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Automation Anywhere vs Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Automation Anywhere
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
522
Ranking in other categories
Process Mining (1st)
Redwood Software - Finance ...
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
18th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Financial Close Software (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automation Anywhere is 11.9%, down from 15.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition is 0.4%, up from 0.3% 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.
Amarjeet Kamble - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly and enables automation in finance, HR, and SDM
There is room for improvement, considering no tools having everything inside it is right. So the room for balancing improvement lies in automation enhancement with respect to the feature areas, considering dealing directly with Excel and reviewing it to do some additional stuff for it in the end system so that reading the right thing, picking up the values, and everything. Right now, you can do it with a little bit of custom scripting in addition to eight. But rather than custom scripting, if we can have a direct feature integrated inside this tool, it will be a major achievement. So, it already has that capability, as you can do custom scripting, and you can go ahead with creating your own. But the direct functions are not available. That's where we are lagging behind. However, importing the values or importing the service can be achieved. So, that is where I can see the room for improvement. In this particular area, the entire system can be improved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can see what the bots are doing when they are working."
"The platform is easy to use, especially for business users."
"I found that the REST API commands are very useful and easy to use."
"The product has saved us a lot of time by reducing manually tasks, like entering data into Excel."
"It is easy to automate SAP by using Cloning and Metabot."
"We spend less time preparing data."
"It improved the task performance at a team level and improved productivity."
"A valuable feature of Automation Anywhere for my needs is IQ Bot because it covers most of the semi-structured and structure data. That's where we are struggling a lot. So, IQ Bot is a very good solution to know and bring onboard for the automation of unstructured and semi-structured data."
"So the best thing is ease of use."
"Redwood has a great feature where it logs every transaction. So, at any point, we can see every step taken for each transaction. It creates an audit trail of the entire process execution. It is a really good feature. This eliminates the need for extra coding or report generation. The audit report is readily available within the tool itself."
"The out-of-the-box finance modules within the Redwood Finance framework help to speed up the process, versus designing and writing generic BOT code."
 

Cons

"Technical support needs to be much faster. I also had the project delivery. I had six clients whom I looked after. Whenever we got stuck, it was all about sprinting. There was a two or three week sprint. Within that, if you just wait for two to three days, it doesn't make sense. The support needs to implode, because I was just talking to a customer now who came directly and asked us, "Can you give us a dedicated support team?" It's feedback from our customer that support takes too long."
"We have HTML mode and Window mode, but Automation Anywhere is limited in this. It would be better if they were able to provide different specification modes."
"It is not able to use OCR effectively and has limited usability."
"The goal of any automation is to provide efficiencies... I would like a default feature where each bot gives us data on all the benefits it provides from its process."
"One area for improvement in Automation Anywhere (AA) is its monitoring system. It's not that good. Both scalability and stability are also areas for improvement in the tool."
"When it comes to Citrix automation, AA should improve or add more features in such a way that all the commands should work when automating a Citrix application."
"IQ Bot has some limitations that should be improved in future releases."
"AA sometimes poses compatibility problems with new web browser versions like Chrome."
"The room for balancing improvement lies in automation enhancement with respect to the feature areas, considering dealing directly with Excel and reviewing it to do some additional stuff for it in the end system so that reading the right thing, picking up the values, and everything."
"Mapping the process steps to an existing R2R process quickly would be a definite step forward."
"would like to see AI integration for automation in future releases. Post-automation, I envision a generative AI model. If I could ask the bot questions like the number of invoices or their current status, it should be able to provide answers directly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is affordable, which makes an easy barrier to entry for the RPA market."
"Automation Anywhere is expensive, making it more suitable for enterprise organizations."
"One of the key features that we chose, the bot as a service or the BotFarm, when they launched version 11.3, they decided not to have the BotFarm anymore. This put us in a situation because we expected to have bots on demand, just like our cloud software. This would have been cost efficient for us to use. We hope to see this again being realized with A2019. I hope the scalability from an on demand basis improves."
"I don't know exactly what the pricing schemes are for the product as this type of negotiation is not my responsibility, but I think the basic pricing comes to $15,000."
"Whatever investment, licensing, and resource costs together are put in for development and delivery, we are still at an ROI of 250 percent."
"It's a bit expensive compared to other RPA tools on the market."
"The certifications are free of cost."
"The licensing cost of Automation Anywhere is better than UiPath and Blue Prism."
"The licensing was purely based on the number of transactions being processed in production."
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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
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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.
What do you like most about Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition?
Redwood has a great feature where it logs every transaction. So, at any point, we can see every step taken for each transaction. It creates an audit trail of the entire process execution. It is a r...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition?
The pricing is very client-specific. It's not a one-size-fits-all price. They don't have a single price for everyone. It's based on the client and the number of transactions. As Vodafone, a large c...
What needs improvement with Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition?
Everything seems to be working well. However, I see value in integrating AI for automation. So, I would like to see AI integration for automation in future releases. Ideally, after I perform postin...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise
Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition, Redwood Robotics, Redwood Finance Automation
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
ArcelorMittal, Alliant Energy, Allianz, Arla, Bacardi, CPS Energy, DSM, Faurecia, Genetech, Jabil, Jumbo,
Find out what your peers are saying about Automation Anywhere vs. Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.