Automation Anywhere Reviews

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.

Our primary uses for this product are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have been using Automation Anywhere since February 2018.

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

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

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

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

The initial setup is quite straightforward

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

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

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

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

It is primarily used for automating manual processes in Project. Automation was carried out in a two-way process, downloading files from client email and scanning values from PDF file. Post these values were compared with thresholds and return mail is sent. Most of the process is carried out in the Windows environment and the Gmail suite is used as the target output location. It also included SAP application BEx for downloading the file as an Excel sheet and sent as an attachment to an email. This was all implemented in AA, and saved a few man-hours in Project.

It was helpful in managing manual task automations and innovative ways to be introduced to projects. It most benefitted us in converting daily routine tasks into automated processes at minimal cost with available infrastructure. This was the most valuable use, that it didn't cost clients infrastructure. Also, a daily status update of the process is sent through an email easily, updating all stakeholders with daily status. The overall features proved a profitable deal in implementing AA in Project.

AA control room is one central system to manage our tasks. We found it excellent to administrate. It was used for easy scheduling of process/task in Remote desktop. This helped to avoid manual intervention to trigger tasks. 

Also, various features like easy email and file reading eg: PDF, XML, etc were innovatively helpful to scan out values and use as variables in code. 

Another helpful feature is the easy command sidebar provided, where we can easily drag and drop a required command.

The accuracy in Web Recorder needs to be improved, defective outputs found most of the time(not sure if is a website side issue). 

You cannot add dynamic variables in PDF scanned values, hopefully, this can be added as a new feature in future.

Integration with most-used email applications eg: Gmail, Outlook, etc for ease in sending mails without any configuration of port or hostname. This could help to concentrate on actual problems, instead of spending time to figure out port and hostname for sending or receiving emails.

I have been using AA for the last five months. 

Recognizable stability observed in tool with various tasks performed in parallel.

Scalability may vary situation with each situation. According to me, most of the time we will get expected results with substantial capacity of computation in the process.

Customer and technical support both were supportive and were able to provide solutions quickly.

We used Blue Prism and the reason we switched was because we found more ease in using features and less documentation required compared to Blue Prism.

Complex, since there are multiple applications involved, SAP, EMail through Gmail suite. Setting up an application in remote desktop with access to SAP and emails. 

In-house.

Our ROI is 22.81%.

License for AA, before investing in infrastructure list out and analyze the current setup, since AA can be implemented at a minimal cost as well without extra infra/setup.

We previously used Blue Prism.

We use AA for Training and Proof of Concept purposes.

OS: Windows 10 

Task: Automate Excel files consisting of quality data.

Multiple Task Cloning

Automated Email Sender

Object Cloning

The basic requirement was to extract a big Lot of data consisting of many attributes.

We need to extract out a relevant attribute from the DB data set and process it such that it fulfills client Data Quality requirement.

Filter out quality data using Manual intervention was a hectic task and that is why I used AA RPA tool. 

• It reduced a lot of time to process quality data and store in organized Excel files and ledgers.
• AA made Task management simpler.
• Hassle-free development 
• Hassle-free deployment
• Good Community Support

There was a large number of individuals who were doing the data collection and artifacts collection, and they were actually a third-party. The solution improves our situation in terms of time, money, and resources. Plus, when you're dealing with Data Quality information, there are additional complications of privacy concerns. If we can keep that in-house and have a bot or automated code take care of it, then there are fewer human eyes on the private information as well. It's a resource saver, it's a money saver, and it helps us with security, keeping more human eyes away from private or touchy information.

1. Task Bots

2. Smart Recorder

3. Meta Bots

4. IQ bots

5. Task Cloning

6. Ease of coding with drag and drop features.

7. It has a very good analytics package.

It is one of the popular RPA vendors offering powerful & user-friendly RPA capabilities to automate any complex tasks. It is one of the "Revolutionary Technology" that changes the way the enterprise operates. This tool combines conventional RPA with intellectual elements like natural language understanding and reading any unstructured data.

Automation Anywhere allows organizations to automate the processes which are performed by humans. It is a Web-Based Management System which uses a Control Room to run the Automated Tasks. Automation Anywhere tool can automate ends to end business operations for companies.

1. Data Mapping Utilities

2. Console Management

3. Bot Runner need to perform much smoother

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

5. Handwritten documents are still a drawback. Also difficult in terms of control room management.

6. A few applications take more time for loading when integrated.

7. Declaring the datatype of variables is challenging.

8. The process of migrating codes from one environment to the next can be automated as a default function.

9. The webpage for the control room could use some retouching or redesign to enhance the user experience.

10. Many little-usable features.

I have been using AA for three months. 

I previously used Ui Path.

First have hands on with Community Version and then figure out your requirements. 

Blue Prism

Being a QA analyst, I am involved in testing my application's stability on a daily basis. A2019 helped me in automating the repetitive process that I have been doing every day.

Once I get familiarized with A2019, I am planning to discuss with my teammates how to implement it into our project for all of the new requirements.

Our primary use cases are smoke testing of the applications, sending email for reports, stability testing, API testing for REST services, database testing, and pulling data from Excel and using it in applications.

A2019 has significantly helped us in reducing the overall time that we have spent on our application manually. Going forward, we have also planned to implement the IQ Bot feature that we are still exploring.

Tasks or activities that were taking almost six hours a day have been reduced drastically to 30 minutes, which saves time as well as business costs.

Smoke testing of the application is performed.

Sending reports and sending emails is easy.

I have found the below items most valuable:

1. The ability to find objects easily through the 'Capture' option saves your time most significantly.
   
2. The ability to run only a particular step, instead of running it from scratch.
   
3. The ability to debug.
   
4. Given that A2019 is a web application, it saves space in a significant manner.
   
5. It is user-friendly and anyone can learn easily.
6. No coding knowledge needed.
7. The flow chart view of the steps is very easy to understand.
   
8. The free learning course provided helped me a lot. I was able to better understand and also practice on my own.

I would like to have on-call customer care support so that if the user gets stuck anywhere, he/she can get the issue clarified.

Additional details or support can be provided for IQ Bots.

The Help menu/description can be provided while hovering over actions so that it can help us better to know them.

The Variable feature can be improved, as there is no single place to handle all your variables.

Sometimes, while recording, the screen hangs and we are not able to perform any actions during that time.

Also, the support should be more user-friendly, as we are not getting any support online.

I have been using A2019 for more than five months.

This product is extremely stable.

Scalability is very good.

I was using Selenium but because it involved too much coding, I switched to A2019.

The initial setup is very easy.

I implemented it on my own.

The cost can be reduced a little for users.

I did not evaluate other options before switching to Automation Anywhere.

We are using AA to automate business use cases, which includes applications like SAP, ServiceNow, Outlook, etc.

We use Windows Server for the Bot Runner, Bot Developer, and Bot Creator. The Control Room is installed in an on-premises hosting. We have multiple clients here at HCL and we used AA for many clients and automated many use cases.

We provide AA setup for customers as well. We install, manage, and set up AA for customers to use, which makes it easy and can be expanded whenever they want. 

AA helped us to reduce the processing time of requests almost instantly.

One of the challenges we had was SAP Password Reset Requests, and we automated this process in AA and now the bot runs as soon as it receives an email in its inbox. AA extracts the data from email, logs into SAP, and then after resetting the password, sends the notification to the user. This all takes place within two minutes, maximum.

Another important use case involves user termination from the organization. The HR team raises a request to SNOW, and the bot receives the alert from SNOW. After checking if the termination date is met, the user is terminated from all the applications, and access is revoked by the bot.

I found that the REST API commands are very useful and easy to use. We use the REST API in multiple places, which saves a lot of time in terms of development as well as execution. We use the SNOW API and the TOPdesk API to create and update tickets in these apps.

Another great feature is MetaBot; when we automate web applications (mostly), after some time, the design or UI gets updated and we only have to recalibrate the bot. The bot accepts the changes and it starts to work again, which saves a lot of time for the developer and the business.

I would like to use VB.NET native code inside of Automation Anywhere. If there were a feature like InvokeCode in UiPath, it will help me to write native VB.NET code inside of AA. This would be a relief to the developers. 

Another feature I want to see is data conversion from one format to another. For example, I want to convert a string date time to Date Time format, or a float to an integer, etc. This will give me the flexibility to interact with other applications and help with passing correct values. I won't have to worry about the error handling from the application that I am automating.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for the past year and a half.

I am using both AA and UiPath, and I see both of them at par. Each tool has some advantages over the other.

The setup and licensing cost is affordable, and it is not exaggerated like UiPath.

We evaluated Blue Prism, NICE, WorkFusion, UiPath, and Automation Anywhere. We ranked AA first pace.

I think AA is a great tool and I love working with it.

We have a long list of customers and multiple use cases in pharma, account & finance, customer billing & payment, and other domains. We use AA to automate those tasks that need less or no human interaction. The reconciliation tasks, SAP and Excel operations, are automated using AA, take less time, and give accurate results. 

Working with MetaBot provided simple drag and drop functionality, integration of DLL of SAP, Outlook, Excel and other application make tasks easier for developers.

Customers are happy with overall performance of bots and it makes the developer's life easy.  

We have a lot of clients who use AA bots in their own process. Tasks that are automated require less human input. AA bots save a lot of time, increase efficiency, deliver accurate output, and provide consistency which improves the overall function of processes in different domains.   

AA is an amazing tool that provides great features to perform Excel operations, Data Integration, and manipulation saving thousands of hours. It is an easy to use application that makes the developer's life comfortable. It doesn't require a technical background.

MetaBot is one of the most valuable features of AA. The simple drag and drop functionality, integration of DLL of SAP, Outlook, Excel, and other application make tasks easier for developers. There's nothing like MetaBot in other tools. 

One can also check the Bot farm for readymade Bots provided by other AA developers and experts.

A2019 is another great feature introduced by AA. The web-based Bot development, Control room, and Bot Insights are other nice features. Improved Error Handling and support of Python script in A2019 seems good.

I have identified a few areas where one can find the scope of improvement:

1. AA IQ Bot has not yet succeeded in living up to its reputation due to its high cost, low ROI, and its inability to meet client requirements.

2. Commands such as OCR are not up to the mark the output accuracy is not satisfactory.

3. It is unable to identify IF/Else, for Loop block when reviewing/writing AA code. There should be an expand/collapse button to identify a block of code.

Integration with Google Spreadsheets and other products should be included in the next release.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for the last three years.

It is a great and advanced tool for the development of Bots.

In terms of scalability, AA is one of the best available tools in the market and provides a lot of command and tools that do not require any technical specialty.  

Easy to use, advanced features like MetaBot, Improved Error Handling, Web-based bot development in A2019, support of Python script and many more.

I have had a great experience with the technical team. I got stuck in one scenario where Object Cloning was not working in the production environment. After spending many hours, I connected with the AA technical team and they provided a prompt solution.

I did not use any other solution.

ROI depends on time, cost, output accuracy, and effective and consistent results.

The pricing of AA is quite high as compared to other tools as it's one of the best RPA tools available in the market.

I did not evaluate other options.

Just reduce AA licensing prices and provide real scenario-based training modules in learning sections.

We use this product to automate business processes with higher accuracy, efficiency, scalability, and robustness. The projects include applications like SAP, SAP BOBJ, SAP BI, and a few legacy enterprise applications like Oracle EBS, and Oracle BI Discoverer.

These applications can be easily automated using Automation Anywhere, and integration with Outlook or Gmail for email, so that automatic responses can be set, is something else that can be easily included.

In a few of our environments like HR and finance, where the process runs with higher priority, Automation Anywhere works perfectly.

In our organization, areas like the human resources department and revenue department are completely being replaced by robots. The bots are saving a massive amount of human time and also reducing the intervention.

The process we have called Job Posting involves scraping data from two websites and posting the job in another's portal. This normally takes three people almost 50-60 hours per week, whereas the bot can easily do it in two hours. This is one of the important use cases that we have implemented.

The tool is designed to be easy enough for a new user to automate tasks.

The first and foremost feature is the availability of activities. These include activities for the keyboard, mouse, different types of loops, conditional, clipboard, and many more.

The overall UI of the tool is so user-friendly that even a beginner can use it easily.

The predefined recording facility is helpful and it mainly includes three types, being smart, screen, and web.

Automation can be more complex when the use case is to scrape text from a non-digital image, although thanks to Automation Anywhere's image recognition and OCR facility, the job can be completed easily.

One of the important drawbacks of Automation Anywhere is that it needs to be able to show the automated process as a single flowchart. After complete deployment of the bot, such as a Task Bot, to see an overview of the complete process and the steps in the job is difficult. As such, I would like to suggest that they provide an option to show the entire process as a flowchart. This isn't required for the UI pane, but perhaps simply export it as a flowchart. This would be great.

The ability to automate using third-party code involvement should be improved. As far as I know, Python scripts can be used to automate a few use cases but it would be great if there is a change to include the .NET and C# languages. I've also worked on UiPath and .NET code can be used for most of the Excel automation. This includes operations like creating pivot tables and applying advanced filters. These are things that work directly with VB.NET code. 

Automation anywhere needs a forum where active users can provide answers for standard errors and exceptions. More webinars regarding the latest releases and the features should also be created.

Automation Anywhere has been used for less than one year in our organization. 

I would say the stability of the solution depends on how well the developer understands the process. When it comes to the product's stability, Automation Anywhere is doing a great job in maintaining timely releases.

I would say this product is very scalable and the ability to have Metabots and Task Bots makes it even more so.

Automation Anywhere has a great technical support team. We had a situation where the bot needed to deal with difficult tasks and the entire team got stuck. At this point, we had the idea of asking technical support for help, and the response time was very good.

I came from a UiPath background and I haven't completely moved to Automation Anywhere. I still work on both of these tools. Based on the use cases and the client's requirements, the appropriate tool will be chosen.

To speak in particular about Automation Anywhere, I've heard a few of our clients saying that Automation Anywhere has much more ability, such as the usage of Metabots, and Task Bots, which can be used repeatedly in different use cases. To me, this is a very interesting feature.

The initial setup was a bit hectic, but later on the with the help of the wonderful support team, it went smoothly.

I would rate the vendor team an eight out of ten.

So far, the organization has 20+ bots, which has generated more than $50K of ROI. As a developer, I am not familiar with all of the numbers.

Pricing is a bit high when compared to other available tools; however, the tool is worth the cost.

When it comes to automation, the common question will be to compare the tool with other available tools and as per my knowledge, the first comparison happens with UiPath. Although UiPath has its own advantages, when it is balanced with the most popular capabilities like scalability, security, and maintenance, Automation Anywhere wins.

I would like to suggest the vendor have a well-maintained community forum, where the notice board should be available to notify of upcoming releases. I would also like to see more webinars conducted to help make the tool more popular

It is good to see more improvements in the tool and the effort of the team to implement all of the latest features is highly appreciated.