Automation Anywhere Reviews

I use Automation Anywhere mostly for automating processes and document processing. The challenges I was trying to solve by implementing Automation Anywhere involved many processes where business users perform repetitive tasks daily, such as checking PO creation or invoice validation. There are multiple processes that they have to repeatedly check each day, weekly, or monthly, which becomes more of a headache for them. We automated these processes so they will be processed automatically, and users will get the end result for validation. It is basically time-saving for them. Some of the processes we automate are due to time constraints. There are many processes where the business required a huge team to implement and process all the invoices, which this bot accomplishes in just a few minutes or hours instead of taking weeks with manual processing.

The best features of Automation Anywhere are the Task Bot and flow managing, which are easy to use. Many things have been newly introduced through continuous updating of the Automation Anywhere tool. They're providing new actions that help to automate in a much better way. The time savings for users is approximately 6 to 10%.

IQ Bot has been changed and enhanced for Automation Anywhere, but the accuracy is still not optimal. They should enhance their document processing capabilities. The Tesseract OCR engine should be significantly enhanced. While IQ Bot has been improved, it still lacks accuracy. This is why most clients opt for third-party document extraction instead of using the built-in Automation Anywhere features.

I have been using Automation Anywhere since 2019, which is approximately six-plus years.

Regarding stability, I would rate it as eight out of ten, indicating it is stable.

Regarding scalability, I would rate it as nine out of ten, indicating it is highly scalable.

I would rate Automation Anywhere support as eight out of ten.

While I don't know much about other tools, I have basic knowledge of UiPath and Blue Prism. Currently, Automation Anywhere is good, but they need to examine their selling points. UiPath is advancing with more openings and automation projects, possibly due to costing, licensing, and usability factors.

For pricing of Automation Anywhere, I would rate it as six out of ten.

I haven't used Automation Co-pilot. Thousands of users are using Automation Anywhere. My relationship with Automation Anywhere is as a developer who creates solutions and provides training for the bot. The company maintains the partnership while I work as a developer. I mostly receive notifications about events. Overall rating for Automation Anywhere is 7.5 out of 10.

I automate data entry by receiving files from one system and making data entries into other applications. Additionally, I perform file transfers by receiving files from one system and uploading them to another application. I also have OFAC verification procedures, which were previously done manually. I enter a local application, and depending on the pending cases, execute all verification processes automatically, sending responses to other applications. Basically, I have extensive data transfer automation. Moreover, I have automation that receives a file from another system and executes a procedure or invokes a web service to upload or create other things.

The product, in general, is more stable. The latest version provides easier vulnerability management. The new version offers a better experience in recognizing objects. The Co-manager tool helps calculate saving costs. Many of the issues I had in version eleven were resolved in version 360. The cloud version of Automation Anywhere 360 eliminates all the vulnerability management, making it much easier to manage. The application replaced about three employees for the OFAC verification processes, thus eliminating the need to hire more people for those tasks.

The new version requires one project to be open at a time, making it slightly more difficult to manage tasks compared to the previous version. They sell every different functionality in too many separate packages, making the procurement process complicated as it requires paying additional licensing for more features.

I have been using the solution for about six years.

The support is good. Sometimes the technical team doesn't know too much about the situation, and they rely on knowledge articles. However, they have improved.

Neutral

This is my first RPA solution. I have other automation solutions in my company, but this was my first RPA solution.

The initial setup for the initial version, version eleven, is not too complex, medium. The latest version is easier because it requires less infrastructure.

One person was involved in the deployment.

The bot replaced about three employees, saving hiring costs.

I think it is expensive. It is not a cheap solution. Though there are other options that possibly can be less expensive, this is not a cheap solution. It's not for everybody.

My supervisor conducted research based on the Gartner reviews and decided to go for Automation Anywhere. This analysis was made several years ago.

The overall rating of Automation Anywhere is eight on a scale of one to ten. Other departments in my company use Control-M and Ansible for automation. If I did not have Automation Anywhere, we might have needed to hire more people for certain processes. I don't have any direct integrations, but I do have several project integrations via file or triggering a bot when an email is received.

I currently work with both UiPath and Automation Anywhere. I mostly employ these tools for RPA automation use cases. For example, I can handle any kind of manual invoice processing, document automation, or any manual processes involving multiple business logic and applications.

I think the automation creation is very straightforward. It is drag and drop, with no need to write any code. It is very self-explanatory, making it easy for non-technical users to develop. Also, the overall platform is easy to navigate and learn, making it simple to adapt and use. As I automate manual processes, it helps reduce efforts, leading to financial savings because the speed at which I process has improved. Additionally, I have been able to redirect some headcounts to other work areas, such as research. This has yielded financial benefits by reducing the headcount on these processes. Normally, it takes three to six months post-development and moving to production to realize the benefits of each automation. Since implementing Appia, I have seen significant benefits within a couple of years.

The platform has good capabilities, but it could improve by providing more development options. Currently, it is really restricted to whatever its own ecosystem provides. Aligning the product more closely with a framework, such as the .NET framework or the standard coding practices in other languages, would simplify adaptation for regular developers. It would be beneficial if the platform provided options for power developers to integrate seamlessly with languages like Java or C#, allowing them to write their own scripts and code.

I have been using the solution for about five or six years.

So far, the solution is good and stable, without much downtime experienced.

Organizations can onboard this platform and scale their automation journey because it is very easy to adapt and set up. They can seamlessly integrate with most business automation processes and use the platform to automate their processes on those applications.

I believe the support is on par with industry standards. The SLAs are based on the criticality and compare well with other companies in the market. I would rate them around nine.

Positive

I was previously using UiPath. The switch was mostly due to cost factors, specifically regarding licensing. Otherwise, in terms of capabilities and the platform, WebKit is also a great platform.

The initial setup is somewhere in the middle, neither very complex nor very straightforward.

I had a team for deployment, coordinated by our infrastructure team. The whole team, including five engineers, was involved.

In terms of percentages, costs depend on the complexity and size of the processes. On average, I have managed to reduce spends by up to fifty or sixty percent relative to our budget.

I evaluated Blue Prism and other tools like WorkFusion, among others. However, I found the Automation Anywhere to be more capable and easier to migrate than UiPath.

My advice is to evaluate and compare with other products available in the market. If someone is looking for an automation platform that's easy to adapt, easy to set up, and competitively priced in terms of licensing, they can definitely choose this product. With courses available in Automation Anywhere University, it should not take more than a month to learn properly and try it out. I have Automation Copilot, similar to MS Copilot, to help developers build code based on prompts. I haven't fully utilized it yet. I would give the overall product a rating of nine out of ten.

We were in finance before, so all of our use cases have been in finance. Recently, we have grown out to IT. Our use cases now encompass HR, IT, legal, and everything that we can.

There have been numerous improvements in the organization. We have saved hours and time and hard dollars. In the first year, we saved over half a million dollars. That was about six months of time. After that, we have done at least three million year over year, and we have increased that very much. As far as time saved, it is well over 10,000 hours in the first year alone, and we continue to grow. This year, we are projecting 30,000 manual hours saved.

Prior to the implementation of Automation Anywhere, we had lots and lots of manual work. People would go into Excel and copy data from one master sheet to many sheets. They would compile data. They would take lots of time to do these things. Today, they can go in, press a button, and launch it. They can download hundreds and thousands of invoices, whereas previously, they used to do it manually. One of our use cases saved two people four days a week of time, which is 32 hours each. We now do that automatically in six hours.

The learning curve is initially a little daunting, but after you are in there and you understand how it works, it is very seamless. It is very easy to pick up and very intuitive, and then from there, it is pretty much you go and get your hands dirty.

The tools that we integrate with Automation Anywhere so far have been Python scripts and PowerShell. We have got Power Automate and Power Flows from Microsoft. We are starting to do some cognitive RPA. We are implementing OpenAI through Azure. We have got a lot of that going right now.

The integration with all of the documents and APIs is very seamless. There are packages available in the store if you do not have the integration built-in out of the box. They are available to everyone. Everything that we have been able to use has been just drag and drop. We can just pop in our credentials and be done.

Automation Anywhere has affected us in a positive way in terms of employee capacity and compliance. We have not had to backfill roles. We have not necessarily replaced people, and that is by intent. We did not want to replace people, but we also did not want to have to backfill people. We wanted people to focus on things that they value and be more productive instead of doing mind-numbing things that get no value, but they just have to do it.

Our time and cost savings have been immense since the beginning. In our first year, after we started launching the bots in June or July of 2019, we saved half a million dollars and 10,000 man-hours. Since then, we have grown more than 70% year over year. This year, we are on track to go up to about 40,000 man-hours saved and more than three million hard dollars saved.

They have been able to provide automation at scale pretty well. We fired up and started off with only three production machines. We are now up at five. Officially, we were going up to seven as of next week. We have heard about people here at the Imagine conference who, for example, have hundreds, so the point is proven, and the facts are there. They can scale up very quickly.

The main Automation Anywhere Program offering we use is Pathfinder. We have not utilized our partner services or anything like that, but Pathfinder has been great. Their user groups have been great. To be able to focus and see the product launches beforehand has always been advantageous. The ability to see that has been good.

The features that we found most valuable have been just automating manual processes. We are able to integrate and work with applications that users typically work with. That has been the best feature for us right now. 

Some of the biggest improvements they can make are with the interface. It can be improved in terms of usability or searching for something. For example, icons are hard to find. Typically, you jump into the search box, but being able to go in and find things quickly with the eye could be very valuable.

We have been using Automation Anywhere since 2019. It has been five years.

The stability of the solution has been great so far. It has been very resilient. Obviously, it depends on how you build it. You can obviously make a bad solution and it is going to be bad, but the uptime has been amazing. We have not had any issues with the cloud service since we moved to A360. It has been great since then.

I would rate their technical support an eight out of ten. There is some room for improvement. A lot of that depends on who you talk to. You have a great person and you have a not-so-great person. 

On the client support, so far, their service has been a ten out of ten. We have had amazing reps who I have worked with, and I have nothing bad to say about them.

I did not use a similar solution previously.

We use a mix of on-prem and cloud devices. We are exploring Microsoft Azure to go to it soon, but we are not using it today.

The deployment experience was a little bit frustrating at first, but I was not the one involved. Our architects were having issues, but we engaged with the Automation Anywhere solutions engineers. We were on the phone for maybe an hour or two hours and they fixed it. The deployment was great.

Our ROI is time saved and money saved. This has just been massive, and we continue to grow. We will be growing in the future, especially after this year.

There has been a half-million-dollar return on investment in the first six months alone. We will be up to three million this year. That is our projection, and I think we are going to exceed that.

The evaluation was done before I got here, but I know the company did evaluate UiPath, Blue Prism, Kofax, and a few others. They evaluated the top Gartner Quadrant applications.

My favorite aspect of the Imagine event is being able to see what other customers are doing, not just networking but seeing the presentations, the breakout sessions, and seeing how other companies are doing the same challenges and maybe way better. It is a good time to go and reach out and ask them how they are doing something or how they are scaling up. For example, one company here has managed to scale up to more than 800 bots. They do something with Azure where they turn on a machine, and it is very cost-effective. That is solving some of the problems that we have.

The Imagine experience has been great. This is my second year here. It has been fun. It is helpful to learn. We have done a lot, so I really enjoyed the entire experience.

I got one of my direct reports here for the first time this year. Some of the things or the reasons I did tell him to come were:

• Being able to network
• Being able to learn from others and see how they do things
• Being able to talk to people who have the same challenges that we have and being able to figure out how to do it better

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Automation Anywhere a ten out of ten.

I have many use cases for Automation Anywhere, including multiple use cases. We are automating SAP finance processes, commercial processes, and distribution processes. So many processes are there.

Automation Anywhere is very easy to use. It's a low-code platform that a person who doesn't have any technical knowledge can use. Automation Anywhere has a single control room where everything exists in a single platform.

In other tools such as Power Automate and UiPath, Power Automate has two components: desktop flow and cloud flow. To do end-to-end automation, including cloud applications and desktop applications, we have to use two things: Power Desktop Flow and Cloud Flow. Similarly, in UiPath, we have three interfaces: Orchestrator, Desktop Flow, and Cloud Flow. However, in Automation Anywhere, there is a single control room where we can do everything: cloud automation, desktop automation, everything.

It would be good if they could make a direct connector with Microsoft applications, such as Teams and SharePoint.

I have been using Automation Anywhere in my career for three years. I am using this for four projects.

I have not seen any problems regarding stability and performance. However, the community control room, which they provide free of cost, sometimes causes problems. When we purchase it, it doesn't create any problems.

The scalability depends on our project and how long it is. We have a project that started in July 2022, and we have many use cases in there. We can say that we can still run. We are still developing some automations there. The scalability depends on the project.

The technical support is structured based on the sensitivity of the ticket. I have created many tickets on the support portal since we have a purchased support portal. We get responses according to the business impact. For example, if we mark it as one, they call us within two hours. If we mark it as three, they just mail us and give the solution. Most of the time, I find that our internal team finds the solution; the support team isn't able to provide a perfect solution.

Positive

I have used UiPath, but I don't work on UiPath. My team members are working on it. As a manager, I used to use UiPath before, but now I am managing everything at the admin level.

The installation is easy. It's not too difficult. There is a provisioning of the control room where we have a customer portal. We can go there, put our licenses, provision our control room, and they can provision within fifteen minutes. After that, we can use the automation engine. The installation part is just installing a small EXE, and we can start the automation.

To deploy a solution from end to end, there is the discovery phase where we identify the use cases. Then we have some documentation phases, such as the design documents. After that, we can start the development. It depends on the use case and its complexity. On average, it takes four to five weeks to complete automation end to end.

If a person has knowledge of everything, they can do everything from development, requirement gathering, to production deployment. But according to our role-based access control, we need at least three people to do these tasks. One can do development, another can do QA testing, and the last one can do deployment.

For pricing, I don't have any idea about the pricing of Power Automate. Power Automate costs fifteen dollars per month for a single creator license. Whereas Automation Anywhere provides a package where we are getting one attended license, creator license, and one control room. It costs seven hundred fifty dollars per month. We can say Automation Anywhere is more expensive than Power Automate.

Automation Anywhere has their own university, which is on an online platform, and all the courses are free. Anyone can make their account on the Automation Anywhere University, get registered in the courses, and take all the training sessions.

It is easy to use for business users who don't have technical skills. There is a license called Citizen Developer. I have a scenario where, six months ago, our client's manager wanted to do some automation, and he didn't want to disclose these things with anyone. He asked me to give him a Citizen Developer license, where he can do his automations. He automates things such as Outlook and some Excels.

I used the Copilot. It allows the user to interact with the live running boards. Before the Copilot, unattended boards were there. When we trigger the board, we cannot give any input at runtime. But with the help of Copilot, we can give input at runtime whenever we want to change the value of any variable.

I would rate the solution overall as nine out of ten.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for more than a year in my college laboratory. I utilize it for editing, collecting student assignments, data entry, report generation, grading multiple-choice questions, managing lab equipment, student communication, and automatic software installation or updating. The primary functions include handling repeated administrative tasks, data entry, feedback generation, grading processes, maintaining lab equipment processes, taking attendance, and communicating with students. If any software installation or update in the lab is required, I manage it with the help of labs.

The task bot is the most valuable feature, which I use primarily to automate repetitive and rule-based tasks like attendance tracking, grading, and report generation. I also utilize IQ Bots for more complex tasks involving unstructured data, and email automation for sending bulk reminders to students. It reduces my work time significantly, giving me the ability to focus on other manual tasks. Without Automation Anywhere, my tasks would take much more time, as these repetitive human tasks need daily attention.

Overall improvement is needed for non-technical users who face challenges with how to use it and how to perform more tasks. It should be more user interface friendly for non-technical users and enhance its ease of integration with third-party applications.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for more than a year in my college laboratory.

When we discuss its scalability, it is available across various departments and adapts well.

There are many FAQs, personal calls, and community forums available. Technical support can be easily obtained through official channels, although sometimes the community forum is not accessible to many users.

I used UiPath before starting Automation Anywhere. I also used Blue Prism, which was difficult due to its need for coding.

Initially, we found it a bit complex, but after learning about it, it served us well. For complex tasks, deployment takes about two to three days.

We can achieve nearly eight lakhs per annum in total savings by using Automation Anywhere.

I recommend Automation Anywhere to other users because it minimizes repetitive human tasks, saves time, and helps reduce costs. I would rate Automation Anywhere nine out of ten.

Our company uses Automation Anywhere for enterprise automation of various finance tasks, focusing on accounting. This includes processing accounts payable invoices, managing oil and gas revenue, extracting data from text, and downloading files from our ERP system. These automated processes, some of which are business-critical and complex, enhance efficiency and accuracy within our finance operations.

Automation Anywhere has helped to address process bottlenecks and departmental inefficiency. It is used as an attempt to streamline operations.

It simplifies the management of complex workloads.

Automation Anywhere has a significant learning curve, but it is understandable and reasonable. Having a support team makes the process easier compared to learning it independently.

The training for non-technical users takes one to two months.

We've integrated numerous tools with Automation Anywhere, most notably our accounting system, which is interfaced via SQL and terminal. Additionally, we utilize RPA to interact with various systems employed by other departments.

One of the strengths of Automation Anywhere is its user-friendly interface, which makes it accessible even to those without a development background. As someone who began with no coding knowledge, I found it a great entry point into the world of automation. This accessibility, compared to tools like UiPath, stems from its intuitive design. Furthermore, the capacity to deploy RPA solutions across various virtual devices, a common feature in RPA, is invaluable for streamlining and scaling automation efforts.

Automation Anywhere's API feature is a fantastic offering, providing the valuable ability to call or execute tasks.

As a developer, I find Automation Anywhere's bot editor riddled with minor workflow issues that hinder productivity. For instance, the broken bot package versioning system prevents copying and pasting code between bots with different package versions, a stark contrast to the flexibility of Python. This inconvenience arises even when transferring code between bots within the same process, significantly disrupting workflow. While there are other minor improvements I could suggest, Automation Anywhere has been, albeit slowly, addressing our concerns.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for five years.

The stability of Automation Anywhere is quite good, with few outages from the platform itself.

Automation Anywhere is a very scalable product capable of handling large-scale automation operations.

In my experience, Automation Anywhere's technical support has been lacking. Many of their representatives don't understand the product enough to offer effective assistance. As a developer, it's frustrating to encounter issues and try to communicate them to support staff who seem unfamiliar with the underlying technology. This lack of product knowledge hinders effective troubleshooting and resolution.

Our current support plan is the most basic, so I don't anticipate a quick resolution. However, they generally respond within the expected timeframe for this level of support.

Neutral

Although I wasn't involved in deploying Automation Anywhere, I recall the process being straightforward and immediately successful for the company.

The implementation included a team of four to five individuals supported by a contractor.

We evaluated UiPath and another product that I cannot recall.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten.

My experience upgrading Automation Anywhere from an on-premise solution to the cloud was challenging despite some helpful features. While a tool was provided to convert version 11 tasks to 360, it introduced unnecessary code during migration. This inefficiency may be specific to Automation Anywhere or a common issue with automation upgrades. Regardless, the process was lengthy and tedious.

Automation Anywhere requires considerable maintenance due to a combination of factors. Our automation of an older Java-based accounting solution causes some challenges. Additionally, automating browser-based tasks in large oil and gas SaaS companies leads to frequent breakage of bots when the underlying HTML or code changes. Consequently, ongoing maintenance is necessary and will be a permanent responsibility for our maintenance team, which includes our project leader and a group of developers.

Establish consistent policies and procedures before doing anything. This aligns with the Center of Excellence framework. Having clear, consistent policies is important before building bots and implementing solutions.

We obtain use cases from the business and optimize their solutions by implementing Lean Six Sigma methodologies to eliminate process waste. We then follow this with end-to-end automation that requires no manual intervention. Automation Anywhere is the tool we employ to achieve this.

Our goal is not to solve problems but to automate manual tasks previously performed by humans. Rule-based processes require minimal human decision-making and are ideal candidates for automation. By using Automation Anywhere, we aim to replace repetitive human labour with machine efficiency.

For example, a business user performs the same routine daily: logging in, analyzing Excel data, and responding to customer emails. This repetitive manual work is ideal for automation. We use the Automation Anywhere tool to build a bot that mimics these human actions. The bot logs in, processes emails, responds to customers, and completes the entire process autonomously, from start to finish.

We use generative AI to process emails by determining customer sentiment and intent: happy, inquiring, dissatisfied, or angry. The AI makes decisions based on email content and automatically generates requests or tickets in ServiceNow, assigning them to appropriate users. This automation replaces the manual task of sifting through thousands of daily customer emails, allowing employees to focus on higher-value work. The combination of generative AI and Automation Anywhere automates this process efficiently.

Automation Anywhere increased productivity by 30 percent.

Automation Anywhere has significantly re-emerged in the industry over the past few years. The platform has introduced numerous features and a robust cloud deployment pipeline. The initial focus is on a cloud-based architecture and a new structure supporting third-party coding languages like Python, VBScript, and VBA. Document Automation, formerly IQ Bot, simplifies document automation development. Additionally, Automation Anywhere acquired Shibumi, rebranded as CWE Manager, to provide a pipeline for automation and offer detailed performance metrics, including ROI, savings, and bot health for business users.

AI is the future, and automation is a crucial component. Our healthcare organization, which manufactures products like gloves and masks and provides in-house hospitality to patients across the US, has significant opportunities for automation and AI implementation. With six data centres globally and a new CIO focused on cost reduction, we're aggressively pursuing cloud migration to Azure and have partnered with Google for AI integration over the next five years. These initiatives aim to streamline operations, reduce costs, and enhance patient care.

Throughout my experience, I have integrated nearly 600 applications with Automation Anywhere, encompassing a diverse range of software, including desktop-based, standalone, and web-based applications.

Automation Anywhere has significantly reduced costs in my organization. For example, a team of 20 employees previously spent six minutes manually entering 20,000 Excel records into an Oracle application daily. This process consumed valuable time and resources, including Oracle licenses and employee wages. Automating this task eliminated the need for one Oracle license by accessing the database directly. Our automation solution processes 10,000 records in just 15 minutes, drastically improving efficiency and accuracy.

Integrating workflows requires careful consideration of automation complexity, determined by the number and type of applications involved and the number of interactions within each application. We assess applications based on web-based vs. standalone, legacy vs. automation-friendly, and the number of fields requiring input. A complexity score is assigned. Zero to ten is low, 11 to 20 is medium, and 21 to 30 is high, and corresponding timelines for development, testing, QA, pilot, and handover are established. Once timelines are set, we focus on securing application access for developers, providing necessary test data, and coordinating with business stakeholders for UAT testing. After successful UAT, the bot is deployed to production for a monitored pilot phase before full-scale implementation. This approach is standard workflow management practice in our organization.

The savings from automation depend on the specific automation implemented. Some automation may provide minimal benefits to the business. For example, if a new automation is introduced and the business user spends only two percent of their time per day on the related task, the savings may be insignificant. To evaluate the ROI, we calculate the costs over five years, including development, support, licensing, and infrastructure setup. In the first year, the focus is on investment and implementation. While savings may not be fully realized in the second year, from the third to fifth year, the business can expect significant returns due to reduced human labor. The automated process can be continuously enhanced to adapt to changing business requirements. My organization has achieved savings of approximately one point five billion over the past year and a half through automation.

Automation Anywhere's most valuable features include generative AI, similar to Copilot, which will significantly benefit developers; low-code or no-code technology; and document automation capable of extracting data from structured and unstructured PDF formats, presenting it clearly and easy to follow. An upcoming feature will also provide graphical representations or dashboards to illustrate cost savings, ROI, and FTE benefits achieved through process automation.

The Copilot recently integrated into Automation Anywhere requires significant refinement and additional features. Essentially, it still necessitates manual review, which is inefficient. For example, instructing Copilot to write code for opening and reading an Excel file generates necessary commands but still requires developer input to specify target data, column numbers, and desired data. This indicates a need for further training to enhance the bot's capabilities.

Integrating Automation Anywhere with existing systems often proves challenging due to the prevalence of legacy applications that are not automation-friendly. Unlike modern applications with easily identifiable elements, these older systems require creative problem-solving to develop reliable and error-resistant automation. This challenge is common across the RPA industry, necessitating innovative approaches to data extraction. For instance, utilizing software development kits, XML files, or APIs can be more efficient than navigating through multiple application pages. Additionally, implementing fuzzy logic scripts is crucial for handling data entry errors, such as name variations, to ensure accurate matching and process success.

The learning landscape for Automation Anywhere offers various certifications and training materials. While the community provides a platform for interaction and resource sharing, not all training content aligns with the specific needs of developers. Additionally, the community forum, though helpful, doesn't always provide timely or comprehensive solutions to user inquiries. The company's internal structure, with multiple product teams, can also complicate the process of obtaining support and resolving issues.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for one year.

I would rate the stability of Automation Anywhere nine out of ten.

Automation Anywhere is a highly scalable tool, particularly evident in its ability to handle user concurrency, as demonstrated in document automation. Its scalability is supported by robust hardware and software requirements, high-performance document and file processing benchmarks, and the capacity to increase or decrease resources to match fluctuating demands flexibly. Essentially, Automation Anywhere empowers businesses to adapt efficiently to changing needs.

Automation Anywhere offers tiered support levels based on partnership status. Gold, silver, and platinum partners receive varying degrees of assistance, including dedicated support teams and prioritized ticket resolution. While their services come at a premium, the benefits include timely responses and efficient problem-solving.

Neutral

I have worked in various industries and have experience automating processes using different automation tools available on the market, including VBA, VBScript, and Python.

Automation Anywhere, while a formidable RPA tool, currently ranks second behind UiPath. Both companies are industry leaders, continually innovating to enhance scalability and reliability. While Automation Anywhere has made significant strides in recent years, UiPath maintains a slight edge in overall market performance. Compared to other available options, Automation Anywhere remains a top choice due to its robust features and reliability.

The deployment process in Automation Anywhere is relatively straightforward. We export the package from one environment and import it into another. However, each organization has its own unique deployment standards, often involving processes like change advisory board approvals. Therefore, the actual deployment method will vary depending on the specific organization's guidelines and procedures.

The overall deployment time for a robot is five minutes. A team was involved in this process. As the developer, I was responsible for obtaining the necessary approvals and moving the robot code from enrolment to deployment. Other organizations may have specific teams dedicated to these tasks. For example, they might have their own Centre of Excellence team that handles all deployments. Therefore, the deployment process can vary depending on the automation and the specific organization. In my current organization, we handle deployments ourselves, while in my previous organization, there was a separate team dedicated to this task. Prior to that, a support engineer typically performed these duties.

Automation Anywhere's pricing is significantly higher than other RPA solutions. We recently conducted a small proof of concept with their generative AI integration and received a quote of $75,000 for one year. In comparison, Microsoft offered a similar solution for only $20,000. This substantial price difference makes Automation Anywhere one of the most expensive RPA options on the market, second only to UiPath.

I would rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten.

I would rate the ease of use of Automation Anywhere as a six out of ten for someone without any technical expertise.

The learning curve for non-technical people is two months.

There are several areas for improvement in the implementation of Automation Anywhere. Many employees are reluctant to entrust their tasks to automation due to concerns about job displacement. While this is a common misconception, automation is designed to streamline processes and free up employees to focus on more complex and strategic tasks. From a development perspective, Automation Anywhere continually introduces new features, but there is often a lack of effective communication and training. To maximize the benefits of automation, developers should adopt a proactive approach, seeking creative solutions and considering the user-friendliness of automated processes.

My entire organization has close to 27,000 employees worldwide. Our enterprise team, consisting of 15 members including me, handles automation work for the entire organization. My team consists of six members dedicated to support activities, monitoring and assisting the robots. The remaining members are part of the development team, solely focused on development tasks.

Upgrading Automation Anywhere is a moderately complex task due to the numerous dependencies that must be carefully considered and planned for during any migration or upgrade. Yesterday, we successfully migrated our Automation Anywhere Control Room from version 32 to version 33. Prior to the upgrade, we underwent extensive preparation, including reviewing Change Advisor Reports, obtaining necessary approvals, and coordinating with the database team to create a backup of the Automation Anywhere database. Once these prerequisites were fulfilled, we proceeded to the server, uninstalled version 32, and installed version 33. The previously created backup was then integrated to ensure accurate data reflection in the latest version. While proper planning is essential, the upgrade process is neither overly complex nor excessively straightforward, making it a medium-level task.

We have a team of six dedicated to support and maintenance activities, managing approximately 250 automations across our organization. The level of maintenance required varies depending on the developer's experience and the complexity of the automation. Junior developers may create bots that are more prone to errors, leading to increased maintenance. However, senior developers or well-designed automations typically require less maintenance. In addition to support and maintenance, our team is also responsible for minor enhancements, bug fixes, and upgrades or downgrades of our automation systems.

We don't need to constantly monitor the bot as it runs according to its schedule. It performs its tasks autonomously, but manual intervention is necessary in certain situations. For example, if an expected input file fails to arrive at the scheduled time, the automation process will stop. In such cases, a support engineer must contact the business to address the missing file. Additionally, manual intervention might be required for downstream automation tasks, such as when a front-end UI changes on an application. These situations depend on the specific downstream application, business needs, and other factors.

I would highly recommend Automation Anywhere as a technology solution. I've been involved with it for nearly twelve years and have witnessed its remarkable evolution. From its early stages to its current state, I'm impressed by its potential for future innovation and problem-solving. Moreover, I've seen first-hand how Automation Anywhere has significantly benefited businesses by reducing costs and saving on full-time equivalent labour. In one instance, I observed how a single automation process could accomplish the work of ten people in just one hour.