Automation Anywhere Reviews

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.

Here's a use case of Automation Anywhere (AA): In a bank, you have an account opening process. The customers go into the bank, then apply for account opening. They will go to a portal, fill out the form, then put their documents. All the data that had been entered and all the documents that are being uploaded will go into a document repository.

With Automation Anywhere (AA), you have a data capture solution that extracts the data, and will put the data extracted into a case management solution, instead of having somebody just taking data and doing manual data entry into the CRM platform or core banking platform. This solution can take the data extracted from the upload, log into the CRM platform, and key in the data one after the other, in that same order on the CRM or the core banking platform, instead of having a human doing that repetitive task of data entry. You can use this RPA solution to handle the document repository, extract the data from it, log into the CRM portal automatically, then key in the data as an automated data entry into the CRM.

There are other competitive solutions, e.g. Blue Prism and IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and those are very good ones, but if you asked me, Automation Anywhere (AA) really, really stands out.

One of the things I like about this solution is its functionality. It's highly functional, aside from it being stable and scalable.

I also like that the Automation Anywhere (AA) team is always innovating, e.g. they're always coming up with new features that would speak to various operational use cases.

Improving on the ease of use and user experience of Automation Anywhere (AA) could help.

We've been providing Automation Anywhere (AA) to our customers for 10 years now.

Automation Anywhere (AA) is a stable solution.

Automation Anywhere (AA) is scalable. It's one of the best you can have in the market.

Automation Anywhere (AA) has very good technical support.

Installing Automation Anywhere (AA) is not a complicated process. How long the installation takes will depend on the client environment. For the cloud version of this solution, you just need to configure it to the use cases of the customers. For the on-premises version, you have to set it up within the client data center environment, and even that doesn't take time. Installation is straightforward.

Our customers pay for the Automation Anywhere (AA) license yearly, for the cloud version.

We were able to evaluate Blue Prism and IBM RPA.

We currently have three customers using Automation Anywhere (AA). We have three people handling the deployment and maintenance of this solution: the system administrator, the developer, and the solution architect.

The advice I would give to other people who want to start using Automation Anywhere (AA) is that the most important thing is for them to understand their use cases before even embarking on the journey, so they can be sure their use cases are RPA related and can be taken cared of by this solution. Automation Anywhere (AA) cannot cater to all automation use cases, as it's mainly focused on clearly defined manual repetitive tasks.

The customers can decide whether they want to have this solution deployed on cloud or on-premises.

I'll give Automation Anywhere (AA) a rating of eight out of ten.

Our case was downloading the invoices from an Oracle Application.

It involved web and desktop applications and the setup was done in a Citrix, where the AA tool and required applications were installed in a secure environment.

Using Object Cloning for a web application, we extract a record of a company code for which all the invoices need to be extracted, based on month and year. When the company codes are available then all the invoices were extracted, applying the proper logic in the Oracle environment (Similar to SAP).

Proper logging and exceptional handling were supported.

Testing was done in the Dev and Test Environment and finally deployed to PROD.

The Bot was scheduled as per the customer requirements in the Control Room, to be executed as per the demand.

It has improved a lot by automating repetitive steps and hence saving a lot of quality time. 

It's very easy to use and all of the employees can easily get involved in the process, whether they are a developer, support, or have an HR background.

Almost all the easy and complex processes can be automated.

For each employee, the tool is useful if they have some redundant or repetitive tasks to perform on a daily or weekly basis, such as timesheet submission or shift allowance extra. It's a BOT BUDDY, as it is called in our organization.

It's very fast and takes no time to execute a lengthy process.

It's secure; all of the passwords and UN are secured.

The tool is simple and easy to debug and run.

The Automation Anywhere University is vast and we can easily get support from other community members.

Free certification and tutorial videos are readily available and are free of cost.

The Control room is valuable, as we can schedule the bot at any time and give access to anyone from anywhere.

The Recorder feature helps to automate without any effort and is very robust and precise.

The automation is very fast and in no time, it executes the process and hence increases the SLA by a vast margin as compared to other RPA tools.

IQ Bot is a very high niche tool and reads any kind of scanned copy and gives the output with more than 95% precision. It's very simple and supports Python and NLP for adding extra features.

Metabot helps to make reusable components and can be used as a function wherever needed.

It supports Dlls, VBScript, Python script, and macros.

Bot Insight helps to get the analytics in a more enhanced and visually attractive way.

The simplicity of the tool is a plus point, as it does not require one to be from coding background to work on it.

I would like the AA tool to be more proficient and a single entity tool that does not require DLLs or some script to be written separately where it is not capable. It should have more commands, which should remove the dependency on MetaBots or other scripts so that everything is available in the tool itself. This would save time.

All the time working on the tool requires internet connectivity, and it will be great if we can work offline. Offline development would be helpful.

More features like AI and ML should be included, as well as additional features to automate Citrix applications and mainframe applications.

I would like to see more Excel commands available.

Introduction to dictionaries and other data types should be included.

I would like to have a ready-made framework available so that less time is spent to develop the whole framework for the processes.

In terms of robustness, the bot should be efficient enough to deal with the code breakdowns. This could be done with more exception handling features and a ready-made framework.

More tutorials with complex scenarios and ILT training would be an improvement.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

The product is very stable and runs without delay, failures, or system hangs.

Logs are maintained both locally and at the server level.

The client and server connection is smooth.

Scalability is wonderful for AA, we can easily add the extra robots as per the transaction load without impacting the process.

The customer support and technical support are very helpful and service is available 24/7,  around the clock.

Communication is very good and their knowledge of the tool is in-depth.

Support teams are pro-active and they have a vast network of partners.

We did not use a different RPA solution before this one.

The initial setup was easy, as per the guidelines shared by AA, including the minimum system requirements such as OS level, RAM requirement, SQL Server, and .NET requirement. This information was shared via the documentation.

When finding any problem, their support team is very fast and cooperative in helping to resolve the issue ASAP.

Our company directly consulted with the Automation Product teams for RPA implementation and COE implementation in our organization.

ROI is high; usually, one process automation is equivalent to three FTEs in our organization.

It's cheapest among the competition, although bargaining is a must.

Different licenses are for Bot Runner and Bot Creator, which saves on the cost.

We evaluated UiPath and Automation Edge.

We found AA to be the best among the others in terms of pricing, licensing, support, and tool capability.

Our primary uses for this product are:

1. We are using Automation Anywhere to automate client processes.
2. The processes are ranging from SAP automation, Oracle automation, and mainframes like AS400. RPA has been implemented for a few of the legacy applications as well.
3. Both the Attended automation and Unattended automation have been implemented for many of our clients and they report satisfactory results.
4. We are using Automation Anywhere IQ Bot to scan documents for clients, as well as for internal processes.
5. The automation solutions provided to our clients them are running seamlessly.

Automation Anywhere has increased the overall standing of our company in the RPA market. Because of the successful automation for the client, we are getting more processes, which leads to more revenue.

Apart from the regular pricing model, the Gain-Sharing model provides a win-win situation for both WNS as well as its customers. This means that our customers will start getting the benefits up front, and leverage the benefits right from day one.

COE licensing is also beneficial, to reduce the effective cost of ownership 

All the features are very good, although what I like best is RPA-as-a-service. This drastically reduces the infrastructure setup time and, at the same time, it can be utilized for productive project work.

The multi-tenant and scalable architecture is the main advantage when you have a cloud service. While RPA is the cutting-edge technology to bring digital transformation, the RPA as a service will reduce costs and increase efficiency with ease of deployment, less maintenance, and cheaper upgrade costs.

Even our customers are happy with the RPA-as-a-service model.

Intelligent automation is currently a buzz and I would love to see more innovation in this segment. I am looking for artificial intelligence and machine learning to be tightly integrated into the cloud platform and I hope that they enhance this segment in the upcoming releases. 

Clients are eager to see AI and ML implemented, and thus leverage the technology to its maximum. We can bring more processes into automation, which is what I want to focus on. 

In a nutshell, more innovation in AI and ML will bring more potential and capabilities to the product.

We have been using Automation Anywhere since February 2018.

The solution is stable but again, it is dependant on the underlying client applications. I am confident the AA solution is very stable.

The RPA-as-a-service model helps to scale the solution beyond the limit. 

The customer service is excellent. Since we have a dedicated AA account manager for WNS, in case of any urgent issue or requirement, we can reach to the manager. So far, the help extended by the account manager is very good. 

Our main focus has been on using Automation Anywhere as the primary tool for RPA.

The initial setup is quite straightforward

We implemented it through our expert, in-house team.

Since I am not directly involved in the ROI calculation, I would not comment on this.

We generally follow the Gain-Sharing Pricing model, which enables the customer to start getting the RPA benefits right from day one of their implementation.

The other options that we evaluated were Blue Prism, UiPath, and others. 

I work in the Management Consulting domain and hence am working with huge amounts of data, using advanced Excel formulae and creating reports and dashboards for clients is a routine. I primarily used the RPA AA2019 to automate and streamline few weekly reports which track KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for few products. Also, I automated the process of Quality checks which we perform after creating the reports. Another use case that I have automated is sending a Zoom meeting invite through outlook. The user only needs to enter a few details like attendees, date, and the time of the meeting.

My organization i.e ZS has been a partner of AA for the past couple of years and this year the organization decided to reach the next level by introducing a pilot program wherein many associates are onboarded to the AA2019 tool and can implement robust and efficient solutions using the same thereby increasing productivity across the organization. This has been a success and we are planning to scale the program to a much wider audience within the organization. The saving of efforts within my project has been to the tune of 20% as of now and I am sure that it will improve as we explore the tool more and automate many more processes.

The Capture command has been a lifesaver for me in each of my use cases and the advanced Excel functionalities like running macro, reading and manipulating data, etc. It allows the bot creator to leverage the inbuilt functionalities that AA2019 has to offer to a great extent. Also, the functionality of designing child and parent bots help me to design the process in a modular way. Additionally, the error handling capabilities of the tool has really improved the troubleshooting experience when we encounter an error.

The AI Sense functionality is what I believe can be improved since when I tried to use it for automating a use case involving a Citrix Virtual Machine, it was unable to capture objects consistently. This feature can be made more intelligent and less bulky in terms of the downloadable package size of the code in the next release and also the VB/Python scripts which we can use in conjunction with the AA2019 functionalities is what I believe would help in automating many processes end to end.

I have been using the Automation Anywhere 2019 tool version for the past six months.

I would rate it an 8/10 since I believe if the AI Sense capability and handling MS power point functions is further enhanced with the next release, then it would make a much larger impact.

It is very much scalable in my opinion and should be used by big organizations lokoing to save costs and increase productivity.

The setup was a bit complex. There were many IT approvals that I needed to take.

I am currently able to save 2-3 hours of manual effort per week.

I have automated the applications that we use for daily checks. We automate the application health check functionality, capture the result in an Excel sheet, and share it.

By using this, we are saving time and we no need to do routine work, as it is now automated and the result is shared with all of the end-users. We are able to navigate if any further application changes.

It captures all of the day-to-day activities and monitors the jobs at the time we specify. It helps with all technologies.

Automation Anywhere, by the name, can be used anywhere for automating tasks. Everywhere automation and anywhere automation. By using AA, we are able to reduce the time and manpower spent on tasks.

We can also have data updates in form of email, which can be saved for later usage.

It is very easy to understand the code.

AA helps in moving people's current trends using the current technology. AA is an RPA tool that makes robots do all of the work or jobs as assigned.

AA is a good tool for all technologies in all organizations.

The features I found valuable based on my usage are:

• Error Handling helps to find the exact error line in the logs.
• Email can be used to send emails to any number of users.
• Excel advanced and basic modules help to execute most of the commands in Excel.
  
• OCR captures the exact text.
• Keystroke shortcut is used within the shortcut, like TAB or ENTER.
• The universal recorder captures the specific options that need to be captured.
  
• The mouse click option can be used to capture exact actions.
• The delay function can be used to make applications wait for a specific time.

In the Universal Recorder, we face minor bugs in A2019. For example, the browser closes and using the recorder.

There are some minor bugs in the universal browser. In cases where Microsoft Silverlight is used, it doesn't capture the button.

In V11 we use OCR, it captures the image and displays the text it captured. However, in A2019, it only captures and does not display the text.

In A2019 it does not display the exact running status, but rather it displays the previous one.

In V11, we used to add images in email message boxes with the current date and time but in A2019, we are unable to do so 

I have been working on Automation Anywhere since February 2020.

The first-ever RPA tool that I used was AA V11.

I started with AA V11, completed the Advanced and Master certifications, then moved to the next version, A2019.

AA comes at a more affordable price than the other tools.

AA is the best tool compared to others in the market such as UiPath, Blue Prism, and ProcessRobot by Softomotive.

I am expecting that in the next versions of A2019, more actions will be added.

The main and primary use case using Automation Anywhere is "Invoice generation", which has repetitive steps and a huge amount of data. For this automation, we worked on a database, Excel, and mail activities.

In order to connect Automation Anywhere with our database, which is in a remote location, we had to install related drivers in the working machine. After that, we apply some business logic to the data and insert it into an invoice template that is in XLSX format.

Ultimately, we save the file as a PDF and send the output file to the user through email.

Automation Anywhere helped us to reduce the work time on data operations. It helps us to work fast and deliver fast. Without it, our work takes too much time using manual effort.

Along with reducing the time, we get the return on investment fast. Now, we are identifying many use cases that are fittable with RPA and Automation Anywhere. The organization has set up a separate RPA CoE and various teams working in this center of excellence. From this, we are working on various problems and providing solutions to clients.

Automation Anywhere has many features that are not supported by other RPA vendors. One of these features is Metabots, and I find it to be the most valuable part of Automation Anywhere.

Metabots are reusable and can be developed easily.

The Control Room is the most important feature, where we can manage the bots and publish to various bot runners in the environment. Here we can add users, edit them, and we are able to assign various roles to the users.

Task Bot can be used to implement the business logic, step by step. 

I think automation anywhere is a complete system if we have to work on structured data that doesn't require human decisions. However, it does not work as well with retrieving data from images. Image automation is something that needs to be improved.

One more thing is that Automation Anywhere does not support reading and writing to CSV files. If we are getting input from a CSV file, we have to add one more layer of automation that first saves the data to an Excel file. This is important to us because most of the data we get from the database is saved to a CSV file.

For the last three years, we have been partnered with Automation Anywhere.

I would rate stability at 90%.

Scalability-wise, I would rate AA a nine out of ten.

The technical support is good.

I haven't used any other RPA solution. We tried with Automation Anywhere and the solution works.

The initial setup was quite easy, and they will provide setup documents.

I have worked both in-house and with the vendor team.

I would rate the ROI a ten out of ten. I can say it is profitable to use Automation Anywhere as your RPA solution.

Overall, the pricing of Automation Anywhere is good.

We have compared it to other RPA vendors like UiPath and Blue Prism.

The primary usage of this solution is for the development of software bots using this RPA solution for various customers, and also for in-house process automation.

Bots have been developed for various domains like Automotive, Banking and Finance, HR, Housing, etc, and across various end-user software like Oracle, SAP, QAD, Terminal applications, etc.

As a first step towards having companies direction move towards emerging technologies, getting the right skillset available for adding Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, NLP, etc, so that we could provide a complete end-to-end solution to the customers.

We internally host v11 and A2019 Web CR of this solution for in-house development and training/learning purposes.

RPA was introduced as an emerging technology in our company and Automation Anywhere was chosen as the RPA Solution. Thirdware became an AA partner for reselling AA licenses. Thirdware performs bot development as a vendor using this solution and has automated more than 60 processes to date in various domains.

The Automation Anywhere RPA solution has opened gates for Thirdware to step into providing an end-to-end solution to customers by implementing emerging technologies like Machine learning, Artificial intelligence, NLP, etc.

AA has brought a completely new skill set for entering a completely new domain and being versatile as a service/solution provider.

1. Bank-grade security provided by AA with Credential Vault and Lockers. With the level of security provided by AA, it is a global leader and it becomes easy to convince prospects and turn them into customers.
   
2. Bot Insights provide visibility. Simply tagging variables used in the bot, can provide automated real-time dashboards that are presentable to management showing them a complete view of how the bots are performing.
3. Platform support is very good. AA supports on-premise and all major Cloud providers for the installation of the software.
4. The solution is very scalable.
5. After learning other RPA tools, I can say that AA provides one of the best user experiences with the user-friendliness of the UI.
6. The role-based access controls (RBAC) provided by AA are simple to define and provide clear distinction and segregation of duties and roles, and they help to maintain security.
7. The A2019 bot agent and development on browser means that there is no need to install a thin client like v11 or other RPA tools. The automation development of bots can be performed right from the browser itself.
8. The Flow view and List view for development mean that development becomes much easier, even for newbie users. The flow view and the drag and drop command flexibility is very helpful. The list view is generally preferred by the developers.
9. Workload management and Queues are valuable components. With the WLM module, multiple bot runners can be utilized to perform a single task more quickly and thus help achieve SLAs. Multiple bot runners can be used optimally to divide and perform tasks simultaneously on different machines.
   
10. Inline Python scripting support with A2019 is possible, which reduces a lot of lines of code for programmers. 

Technical support provided by Automation Anywhere is not up to the mark and needs a lot of improvements. Solutions or details provided by L1 support are contradicted by L2 and/or L3 support persons, thus leading to confusion.

The quality and response time of the support, even on Sev-1 tickets, is not satisfactory.

Enhancements or product issues/bugs are not fixed quickly and no ETA is provided for the same.

Working of triggers (email file, etc) in A2019 in unattended mode is a feature that was available in v11 but missing in A2019. I would like to see this feature in A2019.

In v11, RDP-based deployment and auto-login both were possible but with A2019, only the RDP-based approach is possible. Due to this, there is no way to maintain any application open inside the RDP, as each and every time Web CR connects to RDP to run the bot and disconnects, it closes all of the open apps inside RDP and terminates. I need a way where open apps inside RDP must be left open if they are open already.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for more than three years, right from v10, v11 until the latest A2019 release.

All of the bots deployed by our company are working quite stably in production with minimal support required. Unless there are some changes/enhancements to the bot logic suggested by business users, there are no changes or modifications required to the bot to work.

There was a bug in A2019.14 version which did not allow proper bot deployment intermittently. this had led to a major issue on PROD where schedules were running but bot was not getting deployed on PROD runner machine leading to instability. We had raised the concern with AA team and they have addressed the same in A2019.15 release.

The solution is highly scalable, which is a USP of this solution. Adding more creators and runners is a quick task.

I would rate my experience with technical support as four out of ten, due to a lack of responsiveness and the quality of support provided.

This was the first RPA solution that was introduced in our company.

However, personally, I have learned UiPath and found the Automation Anywhere solution better in all the aspects (Features, Releases, User-Friendliness, Cost).

Customers do ask for a comparison of this solution with the competitors in the market but it is always seen that Automation Anywhere is a clear winner.

The initial setup is straightforward if it is done in express installation mode.

Custom mode installation and installations involving SSO and AD authentication are more complicated.

IQ Bot installation requires expertise.

All installations and implementations are done in-house in our company.

ROI achievement for most of the customers is observed from four to eight months from the time of implementation.

The one-time setup cost can be fully recovered with the ROI achievement within six months, provided the implementation of bots is planned properly.

The pricing and licensing are definitely moderate to costly but easily recoverable by achieving ROI quickly.

Our setup cost was only procuring AWS instances but installations are performed in-house.

UiPath was evaluated but it was found that Automation Anywhere is a clear winner and a market leader globally.

AA is a global market leader and the best RPA software to go with, in all aspects. If the AA support improves then this definitely deserves a rating of nine and a half out of ten.