BotFarm Reviews

We use the Bot Farm solution for two use cases. One is for procurement and the other is for finance. Both use cases required the liquid license availability of the task bot. Therefore, at month-end or the middle of the month, the processing needs to be on a faster pace as we had SLA activity involved with the processing of the invoices and the financial auditing purpose. 

Basically, we use floating licenses which are automatically applied when there was a high peak on the load, and the floating licenses resulted in the shorter processing cycle of the activity.

The scalability is the solution's most valuable aspect. The reason Bot Farm is used is to have only one license availability whenever you have a spike in the transactions. That is a core feature. That is something which we are using to the maximum. It's working well due to the fact that the solution use case is quite structured. The only ask was to have additional bot licenses be present to incorporate it. That way, we don't have to get stuck with the license cost as it's generally on a yearly basis. Right now, it's just on the basis of the usage that we are paying.

The solution has been very user-friendly.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The interface is seamless.

The solution is very stable and quite reliable.

For the intelligent bots, it is still not quite structured, as far as I can see. I checked for IQ Bot. These licenses are having certain issues. We stopped around the pricing part. It's not just the price, however. It was also not fitting the capability. Based on the on-prem model, if they can include an intelligent bot there, it will be helpful with all the security and the pricing parts involved.

The dashboard needs improvement. For Bot Farm, the visualization is not that good compared to the main Automation Anywhere dashboard.

We've been using the solution at least over the last 12 or so months. We are continuing to use it.

The solution is quite stable. It's very reliable. When you're adding the additional licenses the basic structure is there. It's just the licensing that gets involved. It's more on the configuration side. Otherwise, it is quite seamless with the interface. The preliminary interface is Automation Anywhere, so there are no issues there.

The solution can scale very well.

We have two teams using the solution currently.

We are using this solution specifically in the India region, with the two departments of finance and procurement. We don't have that much load as everything gets outsourced here in India. We are still looking for opportunities where a load of taking Bot Farm license mechanisms can be used. Therefore, I can't speak to if we will increase usage or not.

Technical support has been very good. Many a time, there was an issue with the configuration part, or the licenses were not automatically deployed for the execution of the tasks. We had to connect with them, and we always found them to be helpful and responsive. I would say we are satisfied so far.

We have three RPA solutions that we are using. We also use UiPath and Blue Prism.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult. We were pretty comfortable with it already. We are already using Automation Anywhere for the past four years and therefore, it was not a challenge for us.

With approvals, customization, et cetera, the deployment took us about 15 or so days.

We have a team of five that is able to handle the deployment and maintenance. We have a two-year maintenance contract lined up.

We pay based on usage, which is quite good for us. We like this licensing model. From the maintenance perspective, we have a contract signed for two years and it has reduced our pay per basis cost.

Real cost savings come with long-term relationships with the company. For four years we have been there. Therefore, the pricing is substantially lower for us.

We are just a customer.

Bot Farm is a cloud solution. We already have A2019, and Bot Farm is one of the products of Automation Anywhere. It's a cloud version we are using and due to it being on the cloud, it is always continuously updated to the latest version.

Bot Farm is for firms that have reached a certain level of maturity. You don't require Bot Farm if you are having applications that are not consuming your licenses. It becomes very useful when you have a use case that has spiked the variation in the load. Regardless, you need to do the math correctly to get the ROI associated with the licensing costs, the value, and the use case intended. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We primarily have different use cases within finance and HR as well as in IT operations.

The solution's dashboards are very helpful to us.

We find the analytics aspect of the solution to be excellent.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

We've had a few issues with the APIs.

We have connectivity and integration with pretty much every single tech stack across the table that we have in the world, and there are a few areas that they don't do that well yet. I'd be looking for some improvement there, in terms of their integration with certain products.

I've only been using the solution for six to eight months. It's been less than a year. It hasn't been too long.

The solution is quite stable and very reliable. We haven't had any negative experiences in relation to stability. If doesn't crash or freeze. There aren't bugs or glitches.

We haven't tried to scale the solution just yet. Therefore, I can't speak to how easy or difficult scaling the product may be.

From the perspective of business processes, the product is being used in at least eight to nine different business process areas so far.

We don't have plans to increase usage. I would say from what we had originally anticipated, we are about 20% to 30% usage. It's got a lot of scope for improvement still.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

We didn't find the implementation to be too complex. For us, the setup was simple and straightforward. We really didn't face any issues in that regard.

The deployment itself was also very quick, which was nice.

I maintain the solution myself. You don't need a lot of staff to maintain it.

We actually had Automation Anywhere handle the setup for us. They were quite helpful and very knowledgeable.

I don't have any details in relation to the licensing of the cost of the solution. It's not an aspect of the product I take care of.

I personally did not evaluate other solutions, however, an internal team did. They looked at UiPath, however, they decided on this product instead.

We're just customers. We're using the latest version of the solution right now.

I would recommend the solution to other companies if they are looking at an extensive integration across the tech stack within their organization. I would advise that if a company seriously considers the product, that they speak really clearly with Automation Anywhere. They need to ensure that their company will have the support they need, and if they do, they should consider proceeding. 

Overall, we've been happy with the solution. I would rate it at a nine out of ten.

Lots of different use cases, such as front office customer experience, repetitive tasks, multi-login screens, document processing, and screen notification.

We have been solving a lot of our productivity issues in different areas. And of course, in the core business. Productivity increased far more than thirty percent.

I can not think of just one the whole solution is very good. Maybe because it is user-friendly.

The discovery suite that they just acquired could be included. The more I think, maybe it's going to be targeted to be integrated with the process discovery piece, after the acquisition of FortressIQ.

I have been using BotFarm for the past five years.

BotFarm is very stable from our experience.

The has been proven to be effective and we are building bots every day now.

The initial setup it was simple and deployed in less than two months.

We have seen a return on investment in less than six months from the time we started using it.

I would recommend BotFarm an eight out of ten.

The best aspect is the UI, as it is very user-friendly. A business user can employ the tool as efficiently as a full developer.

The intelligent and cognitive controls that they offer are helpful.

The machine learning needs to be improved so that they perform better in terms of predictive analysis and sentiment analysis.

The documentation needs to be improved because it does not shed much light on how the product can be used. In general, the support can be improved.

The stability can be improved.

Having the ability to control the system from the cloud would be helpful, rather than setting up the environment locally.

I have been working with BotFarm for between four and six months.

Stability is something that they need to work on.

This is certainly a scalable tool. It is spread throughout the organization and our user count is perhaps in the hundreds. The roles of our users are varied. For example, it is used by the service processing team, and it is also used by the client where the product is implemented. There are also administrators who manage the overall control.

I would rate the technical support a six out of ten, as there is improvement needed.

In terms of RPA, I have experience with both Automation Anywhere and UiPath.

The initial setup is straightforward. I did not look at the cloud-based implementation, but the MSI installer for the on-premises deployment is a quick one. If the firewall and other things are set up correctly then the deployment will take between 15 and 30 minutes to complete.

My advice for anybody who is considering this solution is to have a proof of concept first. It is important because it may be that some of the features required by the client are not included in BotFarm. As this is a very user-friendly product, it can scale into the organization once the PoC is complete.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use BotFarm to mimic human actions because in our organization, there are certain tasks which are time consuming and require a lot of precision with the data. There are repetitive tasks which are automated through BotFarm, so we've set the schedule depending on the requirement, and there are also schedules that are 24/7, based on the requirement and information available. For example, members of the operations team have to pull the data from a website, select the data, input the data, then process the data. All these tasks are now automated through BotFarm.

What I like most about BotFarm is that it's one of the leading RPA products in the market. Very few products focus on robotics today, so I like that BotFarm offers a lot in terms of what general customers expect it to do.

An area for improvement in BotFarm is that the communication between the Control Room and the Bot Client Missions isn't utilized well.

There's also the issue with PCI DSS compliance or certain regulations that require a set of configurations that are not fully supported by BotFarm. The product should be certified or designed according to the required regulations in the finance industry to make it better.

I've been working with BotFarm for four years now.

The latest version of BotFarm is quite stable, and it didn't give us many issues. The previous version of BotFarm had issues, particularly with jobs being triggered but not starting at the scheduled time. Sometimes a job starts, but it's not deployed to the Client Mission, so scheduling in the previous version of the tool isn't as reliable, but with the latest BotFarm version, my team had a better experience.

BotFarm is a scalable solution.

We had some day-to-day issues with BotFarm, so we contacted technical support, and they provided solutions. On a scale of one to ten, I'm rating the technical support for BotFarm an eight.

Positive

We didn't use a different RPA solution apart from BotFarm. We stuck to it because of its pricing and the level of commitment and training that we received from Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup for BotFarm is a little complex because of the two components, Control Room and IQ Bot. It's pretty straightforward to set up Control Room, but it's not the same case with IQ Bot. It only takes around one to one and a half hours for setting up Control Room with proper planning, while setting up IQ Bot takes up to two hours.

An in-house team deployed BotFarm.

I don't have information on how much a BotFarm subscription costs.

I currently work with BotFarm. My company also uses IQ Bot, but it's still in the exploration stage.

I'm an end-user or customer of BotFarm.

Right now, five thousand two hundred people use BotFarm within the company.

The solution isn't that difficult to maintain.

My advice to anyone looking into using BotFarm is that it's the same with other products, and it all boils down to whether you can afford the solution or not.

My rating for BotFarm, particularly its latest version, is nine out of ten.

The primary use case is to use the bot peer-to-peer (P2P) billing. 

We deal with a few customers where we automate billed services for accounts received with invoice, debit and credit notes.

An additional feature that is missing from BotFarm is the ability for complete, AI-driven automation.

Automation can be divided into two types, namely, full automation (does not require human intervention) and semi-automation (requires human intervention). However, most companies are not able to give all their data from their ERP system to perform full automation. There is a missing feature in the software which allows for this solution to be solved.

Additionally, by using AI, I would like the bot to pull reports automatically from the ERP system, but at the moment I have to log into the system to retrieve reports.

Another area that needs improvement is with regards to machine-bound licenses. When installing the solution on a clients laptop or desktop and creating a license, that license is bound to that computer. I cannot use the users ID or password on any other machine.

I have been using the solution for about 8 months and we have developed around six process automations.

The system is stable and very little maintenance is required, assuming the bots process is perfectly designed.

For example, if the interface of the ERP system changes, maintenance would be required to adjust the bot settings to point to moved buttons/features.

I have called customer service three times and the experience has not been good. They do not offer 24/7 support, which forces us to wait till the next working day to solve a problem.

The initial setup is simple. However, creating a bot requires development experience.

The deployment does not take much time, assuming you already have a complete process that has been defined and approved.

The solution was implemented in-house.

It is too expensive and not worth the price.

We have several bots in Colombia. We can't anticipate how many bot runners we need to use to solve one use case. This is what BotFarm is used for.

The most valuable feature of BotFarm is the fact that we can use escalations when we need more computer power to fulfill all embargo that we receive in one day.

Normally we need to monitor the solution using an AWS console and the control room. We would like to have a standardized dashboard to see all the information in one place. 

I have been using this solution for three years. 

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten. 

• We use the solution for automating a noise cancellation process.
  
  
• In our business, we have a certain requirement to gather information from multiple applications in our customer services team, before we can troubleshoot an issue the support engineer has to handle 14 different applications to get the required information. This means the engineer spends approximately 25 minutes getting the required information even before they can start troubleshooting the issue. In the customer support space, we use this solution for automating the gathering of information from 15 disparate applications.
  
  
• In the customer service space, we have three bots and in the finance space, we have one bot.
  
  
• We have a few use cases where we use the bots to essentially increasing efficiency and reducing manual work in different areas.

The most valuable features I have found to be the screen scraping and the integration with third-party solutions.

The user experience could be made a little better with this solution. I find it difficult to find qualified people to be able to use the solution. 

In the future, I would like to see machine learning built in to support marketing use cases.

I have been using the solution within the last 12 months.

Based on my experience, the solution is stable.

I have approximately 47 users using the solution in my organization. Currently, have this solution deployed in one country and in two departments. Next year we plan to increase have the solution operation in three countries and across 14 departments.

I have previously used Blue Prism and UiPath.

The installation is straightforward.

The license of this solution is on an annual basis. The price is fair. However, what we did initially was a POC, but now we are looking at moving from a POC to expanding it out further. I would appreciate some kind of discount.

I have evaluated Blue Prism and UiPath recently.

Those wanting to implement this solution make sure you have a team that can support you. Getting individuals with the qualified skillsets required has proven to be difficult.

I rate BotFarm a seven out of ten.