Automation Anywhere Reviews

We are in services. We are consultants and we use these automation tools to automate processes for clients. I'm not using it for my own organization, however, I'm using it for clients' organizations.

Use cases are largely cross-business process automation, back office automation. It could be used in finance or accounting. It could be in underwriting, if it's an insurance client, for claims processing.

We have done automation largely in the lending space, including wealth management and customer onboarding. 

The solution helps with reducing operational costs, which can be reduced by up to 30% to 40% in savings in terms of operational cost. That's your basic benefit, which is delivered quite well.

It's usually the RPA functionality that I prefer, which is more widely used. They also have an IQ Bot for document processing, which is a bit of advanced OCR. That's not used as frequently as their RPA tool.

The stability is good.

As it is on the cloud, it's quite scalable. 

Their OCR is a bit expensive, meaning the IQ Bot. There are a lot of customers who don't want to use it due to the price tag. Maybe if they price it more aggressively, it could be widely used as well. Otherwise, it has pretty much industry-leading functionalities, similar to any other RPA tool. 

In general, their roadmap is well defined and we are pleased with its offering. 

I've used the solution for about two years. 

The solution is pretty stable. It's good. Whenever there are issues, there are frequent platform upgrades provided by the vendors. It's very stable.

The scalability is great as it is on the cloud. It can be scaled up pretty fast.

On average, I would say, per company that we've seen, there are close to 50 to 100, users - depending on the size of the organization. If it's a small bank, they have somewhere around 20 to 30 users, however, if it's a large company, it's closer to 100 to 200 users. We work with the solution on a daily basis.

We tend to contact technical support once a month. We deal with them pretty regularly. 

I'm also familiar with UiPath. UiPath and Automation Anywhere are often used in many organizations. UiPath can be on-prem or on the cloud, however, AA is basically now on the cloud. 

What we've largely seen is clients more using VBA or .NET-based automation solutions. Before moving into these platforms, either an Automation Anywhere or UiPath was used.

The initial setup is pretty simple and if any issues are noted, the vendor can assist.

The platform can be set up in two to three months. I have not seen clients directly start on the cloud version. Usually, people have had on-prem which they have migrated to the cloud. Basically, the on-prem setup took two to three months. Maybe if there are new clients who are starting directly with cloud, it could be lesser, maybe a month or so. 

From then on, subsequent automation of processes can take anywhere between two to four months, depending on the complexity. If you have a simple business process, for example, invoice processing or claims payment, that can take one to two months. If you have something more complex, that can take anywhere between two to three months.

In terms of the amount of maintenance, it depends on how many processes have been automated. Usually for a small-scale setup, if there are 50 bots or there are 50 automation, there could be maybe 5 FTEs required to maintain it. If the operations are large, with thousands of bots, the team size can vary anywhere between 30 to 50 FTEs. The larger the operations are and the larger number of processes that have been automated, the bigger the support team requirements are. On average, 1% should be able to support 6 to maybe 10 automations.

There's support from the vendor, so I don't see a major challenge in setting this up.

While the RPA is still competitively priced, usually IQ Bot is expensive. That's what we have seen.

For the OCR, my understanding is that it's a one-time cost. I've seen instances where it's $15,000 or so and on top of that there is some cost on every document processed or maybe a bunch of documents. Per every 1,000 documents processed there is a cost that is recurring. That said, the initial one-time cost is quite high.

We are AA partners. 

I would recommend the solution based on its scalability and stability. 

Generally, people who adopt these tools do a tool assessment between multiple vendors. Usually, we have seen that it's either UiPath or Automation Anywhere that is shortlisted. These two seem to be the most preferred options.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

We started out with accounts payable, and now, we're starting to do more vertical revenue cycle management in healthcare. We're starting to use it for other things.

We're on version 11, but we're moving to 2019 or 360. We're in the process of migrating right now.

We were able to replace a lot of the manual and data entry workload that our accounts payable clerks were doing. We had 18 accounts payable clerks, most of them are still there with us, and the work that was done before by this original group can now be done by four people.

The ease of use in getting started is probably the big thing. They had a lot of references that we were able to check. It is a well-known player, and being able to get up and running quickly was the big thing.

Migration is probably our biggest challenge. When we were trying to do the migration to the new version, it was a little bit painful. We didn't have that many bots, and I can't imagine the level of effort that some of the bigger customers have to put in for that. The product is stable, but moving from one release to the other was the issue.

We also had difficulty with some of the documents that we were trying to automate. IQ Bot or intelligent document processing doesn't have all the features and functions that we were originally told it had. They need to improve that. It had some limitations, and we've had to add other products to the mix just because they weren't able to deliver some of the things that we were told that they could deliver upfront. 

They've been talking about task mining for a while. They don't have a good tool out there to evaluate the current processes and come up with a plan. It is a trial and error process where you have to sit down and go through what different people are doing, for how much time they're doing it, etc. There isn't a good systematic way of capturing that information. There are other products such as Kryon, and there is a new product called Soroco that we're looking at, that would let us evaluate the task that could be automated. So, it is not really process automation; it is task automation. You don't really see end to end when you're doing these projects. You don't just decide to automate the whole process. You select the tasks that you are going to automate, but you don't really know the effect that particular automation is going to have on another task. You don't have the big picture. It would be very helpful if both UiPath and Automation Anywhere provide a center of excellence that you could run on your systems so that the people who are running things come back and say that:

• Here is the task that we should be automating.
• Here is the time that we are taking to do it now.
• Here is what the benefit is going to be. 

All these are manual today. You're looking at what other companies are doing and hoping that you're going to get an ROI, but you don't really know until you start the project, and by then, it is too late. You've already spent the money on the software, the bot, the integration, the services, etc. At the end of the day, you're thinking if you would get the ROI. You have to measure it to see if you're going to get it after you've already spent the money. It would be really nice to have something that you could run upfront to know about the automation tasks that are costing you money today and where you should focus your efforts on automating.

I have been using this solution for about two years.

It is pretty stable, but moving to the new release has been a major pain. 

Its scalability is great. It is for sure built for enterprises.

We have six to eight people who are doing validation now and are actually using the product for validation. They are accounts payable clerks and healthcare revenue cycle management folks. 

It is being used extensively in the finance back office, and the idea is to bring it more to the front office for customer onboarding and things of that nature. We haven't done a lot of that, but that's in the plans. We are trying to figure out the next processes to automate.

It is good. 

We didn't use any solution previously. We did add UiPath to another area of the business, so we did bring on another vendor just to see what the differences were and how easy it was to use compared to the other one. We haven't really said we were going down one path as a company. We didn't want to put all eggs in one basket, so we decided to do one project with Automation Anywhere and one project with UiPath and compare the two.

UiPath has a little bit better document management. They have some process mining that we've started to use. Pricing is roughly about the same. There is not too much of a difference. I haven't seen too much significant difference between the two products.

It was pretty straightforward. We originally thought we could do it with internal resources, but we had to bring a third party in to do it. So, it is straightforward if you have experience and training. Our tech team can do it now. 

We started out with a simple invoicing, and the bulk of it took about three weeks or so. Testing everything probably took closer to six weeks. We finally got it going in two months.

When we first started, we thought we could have more of our team doing it, but we had to bring a third party in to do the bot building and all that. It was a reseller, and they had technical people. Our experience with them was good. They were a little expensive, but it was good.

For its deployment and maintenance, we have about three people. We have created a small center of excellence team with three, or sometimes four, people. We have a business analyst. We have two developers, and we have somebody from finance on that team who is putting a lot of hours into that piece. We're truly trying to figure out the next processes to automate.

For accounts payable, we saw a return in about five months from the time we started. There was a significant reduction in the number of hours that invoicing was taking. We went from 18 people to 4 people. We didn't let all those people go, but we did let a few people go, or we moved them into different job functions. 

We're paying a monthly subscription fee for the bot and for services. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee.

I would advise looking at other companies to know what they're doing. I would also advise putting a complete plan in place so that all bot management needs are considered upfront. It is helpful to put a roadmap in place and have a center of excellence or something like that to make sure that the processes that you're going to implement have an ROI. You can validate the effort upfront by using process mining or other tools and evaluate what the effort is now and what the savings are going to be upfront. 

We did a couple of projects that we thought were going to have significant ROI, but they didn't. It was more of an internal process that we had to fix. It wasn't so much about automation; it was about the way we were doing business. We weren't following processes, procedures, and things like that, and that was what was causing the issue. We had automated a bad process, so it didn't have the return that we thought it was going to have. We had to do some procedures. We had to change some things internally.

I would rate it a seven out of 10. It's a good product. It does what it's supposed to do.

The most valuable feature is the SAP application and the DLLs that Automation Anywhere provides. These DLLs help automate the SAP application. In A360, the latest version of Automation Anywhere, they provide many connectors for the different frameworks, like Office 365 or any other APIs, so those connectors are useful.

They still need to improve the SAP application's ability to use the features it has. For example, we have been using a MetaBot to automate SAP applications. They have given the SAP the ability to command Automation Anywhere itself, but we have encountered some limitations. Microsoft Power Automate has so many connectors, like its connector with Microsoft Office and SharePoint. On the other end, I have found Power Automate to be overpowered compared to Automation Anywhere because they already have so many connectors with Office 365, Teams, and other APIs. There are even more if you consider the cloud flow of Power Automate, so it's easy to get triggered.

Automation Anywhere is not so easy to trigger. For example,  I can create an automation in Power Automate where the user provides input into a form, such as Microsoft Form, and that info gets pulled into SharePoint. In Automation Anywhere, we do not have some trigger like that. We have to keep one bot running 24/7 to get this data into SharePoint. Power Automate does not have anything like scheduling. Whenever you fill out the form, it gets triggered on its own, and the information is saved into SharePoint. So this is an advantage of Power Automate that Automation Anywhere does not have.

Automation Anywhere should add the same feature that Power Automate has, so whenever I create a flow, there is a trigger given by Automation Anywhere. Instead of scheduling that bot on CR, there should be something running in the background constantly, so I do not have to schedule the bot or trigger the bot manually. The trigger should be integrated into Automation Anywhere. Also, if I am creating one variable in one module, I have to make the same variable in another subtask, then I have to create a mapping between those two. If Automation Anywhere were to come out with a feature like Power Automate's environment variables, then that variable could be created globally and used throughout the process. That would be better. 

Another feature I would like to have in Automation Anywhere is "Go To Line." When we are writing the code, it sometimes extends 500 to 600 lines. If I want to go to some line numbers — say, the bot has failed on line number 120 — I have to go manually to line 120. If Automation Anywhere provided something like a "Go To Line" feature, that would be useful for us. For example, if you face an error at line number 500 and your code is 1,000 lines, you have to scroll so far down to get to line number 500. 

Furthermore, in Automation Anywhere, you have to write a DLL separately when you want to have something from a .NET perspective. In UiPath and some other tools, there are direct call functions available. It would be nice if Automation Anywhere came up with something like that, where you can directly have the method called.

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

Automation Anywhere is quite stable. It has been around for many years now and has undergone several updates.  

To some extent, I can say Automation Anywhere is scalable.

The technical support by Automation Anywhere is quite good. Whenever we have an issue, we create a ticket on the Automation Anywhere support site, and the support from their side is quite extensive.

Setting up Automation Anywhere is a bit complex. When I entered into the RPA industry, Automation Anywhere had just been launched. Automation Anywhere was first released in 2014 or thereabouts, and I started working on it in 2017. I was just a novice when I began my journey with RPA, and it was a whole new concept in my organization as well. When we were setting up the control room server and the client, it was a bit daunting. We had to do so much in the background database and then the client. It is pretty complicated to set up the Automation Anywhere control room and the high availability clusters. 

I'm not too sure about the pricing part, because our organizers handle that. I'm just a developer. We get the software already installed on our machine. 

I would rate Automation Anywhere seven out of 10. It is a simple tool to learn, and with A360, they have gone way beyond. They also have an intelligent bot. However, I would suggest going with Microsoft Power Automate ranter than Automation Anywhere because Power Automate's cloud flow is easier to use. In addition, you can use Power Automate with very minimal coding. With Automation Anywhere, you need extensive knowledge of SQL and .NET. You have to learn so many things before implementing Automation Anywhere. 

I have worked on Automation Anywhere for four years and also UiPath. Between these two, I have found Automation Anywhere easier to work on. Also, it's stable because I have delivered around 20 plus automations on Automation Anywhere to date. Based on my experience, I have found Automation Anywhere to be more stable and accessible. I prefer Automation Anywhere. 

In my previous organization, I had worked on UiPath, but I haven't worked on UiPath much for the last two-plus years. So I only have six to eight months of experience on UiPath. I find the Orchestrator feature quite complex and difficult to understand. When I was working on UiPath, they had just introduced their advanced features in Orchestrator, so I found UiPath much more valuable from the .NET perspective. But if we're talking about how easy it is to program, Automation Anywhere is more straightforward. For the past one or two months, I have started getting my hands on Power Automate. In terms of cloud flows, I find Power Automate more useful. Every tool has its pros and cons. After working on Automation Anywhere for around four years, I do find it easy and scalable. But now, now that I've been introduced to Power Automate, I find that I like it because of built-in connectors and templates.

1. Attended automation - contact center automation, assist agents in navigating through the right process - Guided assist on-screen navigation for call center agents

2. Workforce reporting automation, we extract reports on agent availability and different AUX codes and report to leadership.

3. Plot agent time between multiple applications.

4. Real-time alerts to agents on their AHT & after call work beyond the threshold.

5. Real-time reporting on beyond threshold cases to leads.

6. Processing tickets between CRM & client applications.

1. Helped agents process tickets with minimal errors.

2. Improved AHT as they are able to close the tickets faster.

3. Improved overall SLAs by reducing aging (We use a bot to send alerts on emails & chats to agents who take a long time to close cases)

4. Reduce missed calls we pole the reports and send alerts to TL's on abandon calls in realtime

5. Biggest challenge in attended automation, every time the agent has to log in to control room and execute bot for most of the agents this is a time-consuming activity plus they are not tech-savvy

6. The agent should be able to just click on the UI and the bot should automatically login to the control room and execute the bot.

1. Screen recorder

2. AI capture

3, Ability to create custom forms and trigger another application

4. Ability to run the bot from the cloud without installing the software on our machine

5. AI sense can detect many pages inside the Citrix environment

6. I think the Citrix RDA should be universal for All Citrix environments

7. The A2019 UI layout is more user friendly

8. The recording feature where you can record multiple screens at the same time

9. MS excel functionality has lot of features in the current versions

1. for attended automation, the agent should be able to execute the bot without logging into the control room and triggering the bot

2. There are limited features to automation MS word & PowerPoint will look for more in those areas

3. Include Gsuite based automation

4. limitation on .csv based automation

5. Automations on iframes

6. We want to have greater control on deciding when we want to upgrade to a newer version.

7. Smooth upgrade with no production disruptions

8. ability to manage bots across control rooms

9. Ability to generate reports without using bot insight

I have been using AA for two years. 

It's a stable solution, 10 on 10.

I would give a 10 on 10.

9 on 10.

We started with A2019.

Straightforward for unattended, for attended, it took few rounds of fails as our environment is highly restrictive

Vendor team, 7 out of 10.

1.5

Very flexible.

A2019 has many rough edges from a developer point of view and post upgrades, these needs to be smoothened out.

We use Automation Anywhere to track the travel and locking of our devices.

We implemented Automation Anywhere because we needed a way to track our devices and ensure they were not going beyond their boundaries.

Before Automation Anywhere we were manually tracking our devices and now it is done automatically.

Automation Anywhere helps to save a full day. Automation Anywhere helps save costs by allowing remote work and not requiring a person to be at the machine. 

The efficiency we get with Automation Anywhere is valuable.

The Automation Anywhere calibrating needs to be more user-friendly to avoid human error.

Non-technical people can not use Automation Anywhere.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for one year.

The stability of Automation Anywhere depends on the environment it is used in. For example, in hot environments, there can be deviations.

The technical support is good.

Positive

The initial setup was a little complex until we became familiar with the process.

The deployment took one week and required two people.

Automation Anywhere is reasonably priced because it can sustain us for a long period.

I would rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten. The technology is improving every day.

With the right tools, it is easy to upgrade Automation Anywhere.

Maintenance is required for Automation Anywhere to ensure proper functionality daily. Two people for 20 minutes each day is enough to oversee the maintenance.

I recommend completing some courses and shadowing experienced Automation Anywhere users to gain hands-on experience with the automation process.

I use Automation Anywhere to automate processes for other businesses.

Automation Anywhere is user-friendly for individuals with a technical background and can also be utilized by those without specific knowledge.

The learning curve for Automation Anywhere is easy. The steps are nicely designed and of high quality, making it easy for users to learn.

Automation Anywhere has helped our customers' organizations speed up their processes and reduce the workload for their staff.

It offers automation at scale, enabling our customers to accomplish their objectives.

Integrating RPA bots, APIs, business applications, and documents is easily achievable with Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere has helped to increase automation consumption.

The dashboard has room for improvement.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for one and a half years.

It is stable.

Automation Anywhere is scalable.

The technical support has been helpful, and we have not experienced any delays.

Positive

We used Power Automate before switching to Automation Anywhere as per the client's request.

The initial setup is straightforward and takes one or two days to deploy.

I believe our clients do see a return on investment because they continue to use the solution for their automation needs.

I think the pricing is reasonable, but clients often perceive it as expensive. This perception might change once we see the benefits, understand the full process, and realize what is required to achieve our goals.

I give Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten. Power Automate has better cloud flows.

For those who prefer API integration over robotic process automation, I would use an API if it's more logical to do so. It all depends on the situation. If I need to fill some Excel documents, I will use bots; and if I need to display that data on a web page, I will use APIs if available.

We're using Automation Anywhere to automate and schedule some processes. 

Many tasks take a long time for a person to do them. Automation Anywhere enables us to do those jobs in less time. Our overall automation consumption has increased by about 80 percent since we started using AA. 

Automation Anywhere is easy to use, even if you lack technical skills. People without deep technical expertise can easily develop scenarios.

Automation Anywhere could add a few technical features to the UI and some better reporting or validation about whether processes are running successfully. 

We have used Automation Anywhere for only two weeks. 

We haven't used the solution for very long, but it seems stable so far. 

I rate Automation Anywhere eight out of 10 for scalability. 

I rate Automation Anywhere support eight out of 10. 

Positive

I was around for the deployment, but I didn't set Automation Anywhere up. The deployment only required one engineer and took a day to complete. The solution hasn't required any maintenance in the short time that we've used it. 

Automation Anywhere is a subscription-based service. I think the price is reasonable. 

I rate Automation Anywhere seven out of 10. It's a good tool that supports a lot of scenarios, and it can save you time and money. In some cases, you can use API integration, but RPA makes more sense for other tasks because you don't need to develop anything. 

We are a distributor of Automation Anywhere in Malaysia, and our focus is on solving business problems related to accounting, reporting, network operation centers, and first-level troubleshooting.

We deploy the solution on both AWS and Google Public Cloud.

Since we are the distributors of the solution, the improvements provided by Automation Anywhere vary for each of our customers.

The drag-and-drop feature is valuable.

Once we deliver to the customer, and they see the code, they can truly understand it without needing programming knowledge. As customers don't want to rely on vendors constantly.

The analytical dashboard in the Control Room could use some improvement. Currently, it's quite basic, which can pose a challenge when customers require more advanced features. Of course, different customers will have varying needs and expectations, so there's no one-size-fits-all solution. However, I believe it would be helpful if our team could have more flexibility in developing a more sophisticated analytical bot to meet these diverse demands.

I have been using the solution for five years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. We use the solution in multiple locations.

The technical support is good.

Positive

I previously used UiPath and WinAutomation by Softmotive but Automation Anywhere is easier to use.

The return on investment that our customers experience with Automation Anywhere typically revolves around the saved processing time and reduced headcount.

Although the initial implementation cost of Automation Anywhere is relatively high compared to other options, its annual subscription cost is lower than UiPath's, which has the opposite pricing structure.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

I recommend Automation Anywhere to others.