Automation Anywhere Reviews

We normally use automation to interact with SAP applications. Our platform is entirely built on SAP. We are mainly a manufacturing company. We interact with SAP and do a lot of things, like invoicing, entering the value in SAP, and so on and so forth.

The ease of access and deployment are the most valuable features. With SAP, moving from production test to production is very difficult, it takes too long and too much testing. If there's an error or any change in the system, you will have to go through a huge process which takes around one to two months. However, in Automation Anywhere, if you want to do a small or a medium-level change, you can ask the developer to work on it. E.g., one or two weeks is hardly enough for us to develop and deploy it again. So, it sources and is much faster. I believe the security is a very important matter in terms of our company, so that is also an aspect where Automation Anywhere shines.

From an SAP point of view, we have in-built features. They have integrated everything together, so it's much easier for us to use that.

We have in-house, a few variables, which we use from technical perspectives. We don't have them in Automation Anywhere, but they introduced them yesterday. I had a word with an Executive Officer, and he told me that they took all this into consideration and developed it. 

It depends on how you develop it predominantly. Because it's not judged just by saying that it's not stable or anything like that, it's how you develop a framework and how you do it. That's how. From my experience, we have a good number of developers. On my team's, we have around five to six members who are working on this process. We have created a framework in such a way that we don't miss anything. For the past one to one and a half years, we haven't had any post-production issues. The amount of human errors that have occurred have been reduced to around 15 to 20 per person.

It's a scalable product and process. We've been using it for a long time. There are few products in the market, out of which we chose Automation Anywhere because it suits our company very well. We have a scope of expanding the process and bring new teams in to be involved in this as well.

We have 24/7 support. We usually talk to the representative and get a lot of information. We share our knowledge. 

One of the most important things, which I found interesting at this conference, is even high-level executive people come to us and they ask for feedback, e.g., the drawbacks faced while using this product? They're getting in all the knowledge and feedback, then they're implementing it. The most important thing is they're implementing what, as a developer, we wanted include to make our lives easier and for the business to be satisfied.

The initial setup was straightforward. The new version of A2019, which they have introduced, is much easier than what we are doing now. It's all cloud-based and very easy to install. The whole experience is better.

I have experience working with UiPath as well. The one thing is the customer involvement and experience is much better with Automation Anywhere. The feedback which we give and the response time from the Automation team is much quicker. We had some negative feedback and some suggestions to Automation Anywhere team, which they took into consideration. It's like a people's software, where they listen to developers and improve on it. That's the reason why my organization and I are using Automation Anywhere.

I'll say that it is perfect; 10 out of 10. Because we had some drawbacks in Automation Anywhere, which they fixed and developed, taking into consideration the feedback from a huge community of developers. To consider every piece of feedback and work on that, it's a really tedious task. They worked on that and proved that they can do it again.

I actively participate in doing all the data analysis and robotics things in the company.

I work for a Genpact. Its a Genpact India, which is privately maintained. It's a US-based company. We work for a different type of a client. It's not only about healthcare. We work for a financial domain and financial development domain. We deal with different types of analysis, where we apply all types of robotic automation processes along with machine learning algorithms, if required. It all depends upon the client and what they require to done on their behalf.

This solution is all about robotic process automation (RPA), which we deal with. We know that in real life, we have hectic work day-to-day and the volume is increases. Doing manual intervention leads to error. That's why everywhere it feels like we are implementing robotic process automation. In a traditional way, we used to use that RPA console, but this tool helps us do RPA and saves us time, improving our quality. This is required at any level to get a better ROI.

It's all about the client requirement. About six months back, we received a request from a client who wanted us to automate their process. We gave different solutions to do it. They came up with a solution, and said "Okay I want you to go with RPA using this automation tool".

That is how Automation Anywhere came into the picture. It took almost two to three weeks to first learn because we were not aware of how it works. As a consulting company, you need to take a project first because that is the important part. If you miss the project, it will go to another company. So, we took the project and learned about how to involve all these things. We built a team who understood the process, what needed to be done, and what did not need to be done in this particular process, then we took this project.

Based on using this RPA tool, Automation Anywhere, we delivered successfully. The client was happy because they suggested it and gave us the idea. We didn't have to worry about how it would work. So, it was fine for us.

When you look at the volume to process, it takes time. You have a mindset that you may fall in error. If you want to reduce both those things, you need to come up with a solution that will give you both those things together: One is quality, which you are always looking at, and second, your costs. This also saves the cost because you need to hire 10 people to do VBA automation, that will take time. If you use tools which are already enabled with Automation Anywhere, you can enable and use them wherever you want. I feel good comfortable with this particular tool.

I suggest that they add some features in dashboard, where you can say, "These type of features are things that people like more." You want to add those to your project and showcase them to the client so they will be happier. Because you know what features people like if you give a suggestion, that is good for everyone.

I could not say it's a stable product, because when you move in the market, there are many companies are there. They are coming with the different features about your machine learning algorithm, and we should have something predefined.

We already have in Automation Anywhere something that is giving me suggestions. The moment someone is capturing data or reading data, you might suggest, "Okay, you want to do these things." It means that you are giving a suggestion based on the prior historical data that you have collected from different clients. If that is getting enabled, then it would be good because I would not have to worry about what features I would need to add. We know that the client might be looking for these types of features.

I feel day by day there will be an implementation coming up and we will be adding new features. I will look forward to using their services for this.

A tedious task, they have reduced it to a normal task. So, I feel comfortable because Automation Anywhere (the company) is working toward minimizing our efforts, and we are happy with that.

If the process was totally VBA-driven, e.g., sending a mail to a client and attaching so many document to emails, that's very tedious stuff. Something might happen if you do it by VBA automation. E.g., if you're Excel is not responding or what will happen if your system will get hung. The Automation Anywhere tool is in cloud so we don't worry about that. It's all about Internet speeds and servers that are stalling out. I feel that it save us time and provides ROI as a monetary benefit because it reduces FTE, the number of headcount working for a particular project.

I was just aware of this particular tool apart from using a VBA tool for normal automations, I am happy with this tool. I will not be going with another tool. There is always a market open so people can go and switch. However, I feel this is a good tool for day by day. Everything coming over is new, which is very good.

I feel giving them an eight to nine (out of 10). There should be always improvement for any product which comes out the market because there is also a competitor inline with them.

We use this solution for automating tasks such as:

• Manual journal entries on monthly closing
• Travel and expense claims processing
• Net sales monthly closing checks
• Logistics master data maintenance for every new shipment
• Vendor creation on master data for every new demand
• Order confirmation reminders automated for vendors 

We are just using it as one of the automation technologies. The major automation has already happened over SAP on the backend since the whole company globally runs on a single ERP. However, where conventional methods or basic solutions don't work, it definitely helps to use AA software.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the SMART Recorder.

The overall developer client has an easy-to-use UI.

The Control Room, scheduling features, and client repository are really good features that make day-to-day bot development and enhancement quite quick and easy.

The PDF Integration feature is also quite helpful, as well as the Send email command that helps us skip a lot of Outlook-based steps that are not necessary.

More support required to be embedded in the SMART Recorder for SAP objects.

IQ Bot should be available embedded as a feature on the developer client and not as a separate product.

Some NLP AI is required to work in combination with RPA, especially for reading unstructured emails. 

This solution is quite stable. We get one or two tickets in the whole year due to any downtime and that is never due to AA.

AA is the easiest and the best when it comes to scalability.

Technical support for this solution is the quickest and the best. I always get a response within the same day and their support matches our SLAs.

It was a little complex due to the IIS Manager and a lot of other features but with version 11 and beyond it is much easier to install and configure.

We performed the implementation in-house.

While calculating the setup cost you should account for the server, virtual machines, product licenses, maintenance costs, and running costs.

Before choosing this solution we evaluated UiPath and Blue Prism.

Be careful with the installation of this solution. It is better to do it with support from the vendor at first.

The primary use case is automation of processes for people services, such as data management of the employees, and financial processes, like reporting, financial reporting, and month-end closing activities.

it helps to save time when doing processes. E.g., when you do a manual process for eight hours, that time is saved because the bot will do that task for you. The process owners will be able to do the analysis part. The repetitive/manual part will be done by the robot. 

Another advantage is that bot functions 24/5 and humans cannot do that for our processes because they need to go home.

• Easy to use
• Very user-friendly
• Easy to learn

When using MetaBot, we cannot viably search inside it. 

When we debugging the automation, we cannot see where the automation goes after doing a subtask.

The object cloning is inaccurate sometimes, but this can be improved with future versions.

For A2019, I am looking for a faster running bot because I am still experiencing delays when running the bot.

Automation Anywhere is stable right now. It is constantly improving its user experience and the tool. The stability depends on how process owners, the business, and developers use Automation Anywhere to improve the processes of the company.

80 percent of the bots do not need to be supervised. However, 20 percent need to supervised because sometimes errors occur during the run. Most of the errors that I have encountered have been because the object cloning did not capture the buttons properly.

Automation Anywhere is very scalable as to the costs and benefits to the company.

I have already created 15 to 20 bots already. I think they're running well today.

The tech support of Automation Anywhere is very supportive regarding the voice of the customer. E.g., they ask for our feedback about what should be improved on their automation tool. This is one of the things customers look for in a product or tool.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup. I just use the tool.

Our IT team set up the automation without the help of a third-party.

The main difference is between Automation Anywhere and its competitors (UiPath and Blue Prism) is that Automation Anywhere is user-friendly. You still need programming language to use UiPath and Blue Prism. For Automation Anywhere, even if you don't know a programming language, you can easily learn the tool and use it.

Automation Anywhere is a great, user-friendly automation tool, but it still has room for improvement, like the MetaBot and object cloning part.

We have a variety of different use cases, specifically for marketing and finance. 

• Our first goal is to look at automating repetitive tasks. 
• Our second goal is to have Automation Anywhere scale from RPA into a more cognitive tool, providing higher value solutions to the business.

We have been able to take resources that have been doing manual work and putting them into more productive work. This has been a positive impact.

We are using it to optimize our processes, then automating them.

It removes demotivating, repetitive work from our teams.

Orchestration is the valuable feature.

A lot more can be done to make the solution easy for developer to use. While it is good as a base product, it could have better logging and alerting features. We would like the tools to have more usability, especially for humans in the middle.

Other solution features which are offered by competitors, like IBM, should now be part of the part of the Automation Anywhere suite of products.

I need high value products to be created, so I need integration with other solutions. Machine learning and AI need to be integrated with Automation Anywhere. While IQ Bot is a good beginning, our company does not work with manual paperwork since we are already digital. We would like to see more integration with cognitive tools going forward.

It took us eight months to scale to our current number of bots.

We used a strategic partner (integrator) for the deployment.

Set good expectations with your senior management regarding going after the right processes. Look at innovative areas to implement a prepared robotic process automation workflow, so you can reap the benefits at a later time.

Automation Anywhere University is nice. The courses are very intuitive.

The primary use case is to automate processes internally for my company.

I build a lot of processes which have saved a lot of time for my company using this solution. 

In my previous company, a payroll employee would close a payroll, which resulted in him receiving six to seven reports. He managed 15 companies. Each report took him 30 to 40 minutes per company. With Automation Anywhere, I was able to save this work time for him. He was then able to focus on other value-added tasks. The bot now pulls the report for him, sending it directly to the client.

It is very easy to use and learn compared to a programming language, where you have to have a background in coding. Anyone can learn it. Learning the software is easy.

As a developer, the product is easy to use. It has a lot of commands that I can select from, such as folders, organizing files, and going to websites. It saves time from what a human would be doing.

The only challenge is knowing the process of using the software.

I would like to have Git implemented with the version control system.

Sometimes, the recorder from Automation Anywhere does not work well and is inaccurate. This should be improved.

I haven't had experience with the technical support. I never call them.

I would like them to have better license management.

Automation Anywhere is a very friendly tool compared to other RPA tools.

Look into the usefulness of RPA robotic process automation. As a solution, Automation Anywhere is complete for business users and developers.

The bot creation is easy if you have one or two TaskBots. However, if the process is complex, you will need to split the process into modules.  

The solution integrates very well with other applications. Though, it only works with Internet Explorer right now, but you can run other applications with an open program. Object clone captures the objects very well from the software. It code APIs, run stuff from the back-end (like SQL queries), and executing procedures. Everything is in one package.

While I am registered to take courses with Automation Anywhere University, I don't feel that I need to take them. I learn from hands-on training.

I am new to learning about IQ Bot, but I think it is really useful for an insurance company because they scan documents all the time.

The primary use case is for automating our mortgage and loan origination processes. 

We brought onshore a lot of what we were doing offshore, saving our company close to $20 million.

Centralized automation is its most valuable feature.

The bot creation process is relatively simple.

It is reasonably useful for developers. It can be a challenge for a developer, as it limits what they can do.

I would like centralized orchestration and better exception handling in the next release.

Because of the stability of the application and how it interacts with some of our legacy applications, it does cause difficulties.

The stability of the solution is getting better. We have had some issues with the Control Room stability, which makes it harder for us to manage the bots. This is in recent versions.

We are scaling up, but I don't think that we are scaling correctly.

The technical support is solid. They are pretty responsive.

The setup is mostly straightforward.

We used Ernest & Young for the deployment. They helped us get a lot of the work done.

We measure ROI through time and labor savings (FTEs). 

We save time through our reduction in cycle time: 30 to 35 days.

We looked at Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism.

Have your business plan well-developed.

The solution is reasonably wide open, so it integrates quite well with other solutions.

The IQ Bots are of limited use to us right now.

We don't use AISense, and the version of the application that we use isn't capable with Citrix.

Our first use case was to program a bot which could do the work of approximate 30 people, taking around half a year to implement. We did that bot around a year ago. This bot was the best case scenario for Automation Anywhere, making it the perfect application for RPA in our corporation.

Automation Anywhere can work with very old applications. For example, we had one application about to collapse and were able to capture all its information before the collapse happened.

The most valuable feature is its easy to use. For developers, the solution is super easy. I just learned the new Workbench editor, which is even better. In the version that we have now, we normally use a few TaskBots and a lot of MetaBots, so we can integrate DLLs and further enhance the bots that we have. It is very impressive.

The bot creation process is simple and useful. Whatever you need to do, it is there. If there is something else, there are the MetaBot functions.

It has been challenging integrating Automation Anywhere with other solutions, due to all of the controls, as we are a bank. 

We are really excited to have Python run directly from the bots. This would be a massive upgrade, as we could integrate AI even further with the solution. 

There is room for improvement in AI, but they are working on it.

They can work more on integrating the code. I would like to see more similar examples where we don't have to create the code in the bot, but can create the code in the Workbench.

The technical support is great, but I would like them to be faster with their response times. Sometimes, we have to contact them multiple time on the same ticket to receive a response.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward, especially as a PoC. With the controls, it could be a bit more complex.

We have a third-party who manages our IT. They did an IaaS, then we did everything else.

We also evaluated UiPath and Automation Anywhere. 

We chose Automation Anywhere, as it was the more complete, simpler application.

Do a very simple automation of an application entry, like registration. Then, you will see how fast the application is and will start using it right away.

Every time a new employee starts with us, we start them on the Automation Anywhere University, "Hello Bot: Introduction to RPA" course.

While the cognitive document processing is very impressive, we sadly don't have it right now. We are working on acquiring it.

We don't use Citrix. We use Azure for every deployment. Azure has worked very well and is scalable.