Automation Anywhere Reviews

My primary use case is to minimize the manual, repeated work done across the organizations and putting Bots in place for more accuracy, fastened process timings, and employee satisfaction.

Our major reason for implementing the solution is to reduce the FTE count and allow them to realize the benefits over a period of time. The primary use of this tool is automating areas like HR and admin.

It is easy to implement and most of the shared service areas are getting relieved by implementing Bots as part of the process.

From the organizational level, Automation Anywhere helped us in getting more business. Each client comes with their own standards, wherein it helps us in understanding their business altogether.

We can provide them the solutions in various ways, helping them with implementing the Bots, which requires us to enter into their core businesses and provide solutions to different areas.

The tool feature I found the most valuable is Metabot, as we can include the DLLs that are proprietary written code in .NET or other technologies.

Apart from the functionality, their working model and support are good.

Most of the tool's capabilities and features are very good in terms of architecture. It is easily understandable and very well structured. It is the most promising tool in the market, so it is helpful in attracting customers by demoing the already implemented Bots.

It would be great if they provide installation documents that are easier to understand, place more focus on capturing the fields, and most importantly, concentrate more on the OCR capability. Lots of customers come with scanned PDFs, wherein we find that area is more challenging. If a constant solution can be provided to read the non-editable documents, then that would be the highest milestone of the Automation Anywhere.

Lots of companies do not follow the LEAN method, so most of the processes are still with the old models. AA can focus on those areas and introduce some techniques to address those issues within the processes.

They can conduct more regular sessions with partners about their ability and new developments, which will help us in bringing new businesses.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for six years.

Their support in case of any tickets raised is more helpful for us in resolving the issues at the earliest.

We have been using Robotic Process Automation for the configuration of newly issued cloud environments and building cloud IT solutions.

Automation Anywhere Taskbots are being used to build Oracle Cloud environments by leveraging Excel files containing the configuration details. The Automation Anywhere Taskbots will scrape the Excel files in a dynamic way to configure the product using the most appropriate method for the data provided.

The Taskbots effectively match equivalent human inputs, rather than configuring from the backend.

AA has helped to accelerate the initial delivery stage of projects, wherein repetitive tasks were originally completed by consultants. This was an unnecessarily costly exercise, as this did not require the level of skill of a consultant.

The skillset of the consultant lies within gathering the correct requirements and providing the configuration details of these requirements in the predefined Excel files. Having the consultant also perform the arduous and repetitive configuration exercise was not efficient.

The code history functionality is the most valuable feature, although this could be improved upon with better tracing abilities and UI changes.

Overall, the commands provided have enough range to complete almost any task, with creative out-of-the-box thinking required sometimes for workarounds.

The simplicity and base nature of the commands are where the value lies; in combination, the variables, error handling, if/else, loop, etc, can produce significantly variable codes.

None of the commands are unique to Automation Anywhere, which allows beginners to leverage external knowledge.

Where minor but widespread changes are made to the cloud product being operated upon (e.g. a banner was added, or dropping all DIVs down 1), changing the cloned search values (Taskbot) individually was incredibly time consuming, and it shut down the RPA service until it was fixed.

To counter this, it would be valuable to have a 'mass update' of search values for cloned objects, in a similar way to Metabots.

Better tracing of 'if' and 'else' statements and their corresponding 'end' statements would be helpful.

Vertical connecting lines would be appropriate within the code, and a collapse/expand feature for code blocks would be ideal.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for 16 months.

Stability-wise, this product is good.

The scalability is reasonable.

No previous RPA solution was used before this one.

Other options may have been considered, but am unaware of which.

Automation Anywhere is one of the simplest RPA tools!

We primarily use it for data scraping from PDFs. AA has helped me to get the data from scanned PDFs with a higher accuracy rate, automating multiple formats, and maintaining its data in Excel format.

In this scenario, the user emails a PDF to the Bot email ID, the Bot downloads the attachment & scraps the data from it. As per the format, the data is pulled and maintained in Excel, in a standard format. The Excel file is then emailed back to the respective user.

When anybody talks about Robotic Process Automation, Automation Anywhere is the first thing that comes to my mind. Automation Anywhere is one of the simplest Robotic Process Automation Tools.

Its drag and drop feature is the best because there is no hard coding required. Even if a person is not from a coding background, they can easily learn and get their hands on this tool quickly. There are a lot of learning resources provided by Automation Anywhere University and AA provides certifications too.

Using AA has helped to reduce time & human error.

Object Cloning is the most valuable feature I have found for automating a website or a process that includes multiple mouse clicks. This is something that can easily be done using the Object Cloning command.

Object Cloning can also be used to get the DOMXPath inner text of a specific object. It also helps to automate the dropdown menus and in selecting the desired value from them. It is fun to use and if used with proper technique, a user can automate a website or portal with 100% accuracy.

The OCR can be a little better because sometimes while scrapping, it leads to data loss.

In the future, more commands for automating SAP should be included.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two years. 

Stability totally depends on the power of your coding level. In general, AA is highly stable.

AA has high scalability.

Technical support from AA is excellent!

The AA support team is just Awesome. Any query or issues we face while using it can be brought to their notice by raising a ticket. They will coordinate with the user until the issue is resolved and without much delay. Automation Anywhere provides the best service.

We did not use another RPA solution prior to this one.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Our in-house team is responsible for deployment and maintenance.

The pricing is a bit higher.

We evaluated UiPath before choosing AA.

Choose Automation Anywhere over other RPA Tools for better service & accuracy.

For us, the primary use of Automation Anywhere bots is to automate the business, administrative, and financial aspects of businesses. We have automated many tax reconciliations and also automated the monthly salary slip generation for all the employees.

In business processes, the purchase order and invoice generation scenarios have been automated. Automation of Salesforce entries has also been done with Automation Anywhere, which has significantly reduced the burden for employees and made their day more productive.

Automation Anywhere can have a significant impact on any company's operation, as it can automate a wide variety of tasks that are mundane, time-consuming, and the least productive.

The Automation of salary slip generation for all employees in the organization has helped the HR spend less time manually preparing excel sheets and reconciling with other data and more time in improving the quality and working experience for employees by addressing their issues.

Other administrative functions like keeping a record of employee attendance and work hours have also been automated

The Automation Anywhere (2019) is now a SAAS product, hence I feel it's more fluid to use in any environment compared to the AA11.3x versions.

Automation Anywhere used to have a three-layer architecture with a Control Room, Runner, and Workbench but now it has combined the Control Room and Workbench into One. This made it easy to create bots and administer them.

The document Processing tool called IQ Bot has had several new updates, like a logic field, where you can include Python scripts. I feel it makes the tool more adaptive and flexible.

Automation Anywhere is one of the leading RPA tool vendors and they have done splendid work on improving their tool. The places where I still see scope for improvement is in their background automation are, and also their ability to handle Java applications.

I feel that document extraction like IQ Bot can be made more refined so that it may reach its full potential. 

Another area I feel that needs improvement is the variances caused in extraction results when using the tool with third-party OCRs. This is something that needs to be addressed. I believe rather than giving more third-party options, a single good OCR solution must be added to prevent variations in extraction results.

I have been using Automation Anywhere both A11.3x and A2019 for more than two years.

There is brittleness in UI Automation but this can be circumvented by using REST APIs if they are available. Also, the Java Applications still seem a herculean task to automate for many RPA tool vendors.

The bots are scalable and the only thing one has to ensure for better scalability is proper architecture at the beginning with a long-term approach in mind.

The customer service of AA has been good. Many of our queries were addressed with the raising of tickets as quickly as possible.

The set up was easy and straightforward, and the support was also good.

I have automated and released at least a thousand bots by now. I have also used Automation Anywhere's Intelligent document extraction solution called IQ Bot, both the 11.3 version and the 2019 version.

We use AA for automation of daily mundane tasks, which allows me to focus more on tasks that resonate with my interests. These are Excel-based daily tasks.

We also use it for:

• Automation of long, rule-driven tasks that only require some fixed mouse clicks & keystrokes. This saves time and reduces human error
• Deployed bots to work alongside human counterparts for cross-communication between legacy and new platforms.
• Automated data entry and data validation workflows for 24/7 output.
• IQ & Discovery bots for more complex use cases that require image processing & artificial intelligence.

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization to save human efforts on mundane tasks and shifted it to more analytical/interesting tasks.

We have saved hours so that we can spend more time on deriving insights from business, which will help us to increase our profits. 

We have leveraged automation to increase economies of scale and value-added work while reducing operating costs.

The most valuable features include:

1.  UI Automation including mouse clicks, keystrokes, opening & closing applications.
2. The OCR package allows us to read texts from files.
3. Excel automation can automate most of the tasks and even allows you to automate them without having the application on the system.
   
4. FTP automation allows for maintaining archives on FTP, as well as placing & deleting files from the FTP server.
5. Recording tasks with dynamic variables is helpful for web-based automation.
6. Mail automation allows for downloading attachments and saving emails on the system.

Improvements that can be made are:

• It should be easier to automate tasks on a virtual machine that uses a different environment altogether.
• The AA portal should not give us pop-ups every time a bot agent is updated.
• Ease of debugging & inbuilt debug messages can be improved to help find relevant bugs easily.

In the next release, they should add the Tableau tool as a package since most organizations use it for reporting & analytical purposes. Useful actions would be:

1. Opening & closing tableau
2. Downloading sheet data in Excel
3. Refreshing extracts
4. Publishing Tableau

I have been using Automation Anywhere 2019 Enterprise version for a year.

Best customer service. They heard our case and provided the solution in a short turnaround time.

We did not use another RPA solution prior to this one.

The initial setup is a little complex when it comes to dealing with installing certificates and the bot agent.

It is the most economically friendly and it provides you with a lot of functions.

We did not evaluate other options before selecting Automation Anywhere.

We are using Automation Anywhere to automate manual processes and make the organization digital. We have replaced most of the human resources and we are utilizing them for more valued tasks. Now, the other business users are attracted by the output of it and are approaching us to automate their processes in their respective lines of businesses.

We started at version 10 and moved to version 11x. It is more powerful than the previous one, but the new cloud-based RPA has attracted us more and we are migrating to A2019.

We have increased our productivity by five times as of now, and we are still growing.

Now, most of the processes are automated and even free from an audit perspective, as they are completely automated without human intervention. This is getting better and better.

The user is experiencing much higher outputs without error, rather than using humans who are prone to errors. As this works 24 by 7, they are preferring to automate the task and get it processed using the bot. Multiple business lines are adopting this.

OCR, Image Recognition, Object Cloning, and PDF integration help us a lot. We have used these mostly, as our system is legacy. We automate primarily with image recognition and MetaBots, which are mostly accurate. 

Metabots are a useful feature that helps us overcome the issues that we face using image recognition. The reading of data from Excel is much easier and is getting even better in A2019.

The bot store helps us to download most of the reusable utilities and overcome our issues. We also earn at the same time.

It can be improved in a few areas where the legacy system can be read through object cloning.

The Image Recognition functionality should be enhanced to improve the accuracy of checkboxes. In A2019, the bot agent will be deployed on the local machine when we run the bot runner, but to download it takes too long, and the user will lose patience. My advice is to improve on this.

Sometimes, the files are getting corrupted and this causes us a lot of trouble. This is an issue that is still pending.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for three and a half years.

Automation Anywhere is very stable.

The scalability is very good and we have had a pretty good impression from the beginning. It has not changed yet.

The technical support is very good. Whenever we raise any ticket with the support team, they respond immediately. Our issues have been resolved on our schedule after they determine the root cause of the problem.

We did not use another RPA solution prior to this one.

The initial setup was straightforward. The technical team from Automation Anywhere has helped us in installing. They were able to answer our questions wherever required.

The vendor assisted us and they were very good. They are very responsive and reliable.

Not sure as it is from higher management. As of now we cannot share it.

The price is very reasonable.

We did not evaluate other options.

Overall, this product seems pretty good as of now.

We are using this product to automate various BPO processes, where the manual operation team currently does them manually in my project. The process we are currently working on has multiple applications and the API integrated, so we get details from the API and feed those into the front end application. We then process and update the status of the policy in another application.

The main interaction involves retrieving data from a set of applications and feeding it into other applications. Therefore, AA is mainly used for handling end-to-end processes that are compromised of all of the business validations.

This tool provides us with easy accessibility for adopting the new process, as it is more user- friendly. This is the main reason that we implemented this tool. Many new resources are able to grasp the tool and start doing the automation with ease, which is basically missing in the other vendors' tools.

In terms of adaptability, AA has a significant contribution. Most users can easily understand it. The support team is good and is able to resolve the issues or any challenges we encounter.

Actions are very much user-friendly, which we can easily use to proceed with development. The API connection is easy to incorporate and also has the ability to track the task status in the Orchestrator.

XML action commands and Excel commands are the ones we most frequently use in the real world processing of the policy. When we have features targeting those, it will be good enough for the majority of the process we automated.

All of the key action items have been easy to incorporate.

Sometimes the tool is timing out, which would be a good thing to have resolved.

It will be good if we have a framework that is created with the package, so we can leverage those for the multiple processes. As it is now, we create a base framework.

When we have more packages for each of the basic operations, it will be more user-friendly and easier to complete, rather than starting from scratch.

Ideally, when we have those packages we can leverage them for overall project development. Adopting the cloud platform will be more convenient, as opposed to depending on the on-premises setup.

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

Applications can be more effective with the development of bots that are affected less by changes in the object and environment.

The support team is good in helping with queries and issues that had held up the automation.

We used UiPath previously. AA is more user-friendly and adaptable such that anyone can learn and more easily understand how to incorporate it into the process automation.

The initial setup is not complicated.

I would rate the vendor installation team and eight out of ten.

I don't have the exact figures but it does provide ROI.

The setup cost depends on multiple factors, so you need to get details before choosing.

Version A2019 is available and will be adopting it in the coming months. We are looking forward to working on this new version.

We primarily use the solution for universal scanning. As an example, the solution can take various service provider bills and will allow us to view all of them in Excel format. That's a very basic use case.

In SAP, there are many similar regular tasks that are done regularly. In human resources, we created several core SAP systems so that the basic users, in human resources can reduce redundancies by 10 times with very little cost. We actually didn't expect that outcome. It was a nice surprise.

It depends on the use case, however, I'd say the most valuable aspect of the solution is the IQ Bot. 

Normally, you just scan the invoice. However, what makes Automation Anywhere different from other services is machine learning, which includes AI. It's easier and more convenient. 

We can include Python programming language too for getting better results.

The solution provides a Community Edition to all the users. It's a great jumping-off point to learn about automation. There are some features that are reduced, however, it's still quite good.

The insights provided by the dashboard are excellent.

If I build a bot today and don't use it, however, in several months, someone tries to use it, there's a 30-40% change the bot will fail in one or two areas. I'm still trying to figure out why. It's on a ticket right now. It may be due to updates or changes to the environment. I'm not sure.

The solution lacks in the approval process area. They need to provide more solutions.

I've been using the solution for about two years.

The stability is pretty good. The only place it lags is if a bot is made and then not used for many months. Then there can be errors. Other than that, it's got excellent stability.

The solution is quite scalable, however, it all depends, from customer to customer and what their actual requirements are.

We have about ten to 15 people who use the solution regularly. We also have an administrator who oversees everything.

We plan to expand across both the enterprise and A2019 versions. Currently, we're just exploring its capabilities more and more.

The technical support is excellent. I'd rate it ten out of ten. At first, we did run into a lot of issues, and the support team was very kind. They were also very helpful and responsive. We're quite satisfied with their level of service.

I work with RPA technology and have knowledge of multiple companies including Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, Webpack, and multiple other vendors. However, in this company, we've only ever used Automation Anywhere.

I've worked with the free version of Blue Prism for tasks like sending email. It was fine and worked without issue.

The initial setup is not complex. It's also not straightforward.

If someone is an automation novice, for him to set everything up, he must be very clear and aware of the ports. It's advisable to meet the system requirements. If the system requirements fail, there may be challenges on the system and some features may not work or could potentially work if some adjustments also get made. There needs to be a mastery of the technical network like ports and servers.

If I implement it now, if I just install the automation in my server, then it's a one one-time installation

The deployment time isn't too long. It may just take two or three hours if someone is completely aware of what we are doing.

In order to deploy the solution, one person is enough. You don't need a whole big team.

I don't have any information about the pricing or licensing on offer. It's my understanding that there's different pricing, depending on how many licenses a client needs. It's very flexible. If a client just needs a certain aspect, they can just get a license for that.

Automation Anywhere has two different versions, or, rather, two different products. One is the Automation Anywhere Enterprise Edition which is only on-premise. Automation Anywhere also has another service that is called A2019, which can be deployed on-premise. 

One of the main differences between the Enterprise Edition of Automation Anywhere is the dollar policy shop. In there, they can't create or customize our own comment. With A2019, you have an option to create our own comments. A2019 is more flexible. I'd advise new users to go for that version, as opposed to the enterprise version.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We are an SI vendor. We have been implementing customer-facing solutions for processes like reports generation, bank reconciliation, payroll processing, etc.

There were different bank statements generated for reconciliations. With some standardization, we were able to automate a process that took more than 4 hours in under 15 mins. In one of our customer implementations, the environment was to use simple RPA functionalities without any complexities. We achieved it with the basic pack of AA license.

The organizations where we have implemented AA have seen tremendous benefits achieved in terms of time and cost-saving with the highest quality of deliverables. Since this is about how it has helped our organization, I would explain it from the context of a system integration vendor. We are able to build a steady pipeline when we position AA as a solution and enhance our resource skills by certifications of AA.  This has certainly improved or relevance in the RPA market space with a growing team of Automation Engineers.

The features that help us satisfy the needs of the customer to overcome mundane activities using task bots and meta bots are the most valuable along with the rich controls in the control room. The developer team is able to capture all the necessary steps without much hassle with the visual designer and the ability to test each step of automation has helped in delivering error-free automation to our customer. With the new version of AA, we have more control over the implementation and we are able to quickly deploy the solutions to the customer.

OCR - OCR capability needs to become better. For the handwritten documents, we had a struggle to extract with accuracy while some other market tools were able to achieve it without any issues. 

The OCR component should allow integration with 3rd party OCR. This way we can use the best of breed solution along with AA or allow better control over OCR packages to be customized. As of now, it acts like a black box where there is very little control over the outcome of the OCR. We had great struggles with a customer who had handwritten data extraction. Finally, the customer was not able to see the value and the exploration went on hold post COVID.

We partner with multiple tools. We find AA to be much superior in support.

I automated Server applications like SAP, ERP, CRM, etc. With SAP, we can use different kinds of automation like BAPI with MetaBot and the SAP GUI with DLL automation.

One of my uses cases to help understand how we use AA is email-related. First, we used to get emails, and based on this as input, we needed to trigger some events in SAP. Depending on the resulting error, we needed to delete some records and further, needed to generate DB for some records (daily around 1,000 records). This is a repetitive process that happens every day.

Mmainly, we implemented SAP tasks related to customer support functionality. We also use it for the creation of PowerBI reports related to sales.

We have automated approximately 30 processes, reducing the manual effort a lot. Now all of the manual work is handled by the Bot alone.

We trigger by email sometimes, and it is also scheduler-based. We handle errors and can extract information. If the bot is not able to perform any step, then the support team gets into the picture and they will resolve the issue.

I like all of the features, especially the MetaBot, REST API, and SAP DLL.

We use the MetaBot to capture all of the screen contents, then if the elements are captured properly, it is fine. Otherwise, we create a custom object that acts as a click function.

The price is a little high and could be reduced.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for the past five years and it is one of the best tools to automate manual tasks.

Stability-wise, Automation Anywhere is good.

I would rate the scalability a 9.8 out of 10.

The technical support is good. We directly reach out to the AA guys by raising a ticket, and they also have a forum to resolve issues

Previously, we went through manual work. It was only with Excel that we had some automation using macros.

The price is a little bit high but the support is good.

We compared different RPA vendors and finally, we decided to go for Automation Anywhere as our single RPA solution.

Many new options have been implemented in the cloud version. NLP and G suite automation are also available, among a lot of other options in the A2019. At this point, we just need to explore the options.