Automation Anywhere Reviews

I use Automation Anywhere to automate the data input process and produce the forecasting output.

We store our data in Databricks, which is sometimes shared via email. To automate this process, I've created a pipeline using Automation Anywhere that extracts CSV files from emails, uploads them to Databricks, saves the resulting table on a selected AWS page, processes the data, and feeds it into the model.

Automation Anywhere is user-friendly, with drag-and-drop features for nontechnical users.

The learning curve is no more than one month.

It integrates well with other tools.

Automation Anywhere saves us one month per year.

Automated data processing is the most valuable feature of Automation Anywhere.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for 16 months.

Automation Anywhere is stable.

Automation Anywhere is scalable.

Automation Anywhere supports automation to scale.

The technical support is good.

Positive

The deployment is straightforward and can be completed within one and two weeks.

Before implementing, we want to ensure we have all the support and collaboration.

Automation Anywhere is affordable.

I would rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten because it is practical and user-friendly.

I basically develop automations and also configure and create new scripts. I do user testing and separate testing as well.

We use it for legacy applications. We can automate legacy applications well, even with complexity.

It's very easy to use. It helps streamline manual processes. Manual work can cost the company a lot of money, but with an automation, work can be just a click of a button. That, and the work is more accurate and happens much faster. Any manual processes can be automated.

While it does use AI, we don't use it too much. We're looking at it. However, it's not something we prioritize.

I like that we can customize almost anything. You can create workflows fairly easily.

Even if users do not have technical skills, they can still use Automation Anywhere. It's not hard to learn.

I did training over one or two weeks. However, I did find some of the training challenging, specifically in areas where I didn't have any background. That said, I'm using it with legacy applications, which makes some things more complex. For most users, it would be very easy to get going. 

We did see near immediate results once we started using Automation Anywhere. Within a week or two, once we started testing it, we could see how useful it was. 

It's saved us time and money so far. We were able to do reports both before and after running Automation Anywhere and could compare the results and we were able to see that we did actually record savings on both counts. 

The scripting can be a bit difficult. 

I've used the solution for the past three years. 

The stability is very good. That said, it's not 100% stable. Sometimes it does crash.

I've never contacted technical support. 

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. Our team did not find it to be difficult. our deployment team was pretty small. We only had four or five people working on it. It was easy to upgrade as well. There is some maintenance needed, including the need to take logs. However, it doesn't take too much time. 

The price is a bit higher than other options. 

We did look at other options; however, we needed something that could handle legacy automation, and Automation Anywhere made the most sense. 

I'm a customer and end-user.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

New users should be knowledgeable enough to write scripts, as that's the main issue. However, it's a good solution for automating small processes.

We use Automation Anywhere in a DevOps environment. 

Automation Anywhere helps us resolve some friction between IT needs and business requirements. In an agile environment, the first questions are always: How much money do you have? What is your budget? Automation Anywhere or any other RPA solution can help you achieve your goals within budget constraints by lowering operational costs. It increases productivity and reduces errors.

I like Automation Anywhere's cloud-based nature. You don't need any on-prem infrastructure to host it. If you have suitable infrastructure, you can easily integrate it with Automation Anywhere. The learning curve is reasonable. Automation Anywhere has a user-friendly environment, but digesting all the platform's features takes significant time. 

It's challenging to train users on Automation Anywhere. There should be more organized training sessions. I prefer interactive classes to one-on-one training. You can create super users and organize conferences or workshops where users can learn from experts. Maybe you only have a few of these super users in your organization, so that's why you need to have workshops on a weekly basis. 

I have used Automation Anywhere for three to five years. 

I rate Automation Anywhere seven out of ten for stability. 

I rate Automation Anywhere support seven out of ten.

Neutral

I previously used UiPath at a past job but switched when I started work at my current company. 

I rate Automation Anywhere seven out of ten. 

I have primarily worked in the presales as well as in the sales cycle. I do not have hands-on experience with the tool. I have a team of people who are the continuous improvement folks who work in a particular area. We have developers or continuous improvement people who leverage the tool and go ahead and help to get them deployed. For example, if it is UiPath's process mining capabilities, they basically plug the data and do other things. They do the work, and we ensure that we drive the transformation and build the business connects for the customer. So, my role is very different. I am a management consultant. My core hands-on experience is not with digital tools in itself, but I leverage digital tools to drive transformation for a customer. As part of my role, I understand the features and the value add that it brings to the table. I do quality assurance of the outputs that are generated. I also ensure that teams are able to work in a client environment because they need to be able to access the client environment. I also need to drive transformation because there is a lot of stakeholder management. There is a lot of project management that is needed. I work in that area and that sphere. I am not a technical person as such, but when a tool is deployed, I understand how to execute the implementation, how to drive the discussions, and with automation, how to drive value for my customers. That is my area of expertise.

People primarily use it to fast-track and automate transactional, repeatable tasks. By using Automation Anywhere, people want the execution of transactional activities. It could be the back office. It could be the middle office. I have not seen front office use cases, but I am sure there are use cases for that. I have only seen a lot of middle office and back office activities. For example, in the Procurement area, a typical transactional activity would be PR to PO, where information is readily available. That is the use case where it can be easily applicable. Likewise, in the Accounts Payable area, you can use Automation Anywhere to execute automation for payment processing activities. The finance area has got a lot of use cases. They could be reconciliation-related activities, data-gathering activities from different documents, etc. In some areas of Audit to Cash, it could be even looking up invoices and answering customer queries that are pretty straightforward. These are the high-level use cases that I have seen.

Typically, when you are able to execute any repeatable task in an organizational environment, you enhance organizational AI capability. The reason is that your increased accuracy will improve the predictability of the AI algorithm for getting the job transactional activities completed. For example, if somebody is going to create a purchase requisition and the average turnaround time is five days, with a bot, I can get the purchase requisition created in one day. The organization can check and see what is the rate of improvement or what is the predictability of getting the orders received for producing the finished goods. When you look at the end-to-end view, you get predictability to say when will my goods reach the customer. You get to know that by improving one area with automation and ensuring that the work is done in a repeatable manner, you can improve your predictability by a certain percentage, so any automation of a particular process will improve an organization's AI capability. 

The biggest integration is how it integrates with the system of record. When you automate a process per se, you are extracting information or reading information out of a system of record. It could be SAP. It could be Oracle. It could be Microsoft Dynamics, but Microsoft has its tool called Power Automate. That is one level of system integration. The other level of system integration is where you have a front-facing bot. For example, anything to do with query management or queries that keep coming via mail or shared service portals. These integrations are a little different from the ones that you have with a system of record. Automation Anywhere integrates pretty seamlessly for both types of automation. The system of record integration can be a little bit of a challenge as compared to the regular mail servers or shared service portals because of the permissions and the security checks that are needed. Getting VDI access becomes a little bit challenging because customers sometimes are not comfortable giving full-fledged access during the UAT. It becomes a little bit challenging, but it also depends upon the maturity of the customer and the nature of the business. They are not comfortable giving full-fledged access because it will create problems for them, but after that, when it gets into the live environment, things are a lot easier and streamlined. It has nothing to do with Automation Anywhere. It is just about the maturity and the protocols that a customer has in place. These aspects make it easier to integrate with Automation Anywhere or any other service provider. Based on what my peers have mentioned to me, it is not challenging to integrate with APIs, etc. It is pretty seamless. There are not too many issues. There might have been a challenge in a specific situation, but by and large, in general, the capability it offers is pretty standard for a typical automation tool.

There have been a lot of use cases where we have used Automation Anywhere to save time and costs. Typically, any automation gives you 20% to 30% efficiency. That is what I have seen. That is an average. In some cases, it could be high, and in some cases, it could be low depending on the task and the domain, but 20% to 30% efficiency is typically possible.

Since implementing the solution, the tasks are taking place in a seamless manner. As long as the process is not changed, there is the ease of replicability. Repeatable tasks constantly get done without any challenges. 

There is also an increase in the efficiency of the people. There is reduced turnaround time for responses or getting the activities done.

We work with lots of digital tools, and I have been engaged with teams for the last seven years or so.

They are one of the top service providers for automation. They are definitely stable.

Automations are also pretty stable. Automation works on the fact that you are not changing your process. As long as things are repeatable, every automation software does the same thing. Challenges come when you do upgrades to your ERP, or for that matter, you make one simple change in the process. That is when you have any stability-related challenges.

I believe they can do automation at scale.

It has been a long time since I reached out to them for support. As a service provider, they are always there to provide support. The challenges happen in terms of how the deal was constructed, what was agreed, and where were the gaps in understanding. That is where the issues happen. There are usually many unknowns. I would rate them an eight out of ten based on my experience a while ago.

We work with lots of digital tools. We have leveraged UiPath in the past. We are platinum partners with some of the service providers.

 I know that Automation Anywhere, UiPath, or any other solution has its own specific nuances, but the gap between them is closing up technically. In terms of value, I do see that Automation Anywhere offers value.

The tool selection depends on the partnership deal. It depends on who an organization is considering and the approach for partnership deals. In my organization, we have different partners with whom we work. How you partner with an organization and approach that organization is one of the big differentiators. I know there are not too many players out there in the market. You only have big fours. The key thing is how you are partnering with them and how you are going into the market and taking their support. The second thing is how you are promoting the key capability that you are bringing to the table and how you are comparing it with other people. For example, I know that UiPath has process mining capability, but Automation Anywhere is offering AI capabilities. If I go to a customer and immediately start talking about AI via automation, it is a little drawn-out process for me, whereas with process mining, I can immediately plug and play the data and tell them what are the challenges and for those long run activities, what are my automation possibilities. The positioning is important, but I am not undermining the AI capabilities that Automation Anywhere brings. 

I was not involved in the deployment of Automation Anywhere. I work with the RPA team.

The deployment environment varies. It is dependent on the client's environment. It depends on where your data is and where you are doing the automation. If you are doing automation on the data fabric for reporting purposes and you are deploying a bot to gather the data from specific tables, you might put it onto a data fabric or a data lake. If you are working on PR to PO, that information is going to be on a system of record. It might be on the server itself. It is truly use-case-dependent in my view.

In terms of maintenance, customers typically buy the licenses, but these days, I see that customers prefer to use one main partner for all their licenses because it is easy to manage that one main partner. It could be the largest partner they have in their set of vendors who are supporting them for all IT-related activities. If they buy it from them, they do not need to do maintenance, but if they buy the licenses themselves, they may need maintenance. It depends on whom they are engaging with and what is the purchasing model of licenses.

They all are very competitive today. At the end of the day, it boils down to the negotiations that happen and what type of partner you are. Are you a premium partner or are you a preferred partner or a gold partner? Prices are very standardized. There could be a little bit of deviation, but they are comparable. It is a pretty saturated market because everybody has been doing our RPA for the last decade, so they are pretty competitive in pricing.

Every customer is at a different maturity level. Customers at a high level of maturity of process standardization definitely are looking at the next wave of evolution with generative AI. To do some things in generative AI, there have to be some elements of automation. Companies that are not so mature or the small and medium are not yet there. They are trying to digitize the ways of working. They want to ensure that they have the right framework structure within the organization. They are experimenting with automation, but it is more like a basic level of automation. Mature companies with billions of dollars in revenue have already been doing it for the past many years. They are taking up more of the generative AI opportunity to enhance and go deep into those areas.

I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

As our business is a mortgage company that provides loans to borrowers, we use Automation Anywhere to automate business processes to help the end users process loans faster. 

The application's response time is slow when using your desktop and trying to process an application. However, when you apply automation, it can work overnight. You don't need to sit at a desk and watch what's happening. It's all automated. 

Prior to implementation, everything was manual. You couldn't inject other software, like APIs. However, with AA, you can bring in any number of tools that connect right into Automation Anywhere. This makes everything move faster. You save a lot of time and cost involved in processing the applications.

The recent update that included code analysis was very helpful. Previously, we had to go line by line. Now, inside the tool, it shows you which lines are hard-coded. 

We've saved a lot of time. How much time we save depends on the process. It's likely at least 50%. Sometimes, it's up to 70%.

We've saved on costs by about 30%.

It's reduced human error. Using Automation Anywhere, we can eliminate a lot of human error by adding exceptions and identifying what's going on quite easily.

For users who don't have technical skills, it's not that complicated. It defines what every command does. It may take a few months to understand the process; however, going through the documentation and using the community versions and forums will make it easier to learn. You can find answers to any aspect you want to understand. 

We did a POC with the automation copilot. It met some of our expectations. For some of the use cases, it will help in the future. 

The copilot's ability to integrate with our day-to-day is fine. It helps employees working with it. It helps them to make things faster. You just have to provide some information, and the background bots will run. It might help increase productivity in the future if we implement it at the enterprise level. Outside of the POC, it looks like it might help with productivity. 

The solution integrates well with other applications and third-party tools. 

There are great tools inside Automation Anywhere. 

With the automation copilot, if I have any internal tool or application and I want to pass on variables, I don't have it. Maybe the team can work on it to make it more efficient to make it work better across all automations.

I've been using the solution for four or more years. I started with version 10.x.

In the past two to three months, the support has gotten far better. Previously, we didn't have a live agent or live support, and now we do. It's great to have. They can respond immediately, and you can continue with what you are doing. You don't have to wait for support at all. 

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution. 

I was involved in the initial deployment. It took a couple of months.

It's relatively easy to upgrade. It depends on the organization. You need to add more variables and define the standards. However, it's not too complex. 

There is some maintenance needed. When you upgrade versions, devices may be disconnected. Sometimes you need to go and check if the device deployment is happening or not, or a deployment may fail. We have about two people handling the maintenance of the solution. You simply need to ensure the bots are deploying on the right schedules and check errors or disconnects. In some cases, you may need to redeploy the bot. The time spent maintaining bots maybe three to four hours per day per person. 

We also explored Microsoft's Power Automate. However, it wasn't as mature or up to an enterprise level at the time. Automation Anywhere had good standards and excellent support, in terms of architecture, design, and user interface, we chose Automation Anywhere. It also has good community support. Previously, we used to raise a ticket. Now, it's amazing - when you ask a question, people respond to it live. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. 

We use it for processes related to IT operations in the manufacturing industry.

There are hectic IT processes, jobs that run overnight, weekly, and monthly. We can optimize, rewrite, and automate them. They represent the most important use cases that I have been involved with: IT operations and software for manufacturing.

It has helped our organization increase automation consumption by 20 to 30 percent.

The most valuable feature is the Control Room.

Also, the integration of RPA bots with other processes and documents is good. We don't have any issues there. We could have more connectors, but it's fine. I have used it for SAP and for direct API-to-API, and that went well.

It is good for standard procedures with an SOP. For those, it works well. But there are processes that are tricky and need human intervention and intelligence. In those cases, the process gets stuck. Something that is a straight-ahead process—you do A, B, C, and D—is fine. But when you do A and then have to decide whether to do B or C, where there is a need for logical thinking and human intervention, we find it difficult to automate those cases. We have to break down those processes and do that tweaking.

We would like to see a more seamless UI, and we would like AI help. Wherever we are stuck or there is a logical error, AI help, with prompting and suggestions on what to do, would be good. If I have dragged and dropped something in the wrong logical sequence and it fails during execution, there should be automated AI help.

We use NetBeans IDE where we get something like automated help, but that's a platform for doing standard Java and PHP development. Automated help is coming up more and more in many tools. For example, Microsoft is providing it. We would like to have something like that in Automation Anywhere, with automated debugging and self-help.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

Overall, the product is stable for SOP-based use cases. It is not very stable for complex use cases.

It is not very scalable for complex use cases.

Their technical support is good overall, not excellent. They can improve the response time and on-call support. We have SLAs, so we need support to be immediate.

Neutral

We did not have a previous solution.

Recently, automation has gone to the cloud, and that has been most beneficial because installation was quite hectic before. On-prem was quite difficult, but the moment they launched the cloud version, it became easy.

With on-prem, there were issues with installation over production as well as the setup of the Control Room. Often, the Control Room would go down or hang, and we would have to do restarts. It was not seamless.

The licensing cost could be improved. It costs a lot. At the very least, the developer licenses and the control panels should be made free to enterprises, and the production environment licensed. Production should bear the cost; we would be okay with that, but not the development side.

Business users didn't find it that easy to use, but for developers who are building the use cases, it's quite easy. For the business users, the issues were standard ones, such as navigation, user friendliness, and the terminologies that they needed to understand. They often require training before using it, and not just one training session, but training and retraining. On a scale where 10 represents a low learning curve and one is a large learning curve, Automation Anywhere is a seven. For non-technical people, it's difficult. For them, the learning curve is a four or five. It usually takes four to five months for them to be able to really use it on their own.

We have developed solutions for IT back-end processes, so there are no end-users. These jobs run weekly, fortnightly, and monthly. There are two or three people involved with it, but it's the jobs that we have automated.

We need three to four people to maintain the solutions, but that doesn't take a lot of time—about four hours a week. It's not something that needs to be done every day. Before the jobs run, they check to make sure everything is okay, that no errors or notifications are coming up. The maintenance is very low.

Automation Anywhere is good but not exceptional. It's good because, for simple use cases, we use it with different technologies. For complex processes, automations should perform better.

We have automated some data entry scenarios. We also have automation for system monitoring. It is being used for data entry, system monitoring, and data exchange with other systems.

We found a lot of processes to automate. We currently have about 80 processes that we have automated. 

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization increase its automation consumption, but we are a little short of RPA developers. We are acquiring new talent and new resources for that group, and we are on the right path. We have a lot of work. 

Workbench, which is a development tool, is very friendly. It is complete. Compared to Power Automate, Automation Anywhere is much more comprehensive and easy to understand.

We use APIs for some bots. It is not too common, but we use APIs in some processes. The integration at the moment is easy.

We work with version 11, and we have some problems with some applications. Automation Anywhere's software does not recognize them properly. The recognition of web applications is not good. The software does not consistently recognize all the controls and objects. We are in the process of migrating to a new version. We are migrating to Automation Anywhere 360, and I hope that in the latest version, the recognition model can be better. On the Internet and various forums, many people say that Automation Anywhere 360 appears to be much better, but we have not implemented it yet. I hope it is better and consistent. The main problem is consistency. If I make a bot today and tomorrow if the application changes, the bot stops working.

Similarly, in terms of the ability to provide automation at scale, the new version is more focused on that. The version that we have is not that capable. The development is not too easy. We need to put in too much effort, but Automation 360 appears to be easier. Development takes less time.

Automation Anywhere is a technical application. It is not so easy for a regular user. It requires technical knowledge. The new version is more user-friendly from an ease-of-use perspective. 

I have been using this solution for three to four years.

I would rate their technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We are still using Power Automate, but we are not using their RPA model. We only use Power Automate for other automations. When we chose our RPA tool, Microsoft had not released the RPA tool for Power Automate. Microsoft released it a year or two years later.

We have some processes to analyze the ROI, but right now, we are not focusing on knowing that information. Our main need is automation. ROI is important, but it is not critical at the moment. We are still automating projects in the company.

It is expensive. I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten in terms of pricing. 

They bill for every IQ bot that you have. We do not use IQ Bot, but we have a license, and they bill for every thousand pages. 

We evaluated one or two other options, but I was not a part of the evaluation.

We did a little bit of research, and we found that Automation Anywhere was recommended at that time. It had better reviews on the Gartner website, so we decided to go with it.

It takes about three to four months to learn it. Some of the things are easy, but because we are trying to do automations, we need to make sure that we understand the application properly. We need to know how it works internally in the structure of the code because sometimes, we make a programming change that works today but stops working tomorrow. That is because the application can change, so we need to understand how the controls work between the changes and have the logic that allows a bot to run smoothly irrespective of the application changes. It is challenging to analyze the changes in the application and find a way to program the bot to recognize the changes.

To someone who wants to use API integration instead of an RPA solution, I would say that API integration is more recommended, but sometimes there are issues with this type of integration, so we have to finish the project in Automation Anywhere. The first option that we always try is to create our own integration between the systems with APIs. The RPA tool is the last option for integration.

In terms of maintenance, we need to install the updates or patches. Our infrastructure team is in charge of that. We have technicians to install patches. We have people with different roles. They are technical leaders or system administrators. We also have an information security team, and we have a network team, as well as an operating system team. Every department makes a little contribution to the whole environment.

For managing the bots, we have only three people. Maintenance of bots is different because we have bots scheduled all day, so we still need to monitor them on a daily basis, but the update process is monthly. We verify what is pending. Overall, the maintenance takes about eight hours a month.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten.

We use Automation Anywhere for our Finance department.

Automation Anywhere is cost-effective.

The ability of Automation Anywhere to provide automation at scale is quite good.

Automation Anywhere integrates well with APIs, RPA bots, and business applications.

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization increase its automation consumption by over 20 percent.

The customization feature should be made more user-friendly in order to enable the use of external reference components.

The technical support has room for improvement.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for three years.

Automation Anywhere is stable.

Automation Anywhere is hardly scalable.

We are a partner of Automation Anywhere and find the pricing to be reasonable. There is an additional cost for using OCR.

We evaluated UiPath, but the cost is higher compared to Automation Anywhere.

I give Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten.

Users of Automation Anywhere should possess programming skills. The learning curve for the solution is straightforward. Training for Automation Anywhere does not exceed two weeks.

If the solution is maintained by the business user, I believe that robot automation processes are better, as they do not require the same skill set.

We use Automation Anywhere in our Finance, Pricing, and Purchasing departments.

Automation Anywhere requires a significant amount of maintenance. The maintenance is performed by me and two of our business partners and requires approximately ten minutes of testing per day to ensure everything is running properly.

Our organization is planning to transition from using Automation Anywhere to Blue Prism Cloud due to our business requirements. I highly recommend Automation Anywhere to other users.

Automation Anywhere is a suitable solution for businesses.