Automation Anywhere Reviews

The solution has really changed a lot when it comes from v11 to A360. When it was v11, then it was complete scripting, and it was not the UI, the drag and drop features that the other tools provide. You just drag an activity and drop it. It was actually scripting. So it was relatively difficult to develop a code for someone who is not very familiar with basic coding skills.

There are more valuable features with the updated solution. Now they have both the list view and the flow view. They have increased some features in terms of data types. They now have good usage of the data table and have added variable types. It's convenient.

One area that could be improved with the cloud solution when it comes to A360 is we have seen a certain lag. It's not a very happy tool. There are stability issues, but that is something that they maybe looked at already. They have come up a long way, and they are actually promoting the IQ bot as well. The document OCR/ICR techniques are something they're already working on, so I'm looking forward to that as well. 

As a developer, the biggest con is the lag. It's pretty inconvenient to face that delay in things happening. We come across that pretty often. 

It's not necessarily an added feature that I would be looking for, but in general, as a solution, it could have been easier to use than in the current state. The way the tool has been built, it's not easy to build a solution when it comes to using Excel automation. And it's not that convenient.

I've been working with the solution for a little less than two years.

The code for the solution, once developed, is pretty stable. I would say there is no issue in terms of stability there. It is only the initial accessibility in terms of the build phase where we have seen that issue of the lag.

Scalability is pretty much achievable, and I don't think we have faced any issues. We have had bots earlier. But when it comes to larger processes or where there's a situation where we need to use multiple bots for common processes and things like that, there, I have not been able to use those solutions. I don't work as a developer. I work as a solutions architect and a business analyst, and that is one place where I have felt Automation Anywhere is not that capable.

Customer service is comparable to Power Automate and Microsoft; they are responsive.

The initial setup for cloud-based solutions are all straightforward.

When it comes to pros, the solution is convenient. And now it has both the list view and the flow view in terms of the code. So whether it is a seasoned developer or whether it's a newcomer, they have made it slightly easy. I feel that for a first-timer, Automation Anywhere would be something that is relatively difficult to pick up.

I would rate the solution a six out of ten.

Automation Anywhere (AA) can be deployed on the cloud or on premise. For the cloud deployments, we have had customers using Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS. 

I have been using Automation Anywhere in managing insurance business lines, such as personal property and commercial.

Automation Anywhere can improve by implementing a Citrix environment and increasing the stability of tools, such as IQ bot.

I have been using Automation Anywhere (AA) for approximately four years.

Automation Anywhere has been stable in my experience. The performance has been good.

The scalability of Automation Anywhere is good. There have not been any problems.

The technical support has been good in my experience. However, you need to use the latest version to get the right level of support. If it is an end-of-life version, you might not get support from Automation Anywhere.

I do not see a large difference when it comes to what Automation Anywhere offers compared to other similar solutions, such as UiPath. I wanted to implement IQ Bot for customers and this is going to be my main focus.

The initial implementation is straightforward. Most people are using the orchestrator on the cloud or the control room and when it comes to the creator and bot runner, it will always be on the on-premise. The cloud implementation is easy, you do not have to install anything, and when we use it in the Automation Anywhere Cloud, it becomes even easier.

The time it takes for the implementation depends on the environmental requirements. For example, if it is single or multi-node architecture. If it is a single node, it is straightforward.  If it is a multi-node architecture, then it will take a little time. You just have to understand the other component that is present, such as any secondary server.

The is more maintenance to be done to Automation Anywhere when compared to Blue Prism.

The price of Automation Anywhere is a little higher than some of the competition, such as UiPath. However, depending on the use case and other factors we are able to receive some discounts.

I have evaluated Blue Prism.

It is important for those wanting to implement any solution to explore their use case. This will help determine whether Automation Anywhere will be an appropriate fit. For example, if you are looking at large-scale operations. There are many things to consider before you choose any tools.

I rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten.

We use Automation Anywhere to automate business processes for better accuracy, time reduction, and scalability. An Automation Anywhere bot can work for 24 hrs. I worked for KYC Reconciliation processes in Automation Anywhere which consists of data extraction from PDF with the help of IQ Bot and extracted information entered into companies web portals. In the process, clients give us invoices through the mail and te bot identifies mail with specific subjects, downloads invoices, uploads invoices to IQ bot, and downloads CSVs to specific folders, and validate CSVs and upload CDVs to the web portal.

Automation Anywhere improved our organization's growth with prior usage of Automation Anywhere for repetitive tasks like data entry in the web portal and data extraction from the PDF with the help of IQ Bot. I've been working with Automation Anywhere for the last year. I've worked on two versions of Automation Anywhere i.e.V11.3 and A2019. One thing that I like the most about Automation Anywhere V11.3 is that you don't need any programming knowledge to develop the bot, so a non-technical person can also easily understand the process and can create the same.

Automation Anywhere has lots of features, some of them are accuracy increases, time consumption reduced, scalability. Automation Anywhere does not require a strong knowledge of programming languages. The dashboard is user-friendly. In A2019 of Automation Anywhere we can run a python script. The accuracy of the IQ Bot has been improved in Automation Anywhere. The new concept of the control room in A2019 is more impressive than older versions of Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere has lots of good features. It does not require improvement. 

I would like if the IQ Bot could read hand-written documents, otherwise, Automation Anywhere is fabulous to work or develop processes for customers. Automation Anywhere has a user-friendly UI to work with so that any non-technical person can easily understand the process workflow. The accuracy of the IQ bot in the new version has been increased. We can make validations to fields in IQ Bot with Python scripts.

I've been using Automation Anywhere for a year.

Automation Anywhere gives us a stable developed process. We can run a bot without any human interaction. I found it to be stable.

One of the features of Automation Anywhere is scalability. We can scale our developed bot at any particular time and increase accuracy.

If any error occurred during developing a process you can ask for help from Automation Anywhere support team. The support team of Automation Anywhere is pretty good.

I didn't use any other software for developing processes to automate other than Automation Anywhere. From the beginning, I've been using this tool to automate.

Automation anywhere is very easy to set up. We have to download the product from the Automation Anywhere website and run it. We can set up the file in two ways either in Express mode or custom mode.

Our team developed a process for clients.

I'm working as RPA developer so don't have any idea about the ROI.

I'm an RPA developer, so I don't have any idea about the cost or pricing but the licenses for developers and runner IQ Bot are pretty good.

I haven't used or evaluated other options for developing the process.

Automation anywhere going great with its improvements.

Use case: Extraction from Main Frame Application

Solution : 

The bot will log in to the email box and then picks the invoice no, order invoice amount, and surcharge details. 

Based on a single line item and multiple line items, the bot will log in to AS400 and feed and check all the information. If there is a discrepancy then the bot will update it based on the tolerance limit. If there is no discrepancy, the bot will accept the orders. The bot will validate costs in Excel and AS400 application and it will allocate cost for each invoice.

Easy to access: Without the need to download and install software on a local machine, we can access the RPA application from virtually anywhere.

Easy to use: Automating a business process is as easy as logging in, clicking, and automating any kind of business.

Value for time: with the help of Enterprise A2019, we can get instant value. We can log in, set up automation, and go live within minutes, giving an immediate return on your investment.

Scalability: With help of Enterprise A2019 is a highly scalable application, we can deploy a few bots and automating any kind of business processes.

1) By using Workload Management in Automation Anywhere a lot of manpower was reduced. 

2) Credential Manager used to keep customer/client information's more secure.

3) The product is dedicated to the business user and comprises advanced capabilities to offer an intuitive interface for the business user and bot developer.

4) This platform is easiest to use, avoids complexity, and ensures fast adoption & rapid deployment. 

5) It not only fulfills the requirement of the digital workforce but also be flexible to evolve with the business needs.

1) Needs some improvement in IQ BOT:

* while uploading input files we are facing issue with grouping even the same kind of PDFs

* consuming of CPU utilization and requiring more RAM

2) It is not able to use OCR effectively and has limited usability.

3) Handwritten documents are still a drawback.

4) Some of the control room GUI can be improved, it is also difficult in terms of control room management.

5) If Excel gets hanged Automation Anywhere does not give any notification.

6) Needs improvement in image recognition.

7) BOT insights taking more CPU utilization.

I have been using AA for three years and five months.  

Automation Anywhere is a stable RPA application.

Enterprise A2019 is a highly scalable application, we can start small by deploying a few bots and automating any kind of business processes.

We are satisfied with their customer service and technical support.

We have used Blue Prism for Automation. Cost wise it is higher than Automation Anywhere.

A2019 has zero installation required.

We didn't look at other options while choosing Automation Anywhere.

UiPath and Kryon.

There is only one option Automation Anywhere for cost-effective RPA.

We are an SI vendor. We have been implementing customer-facing solutions for processes like reports generation, bank reconciliation, payroll processing, etc.

There were different bank statements generated for reconciliations. With some standardization, we were able to automate a process that took more than 4 hours in under 15 mins. In one of our customer implementations, the environment was to use simple RPA functionalities without any complexities. We achieved it with the basic pack of AA license.

The organizations where we have implemented AA have seen tremendous benefits achieved in terms of time and cost-saving with the highest quality of deliverables. Since this is about how it has helped our organization, I would explain it from the context of a system integration vendor. We are able to build a steady pipeline when we position AA as a solution and enhance our resource skills by certifications of AA.  This has certainly improved or relevance in the RPA market space with a growing team of Automation Engineers.

The features that help us satisfy the needs of the customer to overcome mundane activities using task bots and meta bots are the most valuable along with the rich controls in the control room. The developer team is able to capture all the necessary steps without much hassle with the visual designer and the ability to test each step of automation has helped in delivering error-free automation to our customer. With the new version of AA, we have more control over the implementation and we are able to quickly deploy the solutions to the customer.

OCR - OCR capability needs to become better. For the handwritten documents, we had a struggle to extract with accuracy while some other market tools were able to achieve it without any issues. 

The OCR component should allow integration with 3rd party OCR. This way we can use the best of breed solution along with AA or allow better control over OCR packages to be customized. As of now, it acts like a black box where there is very little control over the outcome of the OCR. We had great struggles with a customer who had handwritten data extraction. Finally, the customer was not able to see the value and the exploration went on hold post COVID.

We partner with multiple tools. We find AA to be much superior in support.

We use it in the field of banking, especially for repetitive tasks in card centers. We use automation with IBM BAW tools. 

It's helpful in creating new customer accounts, as we work with other systems that have no API or services to work with. The process starts in IBM BPM and it calls the robot to finish the work by calling other systems like iScore and T24. These add customer details and retrieve scores for the customer, especially when working with loans (personal, car). 

We used it in sending and collecting emails to and from different sites. 

We use it for repetitive tasks that need a lot of people and consume time, as bots work 24 hours and 7 days.

It helps in:

1. Improving employee productivity, morale, and retention. 
2. While there is some fear that automation will eliminate jobs, the consequences of automation are counter-intuitive: automation actually removes the tedious parts of work and frees up often stretched-thin employees for more meaningful and creative work. 
3. Streamline chaotic processes and workflows.
4. Increases transparency.
5. Enhances customer service and delivery.
6. Drives exponential growth.

Recorders and Bot Insights are very valuable features.

In addition:

1. Workload management helps to make the best use of the bots to make sure bots work well.
2. Concurrent bot executions. 
3. A web-based solution for bot creators.
4. It is a cloud-based solution.
5. Dashboards, especially for bot and task monitoring.
   
6. The REST APIs help to integrate with other systems.
7. Commands in the Excel package that make it easier to work with Excel files.
8. Email package commands.
9. Bot store.
10. Run DLL and Python code that helps a lot in working with machine learning.

The product needs improvements in dealing with remote servers and providing more APIs that will be used with other systems.

Also in need of improvement are:

1. The AI sense command needs improvement.
2. Bot discovery needs more work.
3. Migration tools should be improved.
   
4. REST and SOAP services need work.
5. AA should provide the ability to use custom packages that follow a standard to be imported in RPA.
6. I would like the ability to use custom cryptography algorithms with commands.
7. They should improve PDF commands and IQ features to include Arabic language OCR.
8. The admin user should have the ability to change the tome out of the session. 
   

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

Stability-wise, AA is very good.

The scalability is good.

Technical support is good.

I previously used Blue Prism but changed because I found that AA has more helpful features. 

Straightforward, installation with disaster recovery approaches. 

The vendor team assisted us with deployment and they are very helpful and have a very good level of expertise

It helps to increase the ROI by 25%.

It's very good in terms of cost and pricing.

We automate mundane and repetitive tasks for our clients, like invoice processing, purchase order creation, sales order creation, refund processing, transaction chargeback, and many more.

These tasks are basic and require no special skillset, hence are an extra cost to the company. By automating them, the company saves a lot of manpower, leaving them to better utilize their resources for a more value-added task. This ultimately leads to a better return on investment.

Automation Anywhere has provided the capability to automate repetitive tasks for the organization, which in turn has lead to a lot of cost-savings. It has also helped in removing the robots out of humans, by investing their time in more value-added activities.

Humans can work approximately eight to ten hours, whereas if the same activities are done by the bots, they can keep on working round the clock. Therefore, improving the productivity of the organization.

The percentage of human error in such cases has become little-to-none when processed by the bot.

The universal recorder along with the Excel basic and advanced packages has been highly valuable. With Excel basic, we can perform basic Excel activities even if Excel is not installed in the system. The Excel advanced package has a lot of features added, which were initially not there in Version 11 and we had to rely on external scripting for the same.

Earlier in Version 11, we had different sets of recordings, which often made things confusing but with the universal recorder, the situation is not the same anymore.

The UI could be made better because the UI in Version 11 was better and easier as compared to a2019. We were able to fit in more lines of code on the screen at a time, whereas in a2019, we can see much less. This means that the developer has to scroll again and again to view his/her code.

An option should be provided to disable the flow and dual-mode since those are not used often by the developers, and hence take up extra space on the screen.

The IQ bot should also have a feature to process documents with multiple invoices, as currently, we need to split the document according to invoices beforehand.

I have been working as an RPA Developer for the past three years. For the first three and a half years, I was using Version 10 and 11 of Automation Anywhere, and for the last six months, I have been using A2019.

The solution is quite stable.

The solution is easily scalable. We can add more bot runners or creators as per our need when the requirements increases.

The technical support was great. The support team response is quite prompt and they will provide you the solution to your issues most of the time.

Automation anywhere was my first RPA tool.

The initial setup is straightforward and if there is any difficulty, the AA support team will come to your rescue.

Our in-house team automates processes for our clients. The expertise level was good.

From my experience, I can say that the initial setup cost is easily recovered over a period of time once the bots start running in production. We develop bots for our clients and as per their information, most of the time, the automation of a single process has returned their original investment amount.

We did evaluate other RPA tools but we found Automation Anywhere to be more user-friendly and easy to use. 

I, being a Robotic Process Automation Developer, extensively use various Automation Anywhere products on daily basis. I use Automation Anywhere for end-to-end implementation of processes for clients, as well as my organization.

We have many use cases. One of them is from the marketing department. Every organization needs to market their products and services to get future clients. The marketing people used to mail the prospective clients one by one manually, as per their mailing list. They used to spend approximately one minute on each email. We created a bot that helps the department in sending emails to prospects with product information, service information, brochures, etc. 

Now, the department needs only to specify the content file and an Excel file having email IDs, and the rest is done by the bot. It sends approximately 500 emails within 10 minutes. That makes the process of sending emails extremely fast, including customized content.

Automation Anywhere has helped save many man-hours in my organization by letting us automate monotonous and repetitive tasks. Let's take an example of procurement, to Purchase (P2P) Process in SAP S/4 Hana.

This task requires an employee to manually verify the invoice, feed data into SAP, Park Invoice, Validate Line Items, and generate MIRO. This takes approximately 10 minutes per invoice and that doesn't require any human intelligence. It is just a tedious task. Instead, we implement this solution using Automation Anywhere.

We used the Automation Anywhere IQ Bot to extract data from invoices.

Automation Anywhere Enterprise is used to automate email, for data entry into SAP, 3-Way Match in SAP, as well as MIGO & MIRO Generation in SAP. This frees up employee's time as well as increases the accuracy of the work.

I am inclined towards features such as Automation Anywhere Bot Store, Automation Anywhere Enterprise Client, Recorders, and Scheduling with the Auto-Login Feature.

Automation Anywhere Bot Store; The Bot Store is an online library where anybody can find different types of pre-developed, production-ready bots. Being production-ready and easily accessible saves development time. All bot submissions to the bot store pass through strict security checks, which makes them secure to download and deploy.

Automation Anywhere Enterprise Client; The Automation Anywhere client has 500+ commands to perform various tasks. It has a user-friendly workbench and UI. The most important part is the scriptless development, where you just drag and drop the command and you are ready to run it.

Recorders; Recorders make automating desktop applications, as well as web applications, very reliable and easy to implement. Think of creating a bot to extract data from a webpage in less than 30 mins and it can be run by pressing a button daily. It makes tasks easy to finish. 

Scheduling with Auto-Login Feature; Automation Anywhere has the most user-friendly way to schedule a bot. Scheduling is so accurate in Automation Anywhere that we don't need to worry if the task will be deployed at the specified time or not. I personally manage 30+ schedules and each runs at its set time. Scheduling comes with an awesome Auto-Login feature. This feature logs into locked Windows even when the system has a disclaimer message. It makes scheduling reliable and accurate.

For me, IQ Bot needs to be improved. It has great capabilities and works really well for fully structured and spotless documents. When we try to process structured documents but with some little pen marks, improper partitions, or faded documents, IQ Bot fails to extract data properly out of them. Typical Indian supplier invoices are hard to process through IQ Bot.

I would love to see a package for Regular Expressions with various sub-commands such as regex builder and regex replace.

OAuth2.0 native support should be added in future releases. From a security point of view, there is work that is needed.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for more than 30 months.

Stability is great If you follow the recommended hardware and software. If you do not meet the requirements then it sometimes creates problems. So, the hardware should be up to the mark for a seamless experience.

The product is highly scalable. Scaling is easy. We started with the Marketing department and within the next three months, we were able to deploy bots for six more departments.

Automation Anywhere has a superb support team. They are prompt in responding to queries based on urgency. If I log a ticket with a production-level issue, they quickly respond and help to solve the problem.

The overall experience with support has been great. They even follow up to see if the issue has been solved after giving the solution.

We did not use another similar product. We started our RPA journey with Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup was straightforward. Automation Anywhere has descriptive documents to guide in installing the application on the server. Initially, I was the only person starting the RPA journey in my organization. I needed to set up the infrastructure, develop the bots, and give support as well.

Installing the application on the server was very easy. All credit goes to excellent documentation.

We implemented it through our in-house team.

With the newer cloud version of Automation Anywhere product, the setup cost has been cut down because the customer doesn't need to invest in new hardware.

Automation Anywhere is flexible in terms of costing and licensing.

We evaluated only one other vendor, which is UiPath.

Automation Anywhere seemed easy to work with, in our initial journey of RPA. So we choose it.

The product is promising and is successful. You should start your Automation journey with simpler processes and step-by-step, move towards bigger and more complex problems. They have a great support team and the product's community is active as well. This will help to make your automation journey seamless.