Automation Anywhere Reviews

We have used AA for multiple applications that were to be automated. We're interfacing a lot with Excel, scanned PDFs, image files, databases, file folders, text files, CSVs, and web applications. It's hard to pin down one. The tool can interact with SAP and Oracle which helps us automate the application faster. Mainframes can be automated and Citrix applications can be automated. 

We use it to automate all kinds of business processes. The primary use case is the RPA platform, even though they have the cognitive platform and the analytics platform. We use it for so many different things it's hard to focus on one. Now AIML is also incorporated which is a current requirement and an added benefit.

Data that was in scanned PDF format could not be extracted, but the IQ Bot feature has made it simpler. It's also easy to use and deploy. It is faster and the new features in A2019 are better than the previous versions of AA 11. Currently, new features like the Data Table have been added which helps in multiple forms. 

As it's now completely web-based it can be accessed from anywhere. As AIML is also incorporated where the machine learns by itself it helps in data accuracy and training time for the BOT. Time-saving is achieved and resources can be utilized for some human judgment work.

IQ Bot is very helpful as it is easy to learn and implement and the data output accuracy is almost 90%. Over time, the BOT learns from the validation which is an added advantage. Whatever I was thinking for version 11.3, it's being implemented in A2019. The incorporation of Python scripts is also implemented which will be easier for validations. The forms feature in A2019 is useful which can be used for voice processing where only input will be provided and BOT can perform the backend activity and get real-time data instead of Agents searching for the details.

In A2019 the dependencies that are being downloaded take a longer time that should be reduced. Migration utility should be provided so we can easily migrate from lower versions to higher versions. 

I would like to have reading from a handwritten text, which they are bringing in the next version. That will be a good thing. Some things that I do not see as of today are interactive chat or video interface. These are things that I will look for in the future. I saw something like image recognition, but something like a video or voice recognition is something that I'm looking for in the Automation Anywhere platform as an end-user.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for three years. 

The scalability really depends on how much RAM and how much network bandwidth we can do, how many servers we can apply. From the scalability standpoint, I don't think there will be any issues except for the increased costs.

It's good sometimes. Sometimes it takes time.

I have used different solutions. I switched mainly as A2019 is now web-based so desktop dependency is removed. IQ Bot is easier to use and learn for images and scanned documents.

Setup is straightforward.

In-house.

Cost-wise, it should be reduced.

Document Understanding and Abbyy Flexicapture.

Overall its good solution.

The environment is within a Citrix environment. Our primary use case is for interaction with mainframe applications along with web links and Excel spreadsheets. The bot interacts with the Excel spreadsheet, captures the task, go to the mainframe application, and pastes it with searching details of the task if it matches different details. It populates in the Excel spreadsheet if it is matched or not matched. There are numerous logics used in it. AA bots do the verifications and give an output in the Excel spreadsheet which becomes an input for the agents on the production floor. 

We have used more than 30 bots in our healthcare vertical and are going to use many more bots. We have a very resourceful pipeline to use AA bots in our RPA projects and we are looking to be more engaged with the AA team in deploying these bots. We have very strict cost efficiency savings to be shown to the client and AA has helped us to meet this to a great extent. We have lined up a huge list of RPA projects and are waiting to partner with AA to a great extent which will help us to achieve these cost efficiencies in a great way.

AA has a bouquet of features that can be used in our projects. We have utilized all the features in our existing projects. It may be task bots, meta bots, or IQ bots. The features in the AA bots may be object cloning or security features where the bots can be triggered only from the control room and will help clients to maintain their security concerns. The number of commands is more which will help us to achieve different types of details being captured, verified, and executed in the project for us.

We have a challenge in our front office automation where capturing details from a table within a table does not happen in the existing AA Enterprise client version 11.3.4. The AA team tries various methods like using an Excel spreadsheet to capture the tables. Using object cloning it recognizes only the top line items and not the table which is in an HTML format then they asked to use Python codes within AA to identify tick boxes as a windows box. If this gets improved then we should be able to work on all the voice-related projects for a particular healthcare payer.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for more than three years.

Automation Anywhere solutions used in our RPA projects were easy to deploy for multiple projects, stable from a bots running continuously for close to 18 hrs each day. We will give a 9 out of a scale of 10 for the stability point of view.

The scalability of this solution is high as we can scale it in a very limited time and replicating the codes is easy.

The customer service/technical support is very good with AA and they are very supportive and listen to our issues patiently and give possible solutions wherever available.

We have not used any different solution as it is a client mandate to use only Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup was a bit complex as the control room was maintained by our clients and we had to approach them for each and every thing whenever there was an error/issue.

We implemented in-house but the control room was maintained by our clients and they helped in moving the codes to the control room and we have specific access to run from there.

Our ROI is very good by using AA. There are some projects where we can get close to 1:10 ROI.

We would advise going for Automation Anywhere as it is cost-efficient and easy in-terms of licensing form.

We did not have an opportunity to evaluate other options.

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 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 have validated all the primary features of A2019. New features can be added just by updating the new Package (a group of commands).
• Pass Credentials in CR Directly to run a bot on any device.
• Instead of installing AA Client, we will just install Bot agent on the runner machine. 
• Excel commands are classified into two types Excel Basic, Excel Advanced By giving a lot of scope to use a wide range of Excel operations.
• Instead of using AA Client, A2019 provides users the ability to create bots directly in the control room.
• Flow, List, Dual Views enable the user-friendly environment.
  

We have done lot of implementation with Automation Anywhere. Recently, we have used IQ Bot's latest version and delivered a few projects. It is saving most FTE benefits using Automation Anywhere automation. One good thing in A2019 is that all products of Automation Anywhere, like IQBOT services, Meta Bot Designer, Discovery Bot, and Control room are all together in one product which is very effective for any business team. Package options and workload management with queues are the most efficient features.

• The universal recorder is a kind of hybrid recorder that enables the user to record the data across devices.
• Option to send email from Outlook or SMTP.
• A2019 also supports Python script(2.0/3.0) along with Javascript and VBScript. Also it as inline scripting and importing script file feature. 
• A2019 contains almost 11 diffs. datatypes. Ex: window,number,table.
• Browser support is Improved with Different Browsers support: IE, Mozilla, Chrome.
• A2019 is not dependent on single os. It supports Linux, Windows, etc.
• Running bot through Excel, Waiting for release from the vendor
• Instead of meta bots we can use run DLL commands

• Cloud API vision and OCR engine integration should be more effective. 
• Auto-update of the Bot agent in runtime machines from Automation Anywhere control room server. 
• The import and export of the previous version bots to the latest version of A2019 should be more flexible and friendly for the end business users. 
• AI Sense recorder should be upgraded with additional features for better results. 
• SMTP mail features should come with migration options. All kind of VB scripts and Java scripts which we built using exiting version should support in this version.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for three months. 

The stability of the solution is good with the latest version with final patches. Automation Anywhere team release patches in every release to enhance the features and performance of the added features

It is good for scalability.

Technical support is good. 

We have migrated few projects from other RPA tools to Automation Anywhere RPA automation.

The setup is easy but it is better to have AA support person during that activity.

AA Support team is good in the environment setup.

ROI is as expected.

I am managing the entire cost, price, and licensing model for our project.

We have entirely validated the products before using in our projects.

Initial version of products bugs should be reduced.

We have multiple use cases, we build & supported 200+ automations and one of the main businesses was related to the contract processing and due to high volume and complexity, it was very crucial. Also, we built and supported multiple operations related use cases.

We have built and implemented multiple SharePoint, OutLook, web-based, and automation related to ticketing tools.

Automations were from simple to medium and high complexity related however with the help of many easy to use and user-friendly features, we have implemented them with high accuracy.

Using Automation Anywhere we have built/supported 200+ automation around operations and automated different Sharepoint, Outlook, ServiceNow, and contract processing related use cases. It offers a lot of features, flexibility whether it is through Meta bot, IQBot, etc. 

It offers :

a. Zero-install, Web-ready platform: Deploy RPA across the entire organization and scale bots on-demand in a few clicks.                                                                                                  b. Use the pluggable API architecture to maximize extensibility and customize RPA to meet unique business automation requirements.
c. Integrated machine learning: Streamline your document-centric processes with drag-and-drop IQ Bot integration.
d. Self-learning automation engine: Create a smarter automation engine by infusing third-party AI technology.

Movement on cloud architecture according to me provided by AA2019, will be most beneficial as it will be easy to use and will provide flexibility.

However, we have almost sued all the features extensively and few of them are as below :

• Intelligent automation for business and IT tasks
• Uses SMART Automation Technology
• Rapidly Automates complex and complicated tasks
• Create automation tasks like recording keyboard strokes and mouse clicks
• Distribute tasks to multiple computers
• Automation Anywhere offers scriptless automation
• Auto-login runs scheduled tasks at any time, even when the computer is locked.

1. Accuracy to process handwritten documents.

2. Should add more Analytics and Intelligence related capabilities.

3. Scalability along with the volume and business should be more flexible.

4. Cognitive capabilities should be improved more.

5. Large scale robot deployment is limited.

6. Licensing costs should be reduced.

7. Error handling should be improved more.

As AA has recently moved to Cloud architecture, there will still be a lot of additions and improvements in terms of the features and offering and this will be evolved over the period of time only. About the exact performance on the cloud maybe we have to wait a bit more time and should evaluate once it will get settle down more.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for more than 3 yrs and implemented 200+ uses cases. Also, we have started using the new version AA2019 for a few months (4) and did a few POCs.

The stability is good.

Scalability is good, however, it can be improved.

Technical support is good.

We have evaluated other RPA tools as well however, looking at overall feasibility from features to costing perspective we have taken a call to go along with AA and we are happy that we have made a right call and it has benefited us to a great extent.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We have our in-house development and support team.

Looking at overall feasibility from features to costing perspective we have taken a call to go along with AA. Installation is easy however pricing etc. can be reduced a bit as it is still more for small business/automation.

Yes, we have evaluated other RPA tools like UiPath and BP as well.

Looking at overall feasibility from features to costing perspective, I strongly feel Automation Anywhere offers a lot of features and scalability and is a very good tool overall and people who have not tried should give a try and put some hands-on. 

I am leading a team of RPA COE.

I'd like to explain something about the organization. We are a pioneer in mortgage real estate. For more than 20 years, we are serving US based clients and mortgage banks. The main purpose of using the Automation Anywhere is to have something which is more than RPA that is artificial intelligence. We wanted to combine all these skills so our client can get all the benefits. We do not want to train our bot constantly. We want to have something which has a self-learning bot.

This is why we opted for Automation Anywhere and are using IQ Bot. Because we have a machine learning compounded into it, which means by using this tool, our bot is self-learning so we don't need to train again. That was the primary reason.

RPA serves us as a tool or process that improves the efficiency of any organization. Being part of a BPM, we know we cannot go ahead and have more people all the time for any process. At this stage, we need to do something so we can do two things in parallel:

1. We can reduce the costs. 
2. We can improve the efficiency and accuracy. 

This is what we were able to do using RPA.

One of the most valuable features is IQ Bot. If you compare Automation Anywhere with any of the other organizations, we may get same type of RPA solution, as there are multiple organizations. But, IQ Bot was one of the primary reasons to choose Automation Anywhere. Using IQ Bot, we can extract more data out from the documents that are unstructured. Therefore, we need to do two things at the same time:

1. We need to extract the information from image-based documents
2. We need to make sure that the efficiency and accuracy of the extraction is improving with each extraction.

That is a primary feature of IQ Bot and the main reason that we opted for Automation Anywhere.

IQ Bot is the primary reason that we are using this. We are the one who started using this sometime back. What I realized is that it is just a product that came to be into existence. There are a lot of things that can be improved with a lot of scope. We are already engage with Automation Anywhere, giving our feedback, so they can improve. For example, they can improve the scope of extractions. IQ Bot does have some limitations. We have received assurances that in future releases this problem will be solved, and we should be able to do more extractions based upon future releases.

This is what I mentioned about things that they need to improve. They are working on scalability, but I'm expecting them maybe a faster pace for the thing already in place. They need to improve the extraction and accuracy. It's a sort of a journey that we started with a few fears that may end up with a 100 or 200 fears. These are our expectations from IQ Bot. We are quite hopeful that a future release will solve this problem.

It's a good to some extent. We faced an issue where the IQ Bot was very unstable. There were out days, but it's just good their support team is quite helpful. Whenever we set up new environments, we may face these type of issues. However, these are technical challenges which we might expect from any tool. These are new things for everyone, even for Automation Anywhere.

Initially, we faced stability challenges with the IQ Bot server, but now those are stable as compared to previous versions.

It was quite straightforward, considering that people are able to understand what they need. The need is clear, so it's a pretty straightforward solution.

We did not exactly look at another product, but being within the industry prior to this, we used a few different products. The main reason for not choosing the others were they were lacking artificial intelligence and the machine learning component, which has the algorithm within it. 

Automation Anywhere has been more sustainable and scalable.

There is still a lot of scope issues. There is always a gap between the customer and what they sell us. So, the customer is never satisfied. I want to give an eight, nine, or 10, but I still have a lot of expectations from Automation Anywhere, so I'll go for a seven (out of ten).

We use this solution for automating our business processes that make up our daily operations.

We have a set of steps that we follow for each of our processes. We devise inputs for these steps and then prepare them for automation. The automation then completes and publishes the results.

The automation that we have run on a daily basis helps us by saving a lot of time.

We have a process where we sell products, and using this solution means that we don't need to dedicate somebody to get this work done. Once we get the input file and prepare it, we run the automation. It completes overnight, and the next morning the results are available.

The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use. It has drag-and-drop features, which makes it very fast for us to gather the required data.

I would like to be able to look at the steps that are completed as a process is running.

It would be helpful if we could start running a process from a particular step.

In the drag-and-drop interface, it would be helpful to have interactive hints, or notes, about what is happening and what the different choices are. This would make it easier to learn.

With respect to stability, we haven't had any issues from what we have heard.

The scalability of this solution is really high. You don't think of it as a process, but rather, part of a process. Once you automate the individual parts, you tie everything together.

We have not used technical support for this solution.

We had different people come in and set up the process for us, initially. After that, I started putting in the automation myself, and it is becoming faster and pretty easy for me.

For anybody who is implementing this solution, I recommend they get help from Automation Anywhere to help understand the best way to do their automation. This will help with the development of the bots. This is what we did, and we now have a framework for building the rest of our processes.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.