Automation Anywhere Reviews

We have several back office use cases right now that we are working on. Some of them are workforce management, IT provisioning, and deprovisioning. 

I would give you an example of a most recent process which we have: one of the largest accounts for workforce management. There were about three to four people who were manually updating data into a system, then we replaced that process or augmented that with a bot. That bot now reaches data and enters it on behalf of users, which gives significant hours back to the business. So, those people can work on some other high value task.

The ease of use is the most valuable feature. It's very easy to use, so to get started, you don't really need hardcore development skills. However, over a period of time, when you have a complex use case, then you really need to improve your end user development skills.

One of the things that the product should have is to add more advanced level developer capabilities into the platform. I know it is easy for business, non-technical people. However, for the developers, there should be some more features within the product so they can build advanced level use cases much faster.

To be honest, I would rate it about an eight (out of ten). I would not give two points because there is still room for improvement for some of those real use cases that we are working with. 

I'm very optimistic about future releases of the product.

People are now trying to automate many different kinds of technology. They have use cases related to ARP, invoicing, and three-way matching, for example.

We are seeing an incremental need for legacy systems which do not have an architecture in place or API integrations. Our customers are doing things like simple website scraping, bringing the data into Excel, taking that data and then putting it into their legacy systems. We are seeing customers that read a lot of invoices.

Our customers have been using Automation Anywhere for a lot of integration purposes. They've been using it not only for process integration but for application integration as well.

Using Automation Anywhere, we are able to reduce human functions. We aren't exactly replacing the human, but efficiently increasing the productivity of that particular human by collecting and entering the data into a CCD system like contract systems.

I think there are quite a few new features which have been introduced, but right now we've been using a lot of object cloning and screen scraping. Those are some of the primary features, but we've been able to use other features very wisely as well. These include inbuilt email functionality, some integrations to incorporate heterogeneous systems like Python scripting, and also other things.

Compared to the rest of the industry, this product is easy to use, not only from the technology perspective but from the business user side as well. We have been very successful, in that we haven't seen a situation where we trained a particular set of users or customers, and they complained that they are not able to use it.

Some of the other products in this industry have not been able to succeed because of this issue. Although they are really great, they are too focused on technology and IT, rather than business focused.

Cloud was one of the features we wanted to see because it makes it much easier. The second feature is ease of use in terms of agnostic, which was released in the next few quarters. A lot of customers had been asking about the operating system agnostic, so today it runs mostly on Windows and I believe agnostic is also coming.

There are a few features that we would love to have: running on the cloud, running on Linux, out of the box integration availability with larger ecosystems like Salesforce, Workday, or Microsoft. If somebody is using an AWS shop it should be much easier for them to use this. So there's a lot of room for improvement in terms of infrastructure, provisioning, cloud usability, and ease of use.

This product has pretty scalable so far. The number of customers is growing year over year. People are deploying hundreds of thousands of bots. We haven't hit any scalability issue at this point in time.

I come from an investment background, so when we were doing a SWOT analysis of which product to go with we looked at a couple of free products. We looked at UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism. We found that Automation Anywhere was the easiest to use. Their offer was much more appealing compared to the other products, so that's why we ended up choosing them.

We analyze ROI with what we call 3D or 3V. We look at the value proposition in three ways. First is, of course, the direct cost savings in terms of how many manual labor hours we are saving. The second thing is indirect, such as productive improvisation of the bot, and the third thing is the overall efficiency of the system. Today, when people do the ROI calculation, they just focus on a particular process. In the case of a supplier, if the requisition creation was taking a week, the rest of the processes were getting delayed.

The ecosystem processes what automatically improvises well even though RP did not even touch it. So those are some of the things what we try to bring into the picture when we do the ROI calculation other than the direct cost.

One way to measure ROI is based on how much customers are spending. Most of the customers start with the smaller licensing pack and they are increasing their investment in terms of the licensing and services every year. Some customers start with about $10,000 and end up spending about $300,000 just on the licensing over a two years period. That speaks for itself.

I would rate Automation Anywhere as seven and a half or eight out of ten. It's not because the product doesn't serve the purpose, but every product has a lot of room for improvement. Hopefully, we'll get it to a nine out of ten by next year.

Our primary use cases are mainly around finance and accounting, so invoice processing, AP processing, those sorts of use cases. It's a quite wide use case but that's where we focus.

We work in the business process outsourcing arena, it has improved our organization mainly around freeing up people to do other things and that can be quite large numbers. It can be in the high tens, even hundreds of people that can be freed up to do other work.

The main processes that we have automated with this solution are order to cash, procure to pay and record to report. 

For us, it's about replacing repetitive dull tasks with technology, allowing users to be able to do more interesting aspects of their work that hold the most value. 

We work both attended and unattended bots amongst other automation so we very much look at the use case and see what's the best approach. Most of our solutions are a combination of the two.

We're in a digital world where everything's evolving. AI is coming out, so just looking at keeping moving, introducing new innovations into the product, nothing specific. The Automation Anywhere teams seem to know what the customers want.

Stability is good. I liken it to driving a Ferrari. If you drive a Ferrari down the freeway in second gear, it won't be very smooth and reliable, but if you know how to drive it properly, then you'll have a nice comfortable ride.

Scalability is about the right approach. It's not just about the technology, it's about the people, understanding the processes, putting everything in place to make sure you monitor and govern your bots. Scalability is not a problem as long as you're approaching it correctly.

We can scale from the bots to the pilot to the bots we're using very quickly. It can be a handful of weeks. Depends on the complexity of the process. We like to get things out there quickly because if it's going to take six months, then the business is going to go off and do other things. Our target is to get it done in a number of weeks.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's a great environment to use.

Our ROI is around productivity savings, agile headcount savings, but we also look at things like improvement in net promoter scores. Customer satisfaction is very important as well. There's no point necessarily just saving money if your customers aren't going to be any happier.

We have saved both time and money.

I'd give it a 10 out of 10.

You can automate the wrong process and you won't get any value. Make sure it's the right process and make sure it's a good process. Re-engineer, if you need to first.

About a year and a half ago, we started making a business case for the software. We now have 15 bots running.

• It is flexible and user-friendly. The flexibility is awesome.
• It is easy to learn. Coming from a programming background, it is easy to use.
• Its ability to integrate with other solutions is awesome.
• The cognitive document processing is very good.

I would like to see a bot button.

The technical support is very good. We now have a technician on-hand to assist us with issues, instead of reaching out to Automation Anywhere's technical support. 

The cost is affordable, which makes an easy barrier to entry for the RPA market.

We chose Automation Anywhere because it is user-friendly.

I would recommend trying it. Once you see it in action, you will understand its capabilities and how easy it is to use.

The bot creation process is pretty standard. We take an idea for a business process and try to standardize it. We put in development and test it a hundred times before putting in production.

Courses on Automation Anywhere University are very easy to learn. It provides a huge amount of training and learning exercises for you to learn how to use the tool.

I haven't used Citrix yet.

I'm using it for logistics with respect to Fintech, where we are dealing with the brokers.

In the context of the number of FTEs, they used to spend their whole shifts working on repetitive and mundane tasks. Now, they can be utilized for other tasks.

• The most valuable features are Excel operations and PDF for integrations.
• It's very developer-friendly.
• With IQ Bot, we can now include cognitive automation into our process. The cognitive document processing is pretty good with IQ Bot.

An additional feature we would like to see is the inclusion of a particular kind of scripting in the development environment itself.

Out of ten, I would rate the stability at seven. Compared to other tools, like Blue Prism, which have something like sequential flow-levels. With Automation Anywhere, it's something like action levels.

It took us two months to scale from pilot to the number of bots we're currently using.

The technical support is pretty good with Automation Anywhere. If we have any issues, we raise a support ticket and we get it resolved.

Previously I was using a solution in which we did not have a Control Room. With Automation Anywhere, we have a Control Room which is pretty good.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We used a reseller for the deployment, and our experience with them was good.

We measure ROI, but not with the Automation Anywhere tool. We have our own tool for that.

Automation Anywhere saves time and money.

I've taken all the courses at Automation Anywhere University. I have been certified in Automation Anywhere, using their course system.

The primary use cases are for card and HR automation.

For our interorganizational processes, it has automated some of those processes.

The Bot Store has helped tremendously with accelerating integration from other applications. Especially with Workday, which is one of the main applications that we look to integrate.

It automates forms for our customers and our analysts.

They could improve around continuous integration, e.g., Jenkins and GitHub, stating how you could use those products and integrating them into Automation Anywhere. This is one area that we need to see more improvement on. We had to learn a lot of this on our own, as it is unavailable and not documented. I would like for them to be more verbose in putting this in the documentation.

In the next release, we would like to see more error handling functions for the bots, the ability to kill an errant bot, and have more visibility into a lot of the process flows going on in a more automated fashion.

There is a lot guesswork in areas.

The initial pilot was for two processes, which took us about four months. Then, the other processes were more extensive, so that took longer, only because we needed to do more with the process documentation, not so much in the bot creation. It just depends upon the complexity of the process, but also how well-documented your processes are.

The technical support is good, but I would like to see improvement with the documentation. 

We did not previously use another solution.

The initial setup was complex, only because of the process that was selected. That took us longer than usual, because it had a lot of cognitive decisions in it. Part of our new process is to evaluate if a process should be automated or not, and does it have more repetitive tasks than a lot of decision making. This has greatly increased how we are able to put a process into play for bot creation.

We leveraged a third-party, as far as our bot creation, initially. That is how we did it. We have worked with partners to create bots.

Before the automation, it used to take about two to three hours. Now, with automation, it takes about 40 minutes. We measure ROI with time.

We also evaluated UiPath.

Take into account your processes. As part of the automation journey, don't look at just the technology part. This is where a lot of people make a mistake. They focus so much on the technology that they forget about "process" of RPA. They need to take a longer look at this and break down the process at its task level to see if it is worth going the RPA route. Once you do this, look at the vendors to see which one provides more in the way of bot creation and scalability, especially if you are in a cloud environment. Then, with the continuous integration, you will need to have a lot of this as you are putting things into production from development.

For ease of use, version 11.3 was an improvement compared to version 10.5. I am looking forward to seeing what 2019 provides for developers.

I would rate version 10.5 as a six out of ten and version 11.3 as an eight out of ten. I would rate version 11.3 higher because there have been changes made to how the bot creation is now done, the interfaces, the ability to utilize the VDI environment, and multitenancy.

The primary use case is to save hours for all the manual stuff which is going on.

Things are not overly complicated now. We can streamline processes.

Its ease of use is the most valuable feature. It is easy to train developers and find the right people, then use them to build the tool.

I liked the Automation Anywhere University. It was easy and simple. I hoped that it wouldn't take too much of my time, and it didn't, which was good.

I like the bot creation process, because it is very simple. If the process is not complicated, then the bot is really easy to create.

We had initial hiccups, like any new process. It took us six to eight months to sort the product out. It has been two years, and we know what we are doing and which use case work better for us.

We would like to use the mobile feature and give access to our users, but we don't know how.

The technical support is pretty good.

Everything was previously manual. We determined by going with an RPA solution that we would save time.

The initial setup was complex.

Automation Anywhere helped us with the deployment.

We measure ROI as in the number of hours saved not performing manual activities.

We evaluated a few vendors.

We have integrated Automation Anywhere with a few other application, but there is still more work to be done.

We have done some work with documentation, but not a whole lot. We are still exploring other features.

I have worked for two companies in the past who have used Automation Anywhere. Both primary use cases have fallen under finance and accounting, with a lot of finance and accounting based functions primarily for data processing: 

• Extracting data from different systems.
• Aggregating data.
• Doing analysis on data.
• Porting data into other systems.
• Doing accounting based functions, such as reconciliations and transaction uploads.

• At the most granular level, automating people's daily tasks has been helpful by freeing them up to do higher value-add activities, which is definitely beneficial. 
• On a larger scale, the tool is improving processes overall by making systems and processes more stable. It returns hours, time, and money back to the business.

• From a developer perspective, the user interface is user-friendly and easy to use. 
• From the admin side, the Control Room is simple to use. There is a lot of functionality with a lot of analytics and oversight that you can draw from just simple web pages. It is definitely the most useful.

Integrating this solution with other application has been good for the most part. A lot of the issues that I have are related to the actual applications than with Automation Anywhere. Any additional functionality which comes out in regards to integrating it better with more widely used applications, like Salesforce, Oracle, or Workday, is definitely beneficial and helpful at the end of the day.

I have been hearing great stuff in terms of upping the product's cognitive game. Anything that can be done to work with unstructured data sets would be helpful, like increasing the subjectivity of bots, and moving away from solely rules based processes to anything which actually requires subjective judgment. If Automation Anywhere could code that into the bot design and framework, having it sort of act like a human, that would be helpful. 

Anything that can be done to increase the stability from a system standpoint in regards to large-scale systems, which are being used by a number of applications, e.g., Salesforce or Workday. This would help us, as well.

Automation Anywhere should work to continue maintaining its ease of use.

One to three years.

My current and previous companies have had stability issues. 

I started on version 11 of Automation Anywhere, then when I joined a new company, they used version 10. Therefore, I have seen both versions. With version 11, some of the development stuff was a bit clunky in terms of the tasks that we were performing. They didn't perform as expected, or perform properly, when we were developing the bot. Then, once we deployed it into production, the bot would run for a specific process and work properly about 10 times, but on the eleventh time, it would break. It was always random. Nothing had changed at all, in regards to our system, architecture, or infrastructure.

On version 10, things had been a bit more stable. We made sure that we build code which effectively captures all use cases and exceptions, but stability is key. When you're building automated solutions using bots, people are already skeptical and hesitant to adopt them. Anything you can do to improve the stability is definitely helpful. Ultimately, it depends on what your goal with RPA is. If you're using RPA as a stop-gap to build large-scale system integrations, then it's very helpful. If you're using it as a be all, end all, then stability is your number one concern. 

The product is definitely scalable. A lot of it will depend solely on the architecture of the organization who is implementing it. If you are using on-premise servers, it is much harder to scale up versus if you are using cloud-based architecture. Automation Anywhere provides the tools and expertise to make it scalable.

At the previous company that I was with, we had a pilot in September 2017 with approximately 20 bots. Then, in production, it took nine to ten months. With the organization that I'm currently with their process took a little longer, but they were standing up their COE initially. So, they went from pilot to about 30 bots in production. This took roughly a year and a half to two years. 

With regards to process, there is a lot involved. If you want to have a successful RPA and Automation Anywhere implementation at the ground level, you need to lay the foundation and the framework. Therefore, you need to build your center of excellence, and make sure you have dedicated people who will focus on whatever their role is: People related to support, governance, development, architecture, oversight (who will work with your security teams to get your reviews done), and IT personnel (who will provision servers and licenses and do Control Room administration). There is a lot involved to take it from inception to a successful program. 

The technical support has been helpful from what I've used. Initially, when we were exploring solutions and using Automation Anywhere, as a vendor, their technical support seemed to be lacking a bit. It seems like in the last few months or year, they have been stepping up their game, in this regard. They are very prompt to follow up with issues and want to make sure issues are thoroughly resolved before they close tickets and move on, which has been helpful.

At both companies, we never used a different solution before Automation Anywhere. 

We had individuals working at the companies who spent years going to school, but could not necessarily download reports nor input data into spreadsheets, and this was something that could be easily automated. We wanted to free up users and people to perform higher value-add activities, exercising analytical and critical thinking, as opposed to being cogs in the machine.

Certain aspects of the initial setup were complex, but that's a given when you're talking about technical architecture and getting the infrastructure you need in place for a successful rollout. Though, some aspects of the initial setup were simpler. 

The simpler aspects are designating roles for people based on what it is they want to provide to the center of excellence for RPA and how they see their fit in the organization. The more complex piece of it is working with all the stakeholders, internally and externally, to get all the infrastructure in place that you need in order to develop, deploy, test, and run bots in production. 

For deployment, at the first company that I worked for, that was all in-house, as we were deploying our own bots. The architecture, development, and deployment were all in-house. 

At the company that I currently work for, we have a managed services company who does development for us, and we still handle deployments. It is more like a segregation of duties, where we handle the full deployment on the end once code is ready for production.

We have seen ROI, otherwise we would have stopped using the product.

At a base level, for ROI, we equate a dollar value out to the process owner, or the business user, and multiply that out by the number of hours being saved. However, that is really base level. There are other factors involved that will help:

• If you reduce the number of errors.
• If it's related to month-end or quarter-end close for a business cycle. 
• When automating a base level process, that saves time, but it doesn't always account for the additional time given back to the user to perform another higher value-added task, as well.

On the shortlist were some of the largest players in the industry: Blue Prism, UiPath, and Automation Anywhere. This was in 2017, when I was involved with the PoC. We chose Automation Anywhere because of ease of use and overall functionality. I think the cost was also a big factor, but I don't have much insight into it.

People seem to be a bit skeptical about the cognitive document processing. I don't know if they see the power that IQ Bot provides relative to other world leading software products, such as ABBYY, which is another big OCR technology that I have used. If Automation Anywhere is stepping up its game in the cognitive aspect, this will help guide adoption in the future.

Consider all relevant factors before making a decision on a provider. Don't just randomly decide to choose one provider over another. At the end of the day, it comes down to what you are trying to achieve by implementing an RPA solution, what you're looking for in an RPA service provider, and who is willing to best address that and meet the needs of what it is you're hoping to achieve. You should consider RPA as a solution, and there are a whole host of other automation software solutions across the spectrum, as well, which are relevant for different things, but RPA has its place in any organization. Just know exactly what it is you are hoping to achieve. Based on that, you'll be able to find the best provider for you.

For developers, it's relatively easy to use. I know some developers are hesitant to use it because they come from traditional technical backgrounds. The product is counter-intuitive to everything that they have studied. If they studied computer science, they're really reticent towards something that can just automate what they learned. For someone with a nontechnical background, it's relatively easy to use and easy to build tests out. It takes a bit of effort to master and build sustainable solutions, but it is easy to use from a development perspective.

I have not been able to take courses in Automation Anywhere University for the new platform. I started using Automation Anywhere back in 2017, and the Automation Anywhere University wasn't available. There was another platform, at that time. We did the online training center for it, and it had eight different sections. Back then, it was a little clunky. You had to go through one section and complete it before moving on another. From what I've heard about Automation Anywhere University, it's much better and more functional. I haven't had the opportunity to use it yet, since I haven't really needed to use it. However, I do plan on exploring it in the future.

I don't use Citrix automation.