Automation Anywhere Reviews

We used Automation Anywhere to create and integrate a solution that is suitable for a dynamic application. We had a business challenge where things were dynamic in terms of the environment, and we need to integrate into a CICD system.

It reduced cost and effort significantly. Yearly, our organization saved $14,000. The company started to save more, and increased efficiency in the field of automation then started to pioneer.

Within less time than it used to take, we can automate a complete Apex task. Being able to do this is how we managed to win the work for our client. The client was amazed and suggested the solution throughout the organization.

Complex tasks can be automated easily and reliably.

I feel the tool has to provide deeper insights for debugging issues, considering both internal and external factors.

The image recognition functionality needs to improve so that we can work faster.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for one year and eight months.

We were highly attracted to this product due to its scalability. This is because we started to work within a CICD environment.

The technical support is excellent.

Previously, we used the UFT solution provided by Micro Focus. It did well with us for a couple of years but as the application keeps on growing and becoming more complex, UFT has shifted from pros to cons. That's where we shifted to Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We implemented through a vendor team and their level of expertise was excellent.

Our advice is that anybody interested in this product should negotiate product bundles in order to reduce the cost of installation and setup. This product will ultimately help you to innovate and excel, and we recommend it.

We evaluated other options like UiPath, but we got what we needed that was specific to our requirements, so we onboarded AA.

I believe Automation Anywhere bundles everything for generic needs and in my case, everything was covered in these generic bundles.

We use it to automate all kinds of business processes. The primary use case is the RPA platform, even though they have the cognitive platform and the analytics platform. We use it for so many different things it's hard to focus on one, but it's automating business processes in our banking system.

We're interfacing a lot with Excel, our ERP systems, some legacy systems, the databases, file folders, text files, CSVs. It's hard to pin down one.

Through the software, we have been able to reduce the time that we spend on manual, repetitive tasks so that we can focus on activities that add value to the business or to our partners and customers. The most important things are saving time, increasing control, and increasing automation.

It has reduced a lot of repetitive manual work and manual mistakes that can occur while doing repeated work. This tool is very accurate. Everyone wants to automate their day to day work because of which we will be getting more and more work.

Since more and more companies want to automate their process because of the current situation, jobs for RPA developers have increased. Automation Anywhere has made tedious jobs so easy and time-saving. If the project is super automated, it can be finished in a very short period of time.

String extraction, Excel integration, and web services are the most valuable features. Because we are using web services it is so easy to connect with third-party applications. 

Excel automation is one of the best features in Automation Anywhere. If we have to work with multiple excel sheets with lots of rows and columns, it gets really difficult to keep track of this is done manually. But Automation Anywhere makes it really simple and error-free. 
Email automation is another command which is really good and time-saving. If we have to send out emails to a group and if it is everyday job, AA is very helpful

I would suggest adding more fields while calling in API. There is no option to generate an Authentication token within the Bot.

While using REST web services, we faced a lot of issues as we were trying to connect with the Salesforce application which needs an authentication token to connect. Since there was no option to create an authentication token we had to find a different solution altogether. This feature can be improvised.

Object cloning is another feature which is not very stable and this can be improved as well

I have been using AA for three years.

Cost Licensing is little high.

We get many banking and finance use cases e.g. reconciliation, accounts payable, etc. from banking clients which involves the extraction of unstructured data from various scanned and true PDF documents. Post this, the data needs to be validated and triaged before feeding it into SAP and Java-based applications. 

The Automation Anywhere platform has always stood out from the rest of the solutions available on the market given we have IQ Bots and Bot Insights neatly integrated into the platform which enables us to develop rapidly and train the learning instances using pre-defined domains over the purchase orders, forms, invoices that need to be processed. Post extraction of the form and data fields from the documents we post them into SAP and Java-based applications. Automation Anywhere's ease of automation with these types of applications helps to deliver consistent and reliable automation in record time.

We are currently using AAE 11.3.5.1 Client with Control Room, IQBots, MetaBots, Bot Insights, and AA2019 capabilities.

Automation Anywhere has and continues to help us deliver multiple complex and very complex use cases in record time. With AA2019, this ease of development and rapid time to market has improved by a great margin as virtually no setups and configurations are required. Converting prospects into leads into opportunities has never been easier. AA2019 enables us to build POCs quickly without waiting for IT guys to install AAE client as no setups are needed to build BOTs. This enables us to give demos to clients at lighting speeds and gain client confidence in the capabilities and kind of automation we can execute as an Automation CoE.

1. IQ Bot: IQ Bot makes it a breeze to classify banking documents, purchase orders, and invoices. Also, intelligent OCR helps with accurate form field and text field data extraction from unstructured documents. The easy cloud training of the already existing domains and integration with task bots is the icing on the cake.

2. MetaBots - Metabots makes capturing and re-calibrating screen controls in (offline mode as well) really easy. This enables us to make changes to the UI Assets easy.

3. AA2019 helps us to rapidly try out POCs without going through the install cycle and setting up the control room. This is a very important and critical step given we can build automation rapidly and show to prospective clients helping foster confidence amongst the business enabling growth.

Points to Improve:

1. Control Room -> While exporting a package, an option to de-select all the depending/referenced files should be available. Currently, it only allows for selecting all the files. Also, the views should be re-sizable as they are currently fixed width. This would enable to view long file names easily eliminating any chances of exporting the wrong file.

Points to Add in next release(s):

1. Availability of actions for Date and time functions in task bots, meta bots logics editor like Date Addition, calendar functions, etc.

2. Addition of Assertions activities, that can help with conditional compilations

3. Option to copy multiple variables at the same time (as selected by the developer)

4. Option to close all the task bots files in the editor at a go

5. Option to check-out multiple files inside a folder structure in a go

6. List and array should be made dynamic, as in there must not be a requirement to specify at least 1 element in the list, etc.  

7. Deletion of multiple variables in one go (as selected by a developer)

I have been using Automation Anywhere for over three years.

The solution has been becoming better with every release. We have been reporting bugs and supporting the developer teams to make Automation Anywhere more stable and better. With AAE version 11.x.x.x most of the feedbacks are incorporated and solutions are stable and performant.

Scalability with Automation Anywhere has been great. BOT farms have helped rapidly and dynamically spawn up or down the BOT runners. 

We always get a prompt response from customer service and technical support. I really find the priority technical support the depth at which they go to help us find a solution to issues is simply amazing. I have not experienced this with any other solution vendor. A big thumbs up to you guys. 

Initial setup was a breeze and fairly straightforward with all the great support from Automation Anywhere customer service and various technical teams.

We have used vendor teams and in-house teams to implement various solutions. Vendor team people have good knowledge of the various components of Automation Anywhere and know how to design effective, performant solutions in record time.

Post implementing AA, ROI numbers have grown exponentially. Given the scalability and dynamics that Automation Anywhere platform supports.

1. Setup cost is minimal as AAE Control Room is hosted in the cloud. Also, with AAE no dedicated setups need to be run and installed

2. Licensing cost is relatively less compared to other solutions on the market

3. Pricing stands out well compared to other solutions 

I have evaluated UiPath and Blue Prism.

Automation Anywhere has been a significant step in our digital transformation. AA2019 addresses a lot of gaps that we previously had. This makes Automation Anywhere stands out in the market making it an obvious choice.

We are working for the Telecom industry, so there are multiple orders that come every day for service changes, add, and disconnect, so we have automated repeated steps using Automation Anywhere.

We use the Schedule feature to run an Unattended Bot, which gives a structured report prior to office hours, and we can directly start manual steps once we log in or come into the office.

It is easy to automate SAP by using Cloning and Metabot.

We can easily perform actions on a vendor-based tool that is specially designed for the Telecom industry or for database purposes.

Real-time mail notification is useful when reporting Bot status.

It definitely changed our approach; we automate repeated process steps using the simple GUI of Automation Anywhere's Bot creator, commands, and variables.

The Scheduling and Trigger features make Automation Anywhere fabulous in terms of unattended or independent automation.

We are showcasing our Automation potential to our clients. We offer them a cost and time-effective solution for repeated and time-consuming processes, which surely help a lot in terms of improving quality. It helps to exceed expectations beyond a predefined service level agreement. 

Once you create or paste the file/folder into a specific location, it will trigger the assigned Bot for execution.

We are getting the real-time status of the Bot, indicating whether it is successfully completed or failed.

The Mail notification feature also gives us the exact route cause of Bot failure using the Error Handling feature. It also gives a Snapshot of the error.

We can easily assign roles as Bot Creator, Bot Runner, Attended, or Unattended using the Control Room. We can also create custom roles as per our or clients' requirements.

We can smoothly monitor the status of the User, Bot Status, and many other metrics using the Dashboard feature in the Control room.

The time taken to execute a Bot through A2019 can be reduced. It takes time to upload Bots/Files once you click on Run, and it is difficult to wait while we are developing automations because deadlines are always a risk factor for developers. Code needs to be run code multiple times to achieve requirements shared by the client or team.

Migration from V11 to A2019 is difficult and needs more attention because it should be simpler.

They need to improve the  Object Cloning feature because it creates problems when the resolution is changed.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for more than three years. We started working on AA Version 10.X.

It is more stable than any other solution available in the RPA industry.

The scalability is tremendous and it is like a magical stick in your hand for automating repeated tasks.

Technical Support is always available and they help from scratch, trying to resolve each query.

We did not use another RPA solution prior to AA.

The initial setup was difficult but later, it gets easier in each progressive version released by Automation Anywhere.

We did not evaluate other products.

Automation Anywhere is most easy platform to learn about Robotic Process Automation and show potential of Automation.

We have used AA for telecom industry repetitive processes, public retirement firms processes, and financial bank processes. The development has been with local developer desktops, remote VDIs, EC2s, as well as RDP clients of sorts for the individual company preferences.

We are currently building an Azure environment for our A2019 solution internally, with a VDI as our developer/UAT environment. Production will be a separate VDI operating from our main control room instance, as we create Bot Runner agents out of those VDIs for production.

I also deal with many federated lines of business, as they often develop locally and use attended automation as their source of RPA for their lines of business. Others utilize EC2s as their developer and UAT environments and have a separate production import process that keeps the separation of duties intact. Though this is not as productive as that team expected, they use it temporarily until their control room can be migrated and upgraded into A2019 instance as part of another line of business currently building out a sandbox environment for the remainder of 2020.

I am a consultant and our RPA practice on a personal level has improved the efficiency of the payroll, PTO, and timecard submission process within our company. It has taken time-consuming daily mundane tasks off the plates of our talented finance teams and allowed them to dedicate more productive time to working with more thought-heavy and human-centric activities.

Outside of our company, as we work with clientele, several improvement instances have been evident for those. One company had a very tedious process of monitoring an email inbox for several business units to send emails notifying that their daily database update process was completed. This took many hours of monitoring after hours, but in place of that, the RPA bot was able to perform the monitoring for them of that inbox, perform the necessary follow-up or escalation emails needed, and finalize the process once all was complete. This was unattended automation, saving them precious time, improving morale, and accurately informing everyone of the completion. 

Both v11 and A2019 have their strengths but the cloud-based forms with Excel, Microsoft applications, scripts integration, and functionality of A2019 have really stood out above the way v11 can do those things.

It takes far less code to work with A2019 than v11 for the tasks we have in place. In v11, the Metabot features have proven a tremendous help to work with smaller tasks such as file and folder operations, datetime operations, as well as credential management operations.

I'd say the most impactful and heavily or commonly used ability of v11 and A2019 has been the ability to integrate other code types and operations within the process. For example, if someone needed a heavy data comparison process to take place, utilizing AA could work but often takes a good bit of time to work through a large Excel or CSV file. Instead, activating a pre-developed or partner-developed Python script would be my choice because of the speed and efficiency of that language. I currently use this method and it's a major time saver.

In terms of improvement, usually, I have found is not as general as people think. Specifically, as a use case, I am excited to see improvements in having an A2019 cloud control room working and improved on the Lenox environments. A good bit of our finance infrastructure for web-based applications is built in that environment.

There is a good bit of dashboard-type development going on in this type of environment already, so the ability to integrate some of the functionality, as well as keep the synchronicity of everything within it, would be a major benefit.

Having fewer connection instances would make it more secure, more simple to troubleshoot, and possibly more flexible with the type of applications in use.  

I have been using the AA desktop application versions since 2014 (v09-v11), approximately six years, and A2019 for about four months.

I've not had any instability issues but only environmental stability issues that come down to the company that created the environment. 

I find it very scalable, especially with smaller automations, as they can often grow once proven to businesses that the processes work. 

The technical support was very knowledgeable, very easy to understand mostly, their ability to work with us to meet the needs and being patient was a huge help. 

I did not previously use different versions but currently use both. I do know that going forward with v11 sunsetting in 2021, we are migrating and going through a learning phase of A2019 to fully adapt to that application. 

The A2019 setup was straightforward for the applications themselves. The environments in which they are set up is a different story but, that again is on a per-company basis and often lends itself to the expertise of the DevOps teams. Sometimes, those folks are not familiar with RPA or A2019.  

We implemented through AA directly. The availability of their support was very good. Several meetings and work with their folks went well. 

Our ROI has ranged from thousands to hundreds of thousands, depending on the type of process being automated.

I really enjoy the pricing options with Automation Anywhere, as they are able to flex their ability to adapt to the needs of the customer really well. I am sure the specifics for some pricing are on a partner-by-partner basis but providing the ability to scale the licenses, setup, and pricing to the customer is a huge benefit with Automation Anywhere.

Their technical support system and response times directly to a partner are really good.

We did review UiPath, Blue Prism, and Power Automate. 

I'd say, fully go headfirst into learning the A2019 platform and all it can do for a business. There is something for everyone in that platform. Large or small scale automations, migration processes from v11 is already in place and tested, and there is no more need for Metabots because they are now "packages" that can be made or modified by a seasoned developer, and a plethora of other benefits are evident. Just jump in!! 

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The solution sometimes poses problems in the production phase.

The primary use of this tool is to automate the business process end to end for different finance towers. We have automated the following processes end to end with the help of Automation Anywhere:

R2R: In the R2R tower we have automated the process of uploading the backup files in SAP.

Manually it took around 7 working days to upload 10k documents to SAP.

With the help of Automation Anywhere, we are able to upload 10k documents in 1 4 working hours which is a great achievement for us.

We managed to save 5 FTE by automating this business process.

• Automation Anywhere has helped my organization to automate the complex process which usually takes 7-8 FTE and lots of human effort in repetitive tasks/processes.
• We have developed a bot that would automate the process of calculating the KPI of a P2P finance tower which would usually take 8 hours for each FTE to present the KPI.
• The bot takes usually 2-3 hours to represent the KPI across all regions for the P2P tower.
• The benefits are so great that the organization is saving the effort of 7 FTE from this project.
  

The following features are best in the Automation Anywhere tool:

Automation Anywhere offers the capability of integrating the DLL files with meta bot and hence the developer can use DLL files to connect to applications likes Outlook, SAP, etc.

Automation Anywhere offers the best tool in the market for extracting information from PDF and is called IQ bot. IQ bot is built on machine learning and natural language processing. It helps users to create layouts for the pdf and then process the similar format pdf in one go.

Automation Anywhere is the best automating tool on the market and it's very difficult for me to think to suggest something to improve the tool.

Here are my few suggestions:

Automation Anywhere can include database commands like insert row, bold row, etc commands in 11.x

They can also include features like API integration features in the command panel.

They should create a standard framework like re framework in Ui Path.

As it enhances the capability of the developer to create an automation project.

I have been using the Automation Anywhere tool for more than 2.5 years.