Automation Anywhere Reviews

The company called me to work on the goal of restructuring the team and putting everything in order. When I joined this team, I needed to assess the current state of the program, and I essentially had to reorganize the entire program. Fortunately, that's what I've been doing right now; I have experience managing Automation Anywhere, and it's a great tool for automation since it gives you a lot of flexibility to work with different applications.

From my perspective, the most valuable features in Automation Anywhere are the ability to connect to different systems of records. We are using it at a very basic level; we only use RPA and are not using Intelligent Automation or AI yet; it's not part of my contract. Document Automation is still growing and is not, from my perspective, 100% mature, yet the basic functionality of RPA is amazing. I really appreciate how you can connect and interact, regardless of the system of record, infrastructure, or platform, and that has given us a lot of power to help the organization interact and eventually automate their processes.

In terms of reducing manual work, I think Automation Anywhere could improve by incorporating better integration with DevOps. This is functionality; it's a methodology that cannot be integrated 100% with Automation Anywhere, and a lot of companies are requiring that right now. I think Automation Anywhere is in the right direction, however, a better task mining tool would be great. What we currently have with Fortress IQ needs to mature more, and I say this since people spend weeks creating PDDs documentation. If we had a user-friendly tool that could record sessions and generate PDDs in minutes, it would greatly assist our processes. I have seen tools similar to that, not with Automation Anywhere. It would be great to have it.

I started using the RPA Automation Anywhere in 2017, starting with zero automations. After seven years, we've ended up having around 120-some automations.

My assessment of the stability and reliability of Automation Anywhere or its bots depends on how you define your development strategies. If you have good best practices, reusable code, an effective framework, and a solid development methodology, bots can be very stable. We do have some bots that fail, however, they generally fail since we weren't good developers or due to a glitch in the system, not due to the fact that Automation Anywhere failed. We see issues. That said, those are often related to server maintenance and upgrades.

In terms of how Automation Anywhere scales with the growing needs of my organization, in the cloud, I don't see much problem; the cloud will scale based on our needs. The only concern I see is probably on the Bot Runner side; I need to support VMs, and my team is working to migrate those VMs to servers. This change will help me scale since I can have multiple Bot Runners on a single server rather than adding more VMs; increasing the power of the server allows for 20 to 30 Bot Runners to operate effectively.

We migrated to gold support last year, which is excellent. What I appreciate is that you have a technology partner who gets to know your environment, and that's very important. When I began at my previous company without gold or platinum support, I had to explain my environment every time there was an issue, wasting hours. Now that we are in gold support, they already understand our setup, infrastructure, and pain points, allowing us to address issues more efficiently.

Prior to adopting Automation Anywhere, my company used Excel macros, which are not an enterprise solution; they are more a personal automation tool. Some people were using Power Automate, still, that's not an enterprise solution; you cannot integrate it with the rest of the tools; it's just a Microsoft tool where you can only work with Microsoft products.

The primary drivers that led my company to choose an RPA tool and eventually Automation Anywhere are its capabilities to connect and integrate with other systems of records, not only with specific brands like Microsoft. When I started in 2017, we decided to use Automation Anywhere primarily for its ability to interact with various systems and it was regarded as an enterprise solution.

I have seen a lot of benefits using Automation Anywhere. We currently have around 50 automations running in production, and I am confident that we are saving several million dollars as a result. I cannot provide those numbers right now. Still, I can see many benefits emerging. We work very closely with the legal team, who have to do a lot of manual work; we basically help a lot. That's my main customer right now. The next important customer is technology and digital technology, and then finance. So from all those three teams, I'm covering probably 80% of the company. As a financial institution focusing mainly on financial advice, we will be opening a completely digital bank in the next few days.

I am aware of the existence of other tools, however, I have not evaluated them. When I started in my previous company, there was a prior agreement for me to use Automation Anywhere. When I joined this company, they were already using it; my understanding is they were at some point evaluating UiPath, however, the cost was a huge decision-maker.

I work in the banking industry as the Intelligent Automation Manager for engineering. I joined this company almost a year ago, and I worked before that for one of the largest banks in the US.

My advice would be to ensure proper planning before adopting Automation Anywhere. First, you must define your environment, focusing on security and compliance. Governance is key, and once you are set up, ensure you are developing proper metrics since you need to show management the savings generated from automations. Once you've established that, implement best practices and standards, create a framework, and I wish anyone good luck; they likely will be successful.

I would rate Automation Anywhere as an eight out of ten. It's a great solution, however, there are limitations with tools COE Manager and Document Automation. I have seen some restrictions in the system, and making improvements to tools Fortress IQ would enhance our experience. I understand Automation Anywhere's operational goals, however, maturing these tools would make it an even better solution from my perspective.

Something I have observed repeatedly, as a technical person who engages with various attendees at Imagine events, is the need for clarity when new solutions arise. AI is excellent. That said, my question is about data storage; will data be kept within our control? This topic is crucial for compliance and legal approvals. I think it would be beneficial to have more technical sessions demonstrating how new tools are implemented. For example, during a discussion on Document Automation at a conference, I was concerned about how data moves from on-premises to the cloud, as it could take us out of compliance. More information on these aspects would help people understand the implications.

Our primary use cases for Automation Anywhere focus around accounting and finance. We have some that have moved into our land department focusing mainly on lease records.

The benefit has been in terms of the bot taking a job that someone was doing and being able to move that person into another position. We have also seen a department with ten people being able to do the same work with two people. We were able to move those other people to more value-added tasks.

The valuable features of Automation Anywhere really are around the ease of use. Our RPA program focuses on citizen development, and all of the developers have full-time jobs as accountants, and then they work in automation on the side when time allows. 

The benefits of using Automation Anywhere focus on error reduction and moving people to work on more high-value tasks. We haven't focused so much on eliminating positions, but actually moving people to more valuable tasks. It helps to take away things that normally take a lot of time for someone to do, but don't add a lot of value to their job.

I really appreciate the user interface of Automation Anywhere, but I would like to see some improvement on some of the automation around screen processing. This includes adding some artificial intelligence on the way that bots actually can read the screen and know when things change and be able to adapt to those changes.

I've been using Automation Anywhere for around six years.

Automation Anywhere has been very stable for us. Control rooms are up, and we haven't had any issues or major issues where we had significant downtime.

Automation Anywhere scales very easily as we grow with our program. We're able to add bot runners as needed, as well as control rooms. It's very easy to add additional resources for the program.

Automation Anywhere support has been very good. We're able to put in tickets and request support, and we'll have a support engineer contact us and help us resolve our issues. 

I would give them a nine out of ten. The initial contact might often be a chatbot, which would be our initial response. However, many times, we need to talk to a real engineer to resolve our issues. Overall, it's been very good. Sometimes the chatbot can help you resolve your issues without having to further escalate.

Before Automation Anywhere, we did not have any kind of automated solution. Our audit partner came back and said that we should be doing some automation using an RPA product. At that point, my boss asked me to figure out which was the correct product for us to use, and we started our journey there.

During our deployment of Automation Anywhere, the first and most important thing that we did was to make sure that we got everyone trained. We spent a lot of upfront time training our developers, and that really paid off in the long term. We ran them all through Automation Anywhere's university, so they did all the online training, and then we brought Automation Anywhere in and did classroom training for our developers. That really paid off in dividends, and we were able to end up with a good developer base.

When we started with Automation Anywhere, we were on-prem with version eleven, and then we migrated to the cloud with A360. We saw a tremendous increase in productivity by going to the cloud. We currently aren't using any other cloud providers.

We primarily focus on natural gas production in Pennsylvania. Our office is located in Fort Worth, Texas. We have around 57 automations in production at this point.

The pricing that we received from Automation Anywhere in the beginning was very economical for us. We've seen a lot of benefit from what we spent to what we're receiving. From the beginning, it's been a very low-cost implementation for us.

When we started our journey with Automation Anywhere, we evaluated UiPath, Pega, and Automation Anywhere. We brought all three in to do a proof of concept, and from that, we determined that Automation Anywhere would be the easiest to use for our citizen developers. After the Automation Anywhere proof of concept, one of our accountants went back to her desk, and she was able to create a bot on her own.

My advice to other companies that are looking to purchase Automation Anywhere would be to make sure you have a champion for your process automation program so that you can get support throughout the organization. Automation Anywhere will be a trusted partner to help you through that process. 

I would rate Automation Anywhere a ten out of ten. As a solution for process automation, it's been very easy for us to use, and I don't think that we could have done it with any other solution.

We have had a number of different use cases for Automation Anywhere. As a higher education institution, many of the use cases have been for back office operations. 

Some use cases include automating expense reimbursement processes. This involves the submission of data after collection, validation of data, and several different steps in that process. 

We are exploring invoice reconciliation and invoice processing as a new use case. Many of the other use cases have been system-to-system data transfer where they don't have APIs, which has been accomplished through UI automation and RPA.

We chose Automation Anywhere to investigate the feasibility of using RPA in place of dedicating other team's time for developing custom APIs between systems. We wanted to tackle problems that we couldn't dedicate resources to solving with custom in-house development and bridge the gap between third-party external software.

The governance guardrails built into the Automation Anywhere platform have allowed us to develop solutions at a pace while adhering to our internal organizational policies.

The scalability of Automation Anywhere, the framework, and user interface are particularly impressive. When evaluating Automation Anywhere versus alternatives such as UiPath for RPA specifically, their tool works exceptionally well. Their customer support model has been fantastic at resolving issues. Security and infrastructure are other significant components why we continue to use them. 

The actual tools on the RPA side have been very nice to work with. When onboarding members of our team, being a lower-code platform with much of it being no code, it has been good to bring people up to speed. It's easy to bring both people from developer and non-developer backgrounds up to scale. Our developers have applied standard SDLC principles towards working within that platform.

With agentic process automation, there are several challenges we were looking to solve. GenAI infused document automation has been of great interest to us, especially in invoice processing for our financial side. With APA in particular, some use cases involve taking complex processes that could have large decision trees, and instead of dedicating time and resources towards fleshing out all those if/then statements or pushing exceptions to human middle processing, we aim to lower that scope and allow for quicker delivery time.

The Composer orchestration tools have been great in developing new solutions. Automation Anywhere started as a pilot at our CMU, where we are at the forefront of numerous computer science areas. It's part of our CTO's mission to embrace automation tools, artificial intelligence, and robotic process automation, bringing internal processes into the 21st century and beyond.

Automation Anywhere helps us overcome challenges in the age of GenAI. The platform has solved our initial challenges as we transition from being a pilot to a long-term customer. With GenAI, challenges revolve around use case identification and implementing AI in processes while ensuring governance and protecting sensitive information, government information, and student information.

AI governance and data protection are extremely important for our company. We are currently reviewing the Autopilot capability and evaluating document automation with AI capabilities for new solutions.

As we expand our components of the Automation Anywhere platform that we utilize, we need better connections between them. Currently, our shell framework, metrics, logging, and guardrails are done at an RPA or Bot level. As we take advantage of other features such as work queues, process Composer, and AI agents, we would prefer to see features around offering frameworks around those models or domains specifically that can encompass all of the subset features that Automation Anywhere offers.

Bot Insight is an available feature, and we can create our own custom metrics and logging in RPA Bots, but we don't want to have to send results to a logging subset bot after using an AI agent or higher components such as document automation. We need a native way in Automation Anywhere's framework to tie all that information together, including AI dashboard, governance dashboards, and document automation results.

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

Their customer support model has been fantastic at resolving issues.

Positive

In the RPA space specifically, we have not used any other solution that addresses similar needs before using Automation Anywhere. 

For internal technologies prior to implementing RPA, we had various solutions. For table-based and database-based operations, users were using spreadsheets. 

We are now able to convert certain things to databases, even without native APIs for certain software platforms, because we can leverage Automation Anywhere to bridge the gap between disconnected systems. In the specific landscape that Automation Anywhere competes in, we haven't used direct competitors. 

We have been replacing software developer adjacent technologies, custom script solutions, and low code/no code platforms with different features from Automation Anywhere.

Standing up the service itself had no significant challenges. There were a few small challenges, however, nothing significant that were nonstarters for us. Our teams were able to work around any issues. The biggest thing we had was was enabling SAML authentication to work with our identity management services. 

Other than that, standing up the service, connecting the host controller to our local VMs, etc., that was easy. There was a little bit of network stuff, and some of DevOps stuff. Thankfully, we have a great DevOps team. Working with Automation Anywhere is largely straightforward and seamless.

We have been happy with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Automation Anywhere so far. There is sticker shock with many new features, however, we definitely think that the end results can more than justify the cost. We are evaluating the use case and the resources needed to stand up solutions using some of these features. 

The cost versus return for the traditional out-of-the-box features has been very reasonable.

Since the evaluation phase, we have not considered other solutions that do the same as Automation Anywhere. We have been extremely happy with Automation Anywhere. The tools provided for the cost, scalability, robustness, and infrastructure have been very satisfactory, and we have not had a significant need to evaluate alternative platforms. 

This may not stay that way forever as this is an ever-changing landscape, but for the foreseeable future, we don't see ourselves evaluating alternative platforms.

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

I am the manager of our intelligent automation COE within HR. We operate in a federated model. I lead the HR team, and there are similar teams that exist across the company in five or six other areas.

We have plenty of use cases within HR specifically. We have automation for candidate-facing opportunities before people join the company. We especially have a lot of automation opportunities for our recruiting. The human capital management platform that we use is an SAP product. We use SAP SuccessFactors, so naturally, a lot of our automation opportunities come through that platform. There are a lot of emails and notifications to managers for talent management, talent acquisition, and all the way through to payroll, or anything that falls underneath the HR function. Nothing is off limits, and we have pretty much touched most of the functional areas within the department.

In terms of comparing the processes and tasks automated using Automation Anywhere versus how they were done prior to implementation, a lot of the processes had remained the same, especially in the early years. A lot of people were leveraging RPA platforms to recreate processes the way a human was doing them, so the look and feel were very similar to how a human was doing a process, going across applications over the UI, whereas now, there is a heavy focus on process improvement. A lot of people are leaning into process improvement or re-engineering a process before it is automated and making sure that we are automating the right thing. 

It allows for more reliable dynamic automations if you can leverage something out of the UI. You can leverage a database or an API versus automating something similar to how a human would click through a screen. There is definitely a heavy emphasis on design requirements or completely changing a process from a functional perspective, which takes a lot of work, but your automation is easier to create and maintain in the long run.

Before Automation Anywhere, I have used other RPA platforms. From comparing it to others, it is very intuitive. I do not have a development background, but I lead a team of developers. I am trying to manage and teach them how to use the tool as well. I find that it comes across as very easy to use. I have seen a handful of new developers pick it up within a couple of days. They are able to understand the UI and create their first couple of automations within a few weeks and then they get running with very complex things within the first year. It is very intuitive to use. There are definitely a lot more capabilities coming out, but it is all within the same platform. If you know how to go through the platform, they make it very easy to deploy technical solutions.

Automation Anywhere is one of the easier platforms to learn. There are a lot of online resources, and they also have a community forum. If there is not a video on how to do something explicitly and you have a question, in their developer community, people are quick to respond. You can also simply Google something or look at their website, and you will be able to find an answer for it. Especially after you go through the first couple of days of their university's online training through the community version or get your hands on automation, it clicks pretty quickly. When you see it once and learn everything that is in the platform, everything comes pretty quickly after that, so the learning curve is pretty shallow. 

In terms of the tools that are integrated with Automation Anywhere, we are doing a lot of work within ServiceNow. I just became aware they have a thing called Connector Builder, which basically allows us to build connections right there within Automation Anywhere with ServiceNow. There are other integrations with SAP or Active Directory right there in the developer's toolkit so that they can build automations with it. This makes integrating with your system of records or whatever systems you are automating a lot easier.

We have not done any integrations with document automation. That is a big use case that we are looking at. I know intelligent document processing has come a long way, so I am very interested to see how seamless that integration works out. In terms of being able to integrate and leverage any of our SaaS platforms or on-prem applications that we are automating, we have not seen any limitations to it. We have been able to automate everything. Being able to use API task paths or just expose more endpoints from an API perspective makes the developers' lives a lot easier. It is technically a little bit harder, but if you are able to use APIs, then integrating that way will alleviate future maintenance for automation. It is definitely useful to have that in the platform.

Automation Anywhere has had a big impact on the business. I can speak mostly from an HR perspective. All of our automations that are currently running in production save about 2 million dollars annually, both from a cost savings and cost avoidance perspective. Certain things have a dollar amount. There is a dollar amount associated with a transaction that we can automate, and then we can also inject that time back into our employees' days. Freeing up that capacity allows them to go use their human decision-making skills on more advanced and complex projects and allows automations to do that manual, repetitive, and mundane work. Hours-wise, I do not have a metric, but we are able to save 2 million dollars with our portfolio. We are continuing to add new automations, which makes that number go up and up. 

In terms of time savings, it has been super helpful. We are able to give employees their time back.

We have not had any issues with scalability. Everything from our licensing structure and being able to deploy bots across the enterprise is pretty efficient. Being able to get the most out of our bot runners and start looking at bot performance and utilization across those machines has enabled us to get the most out of it. We are able to deploy everything that at least HR needs right now. I know some of the other companies or departments might need more bot runners to keep up with that scalability. When it comes to end-to-end automation and working across COEs in a federated model, that is a different story. We have not tackled that yet, but in terms of being able to deliver work for HR at our company, Automation Anywhere has been a huge help, and there were no issues in terms of getting the job done.

Automation Anywhere offers a lot of programs to get involved. I recently became involved in their MVP, the Most Valuable Pathfinder program. That is a smaller group in the Pathfinder community that allows us to see early access to what is coming and things that will be showcased at Imagine or the products clubs. We sometimes will be able to get early access to dev environments to go poke around and see what is coming. That helps leadership also see what is coming and be able to make a decision on whether or not to buy new features or capabilities. It gives us a little bit more time to go out to our business stakeholders and the people we are automating processes for and say that there is a use case here. Could we apply some new technologies? 

Four or five years ago, we looked at everything in terms of whether we could automate a functional process, but now, there is a lot more coming with Generative AI and intelligent document processing. There are product clubs and community forums to see how others are leveraging the same tools. It is super helpful to see how other people are applying the same technology. It may spark some interest throughout our company.

The most valuable feature of the platform right now for us is just getting the most out of the tool. When I first joined the company, we were on version 11, which is the on-premise version of Automation Anywhere. Getting over to the new cloud platform A360 has enabled us to get the most out of general RPA or robotic process automation. There are plenty more tools that we are looking at, but just being able to automate functional processes, whether through the UI or APIs, to alleviate that manual work from the department has been really our bread and butter. That is where we see a lot of the value for the company right now.

From a platform perspective, our model has been getting operational data back out to our automation owners. We are a pretty small team. We have about 70 automations in production. Everything that we automate, we naturally own a fraction of that just from a technical perspective. Having a team of developers, you want them focused on building new things. We are at an inflection point where we have automated so much that just keeping the lights on certainly takes 20% to 50% of the time, depending on the time of year. Being able to enable the stakeholders is one of my main focuses. If we are automating their process, I want them to continue owning that as much as possible. We are just expanding on the bot insights. From a security perspective, there have been some challenges for us getting our customers in there from a role-level security perspective and making sure that they have full access to the control room and their automation after it is automated. Being able to manage a digital worker has been a big focus. That is what I am looking to get the most out of the tool right now.

I have been in automation for about seven years now. This is my second or third year with Automation Anywhere, specifically. I just went over my two-year mark. This is the beginning of the third year using the platform.

The stability of Automation Anywhere is fantastic. The platform itself is very reliable. Automation, in general, can be finicky sometimes, and it will break. That is business as usual, but in terms of the platform, reliability, and uptime, it is good. If there are patches, by being on the cloud, we get them faster. Fixes and new features are constantly available to us. We have no complaints there. It has been a great journey.

I have not had any issues being able to deploy solutions for all of HR. The platform has everything to offer that we would need to automate for our company.

Their customer support is very good. There are very few times when we have to go out and open up a ticket, but every time we do, we get very timely support. We seem to be getting connected to the same reps, which is super helpful to build that relationship. If we cannot find a knowledge article or something online, they point us in the right direction or let us know if there is a patch or something else coming that will fix it for us.

I have used a competitor. I worked with UiPath for about four years before Automation Anywhere. There are a lot of similarities in terms of conceptual robotic process automation and similar trends in terms of intelligent document processing, process mining, and task mining. I am sure they all have features around Generative AI.

It was deployed before I joined. In terms of the deployment model, it is probably fully on the cloud, but I am not too sure. When I joined two years ago, we were on version 11 on-prem. One of the biggest things I had to do was migrate us from version 11 to the cloud version.

Even if we do not automate anything and just keep the automations that we have running, that is going to save around 2 million dollars year over year for our HR group. Continuing to expand into new automations will drive higher ROI. So, year over year, even if we do not continue to automate anything, those savings and those hours continually go back into the business.

I do not have any experience with pricing and licensing. We have an admin team and IT team that handles a lot of the infrastructure and technology, so I would not be able to speak too much about that.

Automation Anywhere was evaluated before I joined my current company, so I cannot speak much about that. I know they worked with an implementation partner, and that Automation Anywhere was obviously the chosen one.

We do not use Automation Co-Pilot. It is definitely one of the items or features that I am very interested in. I was excited to get my hands on it during the bot games today at the Imagine event and see how it works. You can give it a string of text, and it will generate code for you right there in the control room. That is super helpful. I am looking to see how my developers react to that as well. I am sure that would save some time from the developer aspect. There is another aspect for business users. I certainly think there are some use cases there that they would be interested in looking at.

My favorite aspect of the Imagine event has been connecting with everyone in person. I work remotely, so it is nice to see people in person. We get to sit in a room and do the bot games again. We get to see some cool new features and everything around Generative AI. I do not hear the term RPA so much. The big focus in the world is Generative AI. There are a lot of keynotes, and we are able to see how people are starting to apply it early. There is a lot of excitement. It is an exciting time, and I am very interested to see how we will be able to leverage Automation Anywhere with the new technologies.

The Imagine experience is energetic. The world of Gen AI feels like a bit of a playground. It is generating a lot of buzz all the way up at our executive level, and I am sure it is the same for a lot of people. I see the wheels spinning for everyone. There are ideas, and it is good to see everyone saying to start small. It felt a little bit daunting how we are going to apply this, but it is nice to see everyone reiterating the same thing, "It is coming, and you have to be careful. Start small, and it is a journey." It is nice. It is a good pivot.

If I were to invite people to the Imagine event, I would say that it feels like a tight-knit community. There are probably a couple of thousand people here. Seeing familiar faces and being able to meet everyone and talk about some of the same struggles that we might be seeing is good. We get to know how others are thinking through it. Being able to see the new technologies is awesome. That was one of the main reasons I wanted to come. It forces you to take a look at what is coming next and how others are applying it and start thinking so that you can make a decision on where you can help your customers with it.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a solid eight out of ten. It is not perfect. There are probably a couple of little things, but being with the tool for two years, I have seen so much being changed. It is a playground. There are plenty of features and capabilities. We are just scratching the surface, so I am excited to see what is next. It is very good.

We use Automation Anywhere most of the time to automate Excel and the SAP system. I used to work for Bajaj Electricals. We are the vendor of Bajaj Electrical India Private Limited. There, most of the data are being pushed into SAP. We are getting data from SAP and manipulating it, and we are preparing reports every day.

The most valued feature of Automation Anywhere is its Excel functionality. Earlier in my career, I used Process Studio as my RPA tool. There was no flexibility of retrieving single cells. We used to fetch the total Excel and we used to apply the filters to get those cells. Automation Anywhere has the flexibility to extract data from Excel.

For non-technical users, some technical knowledge is needed in Automation Anywhere, so they cannot use it as flexibly as developers can. In my earlier career, when using a data table in Automation Anywhere and wanting to merge columns, there was a plugin called Group By. In Automation Anywhere, we have to create variables and append the data to a single variable one by one to get that flexibility. Having an activity for grouping columns would be great. For reading data from Excel, providing a single button to fetch all data columns would make it more flexible for developers. For filtering purposes in Automation Anywhere, we have to apply if conditions and additional conditions to get the appropriate data. Introducing filter activities would change the perspective of developing.

I have been using Automation Anywhere in my career for two months.

In terms of crashing, I have seen some crashes, but they were from other software such as SAP, WinSCP, and Outlook. There were no issues from Automation Anywhere.

The bots in Automation Anywhere are totally scalable. If the developer builds robust robots in parts, then we can use those parts for other processes by integrating them. I have built bots in many parts, such as SAP login. After performing applications, we close all applications. We have built those bots, and we call them once our process is done, so it will close all applications and erase the caches.

I would rate technical support for Automation Anywhere a six.

I have used Process Studio as an alternative to Automation Anywhere. I prefer Process Studio more than Automation Anywhere. Process Studio was launched around 2017 and managed to get into the IDFC First Bank headquarters. According to IDFC use cases, Process Studio was trained and built with more flexibility for business use cases. Automation Anywhere is not as flexible as Process Studio. In Automation Anywhere, performing activities such as downloading, fetching, and data manipulation requires 20 to 30 lines of code. Process Studio gives multiple windows in a single activity, making data manipulation easier. For reading Excel, XLSV, XLSB, XLS files, there was a single plugin. Process Studio's plugins are more flexible than Automation Anywhere.

Having used Process Studio, the initial deployment for Automation Anywhere was not difficult for me. I referred to YouTube videos for guidance. The only challenge was figuring out how to input my device name, which took one to two days until colleagues helped. If some data could populate automatically after installation, it would be beneficial.

For a beginner, Automation Anywhere is a great tool. I have learned UiPath also, which comes with complexities but has frameworks for smooth business flow. Automation Anywhere comes with a beginner-friendly interface. The tool can be learned within five to ten days of training. We haven't used the Automation Co-pilot yet. Once a developer knows all the activities in Automation Anywhere, upgrades become less necessary. Integration with WhatsApp business use cases to send messages would be beneficial. Integration with additional systems beyond SAP, WinSCP, and PDF would make it more flexible in business scenarios. Automation Anywhere can contact me in the future regarding questions about this review. I rate this solution 9 out of 10.

The main objective of using Automation Anywhere is revenue cycle automation and our tie-ins with the hospital allow us to work in different parts of the revenue cycle. It specifically automates either patient info collection, Medicaid submission, and similar tasks. It is all contained within the revenue cycle, which represents the main services we provide to our clients.

What I appreciate the most about Automation Anywhere is that the tool is very robust. It can handle buttons moving around and any elements changing. It makes the process super easy to maintain and, in terms of tracking failures, it is improving. It is very good for new websites, identifying elements effortlessly.

My main issue with Automation Anywhere might be the logging of bots and getting more detailed feedback of what my bot is doing, step by step. It is hard to track fine-tuning in larger codes.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for maybe a year and a half to two years now, or rather I have been using it since I joined.

Automation Anywhere definitely allows us to provide more reliability and affirmation to the client. For every client we successfully automate, it is a checkmark in our book to show that we have a huge skill set of bots and different capabilities.

Having them operational month-to-month and reporting that they work is a very good confidence booster, especially with smaller hospitals when this is the only grant they can invest in. Once development is done, the bot is relatively stable. It does have some discrepancy with older websites but performs really well with all new websites, current revenue cycle automation, or any submissions we have to do. It reduces the pressure of maintenance significantly because even with numerous website changes, the maintenance becomes negligible for us.

When bringing Automation Anywhere, we were trying to solve the time taken in these processes for hospitals. We aim to improve how fast they can charge their insurance or patients, ensuring they hit their revenue targets. We are expanding into other fields, still centered within healthcare. Having these small working components and consistent bot performance brings in the next client, which is a significant goal for us.

In my company, I have not used another product that does the same as Automation Anywhere, but I have studied and used UiPath briefly. That was about two and a half to three years ago.

When bringing Automation Anywhere, we were trying to solve the time taken in these processes for hospitals. We aim to ensure we can improve how fast they can charge their insurance or patients, making sure the revenue part is properly managed as that is what we are ensuring they hit.

Our team is based on two engineers and one team lead.

For every client we successfully automate, it is a checkmark in our book to show that we have a huge skill set of bots and different things to accomplish.

Regarding the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of the Automation Anywhere platform, I have limited experience in answering as I do not represent the company in this aspect. From what I have heard from my team, the basic pricing seems to work for us.

For larger scaling pricing of other features, we need to bring in more clients and a larger volume to justify the potential cost of the license. Every automation license is specific for each hospital since we cannot share files or security due to HIPAA compliance requirements. Currently, we are able to bring in clients in the current price range, though it is becoming more challenging.

We are among the smaller scale clients for Automation Anywhere. The AI component is something we are still not utilizing much because it is difficult to justify the license cost to our clients. In the healthcare sector, there is hesitation to implement AI due to security concerns and a preference for manual processes during their initial step into automation.

A-People platform is particularly helpful for discussions and finding solutions to issues. The support team provides regular updates and maintains good communication even in uncertain scenarios. The platform has a growing repository of answered questions, similar to resources available for other programming languages.

We use OCR extensively, particularly for older websites and legacy systems where button identification is challenging. We have three active builds in production using only OCR, which demonstrates the robustness of the system.

On a scale of 1-10, I would rate Automation Anywhere 7.5 to 8. While I might rate it slightly lower as a developer who works with it daily, most of my team would likely rate it 8.5 to 9 because it effectively meets our needs and critical client requirements.

Our primary functionality is built around screen scraping applications. We collect data from one application and either generate reports or use it to complete a user transaction or a customer transaction. For example, I have automation that handles bill pay. A request comes in, we verify it, and then we execute a bill payment transaction.

When we first started, the motivation was not wanting to be left behind in the latest and greatest opportunity for automating desktop applications that are boring and time-consuming but are still very important for the company's business operations.

We were able to see its benefits immediately during our proof of concept five years ago. We were able to take five users of daily work and reduce it to one user of support work. It was very significant.

Prior to implementation, these processes were done by the business units manually. Post implementation, the solutions are IT-based. As a result, IT now has additional responsibility for the business automation, just supporting the business function. It is one thing to build the software. It is another thing to maintain it and keep it running in production. There is a pretty significant lift or burden on the IT side that was not there during the manual executions.

I like the diversity. Every year, maybe even every six months, new modules are introduced to the program, and module enhancements are added to the toolbox to make automating various applications or situations easier. For example, the email module has been enhanced over the years to support all the latest authentication technologies. That is very important as we move away from username and password and embrace multi-factor authentication. Without the ability for these modules to stay in sync and up to date, we would not be able to use them. 

On the document automation side, the document learning features are not as robust as one would expect them to be. When I am doing document automation and a document fails due to low confidence in populating a field, it requires manual correction. Automation Anywhere states that if I correct enough documents, over time, the automation tools will learn where those error situations are and automatically fix them. We have not seen that feature work as advertised.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for roughly five years.

We have not had any issues. I am very impressed with its availability.

It scales quite well. I have not found an application that has exhausted the capacity of the system to execute. If we need to handle more transactions, we simply need to add additional bot runners. We currently have three bot runners in production. If we needed five or ten, I could have five or ten in a couple of days.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rank their technical support group a nine.

Positive

We have two other solutions in-house other than Automation Anywhere. They are very specific to the tasks they are handling.

It was pretty easy. I took a proof of concept that took nine months to build. Since I could not copy it from the proof of concept environment to our brand-new tenant or control room, we had to reprogram it. The reprogramming and testing took three months. Now, if you put all those numbers together, you probably could say it took us a year to build that first application.

It requires operation execution maintenance by my company and my IT group, but it does not take any Automation Anywhere resources to maintain it now. They maintain it at the cloud level and do a good job.

Two people were involved in the implementation.

The pricing is fair. My company is part of a big organization, so the pricing is very advantageous.

Five years ago, we evaluated four products, and Automation Anywhere emerged as the top choice. It offered the best cloud solution compared to the other vendors or providers. Now, if I took those same four vendors and evaluated them today, I might come up with a different answer. The industry has changed drastically just in the last three or four years, and if we did a reevaluation and could start over, chances are everyone, including Automation Anywhere, is on much better footing today than they were five years ago.

In terms of our AI approach, we are very cautious with AI. We are a Microsoft shop, so we are limiting our AI exposure to an Azure tenant-based AI resource. We are probably building our own LLMs to manage the intelligence or the exposure of intelligence to the AI engine. I do not see us ever using external AI modules.

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

I utilize Automation Anywhere for automation purposes. Recently, I completed a project for a client in the telecom sector. The project involved automating their monthly bill review system for customers. Previously, this system required on-site employees to check millions of invoices each month manually. A dedicated department then verified these invoices, sent them to customers, and verified payment status after payment. This process was time-consuming. We used Automation Anywhere's RPA and OCR capabilities and the AI document processing module to analyze document structures and verify tabs. We then automated various steps like accessing the portal, applying checks, and sending invoices via email. Now, the entire process is automated, triggered by a robot each month.

The main challenge which organizations want to address through any implemented RPA solution is the repetitive nature of their tasks. Instead of having ten employees perform the same monotonous task from nine to five every day, a single RPA robot can handle the workload, freeing those employees to focus on tasks that require human intervention. Automation is ideal for repetitive tasks, such as processing millions of invoices monthly, which can now be managed by a few RPA robots working around the clock. This allows employees to explore new opportunities, which is the primary goal of automation and the main reason for using RPA or any automation technology. Most automation technologies have features that enable this shift. However, automation is not suitable for all tasks; tasks requiring approvals or human judgment cannot be automated.

The deployment model varies depending on the client. In Pakistan, I worked with several clients using ABL who opted for cloud deployment. However, clients dealing with highly confidential and sensitive data, such as banks and telecommunications companies, prefer on-premises solutions. In contrast, clients in sectors like healthcare might be more open to utilizing cloud infrastructure.

Automation Anywhere has enabled repetitive tasks previously done manually to be automated.

Regarding RPA, ever since generative AI was introduced, we have ChatGPT and Google Gemini. The advent of these generative AI models has shifted the automation landscape. Automation has moved from Robotic Process Automation towards Intelligent Process Automation. The difference between RPA and IPA lies in their ability to handle changes. For example, if a website form changes its layout, a traditional RPA bot might fail because it can't identify the fields or buttons in their new positions. However, with IPA, the bot is intelligent enough to understand the fields' requests and can still process the data regardless of UI changes. Besides this, numerous other IPA use cases leverage Large Language Models and generative AI. For instance, a company could have a trained dataset monitored by an RPA bot, which then uses generative AI to create and send daily reports to top management, analyzing current numbers concerning past performance. This is a fascinating area that I've been exploring and working on lately.

For business users without technical skills, automation is achievable depending on the complexity of the task. Simple processes like sending custom emails from an Excel list can be easily automated with basic tutorials. While time and practice are necessary for mastery, basic automation can be initiated with just a few introductory videos.

We recently started using Automation Anywhere Copilot, so we haven't had the opportunity to integrate it with many of our automations. However, we have integrated it with SAP, where the bot reviews SAP data and provides the user with the required information at runtime. I have utilized this feature, and it's quite interesting. They also offer integrations with many other software, so the integration level is relatively high. Regardless of the type of features the business uses, whether they are using Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, or even AWS, integrations are available. They provide custom APIs that can be used for integration.

Automation Copilot helped increase our productivity by 60 percent.

Copilot has enabled staff to focus on other tasks by automating processes. For instance, the business department aimed to automate 350 processes this year, but by September, they had already surpassed that goal with 370 automations. Similarly, last year's target of 250 automations was exceeded, reaching 300. This increased efficiency has significantly improved workflows.

Our primary application of Generative AI for our telecom client is to detect service outages, such as when an area experiences a loss of service. We've been strategically planning our Generative AI approach for this year and the next, focusing on utilizing RPA to identify potential solutions and valuable insights within our data. For instance, in the context of outages, we aim to pinpoint the areas with the highest outage frequency, understand the reasons behind those outages, and correlate that information with customer complaint data. By analyzing metrics like complaint resolution times and outage resolution times, we can create a benchmark that helps us identify areas where we can enhance our customer service.

The amount of time Automation Anywhere helps save is dependent on the automated task. For example, the bill review task we automated helped save 10,000 hours per month.

We have several custom ERPs used internally but primarily rely on Microsoft Dynamics. We have a BCRM portal built on the Dynamics portal, hosting both our BCRM business-facing and CRM customer-facing systems. We also utilize Excel with VBA macros and other platforms, including Kofax for OCR. Kofax's Arabic language detection capabilities are crucial for processing UAE ID cards containing Arabic text. Kofax is our organization-wide OCR solution, integrated with Automation Anywhere. Overall, we have integrated Automation Anywhere with various software solutions.

Integrating Automation Anywhere into our workflows, APIs, and business automation is simple. RPA functions like a digital employee, and we can instruct them to perform tasks. Any activity currently done by a human employee can be done via RPA. However, the crucial question is whether it should be automated. If a task is performed infrequently, such as once every six months, creating an automation is inefficient. The time spent developing the automation could be better used to complete the task manually. Automation is ideal for repetitive tasks performed frequently. If a task isn't repetitive, automating it might not be beneficial. Regarding the capabilities of automation, nearly any work an employee performs on an organization's system has the potential to be automated.

Automation Anywhere has a persistent click-related issue that can make automation difficult, particularly in unattended environments. Even the Automation Anywhere team is aware of this problem, which has existed for several years. When automating tasks on a website, clicks may not work as expected in an unattended environment despite functioning correctly otherwise. The Automation Anywhere team has had numerous meetings to address this issue, but a solution remains elusive.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for almost four years.

Automation Anywhere's ability to provide automation at scales is dependent on how well it can integrate with every platform. I would rate the scalability seven out of ten.

I compare all other RPA tools to UiPath, which has excellent support—I'd rate it ten out of ten. In contrast, I'd rate Automation Anywhere's support six out of ten.

Neutral

In addition to Automation Anywhere, we also use UiPath, and Power Automate.

It ultimately depends on the client's preference for an RPA solution. In my opinion, UiPath remains the leading option in the market, unmatched by any competitor. Automation Anywhere currently holds the second position, but I anticipate Power Automate surpassing it in the future. However, UiPath is considerably ahead of the competition, leaving Automation Anywhere as a distant second. While Automation Anywhere is a suitable alternative, UiPath's high pricing can be a factor in the decision-making process. A lot of our clients choose Automation Anywhere because it is cheaper than UiPath to implement. Power Automate is the solution often chosen by businesses that already have other Microsoft solutions integrated into their environment.

The primary distinction among these RPA tools lies in the connectors and capabilities offered by Power Automate. Many businesses already utilize Power BI and Microsoft Dynamics, with most BI-related software relying on Tableau or Power BI. While some smaller-scale operations may still use Excel for dashboards, it's becoming increasingly uncommon. Power Automate's built-in custom connectors for Microsoft products provide a significant advantage. Overall, Power Automate has proven to be a game-changer, exceeding expectations with its features, custom connections, and level of support. While not currently the case, it's conceivable that with further enhancements, Power Automate could eventually surpass Automation Anywhere in the market.

While I wasn't involved in the initial deployment, I contributed to the migration from version A11 to A360. This was a major undertaking, spanning six months and presenting numerous challenges. Despite encountering various issues, we ultimately achieved a successful migration.

Cloud deployment is straightforward, while on-premises setup requiring server configuration can be challenging. A cloud deployment typically takes no more than one business day.

We have two teams: the operations team and the development team. The operations team handles deployment and typically consists of one or two people. The development team's size varies depending on the number of processes requiring automation. For fewer processes, one developer may suffice; however, we may engage five or even six developers for numerous processes.

Automation Anywhere provides good cost savings.

Automation Anywhere's price is considerably better than UiPath's.

I evaluated Robocorp from a POC point of view.

I rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten.

Challenges in implementing Automation Anywhere depend on the process being automated. For instance, if your organization adopts Automation Anywhere, infrastructure won't be the primary concern as their cloud setup is straightforward. The real challenges lie in the processes themselves. RPA automates processes, so if, for example, in bill review, some invoices are unclear due to being scanned images, the robot might struggle to process them correctly. This is a process-related challenge, not an RPA implementation issue. To address this, instead of incorrect automation, we set a confidence threshold, say 80 percent, below which invoices are flagged for manual review. Thus, RPA implementation focuses on the process itself. Businesses have numerous processes across operations, products, clients, and consultations. The key is to identify these processes and determine suitable solutions. RPA involves instructing the robot on the required steps, which it follows diligently. However, even if ten employees perform the same task, each might have their own approach. Therefore, understanding the process from the user's perspective is crucial to identifying the optimal workflow. This ideal process is then programmed into the robot, ensuring consistent execution. It's important to remember that RPA, including Automation Anywhere, has limitations and cannot deviate from its instructions or make independent decisions.

Automating more complex processes requires a deeper understanding of coding concepts like loops, regardless of the automation scale. I teach UiPath Studio X, which is designed for business users without a coding background. It is a good starting point. Training in Studio X includes teaching basic coding concepts, emphasizing their connection to familiar Excel functions. This approach helps users understand the logic behind automation and bridge the gap between their existing skills and new concepts.

The learning curve for RPA automation, depending on your desired level of mastery, is manageable. It is key to understand all the features and how they work, including the AI-powered ones. Basic RPA automation can be learned in about four to five months, allowing someone to start working as an RPA developer. However, working on an actual project for a year or a year and a half is recommended to become a true expert. This provides ample time to learn the ins and outs of Automation Anywhere, understand the challenges, and develop solutions.

Upgrading Automation Anywhere to a newer version on the same platform is straightforward, but our migration from the obsolete on-premise A11 to the cloud-based A360 required moving every single business process, which was time-consuming. Apart from that specific migration, version upgrades are generally not complex.

Bots running on a cloud platform require continuous maintenance. While the cloud platform can monitor the bots, human oversight is essential to identify and troubleshoot issues like crashes. Large clients may necessitate a dedicated maintenance team working shifts to provide 24/7 monitoring and support. These teams typically monitor the bots' control room on a separate screen while performing other tasks. In the event of a crash, they investigate the cause and, if unable to resolve it, escalate the issue to the development team for further assistance.

I started in the other company with the manufacturing processes for logistics and finance. Now, I am implementing processes for finance and human resources. 

My challenge is to use Automation Anywhere for automatic manufacturing and services. I always push my finance team first, and they have to improve the financial processes before we use Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere is helping us improve processes, as it can handle specific improvements. As we can execute the same processes, it is now easy and fast. With the APA, we can improve more processes. As the processes are more automated and easier to use, it is faster to gain value. Automation Anywhere is helping me overcome these challenges.

Comparing Automation Anywhere with other tools for RPA, in my opinion, it is better because it is easier to use for both the final user and the developer. This gives us many benefits because we can automate the processes more easily. 

APA has helped me achieve my automation goals. It's helped us achieve some of our automation goals. It's made things a lot easier. We have integrated the APA and RPAs with SAP, with Salesforce, and with many data sources. 

I'm using the AI agent studio in the automation process.

I utilize document automation in my current processes. We introduced automation, and where we previously had to use many letters, we now use only documentation.

AI governance is very important in my company, and we are implementing it now. I discovered this company three years ago when I studied the RPA tools. AI governance and data governance are not currently implemented.

There is no need for improvement right now. The AI is very important, and they are starting to use AI. They could continue to develop it out. Innovation is very important.

I started to use Automation Anywhere five years ago when I was working in another company. 

The deployment depends on the processes being put in place. Normally, it is straightforward. 

I do not have the correct numbers to calculate ROI, however, overall, it has been very efficient. The time saved in document processing is good.

The pricing is a little bit high compared with other tools. Of course, some tools may be much cheaper, however, the offering isn't as robust.

For our internal policy, before implementing a new project or new tools, we have to evaluate technical skills and make a comparison with other tools. We did evaluate Automation Anywhere and UiPath. Between Automation Anywhere and UiPath, there are pros and cons. Automation Anywhere is easier to use for final users and developers.

I am utilizing the AI Agent Studio in my automation process. My impression of the AI governance features in maintaining compliance and data integrity in my company is that all the automatic processes are similar to processes made by humans. Only in specific cases do we have to use the compliance process with government; in most cases, enterprises would have to accomplish specific requirements. It is not usual in these kinds of processes to have compliance.  

I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten. If the price were a bit less maybe I would give it a ten.

As a consultant, I have worked with various clients, including banks, insurance companies, healthcare providers, and different tech companies. Each company has distinct use cases. RPA tools are capable of automating any task. We usually automate processes that are repetitive. Automation is always rule-based.

Co-pilot certainly makes the job easier if the client has a subscription. It allows me to analyze desktop flows and activities and create flows using natural language. Natural language processing using LLMs has become an integral part of IT. This tool lets me create flows using natural language, repair automation errors, and answer product-related questions. It is there to assist us in creating automation tests, CI pipelines, etc.

There are many areas for improvement, especially in the developer environment. Providing a desktop version rather than focusing on the cloud is essential. Only UiPath offers a studio environment for desktop application development. Automation Anywhere lacks a desktop version and is solely web-based and cloud-based.

Automation Anywhere is not so easy for business users who are not technical. It is at the medium level. UiPath also provides UiPath StudioX to enable business users to automate easily.

I have used Automation Anywhere for four years. I have also used UiPath for four years.

The support is good. I have faced difficulties with every RPA tool. Automation Anywhere has a good support system but has room for improvement. UiPath has a huge online community for support. They have a lot of active users.

Neutral

The solution we use depends on the client and their budget. 

UiPath is exceptionally more expensive than Automation Anywhere. UiPath is far ahead of its competition, but in terms of finances, Automation Anywhere offers better value and is more effective for organizations seeking cost-effective solutions. Small clients tend to go for Power Automate or Automation Anywhere, whereas large clients go for UiPath.

RPA solutions like UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Power Automate, and Blue Prism can be learned through their academies. When I graduated, I did not know what RPA was. I joined as an intern and was told to go to the academies for these solutions and do the courses. They have developer fundamental and RPA fundamental courses. They also have advanced-level courses of 30 hours, which are free of cost. It took me about two months to learn these solutions. I might have had an edge because of my technical background. For a non-technical person who is willing to put in two or three hours every day into learning, three to four months would be good to take themselves to a level where they can start developing automation at a medium scale. Complex automations happen from experience when you are working with different types of clients. Generally, two to four months is a good period for someone to get a grasp of RPA.

The focus is shifting from RPA to IPA or Intelligent Process Automation. For example, I have done automation for a website task. Previously, when the website changed, such as when a button was shifted, the automation would fail. With Intelligent Process Automation, the bot is intelligent enough to realize the changes that have occurred. It understands what my flow is and what I am trying to achieve. It is then able to modify itself in such a manner that it still works. This is something that RPA has been transitioning toward.

Overall, I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten.