Automation Anywhere Reviews

We have been creating a lot of bots for the finance department. At this time, we are trying to use the TaskBots and MetaBots, not IQ Bots. 

As of now, we have automated processes from the finance, accounting, treasury, and tax departments.

An example of how it has saved time: I know 10 to 12 accountants who were doing a lot of day-to-day manual tasks. Once we implemented the Automation Anywhere into my company, we freed up a lot of their time, so they could work on other processes. 

I like the OCR feature, where we can capture information from PDFs.

The commands provides by Automation Anywhere make the tool easy to use.

I know Automation Anywhere is available for front-end applications, but I don't know how it deals with the back-end. If they are sending technology which comes through to the back-end, that would be a big evolution in the industry.

Citrix is only in the development stage. Automation Anywhere could put some time into improving this more.

The stability is good.

We started with zero bots. In our first cycle, we developed around eight bots. In our second cycle, we created around five or six bots. Now, we are on our third bot cycle.

The technical support is good. They try to get back to us within one to two days. Once they do respond, everything is good.

The initial setup was complex.

Initially, we used an implementer for the deployment. Now, we do everything on our own.

We measure ROI by how much we are saving for our internal people.

Compared to the other competitors' tools that I have been experienced with for bot creation, Automation Anywhere is user-friendly.

I have taken Automation Anywhere University courses. They are simple and detailed. The courses include videos and quiz questions.

We want to learn more about IQ Bots going forward.

It is for my partner development. We primarily work in the insurance business. So, we do a lot of insurance back office operations. These are the types of processes that we have automated.

We previously had a lot of manual processes. With the bot, we were able to automate them. Therefore, we are able to see the real-time value in our business area.

We have multiple developers on our team. With its user-friendly user interface, our developers are able to quickly pick it up. The ease of use is really good.

Bot creation is a cool feature. It allows the developer to do complex things. 

There are some places where Automation Anywhere needs improve a lot, especially from an integration perspective. We have had to build our own scripts to make this happen, building a bot in Automation Anywhere, along with some scripts. However, we have not yet implemented the Automation Anywhere MetaBots. So, once the MetaBots are implemented in our area, we should be able to achieve more.

If the bots become more stable, we can completely avoid using our additional scripts.

I would like to see the record management, data tracking, and database feature. Some of these have been implemented in the version 11. I have not used the latest release, version 11. Also, if some various cable features which come out with it, that will be really helpful.

I would not give stability good marks. There are a lot of negative things stability-wise. These things need to be improved, especially regarding reliability. When we have a huge end user process or need to automate a a huge volume, the failures are high.

The product is more stable versus older versions.

We face issues when we need to increase volumes. Currently, it is failing for some reason, and we don't know the reason. It fails or stops, then we need to see what is going on. We have to fix that, then our developers need to rerun it. These are mostly practical challenges for our team who uses it on daily basis.

Timing is a problem with the technical support. A person will be assigned, but that tech support person may only be available during our morning hours. In the morning, we might be in a meeting, not able to respond when the tech support reaches us, then when we try to reach them back, the tech support person may be on a call or not in the office. This is a challenge.

The initial setup was complex.

To scale from pilot to production takes a long time because the initial setup process is complex.

I am the consultant who does the deployments.

The ROI is really good. We have saved time and money.

We evaluated Automation, Kryon, and Blue Prism. Of those, we felt Automation Anywhere was more user-friendly. On the developer side, we received feedback that development was quick in Automation Anywhere, which is why we shortlisted them.

Since using Automation Anywhere, I might be inclined towards using another product.

Automation Anywhere is currently a good product. The RPA market is growing.

The integration with other applications is good. There are some complications. With some specific applications, it may not work. We are facing some specific issues, but we have found workarounds.

I am certified in Automation Anywhere University.

I have not personally used the IQ Bot nor have I used any trial version, but the features look really good.

I do not use Citrix automation.

We have so many use cases. One of them is in finance and accounts. We have customer billing portals where there are invoices and purchase orders. The bot goes through these and gives a roll-up of the billing numbers. It goes through each customer portal. One example of a customer is IBM. It goes to the IBM portal, it logs in with bot credentials to SAP Ariba, opens an invoice and matches the purchase order items with that invoice, line by line. It then posts that invoice for billing purposes in that customer billing portal.

With the above bot in place, the cash-collection process will actually improve.

One of our other use cases is that in our general ledger process, our accountant was actually doing cash-to-bank reconciliations. He was going into SAP, downloading the open items, and then going into the bank statements and comparing the balances. By using Automation Anywhere, we were able to automate this process and now a bot is actually working as a bookkeeper and it's trying to close all the open items of the previous month and the current month. It ensures that the unidentified balance between the bank and the SAP balances is zero.

That cash and bank reconciliation is part of our book-closing process. It used to take 20 days for books to be closed. It now takes between ten and 12 days to close the books. That's an eight-days reduction and that's because of only one activity we have automated. 

As we speak, we have automated general entries and the AR reconciliation process as well. The time needed for our month-end close has been reduced.

MetaBot is the most valuable feature. Other products have robotic functionality but MetaBot is a kind of functionality by which code is created. For example, if you log in to the SAP Ariba portal and the MetaBot functionality is used, then whenever anyone within our company has to use the SAP Ariba portal, they will not need to code the process again. It will become a drag-and-drop functionality so business users who do not have coding knowledge can drag and drop. Out of ten steps, that user is able to drag and drop six of them to MetaBot. He is left with only four steps that need coding. It saves a lot of time, but these functionalities cannot be achieved overnight. You have to invest time and energy, create a set of libraries.

There is room for improvement when this application is used in a Citrix-based environment.

Another thing I have noticed is that the previous version does not have log functionality. If an external audit is happening, those logs are not available to show what changes have happened in the application. But in the new version they improved it and now those logs are available. So when our external audit came, we were able to demonstrate that whatever changes are happening in the application are getting logged somewhere and saved for future reference. In the future, if any fraud happens, we'll be able to backtrack that fraud into that application.

Stability is good, but it totally depends on the kind of infrastructure the organization is using. If the organization using Automation Anywhere has a sound infrastructure, the stability is good. But if the infrastructure keeps changing, then the application becomes a little erratic.

Scaling is very easy. We were able to scale it up very easily.

For 2018, we thought of doing eight projects, but we completed 25. We're definitely planning to scale up, but scaling up does not depend on Automation Anywhere. It actually depends on our organization's strategic plan, and how fast we want to do it. As an organization, we want to be a tortoise in the journey, rather than being a hare. We want to have a consistent pace of implementation. Initially, we were like the hare and did some extra implementations, but now we are trying to match it up with the pace of the organization. Sometimes, too big a change can rock the boat, which we don't want to do.

But equally, we were able to demonstrate that this application can do wonders for the organization, help us to digitally transform the way we're working, and introduce a new way of working to any organization. Now, humans have started adopting bots as their new team members.

Automation Anywhere has a very nice support team, and it's just a call away. You don't have to log tickets, although that functionality is also available. I have a dedicated person at Automation Anywhere. I can call her at 12 am and she will pick up and ensure that the issue is prioritized and solved the next day for me. I like the way that is done. It doesn't cause me sleepless nights.

The initial setup is straightforward. They have a guidebook to help our IT infrastructure team to set it up. It was very easy. Anybody who does not come from a software background could read it and would be able to install the application and start using it. I have done it myself and I don't have a technical background. It's like downloading Microsoft Word and using it. It's very simple.

Our deployment took three months.

Our implementation strategy is PDCA: Plan, Do, Check, Act. We planned this implementation, and then did it. We then checked whatever was not done correctly in the first instance and acted on it to complete the implementation. We believe in having a very simple approach. We planned to do automation using Automation Anywhere and then we acted on it. Then we checked that out of, say, ten milestones, we were able to close seven of them. We acted on completing the other three milestones.

They're very flexible around pricing and licensing.

We evaluated:

• Automation Anywhere vs Blue Prism
• Automation Anywhere vs UiPath
• Automation Anywhere vs NICE 
• Automation Anywhere vs WorkFusion

However, the Automation Anywhere payment plan, the flexibility they have shown, and the customer service support were fantastic. At a customer service level, we don't want to buy a product and then struggle with the support they're providing.

Go slow. Don't rush into things. Try to adopt this implementation around the business strategy your organization has. Don't follow other organizations blindly. Have a digital policy around adopting this technology. Have a Chief Digital Officer, who is able to understand this and then internally sell it.

Don't go with a "big bang" approach, but rather, go with the right test use cases, and then try to actually solve a complex business challenge through this implementation. Don't implement it just for the sake of it. For example, when we implemented it our focus was not to implement robotics. Our focus was to use this technology to solve a complex business problem so that it makes a meaningful difference in the lives of people who are doing that process daily.

For example, now a bot is able to do customer billing for us and we are able to collect fast. It directly impacts the revenue. On the other hand, if the cycle closing month-end is fast, my CFO has more time for his final quarter closing. He has more time to go through what didn't go well, rather than struggling to close the books and not having time to do an analysis and get insights into what actually works. So we are trying to solve complex business challenges. We're not here to implement robotics.

We could use any technology but, up until now, this technology has helped us.

We have ten-plus users of this solution in the roles of bot manager and bot runner. There are eight people responsible for implementation and deployment and they are solution architects.

We are currently using Automation Anywhere for a Master Card customer complaint bot that will log tickets on our top priority websites. When customers complain it can be logged directly or the agent logs it on one of our databases. The bot goes to the database and can pick up the ticket that was logged on a top priority website. It then becomes a role ID number to us for verification that has been locked properly. Third parties can take notes, then once locked, they can give the ticket to us.

We did this procedure manually before the use of Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere is very simple to use. The features are very simple and the application light. Overall I love it.

I have been using Automation Anywhere(AA) for approximately five months.

Automation Anywhere is a very stable solution.

The scalability of Automation Anywhere is perfect.

I am the only one using the solution. However, I am going to create a team that can use it optimally.

The challenge we face is the response time of the Automation Anywhere support teams. They could be quicker to give support. However, the problem could be because of the time difference. When we do get in contact with the support their knowledge is very good.

I have used other BPM solutions previously, such as Optimus.

We decided to take processes away from Optimus and we now are using Automation Anywhere.

The initial implementation of Automation Anywhere regarding the elastic search and database set connection can be a little difficult. However, I am skilled enough to get through it. There were some balancing issues that my other team members had to manage. They are having difficulty in balancing when I checked the architecture properly. We determined later that there was no need for a load balance to be done on the servers. We didn't do any load balancing and then the elastic search was not done.

The first time we did the implementation took us some time because we had to set up the server based on the minimum server requirements that were sent to us. Then we had some load balancing issues which took some days because we did not have all the knowledge.

If we had all the information we would have been able to do it faster. When we were applying the certification to the servers it was a different approach because it's a Java-based solution. In the first instance, we had a challenge doing the implementation. After the initial problems were resolved I did not have any problems implementing Automation Anywhere. It took approximately two hours to get it all done.

The deployments only need approximately five to ten people.

We don't have a lot of processes. If we want to expand we can change the license to allow it. Currently our license, we can only have 10,000 bots, on all processes. If we have approximately 10,000 bot processes on the control we'll be able to manage the processes in the control room. Five and ten people should be able to manage 10,000 bots.

There is an annual license to use the solution.

I would recommend this solution to any organization or individual.

I rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution in my environment is to use bots to extract the important logistical information from each of the customer Microsoft Excel sheets. Next, the information is transferred, to be entered into the government official logistics documentation.

Prior to submitting the data to the company warehouse management system, it is checked and balanced. The same needs to be done before submission to the official government website.

It helps my organization to further improve the management and assigning of tasks to its human resources.

Through the use of Automation Anywhere bots, no longer do the staff in my organization need to carry out the task of transferring data from Excel sheets to our data or the government website. Thus, as all of these processes are being automated, this manpower can now be shifted to be used in other areas that can be beneficial to the company.

The most valuable feature is IQ Bot, as it allowed us to train it to extract important logistical information from customer PDF documents, irrespective of the format. This is valuable because not all PDF sheets have the same format. Many customers tend to use various formats to represent their data. Hence, with IQ bot, even with the wide variety of different PDF formats, the bots would still able to help us extract what we needed.

I hope that Automation Anywhere can further optimize its bots to help automate tasks with Microsoft Word documents and Microsoft PowerPoint documents because, in most organizations, there is a lot of reporting required. Hence, it would be great and more cost and time-efficient if there is a way to automate everyday tasks such as Microsoft Word Report Generation and Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation Generation.

Further, I would also recommend that Automation Anywhere assist users with automating tasks such as the monthly payment of essential services. For example, automating payment of utilities like the water bill or electricity bill, online.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

The scalability of this solution is fantastic, as the bots can be run on multiple machines at the same time.

The customer service is fantastic and they always provide reliable feedback and help.

We did not use another RPA product prior to Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We have an in-house developer as well as a vendor team. The vendor team has a high level of expertise.

The ROI in terms of finance cannot be disclosed due to company policy but the bots have made the everyday process of extracting logistics information from customer Excel sheets or PDF files much more efficient and faster than the traditional manual method.

I advise others that even as of right now, the setup cost and licensing cost to automate bots on Automation Anywhere is steep but it is worth the investment!

We considered other Robotic Process Automation tools such as UiPath and Blue Prism.

Primarily we use this to get rid of the time-consuming and repetitive tasks such as sending TDS certificates to the client according to their PAN details, invoice processing, and collecting data from online websites.

Processes related to the invoice, Sales Order, and Purchase Order are commonly used so as to avoid time delay and increase efficiency.

We have also developed bots to browse to share market sites and generate a report on the Top 10 Gainers and Top 10 Losers, which has been scheduled, and the report gets mailed to all at ease and on time.

Automation Anywhere has been a boon for our organization because the tedious task that used to be hectic and made us remain seated for hours is now done with a single click.

The development of bots has helped a lot for every branch in the organization, whether it be financing, HR, or the IT department. Now, employees are not depressed working the same repetitive tasks and that time can be utilized for some other productive work.

While many of the bots are scheduled, reports are automatically generated on time and there is nothing to worry about regarding the time constraints.

There are many valuable features in this product. The OCR for character recognition has helped a lot during the invoice processing and billing, as there are some parts of the documents which are handwritten.

The scheduling of bots is also very important. No matter where you are, you need not be physically present for running the bot at that particular time.

Error handling plays an important role when you schedule a bot because if you are not physically present and something happens, you need to know what has gone wrong. 

We do not have a precise area that needs improvement, but sometimes while running bots that traverse through different websites, the screen hangs or takes time to fully load. This in turn increases the wait time. So, if possible, having saved a screen while the earlier bot runs and comparing that saved screen with the current bot run, so as to get an idea if the screen has been fully loaded or not, would be great. 

Though we can make this happen by adding extra logic to the bot, this would increase the bot size for every new website search.  

We have been using Automation Anywhere for more than two years.

In 2018-2019 it was AA v10.7 and then in 2019-2020, it was updated to AA v11.3.

Nothing as such, as Automation Anywhere keeps on upgrading which in turn makes it easier and efficient to develop bots from the prior version.

I have used Automation Anywhere for automating different use cases which involved applications such as Excel, SAP, PDF, Salesforce, Outlook Web applications, Desktop Automation Email automation, and many more. I have automated many processes that involve report generation using Excel, invoice processing, order processing, BPO related processes, and many more. It's safe to automate processes that involve secure credentials because Automation Anywhere provides an encrypted centralized credential vault.

My organization has worked with multiple clients and helped them automate their repetitive and mundane processes. These organizations have seen a drastic increase in employee productivity, reduced human errors, and better SLAs. All of this leads to customer satisfaction.

AA is not much more expensive compared to other RPA tools, so ROI was much higher by automating some of the end-to-end business processes. Support and maintenance work is also easy because of the well-managed control room architecture. 

The best feature is the drag-and-drop command. Users with less coding knowledge can also automate their end-to-end processes very easily. 

Centralized Control made maintenance and support work easier. 

Bot Insights is another feature in which the bot can log all the statistical information and display it to the end-users in a graphical view.

In A2019, I liked Excel Automation because now it is possible to automate Excel files without having Excel installed on the machine in which the bot runs.

When it comes to Citrix automation, AA should improve or add more features in such a way that all the commands should work when automating a Citrix application.

There should be more options to write codes in VBScript, C#, Python, etc. directly within any commands, instead of just invoking an already existing script.

Since A2019 is cloud-based and since it is a new product, there are a lot of commands that require improvisations such as the Outlook Save Email command, Rest API commands, and a few others.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for the last two years and for the past six months, I have been using the latest version, A2019.

When it comes to scalability, AA has a lot of potential. Now with A2019, the commands and the subcommands got doubled and now automation has been very easy.

We get excellent support from Automation Anywhere for any type of product-related issues and queries. They typically reply within 24 hours of time.

I have not used any other solutions before. But recently I have started using UiPath.

The setup was so straightforward for me as I was from a technical background. 

In-house.

ROI was much higher compared to what we have expected or calculated during our ROI calculation stage.

The cost of unattended bots is reasonable and when it comes to attended automation the licensing cost for Attended bot runners is a bit expensive. The overall price is not so expensive compared to other tools.

I have not evaluated because this solution was chosen by my organization.

I believe that A2019 is going to be the next big thing in the RPA field.

We are in the Oil & Gas Sector and our use cases are completely different from standard Industry Use Cases (BFSI). We work upon Engineering Drawings as the Data collection point and IQ Bot plays an important role to perform the tasks. We have built use cases which were involving the Finance Business processes, Procurement process, HR process and also we have developed solutions which were catering to Shared Services in Malaysia where value derived was quite substantial as its cost center and any automation creates a value add to them.

AA has improved our digital strategy extensively and provided the required leverage to place ourselves above other peers in the O&G Industry. We were able to develop quick digital solutions by demonstrating the ROI and gain momentum by aligning the desired resources & budget from leadership. All this has happened due to early wins which were supported by Automation Anywhere. We were able to build our solutions using the OCR Engines provided by Automation Anywhere which helped us to perform the Data Scrapping we have even integrated the tool with Free OCR available in the market.

We have used almost all the features of AA - IQ Bot is no doubt the most useful one for us. Task Bot & Meta bot forms the baseline and is used extensively for most of the use cases. Also, we were able to deploy composite solutions .NET + AA to achieve greater benefits. We have also purchased some other Digital Tools to help us with OCR, these tools have inbuilt Machine Learning capability which makes it easier for us to extract the components from the P&Id's which is an essential part of our pre-processing. Task Bot completed their job of creating the post workflow seamlessly.

Additional features should involve the Cognitive Section where we need more Advance solutions involving ML & AI. We have entered into the Cognitive zone where our solutions are much more advanced in nature due to the complexity involved in the Use Cases. Structured Data require a higher level of data analysis and grouping. We also recommend Automation Anywhere to start incorporating Plugin with Open Source Softwares so that we are able to build robust solutions - presently custom scripting is limited. The automation team can also explore the Oil & Gas sector as a target sector as this Industry have lots of potential and they need to foray in the Digital world in the near future.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for the past 3+ years and we have deployed around 40+ Bots to date with quite a significant amount of savings associated with it.