Automation Anywhere Reviews

The solution has really changed a lot when it comes from v11 to A360. When it was v11, then it was complete scripting, and it was not the UI, the drag and drop features that the other tools provide. You just drag an activity and drop it. It was actually scripting. So it was relatively difficult to develop a code for someone who is not very familiar with basic coding skills.

There are more valuable features with the updated solution. Now they have both the list view and the flow view. They have increased some features in terms of data types. They now have good usage of the data table and have added variable types. It's convenient.

One area that could be improved with the cloud solution when it comes to A360 is we have seen a certain lag. It's not a very happy tool. There are stability issues, but that is something that they maybe looked at already. They have come up a long way, and they are actually promoting the IQ bot as well. The document OCR/ICR techniques are something they're already working on, so I'm looking forward to that as well. 

As a developer, the biggest con is the lag. It's pretty inconvenient to face that delay in things happening. We come across that pretty often. 

It's not necessarily an added feature that I would be looking for, but in general, as a solution, it could have been easier to use than in the current state. The way the tool has been built, it's not easy to build a solution when it comes to using Excel automation. And it's not that convenient.

I've been working with the solution for a little less than two years.

The code for the solution, once developed, is pretty stable. I would say there is no issue in terms of stability there. It is only the initial accessibility in terms of the build phase where we have seen that issue of the lag.

Scalability is pretty much achievable, and I don't think we have faced any issues. We have had bots earlier. But when it comes to larger processes or where there's a situation where we need to use multiple bots for common processes and things like that, there, I have not been able to use those solutions. I don't work as a developer. I work as a solutions architect and a business analyst, and that is one place where I have felt Automation Anywhere is not that capable.

Customer service is comparable to Power Automate and Microsoft; they are responsive.

The initial setup for cloud-based solutions are all straightforward.

When it comes to pros, the solution is convenient. And now it has both the list view and the flow view in terms of the code. So whether it is a seasoned developer or whether it's a newcomer, they have made it slightly easy. I feel that for a first-timer, Automation Anywhere would be something that is relatively difficult to pick up.

I would rate the solution a six out of ten.

I highly depend on the product for automation processes on most of our organization systems. 

It has been able to simplify most of the tasks and projects from the creation of bots that perform most duties. Our team members have focused on more productive duties that require human input leaving less operative duties to robots. 

Service delivery has improved and our customers are very happy since they can be served at faster speeds by robots. It has created a conducive working environment that has overseen our workforce team increasing production.

Automation Anywhere has led to faster growth in our organization. We have increased our sales volume and ensured that the current international threshold. We have created robots to undertake critical roles and left some duties under the labor force team. It has streamlined workflow infrastructure and sped things up in our company. The deployment cost of Automation Anywhere is relatively low when compared to other RPA platforms. It has secured our data and given us very effective cloud services. An increase in production has enabled our teams to focus more on quality and fulfilling customer demands.

The Robotic Process Automation tool is very powerful and most useful in our organization. It has enabled our system management teams to design robots that fit most programs. Cloud operation features are very convenient and have lead to faster deployment processes. It has created a conducive collaboration feature that has led to better teamwork among our team members. The creation of most applications in our company has been done from the programming interface and they have been very effective in running our business programs.

The current version is very effective and I have no recommendation for improvement. Since we deployed Automation Anywhere is has never failed in functionality. It has led to faster growth of our enterprise and lead to increased productivity. 

Automation of most services has led to faster service delivery and given our organization an opportunity to win over many customers. 

The next version could have more data storage capacity that can be customized to sustain different workloads. I am satisfied with most features overall and I am very proud of this Software.

I've used the solution for two years.

This platform has has highly increased performance across the entire organization. Production has increased leading to faster growth.

The customer support team has been very supportive since we deployed it.

Positive

I have not used a different solution.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We implemented through a vendor and they were very supportive and had a high level of experience.

It has contributed to a positive ROI.

The setup cost is relatively low and is affordable while offering a quick ROI. 

I explored other options, such as UiPath, but have settled on Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere (AA) can be deployed on the cloud or on premise. For the cloud deployments, we have had customers using Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS. 

I have been using Automation Anywhere in managing insurance business lines, such as personal property and commercial.

Automation Anywhere can improve by implementing a Citrix environment and increasing the stability of tools, such as IQ bot.

I have been using Automation Anywhere (AA) for approximately four years.

Automation Anywhere has been stable in my experience. The performance has been good.

The scalability of Automation Anywhere is good. There have not been any problems.

The technical support has been good in my experience. However, you need to use the latest version to get the right level of support. If it is an end-of-life version, you might not get support from Automation Anywhere.

I do not see a large difference when it comes to what Automation Anywhere offers compared to other similar solutions, such as UiPath. I wanted to implement IQ Bot for customers and this is going to be my main focus.

The initial implementation is straightforward. Most people are using the orchestrator on the cloud or the control room and when it comes to the creator and bot runner, it will always be on the on-premise. The cloud implementation is easy, you do not have to install anything, and when we use it in the Automation Anywhere Cloud, it becomes even easier.

The time it takes for the implementation depends on the environmental requirements. For example, if it is single or multi-node architecture. If it is a single node, it is straightforward.  If it is a multi-node architecture, then it will take a little time. You just have to understand the other component that is present, such as any secondary server.

The is more maintenance to be done to Automation Anywhere when compared to Blue Prism.

The price of Automation Anywhere is a little higher than some of the competition, such as UiPath. However, depending on the use case and other factors we are able to receive some discounts.

I have evaluated Blue Prism.

It is important for those wanting to implement any solution to explore their use case. This will help determine whether Automation Anywhere will be an appropriate fit. For example, if you are looking at large-scale operations. There are many things to consider before you choose any tools.

I rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten.

We are a company operating in the banking industry and we use the platform in deploying robotic process automation for executing various functions from customer service management.

The automated processes include ticketing, data extraction and analysis, and business intelligence, among others. It helps us automate our functions and this has brought a positive effect into our workflow and we have been able to grow our productivity.

The platform is versatile and users across the spectrum and in various industries are able to acquire it and use it intuitively.

The platform is easy to deploy and use in every organization and when we acquired it, it brought instant impact and our employees were able to productively integrate it into our workflows.

It has helped us relieve the workload on our human workforce and thus ensures that they remain productive and motivated at all times thus work efficiently.

Brings business process automation and this helps in scaling our operations and ensuring that we are able to work 24/7, thus improving our productivity.

It has brought artificial intelligence and this allows us to improve our planning and decision-making process, ultimately growing our company and the way we execute our workflow.

The starting price, which is a one-off fee is a bit high and this may deter mid and small-sized companies from acquiring and decide to shun the platform. It ought to be broken down into monthly installments, where the billing of using the platform is done monthly. This will increase its absorption in the market.

The vendor should increase the training and other engagements with users before they acquire the platform, as this will simplify its usage further and ensure that there no hindrances in using the platform. 

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

Customer support is available and this ensures that any user experiencing any challenge in using the platform is helped and becomes able to use the platform in a reliable manner.

It's affordable and this accords all users a chance to use the platform and grow their portfolio and withstand competition in their respective industries and markets over their rivals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I've been using this tool since 2014.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We deployed in-house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

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

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

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

The initial setup is straightforward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

Stability-wise, this product is excellent.

The scalability of AA is excellent.

Technical support is excellent.

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

The initial setup is straightforward.

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

My advice for anybody who is implementing Automation Anywhere is that 

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