Automation Anywhere Reviews

We use it in the field of banking, especially for repetitive tasks in card centers. We use automation with IBM BAW tools. 

It's helpful in creating new customer accounts, as we work with other systems that have no API or services to work with. The process starts in IBM BPM and it calls the robot to finish the work by calling other systems like iScore and T24. These add customer details and retrieve scores for the customer, especially when working with loans (personal, car). 

We used it in sending and collecting emails to and from different sites. 

We use it for repetitive tasks that need a lot of people and consume time, as bots work 24 hours and 7 days.

It helps in:

1. Improving employee productivity, morale, and retention. 
2. While there is some fear that automation will eliminate jobs, the consequences of automation are counter-intuitive: automation actually removes the tedious parts of work and frees up often stretched-thin employees for more meaningful and creative work. 
3. Streamline chaotic processes and workflows.
4. Increases transparency.
5. Enhances customer service and delivery.
6. Drives exponential growth.

Recorders and Bot Insights are very valuable features.

In addition:

1. Workload management helps to make the best use of the bots to make sure bots work well.
2. Concurrent bot executions. 
3. A web-based solution for bot creators.
4. It is a cloud-based solution.
5. Dashboards, especially for bot and task monitoring.
   
6. The REST APIs help to integrate with other systems.
7. Commands in the Excel package that make it easier to work with Excel files.
8. Email package commands.
9. Bot store.
10. Run DLL and Python code that helps a lot in working with machine learning.

The product needs improvements in dealing with remote servers and providing more APIs that will be used with other systems.

Also in need of improvement are:

1. The AI sense command needs improvement.
2. Bot discovery needs more work.
3. Migration tools should be improved.
   
4. REST and SOAP services need work.
5. AA should provide the ability to use custom packages that follow a standard to be imported in RPA.
6. I would like the ability to use custom cryptography algorithms with commands.
7. They should improve PDF commands and IQ features to include Arabic language OCR.
8. The admin user should have the ability to change the tome out of the session. 
   

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

Stability-wise, AA is very good.

The scalability is good.

Technical support is good.

I previously used Blue Prism but changed because I found that AA has more helpful features. 

Straightforward, installation with disaster recovery approaches. 

The vendor team assisted us with deployment and they are very helpful and have a very good level of expertise

It helps to increase the ROI by 25%.

It's very good in terms of cost and pricing.

Automation Anywhere is an RPA package for basic Automation to Complex Automation. It also has analytics and cognitive capability.

I have used Automation Anywhere in many use cases from PDF integration to Excel reconciliation. The best use case was invoice processing using IQ Bot. In this process, we download PDFs from an application and pass it to IQ Bot for the extraction of invoice data.

This helps in extracting data from PDF documents and use it to post the invoices. This is something that we had done in a single dev environment, where Automation Anywhere was on-premises and secured in terms of sharing details for data extraction.

I have also explored other products from Automation Anywhere including IQ Bot and Bot Analytics. In addition, I have provided POCs to customers with Attended Automation 2.0 and the Automation Productivity Pack.

Our organization is a COE for RPA and a partner with Automation Anywhere. We have implemented RPA in many of our clients' projects. Not only this, but we have updated the way that we work by adding internal bots to increase our productivity.

We have increased our productivity internally by using RPA with our employees who are completing the same tasks every day. These include jobs like claim management, documentation, etc.

This helps our organization by increasing productivity, and also helps us to understand more use cases that can be applied to our clients' organizations.

Automation Anywhere is a package of many features. There is no single feature that will get more value because each feature is important on its own.

I like the software updates because I see new things being added all the time.

The jump From AA v11.3 to A2019 was a great start to help explore RPA and provide more options to developers who are implementing RPA using Java Packages.

This product is easy to use, and it helps business users to more easily understand RPA.

I believe Automation Anywhere is working perfectly and it is the best in the market. However, some points based on a development perspective I would like to add are:

1. Universal search.
2. Creating a variable from anywhere, including from the properties/attributes of commands.
3. I would like to have the ability to delete multiple variables.
4. It should be possible to delete multiple parameters for the API.
5. I would like to have commands to link with the respective knowledge base.
6. Having a refractor in the code would be an improvement.
7. A predefined framework for Bot Development that includes an audit log and error handling would be helpful.
8. It would be useful to have some updates for the control room in terms of analytics.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for the past three-plus years. I have quite a good understanding of the older versions from 10.5 to 11.3, as well as the latest web version A2019.

Stability-wise, this is a good product.

The scalability is good.

Our experience with technical support has been good. The support does screen sharing to solve issues and explain what they are doing.

Prior to working with this RPA solution, I used programming languages for automation. These included VBScript and Python.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Our in-house team deployed this product with the assistance of experts.

If it is saving FTE and Generating a good ROI then it is Worth Investing.

Before choosing Automation Anywhere, I looked at options like free online tools

We automate mundane and repetitive tasks for our clients, like invoice processing, purchase order creation, sales order creation, refund processing, transaction chargeback, and many more.

These tasks are basic and require no special skillset, hence are an extra cost to the company. By automating them, the company saves a lot of manpower, leaving them to better utilize their resources for a more value-added task. This ultimately leads to a better return on investment.

Automation Anywhere has provided the capability to automate repetitive tasks for the organization, which in turn has lead to a lot of cost-savings. It has also helped in removing the robots out of humans, by investing their time in more value-added activities.

Humans can work approximately eight to ten hours, whereas if the same activities are done by the bots, they can keep on working round the clock. Therefore, improving the productivity of the organization.

The percentage of human error in such cases has become little-to-none when processed by the bot.

The universal recorder along with the Excel basic and advanced packages has been highly valuable. With Excel basic, we can perform basic Excel activities even if Excel is not installed in the system. The Excel advanced package has a lot of features added, which were initially not there in Version 11 and we had to rely on external scripting for the same.

Earlier in Version 11, we had different sets of recordings, which often made things confusing but with the universal recorder, the situation is not the same anymore.

The UI could be made better because the UI in Version 11 was better and easier as compared to a2019. We were able to fit in more lines of code on the screen at a time, whereas in a2019, we can see much less. This means that the developer has to scroll again and again to view his/her code.

An option should be provided to disable the flow and dual-mode since those are not used often by the developers, and hence take up extra space on the screen.

The IQ bot should also have a feature to process documents with multiple invoices, as currently, we need to split the document according to invoices beforehand.

I have been working as an RPA Developer for the past three years. For the first three and a half years, I was using Version 10 and 11 of Automation Anywhere, and for the last six months, I have been using A2019.

The solution is quite stable.

The solution is easily scalable. We can add more bot runners or creators as per our need when the requirements increases.

The technical support was great. The support team response is quite prompt and they will provide you the solution to your issues most of the time.

Automation anywhere was my first RPA tool.

The initial setup is straightforward and if there is any difficulty, the AA support team will come to your rescue.

Our in-house team automates processes for our clients. The expertise level was good.

From my experience, I can say that the initial setup cost is easily recovered over a period of time once the bots start running in production. We develop bots for our clients and as per their information, most of the time, the automation of a single process has returned their original investment amount.

We did evaluate other RPA tools but we found Automation Anywhere to be more user-friendly and easy to use. 

I, being a Robotic Process Automation Developer, extensively use various Automation Anywhere products on daily basis. I use Automation Anywhere for end-to-end implementation of processes for clients, as well as my organization.

We have many use cases. One of them is from the marketing department. Every organization needs to market their products and services to get future clients. The marketing people used to mail the prospective clients one by one manually, as per their mailing list. They used to spend approximately one minute on each email. We created a bot that helps the department in sending emails to prospects with product information, service information, brochures, etc. 

Now, the department needs only to specify the content file and an Excel file having email IDs, and the rest is done by the bot. It sends approximately 500 emails within 10 minutes. That makes the process of sending emails extremely fast, including customized content.

Automation Anywhere has helped save many man-hours in my organization by letting us automate monotonous and repetitive tasks. Let's take an example of procurement, to Purchase (P2P) Process in SAP S/4 Hana.

This task requires an employee to manually verify the invoice, feed data into SAP, Park Invoice, Validate Line Items, and generate MIRO. This takes approximately 10 minutes per invoice and that doesn't require any human intelligence. It is just a tedious task. Instead, we implement this solution using Automation Anywhere.

We used the Automation Anywhere IQ Bot to extract data from invoices.

Automation Anywhere Enterprise is used to automate email, for data entry into SAP, 3-Way Match in SAP, as well as MIGO & MIRO Generation in SAP. This frees up employee's time as well as increases the accuracy of the work.

I am inclined towards features such as Automation Anywhere Bot Store, Automation Anywhere Enterprise Client, Recorders, and Scheduling with the Auto-Login Feature.

Automation Anywhere Bot Store; The Bot Store is an online library where anybody can find different types of pre-developed, production-ready bots. Being production-ready and easily accessible saves development time. All bot submissions to the bot store pass through strict security checks, which makes them secure to download and deploy.

Automation Anywhere Enterprise Client; The Automation Anywhere client has 500+ commands to perform various tasks. It has a user-friendly workbench and UI. The most important part is the scriptless development, where you just drag and drop the command and you are ready to run it.

Recorders; Recorders make automating desktop applications, as well as web applications, very reliable and easy to implement. Think of creating a bot to extract data from a webpage in less than 30 mins and it can be run by pressing a button daily. It makes tasks easy to finish. 

Scheduling with Auto-Login Feature; Automation Anywhere has the most user-friendly way to schedule a bot. Scheduling is so accurate in Automation Anywhere that we don't need to worry if the task will be deployed at the specified time or not. I personally manage 30+ schedules and each runs at its set time. Scheduling comes with an awesome Auto-Login feature. This feature logs into locked Windows even when the system has a disclaimer message. It makes scheduling reliable and accurate.

For me, IQ Bot needs to be improved. It has great capabilities and works really well for fully structured and spotless documents. When we try to process structured documents but with some little pen marks, improper partitions, or faded documents, IQ Bot fails to extract data properly out of them. Typical Indian supplier invoices are hard to process through IQ Bot.

I would love to see a package for Regular Expressions with various sub-commands such as regex builder and regex replace.

OAuth2.0 native support should be added in future releases. From a security point of view, there is work that is needed.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for more than 30 months.

Stability is great If you follow the recommended hardware and software. If you do not meet the requirements then it sometimes creates problems. So, the hardware should be up to the mark for a seamless experience.

The product is highly scalable. Scaling is easy. We started with the Marketing department and within the next three months, we were able to deploy bots for six more departments.

Automation Anywhere has a superb support team. They are prompt in responding to queries based on urgency. If I log a ticket with a production-level issue, they quickly respond and help to solve the problem.

The overall experience with support has been great. They even follow up to see if the issue has been solved after giving the solution.

We did not use another similar product. We started our RPA journey with Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup was straightforward. Automation Anywhere has descriptive documents to guide in installing the application on the server. Initially, I was the only person starting the RPA journey in my organization. I needed to set up the infrastructure, develop the bots, and give support as well.

Installing the application on the server was very easy. All credit goes to excellent documentation.

We implemented it through our in-house team.

With the newer cloud version of Automation Anywhere product, the setup cost has been cut down because the customer doesn't need to invest in new hardware.

Automation Anywhere is flexible in terms of costing and licensing.

We evaluated only one other vendor, which is UiPath.

Automation Anywhere seemed easy to work with, in our initial journey of RPA. So we choose it.

The product is promising and is successful. You should start your Automation journey with simpler processes and step-by-step, move towards bigger and more complex problems. They have a great support team and the product's community is active as well. This will help to make your automation journey seamless.

I am working for a company that is engaged in process automation.

In our company, we have used AA in several projects like finance process automation, payroll, accounts payable, and account receivable processing.

Each of the projects that I have engaged in is different from each other. For example, the finance automation project mainly focused on reconciliations, Excel automation, etc. AP and AR processes mainly focused on front-end navigation through the Chrome browser to download invoices from customer portals and upload and process them in their accounting application, which is also a web-based one.

Automation Anywhere assisted me with all the functions that I require to automate the processes and tasks.

The AA tool has more than 500 functionalities, which is really useful in feasibility studies.

Since it has capabilities to integrate with third-party applications easily, it makes the life of an automation engineer very easy. 

Our organization works with a few other leading RPA tools also. When compared, every RPA tool, coding/scripting in AA is much easier for a developer. The code is also very readable, which increases the user-friendliness when it comes to code maintenance.

The effort to train a beginner to code in AA is low because all of the commands and functionalities are simple.

Excel automation, database integration, and object cloning are few functionalities that I find valuable in the tool because most of the business processes work around them.

With Excel automation, we can open, close, save, and navigate through the Excel workbook. Most importantly, macro integration within Excel is easy, and with that, it unleashes all of the capabilities that we can do with macros to be executed by integrating with AA.

Database integration allows us to integrate with SQL Server and Oracle databases.

Object Cloning means that frontend navigation is made easier. With AA the object cloning command, we can capture the UI objects and customize them as per the process.

• The API integration should be improved further since it is a bit difficult at the moment to connect with the API in the enterprise version.
  
• The object cloning command should be improved such to increase the capability and capture more objects in the UI.
• It would be more advantageous if the email automation allowed us to integrate with cloud-based email servers.
• Metabots should be improved further, allowing for the same functionality as the task bot.
• It would be great if AA could reduce the price of IQ Bot.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for more than two years.

Stability mainly will be based on the system architecture. The tool is stable from 11.3.2.4.

This is scalable across many processes and can integrate with many third-party applications.

Technical support is excellent and they work round the clock to sort out any issue we have.

In AA, the tool has more capabilities and functionalities when compared with our previous RPA product.

Setup is very straightforward and there is a complete guideline provided.

We implemented in-house.

Using AA has improved the lifestyle of the employee. Monetary ROI cannot be revealed as per company rules and policies.

Pricing is affordable and I would recommend beginning with the Starter Package.

To evaluate the products, the company went through the reviews.

When considering all the facts, this is one of the most user-friendly RPA tools that I have worked with.

We had been handling various daily reports that need manual Excel work. We have now automated those daily tasks using Automation Anywhere, saving an enormous amount of time on the manual effort. It is now human-error-free.

The Screen Recorder feature is the feature that I like the most, as it can automate anything on your desktop screen by recording your actions or the cursor movement. This makes it easy to learn and configure for any type of environment when it comes to automating regular tasks. 

We implemented Automation Anywhere as one of the primary tools for automating various tasks within our organization. We have implemented this tool for various customers as well.

By providing the companies with such a useful and productive tool, they save a lot of time and money on tasks that can be performed by small bots.

It an easy, simple, and user-friendly tool that can be accessed through the mobile application as well. You can control and monitor your bot through mobile apps, which creates flexibility in handling the software. 

The Automation Anywhere Screen Recorder feature allows us to do things very easily. It's easy to automate regular and routine tasks. It can automate anything on your desktop screen by recording your actions or the cursor movement, so it is easy to learn and configure for any type of environment.

There are three features by which you can automate things. You also do have the console window to monitor each action the tool is performing. You can correct the code if you feel it captured some wrong action. 

I would like to have a simple bot dashboard window for admins to manage things easily. This is important when an organization has a huge number of tasks to be automated because managing tasks can be complex.

It would be very helpful if the bot dashboard were simplified for admins.

The mobile application can be improved by adding more functions and capabilities abuse right now, only a few features are enabled for mobile users. 

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

It is quite stable and we do receive a lot of updates that enhance and add more features. 

It is a highly scalable application.

So far, it's good and responsive customer support.

We do use other RPA solutions, although I don't want to mention the names. The simplicity of this application makes it a win. 

The initial setup is straightforward.

We implemented it through a vendor team.

I don't deal have cost specifics but I can say it is a tool that provides value for the money.

Before choosing Automation Anywhere, we also evaluated Blue Prism.

In summary, I feel that Automation Anywhere is heading in the right direction. 

The problem statement is to automate data reconciliation between three systems, namely SAP, Ariba, and manually-updated Excel. Supplier and Purchase data flows in from different systems and separately, which sometimes results in data inconsistency.

In the current scenario, two people spend two days per week to verify and reconcile this data and then save it. This is a big cost and investment for the client. The ask from Automation Anywhere is to automate this process, including a re-upload of the data back to the systems with results of reconciliation. This way, there is no manual effort spent. 

As mentioned above in the problem statement, the task is to automate the data reconciliation effort between SAP, Ariba, and Excel sheets from SharePoint. The developer team was able to create four bots as a PoC to automate these steps and additionally upload the data back to systems with reconciliation results. This brought consistency in data.

What we were also able to do for the client is to schedule these bots at a specific time every day, which helped remove any kind of dependency or human intervention. This also improved accuracy.

The solution was a mix of recorded runs and scripting. The developer team had a basic understanding of the tool, which made their job quite easy.

Features like reusing each and every piece of code for things such as login scripts, data extraction scripts, etc, helped us to speed up the implementation of PoC for the client.

Another valuable feature was the one-place control-all type mechanism, which helped to have a center point of control for bots running on multiple systems.

The scheduling feature allows for scheduling of the bots to a specific time every day, which helped remove the dependency on humans completely.

We were also able to get the results sent via email.

One area where I can see room for improvement is the training material that is available. I am aware that the Automation Anywhere university has a lot of training content, and even better, all of it is categorized with respect to the user's role in development. I took the training course related to architecture. This course and content were nice but the videos had a digital voice over, which made it non-engaging for me. After certain videos, you cannot concentrate much.

The other point that is relative to my experience is that for a completely new person to RPA, Automation Anywhere may come with a small learning curve.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for between ten months and a year.

The stability will mostly depend on the system under automation.

Qe started with four bots and now there are going to be only more. The target is for approximately 25 bots to be deployed.

I did not need to reach out to the service team myself, but the development team seemed to have no complaints.

This is my first encounter with an actual implementation for RPA. Automation Anywhere seemed to fit our requirements.

The initial setup is mostly straightforward, although there was some initial confusion with the right version of the tool to be used.

Deployment was done by our in-house development team.

On a very high level, I can say that we saved two days for two people per week with this automation.

My only suggestion in terms of pricing is very generic and that is to consider that as much as RPA saves cost and does automation, please get a realistic estimation done on whether you are really achieving any ROI over your investment with RPA. Once you are sure about it, go for it.

The other tool in consideration was Blue Prism; however, the internal development team advocated for Automation Anywhere as a better fit for the requirements, which is why we implemented it.

The tool comes in with a lot of capabilities, however, you are the best judge to use only what is needed.

I work as an RPA developer where I use the Automation Anywhere software.

We work with many clients, wherein we automate their processes. We get positive feedback from the client regarding the processes that we have developed. It saves a lot of their manual time and most of their work is done by the bot, without any human intervention. So far, we have all positive views.

IQ Bot is the most important feature and it has been extensively used by our clients. With all of the new features of IQ bot, I feel it is the most utilized component of Automation Anywhere.

The scheduling/triggering of the bots from the CR, without going to the actual environment and starting the bot, is an interesting feature.

I feel A2019 is still not completely ready and the discontinuing of version 11 is a negative impact for all of the users and clients. I feel version 11 should still be continued and it should be the client's choice whether they want to buy version 11 or A2019.

I have been using automation anywhere for the past two and a half years.

I have not used another RPA, although I have worked on several versions of Automation Anywhere. I have developed in version 10, version 11, and currently on A2019.

Although I'm new to the A2019 version, I find that version 11 was the most user-friendly version of all.

The price of this product is good.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing Automation Anywhere.