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Automation Anywhere vs Microsoft Power Automate comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Automation Anywhere
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
3rd
Ranking in Process Mining
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
525
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Power Automate
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
2nd
Ranking in Process Mining
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automation Anywhere is 11.7%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power Automate is 21.2%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
 

Featured Reviews

Nelson F. Guerrero - PeerSpot reviewer
Saved us half a million dollars and 10,000 hours in the first year
There have been numerous improvements in the organization. We have saved hours and time and hard dollars. In the first year, we saved over half a million dollars. That was about six months of time. After that, we have done at least three million year over year, and we have increased that very much. As far as time saved, it is well over 10,000 hours in the first year alone, and we continue to grow. This year, we are projecting 30,000 manual hours saved. Prior to the implementation of Automation Anywhere, we had lots and lots of manual work. People would go into Excel and copy data from one master sheet to many sheets. They would compile data. They would take lots of time to do these things. Today, they can go in, press a button, and launch it. They can download hundreds and thousands of invoices, whereas previously, they used to do it manually. One of our use cases saved two people four days a week of time, which is 32 hours each. We now do that automatically in six hours. The learning curve is initially a little daunting, but after you are in there and you understand how it works, it is very seamless. It is very easy to pick up and very intuitive, and then from there, it is pretty much you go and get your hands dirty. The tools that we integrate with Automation Anywhere so far have been Python scripts and PowerShell. We have got Power Automate and Power Flows from Microsoft. We are starting to do some cognitive RPA. We are implementing OpenAI through Azure. We have got a lot of that going right now. The integration with all of the documents and APIs is very seamless. There are packages available in the store if you do not have the integration built-in out of the box. They are available to everyone. Everything that we have been able to use has been just drag and drop. We can just pop in our credentials and be done. Automation Anywhere has affected us in a positive way in terms of employee capacity and compliance. We have not had to backfill roles. We have not necessarily replaced people, and that is by intent. We did not want to replace people, but we also did not want to have to backfill people. We wanted people to focus on things that they value and be more productive instead of doing mind-numbing things that get no value, but they just have to do it. Our time and cost savings have been immense since the beginning. In our first year, after we started launching the bots in June or July of 2019, we saved half a million dollars and 10,000 man-hours. Since then, we have grown more than 70% year over year. This year, we are on track to go up to about 40,000 man-hours saved and more than three million hard dollars saved. They have been able to provide automation at scale pretty well. We fired up and started off with only three production machines. We are now up at five. Officially, we were going up to seven as of next week. We have heard about people here at the Imagine conference who, for example, have hundreds, so the point is proven, and the facts are there. They can scale up very quickly. The main Automation Anywhere Program offering we use is Pathfinder. We have not utilized our partner services or anything like that, but Pathfinder has been great. Their user groups have been great. To be able to focus and see the product launches beforehand has always been advantageous. The ability to see that has been good.
Gowtham J - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides valuable integration with other Microsoft tools
The initial setup process involves three trigger points. One is a manual trigger, where users interact with a button or interface element to start the flow. The second is the recurrence trigger, which allows users to schedule automated maintenance at a specific time. Third is a data-driven trigger, where the flow is initiated based on an event in a database, such as creating a new line item in SharePoint database. Once triggered, the flow continues to execute, performing the configured actions and providing the results.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"A cloud deployment typically takes no more than one business day."
"Its ease of use is the most valuable feature. It is easy to train developers and find the right people, then use them to build the tool."
"They've now included the code so we can add some additional code. That's good."
"The valuable features that I see for automation with enterprise RPA are IQ Bot and Bot Insights. If you do anything, Bot Insight will provide the dashboard. It starts from the developer with artificial intelligence and the dashboard, which will provide the visibility of business-level metrics as well as operational-level metrics. Those are the good things I see in automation."
"The setup is straightforward. Automation Anywhere provides customer success managers to help with the setup."
"This solution saves time when completing our pharmaceutical processes, which allows things to progress faster to the FDA."
"I love its reliability, ease of use, and the vast customer support that are always present to help us."
"Earlier users were converting the unstructured data from the PDF into the structured format to process the task but now, this activity is replaced by IQ Bot."
"Instead of manually triggering payments through the website, everything was done through robotic process automation (RPA), saving us a lot of time."
"To me, what's most useful in WinAutomation by Softomotive is that it's quite intuitive, especially because most of the capabilities of the older WinAutomation remain. You also don't need to do or know hard coding, and this is another useful feature of the solution. I also like that WinAutomation by Softomotive integrates very well with Microsoft products, especially Microsoft Office, and this is great news because most companies use Microsoft Office. Having a very good integration with the Microsoft Office suite covers a lot of bases, and is one of the advantages of WinAutomation by Softomotive."
"The most valuable feature is the Office connector, which connects to Excel and Exchange."
"The most valuable feature is how much you can do with this solution."
"It is a great solution for simple automation activities or simple automation of simple tasks. It is also integrated with Office 365. Integration is an absolute breeze with any RPA software."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"The program requires no code making it very easy to implement various functions."
"The most valuable feature is that it is pretty low-code, so you don't need much coding expertise to use it."
 

Cons

"The technical support needs improvement."
"We'd like to see more AI features."
"Integrations should be included with the analytics platforms and third-party SAP, enterprise-level applications, as well as if there are any built-in connectors where you can connect with the ERPs to automate the required teams."
"Migration is probably our biggest challenge. When we were trying to do the migration to the new version, it was a little bit painful. We didn't have that many bots, and I can't imagine the level of effort that some of the bigger customers have to put in for that. The product is stable, but moving from one release to the other was the issue."
"There should be a way to avoid recoding everything whenever there's an upgrade to the latest version."
"There could be more training provided by Automation Anywhere."
"I would like to see them expand the service catalog with RCA add-ons to the current RPA package."
"OCR technology could be more inclusive by offering a wider range of supported languages, as its current selection is limited."
"Microsoft could offer more AI education and training."
"It is challenging to scale the solution across multiple branches."
"I rate the technical support from Microsoft Power Automate a four out of five."
"The product should improve its RPA capabilities."
"We need a more powerful desktop option."
"When you are doing desktop automation, they do not have a clear structure to create the code."
"The tool must be more stable."
"They can build more templates and more connectivity with other platforms. They can provide a more user-friendly way to connect with other platforms. They have their own in-built plugins for certain third-party vendors, but there are still a lot of third-party vendors that are not there."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think it's $5,500 per license."
"Automation Anywhere falls within a mid-range price point when compared to other RPA tools on the market."
"We're on a license package with Automation Anywhere (AA), paid yearly. What would be better is for them to have different packages for different types of organization."
"There are some additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees. There are a couple of add-ons we've looked at: The IQ Bot for OCR and machine-learning were add-ons, as well as the Bot Insights - the analytics."
"The product starts at $10,000 and then it's up to you regarding how much you can consume."
"Their licensing processes are in par with most industry standards."
"We are a partner of Automation Anywhere and find the pricing to be reasonable."
"We generally follow the Gain-Sharing Pricing model, which enables the customer to start getting the RPA benefits right from day one of their implementation."
"Good price-quality relationship. Its features for its price were the best fit for our company."
"It depends and varies a lot according to the licensing terms. There is no cost to maintain if we have less than 10 forms. Microsoft only charges if there are more than 10 forms. So, most of the companies can survive without paying anything extra. It is included in the Office 365 licensing."
"The pricing of this solution is very good and for me, it's the best option there is."
"There is zero licensing cost. It comes with our Microsoft Office subscription."
"With our Microsoft Office 365 license, we are able to use Microsoft Power Automate."
"The licensing model is flexible in that you can pay per automation or per user. My client receives a discount because of the large number of users and pays approximately $15 for each one."
"You pay for use and if you want a premium connector or adapter, but a lot of things are available for free."
"The license cost could be better."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Insurance Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is very good in certain situations but lacks in others. For me, it's more the team tha...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applications that AA has limitations for, such as the Oracle. For web-based applicatio...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
RPA that Bots can run without centralized control?
Yes, Attended Bots which can run without centralized control Module. RPA Tools like Automation Anywhere, uiPath ,Power Automation they do support this.
How do I choose between UiPath and Microsoft Power Automate?
Microsoft‌ ‌Power‌ ‌Automate‌ ‌is‌ ‌intuitive‌ ‌and‌ ‌easy‌ ‌to‌ ‌integrate‌ ‌and‌ ‌use.‌ ‌I‌ ‌like‌ ‌that‌ ‌there‌ ‌is‌ ‌no‌ ‌coding‌ ‌experience‌ ‌necessary,‌ ‌and‌ ‌appreciate‌ ‌the‌ ‌automated‌...
How is Automation Anywhere compared to Microsoft Power Automate?
‌Neither‌ ‌solution‌ ‌requires‌ ‌any‌ ‌coding‌ ‌experience,‌ ‌and‌ ‌both‌ ‌are‌ ‌easy‌ ‌to‌ ‌use‌ ‌and‌ ‌have‌ ‌great‌ ‌drag-and‌ ‌drop‌ ‌functionality.‌ ‌The‌ ‌training‌ ‌and‌ ‌resources‌ ‌for‌ ‌A...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise
Power Automate, Microsoft Flow, MS Power Automate, WinAutomation by Softomotive, ProcessRobot by Softomotive, Minit
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
1. Coca-Cola 2. General Electric 3. Siemens 4. Accenture 5. Deloitte 6. Johnson & Johnson 7. Ford 8. Nestle 9. Procter & Gamble 10. IBM 11. Amazon 12. Google 13. Microsoft 14. Adobe 15. Cisco 16. Oracle 17. SAP 18. Intel 19. HP 20. Dell 21. Verizon 22. AT&T 23. T-Mobile 24. Walmart 25. Target 26. Home Depot 27. McDonald's 28. Starbucks 29. Nike 30. Apple 31. Facebook 32. Twitter
Find out what your peers are saying about Automation Anywhere vs. Microsoft Power Automate and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.