Automation Anywhere (AA) Reviews

Most of our automation happens on Automation Anywhere. 

While the automation is being done, we use it as a platform. Then, depending on the number of users/ bots needed, we apply  for the corresponding licenses.

The good thing about Automation Anywhere is that any process:

1. Which is repetitive, rule-based, and only requires you to do collect/ edit information on the application frontend can be automated. 

Therefore, Automation Anywhere makes for a good use case. 

2.Wherever the process is  deterministic, with no decisions to be made, you can use it. 

It can automate any processes where 

3. Process is well established, standard, or stable, and there are not many changes in the process. For example, a simple task, such as logging into a website, launching a website and doing systematic steps on the website, can easily be captured to Automation Anywhere.  I see lot of applications, especially in finance and accounting domain.

You might have a lot of steps where you need to either extract data, repeat data, or collect data. All of those processes can be automated through RPA, and especially Automation Anywhere. You can use even automation from the server side, not just websites. The only constraint is that the process should not require human intervention and decision making.

We see the application in the 

# BPO space, 

# Finance and accounting, 

# Health care in terms of claim processing.

E.g. in F&A, if you're doing invoice processing where the entire process is manual, and the analyst has to go through the invoice to determine invoice details, discount on the payment  or a penalty should be levied. In such cases, you can scan this information through an OCR, which is an optical character recognition tool. Then, the rest of the information can be pretty much retrieved by the RPA, which means the RPA will scan the information to classify this information and fill up the  web form. This will be sent to the ERP. This is how the workflow would look like. 

Wherever you can put

# a rule-based system, you can automate all of the processes. In our company, all these processes are manual and you might have 50 to 60 people supporting this process for a mid-size company. You can automate it and reduce the manual effort by almost 40 to 50 percent, depending upon how many techs are enrolled and what is the effort being spent in order to process transaction volumes.

I have been familiar with a couple of projects where this was implemented in cash applications or invoice processing, and they could automate these steps. So, I'm familiar with some of the back-end processes and where they are getting automated.

#1.You don't have to really code anything, as it gives you a good interface (UI), because the components are already preconfigured, you  have to just a drag and drop sequence in terms of how you want to execute the steps. 

#2. There are preconfigured APIs that can be used. E.g., if you want to interact with the mailbox solution, you can have the RPA fetch attachments or email body from the mail solution. You can process attachments via test file or PDF. You can even make Automation Anywhere work around PDF, which is typically not that easy to work with in terms of extracting information.

#3. Metabots/ IQ Bots: One of the features, which we have not used too much, but available, is the MetaBot feature. These preconfigured solutions are easily downloadable, and you can just plug-and-play with a bit of customization, which also means you do not have to keep recreating and can reuse existing functionality. Some of the typical uses are that you could be regularly logging into a website. You can just download a MetaBot, as a useful webpage interface and just run it. All you have to do is maybe replace the name of the website, and in case there is a certain authentication mechanism that is being used, then provide that information.

# 4.There are multiple levels of cloning. In case screen cloning doesn't work, you can do object-based cloning or keystroke-level cloning, depending upon what parameters are available to you and what is the level of information that you capture. You can traverse between object cloning, which is the lowest, most basic form of cloning to a stroke-based cloning, which is like taking care of each keystroke-level which is made by the agent.

#1 Exception Management and Notification: When you are making a code, and there is a happy path and exception management mechanism, it would be nice if there was feedback in terms of whether this is the most appropriate way to code this. I'm not sure how this can be done, but that could be very insightful. It already gives you some screen tips, but this could be done in a better fashion, in case you are creating the workflow and then you believe a beta workflow is available or could be done. If a screen tip could be given to the coder for this sort of workflow, this would be a much better feature for Automation Anywhere. 

# 2 Type of Cloning: I've realized that sometimes when screen-level cloning is a better option, people still use object-based cloning. It would be useful if Automation Anyone could give you tips recommending fewer steps or fewer areas of exception management after you inputted your code. I'm not really sure if this is doable from a technical standpoint.

#3 Debugging: Currently, I believe the debugging of bot is a bit tricky and not very elegant, you might have to keep re-running the script to be able to identify the bug. This can be looked at, as a possible area of improvement. 

#4 Scheduling:There are two modules: the run module and the control center. In terms of scheduling and triggering, they could make it a bit more helpful and provide suggestions, e.g., if you are scheduling it, and there is a conflict, can you resolve it this way. Maybe you can get an upfront alert or something to that effect. 

#5: Stability, Workaround and fall back mechanism: When  bot breaks down, is there any of mechanisms or notifications that can be given? You can possibly choose to notify people, typically in organizations people are pretty much adverse to automation. If something breaks down, they would like to know at the earliest given opportunity that something is breaking down and piling up. They want to be able to resolve it quickly. If the resolution is going to take time, they want to be able to make some specific workaround mechanism kick in. If a bot breaks down, immediately the fallback mechanism should work too. If there could be information in terms of  when the process was out of range and somebody might need to take a look at what has happened. This is because most of these business processes that get automated are critical in nature and might have financial and operational impact. People need to know that there are working fine and not broken down. It can really have an adverse impact if they break down and nobody knows.

#6. Platform Training: My experience has been that if the person who codes the bot is not very well-trained, then they might create unstable bots. So, it's not the platform. It is just how somebody has coded the bots which can bring in lot of instability to them. I recommend that when you are using a coder that the person well-trained and have a good amount of experience already working on bots. They shouldn't be newbie or beginner who comes in to code because that will impact the quality of the code itself.

I have been working with Automation Anywhere for the last three years at two different companies.

# Business process stability: Before robotic automation, the business process itself should be stable and very well-documented. Also, anytime a change is made to the process or subprocess ensure, that the RPA gets updated too. Typically, the entire process of automation might take some time, then by that time, the initial business process might have changed a bit. There could variations in terms of volume or in the process itself.

The most important thing is that before you automate something that you must make sure that it is stable, in its steady state for whatever changes might be upcoming over the next six month to year. Otherwise, you might create a bot, which will go into production,  and fail because the underlying process itself has changed.

# Monitoring and controllership: If there is no changes in the process, bots are pretty much stable and especially, if they have been well coded. In case there have been any changes anywhere in the process or subprocess, the bot can fail. This means you must have a review mechanism with monitoring in place. Once you put a bot into production, you have to monitor it and do regular sanity checks. Otherwise, you could have situations where bots have failed and you might not know, then the process comes to a standstill. In a nutshell monitoring and control is an important aspect of RPA in the run phase.

Scalability is just scaling up the number of bots, so scalability is not a problem. You can increase the number of machines and number of bots to scale up the solution, but it can be sometimes very cost prohibitive. E.g., typically, it requires a dedicated machine, and it can't be a shared environment. This can be a bit of a constraint in terms of the number of machines being used. Otherwise, the solution is completely scalable. In case the process requires more throughput, you can just increase the number of bots which are working. Also, if you are doing this properly, then you have to make sure that there are not multiple bots running at the same time which might be at cross purposes.

I don't interact with the people from Automation Anywhere.

# Procurement of the license is easy, but depending upon what you want to automate and how you automate it that might take time. Setup is not at all difficult. You just take the license and install the application, then it's ready to go. However, in terms of what you're trying to automate, how you're trying to automate it, and the complexity of the problem, the entire automation process can take time.

# Implementation timelines:The time frame to implement depends on the complexities and number of the processes and subprocesses. In a typical process, the coding, testing, and deployment could range from a week to four weeks. However, I have seen it sometimes take longer because you have to continuously keep checking and testing it. Every time the code breaks down, you have to possibly start from the beginning.

My experience has been one to four weeks as the ideal time frame. However, depending on how well the process was understood and documented, there can be certain gaps which would only become evident during the testing phase, not otherwise.

# Resources: Depending on the number of bots that you have to create and the number of the complex processes along with the given budget and timelines that you have in mind, the number of developers range from one to multiple developers. The resources that you really need are developers because they are people who will be coding. Otherwise, from an ownership standpoint, we need some subject-matter expertise for the process. The people who are subject-matter experts will be needed on a part-time basis for the developer to be able to map the process well and be able to create their technical design. Then, you will need a technical master who creates the technical documentation of how it will be coded. The number of technical masters again depends upon the processes and complexity along with the corresponding number of developers.

The deployment team may not be very big. You need just the developers and a design architect, mostly two people. All the other people come and go per the requirement stage of the deployment. There might be people who are there only for consultation. Some people might be there only to approve the solution. Whenever you bring in automation, it has to be reviewed, monitored, and assessed from the organization's standpoint. There might be people who are just doing approvals for this process deployment in case it's a very complex project, and then there is a project manager. Otherwise, sometimes the technical design person doubles up as a project manager too.

Before implementing, you do the assessment of why the organization wants to automate:

Imperatives for Robotic Automation 

• What do they want to automate? 
• What are the key objectives  the organization wants to achieve through robotic automation? 
• Is it a process optimization or is it cost cutting? 
• Who is driving the automation? Is it client-driven or is it vendor-driven? 

Then, you have to build the business case in terms of what you want to try to automate. E.g., how much can actually be automated? That assessment should be done. Even the cost and time of automation versus that benefits that you're going to get out of it needs to be done.

# Process Degeneration: When we start automating, we do a process desegregation. This means whatever processes are under scope that we try and understand the task level, activity level, and precedence details. We make activity diagrams, then try and assess out of all of these which one can be automated. So, if the automation index is pretty high, which means that most of the process can be automated, e.g., up to 80 percent, then it might make a better business case than if the automobility is only say 30 to 40 percent. Then, the cost of automation might be way higher.

# Setting the right expectations with the client: t is also important to set the right expectations with the organization. Are they new to automation or do they some prior experience with automation? Because this helps us set the right expectations in terms of the benefits which can be had. The customer might also want to understand what are the impacts if automation fails and the fallback mechanisms. For example:

• How do you mitigate or remediate the impact of automation failure? 
• What is a criticality of the process you're automating? 
• What are your points of failure and choke points? 
• What are your backup plans if things aren't going well?

The most important thing is the business case as to the cost versus the benefits of automation.

# Legal and Compliance Regulations: Also, are any legal or compliance regulations which are applicable because technically it might be feasible to automate, but legally or from a compliance point of view, it might not be good idea to automate. You might want to still have human intervention in terms of verification and validation.

# Criticality of the process: From a financial impact standpoint, things that require a bit of background investigation might be better kept as a manual process or require a human approval rather than automating it completely.

It all depends on the scale. In one project that I have worked on, we had a savings of $200,000 over a three-year period and a payback period of 6 months. The typical ratio is that one bot will replace two people.

# Licensing: One of the components of key drivers for us to renew our contract is AI or automation. As an organization, we are moving toward smarter operations.

Our pricing a year ago was $600 per license, but I am not sure of our current licensing cost.

# Set up cost: Additional costs will be for the machines and the number of machines that you are using. You can deploy virtually as well as on physical machines. In both the situations, you do need to allocate a certain budget for securing the machines and where the software will be installed and running. 

# Dedicated Machines: The machines cannot be used for anything else, because only a certain bot can run at a certain time. You need to be very particular about your scheduling of running the bots, and while the bot is running nobody can use the machine. You cannot have an agent working on a machine and the bot running in the background. The machine  has to be completely dedicated. 

# Network Bandwidth and Disk Space: Then there are the network bandwidth requirements and  disk space requirements, which are additional costs apart from the licensing and software costs. The developer is also going to charge you for their coding time too.

There are two or three more tools in the market such as Blue Prism, UI Path, but I think the preference was given to Automation Anywhere.

I have only worked with Automation Anywhere.

Understand why you are choosing Automation Anywhere, as the platforms are pretty on the same level except for certain functionalities. Also, in some scenarios, one platform could be better than another. Pick a platform and stick with it.

It is easy to use, but I realize that the effectiveness of the platform depends on the coder and how he is doing the coding. This is my experience, because I have seen that the quality of the automation is as good as the person who is using it. In Automation Anywhere, the skill set of the coder really determines how good the automation is, which is why I am making it a eight (out of 10), not 10 (out of 10). Because while the platform is feature-rich and easy to use, it is the skill of the coder that determines how well the platform is leveraged.

I' am now mainly driving AI at my company. RPA has become a bit secondary in the sense that it is a part of my solution, but most of the time, it is AI-driven. RPA sort of helps in the execution of some of the components of that overall solution. From the organization's standpoint, automation is already a part of all our solutions. E.g., our organization is moving toward automation where almost 30 percent of any deal will be allocated to automation. It will be a ratio of 70:30, where out of $100, a total of $30 dollars will be allocated toward automation and AI.

I did my certification on version 10.4.

We serve different clients of ours helping them streamline or ease out with their day-to-day activities. There is a team who identifies which activities can be automated end-to-end. They prepare a proposal sheet, which comes to us, and we do the feasibility of it: How much of that activity can be automated. Then, we proceed from there.

Currently, in our production environment, we are using Automation Anywhere version 11.3.1. In a beta test version, we are also evaluating the latest version, which is 11.3.2.

Previously, we had to input a password to a particular tool for the user to login. The only option was through encrypted keystrokes, and if I uncheck the password, I can see it. Now, they have a credential vault, which is 256-bit encrypted. That is the highest security that can be provided when it comes to credential maintenance. That's a day and night difference. With a credential vault, other than the user who is entering the password, no one else knows what the password is. This also helps when convincing the clients. 

The most advanced feature in the current version is the security. Previously, the whole thing was like a software installation. Nowadays, it is more of a URL and credential vault. Everything is taken care of by a centralized tool, a Control Room, which is only accessible through the URL. I really like this feature. I hear that in the upcoming version that everything will be cloud-based. So, I'm really excited to see that type of an infrastructure.

As a developer or user, I feel that the performance of the overall package could be made a little better or reliable. For example, if I'm opening up a heavy Excel file, which is uploaded in some shared drive over the net, and I have my box coded to open that Excel to do some work or formatting on it, and depending on the network load and the size of the file, this client version while trying to access that file becomes unstable at times. It goes into the hang position until a human being comes in, ends the task, and restarts it. Until this happens, it does not respond. 

In version A2019, it's moving from a software installation infrastructure to a cloud-based infrastructure. I am hoping that the end-to-end deployment from conception to coding to production will be much faster than it is right now. That really excites me as this is a feature that I suggested to tech support.

I've been using this tool since 2014.

I would definitely like to see an improvement in how it handles the system resource crunch and how it takes care of the pressure. That would be really nice to see.

Over the years, I have seen the solution really change. I have seen the differences that come with the subsequent releases.

It is definitely scalable. It is very flexible when it comes to scalability. I have had projects in which the total benefit was about 12 FTEs across the globe. We would start off with 0.5 FTEs when we went into live production. Then, we started onboarding other countries or regions, and getting roles onboarded was pretty much seamless. Scaling up is a good thing that Automation Anywhere has for it.

I use Automation Anywhere's tech support every day. They are awesome. Whenever I have certain ideas, I always drop them an email. Then, six or eight months down the line, I see those releases coming in which makes me feel proud. 

The engineering team works on our suggestions and provides us with a patch or upgrade, which is nice to see.

Back in 2014 (at my previous organization), I wouldn't say the initial setup was smooth. There were a few roadblocks. Both Automation Anywhere and my previous organization worked on them. Eventually, everything got sorted out. Nowadays, everything is much better than what I saw back then.

We deployed in-house.

I have not see ROI in my current organization. However, I did see ROI in my previous organization.

In the initial year after deployment, you won't see return on investment. Eventually, when your bot is more stabilized and your processes are streamlined, in the one and half years to two years window, you will start seeing return on investment. The FTE cost is definitely higher than the license cost of each bot. If your program has been thought through, then one bot can be used to do the work of approximately two human beings worth of labor. That is where the benefit is, which will start from the second year onward. 

Approximately, for a developer, it is around $750 for a license a year. For Bot Runners, it is about $550.

Automation Anywhere is unlike any other software. Automation Anywhere provides me with my bread and butter. I just love the tool.

Understand what projects or automation projects that you have on hand. Every clients setup demands a different set of tools which can be used for automation. Automation Anywhere does try to cover all environments, though. However, there are a few other tools in the market specifically built for specific infrastructures. First, study your requirements. Then, based on those, go ahead and decide on what tool you want to use.

My primary use cases consist of the following:

1. Filtering and manipulating multiple Excel, CSV, XLS files to gather relevant data as per the business requirements.
2. Extracting text from searchable and non-searchable PDF files and uploading the data to separate output files or web-based forms.
3. Scheduling tasks to run on a daily basis or implementing trigger-based process execution.
4. Implementing email automation in various modules.
5. Working with external macros and JScript files, depending on the given business logic. 

Automation Anywhere has by far, provided one of the best and easiest solutions to implement RPA. It has helped increase our productivity in the following ways:

1. The scheduling and trigger-based solutions provided by Automation Anywhere have saved the effort of manually checking the conditions and executing tasks.
2. The OCR commands have made document processing efficient to a certain extent.
3. Working with external scripts has been very useful; I have used JScript and VBScripts in my processes.
   

The features I found most valuable are:

1. PDF Integration Commands: It is easy to extract text from PDF files in two ways, plain text and structured text. Automated password protected files, as well.
2. FTP Commands: I found it very easy to automate processes where I have to extract, upload, and rename files on the SFTP server for my process.
3. Error Handler: One of the most valuable features is the error handler, as this command has helped me design bots that can handle multiple errors and exceptions.
4. Object Cloning Features: This is one of the most reliable features provided by Automation Anywhere.
   

The product is amazing, nevertheless, it would be really great to see the following points being implemented:

1. Better OCR Extraction: The OCR extraction is good to some extent, but I have seen some cases where it has failed to extract text from a few documents, and this was quite unexpected.
2. More Excel Commands: The set of Excel commands I am currently using in Automation Anywhere V11.3 are limited. Most of the Excel commands such as filtering and removing duplicates are not available.
3. Options to edit Document and PPT files: The scope of projects could be expanded if we have such commands. 

I have been using Automation Anywhere for more than a year.

I have used AA to automate various business processes varying from HR and AR teams to Sales.

Starting with HR, we have automated various processes from auto-downloading the data and uploading it to a database without human intervention, to combining multiple file data into one.

For the AR team, we have automated the process to download data from the server and generate the AR report, then updating the dashboards for senior management.

For Sales, we created a form where the Bid Manager would update pursuit details and the tool would pull that data and then send the request to required teams for SPOC allocation.

For HR, the automated download and upload of data (every half hour) resulted in getting the latest performance data to the BPHRs in real-time, as per their access. This helped in saving the manual effort every time a report is asked for including the downloading and sharing of data, as per the access. This way, the BPHRs would directly log into the dashboard and see the data.

Similar effort savings were recorded in other processes as well. Automation of such tasks helped in clearing the bandwidth of the users and requestors alike and saved a lot of to and fro just asking for the latest data.

Automation also resulted in tracking, analytics, and defining a structure for the processes that would help in faster onboarding and easier handover.

Object cloning, Excel, web recorders, database, if-else, loops, and string are some of the most commonly used commands, by me.

Pulling data from web pages using Object Cloning has been an absolute delight. It is very accurate and runs flawlessly.

Up until v11, the Excel commands were very limited compared to what Excel has to offer. We had to use macros mostly, to cover up the gap and avoid using keystrokes. However, A2019 has Excel Advance, which has a lot more functions and covers that gap significantly. 

We are still exploring all the new features and functions of A2019, but one thing I noticed was that it has introduced variable type. While helpful at certain places, I miss the previous method, where one variable can handle any type include a string, numerical, or boolean value.

If the option were available to use the old generic-style variable type, it would be helpful. Now, I need to create one variable for holding a numerical value and convert it to a string value to display it on a message box, which is a little inconvenient. This is purely based on past experience. Once I get used to it, I might find it better and more convenient.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for the last three years. Started with v10 to exploring vA2019, AA has come a long way with excellent features and updates with A2019.

For the HR process, a macro script was created to download data. But the main requirement was that the screen should be locked. As in the working of the tool should not be visible to people around. Hence, the macro script was not working, on lock screen as expected. This is why we moved to AA.

We able to able to replicate the downloading of files and uploading it to database using object cloning and database functions provided by AA.

Most of our ROIs were calculated based on the FTE hours saved since the teams were internal. for some projects it was around 4 hours weekly to 13 hours weekly for others.

The Sales team would take care about pricing, since other teams were also using AA. Licensing was modified based on the runners needed as per the projects. Number of developer licenses were fixed.

We had somebody to teach us about AA, so we directly started with it.

We are currently working on a vendor bill reconciliation process. It is in production now. We are also working on an incident management process for customer service. Within the customer services, there are four or five different processes that we are working on. All of them are incident management but for different categories at different levels. The next use case that we will be working on is bank reconciliation, and then we are planning to expand into HR for onboarding and recruitment. These are unattended robots. 

We are able to integrate it with other products through APIs, which we may not have thought about. For example, there are some in-house solutions that we have for which we have built APIs, and we're able to integrate those APIs with Automation Anywhere. We didn't expect that we'll be working on that but it happened.

The ease of use for the end user and the very low complexity in trying to build a bot are the big factors for us. We are able to work on a project, identify a use case, come up with a design spec, and execute and build a bot within a span of six to eight weeks. In nine to ten weeks, we are able to go live, which reduced complexity. Once we go live, the user interface and the user experience are extremely good.

Their bot runners could be made to handle multiple payloads at the same time because if I want to run multiple parallel operations, the number of bot runners that I have to buy just keeps increasing. It is adding to the cost. However, there is a possibility that we don't need that many bot runners, and we can run multiple operations in a bot runner. This would be a great addition to have.

I have been using this solution for six months.

You get what you paid for. What it says on the tin is what you'll get inside. As a customer, you will not be disappointed. If you're thinking that you want to build rockets using Automation Anywhere, then you will be disappointed. As long as you know your business needs, the automation that you want to focus on, and you understand the product's functionalities in a good way, you will not be disappointed.

Scalability depends on how many parallel processes you want to run. A bot runner basically runs a bot. How many bots can it run? How many of these need to run in serial? How many of these need to run in parallel? This information will determine how much you have to scale. Now, if you're willing to pay a lot of money and have multiple bot runners, that means for each and every bot runner, you can have multiple processes running at the same time. So, if you are willing to pay, yes, you can scale. It depends on your budget. The product works whether you're on 1 bot or 20 bots. The product just goes off and does its thing. That's not a problem.

If it is 1 bot that you're running once a day at 10:00 in the morning, then you need one bot runner. If you have 20 processes that you're automating and these 20 things have to run throughout the day at different points in time at 10:00, 12:00, or 2:00, you can still run them with one bot runner. In those use cases, scalability is not a problem. Scalability becomes an issue when you have multiple processes. If a reconciliation process needs to run along with the general ledger balancing, month-end closing, and everything else, and all of them need to run at the same time, then you're looking at about 10 bot runners running 10 different bots at the same time. If you're willing to pay, you can get what you want, but it becomes a very expensive affair.

We have 15 to 20 people who are touching the application for various purposes. We have business analysts, developers, testers, and the external implementation team. We also have business users.

I have used both UiPath and BluePrism in my previous organizations. Automation Anywhere gives me the flexibility for both on-prem and SaaS, and the difference is not huge for me in terms of performance, security, and all that stuff. It gives me the flexibility, but honestly, on paper, all these three products pretty much do the same. There is a plus or minus 5% difference here or there, but you'll not go wrong with any of these products.

The initial setup was very straightforward. There are specific things that they ask in terms of the environments that we need to build in our typical Windows server, that is, what kind of memory and what kind of processing capability we require. I can't talk from the SaaS perspective because we have an on-prem deployment, but giving on-prem equipment based on the defined specs is pretty much child's play. There is nothing complex about it. It is very easy for developers who understand the platform. You can quickly roll out something and get it live, but you need to understand a lot of logic and the complexity behind the applications such as ServiceNow, Workday, Salesforce, etc. 

We started off with an implementation partner, and our experience with them was good. They had about three people in their team, and we had our business people who were giving the requirements. We also had our technology people who were basically acting as the bridge between our business people and their developers.

We are expecting a significant ROI by the end of the year. 

From a business angle, understand what is it that you need. Where do you see inefficiencies? If you're going to fix inefficiencies that are going to be fixed as part of a larger company-wide transformation program, then use the transformation program and fix those inefficiencies as part of the existing solution. If you think that that larger transformation program is not going to touch some places or if that larger transformation program will touch some of these inefficient areas but not in the near future, and you want some immediate wins, then going in for an RPA tool is a good decision.

At the end of the day, the business needs to be aligned with why you're making the decision, and where and what is your priority? What is your sense of urgency with respect to the places where you're implementing it. For example, in my office, we are working on customer service. There is a massive transformation program going on right now, but that transformation program is touching sales, marketing, finance, and all those areas. It is not touching customer service at all, but customer service has its own inefficiencies. So, we introduced automation in customer service because it's not being touched by the transformation program, and we don't want to keep waiting to gain the ROI of whatever we can get or the reduced cost we'll get from customer service. For example, if I'm going to implement a massive cloud ERP like Oracle or SAP, then I will fix the process as part of that cloud ERP implementation and not wait for a bot to be developed.

From a technical perspective or an integration perspective, use an API to directly communicate between the apps, if you can. You don't need a bot or an RPA to do what an API can do.

I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

Automation Anywhere is an RPA tool that is used to Automate any repeated simple/complex tasks with ease. Automation Anywhere is not perfect but it is still the best tool available in today's market.

It is one of the simplest RPA tools, having a simple user interface, and it is very easy to get hands-on with this platform. It has vast learning resources available, too.

Use Cases:

1. Extracting data from scanned PDFs: Using Automation Anywhere made it much simpler to scrape data from scanned PDFs and convert it into standard Excel format, as per requirements.
2. Portal Automation: AA makes web automation simple and our manual tasks have now been automated. Our portal is for making client bookings of the client. The Bot reads the Excel file shared by the user and accordingly, makes the booking in the portal with minimum time and with high accuracy.

Automation Anywhere is known for its high performance, reliability, and simplicity. Using Automation Anywhere has been a boon for my organization. It saves time and does not require human intervention, depending on the task or process that is automated.

As data scraping from scanned PDFs was a huge task for our organization, and with other tools, the accuracy was around 50-60%, we were facing a huge data loss. When our organization switched to Automation Anywhere, the accuracy rate improved and consequently, there has not been much data loss.

Automation Anywhere has great features and I have found Object Cloning and SAP integration to be the most valuable among them.

Object Cloning: Using Object Cloning, any web-based process or task that has fixed steps to be followed can be automated with ease. Object Cloning captures the object, DOMXPath, Inner text, etc. The drop-down menus can also be automated easily.

SAP Integration: Automation anywhere has added one more feature to this command in v11.3.5, which is SAP GUI. Using this feature/command, SAP Automation has become simpler than before, as it required using Metabot, DLL, etc. Everything can now be done in the task bot itself.

Automation Anywhere should improve its OCR command, as it's my observation that I have faced data loss or improper data being extracted. If the image quality is low then the data extraction with 100% accuracy is a huge task that I have been facing.

If the scheduling of the bot were much simpler, also allowing us to schedule bots prior to the start time, it would be an improvement. 

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

The stability is good.

The scalability is very good, and I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Excellent support.

Once, I was facing an issue so I raised a ticket. The Automation Anywhere support team helped me to resolve it quickly, with proper follow up via email as well as calls.

We did not use another RPA product prior to Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup is straightforward. The Control Room and client are simple to set up, too.

We have an in-house team with a high level of expertise.

Considering the cost, it is a bit high, but worth the price because the output accuracy is high.

Automation Anywhere is a tool that I love! I am quite happy using this tool and there are no features or commands that I have found to be missing that should be added.

Its advantages are performance, simplicity, and excellent support!

Please go for Automation Anywhere. I am sure that you won't regret it!

The primary use case of this solution in my environment is to use bots to extract the important logistical information from each of the customer Microsoft Excel sheets. Next, the information is transferred, to be entered into the government official logistics documentation.

Prior to submitting the data to the company warehouse management system, it is checked and balanced. The same needs to be done before submission to the official government website.

It helps my organization to further improve the management and assigning of tasks to its human resources.

Through the use of Automation Anywhere bots, no longer do the staff in my organization need to carry out the task of transferring data from Excel sheets to our data or the government website. Thus, as all of these processes are being automated, this manpower can now be shifted to be used in other areas that can be beneficial to the company.

The most valuable feature is IQ Bot, as it allowed us to train it to extract important logistical information from customer PDF documents, irrespective of the format. This is valuable because not all PDF sheets have the same format. Many customers tend to use various formats to represent their data. Hence, with IQ bot, even with the wide variety of different PDF formats, the bots would still able to help us extract what we needed.

I hope that Automation Anywhere can further optimize its bots to help automate tasks with Microsoft Word documents and Microsoft PowerPoint documents because, in most organizations, there is a lot of reporting required. Hence, it would be great and more cost and time-efficient if there is a way to automate everyday tasks such as Microsoft Word Report Generation and Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation Generation.

Further, I would also recommend that Automation Anywhere assist users with automating tasks such as the monthly payment of essential services. For example, automating payment of utilities like the water bill or electricity bill, online.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

The scalability of this solution is fantastic, as the bots can be run on multiple machines at the same time.

The customer service is fantastic and they always provide reliable feedback and help.

We did not use another RPA product prior to Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We have an in-house developer as well as a vendor team. The vendor team has a high level of expertise.

The ROI in terms of finance cannot be disclosed due to company policy but the bots have made the everyday process of extracting logistics information from customer Excel sheets or PDF files much more efficient and faster than the traditional manual method.

I advise others that even as of right now, the setup cost and licensing cost to automate bots on Automation Anywhere is steep but it is worth the investment!

We considered other Robotic Process Automation tools such as UiPath and Blue Prism.

Our primary use case is for building Solutions involving RPA bots. We have implemented two standalone infrastructures each with A2019.16 Control rooms. 

Multiple Developers are working using the tools and commands in A2019 to create bots that will be deployed for clients to address their business requirements.

The infrastructure is running on the private cloud . 

The control room is running on the latest Windows server and the latest Windows SQL server is running the control room database.

Developers use VMware Virtual desktops to execute their bots. Chrome and IE browsers used by the developers.

Clients approach us to implement Automation Anywhere for three main reasons:

1: FTE reduction
2: Improving AHT 
3: Quick implementation and getting started on their RPA journey.

We have seen AA bringing immense value to the clients once operational. Bot deployment is easy and controlling Access is easy with RBAC with the recent additions. User groups and user management is on par with tools like Blue Prism & UiPath.

From a development perspective, the web-based approach is easy to deploy. The downside is that it is difficult to troubleshoot as logging on to the clients has been reduced.

It's comparatively easy to find developers who are accustomed to working with AA compared to other RPA tools.  

A2019 Control room

1: Single installer for all components and it installs all pre-requisites- Makes life easier as only admin access is required from the IT team to complete the installation
2:RBAC - Each component access can be controlled via Custom roles. I have created roles for developers, schedulers, admin, testers are all in a single control room.
3: Inbuilt credential vault with encryption is easy to implement and manage.
4:Recently included features of adding Security groups from the Active Directory is a lifesaver for the Control room administrator. Users are managed at the AD level with no overhead tasks of CR admin managing users.

A2019 Bot Agent

1: Easily installed but requires admin rights. 
2: It can be installed on a server now as the option to add multiple users is enabled in bot agent installer files

Verbose logging of bot compiling and deployment from the control room. Events occurring during compiling, pre-processing the bots should be logged in the control room or bot launcher logs.

Exported bots packages are not updated. Each package must be validated independently upon being exported from one control room to another.

Moving away from Client-server architecture to web-based deployment compromised developer experience of app reliability offered by 11.3.X flavors.

Desktop app experience >>> Web experience. Developers are not pleased. 

I have been using A2019 for 4 months.

Stick to long term releases.

Easily scalable on-premises.

Customer support is excellent and have helped on multiple occasions.Raising a ticket through through partner/support portal is very easy. Frontline engineers are quick to respond and access the issue mentioned in the ticket.

In my experience , most of the cases are resolved by frontline team and rarely get to involve their escalation team. Case resolution time differ vastly based on the complexity of the issue being reported and availability of the support engineer. 

Getting quick support/response is difficult and most of the calls are pre-scheduled. Categorizing a support ticket is crucial to get right resources for the issue. You will not like a platform engineer supporting a bot development issue and vice versa.

Enhancement requests via support requests are time consuming and might not see daylight till next minor/major upgrade.  

knowledge base articles available for troubleshooting known issues can be improved. Articles are not sorted properly and finding the correct KB for a known issue takes lot of time and effort.

UiPath, we switched due to organizational use.

Simple installation.

In-house.

Setup: A2019 is very easy. A single installer does it all.

Cost: Cheaper compared to Blue Prism and UiPath Orchestrator.

Licensing: Floating licensing 

We evaluated Blue Prism but it had a high cost.

Too frequent updates and major changes in each update is frustrating.

We use this solution for all the business processes and mainly to integrate with Excel files, our database, and our ERP.

We basically process data that are in form of Excel, PDF, or CSV formatted files. We also interact with information that is stored in our database.

Generally, we automate a lot of processes that are repetitive and time-consuming. We work mainly with processing data, thus reducing the time needed to do the process manually. The workforce is also reduced for completing simple tasks like logging in to a forum, as well as complicated tasks like banking or finance. All of these all possible.

Automation Anywhere has helped us in many ways and is one of the best RPA tools. AA has helped us to spend less time on repetitive tasks by automating them.

The two most important aspects are saving time and saving effort by our workforce. Repetitive work and rule-based tasks are the areas that are being replaced by bots.

The tutorials that are available from Automation Anywhere are very helpful for newbies to learn the platform and get going with the tool.

It is very difficult to pin down one valuable feature because each and every one of them is valuable in its own way.

I find that IQ Bot is the most amazing feature, as it helps us to work more efficiently with business documents.

Object Cloning is another good feature that helps us to save time.

Metabot is another valuable feature that exists in AA.

PDF integration is another important feature that avoids using IQ bots, and using the OCR helps us to extract text from an image.

I have had some difficulty with OCR extraction, which could be a little better.

Automation Anywhere is not fully compatible with browsers other than Internet Explorer while working with web extraction.

Maybe there could be more options added for PDF integration.

Having a few practical use cases added to online learning would be helpful for newbies.

Other than these,  I don't see other difficulties. In terms of extra features, they are adding them day by day to make for the smoother automation of processes.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for the past seven months.

We have been using RPA for the past seven years and have dealt with a lot of other RPA vendors. We have many use cases across all of the verticals like technology, HR, Finance, Mortgage, Insurance, etc.

The current one, on which we are focusing is Mortgage use cases. We have proven experience in all of the verticals with different use cases. Especially when it comes to the environment, there are no restrictions in that regard because it's all based on the client's requirements and their expectations as well. There are a few clients that came with a Citrix gateway, others use the VDI based approach, and still, others bring their own operating systems.

One thing that I want to highlight AA for is their security standards. It's an easy win situation when we present this to our clients. The CyberArk integration and setup are really amazing and it helps us to win deals for new projects.

Especially on the Cognitive capabilities, AA enables us to adopt third-party extensions and products, which is very useful to accommodate more use cases and push the RPA practice to the next level.

The most valuable features are the IQ Bot and Process Discovery.

1. IQ Bot - In earlier days, everyone started with RPA by mimicking the users' actions and achieved some automation expectations. But nowadays, apart from the basic action, there is a need for intelligence like Machine earning, Deep learning, and Artificial Intelligence. The IQ Bot accommodates such expectations. There are a lot of pre-trained workflows available and a lot of capabilities to involve users to train the model.
   
2. Process Discovery - The next trend is Process discovery and it involves automating the identification of process requirements for activities and then automatically developing the workflow.

The dedicated BPM from AA should help to cover more use cases. I would strongly say that AA should have a more advanced BPM tool to support the process/use cases attempted in the project. Instead of depending on other open-source BPM products, AA should provide their own BPM for attended automations.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

Stability-wise, this product is excellent.

The scalability of AA is excellent.

Technical support is excellent.

We have more than seven years of experience in RPA and with different vendors and a lot of different tools. We used the same approach but the recent updates and growth of AA have helped us decide to make use of it

The initial setup is straightforward.

We implemented in-house, with the help of vendor support documents.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Automation Anywhere is that 

It's not always necessary to tie up or utilize unattended bots or achieve 100 % automation. A lot of opportunities are there with the ratio of 80:20 (80% automation and 20% manual intervention) or 70:30.

Our primary use case is automation development supporting internal business operations at KPMG. We have 100+ live automations, with v10 and v11 deployments.

Using this solution has freed internal operations employees to do more "human value-add" work by removing mundane manual tasks. It has improved the quality of these tasks through automation and enabled us to do things we couldn't have previously done due to time and cost.

The most valuable feature so far is Task bot deployment. We hope to expand to IQ Bot this year.

Automation Anywhere's interaction with Excel is a key benefit.

Currently, Automation Anywhere's debugging functionality is minimal.  Most notable is that it works on only the top-level task (not on sub-tasks called by the top-level task).  This limits its practical usefulness.  Increasing the robustness of the debugging functionality would be very helpful.

Additionally, implmentation of a "global" variable concept (variables shared across tasks) would be very useful.  AA's variable mapping between tasks is cumbersome.  

We have been using Automation Anywhere for three and a half years.

Our case was downloading the invoices from an Oracle Application.

It involved web and desktop applications and the setup was done in a Citrix, where the AA tool and required applications were installed in a secure environment.

Using Object Cloning for a web application, we extract a record of a company code for which all the invoices need to be extracted, based on month and year. When the company codes are available then all the invoices were extracted, applying the proper logic in the Oracle environment (Similar to SAP).

Proper logging and exceptional handling were supported.

Testing was done in the Dev and Test Environment and finally deployed to PROD.

The Bot was scheduled as per the customer requirements in the Control Room, to be executed as per the demand.

It has improved a lot by automating repetitive steps and hence saving a lot of quality time. 

It's very easy to use and all of the employees can easily get involved in the process, whether they are a developer, support, or have an HR background.

Almost all the easy and complex processes can be automated.

For each employee, the tool is useful if they have some redundant or repetitive tasks to perform on a daily or weekly basis, such as timesheet submission or shift allowance extra. It's a BOT BUDDY, as it is called in our organization.

It's very fast and takes no time to execute a lengthy process.

It's secure; all of the passwords and UN are secured.

The tool is simple and easy to debug and run.

The Automation Anywhere University is vast and we can easily get support from other community members.

Free certification and tutorial videos are readily available and are free of cost.

The Control room is valuable, as we can schedule the bot at any time and give access to anyone from anywhere.

The Recorder feature helps to automate without any effort and is very robust and precise.

The automation is very fast and in no time, it executes the process and hence increases the SLA by a vast margin as compared to other RPA tools.

IQ Bot is a very high niche tool and reads any kind of scanned copy and gives the output with more than 95% precision. It's very simple and supports Python and NLP for adding extra features.

Metabot helps to make reusable components and can be used as a function wherever needed.

It supports Dlls, VBScript, Python script, and macros.

Bot Insight helps to get the analytics in a more enhanced and visually attractive way.

The simplicity of the tool is a plus point, as it does not require one to be from coding background to work on it.

I would like the AA tool to be more proficient and a single entity tool that does not require DLLs or some script to be written separately where it is not capable. It should have more commands, which should remove the dependency on MetaBots or other scripts so that everything is available in the tool itself. This would save time.

All the time working on the tool requires internet connectivity, and it will be great if we can work offline. Offline development would be helpful.

More features like AI and ML should be included, as well as additional features to automate Citrix applications and mainframe applications.

I would like to see more Excel commands available.

Introduction to dictionaries and other data types should be included.

I would like to have a ready-made framework available so that less time is spent to develop the whole framework for the processes.

In terms of robustness, the bot should be efficient enough to deal with the code breakdowns. This could be done with more exception handling features and a ready-made framework.

More tutorials with complex scenarios and ILT training would be an improvement.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

The product is very stable and runs without delay, failures, or system hangs.

Logs are maintained both locally and at the server level.

The client and server connection is smooth.

Scalability is wonderful for AA, we can easily add the extra robots as per the transaction load without impacting the process.

The customer support and technical support are very helpful and service is available 24/7,  around the clock.

Communication is very good and their knowledge of the tool is in-depth.

Support teams are pro-active and they have a vast network of partners.

We did not use a different RPA solution before this one.

The initial setup was easy, as per the guidelines shared by AA, including the minimum system requirements such as OS level, RAM requirement, SQL Server, and .NET requirement. This information was shared via the documentation.

When finding any problem, their support team is very fast and cooperative in helping to resolve the issue ASAP.

Our company directly consulted with the Automation Product teams for RPA implementation and COE implementation in our organization.

ROI is high; usually, one process automation is equivalent to three FTEs in our organization.

It's cheapest among the competition, although bargaining is a must.

Different licenses are for Bot Runner and Bot Creator, which saves on the cost.

We evaluated UiPath and Automation Edge.

We found AA to be the best among the others in terms of pricing, licensing, support, and tool capability.

We use automation for a tax invoice process, finance process, and human resource process.

In the tax process, it collects all tax invoices from a folder, then AA reads a QR code on the document to confirm, then extracts it to an Excel sheet for the success process and failed process.

For finance, AA calculates the tax type on each project. After that, AA inputs the data into the ERP system for further processing.

For the HR department, AA will shortlist the candidates on the portal. It will then send an email to qualified candidates to follow further instructions for testing. Then, AA will collect the results of the test and send them to the HR staff to process further.

On the tax, finance, and HR processes, AA will automate collecting documents, then extract them into an Excel file, and also do the confirmation using a QR code. In the past, these processes were completed by three or four staff over one to two days. Using automation, these processes are completed in between one and two hours, using one robot. With these savings in time, the staff can do more in other areas. 

These advantages improve staff productivity and creativity. It also means that they do not need more overtime. As a result, it will impact positively on the company overall. 

It's a cloud-based solution, so we do not need any on-premises server. Having a cloud-based deployment provides more flexibility because we just need an internet connection for connecting the agent into the AA cloud.

For a few workflow processes that need credentials, AA provides more security for this. Their encryption is to ensure that our credentials are always secure and cannot be accessed by unauthorized people.

The dashboard can be accessed by several roles. User monitoring, for example, can view the dashboard, watch how many robots have failed, and other stats, but they cannot change how the robot works.

For the short term, in this pandemic era, they should have a feature to write and save directly into Word documents, Office 365, or Google Docs. As it is now, it can only save to Excel files.

In the long term, in the cloud era, it would be great if they had an API or connection into other cloud services, such as SaaS, IaaS, or PaaS. This would mean that their automation ecosystem would be more complex, helping to improve our productivity and creativity.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for about a year.

Stability-wise, this is a good product.

The scalability is good.

We have not yet tried to contact technical support.

Before AA, all of our processes were done manually.

The initial setup is straightforward, as this is a cloud-based deployment.

We implemented using an in-house team.

Our ROI is approximately USD $40k to $50k.

The cost of this solution is a little bit high, but it is worth the price.

We evaluated UiPath before choosing Automation Anywhere.

So far, all the features and services match today's technology, and we expect it will remain current for at least the next two to three years. I hope that they keep this great work on RPA.

Our primary use case is assisting clients in automating redundant, repetitive tasks to drive value and efficiency.

Working with the Automation Anywhere application is very easy in our environment. It has allowed us to win more work and prove value to our clients. 

 AI and ML integrations are also easy to apply, as well as cognitive features.

I would like to see them continue building out documentation with more video-aides.

Training is good and interactive, although the final certification exam is very tough and requires practical, in-depth knowledge. The certification exam for AA is not as per the training videos, as the questions are more scenario-based. This makes it very hard for beginners to clear the exam after just tutorial knowledge.

Automation Anywhere is a good RPA tool, but not so good if we compare it with UiPath. 

The drag-and-drop feature is quite similar to that of UiPath.

My primary use case starts with downloading an inventory file in IE and then storing it in the database. This uses DB variables that interact with the banking application.

Through its automating system of generating quotations, it is much easier for us to track back the same customer data. It is giving us a real-time capability for generating reports.

Automation anywhere has equipped us with amazing tools including Bot Insight, IQ Bot, Discovery Bot, etc. The Discovery Bot is used to search the entire task in the system that can be automated. It keeps much value in our organization.

Extracting PDFs is very easy using Automation Anywhere. Its strong points are that it is easy to use, easy to deploy, easy to share, and has multi-user support. Different devices can be used to execute the bot.

The Bot Store provides some utilities for free, which can then be integrated into my workflows easily.

Using automation has reduced between five and eight FTE in our inventory download and update task. This is more generic to the RPA space than AA specifically, but we tried to automate a large, high FTE, end-to-end process as a POC.

AA is user friendly.

The most valuable features are the web recorder, which is used to extract structured table data, the Metabot to handle smart process automation (SPA), Object Cloning, variable assignment, and Message boxes.

IQ Bot is a unique offering from AA that allows you to extract information from semi-structured documents like PDF invoices, using built-in ML. The ability to train documents and easily review any that fall outside of the model is excellent.

AA has good coverage in terms of out-of-the-box functionality for bot development and management. A2019 has some great new features that take this further, such as the ability to create custom commands for your organization, which helps code reuse and development.

Comparing the code from dev to QA or production should be in some easier way.

Pausing the bot and resuming it in Metabot should be easier.

The Control room audit logs should be moved to an archive for those that are more than six months old.

The error handling capability is good but we are facing difficulties when there are multiple tasks in the same project. I want to be able to handle errors that occur in sub-tasks and it would be better to introduce a global error handler so that we can debug all of the relevant tasks.

I would like to have a project sharing hub like GitHub, inside of the tool, which will help to consolidate project files post-deployment.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for the past four years.

We experienced continuous bot disconnections in our environment. Once we validated it with the AA support team, they suggest for version upgrade and it solved our problem.

The technical support team has good knowledge of the product. They understand problems well and then provide solutions. 

My recommendation would be to start with some simpler processes. This will build your capability and understanding far more quickly. Automating processes that utilize a lot of different web applications can be tricky without additional input/error checking. Be sure that your code is resilient enough to ensure inputs get transcribed accurately and pages/content are loaded before executing more lines of code.

In one of my insurance domain processes, I need to extract the details of customers from an input Excel file and I need to update details like Address, DOB, and Names, all based on their requests in a web-based application.

With respect to our environment, we used Excel commands for doing operations and we faced a few Excel issues in production. Everything was fine in Dev and QA. Then we used Excel as a DB and it provided a permanent resolution.

This product has helped us a lot by improving and growing the business in different domains. Initially, when we have started RPA with AA, we implemented it for only one domain. Now, we are in a position to automate most of the processes across domains.

In V10 and V11, most of the Windows and web-based commands are helpful. We mostly use the Database commands in order to make the process faster and more secure, rather than using Excel or a CSV for reading the input files.

When we think from a business perspective, business applications are more compatible with their specific browsers. Let's say one of my customers is using Firefox, which is the most compatible browser for their application, when we try to automate that with AA, we don't get accurate and stable results. They need to make the AA stable across all browsers and I hope to see it fixed in the next version.

As I mentioned, if we don't close an Excel file in a safe manner, then when we try to open it or another Excel file in the same place, most of the time it will lead to issues. As we are working with unattended automation most of the time, no one will be available to take care of those issues when they happen

I have been working with Automation Anywhere for the past four and a half years. I have worked on versions 9, 10, and 11. Currently, I have started working hands-on with A2019. You are moving to A2019 very soon. 

AA is not stable across all different browsers.

RPA is what I have been working on since my career started. 

I can suggest Automation Anywhere.

I tried multiple options but I found that Automation Anywhere has better options when compared to all of the other tools.

Automate Business processes pertaining to various business units. We used Automation Anywhere Control room and different versions of AA 10.x and AA 11.x to deliver Robotic Process Automation Solutions for different clients. Automation Anywhere helped multiple clients to save a lot of data entry time and have automated almost every repetitive task. AA control room helped to manage the operations of both Attended and UnAttended automations and have helped a continuous run of the bots saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Automation Anywhere helped our organization to get our training and implementation needs successful by providing both community edition and partner edition. Automation Anywhere seamlessly handed off exceptions to employees from Automation Anywhere bots. It helped to better manage  Automation Anywhere bot capacity, as well as to reuse and repurpose the bots in the cloud. 

It helped in Monitoring Automation Anywhere bot progress and report on bot usage and value in the form of Insights provided instant details of the savings and work in detailed analytical charts.

A 2019 dual-mode is very useful and the Control room type of setup for use of A2019 Client is very useful as it eliminates disconnection issues. Also, the broad range of Commands and elimination of the need for Metabots is also very helpful in Automating the increased number of variable types cover an expanded range of web and window components. 

Bot insights and IQ bots are both valuable features if implemented in a cost-effective way for larger enterprises, Bot insights provide analytical details of the ROI that is generated by running bots and IQ bots help to automate document processing in an intelligent way minimizing the cost of document processing and hence saving a lot of employee time and money for any enterprise with a large volume of pdf data.

Version A2019, the Number data type variables should be available to display in "Message Box" command. This will help in debugging. At the present, a type conversion is needed to display it in the message box. There should be an efficient way to integrate AA 11.x. meta bots into AA2019.

Also, the Master certification should be provided free of cost for partners. More practical samples and examples of bots using new features in A2019 should be available in people Documentation. A2019 presentation material for proposing A2019 as an RPA choice should be provided to partners.

I have been using AA for six years.

Excellent

Straight Forward

7

We used AA for all of our healthcare clients for multiple use cases. We have automated most manual steps of Claim Adjudication, Claim Pre-Work Validation, Overpayment Recovery, Triaging, Quoting Census, etc.

In the front office side, we have automated Provider Calls as attended solution which helps Agents to take calls hassle-free while Bots gather the required information from multiple applications. We have automated KFI process where AA OCR identifies the CMS1500 form run it through IQ BOT and further post it on the target application.  

By automating most of our LOB's on the healthcare side and putting it on production, we have saved millions of dollars and were also able to achieve FTE benefits. It has improved our quality, AHT, and was also able to achieve target TAT and SLA. 

We have successfully processed 10 million claims through unattended BOTs. We also saw significant improvement in Agent performance for provider calls where we deployed attended Bots. Overall, Automation Anywhere has been great for us and helped us in generating revenue as well. We had recognized by Automation Anywhere as Innovation Partner of the Year - 2020 in Payer Segment which helps us in selling our solutions to new healthcare clients.   

There are many features of Automation Anywhere that were found to be most valuable like WLM, PDF integration, Advanced Excel Commands, Terminal Emulator and its commands, Interactive Forms building features of A2019 which helped us in developing UI for our front office automation and integrate it with multiple rest APIs. The new features which were introduced in A2019 like Data Table, custom DLL, IBM Watson Speech to Text, IQ BOT, Document Extractor has been impressive. The option to use the Python Script has been very helpful.

We noticed slowness in a few of the commands like Object Cloning, Web Recorders, etc. on which Automation Anywhere can work to make it more robust. There are improvements required in the WLM solution provided by AA, which can make it a more robust queuing system and the system should retry by itself in case of failure due to system error. There should be the option of selecting credentials by passing variables and not just limit it to selection. Retry mechanism should be included in Enterprise 11.x version which helps developers to reduce the number of lines of code.

I have been using AA for 4.5 years.

Whatever product they launch they make sure that it is 99.9% stable. The stability of this solution is pretty high.

It is scalable for sure and has the capability of becoming the world's number one RPA tool.

It was nice interacting with CS/tech support. Most of the time they resolves issues within 24 hours.

Before AA, we tried a few other RPA tools but those have few challenges in terms of security and interaction feasibility after the AA worked for us nicely.

The initial setup is straightforward and does not necessarily requires technical knowledge.

In our case it was both. The level of expertise was 9 out of 10

We saved millions of dollars and had FTE benefits.

The licensing model and cost are very impressive. Now, you do not have to worry about infra setup cost like Server, Database as it comes free of cost with the A2019 cloud version.

We evaluated BP, UiPath, Pega,  etc.

One word for Automation Anywhere keeps shining and helps your customers/partners to automate & gain more.

We are using MS 2007 Windows OS mostly with IE and Excel operations. Anyone can write code with AA software with basic coding knowledge, we just need to know which command will help to build the next step. We had developed almost eight major processes and a few POCs for different clients. As we worked mostly with Web and Windows applications, we had used most of the commands related to Web and Windows applications. We can say bot accuracy was 95% in the final result. Bot consumes around 12 minutes to process 1 application, where if a human performs the same they would take a minimum of 18 minutes on average.

AA application is very good for running the application on a schedule. But a few times, the client requirements were 24/7 so it stops every few days. We found three drawbacks with the product in production:

1. For 24/7 running applications Bot Insights won't be generated.

2. For 24/7 running bot stops every few days, it might be an environmental issue or something.

3. the Same name of Mebabot cannot be uploaded to CR.

4. We tried to upgrade to 11.3.4 but there were few bugs while performing actions in Excel. (You may have fixed later stages).

WLM & Device Pool, where multiple devices perform the same thing parallel and complete the tasks at the same time. The Credential Manager for security is one of the most valuable features for storing credentials and providing security between the developer usage and future maintenance where passwords expire every 90 days. There is no need to touch the code and just update the CR locker section. CR UI is also user-friendly for creating deleting and updating users, roles, etc within the CR. The Audit Log section is also good for logging all the operations done in CR.

It would be better if they could extend the support for AA version 11 for a few more years, as most of the companies have tasks completed in AA version 11, and A2019 is much slower compared to AA 11. It keeps on downloading dependencies, and time-consuming while running the tasks. In AA version 11, if the bot stops uninterruptedly it's better if it could resolve itself and back to normal and process the applications.

You can give clients some more time to get used to A2019 and find and fix the concerns observed till then. That way you can add more features and easy to implement for the development team. If you ask all the clients to migrate to the latest version. Few are still thinking about the migration of code from the old to the new environment and various other factors.

Bot Insight for 24/7 tasks is limited in the AA 11 version. If this gets fixed a few more clients will renew this license as well.

I have been using AA for the past three years. 

We need to train the bot to handle all kinds of conditions. So it will behave accordingly when that situation occurs.

The technical support team were very responsive, they were available 24/7 and for severity 1 issue's for the production part they used to reply or communicate with us in maximum 45 minutes.

Other than the CR set up with the database will take little time. Client installation and configuration was straightforward.

We are a vendor team and worked with the client's environment along with their in-house team. Our clients are always happy with the product and its performance. There are few scenario's due to system instability they used to complain, we used to check and revert back to them what is the problem.

I don't remember the exact number, in one of my bot runner I had seen a $5million change.

Pricing depends upon the number of licenses required by the company. They can implement using the community version. If their business can be automated based upon the business process workload they can decide a number of Bot runner and Developer licenses are required.

To use other tools you need to have knowledge with VB script. But using AA no need of that.

Our primary use case is for the automation of output reports in Excel.

It improved the task performance at a team level and improved productivity.

MetaBot is one of the most useful features. 

It should be easier to use.

I have been using AA for five months.

Our primary use case is for automating daily routine jobs, where I have saved a lot of time. I have enhanced my automation knowledge. We have automated the daily reports and it will trigger automatically once jobs are completed from the backend database which has saved a lot of extra work for our team, saving workforce and time. 

The implementation of the bot is easy and can be built in less time when compared to the other automation tools. No coding knowledge is required to build the Automation bot. It's very as simple, easy to use, and maintain.

We used to do many daily routine checks and jobs. We have implemented the automation knowledge which resulted in good productivity, time-saving, and extra efforts being reduced. It has saved a lot of extra work which we used to put for manual report sending. Implementing the bot is so easy that a new joiner can learn it within weeks. You don't need coding knowledge which helped us a lot because many other automation tools require good coding knowledge to develop a bot. The password security feature helped in securing the passwords.

Easy to use, high scalability, password security features, easy access, etc. There is no coding knowledge required which helped us a lot because many other automation tools require good coding knowledge to develop a bot. 

The password security feature helped in securing the passwords. Implementing the bot is so easy that our new joiner also can learn it within weeks. It helped us in testing the application end to end without any errors. Record and playback features helped in making our work less and efficient.

The debugging tools need to be included, for where and why it has failed to execute the bot in a clear manner. Maintaining the bot is a little tough sometimes during a failed issue. If Automation Anywhere is developed in a real-time environment, we can do daily routine our home routine jobs much easier. I am learning a bit daily day by day. 

Automation Anywhere can also be improved in machine learning and artificial intelligence. It would make our lives easier.

I have been using this for the past six months.

Good stability.

The scalability is good.

I have used Selenium and now i am trying to switch to AA.

I have evaluated a few other tools, UFT and Tosca.

We use Automation Anywhere for automating our processes.

Automation Anywhere improved our organization since it saved us a lot monetary value.

SMART Automation Technology is the most valuable feature.

The IQ Bot could use improvement. 

I have been using AA for 13 months.

Automation Anywhere Enterprise RPA was used in conjunction with Automation Anywhere IQ Bot and Automation Anywhere Bot Insights to reduce the time taken to process a mortgage application by automatically verifying the applicants, the address, title, and scheduling a settlement meeting. The automation solution extracted information from or entered data into more than six applications including four major bank web applications. The environment included a Control Room server, an IQ Bot server, a bot runner machine, all running windows server 2012.

Automation Anywhere is stellar and the pre-built bots on the bot store help reduce the development time and effort. The IQ Bot solution can read from scanned images and documents which has hugely benefited the mortgage processing team.

The professional services team at Automation Anywhere helped in designing and architecting the solution effectively and their modular approach to the solution meant, the solution could be tested for user acceptance in stages. It helped the team provide early feedback and suggest changes to optimize the automation solution.

There are several valuable features : 

(1) Validate the data extracted from digital and scanned documents.

(2) Schedule the bots to run at specified intervals and report on the execution status.

(3) Ability to resume automation from intermediate states in case of exceptions.

(4) Ability to introduce human in loop for making decisions without requiring the mortgage application to be started again.

(5) Reporting on straight through processing, exceptions and failure.

(6) Business user friendly interface, easy-to-learn tools and availability of on-demand training for free.

There are some areas that the product can be improved : 

(1) Better exception handling mechanism.

(2) Parallel processing of branches to improve execution time.

(3) IQ Bot: An easier way to tag the document's source after extracting information from the document. (Which group does the document or a transaction belong to).

(4) Better integration with external data sources for Bot Insights.

(5) Advocating and encouraging use of queues and device pools by providing implementation details with success rate and support from services for the same.

I have been using AA for 1.5 years.

V11 is very stable. 

A2019's stability is yet to be determined but most usecases would not have any trouble being automated in A2019. It is more robust in terms of feature availability and bot code maintenance.

Highly Scalable.

Stellar.

We used UiPath and Kofax Kapow.

Not quite straightforward. Required support from Automation Anywhere Support team but that was made available at no cost.

Vendor team and Automation Anywhere's Professional Services.

>80%

Calculate the IQ Bot page count and usage.

Factor in the development as well as training time required for IQ Bot training and validation. The effort is easily underestimated.

We evaluated UiPath but Automation Anywhere's IQ Bot solution was the only fit for our use case at that moment. (UiPath was yet to unveil their "Document Understanding" product suite).

The learning curve is less steeper compared to other automation products in the market. 

We primarily use this product for Web Applications, Outlook, and Excel.

It helped to increase productivity in a commendable manner.

The most valuable feature is PDF automation, where we can automate templated PDFs with almost 100% accuracy.

DOMX path support for identifying the web elements is helpful.

The Control room features, such as pooling devices, Queues, and the secure environment, are also valuable.

Commands in Excel, Outlook, and Word automation are very limited and hence facing difficulties automating complex requirements for the above applications with V11 version. 

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

Relatively the installation is complex compared to other competing technologies. Lot of things has to be worked around for Control room setup and for starting the bot development like user creation and specific roles getting assigned etc... 

I've installed it on my own using installation guide. But a lot more things are involved while installing

The ROI on major bots has been phenomenal.

I have used AA to automate window-based applications like SAP, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Database, Microsoft Office (Excel, Access), CSV/TXT file, folders based operations, etc. When it comes to web-based applications, AA really shines. Automation applications Share-point, Blackline Reconciliation, Agile point submissions, and Web-based reporting exercises are in real-time.

When it comes to the database AA also works pretty well with SQL and Oracle by executing CRUD queries.

Automation Anywhere has improved my organization by automating many rule-based and nonjudgmental processes in domains like telecommunications, human resources, financial services, and daily or monthly reporting. The deployed bots/automation helped the organization in terms of errorless progress, meeting SLAs in time, 24/7 working hours, reducing dependencies from the human workforce, and FTE realization.

The realized FTE was deployed in more of a complex process and the employee utilization also improved. 

Out of all the features from Automation Anywhere version 11, IQ Bot, is the most valuable feature because it helps us in the conversion of semi or unstructured data to structured data which made it possible to automate a lot of complex processes.

Other than the IQ Bot, the below commands in the task bot also shine in a very useful and reliable way:

Excel Spreadsheet Commands, Database Commands, API Integration, Credential locker management feature and Workload management feature.

The Automation Anywhere Control room component features can be improved, as of now it contains too many roles and rules which makes it confusing to use it.

They should make it more simple because a lot of times I have to go through the user manual while dealing with the Automation Anywhere Control Room.

I always wanted a python and javascript editing console in version 11, which I later found in A2019. Earlier, only Run script command was there to directly run the scripts which somehow creates one additional dependency to the solution.

I am using AA v11 for three years and A2019 for the last two months.

Its pretty nice actually. AA is very stable with Windows-based applications.

When it comes to scalability, the mini bots comes into the picture and helps us to scale the automation. 

It was very satisfying.

I have used Blue Prism as a primary automation tool but due to the limitation of commands/stages the organization considered AA as a primary tool. 

It was very easy to install since it automatically validates if all required files are installed in the machine or not.

My organization is partners with Automation Anywhere.

I am just a developer so I have no idea about ROI.

I do not have that much knowledge about cost/pricing or licensing details.

I worked with Blue Prism also.

I am pretty impressed with the A 2019 version.

Automation of AP 3 Way Invoice Matching Process. Details from PDF invoices with the corresponding data in terminal. This project involved applications like Outlook, Aurora Terminal, PDF reading by IQ Bot, and Excel. The current scope of the project was to process around 600 invoices per day from 20 different suppliers which has saved a lot of time for the end-user. It has been deployed in production and the customer is pretty much happy with the performance of the bot.

On-Premise installation of CR with 1 runner and 2 creator license.

IQ Bot

16GB RAM

It has improved a lot. We could identify a lot of manual processes that can be automated for our customers. The scope of automation by using Automation Anywhere has become wonderful. IQ Bot and AI sense are the incredible features provided.

The features and the architecture of Automation Anywhere make it easy to analyze any process and conclude good candidates for the automation. The flow chart view helped our customers understand the code pretty easily. The handover or knowledge transfer also becomes very comfortable. 

• The most valuable features I see on the actions added have a lot of commands that were unavailable in older versions.
• The concept of packages with the flexibility of adding our own package. The packages for running Python Scripts, different packages for excel, and it has the option to work with Excel if it is not installed in the machine.
• Exception handling with try, catch, finally and many other actions introduced.
• Concept of different data types.
• The different views for writing code like Flow or List or Dual.

1) We have encountered some issues in the actions like Terminal Emulator-> Send Key -> Page Down/Up not working.

2) We found difficulties while copy-pasting commands after the end of "IF" condition and "Loop".

3) A scroll bar will be good in the "Flow" tab.

4) When any command is double-clicked, if the command opens in a popup window as we had in AA desktop versions, then that could have saved some space for development as the code writing section seems to be less which creates difficulties when there are loops in the loop.

5) Email trigger was also not working.

I have been using AA for four months.

Currently, it is a beta version but has pretty good performance stability. There are issues in some packages. I hope with all the updated packages the solution will be much more stable.

For example: Terminal Emulator-> Send Key -> Page Down/Up command is currently not working.

Excellent.

Supportive but takes longer time to respond.

I always used Automation Anywhere from version 10.5 to A2019.15

It was easy and straightforward.

In-house.

ROI of the current project delivered saved 4 hours of time per day of the end user.

The setup cost is less than other solutions in market

Blue Prism. I personally did not like the way and features provided for developing bots.

It's an awesome solution for automation.

We use Automation Anywhere to implement robotic process automation solutions for complex and time-consuming scenarios, especially legacy systems, SAP, & mainframes.

I have recently used Automation Anywhere successfully for a system that is very old, and didn't even have API support. In fact, the creators are no longer providing support for their product, but we successfully implemented the solution and helped the client to reach their customers.

The other use case we have implemented is for invoice processing, where there are a number of templates available. 

AA helped our clients to achieve their goals faster and more efficiently, also reaching ROI very quickly. We, as an organization, now have a very positive image from our clients' perspective by suggesting Automation Anywhere instead of their competitors. This product has helped them to implement RPA in their organization.

In addition to providing services to our clients, we have used AA in HR management and the payroll processes, where it helped our employees to get rid of tedious and repetitive work. Our employees are engaged in better and more productive tasks compared to the past.

Automating Mainframes, Legacy systems, SAP applications, IQ Bot, & Natural language processing abilities are its strong points. By using its AI & ML capabilities, we have solved many problems for our clients.

No other tool is as stable as Automation Anywhere, considering the ML & AI capabilities & ease of use.

Automation Anywhere's interface is pretty awesome and easy to use, even for a business user. The dashboard & Bot analytics are very clear, even for a guy without any technical knowledge. 

I still believe there is a long way to go when it comes to ML & AI capabilities, though Automation Anywhere is the leader here in the market.

A2019 is awesome with its features but I don't find it as stable as v11.

I suggest having more ways to perform string manipulations and string operations, instead of just what is pre-defined in the V11 tool. 

I would like to have a buffer-type thing where the bot should throw an exception to the production support team when it is looping through a record.

Date operations can be improved without using VS script. 

I have been using Automation Anywhere for the past four years.

The solution is pretty stable but A2019 can be improved. 

The scalability is the best of all the RPA tools that I have seen.

Their technical support is the best. I always find the best solutions in the customer portal.

I did not switch from another tool. Instead, I select AA as per my client's requirements. That said, my choice is Automation Anywhere any day.

The initial setup is very simple and straight forward.

We implemented using our in-house team. 

Our ROI is 70% annually.

The pricing is reasonable and one can achieve ROI faster when compared to other tools.

Automation Anywhere is your best choice if you want to implement RPA.

We have automated desktop applications, web applications, SAP applications, invoice processing through IQ Bot, as well as other projects. We have been achieving high accuracy with a maximum success rate.

The product is simple to use and provides a good base of functionality out of the box to cover most automation scenarios. It is also very extensible in that additional functionality can be added through the use of class libraries and APIs.

I like all of the product features, but I mostly like to work with IQ Bots because they have cognitive automation capabilities. We simply train the Bot by uploading sample files, and it then begins classifying, processing, and extracting the data within a short span of time. We can easily train the bot to extract the required fields, and we are processing tons of invoices using IQ Bot in a fraction of the time. This has saved our company lots in terms of both costs and manpower.

Working with Automation Anywhere is very easy in my environment. The automation is built with easy workflows and commands, which are user-friendly, even for people without a programming background.

The biggest advantage that Automation Anywhere provides is the Bot Store, where we search the existing bots and download relevant ones for our own use. These are very helpful in our automation because they are done very fast and deploy in a short time.

They bring out new or enhanced functionality on a very short cycle, which is great, although a criticism would be sometimes new features are released so quickly they can sometimes be a little buggy.

We have been faced with inconsistent error handling during the bot development stage, which is something that should be improved. The error handling is generally good, but the problem arises when developing multiple tasks within the same project. Specifically, I want to handle the error that occurs in a sub-task, as we have to ensure that all of the relevant tasks are completed properly in order to continue the process.

I would like to see a global error handler introduced, which will explicitly handle errors over the entire project.

I would like to have a Project Sharing Hub, similar to that of GitHub, but inside the tool. This would help with consolidating all of the project files at the end of the deployment.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for one year.

Our primary use is a bot to look up accounts from Excel to the source system and entering it back into Excel.

We have a bot running on a computer that is doing manual tasks that we used to do. There is an initial setup time but pays off quickly.

I haven't done anything fancy yet, but the basics work for me for now.

It would be better to make it more user-friendly so that individuals with no experience can pick it up pretty quickly.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for one year.

We have used Automation Anywhere in SAP Automation, Billing Block release, sales office creation, generating reports, and daily monitoring activities.

Regarding business flexibility and scalability, once a series of instructions are given to a software bot, as many bots as required can be quickly deployed to perform the process. This includes processes of any complexity, thereby increasing scalability and flexibility overall.

It has helped our organization in many ways, starting with reducing manual efforts.

We have automated reports and daily monitoring tasks. Our team and client were impressed.

We have also automated monotonous tasks. It increased the speed of our work, making us more efficient.

The most valuable features are Screen Recordings, Smart Recordings, Task Bots, and IQ Bot. I was really impressed with how MetaBots work. I really like Screen Recording because it is used to record a task or a series of actions. It was running an automated process on the same computer that was recorded.

Web Recorder is an awesome option. The way it automates processes (tasks) that involve a web application or a browser, is very good.

Image Recognition is also an important feature. It checks for an existing image within another image. It is a beautiful feature, as it specifies the minimum percentage match for the image captured.

We can quickly and effectively drag and drop commands, which is helpful. It has a clean and friendly interface.

It is easy to integrate with other systems and it plays nice with them. Users are able to create automated processes that utilize all of the lines of the business system, without a single group.

Had we had access to the RPA bots in advance, we would have practiced before fully implementing. This is something that should be changed in the future.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two months.

Stability-wise, Automation Anywhere is good.

The scalability is excellent.

A software Bot can cost one third the price of an offshore FTE and as little as one fifth the price of an onshore FTE.

Basically, to be frank, most of the features are awesome. Of course, we were able to understand it easily because it was neatly explained.

We have excellent business benefits and it also supports SAP, Oracle, Java Applications, Mainframe/Terminals, Unix, Email Applications, Window Applications, Legacy Applications, Google, etc.

The best thing is that the platform can be used to automate any applications.

I primarily use Automation Anywhere for:

1. SAP Automation using DLL MetaBots.
2. Salesforce Automation using REST APIs.
3. Citrix Automation.
4. Teradata Automation.
5. Oracle Application Automation using MetaBots.
6. Automate Mainframe application.

Details: Salesforce Automation

Automating the salesforce application to create the case ID and update the chatter field accordingly using the API.

Through the Bot, we are processing the case number with all of the required operations and at last, changing the case status with the API.

Environment:

We are developing the Bot in the dev environment first, and later testing is performed in the UAT environment. If everything looks fine then we move it into production.

AA brings a lot of benefits for our organization in a number of different ways.

I could say that many of the Salesforce activities are now replaced by bots, like creating the case ID number, uploading the attachment in the Chatter feed object, and many more.

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. It reads the unstructured data from the PDF and processes the task smoothly. Basically, we are dealing more with the invoice PDF to read the unstructured data.

I believe everyone is aware of the Jira application, which is used for issue tracking and project management. Now, all the Jira activities are replaced by the bots. Whenever any user is logging any issue through Jira, the Bot automatically assigns the ticket to the respective individuals, which saves a lot of time. In a simple way, I can say the Bot has replaced our Jira monitoring team.

From my point of view, IQ Bot is the most valuable feature in AA. It is a type of cognitive bot designed to support, as well as learn from business users and enable them to experience the power of advanced artificial intelligence technologies. Integrated with the Automation Anywhere Enterprise RPA, the IQ Bot offers enterprise massive gains in productivity, as it includes competency in automating complex tasks involving unstructured data.

The REST API is also a very valuable feature in AA. Using this, we can automate the web application through the API and execute it in the background in a fraction of time.

MetaBot is also a valuable feature in AA. Using this, we can run the DLL of any application and also develop the process in offline mode. If there any minor changes in the screen then we can avail of the calibrate feature of MetaBot.

It would be great if there will be a built-in machine learning model available in the AA, so the developer can directly map it with their task and train the model accordingly. Training and testing the model can be achieved using these features.

I have been using the Automation Anywhere solution for the past five years.

Stability-wise, Automation Anywhere is excellent.

The scalability is excellent.

I have had an awesome experience with the service and technical support team.

I still remember that initially, there were four or five times where I had raised a support ticket. I got the optimal solution and each time, I received a positive and quick response from the technical support team. I really appreciate their patience and effort.

Fortunately, I have started my career in the RPA field, and that too with the Automation Anywhere tool.

The initial setup is average in terms of difficulty.

We implemented using an in-house team.

I feel the cost of licensing is very high for the A2019 version. There is nothing much to say about the setup cost.

I have been trained in Blue Prism as well, but I feel a more friendly environment in AA.

As of now, I am using the 11.3v of AA, and whatever improvement is required I believe it is already taken care of in the A2019 version.

We have started doing migration of bot in A2019 and have seen that many new features have been added in the latest version of AA. Nonetheless, I can say that AA can expand its features and functionalities in the Artificial Intelligence area.

Apart from licensing costs, I don't have any concerns. I would suggest everyone go with this product and avail all the features wisely.

The primary use case was related to automating a daily job, which involves a lot of manual effort and was error-prone. We did involve RPA to automate the job and also have a pretty useful notification system in place too.

We had a requirement of pulling in data from a location, dumping it all into some spreadsheets, and then applying logic. Once that is complete, the distribution also needs to be controlled, and we have achieved all of this by implementing RPA.

There are also use cases for us where it is still a work in progress, including tasks in finance/accounting, and HR as well.

AA has helped our organization to improve productivity with less manual dependence. It has come up with certain paradigms in RPA that largely reduce human efforts.

The use case that is mentioned above had a dependency on three FTE on a daily basis to process data for us, and implementing RPA has helped us save this effort. 

There have been processes that were tedious and had dependencies on resources, as well as being error-prone. The involvement of AA has reduced problems to a considerable extent.

RPA is a feature that really helped eliminate errors during the execution of structured business processes. In particular, with our requirements, we have seen reduced dependency on the workforce and we had proper execution of our business process.

It has also opened doors for an intelligent notification system as well, with the help of which, we are getting the proper input from the different stages of our program.

Cognitive Automation helps by self-improving, using AI and ML for complex data.

Altogether, these important features help to form the organization as a digital force.

The product should improve on Voice Recognition and IoT pretty soon, as this is the next big thing in and I would like to see this upgraded in the next release.

This is the age of Voice Recognition where systems like Alexa and Cortana are ruling. I would love to see certain features for these.

In addition to this, there should also be a community version that will be able to provide support without a cost. This will make sure that the outreach for Automation Anywhere would increase up to a considerable extent.

I have been using the solution for approximately one year.

The solution is quite stable. I have used it for features like RPA and cognitive intelligence and didn't find any instability.

This is certainly scalable and the support is quite good too.

They have pretty decent customer service support. I had reached out a couple of times and I found them decent and knowledgeable. In addition, they have a good SLA too.

Other than evaluating UiPath, I have not used a different RPA solution.

The ROI is pretty good. I have used it in one of my use cases where I have a dependency on three FTE, and I was able to reduce it by a considerable margin.

UiPath was the option that I was evaluating but ended up choosing Automation Anywhere.

We used Automation Anywhere to create and integrate a solution that is suitable for a dynamic application. We had a business challenge where things were dynamic in terms of the environment, and we need to integrate into a CICD system.

It reduced cost and effort significantly. Yearly, our organization saved $14,000. The company started to save more, and increased efficiency in the field of automation then started to pioneer.

Within less time than it used to take, we can automate a complete Apex task. Being able to do this is how we managed to win the work for our client. The client was amazed and suggested the solution throughout the organization.

Complex tasks can be automated easily and reliably.

I feel the tool has to provide deeper insights for debugging issues, considering both internal and external factors.

The image recognition functionality needs to improve so that we can work faster.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for one year and eight months.

We were highly attracted to this product due to its scalability. This is because we started to work within a CICD environment.

The technical support is excellent.

Previously, we used the UFT solution provided by Micro Focus. It did well with us for a couple of years but as the application keeps on growing and becoming more complex, UFT has shifted from pros to cons. That's where we shifted to Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We implemented through a vendor team and their level of expertise was excellent.

Our advice is that anybody interested in this product should negotiate product bundles in order to reduce the cost of installation and setup. This product will ultimately help you to innovate and excel, and we recommend it.

We evaluated other options like UiPath, but we got what we needed that was specific to our requirements, so we onboarded AA.

I believe Automation Anywhere bundles everything for generic needs and in my case, everything was covered in these generic bundles.

We have use cases that include cognitive as well as non cognitive requirements. IQ Bot is widely used across all the use cases. We are also looking forward to make use of the Excel ribbon and AARI framework. 

One of our use case needs is to extract data from KYC documents and then do the validations to submits the rejection reason.

Another use case is to read customer information for FD booking and validate the customer data with the system's data and book the FD in the specified amount of time.

Similarly we have around 12 use cases for the development/UAT.

AA has improved our organization in a positive manner. It has increased the productivity of our clients and reduced manual, hectic work.

It has reduced the labor work and reduced the prone to error situations because of automation.

AA has helped the client with cognitive capability which has increased the number of use cases for automation.

It has increased the client's confidence in depending on bots and reduce the workforce.

ROI for clients has increased and productivity has also increased effectively because of AA.

The recorder feature for front end automation and email packages is the most valuable feature as it has more features and it makes the email server related tasks easier and more independent on the email client. Integration of VB, python, and java scripts help us to make our code more reliable. Excel basic and excel advanced package with increased features help us to easily automate the Excel related tasks.

PDF package is also valuable for PDF to image conversion, encryption, decryption, and merging.

OCR package is also valuable as it helps to read the contents of Image.

The inclusion of word packages would help us to extract data from Word and automate word-related activities easily.

PDF package should have the Read from PDF option. Now we need to convert the word to PDF and then extract data.

The quick mapping between the parent and child bot variables should be available.

Different tasks should be visible at the same time. Now we need to open different browser tabs to view multiple codes at the same time.

A2019 has more features than the v11 version but some mentioned that user-friendly features should be enabled.

I have been using AA for two years. 

A2019 is less stable than the previous versions. But hope that it will get stabilized soon.

AA provides 24/7 support and with the effective ticketing tool, issues are addressed at the earliest.

We did not use any different solution for automation previously.

The initial setup was straightforward, we had all the pre-requisites in place.

We implemented this through an in-house team.

ROI has increased than earlier in much higher percentage.

I don't have much idea on this, as I am an RPA developer. I would suggest talking to a sales person about this.

We had completed the training for UiPath and AntWorks as well. But we are using AA effectively.

We use it to automate all kinds of business processes. The primary use case is the RPA platform, even though they have the cognitive platform and the analytics platform. We use it for so many different things it's hard to focus on one, but it's automating business processes in our banking system.

We're interfacing a lot with Excel, our ERP systems, some legacy systems, the databases, file folders, text files, CSVs. It's hard to pin down one.

Through the software, we have been able to reduce the time that we spend on manual, repetitive tasks so that we can focus on activities that add value to the business or to our partners and customers. The most important things are saving time, increasing control, and increasing automation.

It has reduced a lot of repetitive manual work and manual mistakes that can occur while doing repeated work. This tool is very accurate. Everyone wants to automate their day to day work because of which we will be getting more and more work.

Since more and more companies want to automate their process because of the current situation, jobs for RPA developers have increased. Automation Anywhere has made tedious jobs so easy and time-saving. If the project is super automated, it can be finished in a very short period of time.

String extraction, Excel integration, and web services are the most valuable features. Because we are using web services it is so easy to connect with third-party applications. 

Excel automation is one of the best features in Automation Anywhere. If we have to work with multiple excel sheets with lots of rows and columns, it gets really difficult to keep track of this is done manually. But Automation Anywhere makes it really simple and error-free. 
Email automation is another command which is really good and time-saving. If we have to send out emails to a group and if it is everyday job, AA is very helpful

I would suggest adding more fields while calling in API. There is no option to generate an Authentication token within the Bot.

While using REST web services, we faced a lot of issues as we were trying to connect with the Salesforce application which needs an authentication token to connect. Since there was no option to create an authentication token we had to find a different solution altogether. This feature can be improvised.

Object cloning is another feature which is not very stable and this can be improved as well

I have been using AA for three years.

Cost Licensing is little high.

Our primary use case is for building RPA automations on this platform to automate and execute business processes. There are various use cases implemented for various end-users by our firm and the environment infrastructure is complex and stretched across multiple systems. Financial processes such as journal posting, invoice processing, PO and non-PO order processing are automated with the help of Automation Anywhere across a spectrum of applications such as SAP, PeopleSoft, and many other financial applications and across various domains.

Business process automation has improved the efficiency and accuracy of processes and reduced manual efforts which can be utilized in value addition for the firm. Basically, when mechanical processes are automated with the help of the RPA platform Automation Anywhere, then users are able to reduce FTE hours spent on doing that work and instead can focus on driving the business growth and value addition to self and the firm. Automation Anywhere has been instrumental in helping our organization achieve this for our clients.

SAP GUI Integration commands are highly useful while working with SAP applications and facilitate easy use of the software. This feature has been recently incorporated within the software and we have been using it to interface with SAP systems in development as well as production. The Meta Bot feature is also highly useful where the Automation Anywhere platform is able to create scripts with inbuilt error handling capability and can perform the same function over and over without room for technical errors.

Excel functionalities, the macro interface can be improved in the next release of RPA platform Automation Anywhere. Functionalities such as maneuvering on the excel worksheets, increased capability to manipulate formulae, and other Excel functionalities will give Automation Anywhere and edge in the RPA platform category since most financial applications use a lot of Excel and macro sheets for their calculations and postings. This will not only help the developer in saving time to develop simple keystrokes but also make the final bot much more stable and robust. 

I have been using AA for two years.

It is very stable and robust with the latest version.

This solution is scalable.

We have had reasonable good experience with technical support team who regularly assist us with any product issues in a timely manner and professionally.

I have always been using Automation Anywhere.

Straightforward.

In-house.

This information is with project senior leadership.

Licensing is pretty straightforward with Automation Anywhere since creator licenses are unlimited and free if we select a certain package. Setup cost and pricing is also very reasonable which helped us in making all client projects economically viable

We evaluated options such as UiPath and Blue Prism.

We get many banking and finance use cases e.g. reconciliation, accounts payable, etc. from banking clients which involves the extraction of unstructured data from various scanned and true PDF documents. Post this, the data needs to be validated and triaged before feeding it into SAP and Java-based applications. 

The Automation Anywhere platform has always stood out from the rest of the solutions available on the market given we have IQ Bots and Bot Insights neatly integrated into the platform which enables us to develop rapidly and train the learning instances using pre-defined domains over the purchase orders, forms, invoices that need to be processed. Post extraction of the form and data fields from the documents we post them into SAP and Java-based applications. Automation Anywhere's ease of automation with these types of applications helps to deliver consistent and reliable automation in record time.

We are currently using AAE 11.3.5.1 Client with Control Room, IQBots, MetaBots, Bot Insights, and AA2019 capabilities.

Automation Anywhere has and continues to help us deliver multiple complex and very complex use cases in record time. With AA2019, this ease of development and rapid time to market has improved by a great margin as virtually no setups and configurations are required. Converting prospects into leads into opportunities has never been easier. AA2019 enables us to build POCs quickly without waiting for IT guys to install AAE client as no setups are needed to build BOTs. This enables us to give demos to clients at lighting speeds and gain client confidence in the capabilities and kind of automation we can execute as an Automation CoE.

1. IQ Bot: IQ Bot makes it a breeze to classify banking documents, purchase orders, and invoices. Also, intelligent OCR helps with accurate form field and text field data extraction from unstructured documents. The easy cloud training of the already existing domains and integration with task bots is the icing on the cake.

2. MetaBots - Metabots makes capturing and re-calibrating screen controls in (offline mode as well) really easy. This enables us to make changes to the UI Assets easy.

3. AA2019 helps us to rapidly try out POCs without going through the install cycle and setting up the control room. This is a very important and critical step given we can build automation rapidly and show to prospective clients helping foster confidence amongst the business enabling growth.

Points to Improve:

1. Control Room -> While exporting a package, an option to de-select all the depending/referenced files should be available. Currently, it only allows for selecting all the files. Also, the views should be re-sizable as they are currently fixed width. This would enable to view long file names easily eliminating any chances of exporting the wrong file.

Points to Add in next release(s):

1. Availability of actions for Date and time functions in task bots, meta bots logics editor like Date Addition, calendar functions, etc.

2. Addition of Assertions activities, that can help with conditional compilations

3. Option to copy multiple variables at the same time (as selected by the developer)

4. Option to close all the task bots files in the editor at a go

5. Option to check-out multiple files inside a folder structure in a go

6. List and array should be made dynamic, as in there must not be a requirement to specify at least 1 element in the list, etc.  

7. Deletion of multiple variables in one go (as selected by a developer)

I have been using Automation Anywhere for over three years.

The solution has been becoming better with every release. We have been reporting bugs and supporting the developer teams to make Automation Anywhere more stable and better. With AAE version 11.x.x.x most of the feedbacks are incorporated and solutions are stable and performant.

Scalability with Automation Anywhere has been great. BOT farms have helped rapidly and dynamically spawn up or down the BOT runners. 

We always get a prompt response from customer service and technical support. I really find the priority technical support the depth at which they go to help us find a solution to issues is simply amazing. I have not experienced this with any other solution vendor. A big thumbs up to you guys. 

Initial setup was a breeze and fairly straightforward with all the great support from Automation Anywhere customer service and various technical teams.

We have used vendor teams and in-house teams to implement various solutions. Vendor team people have good knowledge of the various components of Automation Anywhere and know how to design effective, performant solutions in record time.

Post implementing AA, ROI numbers have grown exponentially. Given the scalability and dynamics that Automation Anywhere platform supports.

1. Setup cost is minimal as AAE Control Room is hosted in the cloud. Also, with AAE no dedicated setups need to be run and installed

2. Licensing cost is relatively less compared to other solutions on the market

3. Pricing stands out well compared to other solutions 

I have evaluated UiPath and Blue Prism.

Automation Anywhere has been a significant step in our digital transformation. AA2019 addresses a lot of gaps that we previously had. This makes Automation Anywhere stands out in the market making it an obvious choice.

We are working for the Telecom industry, so there are multiple orders that come every day for service changes, add, and disconnect, so we have automated repeated steps using Automation Anywhere.

We use the Schedule feature to run an Unattended Bot, which gives a structured report prior to office hours, and we can directly start manual steps once we log in or come into the office.

It is easy to automate SAP by using Cloning and Metabot.

We can easily perform actions on a vendor-based tool that is specially designed for the Telecom industry or for database purposes.

Real-time mail notification is useful when reporting Bot status.

It definitely changed our approach; we automate repeated process steps using the simple GUI of Automation Anywhere's Bot creator, commands, and variables.

The Scheduling and Trigger features make Automation Anywhere fabulous in terms of unattended or independent automation.

We are showcasing our Automation potential to our clients. We offer them a cost and time-effective solution for repeated and time-consuming processes, which surely help a lot in terms of improving quality. It helps to exceed expectations beyond a predefined service level agreement. 

Once you create or paste the file/folder into a specific location, it will trigger the assigned Bot for execution.

We are getting the real-time status of the Bot, indicating whether it is successfully completed or failed.

The Mail notification feature also gives us the exact route cause of Bot failure using the Error Handling feature. It also gives a Snapshot of the error.

We can easily assign roles as Bot Creator, Bot Runner, Attended, or Unattended using the Control Room. We can also create custom roles as per our or clients' requirements.

We can smoothly monitor the status of the User, Bot Status, and many other metrics using the Dashboard feature in the Control room.

The time taken to execute a Bot through A2019 can be reduced. It takes time to upload Bots/Files once you click on Run, and it is difficult to wait while we are developing automations because deadlines are always a risk factor for developers. Code needs to be run code multiple times to achieve requirements shared by the client or team.

Migration from V11 to A2019 is difficult and needs more attention because it should be simpler.

They need to improve the  Object Cloning feature because it creates problems when the resolution is changed.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for more than three years. We started working on AA Version 10.X.

It is more stable than any other solution available in the RPA industry.

The scalability is tremendous and it is like a magical stick in your hand for automating repeated tasks.

Technical Support is always available and they help from scratch, trying to resolve each query.

We did not use another RPA solution prior to AA.

The initial setup was difficult but later, it gets easier in each progressive version released by Automation Anywhere.

We did not evaluate other products.

Automation Anywhere is most easy platform to learn about Robotic Process Automation and show potential of Automation.

We have used AA for telecom industry repetitive processes, public retirement firms processes, and financial bank processes. The development has been with local developer desktops, remote VDIs, EC2s, as well as RDP clients of sorts for the individual company preferences.

We are currently building an Azure environment for our A2019 solution internally, with a VDI as our developer/UAT environment. Production will be a separate VDI operating from our main control room instance, as we create Bot Runner agents out of those VDIs for production.

I also deal with many federated lines of business, as they often develop locally and use attended automation as their source of RPA for their lines of business. Others utilize EC2s as their developer and UAT environments and have a separate production import process that keeps the separation of duties intact. Though this is not as productive as that team expected, they use it temporarily until their control room can be migrated and upgraded into A2019 instance as part of another line of business currently building out a sandbox environment for the remainder of 2020.

I am a consultant and our RPA practice on a personal level has improved the efficiency of the payroll, PTO, and timecard submission process within our company. It has taken time-consuming daily mundane tasks off the plates of our talented finance teams and allowed them to dedicate more productive time to working with more thought-heavy and human-centric activities.

Outside of our company, as we work with clientele, several improvement instances have been evident for those. One company had a very tedious process of monitoring an email inbox for several business units to send emails notifying that their daily database update process was completed. This took many hours of monitoring after hours, but in place of that, the RPA bot was able to perform the monitoring for them of that inbox, perform the necessary follow-up or escalation emails needed, and finalize the process once all was complete. This was unattended automation, saving them precious time, improving morale, and accurately informing everyone of the completion. 

Both v11 and A2019 have their strengths but the cloud-based forms with Excel, Microsoft applications, scripts integration, and functionality of A2019 have really stood out above the way v11 can do those things.

It takes far less code to work with A2019 than v11 for the tasks we have in place. In v11, the Metabot features have proven a tremendous help to work with smaller tasks such as file and folder operations, datetime operations, as well as credential management operations.

I'd say the most impactful and heavily or commonly used ability of v11 and A2019 has been the ability to integrate other code types and operations within the process. For example, if someone needed a heavy data comparison process to take place, utilizing AA could work but often takes a good bit of time to work through a large Excel or CSV file. Instead, activating a pre-developed or partner-developed Python script would be my choice because of the speed and efficiency of that language. I currently use this method and it's a major time saver.

In terms of improvement, usually, I have found is not as general as people think. Specifically, as a use case, I am excited to see improvements in having an A2019 cloud control room working and improved on the Lenox environments. A good bit of our finance infrastructure for web-based applications is built in that environment.

There is a good bit of dashboard-type development going on in this type of environment already, so the ability to integrate some of the functionality, as well as keep the synchronicity of everything within it, would be a major benefit.

Having fewer connection instances would make it more secure, more simple to troubleshoot, and possibly more flexible with the type of applications in use.  

I have been using the AA desktop application versions since 2014 (v09-v11), approximately six years, and A2019 for about four months.

I've not had any instability issues but only environmental stability issues that come down to the company that created the environment. 

I find it very scalable, especially with smaller automations, as they can often grow once proven to businesses that the processes work. 

The technical support was very knowledgeable, very easy to understand mostly, their ability to work with us to meet the needs and being patient was a huge help. 

I did not previously use different versions but currently use both. I do know that going forward with v11 sunsetting in 2021, we are migrating and going through a learning phase of A2019 to fully adapt to that application. 

The A2019 setup was straightforward for the applications themselves. The environments in which they are set up is a different story but, that again is on a per-company basis and often lends itself to the expertise of the DevOps teams. Sometimes, those folks are not familiar with RPA or A2019.  

We implemented through AA directly. The availability of their support was very good. Several meetings and work with their folks went well. 

Our ROI has ranged from thousands to hundreds of thousands, depending on the type of process being automated.

I really enjoy the pricing options with Automation Anywhere, as they are able to flex their ability to adapt to the needs of the customer really well. I am sure the specifics for some pricing are on a partner-by-partner basis but providing the ability to scale the licenses, setup, and pricing to the customer is a huge benefit with Automation Anywhere.

Their technical support system and response times directly to a partner are really good.

We did review UiPath, Blue Prism, and Power Automate. 

I'd say, fully go headfirst into learning the A2019 platform and all it can do for a business. There is something for everyone in that platform. Large or small scale automations, migration processes from v11 is already in place and tested, and there is no more need for Metabots because they are now "packages" that can be made or modified by a seasoned developer, and a plethora of other benefits are evident. Just jump in!! 

Our primary use case is for automated digital invoice signature validation. The bot is designed to create a successful or rejection incident in ServiceNow based on validation output, and then uploads the email attachments received in Outlook for that particular invoice to respective SFTP folders.

Validating 1000 invoices manually takes weeks of time using five FTEs. By implementing the Automation Anywhere robot, we have reduced the FTE count and it was able to process 800 invoices per day with 100% accuracy. The increased efficiency totally justifies the name Automation, as with a single click, it does five FTE work in a single day.

The most valuable features are the Secure Credential Vault, Email automation, and the REST API. These commands have reduced the number of lines of code.

The script/task command has helped with modularization.

The REST API could be improved.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for 15 months.

We primarily use Automation Anywhere to automate Windows applications and Web applications. Both of these are easily automatable with the advanced Automation Anywhere commands, which are user-friendly and easy to use in the Financial & Banking services industry.

It can be used to automate the PDF processes, Microsoft Word, as well as Excel. Without manual intervention, the bot can make its own decisions based on the business rules, and its timely actions make the bot to run smoothly. This saves the users' time and compared to manual processes, the bot reduces the effort and time, with it safely run from the control room.

Automation Anywhere has brought fantastic changes in the process workflows, by automating the maximum number of processes with end-to-end solutions, some of them with 80% of the complete process.

We're able to automate most of the tasks with ease and in less time. We can test seamlessly, before delivering the end product, and once the bots are live it is very easy to maintain.

AA commands are tremendous in obtaining the object properties dynamically once it is captured, and we can select the required properties from the automatically generated ones.

The Object Cloning command is the most useful feature. Through the use of this command, between 30% and 40% of the process automation is complete.

The Excel commands are useful for fetching the cell values and then running specific commands. With this feature, we can invoke the existing macros wherever it is required and once it generates the outputs, the results can also be used for further decision making. This helps the process to run uninterrupted and avoids manual intervention.

We have observed that AA gets locked sometimes. After being used for hours with the same bot, while still using the Run Window command and having it in an open state, the users received a prompt to log back into the control room. This is not correct, leading the bot to fail at certain times.

In the next release, once the bot is triggered, the system should always recognize the active state and not prompt the user to log in again before the bot finishes all of its tasks.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for more than three years.

It has high scalability and can fit into any organizational environment.

Always, we receive prompt and very good service from the AA Technical support team.

Prior to using AA, we used Macros to automate certain processes, but we were only able to automate 50% of the entire end to end solution. This is because of its lack of consistency to when interacting with the web-based and Windows applications.

Automation Anywhere has excellent features that resolve all of the above problems.

The initial setup is very user-friendly, making it easy to install and ready to use software.

We implemented in-house by following business guidelines.

We've delivered approximately 150+ bots and saved about 200 FTEs worth of time per annum. 

Regarding the price, licensing, and maintenance, Automation Anywhere provides its customers with its best and affordable value.

We did not evaluate other RPA solutions.

I would suggest that if you offer RPA services then you should advertise it well because it will take you further.

Currently, our primary use cases are for the automation of medical appeals and charge processing. 

We are currently on the 11.3.4.2 version in our production environment in a HA configuration. We use bare-metal servers for our production Control Room. All of our bot runners are Windows 10 virtual machines. We are in the process of adding A2019 IQ Bot and Control Room servers into our production environment. 

In our Dev/UAT environments, we have added A2019 Control Room and IQ Bot servers in addition to our v11.3.4.2 servers.  

It has allowed us to generate additional revenue without having to hire additional people. Our fleet of bots is able to complete the work of roughly 40 FTEs. Without automating these tasks we would have had to hire additional staff or offshore this workload. 

We have largely targeted processes performed by offshore contractors in order to reduce our reliance on overseas workers. Where we have automated processes performed by onshore workers we have been able to reassign impacted users to more productive work. 

I don't think one feature is more valuable than any other. In my opinion, the value is in the totality of the platform. It is easy to use for our developers with a well laid out UI and many canned tools. The Control Room is very easy to navigate and mostly intuitive to use. 

The AA Client is easy to install and configure. I have found it very easy to integrate into our environment. And with the right vision and direction can be used to automate very complex tasks with plus 95% reliability and uptime. 

I am currently on 11.3.4.2 and the analytics feature of AA, Bot Insights, needs improvement. It is not easy to implement. It is not intuitive for the developer as you have to mark variables for analytics. Because it is very clunky you either have to build "helper" bots to display your bot analytics or use another platform like Tableau. 

I would also like to see improvement in the segregation of roles. I still do not understand the login in not allowing the Control Room Administrator to also be a Bot Insights Administrator. 

I have been using AA for 15 months.

I have found no stability issues with Automation Anywhere.

I have found the platform to be very scalable. We have seen no limitations thus far.

Customer service and tech support have always been responsive, knowledgeable and quick with a solution.

This is our first RPA platform.

I found the initial setup to straight forward. Automation Anywhere has been a great partner through the entire process.

In-house implementation

Our ROI was roughly 10 months.

RPA solutions are not cheap. There will be a large cost to implement any RPA solution but ROI can be huge and very quick if you are not timid. Do not go slow. Embrace the platform and it's huge potential and your RPA program will be a cash cow for your organization. 

We did evaluate UI Path and Blue Prism before choosing Automation Anywhere.

I automated an application launched through the Citrix environment. The application was running on the SIT environment. Our application was a legacy desktop telecom domain application that runs on a Citrix environment. It was a very difficult task to automate our legacy application and we have seen only one tool which was able to successfully implement the automation. I have come to know about the AA tool and wanted to try this tool. And we are successfully able to automate a few of our flows with high accuracy and we have since then used AA for some of our functional executions on our legacy desktop application.

I have also implemented AA for the business process of logging into the work machine, opening remote desktop, and triggering some jobs during odd times. We have also made use of AA to keep our remote desktops active so that they do not get logged out and become a hurdle for our tasks during non-office hours.

After using AA for some of the flows, we identified that the execution time was reduced by 70% when compared to the other automation tool that we have been using for 8 years. As we didn't find any other tool that supports our legacy application automation, we have been using the existing one for the past 8 years. But once we tried with AA, our POC was successful and we are able to automate some of our flows and execute them. We have been saving huge man-hours by using AA. AA has made us to implement a new automation tool for the testing of our legacy application.

Automation Anywhere provides the best application to use for RPA and other automation requirements. It's very easy to use and easy to understand. It's UI(user interface) is user-friendly and easily understood by users, it is very easy to install Automation Anywhere. Simply click on next to install. It is easy to develop a bot, and no coding knowledge is required to develop. 

AA has another feature BOT STORE which contains pre-built bots for most commonly used applications like sap, oracle, etc and last but not least IQ bot features which are used to extract unstructured or semi-structure data from pdf, images, emails, etc. Automation Anywhere also provides a dashboard so you can check your bot details like bot accuracy, bot failure details, and ratio, etc. It helps to find errors. It also provides error handling commands so if you know the bot may get any error so you can handle it.

Configuring A2019 and using it is getting a little difficult because of frequent errors of compatibility. It is not so user friendly like the enterprise desktop version. Sometimes the A2019 platform takes too much time in the pre-processing and deployment process which is too time consuming and to solve this we need to restart the services and also sometimes need to restart our machines. This is extra overhead. AA-client is too heavy software. AA-client should support multiple languages. Sometimes the client software needs to login, again and again, every hour and so.

Advanced Machine Learning and AI features with visualization capabilities should be included in the tool so that the product can offer many new use cases and 

I have been using Automation Anywhere for 1 year and 6 months.

The bots automated were very stable and was not needed a lot of maintaining effort.

The solutions were easy to implement across many machines and using the cloud to run the bots on remote machines was a great feature.

We have been using a different solution and finding an alternative tool to help improve productivity. After the AA solution worked for us, we have been using both solutions to improve productivity even more.

It was completely easy and we didn't face any issues in setting up the software for the first time.

We implemented the bot through in-house team.

We have evaluated Tricentis TOSCA and we couldn't be able to automate our legacy application flows with it.

The AA architecture was as suggested by the AA technical support team. We had one server dedicated each for the control room, bot creator, bot runner, and DB server. The servers were hosted on cloud services offered by Microsoft Azure.

Our primary use case included mostly the internal operations orchestrated by the IT team. It included processes like automation of AD ID creation, updating, and deletion.

Other services were offered to the Business and Finance groups, Human Resource department, and marketing department.

Automation Anywhere has played a pivotal role in expanding the current portfolio of the company by integrating with new Aae technologies like AI and ML and increasing the efficiency of the existing processes.

Some of the changes the organization has observed and appreciated the RPA services implemented by AA are listed below:

Regulatory and Compliance Standards: Prior installation of RPA services, there used to a lot of transcription errors through out the processes which proved quite fatal during periodic audits and in meeting compliance standards. Plus, detection and rectification of these errors was quite time and resource consuming.

Improved Efficiency: Post RPA services, the efficiency and accuracy of the processes have increased tremendously and now the employees can focus more on important research and analysis work.

Customer satisfaction: RPA has automated the repetitive and time consuming tasks which has eased off the pressure from the employees. Now the employees can concentrate on client specific requirements and in order increasing the client satisfaction by responding quickly in a periodic manner.  

Automation Anywhere is fairly easy to use and understand. It requires no prior coding experience. Personally, I started my RPA journey with AA learning about RPA as a technology and AA tool from Automation university and found it quite useful.

The bot store feature is quite useful since it provides pre-built bots for complex systems and it helps a lot when starting the RPA journey.

The AA commands provide a drag and drop option which is quite easy to use.

The Bot insight provides a lot of information ranging from bot deployment, success, and failures, and bot efficiency. This is quite informative and easy to understand which can be directly presented in front of business leaders too.

IQ Bot provides AI and cognitive capabilities that prove extremely useful in extracting texts from scanned images and unstructured invoices and documents.

Automation Anywhere provides more than 300 commands but it lacks in certain areas like Excel automation. For eg: there is no command to add, rename, or delete sheet. However, meta bots can be utilized for the same.

AA sometimes poses compatibility problems with new web browser versions like Chrome.

The AA control room is fairly difficult to understand and maintain initially.

Integration with new technologies and scripts like Python. However, I have heard that A2019 supports Python scripts.

The license prices vary drastically depending upon the partnership with the client.

Debugging of SQL queries is hard. The error description is not accurate. I have to initially test the queries on Access and then only I paste them on AA.  

I have been using this solution for more than two years now.

Automation is quite stable even with Citrix environments. However, it posed some problems when in the production phase. We encountered some random errors which used to come on a random basis.

AA was quite stable when used with Window applications and other applications like SAP, proprietary software, and databases.

The solution is quite scalable and best suited when used for processes involving a high volume of data.

The existing infrastructure can easily be migrated to the cloud and upgraded to a higher version too with minimal effort.

The configuration can easily be scaled up when being used in a cloud environment. A lot of bots can easily be run on the same bot runner server while being maintained by the control room.

The technical support team was cooperative and quick to respond to any query. I am highly satisfied with the AA support team. 

I started with AA v 10 and switched to v11 later on.

The initial setup was provided with installation documentation which was detailed. It posed no problems and in case of queries the support team was there to help.

I implemented it through a vendor team who were fairly new to both the RPA domain and AA tool. 

The ROI of AA is best when utilized for processes involving a high volume of data. 
It plays a pivotal role in cost saving by replacing the existing time and resource-consuming project with a fast and efficient RPA solution.

Since it can be utilized 24/7, the ROI is pretty high with minimal efforts and resources by using unattended automation.

Automation anywhere is best suited for processes that have high volume and are repetitive.
They offer good discounts when purchased in bulk or they provide extra bit runner runners with the existing prices. 

The setup cost basically depends on usage. They can be installed both on-premises or on the cloud depending upon the user's requirement.

Not specifically. We were already AA partners by the time I joined the practice.

I have been using the IQ bot and the latest A2019 version and still exploring new features. I personally liked replacing the various recorder and object cloning command with a single recorder command.

The solution sometimes poses problems in the production phase.

The primary use of this tool is to automate the business process end to end for different finance towers. We have automated the following processes end to end with the help of Automation Anywhere:

R2R: In the R2R tower we have automated the process of uploading the backup files in SAP.

Manually it took around 7 working days to upload 10k documents to SAP.

With the help of Automation Anywhere, we are able to upload 10k documents in 1 4 working hours which is a great achievement for us.

We managed to save 5 FTE by automating this business process.

• Automation Anywhere has helped my organization to automate the complex process which usually takes 7-8 FTE and lots of human effort in repetitive tasks/processes.
• We have developed a bot that would automate the process of calculating the KPI of a P2P finance tower which would usually take 8 hours for each FTE to present the KPI.
• The bot takes usually 2-3 hours to represent the KPI across all regions for the P2P tower.
• The benefits are so great that the organization is saving the effort of 7 FTE from this project.
  

The following features are best in the Automation Anywhere tool:

Automation Anywhere offers the capability of integrating the DLL files with meta bot and hence the developer can use DLL files to connect to applications likes Outlook, SAP, etc.

Automation Anywhere offers the best tool in the market for extracting information from PDF and is called IQ bot. IQ bot is built on machine learning and natural language processing. It helps users to create layouts for the pdf and then process the similar format pdf in one go.

Automation Anywhere is the best automating tool on the market and it's very difficult for me to think to suggest something to improve the tool.

Here are my few suggestions:

Automation Anywhere can include database commands like insert row, bold row, etc commands in 11.x

They can also include features like API integration features in the command panel.

They should create a standard framework like re framework in Ui Path.

As it enhances the capability of the developer to create an automation project.

I have been using the Automation Anywhere tool for more than 2.5 years.

My primary use case is the automation of manual tasks involved in Order to Cash and Procure to Pay.

During the digital transformation of a company, the number of internal portals and applications increases leading to an increased number of data silos.

TCPL has successfully implemented a bot to synchronize data flow (including document files viz. docs, pdfs, images) between its in-house developed install portal and Microsoft Navision ERP.

TCPL has automated the AWB tracking of all outbound shipments to get latest updates on all our shipment movements, take timely corrective measures to ensure our customers receive shipments on time. This helps in ensuring timely order deliveries which results in higher customer satisfaction and lower DSO as we can collect on time only if we deliver on time.

Other bots are:

Vendor Invoice Processing and Data Entry

Accounts Receivables Data Entry

• AA RPA has drastically reduced speed of execution and thus turn around time of processes, ensuring all service level agreements are met and our customers get a great experience.
• Savings of fives Full-time Equivalent or 160 manhours.
• Lower Daily Sales Outstanding as we now meet SLAs and can collect all payments in time.
• Reduction in errors as bots never do wrong calculations or get distracted
• Higher Employee productivity as they are now free from the repetitive mundane work
• Important financial decisions based on updated and accurate information in-hand.

I find the graphic user interface and ease of usability to be the most valuable feature.

The wide range of functions and drag and drop workflow designer makes it easy to learn and work on, for both developers and business users. Being completely web-based makes it even easier and more comfortable to work on, for everyone. From a personal experience, I could learn and start building RPA bots using automation anywhere community edition in less than one month due to the good quality training material available at AA university and the use of usability.

Though IQ Bot is the most powerful and effective cognitive OCR platform for data extraction in the market, still, there is a lot of scope for improvement as there are a lot of non-standard documents which do not give a high straight-through processing rate and accuracy.

Additional features to be included in the next release should be the option to develop basic web portals through which business users can view and run required bots on demand. Secondly, some features of BPM should also be included in the RPA platform itself so that business workflows can be defined and automated easily.

I have been using AA for eight months.

We use Automation Anywhere to automate business processes for better accuracy, time reduction, and scalability. An Automation Anywhere bot can work for 24 hrs. I worked for KYC Reconciliation processes in Automation Anywhere which consists of data extraction from PDF with the help of IQ Bot and extracted information entered into companies web portals. In the process, clients give us invoices through the mail and te bot identifies mail with specific subjects, downloads invoices, uploads invoices to IQ bot, and downloads CSVs to specific folders, and validate CSVs and upload CDVs to the web portal.

Automation Anywhere improved our organization's growth with prior usage of Automation Anywhere for repetitive tasks like data entry in the web portal and data extraction from the PDF with the help of IQ Bot. I've been working with Automation Anywhere for the last year. I've worked on two versions of Automation Anywhere i.e.V11.3 and A2019. One thing that I like the most about Automation Anywhere V11.3 is that you don't need any programming knowledge to develop the bot, so a non-technical person can also easily understand the process and can create the same.

Automation Anywhere has lots of features, some of them are accuracy increases, time consumption reduced, scalability. Automation Anywhere does not require a strong knowledge of programming languages. The dashboard is user-friendly. In A2019 of Automation Anywhere we can run a python script. The accuracy of the IQ Bot has been improved in Automation Anywhere. The new concept of the control room in A2019 is more impressive than older versions of Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere has lots of good features. It does not require improvement. 

I would like if the IQ Bot could read hand-written documents, otherwise, Automation Anywhere is fabulous to work or develop processes for customers. Automation Anywhere has a user-friendly UI to work with so that any non-technical person can easily understand the process workflow. The accuracy of the IQ bot in the new version has been increased. We can make validations to fields in IQ Bot with Python scripts.

I've been using Automation Anywhere for a year.

Automation Anywhere gives us a stable developed process. We can run a bot without any human interaction. I found it to be stable.

One of the features of Automation Anywhere is scalability. We can scale our developed bot at any particular time and increase accuracy.

If any error occurred during developing a process you can ask for help from Automation Anywhere support team. The support team of Automation Anywhere is pretty good.

I didn't use any other software for developing processes to automate other than Automation Anywhere. From the beginning, I've been using this tool to automate.

Automation anywhere is very easy to set up. We have to download the product from the Automation Anywhere website and run it. We can set up the file in two ways either in Express mode or custom mode.

Our team developed a process for clients.

I'm working as RPA developer so don't have any idea about the ROI.

I'm an RPA developer, so I don't have any idea about the cost or pricing but the licenses for developers and runner IQ Bot are pretty good.

I haven't used or evaluated other options for developing the process.

Automation anywhere going great with its improvements.

Automation Anywhere provides a tool for RPA. We can create software bots that mimic humans. The RPA solution is created to work for repetitive tasks and to use human resources for a creative perspective. Automation Anywhere provides the best feature to make a software bot for processes. We use it for SAP, HRMS, SQL, etc.

Environment: we have a V11.x environment and A2019 cloud-deployed environment on AWS Cloud. Right now we are doing a migration process from V11.x to A2019.

Automation Anywhere provides an RPA solution for my organization. We automated many processes through Automation Anywhere in which productivity increased. We also implemented the IQ Bot by extracting invoice data to CSV format and uploaded it to Oracle E-Business Suite. We implemented Automation Anywhere in many department processes. We have two unattended bot runners. We implemented more then 40 processes until now. I used both V11.x and A2019 and I like more A2019 than V.11.

Automation Anywhere provides many features for automating processes.

1. V.11 has three different recorders but A2019 Automation Anywhere created an all-in-one recorder called Universal recorder which more reliable to use.

2. One of Automation Anywhere's best features is the IQ Bot. In V.11 we created many instances & train many groups. In A2019 Automation Anywhere updated IQ Bot to provide more accuracy. They included Python scripting for validation. Before that, we used Macro for validation.

3. Automation Anywhere provides more commands in A2019 and also provides a feature called Packages through which we can update commands that we need.

Automation Anywhere changed OCR features in A2019. My suggestion is to improve the OCR command scope and usability. We use OCR for PDF data extraction as we use in V. 11.x product.

Automation Anywhere has a perfect structure of working. Automation Anywhere has the best product structure. It also provides support for customers and they respond in 24 hours.

They still provide updates on packages to get more accuracy in process creation. The automation has already improved very much.

I have been using AA for 1.5 years.

Through Automation Anywhere, we can create stable bots for processes.

Through Automation Anywherl, we create bost for process and it very scalable & secure. 

I only use Automation Anywhere tools V 11.x &A2019

The initial setup is easier than the migration. We have to follow the steps given by Automation Anywhere for the initial setup. If we have any issues with the setup, Automation Anywhere provides support.

We implemented in customer environment. 

We have to calculate ROI before the process creation to get clarification and to understand the benefits of automation. 

Automation Anywhere provided the best quality for products like iPhones. 

Before using Automation Anywhere I checked Blue Prism & Ui Path but I preferred Automation Anywhere because it is best in quality. It also has IQ Bot for unstructured data converting in structure.

We use AA for automating ServiceNow tickets in Caterpillar.

We get tickets for the configuration requests. Using AA, we auto-download the excel attached to it and do all the necessary cleanup and conversions. 

The entire process in steps as mentioned below:

1. A ServiceNow ticket is created by the client that needs a configuration request related to Caterpillar machines.

These machines are called lane 2 and lane 3 because they are manual configurations

2. Once we get the configuration we then try to match the configuration with all the parts and whether the configuration would be possible or not.

For that, we use SOAP where all our latest data is loaded.

This data is compared with the Excel sheet that client sends us.

The cleanup is done in Automation Anywhere, compared to end to end, and then output is thrown out. This output is then given back to the clients in the form of a ticket attachment to let them know if the configuration of the machine that they have requested is possible or not.

Automation Anywhere has saved us a lot of time, money & efforts by automating our ServiceNow tickets.

We expect to save more time by expanding to other verticals very soon. The other verticals include sending automated replies to the executives using the Power BI dashboards through alerts. We have not yet explored this aspect completely but sooner or later we have a lot of BI needs that will be catered by Automation Anywhere.

In the past, we have also done PoCs for the client that helped the executives run automated scripts every Monday using pre-built SQL commands in the data warehouse.

• Create automation tasks like recording keyboard strokes and mouse clicks.
• Distribute tasks to multiple computers.

Also, the document management processes that IQ Bot gives has very good functionality of how you can actually take unstructured data and make sense out of it, connecting inferences, then making the data available to the user. So, IQ Bot is one of the best tools that I can think of in that aspect. This solves the problem of various document structures, document formats, etc.

Hoping to see AA get more robust with time.

Handwritten documents are still a drawback to read.

Regarding the UI, once you're on some of the screens there are fixed dialogues, they are a set size, so there's a lot of horizontal scrolls and vertical scrolls. If I want to do something that is 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.

Also, there's a loss of overhead of the computing resources in Automation Anywhere. If you have an encrypted bot, the Automation Anywhere software has to read it first, decrypt it, and run it. So there is a potential that, if the logic of the bot isn't good enough, a lot of CPU and memory overload will happen. This is something that Automation Anywhere should look at because it takes a lot of computing resources. I have seen CPUs running at 100%.

I have been using AA for three years. 

Very good.

Very good.

Very good.

We have only used AA as AA has a partnership with Deloitte and Deloitte promotes using AA. 

We have liked AA very much.

The setup was straighforward.

In-house.

We have seen at least 30 % savings in time and 12% saving in costs.

We are not into advisory. We only use the tool.

We are waiting to see AA progress further with more robust solutions.

I start using automation anywhere for my first project to automate HR process. For HR, one of my customers uses a lot of manual processes in their company. They manually update reports in Excel and have a lot of use cases that trigger emails to staff.  Examples of emails are applications for training or requests to top management for approval.

By using Automation Anywhere, we can help our customer manage their data by connecting the Bot to the database and automate emails that are sent between staff and the top management.

When implementing RPA with AA for an organization, we can figure out the spaghetti processes and align the business process so that they become linear. This is possible because RPA uses rule-based automation. Ultimately, it means that the organization will be more structured.

Having AA also helps to improve time-savings, as it is able to complete the whole process faster. The accuracy of the data posted in the system also increases.

In terms of cost, AA reduces the cost of hiring workers because the number of workers can be fixed after implementing RPA.

The most valuable features are object cloning, image recognition, assignment value, and automation for databases, OCR, PDF, Excel, and email.

Excel automation is especially helpful because a lot of small companies are still using Excel as their data storage.

Database automation is really important for executing report queries.

PDF automation is useful because a lot of companies still use PDFs as fillable forms. To automate a PDF, it uses the OCR function to extract data, from either a soft copy or handwritten-scan form.

Last but not least, the assignment value command is really needed to help with the manipulation of variable datatypes. Without this, it is quite hard to manipulate the data.

The assign value function is not there in the A2019 Community edition, which makes it hard for a developer to manipulate the data. For example, using a data table record, when I want to assign a value to a record variable, I am not able to assign it properly. I am only able to define a hardcoded value inside that variable, whereas the requirement is to put the value inside that variable dynamically using another variable. 

In the next release, I am hoping to have a feature where the developer can use a programming method like ".Double/.toString" to make programming faster. As it is now, one has to pull commands one by one for assignment.

Next, I am hoping that AA can have an explanation and directions for each command and how it is to be used by developers. For example, with the OCR function, it would be helpful to know what data is compulsory for the developer to enter, and what data is optional. By having guide like this, it would be more developer-friendly. This would be better for beginners who are using AA for the first time. 

We have been using Automation Anywhere for less than one year.

the stability of the studio is ok and some features is easy to use. but sometimes i feel to automate excel is quite hard and developer need to make many repetitive steps just to insert dynamic data into each cell in excel.Hopes in version 11.3 will have read range and write range function instead need to loop many times and set the cell one by one.btw, i like dictionary data type and impress with AA because no need to read file and just put the path it can already work. but i hope for dictionary variable data type also can support .xlsx file to save as dictionary and able to add dictionary key and value that outside from the file by able to add keypair value by assigning them  as temporary value during process.

Quickly scale to thousands of bots in the front and back office, no matter the type—attended, unattended, or intelligent automation.

The modern microservices architecture enables the platform to scale both vertically and horizontally, delivering fast ROI.

We do not yet have experience with customer support. We have been using AA for less than one year.

In another company, I previously used a different RPA solution. I have switched because I have changed companies, to one that is using AA.

To install the application is easy, but you need to prepare a few accounts during the initial setup. These include a Creator account for developers, a Bot Runner, a server, and a database.

We deployed with the assistance of a vendor team and we are satisfied.

Some of the factors that contribute to ROI are the low cost, ease of maintenance, and automatic updates.

This is a comprehensive automation offering with a scalable architecture and flexible pricing models. This keeps the RPA TCO low and you can automate with confidence.

We evaluated UiPath before choosing Automation Anywhere.

Overall, this is a great tool because it's easy to maintain and it can reduce hiring costs, leading to reduced overall costs in the future.

I am using IQ Bots for invoice indexing for many clients.

My primary use case is extracting invoice details from different vendors for validation purposes. We convert CSV files to Excel for formatting and before A2019, I used to do all validations with VBA script. Now, with AA A2019, it validation very easy using Python. It is also very fast and efficient.

I have created Task Bots for many finance-related clients and they are also working very well. Recently, I converted all of my bots to A2019.

Automation Anywhere has improved my organization, OMFYS Tech.

We have implemented many processes in the organisation with RPA, as we had done with HR bots for different HR processes. From these, we made most of the demo videos that we show to our clients. It helps to discover new processess to automate and use in new projects.

The A2019 version is very stable for the processes that we make. On the other platform, we have projects using Java, Oracle, Python, and HTML, where we had automated processes when required.

I found the new feature of integrating Python and HTML the most valuable. Using this, we can get the DOMXPath dynamic for every HTML property.

On the other hand, Python scripting is very helpful nowadays. We just create a Python script and integrate it with the bot, which makes the work very easy and fast.

I like the IQ Bot very much, as most of my projects use it for invoice indexing purposes.

The recorder in the A2019 version is way ahead, as it allows us to use Chrome and other browsers to capture the object properties. 

The UI can be improved a little bit to make it easier for beginners to understand.

There are many commands called Actions that are very good but sometimes, I feel that it should be more comfortable to find and search for specific commands. There should be some type of hint or notification system about what actions are useful, according to the situation or part of the process that it is in while creating the bot.

The speed of the bot processing on a whole can be improved so that the bot can run in less time than the task or processes.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for one year.

Stability-wise, it is a ten out of ten.

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten.

I did not use another RPA solution prior to this one. I started my RPA journey with automation anywhere only because it is the best available solution in the market.

This is a value for the money product.

I evaluated UiPath and Blue Prism but neither one had IQ Bot-like features. That's why I rejected them and choose AA.

My advice is not to think too much. Just compare the features then you will get to know why AA is the best solution of all.

Our primary uses for this product are:

1. We are using Automation Anywhere to automate client processes.
2. The processes are ranging from SAP automation, Oracle automation, and mainframes like AS400. RPA has been implemented for a few of the legacy applications as well.
3. Both the Attended automation and Unattended automation have been implemented for many of our clients and they report satisfactory results.
4. We are using Automation Anywhere IQ Bot to scan documents for clients, as well as for internal processes.
5. The automation solutions provided to our clients them are running seamlessly.

Automation Anywhere has increased the overall standing of our company in the RPA market. Because of the successful automation for the client, we are getting more processes, which leads to more revenue.

Apart from the regular pricing model, the Gain-Sharing model provides a win-win situation for both WNS as well as its customers. This means that our customers will start getting the benefits up front, and leverage the benefits right from day one.

COE licensing is also beneficial, to reduce the effective cost of ownership 

All the features are very good, although what I like best is RPA-as-a-service. This drastically reduces the infrastructure setup time and, at the same time, it can be utilized for productive project work.

The multi-tenant and scalable architecture is the main advantage when you have a cloud service. While RPA is the cutting-edge technology to bring digital transformation, the RPA as a service will reduce costs and increase efficiency with ease of deployment, less maintenance, and cheaper upgrade costs.

Even our customers are happy with the RPA-as-a-service model.

Intelligent automation is currently a buzz and I would love to see more innovation in this segment. I am looking for artificial intelligence and machine learning to be tightly integrated into the cloud platform and I hope that they enhance this segment in the upcoming releases. 

Clients are eager to see AI and ML implemented, and thus leverage the technology to its maximum. We can bring more processes into automation, which is what I want to focus on. 

In a nutshell, more innovation in AI and ML will bring more potential and capabilities to the product.

We have been using Automation Anywhere since February 2018.

The solution is stable but again, it is dependant on the underlying client applications. I am confident the AA solution is very stable.

The RPA-as-a-service model helps to scale the solution beyond the limit. 

The customer service is excellent. Since we have a dedicated AA account manager for WNS, in case of any urgent issue or requirement, we can reach to the manager. So far, the help extended by the account manager is very good. 

Our main focus has been on using Automation Anywhere as the primary tool for RPA.

The initial setup is quite straightforward

We implemented it through our expert, in-house team.

Since I am not directly involved in the ROI calculation, I would not comment on this.

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.

The other options that we evaluated were Blue Prism, UiPath, and others. 

We are using this product for the development, running, and monitoring of automated processes. We are using IQ Bot for advanced tasks using cognitive technology.

Automation Anywhere has helped in automating business processes for simple to complex business cases. It also helped in understanding, learning, and discovering new automation ideas.

The features that I find most valuable are:

1. There isn't much scripting.
2. It is easy to learn and implement.
3. No prior programming knowledge required to learn and develop.
4. On the server-side, multiple developers working on a single project can save their individual works and have them stored in a single repository.

Custom models with advanced features can be included in the IQ Bot models for unstructured and semi-structured data.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for between eight and nine months.

The primary use case of this solution is that we are automating repetitive processes such as daily currency calculation, data entry in the EPR system, email reading and sorting data, extracting data from webpages, and extracting data from invoices.

We also use automation for data massaging on Excel data, database connectivity, PDF data extraction, scheduling bots, and the validation of extracted data from webpage or invoices.

We use error handling to point out which of the bots are failing. 

We are using v11, A2019, and IQ Bot. 

With the help of Automation Anywhere, our organizational efficiency has increased. We have automated HR-related tasks such as CV shortlisting and salary slip generation processes. This has decreased our time consumption for these tasks.

We have also improved our clients' organizations by automating repetitive processes. With this, the ROI has increased and the overall time consumed by processes is reduced. We now use this manpower for other important tasks.

Human intervention is not required for most of the processes and also, they are auto-scheduled.

The most valuable features are data extraction and entry into webpages, extracting data from unstructured invoices, email sorting and attachment downloading, Excel actions, database connectivity, IQ Bot for extracting data from invoices, connectivity with ERP applications, as the REST and SOAP web services.

With the help of these features, we can automatically fetch data from invoices and websites, which is followed by the automated data entry into the webpage and ERP system.

Excel actions help us for automating work on Excel workbooks.

The A2019 Community version does not fully support Mozilla Firefox, as it has problems when you try to capture data from the Firefox window. 

I would like to see more features added in the Community editions to improve developer hands-on practice. 

When you try to capture an error snapshot in A2019, it's not capturing the proper data compared to V11. 

The Recorder action in the A2019 Community edition is not supported. 

If we refresh the window then it does not show the Chrome window title in the list. This only works on Internet Explorer.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for the last two years.

The technical support team was helpful at the time of installation and setup. Whenever we are stuck, the support team's help is very important.

I haven't used an RPA solution other than Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup was straightforward. With help of the Automation Anywhere technical support team, it is easy to set up.

We implemented using the vendor team. The level of expertise is very good, and they help very well.

The setup cost for this is onetime and licensing is based on your choice of product.

We evaluated Blue Prism and UiPath before choosing Automation Anywhere.

Overall, the product is very good where the repetitive tasks are more in manufacturing industries and the finance department. It is the best solution for any type of industry to automate their repetitive process, leading to increased ROI and reduced time consumption.

We mainly use it for Financial Documents processing to conduct payments to registered Vendors. Invoice reception via a central mailbox on the server; Extraction of said PDF invoices via the IQ Bot cognitive platform using the ABBY OCR, as it is by far the most effective for our processing requirement; Consolidation of each individually extracted file into a central Batch processing file; Upload of central batch processing file into a stand-alone approval system, developed on IBM Xpages; Approval of uploaded files, from a central batch file, for payment; Upload of each invoice record in a third-party processing system such as Sage Evolution / SAP. Payment is done via a batch file generated by a third-party payment application.

AA has enabled faster processing of a series of manual operations and/or procedures. Cognitive capabilities are severely reduced or highly inaccurate, the Cognitive platform requires major attention regarding how data is captured, retained for future extractions as well as how these extractions are validated. There is a somewhat problematic functionality for various commands within AA, these commands do not have a consistent functionality one execution within some external third-party software such as Sage Evolution, XBRL for CaseWare, and CaseClient.

The MetaBots are by far the most effective system within AA. Due to the fact that no scripting is required and only the passing of variables or values to get a definite result. IQ Bot with the ABBY OCR is a powerful component to do multiple extractions in the shortest possible timeframe in comparison to human execution of similarly identified tasks or operations. 

The Recorder functionality is extremely useful and relatively straightforward enough to use, albeit a bit restrictive in its functionality.

IQ Bot requires a significant improvement for its data detection and data retention, mainly from the previously trained documents: regarding the document's format, layout, data contained within the document, the type of data that needs to be extracted. Object cloning commands require a significant improvement in its functionality. It is far too inconsistent with execution within the same application. Plugins for web browsers should be a single plugin that allows for the connectivity and functionality of both the v11/v12 and A2019 software, or at best, allows for both the A2019 and v11/v12 plugins to run on the same client browser simultaneously.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for roughly two years.

The current solution is not very stable due to multiple developers working on the initial development, it would be far more efficient if a small group of developers had worked on this specific project.
The solution should be more stable with a limited number of developers working on the current project. The current project would become more accurate and efficient if the functionality of the current commands could be updated to function more effectively and not stop working on a bi-weekly basis. Soe days the commands work without any problems and some days these same commands stop working and breaks the current processing cycle.

Scalability in our current solution is low but has massive room for growth.

The technical is relatively fast to respond and guidance offered is oftentimes sufficient. Time-zone difference is a major issue as this delays the response from an available technician. No guaranteed solution for cases raised, oftentimes workarounds are the only suggested action with multiple of those resulting in no success on the issue raised.

No previous solution used, as a manual process previously.

The initial setup was extremely complex as no assistance or guidance could be found online for my system.

The setup was done through an in-house team consisting of the current developer and a single IT technician.

Know ahead of time what capabilities you are going to require and plan accordingly to determine the total number of user licenses and development licenses required.

Other options were considered such as Blue Prism and Ui Path, but the capabilities of AA far surpass those platforms based on cost.

Documentation online is severely lacking, have commented on this before in support cases. The online documentation is far too generic, with no linking to relevant or in-depth forums on similar topics.

I am a Digital Transformation Consultant & my role revolves around suggesting, recommending & implementing the best automation solution across to my clients. Some of them also include:

a) Lower operating costs

b) Faster ROI

c) Ability to be more competitive

Giving the right automation solutions can reap major benefits. Understanding these benefits—and some obstacles—will help us develop support for an operations automation project. The primary benefits of operations automation cited most often were cost reduction, productivity, availability, reliability, and performance.

Automation Anywhere (AA) has helped me in suggesting, recommending & implementing the best automation solution across to my client

AA is a better and more intelligent approach to cost containment and reduction. The greatest opportunity is to increase service to the customer (end-user) while systematically reducing costs. Management often overlooks this potential for savings. Most modern servers have a low operating cost and the total cost of ownership has been declining. AA solution has helped to streamline operations in businesses of all sizes.

The benchmarking scores, the latest technology improvements & the use cases are the most valuable aspects. 

• Intelligent automation for business and IT tasks.
• Uses SMART Automation Technology.
• Rapidly Automates complex and complicated tasks.
• Create automation tasks like recording keyboard strokes and mouse clicks.
• Distribute tasks to multiple computers

AA allows you to create processes using 3 types of robots: Task Bot, Meta Bot, and IQ Bot. Instead of rewriting redundant code for processes, a meta bot can be used instead. This type of robot is best used for complex scalable processes. IQ Bot: The most powerful of the 3 types of robots is the IQ Bot.

With more demo recordings and positive real-time reviews from the clients. AA should provide a free evaluation period so it is easy to attract new customers. It is not able to use OCR effectively and has limited usability. Handwritten documents are still a drawback. 

It is also difficult in terms of control room management. The debugger is also a weakness of the tool, forcing the developer to use error handling or message box to map errors. Few applications take more time for loading when integrated.

I have been using AA since 2017.

• It is highly accurate and gets up and running in a very short period of time.
• You can keep the BOT learning by feeding more and more data sets, which makes the whole process highly efficient.
• It is very cost-effective when deployed and when scaling out to the limit.

• Using Automation Anywhere's tool we can automate window and Web-based processes. It is very easy to use.
• It can automate rule-based and repetitive processes.
• It can work 24*7 without taking a rest.
• Time-saving. It is very fast in comparison to doing something manually.
• Cost-saving.

They are always up to mark and ready to help out when in need.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We used a vendor team, they were great !

It has been fair to be honest.

The setup cost, pricing and/or licensing of AA sounds reasonable considering its capability.

Keep up the good work & keep improving as you grow.

Use case: Extraction from Main Frame Application

Solution : 

The bot will log in to the email box and then picks the invoice no, order invoice amount, and surcharge details. 

Based on a single line item and multiple line items, the bot will log in to AS400 and feed and check all the information. If there is a discrepancy then the bot will update it based on the tolerance limit. If there is no discrepancy, the bot will accept the orders. The bot will validate costs in Excel and AS400 application and it will allocate cost for each invoice.

Easy to access: Without the need to download and install software on a local machine, we can access the RPA application from virtually anywhere.

Easy to use: Automating a business process is as easy as logging in, clicking, and automating any kind of business.

Value for time: with the help of Enterprise A2019, we can get instant value. We can log in, set up automation, and go live within minutes, giving an immediate return on your investment.

Scalability: With help of Enterprise A2019 is a highly scalable application, we can deploy a few bots and automating any kind of business processes.

1) By using Workload Management in Automation Anywhere a lot of manpower was reduced. 

2) Credential Manager used to keep customer/client information's more secure.

3) The product is dedicated to the business user and comprises advanced capabilities to offer an intuitive interface for the business user and bot developer.

4) This platform is easiest to use, avoids complexity, and ensures fast adoption & rapid deployment. 

5) It not only fulfills the requirement of the digital workforce but also be flexible to evolve with the business needs.

1) Needs some improvement in IQ BOT:

* while uploading input files we are facing issue with grouping even the same kind of PDFs

* consuming of CPU utilization and requiring more RAM

2) It is not able to use OCR effectively and has limited usability.

3) Handwritten documents are still a drawback.

4) Some of the control room GUI can be improved, it is also difficult in terms of control room management.

5) If Excel gets hanged Automation Anywhere does not give any notification.

6) Needs improvement in image recognition.

7) BOT insights taking more CPU utilization.

I have been using AA for three years and five months.  

Automation Anywhere is a stable RPA application.

Enterprise A2019 is a highly scalable application, we can start small by deploying a few bots and automating any kind of business processes.

We are satisfied with their customer service and technical support.

We have used Blue Prism for Automation. Cost wise it is higher than Automation Anywhere.

A2019 has zero installation required.

We didn't look at other options while choosing Automation Anywhere.

UiPath and Kryon.

There is only one option Automation Anywhere for cost-effective RPA.

Our primary use case is to automate the Client's workflow of reading a ticket from ServiceNow and then assign it to different bots which in turn performs the validations of the tickets with respect to different regions of the client's parameters. After the completion of the validations, the bot will update the ticket as per it's status and then send the hourly output report to Client's operations team. In between, if the bot fails, system exceptions or some business exception scenarios, human team will do the rest of the task.

Automation Anywhere has improved my organization in the following ways:

1. Repetitive tasks have been automated and hence the employees work in crucial logical thinking processes.

2. Tasks now don't depend upon the unavailability of certain employees/colleagues to be completed. Also, bots can run all day long which also affects the overall budgets.

3. Centralized Backup, Security & Disaster Recovery, Bot Insights, Workload Management, ROI Calculator in COE Dashboard.

1. IQ Bot, Automation Lifecycle Management, Workload Management, Centralized Backup, Security & Disaster Recovery

2. Image Recognition and OCR activity

3. Drag and Drop activities eases the task to write codes.

4. Control Room is very useful for bot's activity insights

5. Easy to use activities and almost all the artifacts available in the official AA's docs and forums can solve complex codes.

6. Certification exams are too good and almost cover all the required knowledge to be sound in working with Automation Anywhere.

1. User Interface can be simpler.

2. Master Certification now paid (previously it was free of cost) which sometimes creates hesitation to go for it.

3. Though the courses in the certification's learning hub are great and awesome, there is some more space for adding more explained contents.

4. Citrix automation lacks the perfect end to end automation.

5. Web Automation fails when an automated Screen Resolution is changed to some other resolutions. 

6. Pricing with respect to the competitors is more.

I have been using AA for two years. 

Performance is up to the mark with limited constraints of applications to be used. An application must be of a certain version provided by certain organizations and thus discontinuation of the said applications affects a lot while maintaining the bot.

Scalability is very high. There's no limitation of the number of bots to be used simultaneously and in a single port/machine/ID.

Technical Support provided almost all the solutions we had.

We had used a different solution for the following prominent reasons:

1. Cheaper price for same type of tool.

2. Citrix Automations.

3. Unavailability of required configurations that supports Automation Anywhere

Since the IT team and Infosec looked up for the setup, I don't have much idea about this.

Since the support for IE is discontinuing soon, we are now moving the base code to EDGE Chromium. ROI will be recounted after that. Previously as per the efficiency, we decreased the numbers from the process.

The installation is a bit of hectic process and also the price is more in market compared to other competitors.

UiPath, Blue Prism, AssistEdge

It is primarily used for automating manual processes in Project. Automation was carried out in a two-way process, downloading files from client email and scanning values from PDF file. Post these values were compared with thresholds and return mail is sent. Most of the process is carried out in the Windows environment and the Gmail suite is used as the target output location. It also included SAP application BEx for downloading the file as an Excel sheet and sent as an attachment to an email. This was all implemented in AA, and saved a few man-hours in Project.

It was helpful in managing manual task automations and innovative ways to be introduced to projects. It most benefitted us in converting daily routine tasks into automated processes at minimal cost with available infrastructure. This was the most valuable use, that it didn't cost clients infrastructure. Also, a daily status update of the process is sent through an email easily, updating all stakeholders with daily status. The overall features proved a profitable deal in implementing AA in Project.

AA control room is one central system to manage our tasks. We found it excellent to administrate. It was used for easy scheduling of process/task in Remote desktop. This helped to avoid manual intervention to trigger tasks. 

Also, various features like easy email and file reading eg: PDF, XML, etc were innovatively helpful to scan out values and use as variables in code. 

Another helpful feature is the easy command sidebar provided, where we can easily drag and drop a required command.

The accuracy in Web Recorder needs to be improved, defective outputs found most of the time(not sure if is a website side issue). 

You cannot add dynamic variables in PDF scanned values, hopefully, this can be added as a new feature in future.

Integration with most-used email applications eg: Gmail, Outlook, etc for ease in sending mails without any configuration of port or hostname. This could help to concentrate on actual problems, instead of spending time to figure out port and hostname for sending or receiving emails.

I have been using AA for the last five months. 

Recognizable stability observed in tool with various tasks performed in parallel.

Scalability may vary situation with each situation. According to me, most of the time we will get expected results with substantial capacity of computation in the process.

Customer and technical support both were supportive and were able to provide solutions quickly.

We used Blue Prism and the reason we switched was because we found more ease in using features and less documentation required compared to Blue Prism.

Complex, since there are multiple applications involved, SAP, EMail through Gmail suite. Setting up an application in remote desktop with access to SAP and emails. 

In-house.

Our ROI is 22.81%.

License for AA, before investing in infrastructure list out and analyze the current setup, since AA can be implemented at a minimal cost as well without extra infra/setup.

We previously used Blue Prism.

Primarily we use it for automating back-office operations processes. Some of the most frequent use cases are:

1. Invoice processing and proofing.

2. Reconciliation

3. Automating Timesheets

4. SOW invoice creation.

5. Creation of Credit memos

6. Pulling data from SAP and generating a report.

We use VDIs to deploy. Client & runner environment is mostly Win 10. Most of the bots are scheduled. 

Some organizations still use the manual click on the run button method instead of scheduling or running from CR.

It has definitely helped automating a lot of processes, but it is very difficult to build resilient bots. It is very difficult to find skilled developers in the market, who actually build resilient bots with appropriate error handling. Maintaining the bots is another challenge as the applications keep changing.

It is even more difficult to support a bot than build from scratch. No matter how much you document, things do turn haywire if someone new has to make changes to an existing bot. 

Documenting the AA Solution SDD, PDD is another pain point. It is very common to miss out on a lot of things. 

I feel that in places it is better to create a system to automate rather than use RPA.

Most of the features are valuable. 

1. SAP GUI commands in the latest update is helpful as a lot of processes have SAP involved. 2. APIs are helpful too, but they certainly need more improvement. APIs help in building resiliency.

3. Queues are great but need improvement. They are helpful because most of the automations are transaction-based.

 4. Good old object cloning is always helpful as it is versatile.

5. Metabots help in working with many of the legacy applications. But needs improvement there as well.

6. Credential Vaults are helpful, but needs improvement there too.

1. Excel commands should include more features.

2. Need more variable types for eg. date, amount, number, etc

3. Better API support and more APIs.

4. Queues should be enabled to directly connect to DBs.

5. Managing so many variables is a pain. Some kind of variable initialization mechanism like how Blue Prism has it will be helpful.

6. Input-output variables should be defined for taskbots as well.

7.There are a lot of glitches in AA not fixed since Ver 10. Reach me to know more about them.

8. The commands should help evaluate the current state of variables(like how in Blue prism)

10. Metabots should have command to stop the task. Basically should have all commands of a task bot.

11. No one uses "WorkFlows".

12. The user roles and the Credential Vaults administration, sharing and the whole thing in action is very confusing.

13. Automatic technical logging option should be given by default in all commands like how we have in BP.

4

When it comes to RPA, for every step things should be in the right way at the right time. It is very difficult. So I would rate it as a 5 out of 10 on scalability.

It is scalable, though, in an organizational setup where teams work in silos, I have never seen any organization truly using the scalability to its full potential.

Technical support is okay. At times it takes a lot of email exchanges involved before actually setting up a call and getting help.

AA is all I am using. Blue Prism is used but I prefer AA. Though Blue Prism is better in certain aspects mentioned earlier.

It is the same as how enterprise applications should have in terms of complexity.

We develop RPA solutions for clients.

Costs are ok. IQ Bot is too expensive. Bot Vision should come for free as one can easily use a number of other visualization options for free. There is no point in paying too much for too little.

I have evaluated Blue Prism along with AA

We need some support of documentation methodologies so that the knowledge is easily transferrable through the documents.

The use cases I have worked on made use of automated flow across multiple applications along with processing Excels and emails. We were also able to leverage a single tab for processing the entire flow of the record across three different applications. We also used the Analyze package to view the Business dashboard in the dev environment. The only drawback was that the export of the BI dashboard to the other environments is not yet available. The environments used were dev, staging, and production. The bots were exported out and imported into each environment.

Automating a tedious manual process has helped to reduce manual work and the time taken to process the records. It has also eliminated a great deal of errors because of manual processing. Since the manual process was being automated, we were able to set down sharp rules of validations which cleared out unnecessary manual interventions. Automation has also enabled uniform delivery to the customers with the emails being sent way ahead of time. This has greatly improved product delivery from our end.

The addition of excel advanced to directly append worksheets, add formulas, etc was very beneficial and made the code development faster. 

The usage of steps helped in the segregation of code blocks making it more readable and understandable. The usage of keystrokes in A2019 was much better than in v11. Also, the direct inline usage of the python scripts enabled s to handle various manual processes. 

Using the email and the file triggers were very helpful as we were able to directly execute the bots on the trigger.

We had a few setbacks because of bots getting queued and unable to force delete a task bot which kept persisting in the control room. These features should be included in future releases which will be highly beneficial. Also when the upgrade happened from .14 to .15, it did not allow for the existing task bots to be checked in. The upgrades should work seamlessly to enable high efficiency of the AA product.

We need the Business dashboard to be exported to other environments. Also for the availability of G-Suite package in the enterprise edition.

I have been using AA for six months.

A2019 needs a few more upgrades to make it more stable and robust but the AA support to handle the shortcomings has been great which has enabled us to make full use of the product.

A2019 is highly scalable and there is a lot of scope for upgrades.

Technical support was prompt and we were able to resolve most of our issues quickly

Earlier, I had used v11.3 of Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup was complex because of the confusion with the Pure cloud version. 

In-House

Our ROI is high.

There was a little confusion in terms of the setup costs for the pure cloud version because it was a bit misleading when we understood that all the Control rooms and the bot creators and runners would be on the cloud. The provisioning for the bot agents was not understood immediately.

A2019 is a very good product, there are still some upgrades to be completed, like the functionality of the GIT repository, G-suite package in the enterprise edition. One more advice would be to ensure seamless upgrades so that our current development is not hampered.