Automation Anywhere Reviews

I started my career in RPA tools. It's five years for me working in RPA. I have automated different type of use cases in different businesses, like finance, insurance, banking, capital marketing, and manufacturing. There are a lot of areas where I have implemented use cases using the Automation Anywhere tool.

If I compare Automation Anywhere with different tools available in market, there are few things which make Automation Anywhere different than the others, like IQ Bot, which is not available in another tool as of now. IQ Bot is a very nice feature in Automation Anywhere, which gets me the structured data from the unstructured data, and we know wise processing is a familiar use case used in any kind of organization. Another one is a MetaBot which allows for doing offline development, using DLL, using screen calibration, and configuration. These are the main features that I've used. It is a great tool.

In terms of development for our developers, it is very easy and quick to learn because Automation Anywhere has provided an online academy where developers can easily learn the features. It is very easy. If someone does not have a coding background, they can also learn from it very easily because it is just drag and drop and very interactive.

It's a very stable product. It has been five years for me working in RPA. I started with Automation Anywhere only. I developed so many processes in different areas. If I talk about the banking sector, security is a must. It is providing all sort of securities here, like Credential Manager. Also, this tool is very stable and consistent.

It is a very good scalable product because the MetaBot provides a feature where we can reuse our code for whatever we have developed. We can use it in different areas with the same code. It is reusable. So, it is a scalable product.

Until now, whenever we required any help regarding technical support, we got it from Automation Anywhere. So, definitely the technical support is 10 out of 10. We are very happy. Today, I'm very excited to be part of these bot games.

We were already using it when I joined the organization.

It is very straightforward. Today, in the learning track, I was looking at the latest feature which is coming in A2019, which is very nice, because it is a web-based. So, we can do our development while sitting from anywhere. We don't need any type of installation. It's a web-based. Nowadays, everyone has the Internet. So, it is very easy.

I started my journey from Accenture, which is service based company. There, I worked on multiple tools, like RPA products, including Automation Anywhere, Uipath, and Blue Prism. So, I have experience in these three tools.

Both Automation Anywhere and UiPath are leaders in the market. Both tools are providing capabilities which are good. For me, the main differentiator here is the IQ Bot, which is not available as of now in UiPath. If you want to do invoice processing and all, we go for the whole CS. IQ Bot, which is already an Automation Anywhere feature, is one very big differentiator from other RPA tools. Another one is definitely MetaBot because it give me a reusable component which I can plug and play anywhere that I can use. MetaBot can also provide inline development because sometimes the interact is not there. We can just record the screen, then we can do our development and deploy it. Sometimes what can happen in an enterprise, a screen may undergo some changes. So, MetaBot is capable enough to detect those changes, which is not available as of now in other tools. There are more AI capabilities here.

This RPA tool is a leader in the market. 

I have had a very good experience working with Automation Anywhere.

We'll be discussing our implementations for Salesforce and using Automation Anywhere to automate sales for processes within the organization. We focus mainly on sales and BFSI.

A very important piece within sales is that we've noticed most of the salespeople hesitate from updating their Salesforce at a frequent interval. You jump on a call, you have multiple calls with your customer, and you hesitate to keep dealing these updates within Salesforce. The idea behind this implementation, or this specific solution, is that we take care of all the updating of Salesforce processes. We take care of all lead conversions, lead updates, lead generations, etc. through our RPA. All you need to do is have a conversation with your bot, and say, "Hey, I just had a conversation with Nick. He seems good with all the implementations. We should convert him from Level 1 to Level 2." These basic implementations have been taken care of.

We're also looking at mobile transcription. So, if you are on a call with XYZ, you say, "Hey, I'm jumping on a call with XYZ, just transcribe what I'm talking about." So, you transcribe those calls and update them in your total documentation. That's the idea.

Automation Anywhere has been an integral part of this product's evolution in general. A hindrance that we were faced with was companies who did not have API integrations for Salesforce. This is where RPA and Automation Anywhere came in and helped us with integrating solutions which did not have API integrations within themselves. That's how we've evolved in the past two to three months.

IQ Bot seems to be a good solution that Automation Anywhere has come up with. It sets them apart from the other solutions. I want Automation Anywhere to work on IQ Bot further to help evolve the tool more and create a certain set of solutions using IQ Bot. They can maybe use better machine learning algorithms to come up with better accuracy for OCR extractions. This is an area that I want them to work on.

It is absolutely robust. Automation Anywhere as a solution, as well as our implementation, have been robust in nature with thorough testing and UAT processes being involved. Automation Anywhere can be considered as one of the most stable RPA tools in the industry, according to the perspective of the limited amount of tools that I've used. But, Automation Anywhere seems to be the most stable one.

We initially started off with a customer who had just three bots. We've now scaled them to 15 bots. It didn't take us more than an hour to scale. Automation Anywhere helped us scale from one bot to 100 bots within a period of hours, if not minutes. Unless you're scaling from 10s to 1000s, I think Automation Anywhere has it covered.

Support is five (out of five). The technical support is better than any other automation tool that I've seen. The ticketing resolution that they provide not only for paid customers, but for PoCs that we conduct, IQ Bot, and other scenarios wherein the product might not be functioning properly. The support is top-notch. There are scenarios wherein we need to be able to identify the best possible solution, and there is support for that as well.

We started off about one and a half years back initially. In those days, Automation Anywhere hadn't picked up so much. The initial setup was difficult, but as they have moved from on-premise to cloud, the setup has become much easier. Now, we are hands-on with the setup and can do it within hours.

With another client, we are saving about 20 hours. However, we are not able to justify that return on investment by just saving time. There are other parameters that we would have to look at for justifying the ROI.

The return on investment for most of our clients depends from scenario to scenario. Some of them look at it on a long-term basis and some of them look at it from the amount of time saved. For example, we are currently working on a solution for a CIO. We are saving about four hours of his time during a particular week. The return on investment for that particular person is humongous.

We evaluated all the solutions. We had different RPA tools. Looking at the feedback from the market and the type of technical support that we had received, we went ahead with Automation Anywhere. The major reason for going with Automation Anywhere was the technical support that developers have.

I'd rate it an eight point five to nine because there's still always room for improvement.

I've been part of multiple bot automations ranging from different sectors from finance to retail to banking over four years during which I have implemented multiple bots.

The primary use case for Automation Anywhere is something related to financial and banking operations. Because the financial and banking operations are something which we do repetitively and need to be done with a lot of time. A perfect use case for RPA is something which is repetitive and has a lot of work. Use cases in the financial and banking sectors are something where we have multiple invoices to process multiple transactions. These two sectors are important sectors as use cases for RPA.

There are multiple features which are valuable. One such feature in Automation Anywhere is the object cloning command. Because with the object cloning command, I am able to work with websites and also with Window Operations. I have worked with other tools using this object cloning command. It is easy for a developer to just drag a command and clone whatever features or actions they want. 

I also have an option to modify according to my user inputs when using object cloning. There is one command which impresses me in Automation Anywhere that other tools lack. It gives me the image quality that I need.

There are a couple of features that I would like AA to improve upon in their next releases. One is the PDF automation. Of course, AA has come up IQ Bot which scans PDF documents. I feel that IQ Bot has not reached its mark. With financial and banking, we have multiple invoices that we have to process in our top use cases. Typically, these invoices come in a PDF file. So, PDF automation is the one automation that we want them to concentrate on. 

The second feature which I would like them to concentrate on is the work items concept. AA has come up with this in version 11, but I want them to more like competitors in the market for the next releases.

The stability of the process has improved from version 10 to version 11. The version 11 is the current version, and that is what I am working in. So, I have seen good improvements in terms of stability, but I still want some development in terms the stability. We run these bots in multiple environments from staging to development to production. We find usually in the production environment when we run the bots for them to be stable for a week or two. After a week or two, we see some glitches here and there, though the application doesn't change much. This is one feature which I want Automation Anywhere to work on: Increasing stability.

I'm impressed with the scalability. We are able to do changes. We are able to scale from different environments now with the Control Room in version 10 and 11. The scalability is pretty good. It is up to the mark of the other market competitors.

The technical support is something that I rely on if I have any queries or if I have to work on another alternate approach. I've been working with Automation Anywhere for four years, and during that time, the technical support that AA provides has been very good. They usually resolve the tickets that I raise in 24 hours and have come up with a knowledge base based on previous tickets that other people have raised. They have created something called a knowledge base, where before raising a ticket, I can just go to the knowledge base and see whether people have faced similar issues before and how AA has given a solution. So, in terms of technical support, I feel like AA is doing a pretty good job.

I've seen different versions of Automation Anywhere. They have evolved the setup, so even a newbie who comes to RPA or Automation Anywhere with the setup installation document that they provide, it's straightforward because all the steps are mentioned in the document. I've seen that even a newbie can install Automation Anywhere. So, the document that they provide is top notch for installation.

I have personally worked on an insurance use case where there were production teams 24/7. With the bots that we developed, they were able to do the ticketing and production support. There are multiple scenarios where the development of Automation Anywhere has improved cost efficiency and worker efficiency too.

I would rate them an eight (out of 10). Why not a 10? Because I want them to concentrate on the PDF automation and work items. I see these two things as something which have a lot of scope in RPA in the future. If AA comes up with these couple of features, I'm sure it will be a 10 (out of 10) in version 12.

We started with finance use cases. Some of our biggest success stories have been with collection correspondence strategy around AR and the cash application. We also focus a lot on the financial close process to the month-end processes. These are the biggest areas of focus. We are starting to look at AP in finance. Beyond finance, we're also trying to look at the sales processes. 

Finance was sort of a pilot. We are now looking at sales processes starting from the customer order handling to services, and how we can enrich the experience. Our goal is to enhance the customer experience.

We have a suite of technology products. Most of the time, there is communication between various products. We get a number of emails from our customers that we send out. E.g., our system is based on some criteria that sends emails out to customers. Therefore, there is a lot of user interface level interaction. However, we always look at the problem statement and work through that.

We are a B2B company. We have a lot of communication with our customers in terms of collection correspondence, such as payment reminders. We started with the problem: Should we be a company focused on heavily calling as all companies traditionally are? Or, change that using Automation Anywhere, but how do we communicate with customer using the tool as it is more interactive and individual-driven. We created personalized emails using a digital correspondence strategy. This is an areas where we have delivered results. 

It is easy to code. While you have developers, somebody with a development or workflow mindset can logically build a bot in Automation Anywhere by understanding how to put a process in a workflow. If you have that, then you can logically build a bot in Automation Anywhere. Even a non-IT or business user can just look at the bot language and understand what the bot is doing, and that's the easy part. This is an interesting part of the product that we are trying to capitalize on.

They consistently endeavor to improve the customer experience. Customer success is their motto. The organization clearly knows who they are and what they stand for. 

We are one of the smaller startups in the area so we experience a lot of issues. Most of the issues have been: 

• How do you build up your platforms? 
• Automation Anywhere is more geared toward how humans work, and a bot works differently.

These are the specific challenges that we have seen.

Some small issues:

• A bot will be working and the the screen will lock out.
• The app has a password change policy every few days.
• One day, there will be a message box saying that the application is down or not available on a weekend. The instructions will say read the information and click, "Okay." But a bot doesn't understand the instructions because it is not the IQ system.
  

There are a lot of initiatives going on. E.g., there is one for the Excel part where they are building a plugin in Excel. Those type of plugins would help if they were built in various applications for integration across applications. I would like more plugins overall. It would be nice to have a plugin for all applications, like PowerPoint or any PDF to text converter, to make the tool easier to work with.

On the user side, we have seen issues with user training.

The product still requires programming knowledge. We would like it to become easy enough to use where anyone in the organization can utilize the tool and use the bots. The usability should be at the same level as a Microsoft Suite product. This is on Automation Anywhere's roadmap to evolve toward this.

It is an evolving platform, but it's fairly stable.

They have frequent upgrades. 

Scalability is dependent on the organization and customer size, but it's a stable platform.

We have not faced issues as we have scaled up.

They have a good 24/7 support system. Even if there is an issue, we are able to solve it.

The ticketing system: You create a ticket and can get support 24/7. That's already a big thing for us. We have had good reviews on it.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. Automation Anywhere did a lot of hand-holding through it

We used Automation Anywhere as our initial service provider.

Our return on investment has more been based on improving things which we could not do earlier. There were some aspects of processes which we had to outsource because we were not able to do these in-house. Our return on investment is based on bringing these outsourced services and processes back in-house. In addition, ROI is based on doing things to improve the customer experience.

We have also seen ROI based on employee experience. Quantification is not easy. We cannot quantify it, but we have millennials coming into the workforce who don't want to do "boring" activities. If you tell them that the organizations has a digital workforce concept, this is a driver for them to think that the organization is the way that it should be. This is bigger than dollars when quantifying value.

Automation Anywhere presented a pitch for the IT solutions that we have. 

We considered the top three vendors. We chose Automation Anywhere because of the customer engagement drives and their integrated services team. The other vendors didn't have this. Automation Anywhere's service team stands out.

If you're starting out and a smaller organization, their arrangement of products helps. Product-wise, there are some pluses and minus in everything

Think of what is the best fit for your organization in terms of a technology platform. Also, have goals in mind, like improving the customer experience, not reducing the FTEs in your organization.

Going forward, there will be new releases on the cloud. 

Our primary use case is to improve cost savings or FTE usage through automation.

The product is still new for us, but we are already starting to think about different ways to deploy things to development.

The product is easy to use. It is a good tool for developers and business users.

Getting the bot design into the developer's hands is taking longer than we initially anticipated.

I like the ability to grant specific permissions to specific users and want to see this rolled out in future versions.

We have three bots in production. We are currently working on scaling up to 30 bots.

The technical support could be better, especially with their responds. They always caring through with their timing though.

We started looking at solutions that would make the process faster without redesigning it.

The initial setup was not complex, but we did need assistance to get it up and running.

To deploy our initial three bots, we used a partner (Accenture). Now, we are doing our own development.

We measure ROI by evaluating the entire process: 

• How long does it take to run everything? 
• How many FTEs are running the process? 
• What are the savings from a quality standpoint?
• What processes are now able to be run over the weekend without someone monitoring them over the weekend?
• What are the penalty if something is not automated?

We also looked at Blue Prism.

Start with a good integrator. That is what we did.

It is a good tool for RPA focused development.

We have been able to integrate the tool with other software. So far, we had no issues.

I have taken one course through Automation Anywhere University. It was not a bad experience. I am planning to take more courses in the future. However, the courses are very long.

We use it for finance, and it performs very well.

We have automated every finance-based operation, from collections to invoice processing. We have also worked to implement the solution with customer service, operations, and IT.

It has streamlined many manual processes, eliminating errors and inefficiencies. It has also allowed us to introduce metrics, so we can generate operational reports and improve our overall business.

• Its large command set
• MetaBots and IQ Bots are great features, which have been improving.
• The Bot Store, with its extensive number of MetaBots, has been very helpful.

I have been very impressed with the Bot Store. We have used several MetaBots already, which has saved us many weeks of development.

We have been able to implement several bots from non-developers in the finance department. They were able to implement solutions for existing business processes with no technical programming background.

• The development environment needs to be improved. 
• Making edits across files is hard. 
• Not being able to resize Windows has proven challenging.
  

We have seen vast improvement in version 11. We are still hoping to see improvements in its ability to have the client answer automatically and reconnect when Windows updates are applied. 

I would like to see improvement in its scalability. While workload management is a nice feature, from a practical usage and client usage standpoint, we would like to see improvement.

We usually start a pilot automation with a single Bot Runner. Then, based on volume, we will increase it to two. Afterwards, we'll increase exponentially from there based on volume. 

I've received different levels of support from Automation Anywhere. It has thoroughly improved, and I have seen quicker turnaround times from my questions.

We switched to this solution because our previous solution needed to be updated.

The installation of version 11 is fairly straightforward. I do like the new server architecture based on Java, as it is very straightforward.

We are an integrator and consultant company. We work with clients to do the deployment.

We initially started with a number of full-time employees (FTEs) who we can now reassign. 

For example, with the collections process, millions of dollars might be gained by a company, because now the automation can handle the collection of unpaid bills. Previously, it was too much for human workers to handle.

Time and monetary savings can range from 20 to 90 percent.

Costs varies per client.

The other vendors that clients wanted to review have been UiPath and Blue Prism. In some cases, those vendors were selected.

We have used Automation Anywhere for both attended and unattended automation. 

The primary use case is for a number of different transaction-based systems that the company has.

• We are able to create robotic tasks in a short time.
• Automation Anywhere receives high marks for its ease of use.
• It is able to integrate well with other applications.

A lot of the features that I want to see going forward will be included in the next release.

We have been a little frustrated by the frequency of cache releases.

It has been reliable.

It took a few months for us to scale from pilot to the number of bots that we are currently using.

Their customer support is fantastic.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We have saved time and money using this solution.

Annual licensing costs would be about $100,000.

We also evaluated Blue Prism and UiPath. We chose Automation Anywhere because it was the market leader and their user interface is better.

Go for it. The product is easy to use.

For our bot creation process, we get somebody from the business unit to walk us through their process. We usually record that session, then we determine how to create the bot from there.

The Automation Anywhere University courses are very good.

My primary use case was for a project in Brazil, where we managed to download and extract all the invoices which were pending for my company and inputted them in our system. The tool works very well.

We are automatizing redundant activities, releasing employees to do value-added activities. 

The Control Room is a good feature.

I would like more integration around main applications, e.g., SAP.

Automation Anywhere has to keep their RPA tool connected to everything to maintain it in the RPA market.

So far, the stability is not good. We are trying to improve this because we are facing a lot of instability issues. We are now getting some support from the CSM. We are hoping that he will save us from this issue.

It took us three months to scale from pilot to the number of bots that we are currently using. We started by experimenting with a very low number on the license: two Bot Runners and five Bot Creators. Now, we have 60 Bot Runners and 35 Bot Creators. We are improving as we are seeing new opportunities.

The technical support has been good. They have been working closely with us. However, at the beginning, their support was splotchy. Now, we are working on specific issues together, and they are getting more involved when looking at the problem as a whole.

This was our first RPA solution.

The initial setup was straightforward. However, integrating the application was not easy. The first setup was very easy, but building the infrastructure to support the application was complex. I am unsure if the problem was my company or the application, since my company has a lot of bureaucracy when raising new VMs and installing new applications. There are a lot of problems regarding security, which is stopping us to move forward and becoming agile.

We used Ernst & Young for the deployment, and our experience with them was good.

We have saved money with the solution.

This tools allows us to remove two FTEs from repetitive tasks to work on other things.

Annually, we are paying almost one million reais.

We looked at UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere. We chose Automation Anywhere because it is easy to implement and a good UI, which is different from its competitors.

I recommend trying the tool.

We have a few attended automation bots, which are working well. They work better than the unattended automation. It is an evolutionary process.

We are doing the Automation Anywhere University now for our business, which helps with the ease of use. Our business users don't have development skills, and we are hoping that this resolves that. We have taken two courses, so far. We are now examining the collective results of the participants.

We have not used the Bot Store.