SAP Intelligent RPA vs VisualCron comparison

SAP and NetCart AB are both solutions in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category. SAP is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.0, while NetCart AB is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.5. SAP holds a 1.6% mindshare in RPA, compared to NetCart AB’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of SAP users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetCart AB users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

SAP Intelligent RPA and VisualCron compete in the automation landscape. SAP Intelligent RPA is considered superior for robust integration capabilities and enterprise settings, while VisualCron leads in flexibility and ease of use.

Features: SAP Intelligent RPA is noted for its machine learning capabilities, strong integration with SAP ecosystems, and advanced automation for complex systems. VisualCron highlights include straightforward task scheduling, integration with various applications via open APIs, and solutions for repetitive tasks.

Room for Improvement: SAP Intelligent RPA could improve usability, simplify its user interface, and reduce setup complexity. VisualCron may enhance its integration depth, offer more advanced automation options, and provide improved analytics features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP Intelligent RPA involves a more complex deployment process necessitating initial configuration, with comprehensive support channels. VisualCron, in contrast, offers a simpler deployment model using user-friendly tools and provides responsive support focused on ease and speed.

Pricing and ROI: SAP Intelligent RPA typically has higher initial setup costs due to its complexity and extensive capabilities, potentially leading to a higher ROI for large enterprises. VisualCron's accessible pricing model with lower setup costs aligns with faster ROI for small to medium-sized businesses concentrating on cost-effective automation solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed SAP Intelligent RPA vs. VisualCron Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

SAP Intelligent RPA vs. VisualCron

January 2025

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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

Fortra's Automate

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) category, the mindshare of Fortra's Automate is 1.3%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Intelligent RPA is 1.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Featured Reviews

Anabel Marco

Account Director at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

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.

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Keerthana Jayathran

SAP BTP Developer at Wipro Limited

Offers integration of the document extraction service into SAP ALC, enabling the direct upload and extraction of details

I found that SAP Intelligent RPA can be somewhat unstable when using SAP GUI. When we upgraded from SAP GUI version 7.50 to version 7.70, we had to update our SAP Intelligent RPA screens even though the screens were the same. This was difficult and time-consuming. The one I would like to see is in context with the screens, if they are using the same SAP UI, and if it updates, it should not be changed. At least it should be able to identify the screen. There should be more of an error, like a proper error feature, in future releases. Sometimes, we don't understand why that automation is not learning what, like, where it is stuck, what the reason is, or what the criteria we are missing to add. A proper error message would be helpful.

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Sourav-Dutta

Technical Lead - Database Administrator at SMART ENERGY SYSTEMS LLC

It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process

We use VisualCron for all our automation needs, like connecting to FileZilla, calling APIs, generating PGP keys, creating encryption files with the PGP key login to Azure, etc. It can automatically log in to SQL Server and execute SQL script jobs in bulk. We had 2,000-3,000 users at my previous…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the drag-and-drop interface, which is very Windows-like."

"Web scraping is quite good since it offers a lot of possibilities."

"The licensing of the product is very good. You only need to license it once and then you have it forever."

"This product is quite easy to install, learn, and use, with our new employees being able to start using it in projects for clients after only two weeks of internal training."

"This tool has machine learning and voice recognition and computer vision, which are both quite useful aspects. These aren't available in other tools. It's a good addition to this tool and it gives the solution an edge on the market."

"The product effectively handles all the tasks we require."

"We use it for specific cases, mainly secure file transfers, which are vital for us. And it works for us."

"It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed."

More Fortra's Automate pros

"Most of the details are already in the help portal and SAP notes are available. It is well documented as part of the product support."

"The most valuable feature of SAP Contextor is that everyone is in one place in the program that I need."

"It is remarkably easy to configure and code, and it doesn't require an extensive technical background or coding expertise."

"The initial setup of SAP Contextor is easy."

"Contextor is a good solution for a Citrix environment. It's the first with this tool. Other tools provide the same functionality, but not with the Citrix environment."

"Scalability is fine. It is pretty nice."

"The standout features of SAP Intelligent RPA are its flexibility and integration capabilities."

"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."

"It has improved our organization with more automation within the business departments and less administration and development in the IT department. Usually, as the IT department, we are the bottleneck for many requirements within the business. With this tool, the business departments are able to perform many task themselves."

"It helped us reduce manual steps."

"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."

"What I like about VisualCron is that like its name, it's a very visual tool. In my previous company, there were a lot of scripts for all kinds of services, and through VisualCron, you get to group all flows and get a nice visual overview. VisualCron also has an alerting feature, so you receive alerts from it. VisualCron makes everything clearer and easier to maintain. Every other solution that I was looking for almost always needed a programmer, but with VisualCron, you can do what you need to do without programming skills, so this is another valuable feature of the tool."

"The most valuable feature of VisualCron is its ability to schedule interactive jobs so that you can have interdependencies within the job and interdependencies of a job on another job, and so on."

"'ve only had a few cases where I've had to request support in the past 12 years of use, but the support response time and resolution were was extremely quick."

"What I found most beneficial from VisualCron is that you can directly connect it with different databases, user accounts, and credentials. You can run queries from one machine to another using the credentials, unlike PowerShell, that's run by the machine itself. With VisualCron, you can directly ask other machines and run requests through user credentials. Suppose you have an AWS or Azure environment. In that case, you can maintain the connection between on-premises and cloud-based machines, which is the type of setup in the organization I'm working for. You can directly call some of the services via VisualCron on your local on-premises machine, and I found that an excellent feature of the tool."

"I love VisualCron because we previously spent a lot of time writing Power switches to connect to SQL Server. VisualCron makes it easier to execute services or connect to FileZilla by only adding the credentials to the master credentials stored in the solution."

More VisualCron pros

Cons

"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 documentation for errors needs improvement as many of the error messages we receive are very vague."

"Error messages should be better. For error status, there should be better documentation because a lot of times, error messages that you get are quite vague. For example, you get a message saying that the workflow has run into an unknown status, which is vague. It just tells you that it failed, but you don't know how or why it failed. It makes debugging difficult."

"The interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."

"The solution has a very weak knowledge base."

"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."

"While this solution is continually improving, as it is now, the user interface could use improvement when I compare it to a product like UiPath."

"The OCR for Hebrew text needs to be improved."

More Fortra's Automate cons

"There should be more of an error, like a proper error feature, in future releases. Sometimes, we don't understand why that automation is not learning what, like, where it is stuck, or what is the reason like, or what is the criteria we are missing to add. So a proper error message would be helpful."

"SAP Contextor could improve by automating some processes."

"For potential features or improvements, one aspect I would suggest enhancing is the flexibility of the extraction process."

"I found that the SAP scripting of a program is easier than SAP Contextor."

"The tool's licensing has been kind of a challenge...At the moment, the tool does not offer different licensing models to users."

"One way SAP Intelligent RPA could improve is by integrating built-in DI services for document processing."

"The initial setup is of medium complexity. It is neither too hard nor too simple. You need some background in SAP and an understanding of it."

"I would like to see a better capacity for unstructured data, for example, PDF, or text within images."

"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."

"VisualCron is software, and you will experience performance degradation when you scale up. VisualCron takes too much memory or CPU power. We have to increase the hardware resources of a specific server or system."

"There are some conditions in the mail trigger, but you can only use them as an "AND" condition, not as an "OR" condition. This is an improvement that could be useful. For example, some people put "invoice" in the subject and others put "invoice" in the body. If I want to make a trigger for everybody whose sending invoices, I have to make two jobs for this now."

"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."

"The documentation is a bit weak."

"The error timeout and info could be better. When making web request calls, it will time out sometimes and we won't get any useful info out of the error response."

"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler. If you're familiar with the tool, then no problem, but if not, you'll have a problem typing text because sometimes, the cursor points to other places, so there's an issue with text box alignment in VisualCron. That was painful for me when I was just a VisualCron novice, but when you become used to it, there won't be a problem."

"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface. It isn't always easy to find all functionalities, so what VisualCron needs is a user interface expert who can improve the interface. There's a learning curve in terms of finding what you need from the interface of VisualCron. The technical support for VisualCron also needs improvement in terms of response time. Currently, there's no live support or hotline you can call to get quick answers, so this is what I'd like to see in the next version of VisualCron. A less cluttered and more streamlined interface, where you don't need to hunt for some of the features, is also what I'd like to see in the next VisualCron update."

More VisualCron cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."

"It comes with a package that costs approximately $20,000 USD per year."

"Compared to other products, the pricing model for this solution is much more convenient, flexible, and adaptable to the Portuguese reality."

"The pricing is quite reasonable. We can run the process with one bot. The limitation is at the server level because they have some resources, and sometimes that is enough. It isn't too expensive, so you can get a good return off of one, and you can also have a pack of five bots that is quite competitive."

"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."

"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."

More Fortra's Automate pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is not that expensive. It is manageable."

"The initial cost might seem higher, but over time, with continued use over five or ten years, the cost tends to decrease, making it a more economical choice."

"It all comes with a bundle right now. Having advanced features, it is competitively priced."

"This is not a tool or software with a license as others are. The SaaS model is based on the usage of the tool."

"We are fine with a rather cheap setup. Licensing with VisualCron is fair. You have a simple one-year licence in different sizes. There isn't a licensing jungle with hundreds of options and opt-ins."

"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."

"VisualCron is correctly priced because it wasn't very cheap, and it wasn't overly expensive, so the price for it was set correctly. When my previous company bought VisualCron, it was €800 per server per year. On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing for VisualCron a five because it was just right. The tool was affordable, and it has one of the most competitive pricing in the market."

"ROI is 95 percent."

"The price is a bit high."

"ROI is one month."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Energy/Utilities Company

Computer Software Company

27%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Insurance Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for HelpSystems AutoMate?

We used the platform primarily for task automation, including transmitting EDR files. Additionally, we've utilized it...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?

The starter pack was all we needed and was reasonable. Others were either more expensive or didn't do all that I want...

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What do you like most about SAP Contextor?

The standout features of SAP Intelligent RPA are its flexibility and integration capabilities.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Contextor?

The pricing for SAP Intelligent RPA operates on a model that considers power usage and transactions per job. It is ad...

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What needs improvement with SAP Contextor?

The tool's licensing has been kind of a challenge. If the tool can bring up a usage-based licensing model, it would b...

See all answers

What do you like most about VisualCron?

The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VisualCron?

The price is a bit high. However, it is okay.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VisualCron?

The documentation is a bit weak. The tool must provide a better set of documentation.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power Automate vs Fortra's Automate

Compared 50% of the time

UiPath vs Fortra's Automate

Compared 37% of the time

Automation Anywhere vs Fortra's Automate

Compared 8% of the time

Blue Prism vs Fortra's Automate

Compared 4% of the time

More Fortra's Automate Competitors

UiPath vs SAP Intelligent RPA

Compared 42% of the time

Automation Anywhere vs SAP Intelligent RPA

Compared 23% of the time

Microsoft Power Automate vs SAP Intelligent RPA

Compared 13% of the time

Blue Prism Cloud vs SAP Intelligent RPA

Compared 10% of the time

SAP Build Process Automation vs SAP Intelligent RPA

Compared 5% of the time

More SAP Intelligent RPA Competitors

Microsoft Power Automate vs VisualCron

Compared 45% of the time

Control-M vs VisualCron

Compared 19% of the time

Stonebranch vs VisualCron

Compared 8% of the time

OpCon vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

More VisualCron Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortra's Automate

February 2025

Download Fortra's Automate product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP Intelligent RPA

January 2025

Download SAP Intelligent RPA product report

Buyer's Guide

VisualCron

January 2025

Download VisualCron product report

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate

SAP Contextor, Contextor

No data available

Overview

Fortra's Automate is predominantly used in HR and operational departments for automating reports, file manipulation, and data processing. Key uses include automating repetitive tasks, integrating PDFs and emails, running scripts, processing large data sets, transforming file formats, synchronizing databases, managing job schedules, and transferring files.

Users commend Fortra's Automate for its ease of implementation and user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, which requires minimal technical skills for efficient bot deployment. The software is appreciated for its effective scheduling tools, reliable integration capabilities, and a wide range of functions such as file interaction, secure file transfers, and extensive automation without the need for coding. Businesses achieve significant time savings and simplified processes, bolstered by continuous updates and robust customer support.

What are the key features?

Scheduling Tools: Enables precise control and timing for automation tasks
Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly connects with various systems and software
File Interaction: Comprehensive functions for file manipulation and transfer
Secure Transfers: Ensures data safety during file transfers
User-Friendly: Minimal technical skills needed for deployment and use

What benefits should you look for in reviews?

Ease of Implementation: Fast and simple setup process
Time Savings: Reduces time spent on repetitive tasks
Process Simplification: Streamlines complex workflows
Customer Support: Access to continuous support and updates

In various industries such as healthcare, transportation, and payroll, Fortra's Automate automates workflows like invoice generation, data retrieval, data uploading, and insurance eligibility checks, enhancing efficiency and accuracy for HR and operational tasks.

Fortra

SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation lets you automate enterprise business processes. Design process automations within the Cloud Studio by creating end-to-end workflows. Generate packages from these automations into the Cloud Factory powered by SAP BTP to configure and execute these packages with Agents. Agents running on workstations can work as a digital assistant (attended automation) or as a digital worker (unattended automation).

SAP Intelligent RPA enables business users and technologists to become citizen developers. With powerful yet intuitive low-code and no-code capabilities, the solution supports you in driving automation by tapping into the expertise of citizen developers.

SAP

VisualCron automates tasks like file encryption, scheduling SQL jobs, system integration, data workflow management, and application triggering, making it ideal for handling nightly syncs, FTP server file replacements, job scheduling, and invoice processing.

VisualCron provides an efficient automation solution with features like error and status reporting, API connections, PGP key generation, encryption file creation, and bulk SQL script execution. It simplifies task automation through its mail and event triggers, job variables, conditional execution, and logging with error alerts. Users benefit from its integration capabilities, scheduling flexibility, visual interface, and support for databases and credential management without extensive coding.

What are the most important features?

Simplicity: Easy-to-use interface for seamless automation.
Mail and Event Triggers: Automate tasks based on specific events.
Job Variables: Customize tasks using various input variables.
Conditional Execution: Execute tasks based on predefined conditions.
Error Alerts: Logging and error reporting to ensure task reliability.
Integration Capabilities: Easily connect and integrate with systems and APIs.
Scheduling Flexibility: Create complex schedules with ease.
Visual Interface: User-friendly GUI for efficient management.
Database Support: Manage and automate database tasks efficiently.
Credential Management: Securely handle credentials for various tasks.
PowerShell Commands: Execute PowerShell commands directly.

What are the benefits or ROI users should look for in the reviews?

Efficiency: Streamline and automate repetitive tasks to save time.
Cost Savings: Reduce manual labor and associated costs.
Reliability: Ensure consistency and accuracy in task execution.
Integration: Enhance workflows by integrating with different systems.
Flexibility: Adjust quickly to changes and handle complex scheduling needs.
Support: Benefit from extensive post-sales support and configuration options.
Innovation: Foster innovation by eliminating the need for coding.

Industries like finance, healthcare, and logistics implement VisualCron to automate data workflows, secure file transfers, and schedule critical tasks. It is used to streamline invoice processing, manage large-scale data operations, and ensure compliance through encryption and error reporting. VisualCron enhances operational efficiency, scalability, and security in various sectors, making it essential for businesses requiring robust automation capabilities.

NetCart AB

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

BNP Paribas, Societe Generale, Kabel Deutschland, Orange, Carrefour

7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)

Buyer's Guide

SAP Intelligent RPA vs. VisualCron

January 2025

Free Report: SAP Intelligent RPA vs. VisualCron

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