Automation Anywhere Reviews

We use Automation Anywhere for product SLAs on the finance team. We are also using it for a difficult automation project. 

We have automated a lot of processes, e.g., claim processing and payments.

It is currently deployed on-premise.

We are helping to automate some of the manual tasks and help to achieve the SLA.

We have some products, like Clubcard, which is a shopper's card that we're using in the Star Market. We are using Automation Anywhere for that validation, raising requests, tracking the Clubcard, and when users get new Clubcards. All these things are done through Automation Anywhere. We use the API to get the status of card numbers. 

IQ Bot is great. We recently implemented two IQ Bots in our finance sector. Manually, we had one person doing a task that took five minutes minimum. With IQ Bot, we are able to do that one particular task in one and a half minutes. That is a huge time savings.

We have done some Citrix automation with MetaBots for claim processing. We use it for validation. It is working well.

We have a credential manager. We have the ability to store in an encrypted way. Whenever we create any bots, we also have bot IDs. Without the bot ID, we are not going to deploy in production. We have the option for the support team only to get access and share their screen with users. If there is a critical password, the user will only put down the password. If we have the bot ID and password, then our support team can directly get that from the application IT team. That support center of excellence team will put in the ID password and credential and see the bot ID and password.

The API feature is the most valuable feature for some process, especially for the Clubcard. It helps us with validation of databases.

We are able to do a lot of things with MetaBots.

The management works well.

One of the great things about Automation Anywhere is that it is a developer friendly. If someone doesn't know the technology, but is logically strong, they can easily learn the tool. This is very good for us. We can train anyone in a short amount of time. 

If someone is not technical, they can also easily learn the tool. You do not have to write in syntax.

We have a situation where the system is not capturing data properly. It is clicking on the UI but it is not able to expand.

We have trouble with large volumes of data in Excel and are not getting good results. I want all the functionalities that they have in the Excel added to our existing version or an upcoming version of the product, e.g., Macros and VLOOKUP.

We have had connectivity issues, such as the reporting of a bad gateway.

We have integrated Automation Anywhere with our SQL database. I heard in version A2019 that we can easily integrate Python too, which is great news. Up until now, I have not been able to implement Python in our Automation Anywhere task bots. Though, we can integrate with other applications, like artificial intelligence, and this is better.

We have not implemented this tool with our AI. We have AI and IBM Watson. We would like to get information (or services) from the Automation Anywhere team on how to connect and implement the AI, as this is a great thing in the market. I'm looking for what to do.

Sometimes, we are facing issue in unattended. If unattended mode is not working, sometimes it will work in attended mode. However, I don't want anything in attended mode. The process is rule-based and logic-based. We just have to schedule, then if the user wants to run from the Control Room, they can. To run attended mode, we have to login into the VM to start it and human activity is required.

The version we started with is not as stable as the current version. We are trying to move to version 11. We are also in touch with our CSM regarding the A2019 version, which Automation Anywhere should release in the next year

We have 50 bots live in our organization.

We have three environments: staging, pilot, and production. In staging, the developer creates and tests their bot for internal testing. After that, we deploy into the pilot environment. That is hypercare which is for User Acceptance Testing (UAT). It is there that we run the bot in unattended mode for one and a half weeks at least with huge volumes. If we have no issues nor errors, then we create a ticket to deploy into production, our center of excellence. This is what our support team does. They will deploy into the production environments. We keep an eye out for at least 10 to 12 days as hypercare. At 12 days in hypercare mode, if we are not getting errors, then we run it in unattended mode as much as we can.

We are using Automation Anywhere in our business units. We have plans to increase the level of the tool's use.

We are planning to move onto the cloud, but first, we have to see if it will work with our business SLAs. If it is good, we will move over. We need to do a test first to determine whether the bots work well or not, which will take about three to six months. Then, we will make a decision on whether to move over to the cloud, the A2019 version. My team is excited for this version.

We would move over to Microsoft Azure because our company is already using it.

The technical support team is supporting us well.

We needed a support guide from Automation Anywhere for the initial setup because we had standalone and a lot of clusters. We needed help from a support guy during our setup to determine whether to go with a standalone or cluster setup.

For the bot creation process, we first check the requirement. Then, we check with each application, whether it is applicable through the Automation Anywhere tool or not. Some applications, like Oracle, do not work correctly. We make a feasibility report and advise the developer to use certain commands only. We provide a process map, e.g., how to create the bot according to Automation Anywhere guidance and what are the coding standards provided. We deliver everything. Then, the developer will start building our bot.

In our organization, we are focusing on continuous improvement through this tool. We are improving day by day, but not focusing on the elimination of any employees. We are just focusing in our improvements and accuracy in our SLAs. Therefore, there are three things that we are focusing on:

1. Implementing our SLAs on time. 
2. Focusing on accuracy.
3. Focusing on our continuous improvement.

Automation Anywhere is profitable for us. As volumes increase and we have a lot of data, this takes time to complete manually. Bots can complete the work without impacting the business. 

We are saving time. Some processes that have taken 24 hours for our guys to do, now take seven to eight hours for our bots. That's our achievement. It also brings accuracy.

We save money indirectly. We are also improving the accuracy of our SLAs. 

I am using that Automation Anywhere Master Certification for version 11. Recently, this has been updated in Automation Anywhere University. Until this month, it's free to use. There are no charges. That's why I would like to complete it this month.

We are waiting for them to release version A2019 version of Automation Anywhere University.

Use the standard guideline that Automation Anywhere provided. Build a dry model for each bot. This will be useful for debugging. I give these diagrams to my developers.

When automating Citrix, we can install on the client. It can easily access objects, we can click anywhere and it can take data from anywhere.

We have a scenario where one process is working, but in another case, it is not able to capture everything.

This is a good product. This platform is great, but there are a lot of issues to resolve, including the Excel features.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to follow the instructions and the standards that are specified.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use of this product as a solution is developing bots to automate tasks and processing. For example, we have financial bots and we have IT bots. We have been involved in developing and monitoring the bots for about one and a half years, mostly for finance and IT. A majority of the tasks were done by other teams.

We have automated mainframe applications and integrated the tool with web-based applications and SAP. We have automated many SAP processes, including posting the entries and POs to SAP.

We are currently planning to migrate those bots into the current version (11.3.2) to make the bots more stable.

We are using the on-premise deployment model. We have multiple processes getting automated through this tool.

The major benefit for using Automation Anywhere is that it has provided a lot of FA (Finance Automation) benefits. That is a major plus point for using an RPA (Robotic Process Automation) tool. Any automation tool, for that matter, has its benefits. But because Automation Anywhere is easier to implement and learn, it is possible to move the bots to production faster. Speeding up that process helps in simplifying our workflow and productivity, and allows our people to do the most useful work we can do.

The basic Taskbot itself is the most valuable part of the product for what I do. The use of IQ Bot is still in a development stage. We are looking forward to August 2019 when we should be migrating to a newer version. That seems very promising. For now, we use Taskbot and Metabot with a variety of applications.

The ease of use is good. We had someone join the company who had no understanding of RPA. He was trained on it, getting his hands dirty, then he was able to develop and start automating processes quickly within a month. 

Resources are available online. A person can get certified and start automating right away.

The Bot Store is good. Although, we have not used the Bot Store much, there are some useful bots already built in it. We can just use them in our processes if feasible.

There are several things that would improve the product. I would like to see them include a group chatbot and make the IQ Bot more stable. Just those things would be great. Adding those kinds of features improves what we can do with the product. Using a client control room concept to ensure that everything is based on the web login, would also be great. Obviously we know that the development of new features will take some time.

We are expecting those kinds of features in the future. We expect more AI integration in our technology.

Automation Anywhere could use to be more stabilized. The product is becoming more stabilized with newer versions, but there are various things that still need to be stabilized. In the current version that we are using, we have a Control Room where the client will sometimes get disconnected. This will result in downtime. Therefore, we need some stabilization from the tool perspective. We don't have any other option than to raise a ticket to Automation Anywhere or get in touch with their support to get the issue resolved. So, we are having downtime. This can be improved.

We are not completely okay with the IQ Bot. We previously used version 5. The newest version does have more accurate results.

Technical skills are required to use the product. With these tools, technical programming is still required with the guidance of technical people. Business people can go ahead and try building a few smaller processes, then when they gain technical knowledge, they can use this tool to their full advantage.

Most of our processes are attended automation. It would be great if more processes were unattended automation, so we could release more FTEs.

We are currently using third-party Taskbots. We would like Taskbots directly integrated into the tool.

We have been using Automation Anywhere since version 9. Over that time the stability has improved a lot. We are expecting it to be even better in coming versions and this is why we are looking forward to our migration to 11.3.2 in August of 2019.

In program versions 10.3 and 10.7, what we were developing was okay. The stability was fine. In version 11.2, we had basic client login issues and database issues as well. When we have a better foundation as far as the stability, we are hopeful of getting better updates.

As far as being able to scale our usage of the product, until now, we have been doing well in diversifying. In the future, we expect to be able to get more from the tool. Our ultimate goal is to use the tool to automate most of our internal processing and reap the benefits of RPA.

Multiple users are currently using the product.

The technical support has been really good. Honestly, it is very good. We have been getting good support from the correct technical people quickly. One thing we would like to experience is that instead of waiting for a new version of the tool to resolve issues, that we could get immediate patch upgrades to cater to our requirements. That would be great. We are getting patches sometimes, but they do not perform as well as we might hope.

We have taken courses from Automation Anywhere University: version 11 and IQ Bot. We also attended training at the Automation Anywhere office for IQ Bot. The Automation Anywhere University courses are quite good. You can easily learn and get certified, which has some value in the market.

We were looking to Automation Anywhere as a solution in a relatively new concept. We believe it was our best choice and, currently, we are hopeful that the stability and the enhancements done to the tool will pay off. We are looking forward to using 11.3.

So far, the initial setup of versions has been straightforward and we expect it to be even smoother in the future.

Bot creation process: 

1. We identify the process.
2. That process will be well-documented along with the operations people, who will develop the BRDs. 
3. After the BRD creation, we'll come to know whether the process is feasible to automate.
4. Concurrently, a solution design document will be developed.
5. Developers will create the bot. 
6. Once the Bot is developed, UAT will be given to the operations people telling them whether the bot is performing as per their requirements.
7. Once finalized, we'll get a UAT sign off and the code will be moved to production where the bot will go live.

Scaling bots to production depends on the process and how complicated it is. For a simple process, it will take two to three weeks. If the process is a bit complex, it may take close to one to two months. It also depends on how your internal compliance is organized in the company. We have a compliance check done at every phases of automation, so it will take us more time to get the process live even for a simpler process since we have to get compliance sign off during every phase.

We did not use an external resource for the implementation, but I was there when the initial setup was in progress.

As I am currently part of a team of developers and people who perform functions, we are not directly involved in the deliberation of assets or ROIs. However, it is apparent that there is a return on investment, and we are noticing it.

We have many benefits reaped from the automation work we have done. So, I don't have the exact information about the cost and what our return on investment is, but it is benefiting the organization in a much bigger way by channeling efforts away from wasting manual time on processing.

As our team size increases, we may get some more licenses for the tool.

We checked on Blue Prism and UiPath. UiPath was still developing. 

We opted for Automation Anywhere. The pricing was okay for us. Also, It was easier to learn the tool and implement within the team. It is easier to learn, implement, and get things done with Automation Anywhere compared to other tools on market right now. 

Before automating, understand the process:

• How big is the process?
• Is it of use to the organization?
• How repetitive or complex is the process?

This is important because automating tasks requires resources.

On a scale of one to ten with one being the worst and ten being the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven. So far it has been good, but obviously there are opportunities to be so much better.

We expect more from Automation Anywhere based on the new technologies that we know exist concerning AI and also unstructured learning. There's a lot of room for improvement, so that's why I would not rate it higher. Other than that, for data structure, it has been good — apart from a few stability issues.

Ease of integration is good. We have automated a process in the current version. Automation Anywhere will tell us if it won't support this version anymore at this particular time, so we'll have to migrate that code to the currently released new version. At that time, we may face some challenges after moving the code. We may have to do some tweaks to the code. We can't directly run it as is, so we'll have to do some minor tweaks so that it is stabilized more, then it'll be better.

As far as recommending the software, that depends on what use case and what work requirements an organization has. For structured data and for simpler processes, it is fine. For unstructured data — which should be addressed by IQ Bot and additional features — I may not recommend it yet. But for dealing with automation of straightforward processes, Automation Anywhere is good.

RPA solutions are continuously improvement due to competition. Sometimes, it is worth waiting for the next version which is more stabilized to be released.

We are in the retirement industry. We use it for application-based automation. We are trying to mimic our operations to redundant business users' tasks, like clearing claims and loans.

We are using version 10.7. We are currently trying to upgrade to version 11.3.

We use Bot Insights. Business users utilize Bot Insight dashboards to get analysis.

In the 10.7 version, the back-end port for the MetaBot password has looping. This has been a type of limitation. Now, we are upgrading and integrating the Control Room, which is a validating feature.

I would like them to add OCR features. This would help us deal with unstructured data and we can get more data out of images.

I would like to see more features related to artificial intelligence. 

The latest version is more stable. We have mostly legacy applications. We do interact with Automation Anywhere support for patches and DLLs which are compatible with our legacy applications. Maybe after our upgrade, we can expect more stability.

In couple of months, we are looking to upgrade. We have set up our environment for integrating in AWS into our architecture. We are setting this up now and planning to install Automation Anywhere 11.3 to see how it is.

It is scalable. Since we have only had it one year, we are still looking into the scalabilty factor.

The technical support is good. They are knowledgeable and don't waste much of our time. They are quick in resolving things by identifying the exact root cause. 

We try to resolve the issue from our side first because we are trained in the product. It is only when we can't solve the issue that we contact support.

The initial setup is straightforward, except when setting up with cloud-based services, like Amazon. The cloud-based setup process is complex.

Automation Anywhere came in and helped set up the tool for us since it was initially new when we onboarded it.

It has saved us a lot of hours, manual effort, and we can focus on more important tasks, which helps us with our ROI.

We purchase on a bot basis. Our costs are approximately $5,000.

There are a lot of vendors out there, like Blue Prism and UiPath. However, A2019 offers cross platform and single point, which is why I would recommend Automation Anywhere.

I have been very impressed with the A2019 version. This version is phenomenal. 

We work in a very complex type of environment. We do a lot of data analytics and strategy consulting work. The work that we have automated so far is our legacy suite of applications, doing all the reporting, data extraction from different web sources, and collating the information, then publishing to websites.

We use RPA or the Automation Anywhere tool to orchestrate the whole process. We combine it and integrate it with other API and Python solutions to help get the data from a particular source, whether it be an FTP source or AWS environment. Then, we make those validations using Excel. After that, we do our QCs and validations, then publish or submit the reports.

We partner with a few other vendors as well for different use cases based on the type of clients that we are working with.

We feel our team is more involved in the whole process to give better ideas and give new use cases to help automate things. Things that were very repetitive and manual, such as creating daily checklists and reports, those have been reduced considerably. Our team is very happy about that.

Automation Anywhere has a very rich and easy to use interface. This makes it very intuitive. As an organization, we give training to business users to help them automate themselves. It is an easy to go, create your own scripts, and logic. The typical commands which they have in the workbench are very helpful for us.

New versions keep coming up. The challenge for us is to have the downtime to do the migrations. This could be improved upon. We would like fewer version changes and upgrades happening to the application. While the downtime is not that much, depending on the business processes, there are times few critical processes are running on a daily or hourly basis. We would expect the downtime to be even less for them.

There are a few internal applications that we have where Automation Anywhere needs to be added. We need to get those applications embedded so the integration process between those applications is smooth. E.g., With a Citrix type of environment or VDI environment, we have not been able to get the right information. We have to use the coordinates. Recently. we attended a session and realized that they have come up with an IQ Bot and computer vision technology. Therefore, we have some use cases which we want to leverage.

Our focus would be for them to keep innovating for more intelligent solutions which can merge your text to speech. These types of solutions, along with other ML and AI capabilities, can solve for the larger objective and typically RPA platforms are not able to do. The type of applications that we use are very large and different. They are not the typical ERP systems or systems which normal organizations would have. If they could bring AI and ML capabilities onboard, this would help me rate them even higher.

The stability is great. We have very few issues. 

We just migrated to version 11. Though, I don't know the exact version. It was a seamless experience. The whole integration and migration has been very smooth for us.

Scalability is an important aspect of it. We believe they have been doing it pretty well. Earlier, we were doing everything as an on-premise implementation. Later, we moved to an AWS environment, hosting everything on our cloud machine. This helped us scale the whole solution and reach our multiple clients in projects that we were engaged in very quickly.

We believe the A2019 version is meant to scale the tool to a larger audience.

If we have issues, the Automation Anywhere team is always available to support us, as there are account managers and customer support managers.

We use the technical support a lot. We have our own dedicated tech support. Whenever an issue arises, we raise a ticket and it gets resolved based on criticality - within a few hours to 24 hours is usually the turnaround time. They are very helpful in terms of setting up conversations and meetings to understand an issue, then take it forward for resolution.

We already had a process excellence transformation team doing the typical operation excellence type of work process improvement and process re-engineering. We decided that it would be better to help us take the leap of automation and go from the third or fourt-generation improvements we were doing since those were long-time deployments and bring a change. We were looking for faster adoption, an easy to deploy solution, and achieve a quick ROI. This is also sellable to our leadership and makes sense to take to a larger scale. That was the whole idea.

We first thought of implementing internal system automations, legacy application automations, and Excels automations. However, when we realized the potential of this technology, and how it integrates along with its seamless environment setup. That was the go ahead for us, and we started our journey.

Initially, because we started everything in-house (did not partner with a consulting firm or the typical technology integrators), it was difficult. Then, we started learning the architecture and environment. Automation Anywhere gave us a dedicated support to set up the whole journey for us in the initial few years. It went from strength to strength after that.

We built up the whole capability in-house. Automation Anywhere helped us with the setup.

From the second year onward, ROI is achieved, which is a great thing because year-over-year you are accruing those benefits.

We have deployed it across multiple processes: reporting, data management, or sales strategy work. We have achieved a scale where we are in a position to close $1M of benefits.

The number of licenses that required when evaluating a solution was not a hundred bot licenses or Bot Runner machines. At that time, we were not looking at scale and that is where Automation Anywhere helped us.

Including the AWS setup and everything per license, it costs us around $10,000 on an annual basis. I believe that is pretty reasonable considering the teams that we have. 

We evaluated the top four vendors: Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, UiPath, or Kryon. But, we realized the type of use cases that we had and wanted to try first to deploy them. Those vendors had enterprise large-scale license models in place, but we wanted a use-per-license type of system and support structure with its communities. Automation Anywhere reached out to us, and said, “We will do a free PoC and pilots for you. If you feel the solution is suiting your set of use cases, then go ahead and purchase.”

We set up the whole team and evaluated a few vendors. What prompted us to go with Automation Anywhere was our typical use case that we cater to. They were not run-of-the-mill, large volume, highly repeatable work. We have processes where only two to three people are doing the work and not many volumes coming in that.

We wanted our vendor to understand our challenges. We had multiple meetings before Automation Anywhere could understand what work we do. Then, it was like, "Aha." So, it took us time to reach where we are, but we have now partnered with them, and it's going great for us.

1. See how your use case fits with the solution. A few uses cases may be good for you.
2. Take a look at the cost model. Do you want to go for a big bang approach or large-scale implementation?
3. Customer support: Organizations fail to understand when you have deployed bots in the production systems, and they are up and running, that you need a very robust, strong support system. This way if any issues come up regarding the application/solution, teams are there to support you.

Primary use case of Automation Anywhere is financial accounting reporting use cases.

We use unattended bots for all the financial reporting. We have also done some use cases in master data management (MDM). These are the things that we did early last year.

For the next year, we will be primarily focused on cognitive automation. We've already started with IQ Bot exploration. We will be looking into the new version of IQ Bot.

We released ERP, improving our workload balancing. For example, for each of our employees, we have release almost 400 hours of critical repeated efforts.

Automation Anywhere is very good for rapid development. It has all the capabilities in terms of giving a stable automation framework. It has very cool technical capabilities, like MetaBots, dev controls, and object cloning. 

We encountered issues during the upgrade of the framework. We were using the older framework of version 10.3.5. When we were upgrading, we were having a few issues in terms of getting the proper hardware and software prerequisites. For some things, like getting the controls of some of the application's tools, we were getting Automation Anywhere's help.

The operation happened both in hardware and software. There was some amount of friction in terms of technical and hardware operations. In terms handling capturing the controls, that's where we used the help of tech support.

We are looking forward to the release of cloud/web automation, which has yet to be released.

We having most of the use cases rely on Automation Anywhere. However, we face some challenges in terms of RPA implementation with Citrix.

Whatever use case we have deployed in production, we have found nil in terms of stability issues. 

For scalability, we are still working on the bot utilization framework and have created additional frameworks apart from the existing automation framework.

Tech support is one of its primary features, far better than the other RPA tools. We have been able to fix some big technical issues that we came across.

Initially, we were having a few challenges in terms of getting the approval from InfoSec since we wanted some Veracode reportt from our CSM. That took some time. Initially, we were having open issues with the older version, in terms of the Veracode code report. These were high-end critical. Eventually, we were able to get the final report after the approval from Infosec. Then, we were able to install all of the software to our Olam framework.

We started with an integrator, then went directly with Automation Anywhere. Our experience was good. They started by helping us work with the software and understand Automation Anywhere's capabilities.

We have released at least $400 to $500 a month during our peak period, so we have really seen ROI with the product.

I think it's $5,500 per license.

We had some RPA tool implementation strategies. We looked at all the tools and their features. We did a brainstorm session with all the tools and found out the nuances between them. We identified Automation Anywhere as the tool that we should implement in Olam.

We compared Automation Anywhere with UiPath, Blue Prism, OpenSpan, and WorkFushion.

Automation Anywhere is one of the easiest tools that developers can use for development. It takes them only a small amount of time. It has good stability in terms of implementing the automation use cases. We also found Automation Anywhere as a pioneer in terms of RPA implementation.

Automation Anywhere is a pioneer in RPA tools. I would recommend Automation Anywhere. Automation use cases will be rapidly implemented through it. It has a good amount of stability and cool features that can be robustly developed with the help of developers as well as business people.

We are looking forward to using IQ Bot as well as attended automation in the coming year. These are features that are available, but have not used yet. We are trying to do a PoC to start and implement them into our daily use cases.

Currently, we are focusing more on finance, shared services, and interpretive related ideas. For accounting and finance statistic, we have reconciliation specific processes, such as rates uploads into systems. The majority of our development is on SAP and Excel. We are focusing on the financial services area, so our use cases are more related to finance and accounting. These are the use cases developed by the development team.

We are using an on-premise deployment model.

The main agenda for using the RPA is to see how we can get the benefit from reducing human capacity as well as quality output. These two are the major focus for us and what we are achieving.

Timeline-wise, it normally takes a long time to develop. With the AA and RPA concepts and their ready-to-use components, we can deliver a bot within couple of days or within a week time frame based on the use case.

It is easy to use and developer-friendly. The development time is very short. If any system needs to be changed or any functionality needs to be incorporated to any of the technology, it usually will be a long process, like months. With this innovative tool's automation, it is very dynamic, easy to develop, and deliver results quickly. With some of our use cases, we were able to deliver within the time frame of two to three weeks, which is the biggest plus with this tool.

There are good MetaBots available in the Bot Store. We were able to leverage them, as well as established our own reusable components. Considering that, it is easy to add on any software or applications that sits in the system.

We would like to have the Excel plug-in. We have a challenge with unattended bots in development which will be deployed on virtual machines. End users ask, "Why can't we run the bots whenever we need?" The new concept for getting attended bots as well as the Excel plug-in will solve this problem, but we'll wait for 2019 version, which may be a better solution for the business.

More structured and unstructured data collection will be a challenge. While we have the IQ  Bot tool, the success rate at the beginning will be lower. It will be around 20 to 30 percent at the start because you need to train the bot at regular intervals. Of course, this depends on the data. This area could use be improvement.

The marketing strategy is directed toward end users. These leads to confusion in the organization regarding, "Who needs to develop?" Is it IT or the business? This causes friction within the business. Whatever the approach, it is important to show how to get the most benefit out of the tool. There should be a clear roles for IT and the business when using the tool. This way teams and structure can be better established in a business.

For attended automation, there are still questions to be answered: How it is going to maintain the queue? E.g., there are 20 users who want to process their own processes, and when they trigger things, how will the Control Room react? How will bot work distribution happen? These things still need to be looked into, but conceptual-wise, attended automation is really good.

It is confusing: Who needs to develop the bot? The business or IT. At the basic level, the bots can be created. However, once they are moved into production, you have to make sure that the bot is stable and running 24/7 without any issues. Therefore, a lot of care is required due to the amount of controlling mechanisms required.

There are a few problems with deployment and maintenance. When it moves to other systems, the consistency will be somewhat lost.

RPA is decently established and stable as the market is coming up with new features. However, the unstable area is more the IT part of it where a lot of research still needs to be done, especially in the case of artificial intelligence. 

When we run bots, sometimes the systems will go down. Maybe it is because the same functionality worked once or even regularly, but then all of a sudden there will be an issue. It might be a network, latency, or some other issues. Still bot stability needs improvement. These are very rare situations. It works most the time, but one time it will fail and we don't know why.

When I talk about RPAs, it is to say, "Can this problem be solved with RPA?" Scalability-wise, we are in good shape. 

In terms of AI incorporation, this type of scalable incorporation would be benefit everyone. The trend looks like we are going to reach to this point in a good manner.

We were able to put more than 40 bots into production. There are around 20 more in progress. On average, we were able to save around 25,000 hours of manual efforts.

The technical support's response is very good. They gave back solutions quickly. We haven't face many challenges when using the tool. So, we haven't interacted much with the technical team, maybe two or three instances. 

We looked into moving into RPA because it was the trend in the industry.

We do regular acquisitions which leads to a lot of duplicate roles and resources along with similar activities. With this approach, we can streamline our processes and bring uniform processes across the organization. We have been able to establish this. If we use the bots on a lot of manual efforts, it will reduces effort. Going forward, we can use the bots in a better manner by using them for the strategy of delivery and appointments.

We started this journey with a PoC. For three months, we tried understanding the tool and its capabilities. 

The initial setup is not complex for the tool setup. The struggle points are establishing the right mechanisms to identify the candidates and prioritizing things. 

In April, we started the pilot. By July, we had the software as well as the use cases that we needed. We got the licenses in July or August. It took us at least a quarter to establish systems and resources. Then, we started delivering the bots from December 2018. It took six to eight months' time frame from PoC to first bot deployment.

For our bot creation process:

A business user, whoever is doing the manual process currently, will send their request with the details of the use case. Those details will be assessed by IT and the business functional groups to measure what will be the man-hour savings. Also, is it a possible candidate for RPA?Based on those measurements, we identify candidates for RPA, then we determine if they meet the current threshold of 500 hours. If it is more than 500 hours, we consider that a candidate for RPA. Based on that criteria, we identify and prioritize it. Afterward, it comes to the development team for development.

If we had been alone during the initial setup, might not have been that successful. However, when we partnered with the other groups, like consulting firms, then we were able to get the right mechanisms in place within a short time.

We did the deployment in-house.

We have a good dashboard to measure ROI. Whatever investment, licensing, and resource costs together are put in for development and delivery, we are still at an ROI of 250 percent.

To measure ROI, whenever we get a use case from the business when we do an assessment, one of the factor that we capture is the time saving. We try to measure and apply the country rates for the locations where they are doing manual efforts. We measure the time savings by applying the country rates and deriving the hours and value.

The time that it takes to develop and deliver is within two to three weeks.

It has good licensing costs which are average for the market.

We did try out UiPath, which is a good solution. 

We also look at Blue Prism.

We like Automation Anywhere's end user experience. We thought Automation Anywhere was the better solution for developing bots in the long run. It is a centralized tool because of its Control Room. It makes sense to have a solution where everything is in a centralized repository. AA has a more future-looking perspective which will help them in the long run.

We currently are not evaluating any other vendors.

When we saw the tool capabilities, we were so excited. We tried to start using them but we needed to have the right structure and mechanisms in place from the beginning to identify the use case for prioritizing. This plays a major role. 

If you are a big organization with a center of excellence, you need to bring all the people together. The establishment will play a bigger role than just developing and delivering bots. Developing and delivering bots is a very small portion, which is doable by any individual who has a basic technical background. To be successful in your journey, having the right structure upfront will help.

We experimented a little bit with IQ Bots, but we didn't see much use cases in this line currently.

A lot of people interact with RPA and the industry is really excited about it. However, you need to pick the right candidate to be successful in your journey, along with the right framework for the development. This will give you a good output. This is what the business needs to test. Pick a solution based on the organization's needs as well as the right approach. Have an assessment with an approach framework will help.

Automation Anywhere is removing the boring, repetitive tasks from the workforce.

I've worked on different models over different frameworks. 

I do the coding as well as the deployment side. I prepare documents and the user ID. Sometimes, if the user ID is not prepared, then I jump into the process to get it done. With the technical feasibility of the document, I take the technical feasibility and do an estimation to code the bot. I configure the bot, then code it according to the entity and get it reviewed from the client. Then, I run the bot through the Hapi port, as well as different scenarios which might come up.

Once the client is happy, we have a couple of rounds of testing. We have a "You Ready" phase where we code for a few days and the client provides data. We run through the data and this give them the technical results. When they're happy, then we finally move the code over.

One of the clients that I worked with to automate their process received invoices from 12 different companies and different regions. These are the process steps that we automated:

1. We could get the data from PDFs (the invoices were in a PDF format).
2. We accepted the data, uploaded it, and filtered out some of the data. 
3. Once we extracted the data, we use it to search data on particular websites for a particular invoice number to be processed. 
   
4. We used the invoice number to process the invoice.
5. We got approval for the invoice. 

I worked on another process where it generated offer letters for different people with templates. We would get the data in a dump. We would take that data put it into a template, and then into a Word file.

With another client, we used to receive around a million files. Per day, we would have to process around 70,000 to 80,000 records, uploading data where the volume was huge. We deployed the process in multiple bots, using about 20 bots to get the process done. For this client, every second used mattered. We had to code the bot in such a way that we could save every second for them. We had to figure out how much time the bot took and the cost savings for any particular data. We used the workload feature of Automation Anywhere get it done. The manual process took around 30 to 40 people around five to six hours a day, where the bot finishes between one to one a half hours. This was a huge time savings for the client.

For the client with 70,000 to 80,000, we created an SQL database to maintain all their records using bots. E.g., if a bot failed, then another bot would retry using the same information. In the "You Ready" phase, this process was 95 to 98 percent successful. When we finally moved it to production, we had between 99 to 100 percent accuracy. This took us around one and a half months to set up. Two development levels were involved along with an architect who was guiding us.

The most valuable feature is the object cloning. If you compare it to the other RPA tools, object cloning in Automation Anywhere is the most valuable. Mainly for web application, object cloning comes in very handy. Most processes are built as either a website or as a desktop application. Out of 800 commands, around 150 to 200 will be cloned through object cloning. In Automation Anywhere object cloning, there is a special feature called DOMXPATH, where we can customize it to any level. If IDs getting changed, which happens in some cases, then we find out the pattern. Based on the pattern, we come to the particular text box and button. Then, we can use bots along with parent-sibling relationships to get things done. 

I like that it has PGP Command and it is able to connect to a Citrix environment. 

We have the MetaBot feature, which is valuable because we can read reusable components in the MetaBot, then use them as a framework.

The training and resources for this tool are very good. They are so simple that anyone can easily learn it. One of the tool values is its ease of use.

The Excel part needs improvement because we use it as a database. Right now, we are using UiPath for this feature, as that RPA tool allows us to sort, search, and filter in Excel databases. 

The IQ Bot is pretty immature, in regards to AI and machine learning. I would like them to add additional logic.

I have been using it for almost two years now.

Automation Anywhere is quite reliable and stable, especially compared to the other RPA tools. E.g., with UiPath, code that was working yesterday might not work today.

We have experience minor issues with Automation Anywhere, such as with the object cloning, where it required us to restart the machine. Once the machine was rebooted, the solution worked fine.

It takes one or two people to handle the daily maintenance of this solution.

We code our bots with tasks and subtasks in such a way that we can easily combine them when new features come up.

The initial setup is pretty simple and fast. It can be done from the web Control Room, which can be done easily.

For coding, we are keeping the information in XLS or XML files. We use MetaBot to retrieve the data. We keep our URLs in an Excel file, so when we go to our production environment that it will automatically take the URLs and implement them.

One or two people can deploy the solution easily if they understand the requirements.

In most of the cases, the product value is very good. If the infrastructure, implementation, and framework are good, then generally, the client can get a good return on investment. However, getting good resources is tough since most people have limited experience in RPA products who struggle a lot to use these tools.

The coding for Automation Anywhere is a lot easier than for UiPath and Blue Prism. I have about a year and half of experience with UiPath. Compared to UiPath, Automation Anywhere is easy to use and bot development is faster. If you try to develop the same bots in UiPath, development of the same bots in Automation Anywhere will be faster. If the client wants the bots to be developed very quickly, we will do it Automation Anywhere. However, if they give us time, then we will us UiPath. If the process is huge and complex, then we go with Blue Prism.

Another key advantage of Automation Anywhere is the object drawing feature. This comes in very handy. Whereas, if we use UiPath, we have to use the .NET code and commands versus Automation Anywhere where can use scripts or create MetaBots. 

Companies need to do feasibility testing to avoid trying to automate processes which are not right for automation. Then, they should examine which vendor is the right one for the automation process, e.g., Automation Anywhere or UiPath. They need to establish the proper infrastructure for the RPA product, like licenses and an RPA team. The RPA can be a mixture of trained professionals and people who are learning as they go from the training provided by the tool.

Version 11.3 updated a lot of features that were previously not there, like workload automation and analytics dashboards.

I am always learning new things with this tool.

The primary use case is hard to say. We have used it in a number of different areas in our company. We've used it for HR, IT, and our business partners on the front lines using the application. Therefore, our primary use case is hard to say, but basically what we try to do is automate the drudgery out of our business partners' lives.

We have automated some of our HR applications, where there are certain courses. Because we're in a financial industry, we have to maintain certain certifications, etc. Some of that is automated where we help generate reports back to HR. In some cases, there are some very front-end, which are CSRs. We have processes automated for them so they have a less manual work effort. 

We have worked with our compliance area. Some of the things that we have automated there, because we are a financial industry, are political contributions where we have to be very careful. There are a pay-to-play laws in the US, so we've actually automated, which were very difficult because you had to go to all 50 states to download all the information. Trying to do it manually was probably over 8000 hours a year, and now, we're doing it with automation.

What is important to us is continues improvement and learning. We want everyone to be able to look at what they do with a critical eye towards how can improve and get things better? By introducing the solution and working closely with our business partners every time, we create a bot, then their mindset shifts. 

Now, they are looking at everything else they do, and saying, "Hey, wait a minute. Maybe I can do this in a different way." Whether it's using a bot, some other solution, or sometimes even just improving the process as it is without automation, the company in different parts of organization is really starting to adopt the idea of continuous learning.

Probably ease of use has been its most valuable feature. It's been very easy for us to use. We like to operate in a sort of a federated model. So, when we originally started, it was just our vendor partners who were doing the development. Now, we have our own set of core developers at my company. Since 2017, we now have about 23 different people, most of whom are certified developers, a lot of them didn't have a developer background when we started.

With the user interface, a lot of the parts of it I really like, but there are some things that could be made a little simpler. A little less clicking around here and dragging over there to use.

My impressions of the Bot Store are I really love the idea of it. We've actually downloaded a couple of them and used them. One of the more recent ones was interesting. It required a license key, which kind of confused us. If it's freeware, why do you need a license key? But we got around it.

What has also been nice, with the most recent bot from the Bot Store that we downloaded, it was developed by a vendor partner who we are partners with as well. So, when we had some issues with it, we were just put in contact with the developer at that same firm, then we were able to work through any issues. Subsequently, they have made updates to it and uploaded it back to the Bot Store, so it's actually great.

The stability is pretty good. In all fairness, I know we went from version 10.5, where we thought we were fairly stable, and we did have some issues. Then, we migrated to version 11.2 and encountered some other stability issues around scheduling things. But, after talking with some Automation Anywhere techs who were extremely helpful, we have recently, as of last week, upgraded to version 11.3.2.1, and that seems to have solved some of our problems.

We are still testing it. I still need to do some checkups. Obviously, I'm here this week, so I'm not doing it right now. Generally speaking, it is stable. Knowing what it's trying to do, I think 100 percent stability with everybody will be different. Architecture and environment are going to be pretty difficult, but they do a good job.

The scalability is easy. Installing license keys, bringing up new Bot Runners, and all that stuff from the Automation Anywhere side of it are easy. It's very easy. I've had little-to-no difficulty doing any of that. I have to go through the paperwork of hardware, VDIs, etc, and that's all on our side. But, from an Automation Anywhere standpoint, it's been very quick and easy to scale.

The technical support, from my experience, has been very good. Granted, sometimes there has been a little slowness, but if I deemed it critical, or whatever, then I've had conversations with our customer service manager, or anyone, and they've been able to get me with somebody in architect, which has been phenomenal.

When we did the upgrade to version 11.2, it was sort of complicated, because we had to start all over. We had to bring in new hardware and a new set of new databases, but the gentleman who helped me out was great. He fully documented the process for us, which was awesome, because I didn't have that from the original installs of version 10.5. Because he documented it, I was able to go through the upgrade from versions 11.2 to 11.3 very simply and fast. I would say the technical support is very good.

Why did we want to invest in an RPA solution? This was our first solution, so we weren't with someone else first. We did do some evaluation, looking at how and what we wanted to do with bots. Did we want to just use it purely on the back-end? Did we want to use it on the front-end? 

Some of the leaders at the time in the strategy and innovation team at our company just saw the need for it. We knew there was a lot of manual redundant processes that were just right for automation, so we said, "Hey, let's bring it on." The PoC sort of proved the concept, then we just brought it in-house and kept going from there.

The initial setup was somewhere right in the middle. It wasn't super simple. We could've probably done things a little better than we did, but it also wasn't horribly complex.

We used an integrator and reseller for the deployment, originally. We worked with HCL Technologies, but we found some gaps in our knowledge because of this. We didn't fully understand the architecture and how it was built. 

During all the process of the installs, we didn't get all the documentation. This made some things a little difficult for us, especially when we ended up parting ways with HCL. 

Then, we signed with a different vendor for both development and reselling, OPTIMIX. So, going through with the Automation Anywhere architects and getting it installed was great.

One of the first steps that we do before automating anything is we determine if it is a process where there is enough ROI involved to dedicate development resources or a bot to? Sometimes, in all honesty, the use case is we want to learn something, so we do it anyway. But, generally, we do a time and motion study, so we understand how much time we are saving somebody. We measure that. Additionally, we measure cost. That varies depending on the department that we're doing the automation for. But, we can measure that, and usually that is a straight hourly rate times the time saved.

Cost avoidance is something that we do, too. In other words, there was a process that we automated where a department was considering hiring someone just to do some file transfers and copies, etc. We automated that process, and they just didn't have to hire somebody.

It definitely saves us a lot of time and money.

It looks like it will be right around $115,000, not counting IQ Bot, which we won't renew until later.

We looked at Blue Prism and UiPath, but we felt that Automation Anywhere was a good mix of both the front-end and back-end, whereas UiPath seems very front-end only and Blue Prism is very back end only. We needed a mix for what we wanted to do.

We don't use it as attended as much. We have had a few cases where we were going to use attended, then just decided that for the rarity of those types of uses that we didn't want to have a Bot Runner just sitting and waiting for someone to chime in five times a day. Instead, we've created more scheduled. Right now, all of our bots are running unattended.

It's really easy to use. Again, going back to something that I mentioned earlier, we have a number of people at our firm who are now certified RPA developers that had no development background. They did that just by the online training in some cases. In some cases, it was the online training, as well as a three day class that we brought in-house and had taught. However, the only part where you want to get experience and learning are around error handling.

I've been in software for a long time. I've never seen a perfect piece of software, yet. I've seen some that are very good. With everything this is trying to do and the complexities of the environment, I'm going to give it an eight (out of ten) because it's very good. I think me giving something an eight is pretty high in this space.