Automation Anywhere Reviews

We need to automate business unit solutions in our office. As of now, there are a lot of requirements RPA within our organization with many verticals who require their redundant tasks to get automated. 

It saves manpower, time, and money. E.g., one particular task may require five FTEs to work on it daily doing repetitive work. Using Automation Anywhere, we automate the task and those five FTEs can be saved from doing it.

By automating the process, we are reducing human error.

The IQ Bot is unique. It is not available in another RPA tool that I am aware of, like UiPath or Blue Prism. IQ Bot converts unstructured data to structured data.

You can assign a time to a bot when it should run through the Schedule Manager. This feature is much easier to use in Automation Anywhere. Both UiPath and Blue Prism have their versions of a scheduler which are not as user-friendly. UiPath Orchestrator is a bit complex.

It is easy to use with a drag and drop. All the options are right in front of you. Anybody without an IT or development background can start off with Automation Anywhere.

Security needs improvement. 

I need to understand the migration from desktop to cloud. There are questions around this that I need clarified, like: "How is it going to happen?" Migration is not easy. It will take time. Will the process be smooth? I have a few doubts.

The stability is really good. We have not had any downtime.

Scaling is easy. We can have one Control Room with 10 bots working simultaneously, which is very good.

The technical support has been brilliant. We haven't needed to wait a lot. Anybody from my team, whenever we tried to contact the customer care or technical support, has gotten a reply back probably within one to two hours. So, support has been outstanding from the Automation Anywhere team.

I learned about Automation Anywhere from online searches. I trained myself on it. My organization learned about Automation Anywhere from me.

The setup wasn't easy nor was it difficult. After one or two times, the setup became easier.

I set Automation Anywhere up with the help of Acronotics, who came in to train us and help set up our environment.

We have saved one to two FTEs per year. A bot processes their projects now.

I tried out all the RPA tools and found Automation Anywhere to be the most user-friendly.

Blue Prism is more secure than Automation Anywhere. E.g., Blue Prism has a system that is difficult to penetrate. You can't simply go into their system and make any changes.

Any company looking at starting RPA should look at a user-friendly software. Compared to other RPA tools, I prefer Automation Anywhere.

Whenever I have used Automation Anywhere, it has been brilliant.

There are still so many features that I need to explore in Automation Anywhere.

We are working with our clients using this solution. Often, they are automating some of their retail and marketing processes, including the generation of bills and statements in finance.

Our clients are using a hybrid cloud, with their own VM environment.

One of the recent projects that I worked on was for a complex financial process in a bank. It involved automating several manual processes. The data had to be retrieved from SAP by means of a file and then imported into an Excel worksheet. My suggestion included implementing an SQL server and then automating the process using this solution. Instead of the series of manual tasks, they now only have to verify the final result, and it makes life much easier.

We are assisting our clients by improving the way they do things. This is a great platform, and we are implementing the logic into the bots that they are using to automate.

The user interface and tools are good.

In the next release of this solution, I would like to see more OCR agents included.

My customers would like to use the IQ Bot without having to invest more money in purchasing another license. If it is not possible to include IQ Bot in the basic package then, at least, the OCR features and the TaskBot can be enhanced. This would allow us to include small-scale industry, as well as large organizations.

There is an issue with security where users can see the values in the credential vault. Because of this, we don't see the point in creating values inside the vault.

This system should be able to handle situations with very there are very large volumes of data in Excel.

Stability depends on your skillset, and how you have written the code in terms of logic and handling errors. If you have built the code properly, in a systematic way as it requires, then it will definitely be stable. If instead you randomly do things that you needed to be done today, I don't think the stability of the bot will be very good.

Stability is good now, although we have had problems in the past. For example, when we were processing very large amounts of data in Excel, Automation Anywhere failed. The volume was in the millions of rows of data.

The scalability of this solution is good compared to others.

We have not used technical support for this solution.

In addition to this solution, I have good knowledge of Blue Prism and UiPath.

Initially, I found the setup of this solution to be complex.

Before getting started we had to install the SQL server and perform the migration. Then, it involved user accounts. You have to create a new user and add the details, which is quite complex. Then, whenever you are installing the Enterprise Edition, you have to perform setup that includes the IIS settings. Overall, it was quite hectic, and some of the people were not able to do it.

The implementation of this solution is something that we assist our clients with, but it depends on the situation. Different organizations have different ways of implementing. For the most part, I create the packages and give my work to the COA teams, and they finish it themselves. When they are not able to do that, we help them further.

We are using MetaBots as well as TaskBots.

There are lots of features that are still not there in version 11. I know that version 12 is coming, but I do not know much about it.

This is a solution that I recommend. We began with the free license, but if you are going to use Automation Anywhere then you have to purchase the license. It's an investment. With UiPath, the development license is free, so it depends on the situation. In general, if the client is ready for automation then I suggest this solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use this solution to automate the following task:

• Open MS-Excel-File from Folder
• Update the data with keystroke-command
• Wait for calculation of the result
• Save the file
• Loop the command above for each file in the folder
• Send email-notification to the task owner
• Send Quality Check to task owner (.pdf-command)
  
• Error handling (where applicable)

This solution gives us greater employee satisfaction because manual recurring work has been reduced. We also have a savings of manpower, independently of office-hours thanks to bot scheduling.

We redesigned tasks before the implementation of bots, and have higher stability through standardized Bot Runner.

We find several functions valuable, including:

• The Files/Folder command makes it easy to work off each file in a folder. I don't know how else to do this command.
• The Variable Operation makes it easy to work with variables. The system variables catalogue is helpful.
• The Send eMail Command helps with the flow of information.

In the Microsoft Excel features, it needs a command to wait for a calculation to complete.

In Microsoft Excel, why isn't it possible to share a session in different tasks? It's complicated to program all of the commands in the same tasks (loss of overview).

The Filter function only supports four commands (Mouse/Key/Delay).

In the Optical Overview for the Loop command, an if/else would be helpful.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

It takes a lot of effort to build up the internal infrastructure/topics like Virtual Machine/Security/development-Governance/Usecase-Management.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for updating manual tasks such as downloading, processing, and uploading.

An example of this is manual posting, where the customer is asking for money to be posted. For example, let's say that some extra money is posted by mistake. That has to be reconciled and be pushed back to the actual owner.

Another example is bank transfer, where the customer is requesting money to be transferred from one bank to our bank. We generally interact with the customer and the bank, and there are several transactions that need to be completed. We now have this as a Complete Conditional Automation, where depending on the status, one of several sub-processes will be triggered and completed.

This solution has helped us in several ways, the first of which is scheduling processes.

There are many processes that need to be run during office hours, which is fine, but there are many that can be run outside of office hours. By taking care of these processes outside of office hours, it improves our efficiency. Also, if the bot were only being used for eight hours out of a possible twenty-four hours then the cost-per-hour is higher.

The recording feature accelerates the timeline of your implementation. It means that it takes you less time with lesser investment. The resource cost becomes less and brings your break-even point closer.

The most valuable feature is the recording feature. If you compare to a solution like Blue Prism, in that case, you need to build everything from scratch. Here, you record everything and then it is easy for you to build the automation. There is a skeleton in place, and you just have to build from there.

The scheduler is a really helpful feature for us because there was a time when people used to do attended automation, and they needed to run the software. This lets us schedule it to run at any time.

I would like to leverage the AI component without the requirement to know a coding language, such as Python.

This solution is pretty stable. We only had issues with the previous version.  We don't have any malfunctions so far, although, with the older version, we faced some object de-capturing issues. We had captured where it was supposed to hit, and it was hitting elsewhere. With the new version, so far so good.

Considering the automation that we have done, we have not been required to scale.

Technical support for this solution is excellent. They organize video chats and were able to guide us initially when it was installed. They gave good training to people and helped with some development activities. They are also fast in responding to issues.

We have used Blue Prism and there are some differences between the two solutions. The first is that Automation Anywhere provides you free training, and Blue Prism does not. You have to take the time to attend class, and you have to pay for the software to do some hands-on. Even then, you don't know if you will get the latest version. On the other hand, with Automation Anywhere, you have the Community Edition. This is good enough for a beginner to learn on.

The recording feature in Automation Anywhere helps a lot because you don't have to build everything from scratch, brick-by-brick.

Finally, Automation Anywhere is evolving faster than Blue Prism.

I was not there when the solution was initially set up, but I assisted with the upgrade.

There was a misunderstanding between the infrastructure team, our team, and the Automation Anywhere team, which was a major issue. It was unclear how the servers were going to be set up and who was going to install. Nobody knew what the requirements were, and as a result, things took longer than they should have.

We recently upgraded versions from 10.5 to 11.3.2, and the newer version is better. The major issue we used to face is an auto-login failure. It caused a lot of havoc with the customers because some process that had to run in the morning before we came into the office had not run. However, with this new version, that problem has been solved. There were also a few applications that were not previously compatible, and we were told that they would be with this new version. So far, the ones we have checked are now compatible. 

One example of these is Phoebus. There are some legacy banking applications that we are moving to Phoebus, so this has to be compatible because our future automation depends on that.

I am looking forward to using the AI in this new version. I want to see how user-friendly it is, without much knowledge of Python or another coding language. I saw a video and it seems to have become very user-friendly, with a step-by-step guide. I want to see how easy it is to leverage that power without needing to know how to code.

For anybody who is researching RPA solutions, I would definitely tell them to go with the top players in the market. These are UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere. Then, you do your cost analysis and figure out who is giving you the best price. Then you analyze the service to figure out who is providing the best service. Finally, you can compare.

I recommend Automation Anywhere considering my experience with their service. Once you buy the product, the product may be good. But, if the service is not good then you may suffer. If you have a problem and you do not have service for three days, then how much business have you lost in that time? So, service matters a lot after you purchase the product. That is how you choose the solution, rather than by cost alone.

In our experience, Automation Anywhere is great, but I am expecting more in the AI and with the IQ Bot.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We have automated a lot of back-end processes. We started with easier tasks and are moving onto more complex tasks now.

We have a use case where we need to digitize documents, and we will be using the IQ Bot going forward. We are excited to work with Automation Anywhere on this in the future.

The OCR is the most valuable feature, though this is a third party feature that we have integrated. It is quite easy to integrate with other solutions.

The commands are not working 100 percent as the developers thought that they would.

We tried Citrix six months ago, but the solution that they gave us did not work in our environment.

I would like the IQ Bot to have plug and play functionality.

When it comes to stability, complex bots always have issues.

The stability needs improvement.

The scalability is good.

Sometimes, it takes 24 hours to get a response from the technical support.

We decided to pursue an RPA software because we had a lot of error prone legacy systems.

It took six months for us to start our bot process because of issues, like security and setting up servers.

We deployed it in-house.

We have automated over 2000 man-hours.

We also looked at UiPath.

The Automation Anywhere University courses are very good.

The bot creation process depends on your use case, e.g., the simpler the use case, the simpler the creation process.

I would rate the tool as a seven out of ten.

It’s mainly for back office tasks, such as accounting and supply chain management (SCM). Currently, we are implementing RPA for these back office tasks. 

We are not just doing RPA. We are tackling it along with the review of a business process as a set, improving the process and automating simultaneously.

The most valuable feature is that a job by RPA can be done three or four times faster
than a human without human error.

E.g., when the robot handles tasks, there are triggers. It could be triggered when it receives an email, when it finds a file, when the specified time comes, etc. As there are many outside points of contact, it’s hard to understand how they are prioritized when a trigger priority is the same. Since I wouldn’t know which trigger is being prioritized unless I actually give it a try, I want a clear understanding of it. 

Also, please make it possible to set a trigger with the control room. 

As far as the stability is concerned, some unknown errors do occur. While I am sure the Automation Anywhere is working to improve this, there is room for improvement. 

It is very scalable. The structure is a client server, so we can expand the environment quickly, if needed.

Currently, we are getting it through a vendor from who we purchased a license. So,
when we have questions, we contact them, then they contact Automation Anywhere’s headquarters. We always get answers, but it is a bit time consuming. Here is where I think some improvement can be made. 

We were given the manuals, so we did it ourselves. It was not hard or challenging. We
did receive support, but there were no issues. 

This initiative is not something that we expect will have a quick, huge impact. We are still in the process of expanding and penetrating the solution. We will enter the phase where we see targeted impact shortly. In order to achieve this, we would like to see the support by Automation Anywhere reinforced along the way. 

We did look at two or three other solutions. In our company, the people in each business unit would be creating robots rather than the IT programmers or specialists. With that in mind, Automation Anywhere can be user-friendly and simple since business unit staff can even create robots, and that’s one of the big reasons that we chose it. The other reason is that we wanted to have control and governance over the task assigned to robots. Those two points made Automation Anywhere’s structure a great match for our needs.

We have started using the solution overseas, and in some areas, including Asian Pacific, robots are made by the local staff. When they have questions, they want to ask questions in their native language, but the support is not available in some of the languages as of now. I’m hoping these language improvements will be something improved going forward

In regards to advice, if looking to reform your business process and automate in the same way as we did, they would need something appropriate. We chose Automation Anywhere. If you have a lot of simple tasks, you may want to process with speed and obtain something else. There are different tools for different purposes. Get the right tool and think about the way to do it for whatever you are aiming for.

Foreign Language: (Japanese)

この製品を主にどのように使用していますか？また、パフォーマンスはどうですか？

主に会計系、SCM領域のバックオフィス業務を主にRPA化しています。

当ソリューションはどんな点において最も役に立ちますか？

人の3-4倍くらいの速さでミスがなく業務が自動化される点と考えています。

当ソリューションを使用するとどのようなメリットがありますか？御社が機能する上
でどのような改善をもたらしましたか？

単なるRPA化だけではなくビジネスプロセスの見直しもセットで取り組んでいます。
プロセス改善も同時にできています。

当ソリューションの安定性に関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか？

安定性で言うと原因不明のエラーというのは多少発生しています。この点については
改善の余地があると考えています。

当ソリューションのスケーラビリティに関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか？

拡張性は非常にあると思います。クライアントサーバー型なので、増加したい部分を
必要に応じて迅速に拡張できると考えています。

このソリューションにテクニカルサポートを利用したことはありますか？ある場合
は、サポートをどのように評価しますか？

今は弊社がライセンスを購入しているベンダー経由でサポートを受けています。確実
に回答は頂けていますが、時間を要する部分もあり改善する余地があると考えていま
す。

初期セットアップには関与されましたか？セットアップは簡単、それとも複雑でした
か？どういった意味で簡単、あるいは複雑でしたか？

マニュアルを頂き自分たちで実施しました。セットアップは難しくなかったです。支
援も頂きましたが特に問題はありませんでした。

当ソリューションの次のリリースに含まれていたらいいなと思うのはどのような機能
ですか？また、それはなぜですか？

例えばロボットがタスクを動かす際にトリガーがいくつかある。メール、ファイル、
時間を指定など。トリガーの優先度が一緒の場合、これらトリガーの中でどれが優先
されるのかがやってみないとわからないところがあって、そういった所がクリアにな
っていると良いです。また、トリガーをControlRoomで設定できるようにしてほしい。
こういった点を含め、管理ツールの機能がもう少し強化されると良いです。

どのようなROIが見いだせていますか？データを提供してくださいますか？

初期段階から大きな効果を出そうという取り組みではないと考えており、現在は社内
にRPAを浸透させている段階です。これから狙った効果が出るフェーズに入ると思って
います。Automation Anywhereさんのサポートもより強化して頂く必要があると感じ
ています。

他にどのようなベンダーを検討していましたか？最終的に当ソリューションを選択し
た理由は何ですか？

他に2つ、3つ検討しました。弊社では、ITプログラマーやスペシャリストというより
も、業務部門の人にロボットを作成する前提です。Automation Anywhereはユーザー
に対して非常にシンプルで分かりやすく、業務部門の人でも作ることができるという
ことが一つ大きかったと思います。もう一つは、ロボットがやる仕事、タスクをコン
トロールするガバナンスの観点がありました。これら2点から、Automation Anywhere
のストラクチャーは弊社のニーズに合っていたため、選定しました。

このソリューションに1から10の評価（10＝最高）を付けるとしたら、どのように評
価しますか？そしてその理由は何ですか？

8

海外でも利用を開始しており、APACの現地スタッフが開発しています。質問がある場
合、現地の言葉で問い合わせをしたいのですが今はそれができない言語もあります。
こういったところで今後改善もあると思いますので、期待も込めて残りの2点。

他の会社でソリューションまたは同様の他のソリューションについてリサーチしてい
る同僚の方がいたら、どのようなアドバイスをすると思いますか？

色々なやりかたがあって私共みたいに業務プロセスを改革するのとセットで進めると
いうことであれば、…我々はAutomation Anywhere を選択しました。

本当に単純な業務が沢山あって、スピードを持ちたい、出したいというのであれば、
違うツールかもしれません。狙う業務形態にあったツールは変わります。

何を狙おうとしているのかによってツールは選ぶべきですし、やり方も考えるべきだ
というようなことは申し上げるかなと思います。

I use Automation Anywhere to automate processes for other businesses.

Automation Anywhere is user-friendly for individuals with a technical background and can also be utilized by those without specific knowledge.

The learning curve for Automation Anywhere is easy. The steps are nicely designed and of high quality, making it easy for users to learn.

Automation Anywhere has helped our customers' organizations speed up their processes and reduce the workload for their staff.

It offers automation at scale, enabling our customers to accomplish their objectives.

Integrating RPA bots, APIs, business applications, and documents is easily achievable with Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere has helped to increase automation consumption.

The dashboard has room for improvement.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for one and a half years.

It is stable.

Automation Anywhere is scalable.

The technical support has been helpful, and we have not experienced any delays.

Positive

We used Power Automate before switching to Automation Anywhere as per the client's request.

The initial setup is straightforward and takes one or two days to deploy.

I believe our clients do see a return on investment because they continue to use the solution for their automation needs.

I think the pricing is reasonable, but clients often perceive it as expensive. This perception might change once we see the benefits, understand the full process, and realize what is required to achieve our goals.

I give Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten. Power Automate has better cloud flows.

For those who prefer API integration over robotic process automation, I would use an API if it's more logical to do so. It all depends on the situation. If I need to fill some Excel documents, I will use bots; and if I need to display that data on a web page, I will use APIs if available.

We use Automation Anywhere to automate all the repetitive tasks that was previously done manually by individuals and to reduce the risk of human-errors so we can save time and money, It's like creating a digital employee that will work more quickly and accurately than humans. We mainly use it for the service desk tasks and to handle requests and also to create invoices and approving bills in finance and accounting departments, And we're implementing it into all of our departments since we found the benefits of it.

We have solved many problems we had in the past before using Automation Anywhere, Mainly we saved a lot of time and money, We reduced and minimized the risk of human-errors and got rid of all the manual repetitive tasks so we can focus on the core of our business, All the people in charge of supervision are dedicated now to a more important tasks. We succeed to reduce the response time of our business processes and this increased our performance and effected on our overall, But then when we started implementing RPA solutions for our clients, We had to switch to another product with an easier implementation and more friendly interface.

The most valuable feature for me is the power of AI Technologies involved in Automation Anywhere's IQBot such as Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Fuzzy Logic, and Machine Learning to automatically classify, extract and validate information from business documents and emails, I also like the Bot Insight to analyze and optimize the processes, I also like the visual flow charts and the drag-and-drop actions, I like the cloud infrastructure and security and the lightweight web-based architecture. 

They need to improve the REST Api Documentation because its not well detailed or clear enough for beginners, They need to provide some out of the box AI and ML functions such as Image classification and Objection Identification, They also need to improve the real-time data and analytics,There is less support for various data types, The .NET Framework is not completely supported and they have to add more features to fully support the .NET, Last advice is to add an option for developers for Graphical View along with the Code View option.