Automation Anywhere Reviews

We mainly use it for Financial Documents processing to conduct payments to registered Vendors. Invoice reception via a central mailbox on the server; Extraction of said PDF invoices via the IQ Bot cognitive platform using the ABBY OCR, as it is by far the most effective for our processing requirement; Consolidation of each individually extracted file into a central Batch processing file; Upload of central batch processing file into a stand-alone approval system, developed on IBM Xpages; Approval of uploaded files, from a central batch file, for payment; Upload of each invoice record in a third-party processing system such as Sage Evolution / SAP. Payment is done via a batch file generated by a third-party payment application.

AA has enabled faster processing of a series of manual operations and/or procedures. Cognitive capabilities are severely reduced or highly inaccurate, the Cognitive platform requires major attention regarding how data is captured, retained for future extractions as well as how these extractions are validated. There is a somewhat problematic functionality for various commands within AA, these commands do not have a consistent functionality one execution within some external third-party software such as Sage Evolution, XBRL for CaseWare, and CaseClient.

The MetaBots are by far the most effective system within AA. Due to the fact that no scripting is required and only the passing of variables or values to get a definite result. IQ Bot with the ABBY OCR is a powerful component to do multiple extractions in the shortest possible timeframe in comparison to human execution of similarly identified tasks or operations. 

The Recorder functionality is extremely useful and relatively straightforward enough to use, albeit a bit restrictive in its functionality.

IQ Bot requires a significant improvement for its data detection and data retention, mainly from the previously trained documents: regarding the document's format, layout, data contained within the document, the type of data that needs to be extracted. Object cloning commands require a significant improvement in its functionality. It is far too inconsistent with execution within the same application. Plugins for web browsers should be a single plugin that allows for the connectivity and functionality of both the v11/v12 and A2019 software, or at best, allows for both the A2019 and v11/v12 plugins to run on the same client browser simultaneously.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for roughly two years.

The current solution is not very stable due to multiple developers working on the initial development, it would be far more efficient if a small group of developers had worked on this specific project.
The solution should be more stable with a limited number of developers working on the current project. The current project would become more accurate and efficient if the functionality of the current commands could be updated to function more effectively and not stop working on a bi-weekly basis. Soe days the commands work without any problems and some days these same commands stop working and breaks the current processing cycle.

Scalability in our current solution is low but has massive room for growth.

The technical is relatively fast to respond and guidance offered is oftentimes sufficient. Time-zone difference is a major issue as this delays the response from an available technician. No guaranteed solution for cases raised, oftentimes workarounds are the only suggested action with multiple of those resulting in no success on the issue raised.

No previous solution used, as a manual process previously.

The initial setup was extremely complex as no assistance or guidance could be found online for my system.

The setup was done through an in-house team consisting of the current developer and a single IT technician.

Know ahead of time what capabilities you are going to require and plan accordingly to determine the total number of user licenses and development licenses required.

Other options were considered such as Blue Prism and Ui Path, but the capabilities of AA far surpass those platforms based on cost.

Documentation online is severely lacking, have commented on this before in support cases. The online documentation is far too generic, with no linking to relevant or in-depth forums on similar topics.

We are proposing a documentation solution like archived files, payroll, and integrating data between Excel forms and CRM/SAP.

We have a solution for how to digitize archived files into PDFs and distribute them to a dedicated folder. We use Excel forms to manipulate data, then the physical data will be scanned and contains the date, which will be input by the user manually. After that, the bot will execute the process for distributing the file, and finally, will send a report to the user.

We use analytics as part of the result.

We are not the end-user. Rather, we are helping users to get the best solution out of their business process. Mostly, we are learning from webinars or the AA YouTube channel.

We know that many things can be solved by using RPA, but the con is that the branding image of AA in Indonesia is low. We have to compete with UiPath on a line per line basis, so it will be not easy to persuade users to use AA.

I hope we can get more support for AA to expand in the Indonesian Market.

There are many features that are valuable including Whatsapp messages, OCR, and image recognization, but I have not tried all of them.

My opinion is that we need to have a video or tutorial on how to implement these features, as well as seeing what results to expect. We are having difficulty explaining RPA to users if we have to. The competitors can present the features more interactively using video, which is better than a PowerPoint presentation. Having this would make it easier to sell to the user, because the market in Indonesia prefers to see the demo/result, as opposed to learning the technical aspects first.

Similarly, they would prefer to see a success story and case study, instead of listening to a text presentation. I think we need to create an interactive presentation that is more creative and gives more proof of results for the process, and lesser in terms of technical description.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for seven months.

I have experience with traditional RPA.

IQ Bot is useful but the price is not friendly. Many users are interested to try it, but the cost is not a good deal when you consider ROI.

The price between distributor and partner is different, especially in terms of the discount. We cannot lock the discount from partner to distribution, so we still have a different price. 

We have evaluated other products but we need more time to see the results of our automated processes.

I would love Automation Anywhere to expand the market in Indonesia but I need more support. This is not only from a technical perspective, but business development assistance is needed to grow the market in this region.

We are using Automation Anywhere to automate manual processes and make the organization digital. We have replaced most of the human resources and we are utilizing them for more valued tasks. Now, the other business users are attracted by the output of it and are approaching us to automate their processes in their respective lines of businesses.

We started at version 10 and moved to version 11x. It is more powerful than the previous one, but the new cloud-based RPA has attracted us more and we are migrating to A2019.

We have increased our productivity by five times as of now, and we are still growing.

Now, most of the processes are automated and even free from an audit perspective, as they are completely automated without human intervention. This is getting better and better.

The user is experiencing much higher outputs without error, rather than using humans who are prone to errors. As this works 24 by 7, they are preferring to automate the task and get it processed using the bot. Multiple business lines are adopting this.

OCR, Image Recognition, Object Cloning, and PDF integration help us a lot. We have used these mostly, as our system is legacy. We automate primarily with image recognition and MetaBots, which are mostly accurate. 

Metabots are a useful feature that helps us overcome the issues that we face using image recognition. The reading of data from Excel is much easier and is getting even better in A2019.

The bot store helps us to download most of the reusable utilities and overcome our issues. We also earn at the same time.

It can be improved in a few areas where the legacy system can be read through object cloning.

The Image Recognition functionality should be enhanced to improve the accuracy of checkboxes. In A2019, the bot agent will be deployed on the local machine when we run the bot runner, but to download it takes too long, and the user will lose patience. My advice is to improve on this.

Sometimes, the files are getting corrupted and this causes us a lot of trouble. This is an issue that is still pending.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for three and a half years.

Automation Anywhere is very stable.

The scalability is very good and we have had a pretty good impression from the beginning. It has not changed yet.

The technical support is very good. Whenever we raise any ticket with the support team, they respond immediately. Our issues have been resolved on our schedule after they determine the root cause of the problem.

We did not use another RPA solution prior to this one.

The initial setup was straightforward. The technical team from Automation Anywhere has helped us in installing. They were able to answer our questions wherever required.

The vendor assisted us and they were very good. They are very responsive and reliable.

Not sure as it is from higher management. As of now we cannot share it.

The price is very reasonable.

We did not evaluate other options.

Overall, this product seems pretty good as of now.

From started working on Automation Anywhere platform, primarily worked on contact center and telecommunication sectors. Now exploring our RPA solution/expertise towards different different sectors such as insurance, medical, transport, education and so on.

With the help of automation anywhere platforms/tools we have done few projects for our existing clients and internal as well. Overall it is a good product which we can use to automation many repetitive tasks or known tasks. Also it has capability to automate complex and unstructured or semi structured datas. 

It has IQ Bot, Meta  bot and bot insight features/products which are a good advantages over all other RPA platforms. Also AA is providing self learning platform where we can up our RPA skills and do develop/hands on practice on the both community (on premise and cloud) editions.

Currently I am using AAEC 11.3.4 and A2019 version. Both are stable and have all the required features. If I will find anything which has to be focus on definitely recommend to AA team.

From 2018, I am working on automation anywhere platforms.

Same I would give 8 out of 10 scale rate.

I will give 8 out of 10 scale rate.

Yes, we had a good experience with customer/technical support team but few more improvement requirements from AA team.

I started with Automation anywhere platform only later I tried other RPA platforms such as UiPath, Nice, Workfusion. But compare to Automation Anywhere I didn't find any other RPA platforms as a competitor. It's a best and easy to learn.

It was very easy and anyone can do it. If they are doing for lab or personal setup. For the client AA teams are helping.

We have implemented through vendor and in-house team.

ROI is good and impressive after using automation anywhere RPA platform.

Pricing is average and less than blue prism. But one thing I would like to add that post 1+ years completion only we can expect ROI because after taking license and putting RPA solutions into production will take lots of efforts and time. Thus in one or below one year time period we can't expect good ROI.

Having said that I found few bugs in the 11.3.1.2 version and later upgraded into 11.3.4 version we didn't find any issue and for other suggested parts they already resolve/added features in the A2019 cloud edition. 

In the A2019 community edition, while running its taking time to run RPA bots and having few bugs related to IQ Bot server connectivity and other things. But they will solve it soon as expected. 

Also in A2019 they should make one separate page or redirected into separate page where we can easily develop RPA bots because in CR webpage my bot section we are not getting enough space to develop resulting its taking time to create bot. Because many developers working on system with screen resolution 1366*768. It will be better if they can add one separate windows/page for RPA bot development in the CR webpage.

I have overall 10 to 12 years of experience in RPA. I started RPA doing VBA. That seemed like I needed coding, and for coding alone, I wasted more time. I came to know Automation Anywhere, which is a product that automates RPA processes in an easy manner. 

I was interested to learn it. I had an opportunity to attend training for Automation Anywhere for almost one month. I started with version 10.5. It was really interesting.

From the beginning, before I interacted with Automation Anywhere, I thought that I would also need to code something using the details, then it will take more time. That is not the case. If I want to automate something, I can easily drag and drop. There is any function that I need for a business case or some critical thing that I need to automate, then we can create a condition, have a API, use Excel automation, or do everything together. 

Most companies in the industry are facing the task of automating unstructured data or repetitive tasks. It's too difficult to use some of the other RPA tools, VBA, Java, .NET, etc. So, when I try to automate something using Automation Anywhere and I want to consolidate something when there are a hundred Excels in the folder, I can easily use my files and folder option. I can put in a condition without a need to code. I can just drag and drop. I can open Excel, select all those things, and put it altogether, then send it to my client. So, it's very easy to interact with Automation Anywhere.

The most valuable feature of Automation Anywhere is the value of feature lessons, like I had a session for A2019. I attended a session for 2019, which is very impressive. It's weightless. There isn't another system that I have found like this in version 11.3. Every system is busy. With the new version, I can easily open my browser and navigate. I can automate it wherever it is, and that's really interesting.

I face little challenges when I move code to production. In Automation Anywhere 11.3, when the bot is running until it loops 24/7 in my development and UAT environment, we don't have our antivirus on it. When it comes over to production, there is an antivirus running on it. However, we don't know what time it will be scheduled. My client is taking care of that. So, when I raise a ticket with Automation Anywhere, they share some suggested documents to exclude those lists from antivirus. When I approach my client, they want to exclude those things because they are treating them as maybe not secure.

What I am suggesting, when using A2019, if there are any additional features to exclude those antivirus scans until after my task is completed, then the antivirus can start scheduling. Then, I can easily tell the client that the priority are running and the Automation Anywhere scans can wait until after the release.

I had a chance in Intellect Design Arena to go from installation to deployment. This was the first process with RPA in Intellect Design Arena, so people were thinking it's the first project that we have with Automation Anywhere. However, we are very experienced and can automate nearly anything.

It's obviously reliable. It has a reusable component. If you compare some of the other RPA tool, they are more difficult to explain. We need to create one solution design with a low level and high level each for everything. When it comes to Automation Anywhere, and someone has joined, they can easily understand the way of the coding. When you see the code of the structure that we do, it's really impressive and anyone can easily understand it.

Their guys will take maximum only two hours to solve the biggest problems. If I need any clarification, I will raise a ticket. However, their people won't message me when replying back, "Are you checking this setting?" Their people will call me and ask, "How can I help you? This is the issue. Have you followed the steps by testing or calling it something different." Instead of sending a mail and wasting time, their people will directly call me and ask, which is the best thing with the Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup is easy. As a first step, it will ask for the location. As a second step, if you want to add an SSL certificate or database. There are just four steps of installation. It's very usable. Anybody can easily install Automation Anywhere, if they want.

I have used UiPath and a basic version of Blue Prism. 

When I compare it with other RPA tools, Automation Anywhere seems pretty good. It's a user-friendly tool. Anyone can easily understand it. If there is an error, you can easily debug it from the developer level. In Automation Anywhere, the error handling happens in the easiest way. In case of an error, we send an email. It's not too difficult code to understand. There's only beginning and ending error handling, which is easy to understand. 

I would rate it an eight (out of 10).

We use this solution to automate tasks for which multiple steps have to be done.

We do it a very large number of times in a day.

We have been able to automate tasks that have a lot of repetitiveness.

The most valuable feature is the object cloning.

The user interface is easy to use.

While we have been developing over time, there have been issues with stability.

The speed of automation needs to be improved.

This solution is not that stable.

We have been able to scale ok.

I implemented this solution for my company.

This is a solution that I recommend.

We are looking forward to trying the IQ Bot to help with reading, scanning, and querying of files.

This solution has a wonderful concept, but the stability needs to be improved.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are trying to automate a few of the processes that we did manually. Product setup is an important aspect, as we are using bots to do the setup for us. We used to do the setup manually about three to four months back. 

We used to set up 150 to 250 products in a week. That has come down to a day. 

I initiate the bot, then I go home. So, it's working 24 hours. I am restricted to working nine hours. Time is something that we are saving. We are becoming more efficient and our partners are happy. They can send us workloads. Then, we can just kick it off, go home, and by the time we are back, it is done. I send an e-mail saying, "Whatever you've sent over is done." 

Efficiency is something that has increased a lot. Productivity has increased a lot too.

Object cloning is one of the main features that are using. We are very happy with it. as It has enabled us to capture a lot of things on screen and use them. 

We want it to work with more APIs. It needs to integrate with multiple APIs. That would be something that I would like going forward.

Currently, it does not work that well with legacy tools.

It is a bit wonky with HTML when I'm working with it. There are times when it's not able to detect the technology that we are using. I don't know whether it's an Automation Anywhere issue or an internal issue. I want it to work smoothly with more technologies.

Our tool is a bit slow, as it's a legacy tool. Automation Anywhere is having a some issues when running back. This is one of the things that we are not happy with. We need to upgrade our systems for Automation Anywhere to work better.

As of now, we have it limited to one process. However, we can scale the solution. It can cascade onto multiple processes, so that is a positive note for scalability.

We are just in the initial phases. I personally have created about three to four bots. 

We have not contacted the technical support because we have not had issues.

My manager works our customer success manager.

Automation Anywhere is our first introduction to automation. I'm pretty happy with it. I did ask people who had come from Automation Anywhere about UiPath to get a clear idea about it. I think UX is one of the strongest points for Automation Anywhere which can attract competence to your workbench and work. That's what we have been told. 

I still need to experiment a lot with it. Whatever I've done so far. it's been at an 80 to 85 percent success rate.

I've not had the chance to work with UiPath.

We want to do more Automation Anywhere certifications and learn more about them. We did not get that information from our account team, which could be improved.

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.