its microservice architecture, which allows for scalability and agility, as well as its integrated AI capabilities. These features provide a powerful and user-friendly platform for automating tasks.

In the retail industry where I work, we need to track our working hours every Sunday. This is because some Sundays have work restrictions in our country, with exceptions. We record these hours to ensure our national system can verify the accuracy of our payroll.

For example, we use Automation Anywhere to automate tasks. It takes changes from an Excel spreadsheet and updates two different systems. Another process involves checking discrepancies between the quantity of items received and those paid for. For our back-office bonus processing, we use automation for transactions in our ERP system, ensuring all necessary data is entered.

We implemented Automation Anywhere to reduce the amount of manual operational work currently required in our company. This decision comes as we are experiencing significant growth, with new stores opening and a corresponding increase in back-office workload. Additionally, Automation Anywhere will help us improve data quality and minimize errors, ultimately reducing costs.

Since implementing Automation Anywhere, our processes are much better documented. Previously, we lacked process documentation in our company. Now, not only do we have it, but it's also created quickly and accurately. Additionally, we have more control over logs. This means if a robot encounters an issue, it can automatically escalate the task to the responsible individuals. Furthermore, we now benefit from reporting capabilities that were previously unavailable.

There are three scenarios where AI could significantly improve our efficiency. Firstly, we deal with weekly discounts. We offer reduced prices on certain items and advertise them in flyers. Unfortunately, sometimes the printed flyer prices don't match the prices in the original digital tables. This inconsistency is problematic because our stores operate independently, carrying different products and offering varying discounts based on location. Consequently, we create multiple flyer versions for different cities. Currently, this process is entirely manual. Back-office staff print the flyers and then meticulously compare prices with the digital tables. We believe artificial intelligence coupled with advanced OCR could automate price verification on flyers before printing. AI could analyze the flyer images or scans and ensure they match the original data. Secondly, we encounter discrepancies between product names in vendor data and the names we use internally. AI could streamline this process by matching equivalent products and eliminating the need for manual data entry.

Automation Anywhere offers an academy that is helpful for non-technical users to learn the platform. Learning the basics typically takes up to three months.

We implemented Automation Anywhere about a month ago and developed a comprehensive solution for our office. We've already observed a significant increase in satisfaction among back-office workers who previously performed these tasks manually. Automation Anywhere has freed them from repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on more strategic activities like report oversight. Management is also very pleased with the results, rating their satisfaction at eight out of ten. Additionally, Automation Anywhere has helped us improve both speed and accuracy by significantly reducing errors in this process.

In the first year of implementation, we have identified 20-30 processes that could benefit from automation to help us manage our growing volume of office tasks. We are considering incorporating AI as early as this year-end, depending on the success of our current implementation and any unforeseen challenges. Additionally, we see potential in generative AI to improve efficiency for both our clients and back-office staff. We've identified ten HR processes in particular that could be streamlined with this technology.

We have integrated several internally developed HR applications with Automation Anywhere to manage timesheets and vacation planning, and also integrated retail applications for checking product quantities.

I've been using Automation Anywhere for a few years now, and it's addressed most of the issues we had with previous versions. It runs smoothly, especially since our company uses Google Workspace. Overall, I've had a positive experience with Automation Anywhere. It's worked well for me, and I haven't encountered any problems so far. In the past, I also used Microsoft Workspace, and Automation Anywhere functioned well with that too. In my experience, it seems to be compatible with most platforms.

Automation Anywhere has helped save us costs and almost 40 hours per week.

In terms of development, we've been relying on the provided operations so far. However, I haven't yet explored Copilot for the discovery phase. I believe it could be a very helpful tool for us moving forward, and I think it's a great feature.

The help Automation Anywhere offers during setup isn't great for smaller companies like ours. It could be improved.

Many users in my country lack, for example, advanced Excel skills. This makes using Automation Anywhere a significant challenge for them.

The Automation Anywhere community doesn't seem very active. Additionally, navigating their site can be quite difficult when encountering problems. As a developer and engineer, I found it challenging to locate information. Support could also be improved. For example, I had trouble connecting my Google account, and finding help was nearly impossible.

In terms of variable initialization, I prefer the previous enterprise version. It was simpler and required less code. Object access could also be improved in the current version. Ideally, there would be an easier and more precise way to retrieve objects.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for three years.

Automation Anywhere is stable.

Automation Anywhere does a good job of providing automation at scale. 

It is difficult to get proper help from the technical support.

Neutral

Deploying cloud solutions can be relatively straightforward. Therefore, I don't anticipate the initial deployment of Automation Anywhere being particularly complex. It seems the Automation Anywhere salespeople provided excellent information to facilitate the implementation process. In total, three people were involved in the deployment.

By implementing processes using Automation Anywhere, we can save up to 3,000 euros within two weeks of development.

The pricing is fair and allows for scalability. This means we only pay for what we need, and if our needs increase, we can easily upgrade our plan.

Upon joining the organization, I discovered they were already using Automation Anywhere. However, before implementing this solution, they had evaluated UiPath, Blue Prism, and Microsoft Power Automate. Ultimately, Automation Anywhere won them over due to its competitive pricing, fast implementation speed, and responsive support.

I would rate Automation Anywhere nine out of ten.

Understanding the trade-offs between different solutions can be challenging for higher management. While some local RPA solutions offer free or cheap services initially, they may not be as efficient, especially as automation needs grow. It can be difficult to explain to the board that maintaining such solutions becomes increasingly complex as automation demands increase. Additionally, limited vendor support during implementation can be another hurdle.

Upgrading the solution is easy because it is cloud-based so it is all done by Automation Anywhere's people.

Currently, three departments are contributing to the development of automation solutions. We anticipate even more involvement this year. On the personnel side, ten individuals are currently involved in developing Automation Anywhere. Additionally, two people utilize the tool – one developer and one business user. We are experiencing a growth phase and are actively hiring additional staff to develop new processes.

Since it's a cloud solution, maintenance is handled by Automation Anywhere. Our team maintains the custom software and processes we've developed.

I recommend Automation Anywhere, but before implementing it, every user should first identify the processes they have that are suitable for automation. Be critical and optimize everything that can be streamlined without RPA. This is important because automation requires well-defined tasks to plan resource allocation effectively. When nominating a process for automation, evaluate the time it currently takes for a human to complete it. For example, a four-hour manual process won't become instantaneous with RPA, but it will certainly be faster. The goal is to understand the time savings and resource allocation needed for the robot. This includes determining how frequently the robot should run and on what schedule.

Some of our use cases for Automation Anywhere have been embedding automation into our AML process and Anti-money laundering process as well. Also using automation to navigate some of our legacy applications to extract information from the UI.

The challenge we're trying to solve with Automation Anywhere is extracting information from our legacy applications. We do not have exposed endpoints. We have to use Automation Anywhere to be able to navigate and extract information for customers and from data information as well.

The processes and tasks automated by Automation Anywhere are a little bit more detailed. What we've come to figure out is the processes previously were not documented correctly. And Automation Anywhere allows us to get more insight and documentation out of our processes.

One of the immediate opportunities we see to leverage AI within our processes and our operations is customer service. Leveraging the natural language models and human response to be able to generate customer-focused responses is something that we plan to leverage very soon.

Automation Anywhere has improved our organization by allowing our resources to focus on the task at hand that impact our customer, while we use Automation Anywhere to replace some of the redundant work that some of our users and internal team members are facing.

Our company approach to generative AI for Automation Anywhere is more in line with building the future, allowing us to enhance our processes without necessarily embedding our internal team members with redundant tasks, allowing them to focus on the actual deliverables of a business versus generating a response to email or reading email. Allowing them to be a more human-focused team member.

Looking into Automation Anywhere in terms of the relationship with AWS, we manage our servers locally for our VMs and are looking to migrate to AWS. The partnership with AWS will allow us to integrate some of our processes and allow access to some of our DVs. This will be a good improvement for us.

Automation Anywhere is easy to use for people who don't have experience because it is a no-code solution and is user-friendly in terms of being able to generate automation with a plethora of available tasks and variables.

One or two automation walkthroughs of the actual process are required to learn Automation Anywhere. It takes a short amount of time for a user to get acquainted with Automation Anywhere. There are some latencies with being able to expose certain things such as APIs or establish a certain connection, but building automation is short in terms of development.

We have a few tools that are integrated with Automation Anywhere. We use a lot of Microsoft tools. Azure AD is integrated directly with Automation Anywhere and allows us to expand our ability to automate processes. We also have some desktop applications and some proprietary software that we would like to integrate with Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere is a robust platform that allows us to make multiple connections and scale horizontally across the actual environment to give us a more robust integration or automation that allows for downstream impact whether it is internal users or external users of our products. It allows us the ability to go horizontally fast with a lot of multiple integrations of products.

Automation Anywhere has helped us save time and costs, sometimes in the same automation as well as replacing some of the redundant tasks. Some of our users are giving us the ability to scale quicker without adding additional resources. That saves costs. We save hundreds of hours with some automation and two to three hours for others, but the cost impact of being able to do that with automation has saved a ton of costs as well. We have a lot of bots running daily, manipulating and removing the redundancies of those manual tasks. The resource costs saved equal hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The feature we found to be the most valuable is the documentation automation as it allows us to focus on the actual important piece of building automation instead of tracking some of the repugnant documentation that goes along with building automation. 

Automation Anywhere's network has room for improvement. Expanding its partnership with a few other vendors. The likelihood of including companies like AWS, Google, and things like that is the exact approach to what I think Automation Anywhere can improve on. It allows business users who participate and are clients of those vendors to a seamless process integration with Automation Anywhere. This allows for an ecosystem that supports a more robust development of automation because we get a broader use case amongst multiple users of the same product.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for four years.

Automation Anywhere allows us the ability to scale across multiple platforms and in different volumes. At a small scale, we don't have to readdress that automation or that bot to be able to scale if configured and built correctly. It is a very scalable approach that we can take in terms of the integration that we have access to. It allows for an open platform to be able to scale.

The technical support is user-friendly. They are responsive and normally respond within 24 hours. They provide us with updates so we are not left in the dark and keep us involved. They make sure to follow up with a call if anything is needed.

Positive

We did not use any automation beforehand but we have a partnership with Workato that allows us to leverage more API-driven automation as well. We utilize both due to the actual diversity of Automation Anywhere. It gives us the ability to navigate a UI, a more legacy application whereas Workato gives us the ability to connect APIs. We use both of them in the same automation platform.

It took us a month to deploy. We set up a few runners or virtual machines to be able to do that work with our IT team who configured some of the runners and made sure that we embedded applications that were gonna be useful and practical for the actual automation itself. We then walked through a few test automation and were able to deploy our first automation within a month.

Automation Anywhere pricing and licensing are competitive compared to the other automation vendors. Automation Anywhere gives us a platform to scale quickly without embedding a lot of costs on our end. It is reasonably priced.

We evaluated the landscape of automation and the partners and vendors that offer the service before we chose Automation Anywhere. My positive previous experience with Automation Anywhere helped make the decision a lot easier for us.

Automation Anywhere is easy to use. It is a simple platform to understand. A simple platform to roll out. We don't need a robust education in terms of automation. We can train internally. We can expose other POs or PMs to the actual application and they will be able to give us additional insights of automation that we can improve.

The con is the resources assignment outside of our internal team members. Finding resources who have good experience variant with Automation Anywhere in the States may be a con for us.  

I would rate Automation Anywhere nine out of ten. From what I have seen, they are headed in the right direction to get a ten.

We do not currently use Automation Co-Pilot, but we are excited to start using it. We are going to have a session about using Co-Pilot with our internal teams.

Upgrading Automation Anywhere is simple in terms of the control room to be able to do an upgrade or speak to our account executive to get additional licenses or products added to our instance.

Maintenance depends on how we build the automation. We keep in mind the actual process of being able to manage automation as we build it, which will ultimately save us a call for maintenance at the end. Being able to enable notification error handling within the automation helps reduce the actual maintenance requirements for automation.

Not many people are involved in the maintenance of our automation because we embed some of the process owners into the process so they are aware if a bot was to fail. Then we give them corrective actions in terms of exception handling to be able to oversee that bot as well as to reinitiate a bot or add additional variables into the bot to allow the success of that bot. A minimal amount of people are required for bot maintenance.

I have used Automation Anywhere in various industries, including banking, telecommunications, retail, and oil and gas. In such clients, there's often a mismatch between systems, needing more integration. Creating new integrations from scratch, like calling APIs, is complex. Automation Anywhere bypasses this by integrating systems through their user interfaces. For instance, inserting data into an SAP database typically requires knowledge of connection strings, database design, and tables. This information isn't readily available. With Automation Anywhere, I observe users performing tasks like creating clients. I note the screen and information used, then load that into an Excel file. Automation Anywhere processes numerous transactions using Excel data and screen interactions. This accelerates digital transformation. While APIs are the ideal engineering solution for integration, robotics provides the fastest results.

We have installed Automation Anywhere on AWS, Azure, and GCP, which works well.

Automation Anywhere is user-friendly with its concept, even C-level executives can try automating tasks in five minutes, which is a great marketing strategy. However, for professionals in sectors like banking who design critical mission bots, deeper knowledge is necessary, including logging, API calls, etc. Automation Anywhere's best features are sufficient for newbies or those needing quick implementations.

Copilot is a good feature for those using machine learning and AI.

Copilot helps increase the productivity of new users.

Typically, extracting information from transactional systems requires tools like Automation Anywhere. For less structured tasks, generative AI is a great option. One area where these tools can improve is web scraping. For instance, if a website changes, traditional bots fail. However, with generative AI, we can create bots that understand page context and adjust accordingly. For example, if the input field for a flight code changes its location or ID, a generative AI-powered bot can still identify it by understanding the context of the surrounding labels, like "flight code". I believe we'll see a significant evolution in the coming years, with computer vision and generative AI enabling bots to understand the location of information on a screen and adjust web scraping strategies dynamically.

One of the main concerns with Automation Anywhere is the lack of a robust feature for capturing and managing information from the user interface, something competitors like Blue Prism already offer. In Blue Prism, you can create an "application model" to capture every control on a screen and assign them to variables, making it easy to reference and update them in your code, even if the screen layout changes. In Automation Anywhere, however, you must manually search and update capture instructions within the code, which is time-consuming and error-prone. Implementing a similar feature in Automation Anywhere would be critical for improving efficiency and maintainability. While this idea has been discussed with the company, it has yet to be implemented.

For experienced developers, there's room for improvement. For instance, code refactoring, a valuable feature, is currently impossible in Automation Anywhere. While Automation Anywhere is excellent for beginners, it could benefit from enhancements for advanced users.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for eight years.

Automation Anywhere is scalable. One of my clients, the largest bank in our country, is also one of Automation Anywhere's biggest clients. We have Automation Anywhere running on over 9,000 computers at the bank.

The technical support team is an excellent resource. We are a long-standing partner of Automation Anywhere in our country. My team possesses a deep understanding of the platform, but when we require assistance, the support team is always helpful.

Positive

The initial deployment of Automation Anywhere is straightforward. We use the bot model and deploy bot runners through the Automation Anywhere cloud, simplifying the process. While using the Automation Anywhere cloud is convenient, we've also deployed an instance in a private cloud environment like Azure or AWS, which works well. However, deploying in a private cloud requires knowledge of clustering and related concepts, so it's not suitable for everyone.

On average, a bot runner in Automation Anywhere can cost $5,000, while in Microsoft Power Automate, you can get most of the same functionality for $100. However, when you factor in the materials, support, and ecosystem of Automation Anywhere, it proves to be a more cost-effective solution overall.

I rate Automation Anywhere ten out of ten.

Typically, they release hotfixes, and if you're using Automation Anywhere's cloud platform, you receive these hotfixes automatically and at no cost. However, in my situation, as a system integrator partner of Automation Anywhere, they inform us of available hotfixes, which we then download and implement without issue.