Automation Anywhere Reviews

We use Automation Anywhere to create robots. Basically, the purpose of this tool is if we have any employee doing daily repetitive work, where he does not have time to work on it but he still has to do it every day, we can automate those kinds of projects by using this tool, and we can reduce the burden on the employee. That is the basic use of the Automation Anywhere tool.

In terms of benefits to our company, with this tool we can release the employee from their routine work so that they can concentrate on their other work, like doing innovative things. They can get rid of the regular, routine work.

The feature of this solution that I like the most is that it is coding free - it is a coding free tool. It does not need much coding at all. For all the activities you just drag and drop. That is the best advantage of this tool.

In terms of what could be improved with Automation Anywhere, there are a few areas. They could improve the environmental stabilizing issues. There are a lot of environmental issues when rolling over from one environment to another, higher environment. This is the one thing they definitely need to look into. 

They also have to look into the document understanding process - the screen scraping of the documents, etc... 

In the next release, I would like to see, as I mentioned, better document understanding and screen scraping. There are a few more activities they have to include, like reading the particular column on the Excel operations. They can increase more activities like that.

Right now, there are a lot of complications and complexities involved when reading Excel - they could make that easier.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for almost two years.

We are not using the latest version. We are using 11.3.

In terms of stability, when rolling from one environment, like the production environment or development into other environments, like mixed environments, the application will not open properly or it may take time to open the application. At that time, the tool is not stabilized. It is not able to wait or capture the proper information and application.

Automation Anywhere is scalable

In our company, there are many developers using it and we rolled out around 149 bots, so I can't say the exact number. Different team members are using this tool, and they benefit from its use. Multi-projects are using this bot every single day.

I have reached out to support. There is a website for all we need. We can raise a ticket and can contact them there.

The initial setup is straightforward. The Automation Anywhere company supported us for the installation process. They are good supporters.

In terms of how long it took, that part will be taken care of by our admin team. We are not part of that process at all.

I am not aware of costs, but for every bot we have a license. That is what I know.

I can recommend Automation Anywhere. 

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would say, given the existing process, Automation Anywhere is a seven. As I suggested, if they improve the stabilizing, the screen scraping, the document understanding and some other activities, then definitely they can go ahead with that tool.

We deploy Automation Anywhere in both on-premise and on the cloud. In past, most customers have preferred the on-premise deployment, but the latest version, which is 2019, is becoming popular because it's on the cloud. 

The customers who are using the earlier version, they're on-premise and new customers are using the cloud version. The trend is moving onto the cloud rather than on-premise.

A few of our use cases for Automation Anywhere are for the HR departments, onboarding process, finance domain, month-end reports, ledger update, and AP automation.

The integrations with the OCR engines in Automation Anywhere are quite powerful. It has helped us in many projects.

The solution could improve the integration with some web applications. It was difficult to manage them.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for approximately three years.

Automation Anywhere is stable. We have customers that have been using it for years and they have not had any issues.

I have found Automation Anywhere to be highly scalable.

I have not personally contacted the support, but I heard from colleagues that the support is good.

The initial installation is simple.

I would recommend this solution to others, it is one of the leaders in the market at this time when it comes to RP platforms.

I rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

I use this solution to script and update website data and work with databases such as SQL. We also use IQ Bot extensively to script data from PDF files.

AA has improved our efficiency and saved on manual hours because no manual interaction is required.

The most valuable feature is the task bots because we found that cognitive functionality can be improvised.

An area for improvement would be that, once the code goes beyond 1,000 lines, it becomes really tough for a programmer to keep track of what is happening with the variables. I think they should add some kind of inbuilt modularization to help programmers keep track of what is happening.

I've been using this solution for two-and-a-half years, and we switched to A360 a couple of months ago.

There are some bugs in the system, but AA's stability is improving day by day.

I think scaling from small to medium automation works well, but if building out very big applications, sometimes the code can be too lengthy and uncontrollable.

AA's technical support can vary - most of the time, it's good, but sometimes it's tough to get your issue addressed.

I implemented using an in-house team, with support available from AA if required.

We evaluated UiPath.

I'd rate this product as eight out of ten.

Automation Anywhere has a lot of room for improvement. It is not customer-friendly. They are always rolling out patches. They have a lot of limitations.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for the past three years.

Stability-wise, Automation Anywhere is stable, but that is what an end solution should be. It should be user-friendly and accessible, particularly when it comes to automation.

The technical support is good. We have not had any issues. 

Before Automation Anywhere, we were working on HP products, like QTP, and then LoadRunner.

The initial setup is difficult because Automation Anywhere does not have a GitHub integration. They need to build a patch for that. From the end point users' point of view, it leaves a bad impression.

Automation Anywhere's price is a little expensive. Moreover, it comes on like a single/set license. It should come in perpetual licenses. If a license is not getting used, then it has to be switched over to some other process. In cases like this, Automation Anywhere does not come up. I think they lose a lot of business because they do not use a perpetual model.

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.

Most of our automation happens on Automation Anywhere. 

While the automation is being done, we use it as a platform. Then, depending on the number of users/ bots needed, we apply  for the corresponding licenses.

The good thing about Automation Anywhere is that any process:

1. Which is repetitive, rule-based, and only requires you to do collect/ edit information on the application frontend can be automated. 

Therefore, Automation Anywhere makes for a good use case. 

2.Wherever the process is  deterministic, with no decisions to be made, you can use it. 

It can automate any processes where 

3. Process is well established, standard, or stable, and there are not many changes in the process. For example, a simple task, such as logging into a website, launching a website and doing systematic steps on the website, can easily be captured to Automation Anywhere.  I see lot of applications, especially in finance and accounting domain.

You might have a lot of steps where you need to either extract data, repeat data, or collect data. All of those processes can be automated through RPA, and especially Automation Anywhere. You can use even automation from the server side, not just websites. The only constraint is that the process should not require human intervention and decision making.

We see the application in the 

# BPO space, 

# Finance and accounting, 

# Health care in terms of claim processing.

E.g. in F&A, if you're doing invoice processing where the entire process is manual, and the analyst has to go through the invoice to determine invoice details, discount on the payment  or a penalty should be levied. In such cases, you can scan this information through an OCR, which is an optical character recognition tool. Then, the rest of the information can be pretty much retrieved by the RPA, which means the RPA will scan the information to classify this information and fill up the  web form. This will be sent to the ERP. This is how the workflow would look like. 

Wherever you can put

# a rule-based system, you can automate all of the processes. In our company, all these processes are manual and you might have 50 to 60 people supporting this process for a mid-size company. You can automate it and reduce the manual effort by almost 40 to 50 percent, depending upon how many techs are enrolled and what is the effort being spent in order to process transaction volumes.

I have been familiar with a couple of projects where this was implemented in cash applications or invoice processing, and they could automate these steps. So, I'm familiar with some of the back-end processes and where they are getting automated.

#1.You don't have to really code anything, as it gives you a good interface (UI), because the components are already preconfigured, you  have to just a drag and drop sequence in terms of how you want to execute the steps. 

#2. There are preconfigured APIs that can be used. E.g., if you want to interact with the mailbox solution, you can have the RPA fetch attachments or email body from the mail solution. You can process attachments via test file or PDF. You can even make Automation Anywhere work around PDF, which is typically not that easy to work with in terms of extracting information.

#3. Metabots/ IQ Bots: One of the features, which we have not used too much, but available, is the MetaBot feature. These preconfigured solutions are easily downloadable, and you can just plug-and-play with a bit of customization, which also means you do not have to keep recreating and can reuse existing functionality. Some of the typical uses are that you could be regularly logging into a website. You can just download a MetaBot, as a useful webpage interface and just run it. All you have to do is maybe replace the name of the website, and in case there is a certain authentication mechanism that is being used, then provide that information.

# 4.There are multiple levels of cloning. In case screen cloning doesn't work, you can do object-based cloning or keystroke-level cloning, depending upon what parameters are available to you and what is the level of information that you capture. You can traverse between object cloning, which is the lowest, most basic form of cloning to a stroke-based cloning, which is like taking care of each keystroke-level which is made by the agent.

#1 Exception Management and Notification: When you are making a code, and there is a happy path and exception management mechanism, it would be nice if there was feedback in terms of whether this is the most appropriate way to code this. I'm not sure how this can be done, but that could be very insightful. It already gives you some screen tips, but this could be done in a better fashion, in case you are creating the workflow and then you believe a beta workflow is available or could be done. If a screen tip could be given to the coder for this sort of workflow, this would be a much better feature for Automation Anywhere. 

# 2 Type of Cloning: I've realized that sometimes when screen-level cloning is a better option, people still use object-based cloning. It would be useful if Automation Anyone could give you tips recommending fewer steps or fewer areas of exception management after you inputted your code. I'm not really sure if this is doable from a technical standpoint.

#3 Debugging: Currently, I believe the debugging of bot is a bit tricky and not very elegant, you might have to keep re-running the script to be able to identify the bug. This can be looked at, as a possible area of improvement. 

#4 Scheduling:There are two modules: the run module and the control center. In terms of scheduling and triggering, they could make it a bit more helpful and provide suggestions, e.g., if you are scheduling it, and there is a conflict, can you resolve it this way. Maybe you can get an upfront alert or something to that effect. 

#5: Stability, Workaround and fall back mechanism: When  bot breaks down, is there any of mechanisms or notifications that can be given? You can possibly choose to notify people, typically in organizations people are pretty much adverse to automation. If something breaks down, they would like to know at the earliest given opportunity that something is breaking down and piling up. They want to be able to resolve it quickly. If the resolution is going to take time, they want to be able to make some specific workaround mechanism kick in. If a bot breaks down, immediately the fallback mechanism should work too. If there could be information in terms of  when the process was out of range and somebody might need to take a look at what has happened. This is because most of these business processes that get automated are critical in nature and might have financial and operational impact. People need to know that there are working fine and not broken down. It can really have an adverse impact if they break down and nobody knows.

#6. Platform Training: My experience has been that if the person who codes the bot is not very well-trained, then they might create unstable bots. So, it's not the platform. It is just how somebody has coded the bots which can bring in lot of instability to them. I recommend that when you are using a coder that the person well-trained and have a good amount of experience already working on bots. They shouldn't be newbie or beginner who comes in to code because that will impact the quality of the code itself.

I have been working with Automation Anywhere for the last three years at two different companies.

# Business process stability: Before robotic automation, the business process itself should be stable and very well-documented. Also, anytime a change is made to the process or subprocess ensure, that the RPA gets updated too. Typically, the entire process of automation might take some time, then by that time, the initial business process might have changed a bit. There could variations in terms of volume or in the process itself.

The most important thing is that before you automate something that you must make sure that it is stable, in its steady state for whatever changes might be upcoming over the next six month to year. Otherwise, you might create a bot, which will go into production,  and fail because the underlying process itself has changed.

# Monitoring and controllership: If there is no changes in the process, bots are pretty much stable and especially, if they have been well coded. In case there have been any changes anywhere in the process or subprocess, the bot can fail. This means you must have a review mechanism with monitoring in place. Once you put a bot into production, you have to monitor it and do regular sanity checks. Otherwise, you could have situations where bots have failed and you might not know, then the process comes to a standstill. In a nutshell monitoring and control is an important aspect of RPA in the run phase.

Scalability is just scaling up the number of bots, so scalability is not a problem. You can increase the number of machines and number of bots to scale up the solution, but it can be sometimes very cost prohibitive. E.g., typically, it requires a dedicated machine, and it can't be a shared environment. This can be a bit of a constraint in terms of the number of machines being used. Otherwise, the solution is completely scalable. In case the process requires more throughput, you can just increase the number of bots which are working. Also, if you are doing this properly, then you have to make sure that there are not multiple bots running at the same time which might be at cross purposes.

I don't interact with the people from Automation Anywhere.

# Procurement of the license is easy, but depending upon what you want to automate and how you automate it that might take time. Setup is not at all difficult. You just take the license and install the application, then it's ready to go. However, in terms of what you're trying to automate, how you're trying to automate it, and the complexity of the problem, the entire automation process can take time.

# Implementation timelines:The time frame to implement depends on the complexities and number of the processes and subprocesses. In a typical process, the coding, testing, and deployment could range from a week to four weeks. However, I have seen it sometimes take longer because you have to continuously keep checking and testing it. Every time the code breaks down, you have to possibly start from the beginning.

My experience has been one to four weeks as the ideal time frame. However, depending on how well the process was understood and documented, there can be certain gaps which would only become evident during the testing phase, not otherwise.

# Resources: Depending on the number of bots that you have to create and the number of the complex processes along with the given budget and timelines that you have in mind, the number of developers range from one to multiple developers. The resources that you really need are developers because they are people who will be coding. Otherwise, from an ownership standpoint, we need some subject-matter expertise for the process. The people who are subject-matter experts will be needed on a part-time basis for the developer to be able to map the process well and be able to create their technical design. Then, you will need a technical master who creates the technical documentation of how it will be coded. The number of technical masters again depends upon the processes and complexity along with the corresponding number of developers.

The deployment team may not be very big. You need just the developers and a design architect, mostly two people. All the other people come and go per the requirement stage of the deployment. There might be people who are there only for consultation. Some people might be there only to approve the solution. Whenever you bring in automation, it has to be reviewed, monitored, and assessed from the organization's standpoint. There might be people who are just doing approvals for this process deployment in case it's a very complex project, and then there is a project manager. Otherwise, sometimes the technical design person doubles up as a project manager too.

Before implementing, you do the assessment of why the organization wants to automate:

Imperatives for Robotic Automation 

• What do they want to automate? 
• What are the key objectives  the organization wants to achieve through robotic automation? 
• Is it a process optimization or is it cost cutting? 
• Who is driving the automation? Is it client-driven or is it vendor-driven? 

Then, you have to build the business case in terms of what you want to try to automate. E.g., how much can actually be automated? That assessment should be done. Even the cost and time of automation versus that benefits that you're going to get out of it needs to be done.

# Process Degeneration: When we start automating, we do a process desegregation. This means whatever processes are under scope that we try and understand the task level, activity level, and precedence details. We make activity diagrams, then try and assess out of all of these which one can be automated. So, if the automation index is pretty high, which means that most of the process can be automated, e.g., up to 80 percent, then it might make a better business case than if the automobility is only say 30 to 40 percent. Then, the cost of automation might be way higher.

# Setting the right expectations with the client: t is also important to set the right expectations with the organization. Are they new to automation or do they some prior experience with automation? Because this helps us set the right expectations in terms of the benefits which can be had. The customer might also want to understand what are the impacts if automation fails and the fallback mechanisms. For example:

• How do you mitigate or remediate the impact of automation failure? 
• What is a criticality of the process you're automating? 
• What are your points of failure and choke points? 
• What are your backup plans if things aren't going well?

The most important thing is the business case as to the cost versus the benefits of automation.

# Legal and Compliance Regulations: Also, are any legal or compliance regulations which are applicable because technically it might be feasible to automate, but legally or from a compliance point of view, it might not be good idea to automate. You might want to still have human intervention in terms of verification and validation.

# Criticality of the process: From a financial impact standpoint, things that require a bit of background investigation might be better kept as a manual process or require a human approval rather than automating it completely.

It all depends on the scale. In one project that I have worked on, we had a savings of $200,000 over a three-year period and a payback period of 6 months. The typical ratio is that one bot will replace two people.

# Licensing: One of the components of key drivers for us to renew our contract is AI or automation. As an organization, we are moving toward smarter operations.

Our pricing a year ago was $600 per license, but I am not sure of our current licensing cost.

# Set up cost: Additional costs will be for the machines and the number of machines that you are using. You can deploy virtually as well as on physical machines. In both the situations, you do need to allocate a certain budget for securing the machines and where the software will be installed and running. 

# Dedicated Machines: The machines cannot be used for anything else, because only a certain bot can run at a certain time. You need to be very particular about your scheduling of running the bots, and while the bot is running nobody can use the machine. You cannot have an agent working on a machine and the bot running in the background. The machine  has to be completely dedicated. 

# Network Bandwidth and Disk Space: Then there are the network bandwidth requirements and  disk space requirements, which are additional costs apart from the licensing and software costs. The developer is also going to charge you for their coding time too.

There are two or three more tools in the market such as Blue Prism, UI Path, but I think the preference was given to Automation Anywhere.

I have only worked with Automation Anywhere.

Understand why you are choosing Automation Anywhere, as the platforms are pretty on the same level except for certain functionalities. Also, in some scenarios, one platform could be better than another. Pick a platform and stick with it.

It is easy to use, but I realize that the effectiveness of the platform depends on the coder and how he is doing the coding. This is my experience, because I have seen that the quality of the automation is as good as the person who is using it. In Automation Anywhere, the skill set of the coder really determines how good the automation is, which is why I am making it a eight (out of 10), not 10 (out of 10). Because while the platform is feature-rich and easy to use, it is the skill of the coder that determines how well the platform is leveraged.

I' am now mainly driving AI at my company. RPA has become a bit secondary in the sense that it is a part of my solution, but most of the time, it is AI-driven. RPA sort of helps in the execution of some of the components of that overall solution. From the organization's standpoint, automation is already a part of all our solutions. E.g., our organization is moving toward automation where almost 30 percent of any deal will be allocated to automation. It will be a ratio of 70:30, where out of $100, a total of $30 dollars will be allocated toward automation and AI.

I did my certification on version 10.4.