Automation Anywhere Reviews

Processes which have a decision making and do not have any required rule-based are considered for automation.

All the features that we have different from each other. Most of the time, we go for object cloning and IQ Bot, which will be used in the coming years. That feature, people are looking forward to, as it will help us read and extract data from unstructured formats.

Although, IQ Bot has data being extracted from it. It can improve with more features, like handwritten copies that are readable. Anyway, the IQ Bot is coming out in a bit, and I'm sure we will go with it.

For most of the cases that we have worked on, the application has been stable. Automating applications has brought a huge change to the automations which we have carried forward.

It depends on the developer and how they have coded it with respect to scalability. However, it has the ability to be scalable.

The main point to go for Automation Anywhere is because we have worked with other tools than Automation Anywhere and the support team which Automation Anywhere has takes time to try understanding the issue, then give the feedback. That is something we learn along with the Automation Anywhere guys. I would go for Automation Anywhere because of the support team.

Version 10 that we had was a little complex to set up. However, version 11 is pretty easy.

We use multiple tools, but most of the time, it is Automation Anywhere which we go for because of our clients who are looking forward to working with Automation Anywhere. It's sort of easy to use. Also with respect to the client as well as the developers, it gives quick results. With other tools, we need to perform a lot of tasks. This tool is a bit quicker. The ROI also comes into picture.

I have in fact told all my friends and colleagues who are in the RPA domain to work with Automation Anywhere because it's easier to run as well as to implement. Overall, the deployment is easier. I mostly prefer Automation Anywhere over the other RPA tools.

I would rate the product a nine to nine point five (out of ten).

We are using it for finance and logistics-related tasks in departments that we are automating. E.g., for finance, we are using it for cash and bank reconciliation. For logistics, we automated eBay billing for the government portal before any goods can come out of the airport or get inside the airport for any package. We are using Automation Anywhere to create the transits IDs for this.

The product is deployed via internal cloud.

For the cash and bank reconciliation, we brought down amount of days it takes to do the reconciling and announcing the results. Previously, it took 10 to 15 days. Now, it takes two days.

It runs in the background.

It doesn't require any coding knowledge. Any business person can automate this process.

We started with attended bots and are in the process of migrating to unattended bots. We are facing a lot of issues with unattended bots as Automation Anywhere is not supporting this. When we run unattended bots in the background, the screen resolution changes. That needs to be improved because it might cause our IR operations or objects to fail.

Attended automation is fine but it is not the favorable because we are looking for an unattended bots. If we want to trigger bots manually, then we need a resource for that. Therefore, there is no point in hiring a resource only to run the bot. They need to improve the scheduler.

There are a couple of issues which needs to be rectified. Otherwise, Automation Anywhere is like using the Windows Scheduler. Aside from the Control Room, it's normal automation, and you can use other tools for that.

Sometimes, the ESX services will stop. We are working with IT to resolve this, as it's not our fault. Automation Anywhere is stopping the service, and during that time, the bot will be stopped. Right now, we are logging into the client machine and restarting/rebooting them, then restarting the services. As some of our processes run at night, we won't know that the service is down since our processes run 24/7. This issue is then escalated to the manager. This is the current challenge that we are facing, and we would like them to improve this.

Automation with bots runs fine only if it is an attended bot. With unattended bots, the bots run only 25 to 30 percent of the time.

We are not using it to its full scale. We have deployed only nine bots in production and two in development. We are only using three or four bots completely. Rest are going unused, so we are not looking to scale out anytime soon.

We hardly get a solution out of the technical support. I would rate them as a five out of 10. There is a lack of ownership.

In Juniper, we had automation for different tools, like dashboards and visualizations. We used Tableau. Therefore, we upgraded some of the manual gap, then we began to explore other tools at that time. That is how we came to know about Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Approvals are taking us more time than development. For the bigger products, it takes four to six months to scale. If it is a smaller product, then it can take 45 days.

We are using consultants who are developing our bots for us.

We receive help from customer support.

We have not seen ROI in the last year. We should see ROI on the platform in two or three years.

If we use attended bots, there is no ROI in the product.

Our annual licensing costs for the entire company are $100,000.

We did a PoC with UiPath as well. We felt Automation Anywhere was better than UiPath because of its features, like its Control Room.

UiPath is better for development because its workflow feature.

I would rate the solution as a six out of 10 due to the resolution issue. It is a major issue that we are facing with the tool.

Get the approvals done before investing. We wasted the license for six months. The licenses were unused because we didn't have the approvals for the application. We procured it and kept it for six months. Therefore, before investing, get the approvals internally, then go for it.

We have integrated Automation Anywhere with SAP (ERP system) and BlackLine (reconciliation tool). For integrating, we are using web scaping tools and object cloning.

I am certified Automation Anywhere RPA professional with Automation Anywhere University. I am looking for courses on solution architecture and would like to have something for this in the University.

We don't use Citrix automation.

The primary use case is for automating regular applications. We will get data from users, then automate that application. An example of a process that we would automate:

• We get a bank statement. 
• We would need to upload those records into the regular application. 
• We would need to update the invoice numbers into our regular applications. 
• We need to validate everything before uploading all the data.

It rectifies small things.

I make changes, but when updates happen, then I have to make those changes again. This has to be fixed from the product side, so we are not continuously making changes again after updates. It takes us four to five weeks to develop a bot and the upgrades erase a lot of that work, because it takes another two weeks of small coding changes after an upgrade has been released. 

We are looking forward to seeing additional features in version 11.3, such as the new APIs and MetaBot features. They are also adding Jenkins and AWS.

With any new upgrades, we have to make changes in the codes. To us, this means that the tool is not stable. We have been told by Automation Anywhere that this will be fixed in future releases.

This value-add product is fast growing.

We have 20 bots in production.

The technical support is fine. As soon as we raise an issue, we can get the technical support that we need. They provide the solutions to our issues.

We deployed the solution in-house.

We haven't seen ROI yet, but we will see it in the future.

We haven't faced any major issues with the tools that we are using.

We mainly use the bot to make our operation more efficient, save the effort of human beings, and reduce the overall cost to the organization.

Automation Anywhere has improved our organization by allowing us to reduce the number of new hires, enable us to keep the same workforce, and increase productivity.

The product is very precise, and very efficient. We run bots almost five days a week. We just tell the bot what they have to do and it is always accurate and precise, no issues.

I believe version 11 is much better than the previous version we were using.

They should make the product smarter. The bot we use right now is kind of fundamentally basic loop-based. We really want to see a little bit more advanced capability, that way we can undertake more comprehensive tasks.

The scalability, I think will be feasible, but so far we don't have any plans to increase the bots to the large scale of the operation.

So far, the bots run very stable and have little problems, we see the bots becoming more stable every day.

We can define certain procedure we already know, but we continue develop more user cases, which bring from the other end users.

I cannot say how much exactly we have made regarding ROI, but we can see the saving down the road.

We have a few licenses. They cost roughly $10,000 each.

I think understanding the product is very important. People have to understand what the bot can do before they implement one in their environment. That is very important.

We have Automation Anywhere version 11. We put all the bots on the virtual machine. We run continuously every week.

When it comes to attended automation, we try to introduce more use cases and let more people understand what the bot can do, and expand the capacity of the bot, so it can serve our organization.

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.

The primary use case is from a compliance and regulatory standpoint.

We have been able to reduce our number of FTEs.

The ease of use is its most valuable feature.

While the ease of use for non-tech users is good, it could be improved.

I would like to see extensive OCR capabilities in the next release. That is a must.

They need to make the solution more robust.

The solution has been pretty stable.

It is pretty scalable, but it does depend on how you develop the bot.

The technical support is very good.

The initial setup is a little complex. For a person with a technical background, it is doable.

We have received 70 percent optimization using this solution.

I would recommend this solution. 

Look at the solution's capabilities and compare it to what your automation needs are.

It is leading the market from the automation standpoint.

We have several use cases for Automation Anywhere:

• Grab data from one site to another.
• We run all cache processes through it.
• We can get more information using IQ Bots.

The platform is easy to use, especially for business users.

I would like to see web and cloud-based platforms for future releases.

While it depends on the customer, it generally takes about two to two and a half months to scale up bots for production.

We are the integrator for deployment.

We have saved time and money using the solution.

Licensing costs range from $50,000 to $200,000.

There are five to six competitors in this market.

Make a list of all your processes before starting, then decide on two or three processes that you want to automate.

I have taken Automation Anywhere University courses. The new learning course model is more inviting and easier to use.

As a solution, RPA integrates well with other solutions.

It is very easy for us to work with the Citrix applications.

We mainly use it for development of finance operations, and it's been performing fairly well for the most part. We have 40 automations going right now and they run daily on the Bot Runner.

We've automated journal entries, bank reconciliations, different claims-accounting - a lot of finance processes. For example, we created a system where accountants can drop in journal entries and the journal entries will be read and posted to our system.

One of the processes we automated was that people who work in treasury would go into their email and download PDFs from their emails over and over. Sometimes there would be 200 or 300 emails that they would have to go through, and they would spend a whole day doing that. Now we have an automation that does it, and it only takes one or two hours, and it frees up their time too.

We have saved time or money using this solution, but I don't know how much. That information is tracked by my manager.

The most valuable feature of the product is the flexibility. There are so many features that you can use to develop; it can hit a lot of use cases.

In terms of the usability, the drag-and-drop, instead of being able to type, makes it hard for somebody with a programming background to get used to it. The drag-and-drop slows down development; I can't just keep my hands on my keyboard, I have to use my mouse as well.

The bot creation process is tedious. The solution has a lot of features, but since you have to drag down a lot of the commands, it can get tedious to use it. You end up having to use the mouse a lot more. You can't do it as fast as if, say, you just typed it out on a keyboard.

Since I do a lot of bot development, I'd like a different way to develop them, other than dragging the commands down. If there were a way to type out the commands, to make it a little bit easier or a little bit faster to create the automation, that would be good.

Integrating this solution with other applications is hit or miss, depending on the application. For some applications it's very easy and then sometimes, for others, it's very difficult. There are occasions when, the first time, the application doesn't work at all, so we have to use commands that are not as consistent.

The stability of the solution is hit or miss. It depends on what you're using it for. Sometimes it's very stable and you'll never have issues, but for some processes it may have issues, and you have to be able to fix them and develop it properly.

What we're trying to figure out right now is how to scale this. That's where the hardware comes in. For the most part, scaling with the application is more a matter of building the infrastructure around it.

To scale from pilot to the point where we are now, where we're developing three or four bots every two weeks, it took us six months. A lot of that was trial and error, creating our standards, and hiring developers to whom we could pass the projects.

Sometimes technical support has been very helpful and they've solved a problem very quickly, while sometimes it takes a month or a few weeks to get a problem solved.

The setup was complex because we didn't want to just start making bots immediately. We needed to build the infrastructure around it so that, in the future, it would be a lot easier for us. Once we had a process for how to build bots, it was a lot easier for us, and we had proper standards.

We used Neuralify. They helped a lot in getting us set up and it's been a good experience working with them.

I'm not 100 percent sure how we measure the ROI of a process we automate because a lot of that is handled by my manager. From what I know, we measure it based on time returned to the employee. Instead of calculating how much time it takes for the automation, we calculate how much time the employee was spending on this task beforehand, and now that we've moved it to an automated process, how much we have saved them.

Overall, I think we have seen ROI, but I don't have specifics.

On the shortlist we had UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere. They ended up using Automation Anywhere because it was the most flexible and the easiest to use.

Instead of trying to build a bot immediately, first build the infrastructure for how you want to build the bots. That way, when you scale in the future, it's a lot easier than trying to figure that out after you've already made multiple bots.

I have taken courses at the Automation Anywhere University, but for the most part the courses have been very basic. I had prior training, but when taking it again in the University, a lot of it was just going over the basics of Automation Anywhere.