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IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) vs Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Automate
Sponsored
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Robotic Process Automat...
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Redwood Software - Finance ...
Ranking in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Financial Close Software (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Automate is 1.5%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is 2.5%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
 

Featured Reviews

Anabel Marco - PeerSpot reviewer
Automates processes efficiently with cost-effective scaling and robust customer support
Web scraping is quite good since it offers a lot of possibilities. Another important feature for me is its compatibility with MBI, the Power that is ISEQUADO Centers. I appreciate the ability to scale and increase the number of bots or studios without additional expense. Automate's non-reliance on additional orchestrators makes it quite cost-effective.
Karinne Carnevalli De Almeida - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly interface and good stability
I would recommend using IBM RPA. I would advise you to learn about your main processes to automate inside your company. So you can apply it in big and small processes depending on the investment for your company. That is an advantage or not. Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. It has some difficulty in the tool, but it's a very stable and useful tool for automating processes.
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

"I find the ease of use from a programming perspective very valuable."
"Overall, the whole product is really nice and provides significant benefits."
"It's very easy to use. That's a big selling point for it. It has got a drag-and-drop interface, so you can quickly deploy bots."
"I find it very user-friendly. Our IT department and other departments can seamlessly collaborate without requiring extensive training. As a business department, we particularly value this aspect, as our team doesn't consist of many IT users. However, we couldn't solely rely on a drag-and-drop approach to implement and utilize the solution within our departments."
"Fortra's Automate has effectively replaced the workload of an entire employee, saving us significant time and money."
"Compared to other vendors, it's the scheduling tool because a lot of vendors want to charge you extra for their enterprise-level license to have a scheduling tool built in to give you the ability to set up regular schedules to run and do certain data checks."
"I actually quite liked the no-coding functionality."
"The most valuable feature is the drag-and-drop interface, which is very Windows-like."
"The solution's ease of use is its most valuable aspect."
"It's not inclusive, in terms of automation, you can just do it standalone, in its own silo. It's not going to force your existing system or teams, your admin teams, to create new IDs for you or even force them to create new services or APIs for you or expose something from there. They can just keep the way they are doing it right now, but you still automate it."
"IBM RPA helped us resolve a lot of difficult cases we could not resolve using other solutions."
"It is a good tool for automation."
"IBM Robotic Process Automation is very easy to use."
"I like the integration with Watson and the possibility to have an intelligent reading of all the customers' documents."
"The initial setup is very easy."
"The solution is scalability."
"So the best thing is ease of use."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"It would be an improvement if Automate had better stability tools, whether by recommending a certain amount of memory because it can be a memory hog at times."
"The vendor is currently working on a solution that allows us to automatically create a process that is based on a document that we receive via email."
"I find that most important features are strong, however, there is a lack of good development for artificial intelligence, such as machine learning."
"Fortra's Automate is not as reliable as I would like it to be."
"The interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"Sometimes when we communicate with the ERP system and there is an issue, we are not always aware of the specifics of Automate and the source of the problem."
"The product also has a limited use case in some respects."
"It's possible that they could use a stronger community for seeking guidance and help."
"IBM Robotic Process Automation should be more stable."
"The time it takes for approvals, and risk analysis could be faster."
"IBM should provide specific solutions for specific problems, like templates for invoicing processes, or general templates for creating efficient processes."
"Needs better integration with artificial intelligence or with machine-learning."
"I would like to improve the efficiency of this solution and the Surface Level Agreement."
"Extensibility is the key, especially in terms of the Recorders feature that we have. That should be browser independent. Enhance it because some people have Chrome, some have Internet Explorer, etc. Also, integration with PDFs: Not just the ability to read information from PDFs but the ability to write information from PDFs, make it secure, sign it, etc. Finally, if they can allow a token exchange inside the tool itself, that would help."
"Stability could be better."
"We can use its inbuilt activities, and it's a complete package, but just like ElectroNeek, a limitation is that we have to depend on its inbuilt activities. We can't include our own activities or we can't introduce other activities."
"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

"It has gone up in price. The price of Fortra's Automate has increased since we first started using it. It does a lot but also costs a lot. It was a lot more affordable before Fortra owned the software."
"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."
"From a distributor's side, one of the biggest selling points is its price point. Without going into any numbers, compared to UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism, we're significantly cheaper. The main difference is that other competitors usually charge you per process. However, in Automate's case, it's priced per bot. So, a bot can run multiple processes at the same time, but you are only priced for a single bot."
"I like the way this solution is priced because you can buy a license, or you can buy the software outright."
"I believe the price falls within a reasonable range, which significantly influenced our decision regarding the product. This aspect is crucial for any technological solution, especially in our country where enterprises might be hesitant to invest heavily in something untested or uncertain about its practicality and potential returns."
"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"While solutions like UiPath and Blue Prism cost around $11,000-$12,000 for each license, this product costs around $7,000 and you can keep it forever."
"The license is paid annually."
"IBM licensing is annual and based on Virtual Processor Cores (VPC). This provides flexibility as part of the containerization environment."
"The product has a yearly licensing fee."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"I rate the pricing ten out of ten. So, the pricing is very good for me."
"There is a free trial for one month, so you can use it to run your payloads or proof of concept. After that, you can pay for the license on a monthly or annual basis."
"IBM RPA is cheaper than other tools."
"The product is reasonably priced compared to other tools."
"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
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
16%
Educational Organization
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about HelpSystems AutoMate?
We use it for specific cases, mainly secure file transfers, which are vital for us. And it works for us.
What is your primary use case for HelpSystems AutoMate?
I am a consultant and I am making a lot of processes in human resources, payroll, certifications, trainings, web scra...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
The pricing is quite good compared to its competitors. Competitors are often more expensive than Automate. I would ra...
What do you like most about IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
Integrating the tool with SAP, EBS, or other ERPs is easy.
What needs improvement with IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
The product must be promoted more. There are no promotions.
What is your primary use case for IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
We're working with different clients from the manufacturing environment. We have implemented end-to-end solutions. We...
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 t...
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....
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 A...
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
IBM RPA
Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition, Redwood Robotics, Redwood Finance Automation
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aldergrove Financial Group, Preferred Health Professionals, Mindbeam Technologies, First Credit Union in British Columbia, Vestcom International, Prime Liberty Benefits, University of Tampa, CNLBancshares, World Precision Instruments, BJ's Restaurants, Globe Pequot Press, Accudata Technologies, Norton Healthcare, Pacific Toxicology Laboratories
The Hanover Insurance Group
ArcelorMittal, Alliant Energy, Allianz, Arla, Bacardi, CPS Energy, DSM, Faurecia, Genetech, Jabil, Jumbo,
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) vs. Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.