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Automation Anywhere vs Celonis comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Automation Anywhere
Ranking in Process Mining
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
522
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (3rd)
Celonis
Ranking in Process Mining
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
Shaif Tazir - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers easy integrations, end-to-end process view and an EMS feature to identify inefficiencies
Celonis' data engineering processes should be transformed into a low-code structure. Excessive coding is still required across the Starter Kits, where the market is focusing on low-code automation or transformations. The tool's UI should also be more intuitive. The data engineering pipeline within Celonis is highly technical. The interface in future versions of Celonis can have a drag-and-drop format with a more intuitive configuration. If you check other solutions like Power BI, business professionals can use it without technical experience, but usually, the same person won't be able to use Celonis freely. In the standard deployment of Celonis, you will need one project manager, an expert value architect, and two or three developers to manage the design pipeline. If your organization has a partner for executing all the Celonis pipelines, then it must be ensured that a COE is assigned in-house for hypercare needs. For instance, if some KPIs need to be changed or if irrelevancy is found, maintenance needs to be implemented every year or every six months for KPI adjustments and rebuilding of sources or logic. The aforementioned maintenance tasks for Celonis are usually carried out by an in-house COE; without a COE, maintenance can become challenging.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One very useful feature is the IQ Bot, which is helpful in the operation of the data input process to all of their applications."
"It has helped us to save a lot of FTEs for our solutions that we have provided to our companies. Suppose a job which was done by a group of eight to nine people on a daily basis for 24 hours was taking a lot of time, so we created a bot with Automation Anywhere. It was done with a bot working 24/7. It reduced the numbers of guys required to do that process."
"Scalability is one of the best things about most of the RPA bots. Once you create one, scalability is just about multiplying them."
"We have improved on IQ Bot collectively with the normal Taskbot that we use. How it got started was that we have a lot of scanned documents to input for our solution. So, I used to get a lot of scanned documents, and extracting or reading the data from those has always been a pain area. We always used to bring a manual person in to do it. Once a manual person did that activity, it was brought into Excel where I could run the bot. With the entry of IQ Bot, it now takes care of my scanned documents, which means IQ Bot does the OCR extraction and gives my data to the Automation Anywhere Taskbot. This means no manual intervention and end-to-end bot processing, along with a happy customer at the end of the day. We provide these services to multiple clients, so we have been doing this for all of our clients."
"IQ Bot is very helpful as it is easy to learn and implement and the data output accuracy is almost 90%. Over time, the BOT learns from the validation which is an added advantage. Whatever I was thinking for version 11.3, it's being implemented in A2019. The incorporation of Python scripts is also implemented which will be easier for validations."
"The feature we found to be the most valuable is the documentation automation as it allows us to focus on the actual important piece of building automation instead of tracking some of the repugnant documentation that goes along with building automation."
"It is easy to learn and easy to deploy. That is the best part compared to the other RPA solutions available in the market. Automation Anywhere is easier than UiPath and Blue Prism."
"We are using it to backfill a lot of our resources who are retiring, so we are hiring less people as we go."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the PTS service."
"The most valuable features of Celonis are its graphical interpretation and pre-built connectors with industry platforms like SAP or Oracle."
"The solution offers a very good user interface."
"For the amount of information that it processes, it works relatively fast. I like the visual presentation and the interface is intuitive. I also like that Celonis has a learning academy."
"Celonis, especially for high-risk finance-related processes, helped us make precise decisions and uncover hidden values within our architecture. It was one of the most significant values our business identified. Additionally, it helped us during the migration process."
"The training material is good. The information is very systematic, detailed, and comprehensive. They have a training video for almost every single thing, which makes it easier to know how to use the tool."
"Cause analyzer is a very good feature."
"The product helps clients visualize potential savings by minimizing human errors and reducing manual work."
 

Cons

"It is not always predictable 100% of the time. While it has improved with each version, some unexplained issues still exist."
"The product needs improvements in dealing with remote servers and providing more APIs that will be used with other systems."
"The Insight feature could be improved. I don't think there's a lot of information about how to use Insight, so you have to try different scenarios to understand that feature better."
"Understanding what we wanted to do the tool after setup, that was complex."
"The UI can be improved a little bit to make it easier for beginners to understand."
"They want to get more accuracy in handwritten forms, which might take some time."
"If I want to do something that is more purely business-related and is somewhat complex to write or is nuanced, I sometimes have trouble implementing that inside of the Automation Anywhere script. I feel limited at times with some of the looping and some of the branching and some of the ways to make procedure calls when I have a complex business issue."
"Automation Anywhere's frequent updates are unnecessary and disruptive."
"Celonis should have the ability to automate in the next release, in my opinion."
"The price could be better, but complexity is the biggest problem. Celonis is quite easy to operate once the customizations are done. You need a large amount of skill and knowledge to work with the tool. You need to understand it and know more than the basics."
"The way they manage the data should also be improved. There is a lot of room for improvement there because a lot of duplicated data gets created, which should be improved. There should be ease of data management and code management."
"The marketplace should offer process connectors for Oracle JDEdwards, and Peoplesoft."
"The process analytics could be a bit easier."
"Similar to what SAP is doing with S/4HANA, Celonis should allow business users to create their own analytics tab. In my previous organization, business analysts were the only ones who were actively building these reports with Celonis, whereas SAP platforms are now allowing the business users to create their own reports with graphics and all other things based on the data that is presented. This is one thing that Celonis needs. Currently, just the technical teams are doing that. Sometimes, when we were looking at five years of data, it used to take up to 3 seconds. It wasn't bad, but we had to wait a little bit. It probably also had to do with the server. I don't know if it can be used on mobile devices. If not, that will be the way to go. They should mobilize it to allow people to see these reports on their mobile devices."
"Celonis could improve by expanding its use beyond finance areas into infrastructure domains, such as networks and server utilization."
"The support costs are very high."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Automation Anywhere is thought to be quite expensive, especially for smaller organizations."
"Automation Anywhere is expensive, making it more suitable for enterprise organizations."
"The pricing model can be a bit more flexible."
"Automation Anywhere University is pretty good. They make it available free for everyone."
"The pricing of AA is similar to UiPath."
"The cost is at the highest end of the spectrum."
"With the rebate processing automation that we did, it has provided us a savings of around an hour or two a person on a daily basis, which is quite a lot of savings."
"The setup cost for this is onetime and licensing is based on your choice of product."
"Celonis offers free learning possibilities. I am using the free version of Celonis."
"It is quite a significant investment. From a cost perspective, they need to reevaluate the licensing model. The cost is justified, but they need to make the licensing model slightly different."
"Celonis is cost-effective."
"Celonis is a little more expensive than UiPath."
"Pricing-wise, Celonis is a five out of ten right now because my clients just started with the solution. When my clients start looking at scaling Celonis, the cost will grow. Every user has an additional charge, and every gig of data you bring in costs extra."
"Evaluating the price of the solution can be a difficult question. It is all about the business case and the return of the investments. That is typically how we also see this type of solution. It depends very much on the return. The entry-level is focused on enterprise size companies, for the SMB segment is it is out of their range. It is definitely expensive."
"Celonis is expensive, but it is functional."
"I rate Celonis' pricing a ten out of ten because it is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
 

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.
Which is better - Signavio Process Manager or Celonis?
SAP Signavio Process Manager is a very robust industrial-grade business process modeling tool. It is easy to use and does not require too much technological involvement. This solution has a collabo...
What do you like most about Celonis?
Celonis, especially for high-risk finance-related processes, helped us make precise decisions and uncover hidden values within our architecture. It was one of the most significant values our busine...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Celonis?
The pricing of Celonis is very competitive. I would rate it nine out of ten based on customer feedback.
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Anheuser-Busch InBev, AXA, Bayer, Cisco, Deloitte, Deutsche Telekom, Hitachi, Kellogg's, Lufthansa, and Whirlpool
Find out what your peers are saying about Automation Anywhere vs. Celonis and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.