Automation Anywhere Reviews

We are using this in our college laboratory where I am a professor. We are using it for educational purposes. 

In our college, we are also taking attendance using automation software that we have built. It automatically takes student attendance based on face recognition. We have automated this process.

Automation Anywhere is very useful for automating repetitive tasks. It saves time. Our attendance automation helps take attendance of every person easily. It enables focus on strategic work, boosting productivity.

Automation Anywhere is very easy. It helps in many ways to do more work. It is user-friendly and provides good productivity. It has improved our productivity by at least 10%. 

The best feature is its ability to combine Automation Anywhere with AI to build intelligent bots. It saves time and offers better career opportunities for our students. IQ Bot automation helps to extract data from PDFs and invoices and store it in the database. It is beneficial for students and allows employees to focus on strategic work. 

It is very easy to learn. If you want to do a particular work, you can do it fairly easily. There are drag-and-drop opportunities available, and everything is easily integrated. We can quickly learn and find solutions to our problems. A simple task takes two or three days to learn. A complex task may take about five days.

There is limited scope for complex decision-making. For instance, a bot can extract invoice details, but it cannot determine if an invoice is fraudulent without AI integration. The enterprise version is expensive for small businesses and individual users, which can pose a challenge.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for more than a year.

It is stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

The stability of the bot depends on the factors like design and application changes.

It is highly scalable and flexible. Cloud-based Automation Anywhere offers maximum scalability. I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.

In our university, there are more than 500 students using Automation Anywhere.

It has good technical support, but the response quality and availability depend on your subscription plan. They offer standard technical support as well as premium and enterprise support.

Multiple support channels are offered, including documentation, community forums, chat, email, and phone support. Self-service support is also available for all users and is free for everyone. Community forums are helpful but not always reliable for critical issues.

Positive

It is better than UiPath Community Edition, open-source RPA tools like RoboCorp, and Blue Prism. 

Automation Anywhere is very easy to use. It does not require any coding which makes it more user-friendly than Blue Prism. Automation Anywhere is also cloud-based which is not the case with Blue Prism. Automation Anywhere's price is better than Blue Prism.

Its deployment is easy. The deployment time for Automation Anywhere cloud depends on factors such as infrastructure complexity. For a standard cloud deployment, if using a basic setup, the time required is between thirty minutes to two hours.

Ongoing maintenance is required, especially if bots interact with a dynamic application, cloud service, or AI model. We are using cloud services, so regular updates are required. If the UI of an application changes, we may need to update it.

The enterprise version is expensive for small businesses and individual users.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten. It is a great solution for automating business processes and repetitive processes. It works great for data entry, invoice processing, and customer service automation.

I train new analysts and developers how to use Automation Anywhere, so my use cases are rudimentary. We automate many internal processes, such as our monthly reports, employee onboarding, and time cards. On the client side, we focus on finance and accounting use cases, such as order to cash, procure to pay, record to report, etc. I do a lot with revenue ops and revenue cycle automation.

You can create synthetic data to test automation capabilities without using real data. For every RPA delivery lifecycle, you can use synthetic data instead of production-grade data. If you need to beef up your artifacts or documentation, you can use Generative AI to have more complete or comprehensive artifacts as a part of your delivery artifacts.

Document Processing has been a higher priority for our clients this year. Automation Anywhere can meet that need in two areas: FortressIQ transactions and the IQ bot capability.

Automation Anywhere has significantly improved efficiency within my organization. For instance, we reduced the time to enter orders from five to ten minutes to less than a minute in one use case. This has given full-time employees significant time and enabled us to process more orders. We save a ton of time using automation to onboard folks and for our time cards.  

Automation Anywhere's most valuable features include its end-to-end capabilities within a single platform. It offers desktop automation, unattended automation, a recorder for tasks, and advanced IDP capability, which means that I can handle everything from basic cutting and pasting to advanced use cases. With Automation Anywhere, I don't need multiple other tools to automate end-to-end processes. I only need one additional chatbot tool, assuming conversational AI is part of the solution. If I don't have chatbots, all the capabilities are built into the platform.

It's the second-easiest platform we use. Blue Prism is the easiest for non-technical users, but Automation Anywhere is also straightforward. It has a drag-and-drop interface that helps people who have used visual tools and a recorder for rudimentary task automation. If you're not a professional developer and haven't gone through the process yet, it's pretty easy to build a bot without much training.

When I took the training, I did 40 hours of basic and 100 hours of advanced. If I had learned it from scratch, my experience would be different. It was the last platform I learned out of the three. I had Blue Prism and UiPath under my belt before I learned it.

It takes 40 hours to train a non-technical user in basic automation. A process analyst only needs eight hours, but if you use the platform outside of Bot Insight, you need 40 hours to be proficient. 

Automation Anywhere is easy to integrate for all the standard use cases if you have an API. Otherwise, you'll need to build a custom plugin or use computer vision. You can integrate workflows, APIs, business applications, and documents. 

The IQ Bots need more out-of-the-box models to lessen the time required for model training. Their competitors provide more built-in models, which enhance capabilities in document processing.

Automation Anywhere white-labels the Shibumi platform and calls it COE Manager. They could expand on that platform to reduce the development time and manage robots in production. The COE tool could do more. I think that's another place where they can expand their capabilities.

I started using Automation Anywhere in 2019, so I'm on my fourth year.

Stability issues are typically avoidable. Proper infrastructure setup and understanding are crucial for robot processing speeds. Infrastructure is critical, and you must ensure you design these bots to identify all business exceptions In the bot hardening process and the RPA delivery lifecycle. System exceptions are unavoidable, so you need to fix them. But outside of that, there isn't an inherent latency based on legacy software or anything else.

Automation Anywhere’s ability to provide automation at scale is on par with its competitors.

I rate Automation Anywhere eight out of 10. It's on par with competitors, especially if you get the enterprise version. They're a leader in the cloud, with more cloud clients than any of their competitors. 

Positive

I have used UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere. Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere are similarly easy to use. Automation Anywhere comes with all the digital capabilities you need right out of the box. They added those capabilities through acquisitions, but they own them outright. Blue Prism is easier to use but doesn't have all the same features.  They were late to market with their RDA capability, And I would say their IDP capability isn't as accurate, so it's not as highly rated.

Given its web-based architecture, the initial setup is genuinely straightforward. The hardest thing is a hybrid setup because you have to remember the rules for each one. Depending on the web browser, you have to have a certain amount of power and bandwidth at your disposal. I don't know that I would manage the environment myself. I'd rather have hybrid to cloud so that AA could manage the upgrades for me.

 Larger, multi-tenant deployments typically take three to five weeks, while a single device on a VM can be set up in two to three days. When we sell it and do it for infrastructure, we use senior consultants, so it's 1.5 resources. Depending on how complex the configuration is, we may need more senior consultants, but one architect plus a consultant is usually enough to get it done. 

Automation Anywhere requires some maintenance. We provide managed services to our clients for break-fix and business or system exceptions, but Automation Anywhere handles all the upgrades, patches, etc., as long as it's in the cloud. 

 It's difficult to say how much maintenance Automation Anywhere needs because it varies based on your environment. Sometimes, your environment isn't set up correctly, so the service crashes a lot, and you spend a lot of time resetting services and restarting processes.  

It also depends on the configuration and the number of automations. My largest client has 400 automations in production, so it's a full-time job. They say one person can manage that many, but I don't think that's a healthy number. It's more like 140, depending on the SLAs and use cases. An IT resource can fix most system exceptions, but business exceptions require somebody who's at least minimally basic-certified and ideally advanced-certified. 

In other cases, the automation wasn't built with the best practices in mind, so the process will time out and take longer than a human. Many things can cause maintenance and uptime to increase. Ideally, you want to do load management with the bot, so you're sharing the work. You want a utility available if the workload increases or a bot goes down. Lastly, you should ensure enough onboard memory and bandwidth for the automation to run.

The time to value varies depending on the size of your project and its objectives. It takes four to six weeks to produce a viable project if your goal is to prove that you can automate a process in your environment and realize value. Medium-to-large high-value automations might take six to 10 weeks or more. Once you have 10 processes in production, you'll see a return of two to five times the investment.

Complaints are generally about the cost of IQ Bot, which is higher than its competitors. The base model’s pricing is comparable to other platforms with attended, unattended, and IDP capabilities as well.

I rate Automation Anywhere eight out of 10. They're one of the leaders. I don't want to give a bad score, but no one is a 10 because there's always room for improvement. While the market share doesn't reflect it, they're tied for first place, in my opinion. 

I recommend doing the training before you purchase Automation Anywhere so you can understand the terminology, components, capabilities, and best practices. You should also get a partner to help you avoid all the hang-ups and pitfalls of adopting and monetizing new technology. About 70 percent of solo implementations fail.

My use cases include technical service, finance, and IT ops.

What I appreciate the most about Automation Anywhere is its ease of use. The ease of use helps my company by allowing us to roll out automations quickly.

The main challenge I was looking to solve with the agentic process automation, is that we don't have any agentic process automation yet. In the age of agentic AI, probably the biggest challenges for me and my company are determining which direction to head and settling on the right path. Automation Anywhere can help me with that. It depends on the price point; currently, the pricing is a bit high. I am just on the RPA. I have not had a chance to try out the AI agent studio feature of Automation Anywhere yet.

AI governance is very important for my company in general. It is important due to safeguards, making sure that there are appropriate guardrails in place so it does not give proprietary information outside the company.

I utilize Automation Anywhere Center of Excellence manager or CoE manager. My impression of its impact on visibility in the automation lifecycle is so-so; it has good points and bad points, and I have discussed with Automation Anywhere several of the other shortfalls as well as the positives.

We are using the cloud-based nature of Automation Anywhere CoE manager in managing our automation pipeline. I use it to track the progress of various ideas, the solicitation of ideas from our population of managers, as well as to track a couple of projects against our initial goals. We do use document automation in our current processes, yet not in production as we are in the process of one project that's being developed right now.

One way Automation Anywhere can be improved is in ticketing; I have a couple of tickets that have been outstanding for a while, and the support staff have closed tickets without checking with me first, which has been a sore spot.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for five months.

I used Microsoft Power Automate before choosing Automation Anywhere.

My experience with the deployment has been very good. 

My experience with the pricing, the setup costs, and the licensing of the platform has been good with the bots, as well as the support package, but the price points on the agentic side and AI side are rather high.

I did consider other solutions before choosing this one, including UiPath. I went with Automation Anywhere because it was a coin toss between the two, but Automation Anywhere had a better price point.

I switched to Automation Anywhere since it is a better product. 

From one to ten, I would rate Automation Anywhere probably about an eight.

We implement Automation Anywhere for our customers or for our clients, but we also use it internally for our own processes too.

We're in a growth phase, so this solution helps us scale and standarize processes so we can do more with less. 

The low-code platform is pretty easy to learn, especially if you have come from a technical background. Then you can build quite a few powerful automations with it already with the traditional RPA in terms of the flexibility it gives you. 

There are additional features, such as document automation, that expand the scope in terms of what you can use it for. It's a great multi-tool. Every piece of it works really great. 

For us, the features of Automation Anywhere help us scale our automations and standardize our processes. We are able to do more with less, and that's been the key for us in terms of using the platform.

In our automation processes, we are utilizing the AI Agent Studio mostly in our training. We haven't fully rolled out any live automations yet. That's something we'll implement very soon. The integration features of Automation Anywhere are flexible in terms of what you can connect to. You can bring it over lens or use what's available, which gives a lot of flexibility in terms of how you can use the platform.

We have explored the autopilot capability of IQ Bot AI, and it's maturing. We are keeping an eye on it to determine if it can speed up the development work for us. We are definitely curious and will continue to explore as the product evolves.

We utilize Automation Anywhere's CoE Center of Excellence Manager. Its impact on visibility in the automation lifecycle is actually very important. It shows the complete lifecycle of opportunities, from what's in pipeline to what's been deployed, and how those deployments are performing in production.

In the age of agentic AI, it's allowing us to imagine what comes next.

My impression of the AI governance features in maintaining compliance and data integrity in our company so far is positive. Though we haven't rolled out anything actively yet, from what I see, it gives quite a granular level of control in terms of what can be done and how different outputs can be controlled. AI governance is very important to our company, and while the AI Agent Studio's compliance feature might not be as mature, there are security requirements around keeping our customer data safe and secure.

The availability of material in terms of more technical documentation could be improved, particularly in-depth information about how things can be done. I'm not saying it's not available at this time, but there's always scope in terms of playbooks, especially with APA coming out, as things can be done differently than traditional methods. It would be beneficial to have standardized playbooks that we can use to understand change management, position this to our leadership, and demonstrate the art of what's possible. Some playbooks of that kind, especially on the execution level, would be nice.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for about five years.

Before adopting Automation Anywhere, we haven't really used other solutions. 

What I appreciate the most about Automation Anywhere is that it's pretty flexible in terms of standing it up. You don't have to have a whole lot of infrastructure setup that's required for it.

It has not yet influenced our automation programs and we're not really tracking the level of return on investments.

My experience with the pricing, the setup costs, and the licensing of the Automation Anywhere platform is that it's pretty competitive.

We do test different solutions to see how they are in the market. They don't necessarily have with Automation Anywhere offers. 

Automation Anywhere helps us overcome operational challenges. Especially with what's been announced recently, the solution expands a lot more beyond what was typically possible so far. I'm looking forward to checking it out in practice and seeing how much we can push the platform. 

We've just started with APA, so we don't have anything rolled out yet, however, we are looking forward to actively using it.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. Within any solution, there is always room for improvement. They seem to be going through a maturity phase. The foundation is strong. 

Jersey STEM is an all-volunteer organization, which means that we have interns doing development using donated systems. The beauty of donated systems is they're free. The challenge of donated systems is that there's a lot of data that isn't correlated, and the systems don't talk to each other, so we use RPA to establish some communication between the systems and gather data into a central coherent location.

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization by giving us a relatively easy way to gather all the data we need. We have data from HR, volunteer-matching systems, and grants systems. Automation Anywhere has enabled us to automate data gathering and posting that data into usable forms.

Before implementing Automation Anywhere, we processed these tasks manually by getting data from websites, putting them into spreadsheets, and going from spreadsheets to databases. Attempts to automate that using other tools were pretty onerous. 

Automation Anywhere enables us to simplify the process and see results much faster. Previously, it would take six to eight weeks to get results. With Automation Anywhere, we're getting results in two to four weeks, which makes the business happy. When I say business, I must remind you that these are all volunteers with little time on their hands. They're doing this with full-time jobs. Our goal is to make their lives easier with Automation Anywhere.

Jersey STEM primarily uses Google, so we use tools like Google Sheets and Google Docs. The automations all have to do with the Google ecosystem. Additionally, we must integrate with all donated systems, including HR, volunteer-matching, and grant systems that are donated to us. Jersey STEM is building the data warehouse as we gather all that data.

In a volunteer organization, employee capacity and compliance are not the primary metrics. Because we have an all-volunteer crew, we don't have them eight hours a day. We only have them for a couple of hours a day. We want to do anything we can to better utilize those two hours a day so that they're not spending them moving data around in spreadsheets. 

I have some metrics at the top of my head, but they're a little abstract. Accomplishing what we've done so far with the bots in production would take 40,000. It's not a direct correlation of full-time employees because that's all work that would not have gotten done because they don't have time for that kind of nitty-gritty work. 

Automation Anywhere has saved us a lot of time but not so much cost because everything is donated. If you have volunteers and they're giving you two hours a day, it is better to spend time on intellectual work rather than repetitive mundane work. That's the big bang that Automation Anywhere gives us.

Automation Anywhere's ease of use is the most valuable feature. We have interns doing RPA development, and it takes them about four weeks to get advanced-level certification. And within four weeks, they're productive. It's user and developer-friendly, robust, and scalable. We started in March with four bots in production. We have four more bots about to go online, which is pretty quick in the RPA world.

At Jersey STEM, we haven't put Automation Anywhere directly in front of business users. We don't have citizen developers because most processes we tackle are back-office automations. In the fullness of time, we will put citizen developers to work. I'm confident they will pick it up fast because Automation Anywhere does a great job of simplifying the process of building automations.

The learning curve for Automation Anywhere is quite simple. I had four interns do some basic training online. We did a three-day course with them to get them the advanced training, and they were productive within four weeks. They are in the process of building more bots. At this stage, we may be in danger of having them run out of work because they're working so fast.

Integration is the primary reason that Automation Anywhere process-building is so simple. All the building blocks are handed to us. It removes the guesswork of what has to be connected to where. We can pay more attention to the logic of the process rather than the mechanics and infrastructure of the process.

The only thing I would advocate for is making Automation Anywhere's developer environment Mac-enabled because many of our graduate students are coming out of school with Macs. Everything else in the Automation Anywhere world is built for Windows.

We've only been using Automation Anywhere at Jersey STEM since March of this year.

Automation Anywhere has been rock solid for us. We have had no issues.

We have yet to find out the limits of Automation Anywhere's scalability because we're only starting. We have a control room with one attended bot runner. I can imagine that within the next year or two, we'll need to scale up. Given the way Automation Anywhere is architected, I am confident that scaling up won't be a problem. 

Deploying Automation Anywhere was relatively seamless. I've been using Automation Anywhere since version 10 and was a solution architect for version 10 and version 11. An on-prem deployment requires a computer science degree to understand because there are so many factors involved. With a cloud deployment, everything was done for me. The only thing I had to do was provisioning and configuration. It made life a lot easier. I could complete it on my own in about two weeks.

It's too early, but the ROI will not be measured in dollars and cents. It will be measured in our ability to get data faster. For example, if we have a base of volunteers waiting to connect with us, we can connect with them much faster. If there are grants to be had, we can get to those grants a lot faster. 

The difference between a volunteer organization and a typical business organization is that our funding has to come from outside. We have to find it. Help comes from outside. We have to find it. The return on investment is getting there quicker.

We purchase Automation Anywhere through a service partner that's also helping us with those costs.

I rate Automation Anywhere nine out of 10. It's a solid nine and a half because I don't give out tens. 

The Imagine event has been highly informative and useful for me. It's informative because I'm learning all about the generative AI coming down. That's been the focus. It's useful in that I've made lots of connections this year. When folks find out about Jersey STEM's goal, they're interested in volunteering. I have a whole bunch of new people to talk to who will help us with our future endeavors.

The Imagine experience is a full-on fire hose of automation, but it's a lot of fun. All the presentations have been geared to keep people's attention and to be entertaining. It's a brave new world, and there's a wow factor here.

I would invite folks in my field and other volunteers. It would be self-serving because our volunteers would make more connections, get more people to help, and also learn about the possibilities of where we could take Jersey STEM from a data infrastructure perspective.

Through Automation Anywhere RPA, we have been able to save thousands of hours of AP invoice processing each year.

Automation Anywhere RPA has enabled a lot of our employees to have their valuable time freed up to do other things, ranging from the Treasury department, the Revenue department, General and Cost Accounting. We had lots of manual processes, no automation whatsoever, and the automations are able to automate those things, such as document processing, PDFs, and ERP system navigation, enabling our employees to focus on other things that require more critical thinking and decision making.

As far as what could be improved with Automation Anywhere, I think they have a really wonderful product. There have been things in the past that I have asked them to improve or submitted a ticket to them to improve, and I've seen results from that. 

They have implemented something that makes the product better. 

If there was anything that I would ask for improvement on, there were times in the past where through submitting a ticket for support, it seemed that some of the engineers who were helping me did not understand the product that they were supporting. That felt difficult because I felt I was almost explaining the product to the company. But again, isolated and for the most part, it's been a really good experience.

Before we implemented Automation Anywhere, we were not using any automation or RPA solution back in 2018.

Their support team is really great, and they also have a really robust online community, the Pathfinder Community, where developers and automation leaders can go and have discussions, submit use cases or issues, and get support from others as well. I have also had Automation Anywhere staff respond and reach out to me through a Pathfinder community post that I've made. Their ticketing system is also good, and they recently implemented an artificial intelligence agent in their email responses that has helped guide the ticket through the escalation process.

Neutral

We didn't have anything in place before adopting Automation Anywhere.

For others who are looking for an RPA solution and considering Automation Anywhere, I would encourage you to choose Automation Anywhere if you are hoping to have any level of citizen development involved. 

They make it very easy for anyone to learn and pick up the skills required to develop bots. Beyond citizen development, I think that they have a very reliable platform that is very robust in functionality. 

They can integrate with many applications, and they make it very easy to create automations that scale and are able to automate a wide array of business processes.

When we were looking to implement an RPA solution, one of the other prospective vendors that we looked at was UiPath. One thing that stood out to our company was how approachable Automation Anywhere was compared to UiPath, which seemed to be more developer focused and more technical focused, not as low-code as Automation Anywhere. 

With Automation Anywhere, you could come from anywhere, any level of experience, and any industry. You can learn from their Automation Anywhere University and become a bot developer, which is what we did, since all of our team is composed of accountants who are in the industry first and technical second. Automation Anywhere really provided a solution that let us make that work.

I don't have the exact figures regarding the hours we reduced, but I can say that it is thousands of hours. It's less clear in other departments whether we have seen benefits, as it's more focused on quality of life and relieving pain points. 

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Automation Anywhere as a nine, really because I believe that they're a very fantastic RPA company. Any company has bumps and bruises, but with Automation Anywhere, it's been a very reliable solution that has been able to achieve anything that we need. 

It's been easy to learn for developers who want to pick it up and easy to manage from a Control Room perspective on the back end. As a company, I just really think that they do a very good job at delivering on the customer's needs.

Our main use cases when using Automation Anywhere involve a lot of end-to-end processing with a human in the loop. With the GenAI features and capabilities, we are now exploring and extending or expanding our use cases further.

We haven't done anything with AI agents just yet. We've just tapped into the GenAI aspect. We're excited to explore AI agents and how they can impact our existing and new processes. We have ideas, but we haven't delved down that path just yet.

The biggest challenge for our company is getting the correct information from an end-user regarding what they're trying to accomplish. Getting that information from one point to another is our biggest challenge. We're excited about the generative aspect of it because we know that it can listen to the end-user, pull relevant information or regenerate what it needs to, and provide it back to them as an assistant. We're excited for this capability.

We haven't tapped into AI agents, but everything else with the platform has absolutely helped, such as its basic RPA capabilities, Co-pilot, and human in the loop. It's definitely made our work jobs a lot easier because of those capabilities, and the same thing is with our end-users.

Automation Anywhere has helped us to achieve our automation goals. It's made our lives significantly easier to be able to tap into that environment with the ease of development and the ease of use. It's made things much simpler, much quicker to develop, and scale up.

We utilize Document Automation in our current processes. That was one of our biggest draws to Automation Anywhere when we first invested. We looked at a bunch of different IDP tools initially before Document Automation. Automation Anywhere had the IQ Bot tool. That's what we first invested in, and then we were excited when they did the upgrade to Document Automation. The capabilities there are a lot easier to use out of the box. It's a lot easier to scale, and there are AI benefits to it.

Document Automation has absolutely impacted our efficiency and productivity. We had one process specifically that drew us to this use case and then expanded it much further out, where we're essentially inputting invoices that don't go through our normal procurement system. It used to go through our AP team for manual input. It used to take a full person's time a year to do that. We're saving essentially a full FTE through Document Automation. That was our first use case with it, and we have a couple of others in various other accounting operations and tax bases that save significant hours. We also have some hard dollar savings along with it. It has had a huge impact so far, and we see it being a huge impact going forward.

We've used a couple of different tools, and it just has the best end-user experience. Among everything we've tried, it's the easiest one to pick up from the product perspective. They're doing everything right.

What I appreciate the most about Automation Anywhere is that the end-user experience is superior to any of the other tools on the market that we've looked at. We've shifted platforms a couple of times, and Automation Anywhere is the one that stuck based on end-user experience, the ease of development, and trainability with the tool.

Automation Anywhere has definitely made a significant impact in terms of hours saved to scale up. We've had to re-platform a couple of processes from other tools to Automation Anywhere. We are doing the exact same process, but the hours saved have been more because of the end-user experience and ease of development. The time it takes to get it up to scale has been a lot quicker than everything else. It has made a significant improvement for new and existing processes that we've shifted over.

I don't have an example of how Automation Anywhere can be improved. This definitely isn't a negative. One thing I loved about Automation Anywhere compared to some of the other tools out on the market is that there are constant improvements and constant updates, and they're letting us know of those. Anytime we see a challenge and bring it to the attention of the team, they always let us know that it is on the roadmap for future releases. A lot of the issues that we've had, we've been able to wait a little bit of time, and whatever problem they're trying to fix has been deployed in future releases.

We've had some technical difficulties connecting, but that's more on our environment and how we have the machines and everything set up. It's not specific to Automation Anywhere. However, it's pricier than some of the other tools. 

We are coming up to year four.

We were using one of their competitors. We started our automation journey about seven years ago with a consulting partner that helped us pick the right tool for us. At the time, Automation Anywhere was still on the market, but they weren't one of the leaders that they are now. Over time, that solution has been very helpful for us, but it never progressed the way Automation Anywhere has. There wasn't a leap and bounds progress in terms of investments in the tool and the new capabilities and features. That's what drew us to the Document Automation or IQ Bot. The other tool we were using did not have the same success rate, ease of development, and user experience. We looked at Automation Anywhere, amongst two or three others. Automation Anywhere was by far the best of those tools. While we were using that, we explored the RPA and other features. RE before it became Co-pilot and other functionalities drew us to it. We started investing more heavily in Automation Anywhere, and now it's our primary automation tool.

Our team has specifically only used Automation Anywhere and one other tool. Other businesses may have used it, but they don't have the same structure set up that we do now. We are the automation team within our organization, so we're the ones who are doing it on a consistent basis. If any other team has done it, it hasn't been problematic.

For the most part, it's been fairly seamless. The biggest struggle on our end seemed to be with just the technical connections. It's just how we have the infrastructure set up. We're housing an on-prem solution. We're exploring the cloud and shifting there because I know it'll be easier management from our side. There'll be fewer technical issues. It will be a lot easier to get newer updates from the tool itself. That's one thing that we're looking into now.

It's unique compared to certain other tools that we've used. It's somewhat pricier than some of the other tools that we've used, and the breakout between the different applications is also somewhat costly. If they can make it a little more cost-effective or bundle packages a little bit more, that would be beneficial.

AI governance is very important in my company and in general. Before we even tapped into the AI infrastructure, that was one thing we made sure was set up beforehand. We have a whole AI governance policy and a committee. Anytime there's an AI project, it needs to go through that committee. They need to understand all the data that's going to be processed through it, what tools we're going to be using, and what the project is as a whole. It needs to get approval before we can build it out.

We had an AI committee and a governance structure in place before we delved into the AI space. All of our data is in a secure cloud. We can't have anything touching the public environment, just based on the sensitivity of the data that we have. It's very secure and strong as a governance structure.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten. I don't think anything is a perfect ten. There's always room for improvement. Out of everything that we explored and learned, and used previously, it's made a huge impact. We're excited for what's to come, and we're definitely going to be using it for a long time.

I work for a healthcare company in the pharmacovigilance sector, where we are automating business processes. One key process is case processing, which involves identifying adverse events from drugs, vaccines, or medical devices. These adverse events are reported through various channels like call centers and emails. Currently, data from these sources is manually entered into a drug safety database. We are automating this data entry and the subsequent quality and medical reviews. This automation aims to reduce the workforce from approximately 5,000 to 1,000 employees, primarily by streamlining these processes using Automation Anywhere software.

To reduce maintenance and streamline operations, we have transitioned to a cloud-based subscription model. We are utilizing Automation 360, a subscription-based automation solution, and have also adopted RPA as a service, leveraging pre-built bots offered by Automation Anywhere, some of which are free while others require payment.

Implementing Automation Anywhere has brought significant improvements by automating repetitive processes previously handled by a large team. This automation has reduced the workforce requirement and allowed for attended and unattended bot implementation. Consequently, human errors have decreased, the quality of deliverables has improved, and timelines have been accelerated. Previously, delays in task completion resulted in penalties for the company, but this issue has been resolved. Automation Anywhere has enabled faster processing of cases, marking a significant positive change in the company's operations.

AI is being used to automate the case intake process, which involves analyzing structured and unstructured documents like emails, articles, and scientific papers. Previously, this task was time-consuming, requiring staff to manually search documents for key information. The process has been significantly accelerated by implementing Automation Anywhere's IQ Bot, with its cognitive automation, AI integration, and natural language processing capabilities. The software automatically highlights crucial details like patient information, product specifics, and adverse events, enabling reviewers to assess document relevance quickly. This automation has reduced review time from 30 minutes per document to five to ten seconds, allowing a greater volume of literature to be processed. Furthermore, the NLP feature automatically identifies and justifies the presence of specific criteria within the documents. By integrating Automation Anywhere into their internal tool, the organization has reduced the workforce needed for this process from over 100 people to 12-15, resulting in increased efficiency, faster turnaround times, and a more manageable workload.

Automation Anywhere offers a user-friendly platform with a drag-and-drop interface, making it easy for business users with limited technical skills to implement RPA solutions. The platform provides a complete suite of tools, including task automation, cognitive automation using IQ Bot, and bot insights and analytics. While embedded with AI capabilities, the platform remains accessible to users without deep technical knowledge. Users should familiarize themselves with the available features, including built-in AI capabilities for handling various document types, and explore the Bot Store marketplace for pre-built bots that can accelerate development. Automation Anywhere enables rapid scaling with cloud-hosted architecture and prioritizes security with GDPR compliance, audit trails, and role-based access.

Initially, integrating Automation Copilot with our daily applications proved challenging. However, subsequent updates have simplified the process. While it previously functioned with attended bots but not unattended ones, expanded API capabilities now allow for greater compatibility with third-party applications. This enhanced functionality enables us to emulate various tasks and seamlessly integrate with systems like Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle. We have successfully implemented Automation Copilot for data entry, updates, and, most significantly, report generation, resulting in improved efficiency and productivity.

Automation Copilot has significantly increased our productivity. Integrating our systems will allow for seamless data transfer, eliminating the need for manual intervention and preventing quality issues. Tasks will be completed automatically and in real-time, increasing productivity and reducing the time spent on manual work. This eliminates the need for batch processing and ensures that everything happens instantly.

Over time, we have integrated numerous products with Automation Anywhere, leveraging their REST API for seamless data flow. This has enabled successful integrations with Salesforce, SAP, Oracle's Argus, and five of our seven internal products, particularly with Automation Anywhere's cognitive automation capabilities. As long as Automation Anywhere provides the REST API, we can integrate any application or third-party service, facilitating effortless data transfer between various tools.

The time savings are valuable.

The learning curve for Automation Anywhere is steep, especially for advanced features like IQ Bot and API automation, which require technical expertise. While basic automation is relatively easy, the platform's documentation and training materials are not comprehensive, making it challenging to master the more complex functionalities. Compared to UiPath, which offers extensive resources and support, Automation Anywhere's limited resources contribute to a steeper learning curve for those seeking to utilize its advanced capabilities.

From a business perspective, Automation Anywhere is expensive compared to other tools like UiPath, making it unsuitable for small or medium-sized businesses. It requires robust systems to run efficiently and previously had limitations integrating with legacy systems, though they are improving this with REST API support. Additionally, community support is slow and unhelpful for critical issues. While they offer IQ Bot for unstructured data, it can only automate around 50 percent of such processes, requiring manual intervention. Although Automation Anywhere supports customization, it is limited. These are key areas where Automation Anywhere could improve.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for four years.

Despite Automation Anywhere being resource-intensive, in my four years of experience using it, I have found it to be a highly stable system that has never crashed.

Automation Anywhere offers impressive automation capabilities at scale. From a product standpoint, it is highly effective and achieves its purpose well. Automation Anywhere is a strong choice for enterprise applications due to its robust functionality and cloud-based version. While the portal could be improved, the product itself is excellent and, if chosen strategically, can streamline numerous processes.

Technical support response times are slow. While we can escalate critical issues, their carelessness with other matters, especially those impacting business priorities, is a concern. Their slow pace and occasional irresponsibility demonstrate a lack of respect for our time.

Neutral

As a UiPath certified architect and business analyst with extensive experience in UiPath and Automation Anywhere, I find UiPath to be the superior solution for most companies. While both offer cloud-native capabilities, UiPath boasts a more user-friendly interface, requiring less coding knowledge. Its AI Fabric platform provides extensive machine learning capabilities, surpassing Automation Anywhere's limited AI integration. UiPath also excels in bot management and orchestration, offering a user-friendly approach and robust capabilities. Furthermore, UiPath provides stronger security and compliance features, superior third-party integration, and greater pricing flexibility, making it accessible to companies of all sizes, unlike Automation Anywhere, which is often only affordable for mid to large companies. Although Automation Anywhere offers decent cognitive automation, UiPath's ease of use, AI capabilities, and flexible pricing make it the more versatile and comprehensive choice.

The initial deployment was complex, requiring determining the bot type, attended or unattended and bundle handling strategies for multiple bot deployments. This process, driven mainly by configuration and orchestration, can be time-consuming for those without a technical background. Familiarity with the system streamlines deployment, while newcomers or those with limited technical expertise may find it more challenging.

Automation Anywhere is expensive, making it more suitable for enterprise organizations.

I would rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten.

The benefits of Automation Anywhere projects aren't immediate. Building and implementing a successful automation system involves several stages: proof of concept, pilot process, and finally, production rollout. This process typically takes two to three months due to the necessary development, testing, and refinement. However, once automation is in production, the improvements will be significant and immediately apparent.

In a highly regulated industry with over 10,000 employees, traditional RPA faced strong resistance due to concerns about headcount reduction. To overcome this, we adopted a cognitive automation approach, integrating machine learning capabilities from Automation Anywhere into existing applications. This minimized disruption and ensured a smoother transition. By embedding cognitive automation within familiar and validated systems, we achieved production with minimal resistance. This strategy also allows the system to learn user input through reinforcement learning, adapting to expectations based on feedback and a reward/penalty system. Therefore, we prioritize cognitive automation integrated within our existing products rather than relying solely on a separate RPA suite, especially given the challenges of implementing RPA in a large organization within a highly regulated industry.

Because we use Automation Anywhere in the cloud, they manage all upgrades and provide a defined schedule. We receive regular emails about upcoming upgrades, including the specific date and time. We can communicate any concerns about potential business impacts, and they provide clarity and assurance that upgrades will not disrupt deployed bots. This ensures our work remains unaffected during the upgrade process, which they handle very efficiently.

The bots require maintenance on our end to ensure smooth operation. This includes monitoring their uptime, examining audit trails for failures, and periodically checking their performance. While Automation Anywhere handles regular software updates and maintenance, we are responsible for maintaining the business processes the bots support. This involves ongoing support and ensuring the bots function correctly. If a bot fails, we are responsible for investigating the cause and restoring it to functionality, as we understand the critical role each bot plays in our operations.

To successfully implement Automation Anywhere, prioritize hiring an experienced consultant to provide initial training and guidance. This expert can efficiently onboard other team members, ensuring a smooth transition and maximizing the software's potential. Their expertise will be invaluable in identifying suitable bots from the bot store, even if they require some customization to align with the company's unique processes. This approach saves time and resources compared to developing bots from scratch and leverages existing solutions for faster and more effective automation.