Automation Anywhere Reviews

I mainly used AA to extract data from invoices from PDF files with multiple formats and to upload this data to a Data Lake, on a Windows machine.

Other projects involved extracting data from Excel and CSV files and then inserting them into custom applications, databases, and mainframes and finally sending recap emails to the user.

The Bots developed, according to the end user's needs and the type of process, were both attended and unattended. In both cases, the end-users were always satisfied with the functioning and performances of the Bots.

By automating the process with AA and using the verification station, it was possible to speed up the process and strengthen it, involving the process owner in the verification of the correctness of the data extracted.

It is becoming more and more normal for companies that a process is carried out partly or totally by a Bot, thus allowing humans to dedicate themselves to high value-added activities.

The speed-up and greater control over the quality of the processes have also led to savings in money and are increasing the happiness of the company's customers.

I consider the verification station very useful because it allows you to quickly check if the data extracted are correct or if you need to change the process. The process owner is also much happier because he is more involved in the implementation of the Bot and thus it is easier to develop the requirements.

During the test phases and during the review, it is possible to engage the process owner who almost enjoys verifying the correct functioning of the Bot, thanks also to the simple and attractive interface of the verification station.

You could improve the tools for reading CSV/Excel, also providing wizards or detailed guides, otherwise, it is quite complex to use them, especially at the beginning.

It would be useful to have an online wiki on each tool that can be used on AA with practical examples of use, with images and videos.

It would also be useful to increase the community and make public in a forum the problems solved by other developers through the support, so that we can use past experience to solve development problems without having to send emails to AA about a problem that may have already been solved.

I use Automation Anywhere for five months.

I think the final product is quite stable. All the functionalities included in AA are extensively tested and thus do not present strange errors after the Bot has been released into production. AA also handles the release of new versions of the IDE very well, guaranteeing the portability of the code with simple procedures.

It is a very scalable product, also thanks to some features included in the IDE.

So far, I have not used customer service very much.

I currently use both Automation Anywhere and UiPath. Depending on what you need to automate, one may perform better than the other.

The initial setup is quite long and full of different phases. It would take only one official AA installation guide with the most detailed step-by-step description and one image per step, without the need to consult more than one guide.

I implemented through a vendor team and their level of expertise is medium-high.

We also evaluated UiPath.

It is a tool that allows you to have excellent performance but some features are not intuitive to use.

I will be talking about some of the leading products from Automation Anywhere, which is their RPA Taskbot and IQ bot. Being a consultant and partner, we have implemented successfully some solutions for Automation Anywhere using IQ bot and Taskbot.

We have found that finance as a function has always been a very strong use case when it comes to a product like Automation Anywhere. The reason is very strong compliance, quality, error controls, and the speed and efficiency with which Automation Anywhere can deliver projects. Because of this, finance as a function has always been a great user for this type of solution. However, we have also tried implementing Automation Anywhere around some very different use cases in HR.

We have implemented Automation Anywhere solutions for HR recruitment and onboarding, which has helped save a lot of time to go through some of the very detailed resumes with multiple pages of a candidates' profiles, their skill sets, their academics, and their years of experience. When there are hundreds and thousands of such resumes which are applied online through multiple channels, like LinkedIn, Monster, email, or any campaigns, it really becomes very painful for HR organizations to go and scan so many CVs and process, then mine, the best candidates for a particular job request.

So, we use successfully Automation Anywhere product to automate the complete recruitment process, along with our onboarding process as well. It has really worked wonders for the organization and departments.

Finance as a function is driven by cost and the money involved in it. So, if I'm processing an invoice, doing procurement, or expense processing, there is money involved. From a compliance perspective, the value of the bot should be accurate to the second or third decimal. The accuracy of the job being done has a very high sensitivity in finance compared to other functions because there is money involved on the receivable side or payable side. So, either I am to collect money from my customers or I am to pay money to my suppliers or vendors. Everywhere, there is money involved, and you can't execute an incorrect job. You can't execute a wrong document and end up paying less or end up paying more to your suppliers or customers. When it comes to financials, Automation Anywhere has done amazing work in ensuring not only the speed and accuracy of the bot, but also the compliance and error controls through which the bot executes the job at very high satisfaction and tolerance levels. So, I have seen various use cases and success stories where Automation Anywhere is used in finance.

So far, we have seen that a valuable feature of Automation Anywhere is the ease of integrating it with multiple systems. It can very easily integrate with an environment of an organization. It helps in a quick go to access and implementation. You don't have to spend days implementing Automation Anywhere software. You can quickly go drag and drop and do an ease of configuration. You can actually get your bot up and running very fast, which is one important advantage.

For a business user, it is not very technical or complex software. Before this, they need to have a lot of training. So, that is the ease and simplicity with which Automation Anywhere can be deployed, not only by a technical team, but also by the business owners. I found this to be a very unique, competitive advantage.

The industry is moving towards strong AI and ML-based algorithms. They have already started their journey. Earlier, Automation Anywhere added Taskbot, then they added IQ Bot. I would say bring the AI component into the Automation Anywhere product line, then a user will be able to make a lot of decision-making processes digitally instead of with human intervention. The more that they bring and make their cognitive engine stronger, along with the Taskbot or digital worker, that's where I feel they will have a wonderful contribution to an organization who is looking at a truly digital workforce environment.

They should do more on the cognitive side. If they can keep adding more features, that would be their greatest advantage.

A good thing about Automation Anywhere are three important things: scalability, durability, and the entire stability of the environment. So, I can start the journey with one, two, five, or 10 bots, then just look at the very comparable enterprise organization where I could apply hundreds of the bots.

Now, in any other situation, when I deploy the bot from our development to UAT to a production environment, and bots are running in a production environment, what I should not be worried about is: Are those bots running? Are the tasks getting completed on time? All that stuff. 

Stability of Automation Anywhere bots is very high. So, a one side deploys these bots successfully. I don't have to worry much whether the bot is stable. Is the bot performing? Even after deploying the bot, do I have to go back and check ii the bot is having some problems? Or, are there some errors being induced?

In the Control Room, I am able to see the complete dashboard of all the bots: 

• Which bots I have deployed (hundreds of them)?
• How many bots are in progress? 
• How many bots are running? 
• How many bots have thrown some error because of incorrect jobs or processes?

That gives me very quick access to the entire deployment of my bots. I can access that dashboard, even from my mobile. Even if I'm not in office and I'm head of the enterprise or a COE architecture, I can just log into my mobile and see how many bots are performing well, how many bots have done the job in time, etc.

The stability of the whole architecture is the essence of Automation Anywhere, if you ask me.

Scalability is huge. I have seen organizations who don't want to invest big during the initial phase, even if they have a big appetite to deploy hundreds of bots. They normally start with five or 10 bots. The best part about Automation Anywhere is you can start with five, 10, 50, 100, 200, or 300 bots. Today, the Control Room can manage 300 to 400 Bot Runners in a single architecture.

So, organizations don't have to worry that after a 100 bots they won't have to do another architecture change or shift the entire environment here or there. They can keep on adding bots and keep scaling their organization to hundreds of bots.

You can configure bots to do multiple tasks in a series or in batch mode, depending upon the type of task. Ideally, when you assign a job to the bot, it will try to finish it. But, if there is some parallel processing required for some business requirement, I can make a few bots do the job parallel, then I can take over from where the other guys left off. That is another ease of Automation Anywhere. Bots can be configured the way you want to perform your operations.

I have worked with their technical support. I would rate them quite well. It is improving day by day. From the initial days, when we used to approach the technical support, we definitely used to get a lot of technical insight from them related to Automation Anywhere. Today, when we talked to them for environments outside Automation Anywhere which are a customer environment, they are able to assist us. They are able to guide us on something, even as a part of the enterprise architecture. 

The best part I have seen is the technical capabilities and support metrics to help the customers and partners (like us) are improving day by day. That is the biggest advantage of why they are able to reach this scale of enterprise penetration today.

In this forum, we have come to know that they're also coming out with a browser version. Today, we have to install the software on a PC, desktop, or server. What they are coming out with now is like a browser version, which quickly can be applied instead of an installation. That is amazing. That will be disruptive. You can now deploy hundreds of bots at a very fast pace, and that's an amazing thing to look forward to.

We have seen environments where customers do have multiple product lines for doing different functionalities or process automations. While comparing various competitors, we have found that if a customer is at the SMB or medium scale of deployment, say two, five, or 10 bots, there are competitive products available . But, any organization who has gone enterprise scale of hundreds of bot has chosen Automation Anywhere because the way they have created their entire governments and architecture. Customers are more comfortable with Automation Anywhere when it comes to scalability.

Two or three bots, we have seen competitors here and there. But, the moment you move into large scale bot deployments, we have seen comfort more with Automation Anywhere compared to other competitors.

Last year, I would have rate them an eight (out of 10). This year, I would rate them a nine (out of 10) because I'm seeing a lot of improvements coming. As an observer in the industry, a consultant, and a partner, this is what look upon to any giant like Automation Anywhere to bring a lot of exciting new features every year. This is required by everybody in the organization and globally. That's why I would say nine out of 10. I would have said 10 out of 10, but I want them to bring more such features, and maybe next year I'll be saying 10 out of 10.

I work for KL University as an associate professor. I take care of internships, placements, and industry connect. I'm the associate dean of internships, placements, and industry connect at KL University.

In our university, we have started a center of excellence in association with Automation Anywhere. This robotic process automation tool is very important in terms of distal transformations. 

The majority of students are doing a lot of robotic projects with the help of the bot that we have established in our university.

Another way that this tool helps is professors are doing a lot of researching initiators in terms of automation, wherever there is automation, there is the possible usage of RPA.

The majority of students are showing a lot of interest in this tool as it deals with process automation. Once students are done with the certification and training, the majority of recruiters are showing interest because RPA is doing an excellent job in the market. The majority of Indian companies are showing a lot of interest in recruiting students who are trained in this Automation Anywhere RPA tool. When compared to current skills in the market, Automation Anywhere is a hard skill, where in universities in an Indian-based culture, this place a wider role.

A user can easily adopt this technology and utilize it, when compared to the other available resources in the market.

A majority of this tool works on automation. For future prospects, this tool should 80 percent deal with neural networks, deep learning, and artificial intelligence and that has to be integrated a lot. As these are future skills, these integrations will help us take the tool to take to the next level.

This product is very stable in the market because the adoption of this product is very clear. There is no complexity. Plus, anyone can learn this tool. In India, if a tool comes along, people think that it is relevant to technical guys. However, if someone goes through RPA, a non-IT guy or IT guy (anyone) can adopt this technology, as it is easy to adapt. The unique selling proposition of this product is adaptability is good. So, this product will be the stable in the market.

The majority of the technical support that we get will be through digitization. If someone wants to go through a digital process automation, this is one of the best tool to adapt it. When compared to other products on the market, the adaptability and usage are very easy. Moreover, getting the resources who are trained in Automation Anywhere, we can get that very easily. As Automation Anywhere is giving this technology for free, as there are no commercials involved, the majority of the skilled workforce are showing a lot of interest. That will be the future of this product.

There are quick user manuals clearly available. We can easily install the product and start working immediately. There are very big eLearning resource contents available. With the help of Automation Anywhere team in India, they are providing a lot, just to support student and faculties in universities. There is a quick learning process with the help of eLearning resources.

This is a one of the best automation tools where we can have quick transformations when compared to other tools available in the market.

The most interesting about this product when compared to the other products on the market: 

1. The resources available.
2. eLearning access is available.
3. The certifications are free of cost.
4. Adaptability is easy.
5. The implementation part is easy.

I can give it an eight out of 10. We need it to add something. It is a little too early, and they are working on that. If they can add more on these things, this will be one of the future leader of the market. While it is already a future leader, it will goes into the next level of the market.

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.

We are working on implementing automation for a financial use case. Every time somebody travels they have a lot of receipts and they come in different formats. We would like to automate the processing of these receipts. We have a team in the US who have implemented this, and we would like to do the same thing here in India.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the automation of manual tasks, which save us time.

I really like the Automation Anywhere University website because it has a lot of good documents that you can read to learn about the solution.

I would like this solution to be supported on a Mac. Right now, we are using a VM with Automation Anywhere installed inside it, but it would be nice if the solution could be used on macOS.

I would like to see instructional videos on how to use this solution.

We still only have a small group working with this solution, but until now, everything is working fine.

This solution is scalable.

We have not used technical support for this solution.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

Our US company does a lot of traveling and they are always dealing with receipts. It is a small finance group, yet they were doing a lot of manual work. They have to check for things like a matching date and the correct amount. From there, we understood that we need to do something automated. One of our colleagues from the US attended an Automation Anywhere conference and then they implemented this solution after that.

The initial setup of this solution is very easy.

We have an in-house team who took care of the implementation.

We have a developer license for this solution.

We have tried UiPath but this solution was selected.

This solution did not take us long to learn how to use. We found the guidelines at automationanywhereuniversity.com and started using it.

At this time we use the MetaBot but not the IQ Bot.

This is a solution that I recommended to a friend of mine at another company. They are using Blue Prism, but after telling them about the Automation Anywhere University they started viewing the documents. They are now doing a POC with this solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We have many use cases for this solution including invoice processing, email processing, Excel file manipulation, and text file manipulation.

Using automation, we have been able to reduce a lot of time spent on processes.

We have also been able to automate statement processing.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the MetaBot, which gives you the power to add many DLLs and customize them for the automation.

We have had issues with stability in the past, and there should be a function that helps you to find out what is wrong with your environment that is causing the automation to fail.

We would like to have more information on how Python integration works, and how easily it can be done.

This solution is stable but sometimes it doesn't work due to various issues with the environment, like your service doesn't work or your sign-in gets disconnected.

This solution is scalable and works fine. I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

Technical support for this solution is quite good and they are very responsive. They also give you a solution very quickly.

When we first started with this solution it took about ten days to learn how it works. Afterward, it was quite straightforward to work with it.

We looked at UiPath but it was not as capable as Automation Anywhere when it comes to large scale.

The 2019 version of this solution looks quite exciting. It will include many features for web integration. It will also include support for Python, which is something that we are looking forward to.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Cost savings.

Cost savings to the client and business transformation makes life easy. 

We have the Bot Store, and also we have contributed a lot of things into Bot Store. We have about 40 different bots in your Bot Store.

I think that one of the coolest features that what Automation Anywhere has come up with is AI Sense. I see an immense potential there. Using AI Sense, we can automate outside Citrix. That's going to remove the client dependency or overall automation journey, and that can give lot of optimization, cost saving, and the time to market.

Improvement areas will be there for everybody. I think one area which I would like to see improvement is in IQ Bot. Maybe it has improved a lot in version 11 X but I think that that's one area which definitely scope to improve.

Thumbs up both sides. Stability and scalability. I think these are the least spoken things with Automation Anywhere. It's been in the market for long and they have been proving this right from the start.

It's straightforward, easy going. Anybody can start that. Only thing is that the people should have common sense.

The first one is the FT savings. That's directly proportional to the cost, what client is going to spend. The second thing is, once again, time to market or the optimization and process delivery.

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.