Automation Anywhere Reviews

Automation Anywhere is being used as a solution in creating robots, which imitates mundane tasks and simplifying business processes all across different divisions and departments that fit their process needs.

This solution greatly helps us reduce repetitive human effort and turn them into more productive resources for the company. Automation Anywhere also helped in turning complex processes into possible solutions, which greatly reduces production costs, also allowing employees to do more and enjoy more.

Automation Anywhere greatly improved our processing time since robots can execute process steps faster than human resources do. With this, we also reduced errors and mistakes in processing because robots don't get tired or worn out. It thus reduces the risk of misinformation and other human errors.

It also helped in making our resources more productive, given that repetitive tasks are now reduced. Simple processes such as tracking, logging, and data consolidation are now automated, which helps us focus more on doing tasks that are impactful and more important.

IQ Bot is one of the features I greatly value in Automation Anywhere, as it has helped me in creating bots that involve processes with unstructured data, thus making complex processes possible and attainable with this technology.

Their mobile application is a great feature for developers and project owners on the go, as they can monitor the status of the robot runs anywhere and anytime. This is an important feature because this world is running at a faster pace than before, and mobility is very important for everyone.

Automation Anywhere can be improved with respect to the user-friendliness of the interface because most of the competitors are now using a flowchart-like structure, thus making it easy for anyone to learn and study it. Essentially, it's as easy as connecting shapes for each action and process.

An area for improvement is their OCR reading for images since some competitors have an inbuilt OCR reader that recognizes various hand strokes much better, thus improving the time and resources needed for transcribing the documents.

I've been using Automation Anywhere for two years and six months.

This solution is very stable in terms of performance and after-sales support.

This solution is very scalable as they adapt to the different needs of their customers.

Customer Service is a breeze since they quickly respond to various issue request.

We've previously used Pega Robotics as an automation solution, but since we're improving our services and processes as well, we need to step-up our automation technology to keep up with the ever-changing business world.

The initial setup was pretty straight forward, and the installation is easy.

Implementation was done by an in-house expert who had knowledge of our systems and processes, thus reducing the time needed in acclimating our process with the product.

Based on our department's statistics, we've been able to recover our initial costing after two-plus years.

I advise users or prospective buyers of this product to know more about the features they offer before diving in with this solution, pricing-wise. It is one of the most affordable RPA solutions, and as for licensing, they offer a community edition that greatly helps anyone who aspires to learn about the product before buying the enterprise solution. It will give them an overview of the features and functionalities that they will encounter when using the robot.

We've evaluated different options such as UiPath and Blue Prism, but due to costing, we've selected Automation Anywhere as our provider.

This solution is worth considering for medium to large-scale companies looking to automate various processes.

We have used RPA technology to build solutions which are across discipline and cater to end to end business process. At the start, we were performing use cases that primarily dealt with the Project Control group as most of the manual activities are based on the Excel operations which are either Macros based or involved tedious manual upload to the system in a periodic manner. Later we moved our strategy to cater to the more enhanced solutions which were primarily digital solutions involving - OCR, AI & ML. We were focusing on the Engineering Drawings which were more Unstructured & had the potential to create a Digital Workflow using the unstructured information.

Automation Anywhere has surely helped our organization to shape its Digital Journey - It was our first RPA tool which helped us to perform basic automation which created Point solutions but has added tremendous value at the early stage. We were able to scale-up fast using Automation Anywhere due to its user-friendly AI and later on IQ Bots provided the required edge to handle the unstructured data. We also tried to explore the Bot Insights which helped us to monitor the day to day Bot health and the hardware needs.

We have found both the basic Task Bot & IQ Bot very useful as the combination of both helped us to create some solutions which were End to End Business solutions. IQ bot performs the basic Data Sample set creation and Extraction of the details from the unstructured PDFs and later we have used the Business Rule engine using the IQ Bot to perform the data feed into the various Systems. Overall we were able to achieve the value using the combination. As part of our internal solution, we have also created custom Python scripting to handle the OCR failure issues surfaced due to IQ Bot product limitations

Automation Anywhere can be improved in certain areas specified in the cognitive zone where the information needs better OCR Engine + Machine Learning capabilities. Also, they can improve on the System Identified region function of the IQ Bot - Our team faced a tough time in handling that as we were not able to assign variable to System Identified Region as the IQ Bot tool wasn't allowing it. Also, we have had a certain issue while performing the WLM - Workload Management functionality, applying Queue mechanism becomes hard sometimes - Can be more intuitive for the end-users.

We have been using Automation Anywhere from the past 3.5 yrs and the product is catering to all our basic to mid-level complex requirements. We have developed multiple Bots catering to multiple disciplines. RPA Solutions are presently catering to Internal Stakeholders and we are planning to roll out for our External Clients as well.

We haven't used as such any RPA tool prior to this but yes we have used UiPath parallelly with the Automation Anywhere. Both tools are good but Automation Anywhere has an upper edge on Cognitive area as compared to UiPath.

Each RPA Tool has its own limitation & benefits - For an early started UiPath may be a better option because the license cost is less but once you Scale & Try to move to advance complex Use Cases involving Cognitive it may not help much

Yes, we have evaluated other Options but with the Tradeoff between License Cost & Functionality, we have found Automation Anywhere as the best fit for Oil & Gas Use Cases.

Nothing specific Automation Anywhere can do better in Cognitive it needs to stabilize its products. Also Cloud product is the game-changer for them A2019

I am a platform architect for the RPA so I deal with all 3 major RPA vendors. I build the Infra for all big setups. I have immense experience plan, design, and building the setup on cloud, on-prem and with different configurations.

I implemented AA in different environments, the AA installation is the smoothest compared to other RPA software installs.

Migration is a little challenging since it requires direct integration with DB, credential vault and all that. Since multiple credentials are involved, it is a challenge to get all the credentials, it should be easier if only the control room credential was required. Versioning migration is still a challenge.

My company uses AA extensively for internal BPO work as well as we refer and deploy it to the customer as a RPaaS model. It helps in increasing productivity, reducing the cost of the whole operation. It makes fewer errors and in the COVID situation proves to be a reliable workhorse.

We implemented a lot of new environments recently. v10 expiry and COVID situation accelerated the implementations. Compared to older days now all implementation of infra bot happened pretty quickly.

Bot with Citrix integration may require a lot of improvement but having any extra feature really helps in complex implementation.

The cloud templates for implementation helped greatly and it helps us in pushing the software fast.

• The OCR integration came a long way. They have intelligence inbuilt into it.
• Ease of deploying and the KB article really help people to just read and deploy different 3rd part components as well(svn, DB, LB, etc) .
• Nowadays, the screen scraping techniques evolved in RPA and it is good to see they are in play which was not the case couple of years ago.
• HBC is most suitable for COVID times. 
• The RPaas offering will help customer to use it for less number of bots.
• AD security group integration is a good feature
  
• AI sense is good too.
  

They need to concentrate lot on a nonpersistent RPA model. Integrate IQ bot with AA instead of making it as a separate component, since nowadays intelligent bots need to be integrated into RPA core. Instead of bot agents getting installed on the machines, concentrate on making it independent of the system and only as a plugin in the browser.

It doesn't have an independent small install for developers and always requires to be fully installed.

Bringing a DevOps model for bot implementation integrated through private bot store might be a good idea to improve the tool.

I being using it since couple of years, i am impressed by the transformation from v10 to v11 and v11 to A2019. 

The solution is pretty stable, we didn't face many issues. Once the instalation is done the control room core architecture wont face many issues.there are quick fixes like service restart if anything goes off. but most of the time we hear AA support suggesting us to reinstall with the new version of software for performance issues, but with my experiance i hardly see that making huge differnce in fixing the actual issue.

 Monitoring can be done through email alerts for the core infrastructure. Issues mainly in HA(High Availability) with cluster sync issues still not monitored at the dashboard level, which might be a concern if the cluster goes out of sync. At the bot implementation lot of things are dependent on the way we code so it's additional work for the developer to get the code keeping in mind all the events which might happen. I would have been impressed if the solution had framework at the control room level to keep track of the overal execution and transactions, hope they can bring that feature in future releases

We never faced any issues with scalability for AA. sometime it takes high CPU on CR, but that is expected. one of the frequent questions we encouter with HA setups is the single point failure of repository storages, i understand that this needs to be taken care by storage fault tolerance, however most organization might not use cloud for RPA and if we are doing on prem install they might not have a high resillenace storage. SQL availability group still needs a SQL expert to get that right and DR solution totally depends on the underlaying infra we work on (there may be lot of alternative solution and its a big discussion to be honest :-)   )

Hence HA and DR solution really require a expert like us who have extensive knowledge on RPA, cloud, infra, windows and SQL  

They offer excellent customer service. No complaints except that every time they ask for a software upgrade as soon as they hear about an issue, which is not actually a good solution. Otherwise, they have very good knowledge of most of the issues. 

We keep switching between RPA software for a number of reasons. We prefer AA for the following reasons:

• Low cost for run licenses compare to other RPA solutions
• A high number of certified developers help in bring efficient automation compared to others, they in turn promote the RPA software that they know of.
• Easy to program, no prior experience of programming required.
• Easy to use compared to other RPA.

The initial setup was straightforward, even a complex setup can be set up in 20 mins if you have all prerequisites.setup can be complex if there is a HA , DR implementation, as a architects we need to factor in lot of variables. some are target application access,  MFA for the application or windows authentication, credential management, data accessibility, network reachability , underlaying hardware, PaaS offering in cloud(depends on the cloud) , VDI or VM template to choose (Makes huge difference in performance and costing), citrix or native application . Overall simple install, but huge planning to figure out the overall feasibility and effectiveness of implementation

We implemented in-house. I implement it within Accenture and for customers as well. I rate my self pretty high for implementation. I have solid experiance (AA master) as well as cloud certification. I have 12 years experiance in infra, so expect a good solid backgroup on both AA and infra.

ROI is important for the business case. ROI is good if you are going for long run, year on year. i never stayed on a project till we start getting the actual values, i see nowadays ROI is shrinking due to RPA vendors raising thier license costs , additional cost added to get the complex RPA solutions to be implemented

The setup cost for AA is always fixed since the configuration won't change much for the different number of bots, the license cost is lower in AA,

We usually evaluate Blue Prism and UiPath along with AA for implementation. We decide based on the requirements.

• We have validated all the primary features of A2019. New features can be added just by updating the new Package (a group of commands).
• Pass Credentials in CR Directly to run a bot on any device.
• Instead of installing AA Client, we will just install Bot agent on the runner machine. 
• Excel commands are classified into two types Excel Basic, Excel Advanced By giving a lot of scope to use a wide range of Excel operations.
• Instead of using AA Client, A2019 provides users the ability to create bots directly in the control room.
• Flow, List, Dual Views enable the user-friendly environment.
  

We have done lot of implementation with Automation Anywhere. Recently, we have used IQ Bot's latest version and delivered a few projects. It is saving most FTE benefits using Automation Anywhere automation. One good thing in A2019 is that all products of Automation Anywhere, like IQBOT services, Meta Bot Designer, Discovery Bot, and Control room are all together in one product which is very effective for any business team. Package options and workload management with queues are the most efficient features.

• The universal recorder is a kind of hybrid recorder that enables the user to record the data across devices.
• Option to send email from Outlook or SMTP.
• A2019 also supports Python script(2.0/3.0) along with Javascript and VBScript. Also it as inline scripting and importing script file feature. 
• A2019 contains almost 11 diffs. datatypes. Ex: window,number,table.
• Browser support is Improved with Different Browsers support: IE, Mozilla, Chrome.
• A2019 is not dependent on single os. It supports Linux, Windows, etc.
• Running bot through Excel, Waiting for release from the vendor
• Instead of meta bots we can use run DLL commands

• Cloud API vision and OCR engine integration should be more effective. 
• Auto-update of the Bot agent in runtime machines from Automation Anywhere control room server. 
• The import and export of the previous version bots to the latest version of A2019 should be more flexible and friendly for the end business users. 
• AI Sense recorder should be upgraded with additional features for better results. 
• SMTP mail features should come with migration options. All kind of VB scripts and Java scripts which we built using exiting version should support in this version.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for three months. 

The stability of the solution is good with the latest version with final patches. Automation Anywhere team release patches in every release to enhance the features and performance of the added features

It is good for scalability.

Technical support is good. 

We have migrated few projects from other RPA tools to Automation Anywhere RPA automation.

The setup is easy but it is better to have AA support person during that activity.

AA Support team is good in the environment setup.

ROI is as expected.

I am managing the entire cost, price, and licensing model for our project.

We have entirely validated the products before using in our projects.

Initial version of products bugs should be reduced.

We have multiple use cases, we build & supported 200+ automations and one of the main businesses was related to the contract processing and due to high volume and complexity, it was very crucial. Also, we built and supported multiple operations related use cases.

We have built and implemented multiple SharePoint, OutLook, web-based, and automation related to ticketing tools.

Automations were from simple to medium and high complexity related however with the help of many easy to use and user-friendly features, we have implemented them with high accuracy.

Using Automation Anywhere we have built/supported 200+ automation around operations and automated different Sharepoint, Outlook, ServiceNow, and contract processing related use cases. It offers a lot of features, flexibility whether it is through Meta bot, IQBot, etc. 

It offers :

a. Zero-install, Web-ready platform: Deploy RPA across the entire organization and scale bots on-demand in a few clicks.                                                                                                  b. Use the pluggable API architecture to maximize extensibility and customize RPA to meet unique business automation requirements.
c. Integrated machine learning: Streamline your document-centric processes with drag-and-drop IQ Bot integration.
d. Self-learning automation engine: Create a smarter automation engine by infusing third-party AI technology.

Movement on cloud architecture according to me provided by AA2019, will be most beneficial as it will be easy to use and will provide flexibility.

However, we have almost sued all the features extensively and few of them are as below :

• Intelligent automation for business and IT tasks
• Uses SMART Automation Technology
• Rapidly Automates complex and complicated tasks
• Create automation tasks like recording keyboard strokes and mouse clicks
• Distribute tasks to multiple computers
• Automation Anywhere offers scriptless automation
• Auto-login runs scheduled tasks at any time, even when the computer is locked.

1. Accuracy to process handwritten documents.

2. Should add more Analytics and Intelligence related capabilities.

3. Scalability along with the volume and business should be more flexible.

4. Cognitive capabilities should be improved more.

5. Large scale robot deployment is limited.

6. Licensing costs should be reduced.

7. Error handling should be improved more.

As AA has recently moved to Cloud architecture, there will still be a lot of additions and improvements in terms of the features and offering and this will be evolved over the period of time only. About the exact performance on the cloud maybe we have to wait a bit more time and should evaluate once it will get settle down more.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for more than 3 yrs and implemented 200+ uses cases. Also, we have started using the new version AA2019 for a few months (4) and did a few POCs.

The stability is good.

Scalability is good, however, it can be improved.

Technical support is good.

We have evaluated other RPA tools as well however, looking at overall feasibility from features to costing perspective we have taken a call to go along with AA and we are happy that we have made a right call and it has benefited us to a great extent.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We have our in-house development and support team.

Looking at overall feasibility from features to costing perspective we have taken a call to go along with AA. Installation is easy however pricing etc. can be reduced a bit as it is still more for small business/automation.

Yes, we have evaluated other RPA tools like UiPath and BP as well.

Looking at overall feasibility from features to costing perspective, I strongly feel Automation Anywhere offers a lot of features and scalability and is a very good tool overall and people who have not tried should give a try and put some hands-on. 

We are in the Oil & Gas Sector and our use cases are completely different from standard Industry Use Cases (BFSI). We work upon Engineering Drawings as the Data collection point and IQ Bot plays an important role to perform the tasks. We have built use cases which were involving the Finance Business processes, Procurement process, HR process and also we have developed solutions which were catering to Shared Services in Malaysia where value derived was quite substantial as its cost center and any automation creates a value add to them.

AA has improved our digital strategy extensively and provided the required leverage to place ourselves above other peers in the O&G Industry. We were able to develop quick digital solutions by demonstrating the ROI and gain momentum by aligning the desired resources & budget from leadership. All this has happened due to early wins which were supported by Automation Anywhere. We were able to build our solutions using the OCR Engines provided by Automation Anywhere which helped us to perform the Data Scrapping we have even integrated the tool with Free OCR available in the market.

We have used almost all the features of AA - IQ Bot is no doubt the most useful one for us. Task Bot & Meta bot forms the baseline and is used extensively for most of the use cases. Also, we were able to deploy composite solutions .NET + AA to achieve greater benefits. We have also purchased some other Digital Tools to help us with OCR, these tools have inbuilt Machine Learning capability which makes it easier for us to extract the components from the P&Id's which is an essential part of our pre-processing. Task Bot completed their job of creating the post workflow seamlessly.

Additional features should involve the Cognitive Section where we need more Advance solutions involving ML & AI. We have entered into the Cognitive zone where our solutions are much more advanced in nature due to the complexity involved in the Use Cases. Structured Data require a higher level of data analysis and grouping. We also recommend Automation Anywhere to start incorporating Plugin with Open Source Softwares so that we are able to build robust solutions - presently custom scripting is limited. The automation team can also explore the Oil & Gas sector as a target sector as this Industry have lots of potential and they need to foray in the Digital world in the near future.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for the past 3+ years and we have deployed around 40+ Bots to date with quite a significant amount of savings associated with it.

We use it to automate repetitive tasks. When an employee logs into an organization and their work is mundane (doing a repetitive task), I personally feel that it will take a toll on their motivation. We have to do something better as human and it should be more creative. Any repetitive task has to be automated. This improves the morale of employees and will bring out a lot of creativity in them to make more decisions. This is how people start to innovate and how companies grow.

There was a particular use case where we had to automate a customer's email. This customer had a couple of customers to whom they have been writing for intern management. We needed to monitor the intern management emails and pick up the right keywords from the emails, automatically go to the CRM tool, and book a ticket for them. Then, we had to go back to the customer with the acknowledgement email. It was quite interesting.

Initially, there were some hiccups. They were not able to automate the regular chain of automation because of multiple API issues. Then, they thought RPA wold be a better solution and approached us. One of the interesting things was the data that they prepared for us was unstructured. Handling RP unstructured data was a bit hard, but we were using Automation Anywhere. We were able to find the right hot words because they were following certain patterns. We were able to find those patterns within emails.

Bot Insights is the most valuable feature. We don't have to struggle with generating metrics around how the bots are performing. This information coming out of Automation Anywhere is useful to us because of the way the metrics are generated. It inspires confidence in our customers. 

Version 11 is a bit heavy. At times, it takes a toll on the computing resources. It consumes a lot for computing power. We have seen multiple instances where computers or the client has crashed because of this particular problem. Automation Anywhere can improve this a lot. However, the A2019 version will be a lot lighter because it is all web-based. In the future, we expect to see lighter version, but for now, it is okay.

The features around holding and handling Excel data need to be improved. They need to be able to handle data tables, data variable, and Excel numbers.

They need more scripting integration.

It is pretty stable. The error handing features are pretty good. 

Scalability is awesome and on par, but they could do better.

The technical support has been brilliant and good. They have been quick to respond with the right answers, as much as possible.

Our customers get to know about RPA through multiple channels. They are looking to join the race. 

The push for RPA is usually from bottom to top in a company. Someone does research on RPA then needs to convince management. Afterward, they will contact us to run automation scenarios for them.

It is not a one click installation. We need to need to install the SQL Server, then we need to connect them all. This is where I think a normal agent wouldn't be able to do that. We need to deploy senior engineers to do this since it is slightly difficult. We had to train our IT guys on this.

Compared to the competitors who have a fast, swift installation, Automation Anywhere's installation is hard and needs work.

Our customers have better use of their manual resources. 

Costs savings have been seen by employing bots for multiple shifts instead of people. Bots are also more stable.

Automation Anywhere has better brand and marketing than its competitors. They have a lot of success stories from top level people from around the world, which is encouraging.

Go through the Automation Anywhere training modules to understand the tool. Developers should go through the developer training module while business analysts should go through the business training module. This will give you an idea of what Automation Anywhere can do and what it can't do.

We did the PoC in 2016. It was mainly in the services process. We were more focused on the company billings, where there were multiple subprocesses and sub business units. We have did the complete landscape of more than 15,000 FTEs. We are talking around 153 different work types. As the main lead, I was to provide the real-time support to the customers who needs us to fill out required details. That was a completely repetitive task. We decided to conduct a PoC on that, which we did.

If we talk about the automation RPA. it definitely has worked very well for us. I'm talking about giving good savings, about more than 180 FTE savings, after implementing more than 200 plus bots. It has worked well. As an organization, it has supported us very well, and also for our customers.

Our task was very repetitive in nature. We had to fill information from Excel to some application. That was quite repetitive and the volume was also very high. Initially, we did the PoC from that process, which was easy to implement. Because it was a first for us, it was very easy to implement. That has provided good savings for us, where we have implemented 13 bots with the reduction of 16 FTEs.

There were also some tasks where we needed a cognitive approach or an OCR solution. There were some scanned documents in a PDF format. We were in the initial stages and struggled at that time. I'm talking about in 2018. We struggled to get them into the structure format.

In the current stage, there are lots of opportunities in terms of claims, insurance, and banking where we need AI and cognitive solutions to automate unstructured documents. That is a need of ours. Automation Anywhere should improve in this field so they can provide support for artificial intelligence and cognitive solutions.

Initial days, we struggled. When we started the automation for six weeks, the solution design was put on hold because of the system capability. But, they provided us good support and upgraded their systems, and now, it works smoothly.

If you ask me to rate the technical support from one to five, I will rate them a four. I will say that the technical support is good. If it is required that they provide their resources, they will send their resources to your organization to support you in terms of development and technical support. 

I have experience with UiPath too. If we talk about Automation Anywhere and UiPath, it's a completely different experience. Our work now is more for the claims and payroll processes where thought and human intervention are involved to process transactions.

This is now a completely different experience. Initially, it was a very repetitive task. Now, manual intervention is required. We have to go and read through documents. We have to read through histories. In terms of that, I can rate equally Automation Anywhere and UiPath. However, if we talk about artificial intelligence in 2019 and what Automation Anywhere is coming out with, it is great then.

The initial setup was not that great. The road was very up and down. We struggled. A lot of the features were not compatible with applications which we are using. That was the reason. This was the initial days, we are talking about 2016 to 2017. The buzz was not as much as we are having now. 

From that time until now, Automation Anywhere has upgraded their systems. They are at a good pace now. But, at the initial stage, we struggled in terms of getting things sorted. We also needed support, so the Automation Anywhere team sent some support to us who helped the developers in terms of coding and finding solutions.

Some of the features were not very well identified at that time. The Automation Anywhere team provided the support for that. Initially, it was like a rollercoaster for us.

If we talk about time, normally bots take more time than users. The benefit is the bots can work 24/7, if your application supports. With the solutions that we have now, we can have attended and unattended bots.

There are savings in terms of ROI, but It's not only about savings. It's about the customer experience nowadays. If we talk about the customer experience, your experience will be improved. There will be a lot of reversals which happen when you are processing transactions manually. When you are implementing the RPA, you eliminate those reversals. You deliver the product right the first time. That is more important in terms of keeping your organization having consistent growth. That is a very important thing. 

You will see savings, not in the same year, but in the coming years. In two to three years, you will definitely save money.

Automation Anywhere works very well. When you have a large number of accounts, have to automate, and the task that is repetitive, you can use Automation Anywhere. The features work very well.

I will rate it an eight (out of 10). We had that experience where we struggled to have the structured format of scanned documents and PDF formats. There, we struggled a lot. That is the reason for the rating. The rest, I think is perfect. The services are fine. Automation Anywhere services are good. It is easy to implement. The best thing: It's simple and easy to implement.