Automation Anywhere Reviews

When we started Automation Anywhere, it was a rule-based automation. All the rule-based used cases we could automate. Now, with the upcoming version, it includes AI and Python, so we can go ahead in our roadmap and start automating dynamic used cases too.

We started on the 10.5 version of Automation Anywhere. The Control Room had some limitations. With version 11, they removed all those limitations. In version 11, we do not have the Python support or AI machine learning support. But, with the A2019 version, we will have the AI machine learning libraries in the support. So, we can easily use those libraries now.

The main thing is the simple UI, easy to use commands, and it's very easy to learn compared to other tools in the market.

With the upcoming version, they have addressed all the issues of the clients. They have AI and ML. The GUI is good. The cloud has been included. So, it's promising that they have now included these. We have to see how much we can get used to it.

Version 10.5 has been the most stable version that we have used. With version 11, we are still getting some updates, so it will take some time for version 11 to get stable.

It is scalable. In version 11, scalability has a limit, but with the upcoming version, it will be scalable because it is on the cloud now.

AA has good support. Suppose we have any queries, they are there to help us. They have a support portal where we can raise a request and they will immediately reply on the basis of the priority level that they have set. So, it's very good.

If we go through the client setup, its very easy. But, if we are going through the high availability in the IQ Bot setup, it's a bit complex.

We have more than 50 bots in the company. The FTE and ROI are very good. In the future, we have many projects in pipeline that we are about to implement. So, definitely there is a good ROI and FTE savings for us.

I will rate version 10.5 as a nine (out of 10) and version 11 as an eight (out of 10). Let us wait and see about the upcoming version.

I lead the automation team in UI. In the UI, we automate mostly PDF and shared devices, then most web applications. For large volumes, we mostly automate PDFs.

I have enjoyed using all the features of this tool, not just one feature, e.g., object cloning, Excel automation, and the web recorder. 

The tool is very easy to use and mostly user-friendly. I like that when using it I don't need much expertise.

With the IQ Bots that use AI, I want to see more features using that type of machine learning and artificial intelligence in their products.

It is a very scalable product. With the market, every time and every day, we can scale it.

It is very easy to interact with the support team for Automation Anywhere whenever it's required. Sometimes, if the training is required, they would visit our premises. We can also visit their premises. In terms of training and product support, if you have any challenges as a developer, they help all the time. It is very easy to connect with them.

It is very straightforward.

I have seen a huge difference in how it is improving products.

I use them mostly. I would recommend it to all my friends and team. I encourage team member to use it, even those who are not from a technical background. They can also move to Automation Anywhere, use, and can learn from it. If they go to use Automation Anywhere University and other training tools, the training materials are available for them. So, it's very easy to learn as well. Different platforms and technology members have also moved to use the RPA platform, and are now using the Automation Anywhere tool.

I'd give it a nine point two out of 10. There is still a way to go for Automation Anywhere where we can see improvement. Mostly, we want to see more artificial intelligence and machine learning. Now, I can see only this mostly in the IQ Bot where we construct the data from PDFs. I also want to see more features where we can use the artificial intelligence in automating tasks as well.

Processes which have a decision making and do not have any required rule-based are considered for automation.

All the features that we have different from each other. Most of the time, we go for object cloning and IQ Bot, which will be used in the coming years. That feature, people are looking forward to, as it will help us read and extract data from unstructured formats.

Although, IQ Bot has data being extracted from it. It can improve with more features, like handwritten copies that are readable. Anyway, the IQ Bot is coming out in a bit, and I'm sure we will go with it.

For most of the cases that we have worked on, the application has been stable. Automating applications has brought a huge change to the automations which we have carried forward.

It depends on the developer and how they have coded it with respect to scalability. However, it has the ability to be scalable.

The main point to go for Automation Anywhere is because we have worked with other tools than Automation Anywhere and the support team which Automation Anywhere has takes time to try understanding the issue, then give the feedback. That is something we learn along with the Automation Anywhere guys. I would go for Automation Anywhere because of the support team.

Version 10 that we had was a little complex to set up. However, version 11 is pretty easy.

We use multiple tools, but most of the time, it is Automation Anywhere which we go for because of our clients who are looking forward to working with Automation Anywhere. It's sort of easy to use. Also with respect to the client as well as the developers, it gives quick results. With other tools, we need to perform a lot of tasks. This tool is a bit quicker. The ROI also comes into picture.

I have in fact told all my friends and colleagues who are in the RPA domain to work with Automation Anywhere because it's easier to run as well as to implement. Overall, the deployment is easier. I mostly prefer Automation Anywhere over the other RPA tools.

I would rate the product a nine to nine point five (out of ten).

We'll be discussing our implementations for Salesforce and using Automation Anywhere to automate sales for processes within the organization. We focus mainly on sales and BFSI.

A very important piece within sales is that we've noticed most of the salespeople hesitate from updating their Salesforce at a frequent interval. You jump on a call, you have multiple calls with your customer, and you hesitate to keep dealing these updates within Salesforce. The idea behind this implementation, or this specific solution, is that we take care of all the updating of Salesforce processes. We take care of all lead conversions, lead updates, lead generations, etc. through our RPA. All you need to do is have a conversation with your bot, and say, "Hey, I just had a conversation with Nick. He seems good with all the implementations. We should convert him from Level 1 to Level 2." These basic implementations have been taken care of.

We're also looking at mobile transcription. So, if you are on a call with XYZ, you say, "Hey, I'm jumping on a call with XYZ, just transcribe what I'm talking about." So, you transcribe those calls and update them in your total documentation. That's the idea.

Automation Anywhere has been an integral part of this product's evolution in general. A hindrance that we were faced with was companies who did not have API integrations for Salesforce. This is where RPA and Automation Anywhere came in and helped us with integrating solutions which did not have API integrations within themselves. That's how we've evolved in the past two to three months.

IQ Bot seems to be a good solution that Automation Anywhere has come up with. It sets them apart from the other solutions. I want Automation Anywhere to work on IQ Bot further to help evolve the tool more and create a certain set of solutions using IQ Bot. They can maybe use better machine learning algorithms to come up with better accuracy for OCR extractions. This is an area that I want them to work on.

It is absolutely robust. Automation Anywhere as a solution, as well as our implementation, have been robust in nature with thorough testing and UAT processes being involved. Automation Anywhere can be considered as one of the most stable RPA tools in the industry, according to the perspective of the limited amount of tools that I've used. But, Automation Anywhere seems to be the most stable one.

We initially started off with a customer who had just three bots. We've now scaled them to 15 bots. It didn't take us more than an hour to scale. Automation Anywhere helped us scale from one bot to 100 bots within a period of hours, if not minutes. Unless you're scaling from 10s to 1000s, I think Automation Anywhere has it covered.

Support is five (out of five). The technical support is better than any other automation tool that I've seen. The ticketing resolution that they provide not only for paid customers, but for PoCs that we conduct, IQ Bot, and other scenarios wherein the product might not be functioning properly. The support is top-notch. There are scenarios wherein we need to be able to identify the best possible solution, and there is support for that as well.

We started off about one and a half years back initially. In those days, Automation Anywhere hadn't picked up so much. The initial setup was difficult, but as they have moved from on-premise to cloud, the setup has become much easier. Now, we are hands-on with the setup and can do it within hours.

With another client, we are saving about 20 hours. However, we are not able to justify that return on investment by just saving time. There are other parameters that we would have to look at for justifying the ROI.

The return on investment for most of our clients depends from scenario to scenario. Some of them look at it on a long-term basis and some of them look at it from the amount of time saved. For example, we are currently working on a solution for a CIO. We are saving about four hours of his time during a particular week. The return on investment for that particular person is humongous.

We evaluated all the solutions. We had different RPA tools. Looking at the feedback from the market and the type of technical support that we had received, we went ahead with Automation Anywhere. The major reason for going with Automation Anywhere was the technical support that developers have.

I'd rate it an eight point five to nine because there's still always room for improvement.

We are using Automation Anywhere for multiple automation processes. There are multiple clients with KPMG who have many automations going on.

In finance and accounting companies, they ask for report generations and record fetching from some data source type of tasks. They want it to be fetched and exported into forms, charts, etc. using automation. The task will happen when triggers are required based on some data sources. It is the data that will be exported and sent over mail. These tasks are mainly focused on organizations.

No other competitor has this email trigger, so it saves a lot of time if you automate the process. We don't need to fix a time for a task to run. It gives the feature of on demand execution for any task. Whenever a user wants, it can send a mail and get the task done as soon as possible. That is our main feature, I feel. 

There are multiple features, like PDF integrations, which are coming up. Task-related features to PDF integrations are coming up nowadays, so people want those executed and improved a lot in Automation Anywhere.

For improvement, I would like to see Automation Anywhere integrating with multiple other technologies. As of now, it is integrating with .NET. When it come to future technologies, I want Automation Anywhere to integrate with Python scripts, and make the execution easier. That will be very helpful, having our cognitive technologies interacting with Automation Anywhere.

On the basis of rating, I'll give a 90 percent to the process being stable. The remaining 10 percent is based on the change in the environment. If you change the environment from development to production or some other environment, then there are minor glitches which come into the process. But, that also can be handled a bit easier in Automation Anywhere.

It is very scalable. If we come to the point where we need to increase the number of bots in a process, for different countries or teams, we can add multiple bots and Bot Runners to the process, then we can execute. This gives a lot of scalability to the process.

The technical support team was very helpful on on our development. There were many cases where we needed their support and urgency. They gave a lot of support to us. They responded well quickly. That's what is required for our development or developer team, so I'm a bit happy with our technical support team from Automation Anywhere.

It's a bit straightforward. If you go through the user manual of Automation Anywhere, the stuff with automation there is quite easy. A layman or common man, who is new to the Automation Anywhere can install it quickly. So, it's easy.

There are a lot of savings in terms of effort and time as well as costs. Automation Anywhere automates a lot of processes. It allows an organization to save the efforts of a lot people. It saves a lot of time because people can't work a whole day (24/7), but Automation Anywhere bots can.

I'll rate it near an eight (out of 10) for Automation Anywhere. I'm giving this rating because the first thing which can be improved is integrating multiple technologies like Python, which can enable the developer and the process to run in a much better, faster way. The second thing is the automation that is available in Automation Anywhere can be improved. This will help other use cases to run.

I've been part of multiple bot automations ranging from different sectors from finance to retail to banking over four years during which I have implemented multiple bots.

The primary use case for Automation Anywhere is something related to financial and banking operations. Because the financial and banking operations are something which we do repetitively and need to be done with a lot of time. A perfect use case for RPA is something which is repetitive and has a lot of work. Use cases in the financial and banking sectors are something where we have multiple invoices to process multiple transactions. These two sectors are important sectors as use cases for RPA.

There are multiple features which are valuable. One such feature in Automation Anywhere is the object cloning command. Because with the object cloning command, I am able to work with websites and also with Window Operations. I have worked with other tools using this object cloning command. It is easy for a developer to just drag a command and clone whatever features or actions they want. 

I also have an option to modify according to my user inputs when using object cloning. There is one command which impresses me in Automation Anywhere that other tools lack. It gives me the image quality that I need.

There are a couple of features that I would like AA to improve upon in their next releases. One is the PDF automation. Of course, AA has come up IQ Bot which scans PDF documents. I feel that IQ Bot has not reached its mark. With financial and banking, we have multiple invoices that we have to process in our top use cases. Typically, these invoices come in a PDF file. So, PDF automation is the one automation that we want them to concentrate on. 

The second feature which I would like them to concentrate on is the work items concept. AA has come up with this in version 11, but I want them to more like competitors in the market for the next releases.

The stability of the process has improved from version 10 to version 11. The version 11 is the current version, and that is what I am working in. So, I have seen good improvements in terms of stability, but I still want some development in terms the stability. We run these bots in multiple environments from staging to development to production. We find usually in the production environment when we run the bots for them to be stable for a week or two. After a week or two, we see some glitches here and there, though the application doesn't change much. This is one feature which I want Automation Anywhere to work on: Increasing stability.

I'm impressed with the scalability. We are able to do changes. We are able to scale from different environments now with the Control Room in version 10 and 11. The scalability is pretty good. It is up to the mark of the other market competitors.

The technical support is something that I rely on if I have any queries or if I have to work on another alternate approach. I've been working with Automation Anywhere for four years, and during that time, the technical support that AA provides has been very good. They usually resolve the tickets that I raise in 24 hours and have come up with a knowledge base based on previous tickets that other people have raised. They have created something called a knowledge base, where before raising a ticket, I can just go to the knowledge base and see whether people have faced similar issues before and how AA has given a solution. So, in terms of technical support, I feel like AA is doing a pretty good job.

I've seen different versions of Automation Anywhere. They have evolved the setup, so even a newbie who comes to RPA or Automation Anywhere with the setup installation document that they provide, it's straightforward because all the steps are mentioned in the document. I've seen that even a newbie can install Automation Anywhere. So, the document that they provide is top notch for installation.

I have personally worked on an insurance use case where there were production teams 24/7. With the bots that we developed, they were able to do the ticketing and production support. There are multiple scenarios where the development of Automation Anywhere has improved cost efficiency and worker efficiency too.

I would rate them an eight (out of 10). Why not a 10? Because I want them to concentrate on the PDF automation and work items. I see these two things as something which have a lot of scope in RPA in the future. If AA comes up with these couple of features, I'm sure it will be a 10 (out of 10) in version 12.

We mostly use it on engineering processes. We also use it for finances in SAP — uploading, invoice creation, etc. But we have mostly focused on our engineering processes.

An example from the finance area is when we need to invoice a customer. We open our SAP account and upload all the data into SAP, create an invoice, and send a notice to the finance team that the process has been completed. They then move the process further along. It's a daily type of operation, whenever such requests come.

We are using the on-premise version because the cloud version (A2019) is not out yet.

One of the ways it has improved our organization is regarding working on Saturdays and Sundays. Obviously, employees don't like to come in on those days. When a user is not there and we want certain processes to be done, we don't expect the engineers to sit there and do them. We can schedule things via email so a bot runs on Saturdays and Sundays. That results in a reduction of man-hours. 

It automates all the processes which do not require human intervention, things which are very repetitive. That means we can give more important work to the engineers now, rather than asking them to do repetitive tasks.

We have these invoices which gets generated every month. We have to enter these invoice details into the stacks. It is a tedious task that is done by our finance team. We have automated the process of entering the details into the stack, and t reduces a lot of manual work.

The best feature of AA is the scheduling and the triggering part of it. Whenever an email comes in we can just use Automation Anywhere. We don't have to sit there. The unattended bots of Automation Anywhere are something which we find very useful.

It does not require much onboarding skills. It's easy to train anyone. We just ask them to apply logic.

One very important thing would be more support for Citrix automation. We want something to support Cisco. Citrix automation is not a very good tool. We are not able to use it properly. Even if we go through a remote desktop connection, it goes along only with the keystrokes and image recognition.

Also, when we are moving from one version to another version, it's very difficult because most of the features stop working. They should first test everything and then release the new version. For example, there's a system variable known as the Excel Cell Row. It gives you the current row of the inner loop. When going from version 11.1 to 11.3, this variable was suddenly not supported, and most of our bots were dependent on that. Everything went down and we had to start from scratch. If you do not have a developer who has done this, it's going to be a big problem in terms of the time it will take.

We need the migration from version 11 to A2019 to go smoothly. Our developers cannot be expected to enter the code again.

I'm not sure about the stability because there are a lot of upgrades all the time. Whenever we move from version to version, like 11.1 to 11.3, if we have ten bots we have to go around and test all ten bots. And in case something is not working, we have to make changes. If they support a migration utility properly, I think it's a great tool.

The scalability is great. Nearly a 100 bots have been deployed in finance, HR, and mostly engineering. We will be implementing bots going forward in procurement.

It has taken us two years to scale to our current number of bots because we spent a lot of time on training at first.

Technical support from Automation Anywhere is great. I have written to Automation Anywhere support many times and there is a great response from them. Even if they do not have the exact answer, they always say, "You can try this option or you can try this option."

We started with Automation Anywhere. The biggest reason our company chose Automation Anywhere was because we found it more reliable for our operations than any other. Also, the response from Automation Anywhere is really good.

We started with version 10.7. When we started, initially downloading the Control Room and those types of things was a bit complex. We had the user manual, but I don't think it's very good. It misses many points. When we missed something, we needed to contact Automation Anywhere support, so there were some delays in the process. 

Then we moved to version 11.1, which was more complex and requires more of your system space.

Overall, the other process is a bit complex. They have said they're coming out with the cloud version. I think that will be a bit easier. 

The development process took us about six months.

We have a team in our company which is responsible for RPA. It's something which we do internally for our company.

There has been a great return on investment. We are interested in saving manual engineer man-hours. So far, we have saved $100,000.

We also evaluated UiPath and Blue Prism. We chose Automation Anywhere because of how well it suited it our office.

Automation Anywhere is easier to use. With drag and drop, we don't need the uploading skills, etc. Everything is just there. You can just drag and drop, then just go ahead and do it. With UiPath, it was a little difficult to understand the process. Also Automation Anywhere has email automation.

I would rate the solution at seven out of ten. One main drawback is that migration issue. Another thing I would like to see is support for all the other scripting languages, like Python, JavaScript and all.

Go through the Automation Anywhere courses properly to be aware of all the system variables and all the features it has. Then proceed with the development phase. Until you're clear on the basic things you cannot do anything in the tool. You need to know those things.

I have done the Masters course on Automation Anywhere University. I have a Masters Certification from them. Their courses are pretty interesting. At the end of the Masters course, we had an interview on the course itself. There were a lot of informative things and it was a great experience.

Next year, we should be moving into cognitive document processing.

We are currently using it for a lot of projects, like repetitive or manual tasks. We are building bots to free human beings from boring jobs/tasks. We are working daily on Automation Anywhere to automate our processes.

We are using it on-premise. We are not using cloud for deployment. As of now, we are running it on our client machines. We develop automation on our desktops, then deploy our automation on our physical desktop using Automation Anywhere.

We have automated web scripting, downloading documents from particular websites, scraping data from websites, and extracting the data from PDF files. We are also updating the application with some user inputs. E.g., if you have an Excel sheet to update into a particular application, we can use Automation Anywhere tool and automate the process.

We have built some Java applications in Automation Anywhere. I have also coded macros and Python scripts to include in our Automation Anywhere tool.

The Automation Anywhere tool is very handy to use since I have some programming background, like I previously worked on Java. It's very easy to use Automation Anywhere because there is not much of coding involved. We just need to drag and drop the commands, then we can do the job.

Automation Anywhere is good for integrating other programming languages and other tools. The ease of use is very good, as we can directly code other programming languages, like Java or JavaScript, into our application and get output.

I have done work using a VPN, connecting via a remote desktop. The good thing about Automation Anywhere is if a client works without Internet, e.g., if we deploy on a client mission and the network is off, then a bot will still run offline.

If we want to read a scanned PDF, we use IQ Bot. Using the cognitive detail of IQ Bot and some machine learning abilities, we can train the IQ Bot to process all scanned PDF documents and give the results in an Excel file. This is a very good feature introduced by Automation Anywhere. IQ Bot is doing well.

The Bot Store is like a marketplace for bot developers. We already have some utility bots that are simple bots from there. We can download the bots from the Bot Store and use them in our current process. That's very helpful for the bot developers, especially for beginners who have just started with Automation Anywhere developing bots. There are a lot of bots deployed in the Bot Store. If you find any interesting bots, we can also upload bots to the Bot Store, making them available for everyone to download and use.

With attended automation, we need human intervention to provide input for bots. We make sure files are presented in a particular folder to pick up those files and feed it to the bot. Attended automation sometimes might go into exceptions, thus we need to monitor it in-between, then check whether it is working properly. This way, we ensure the bot is working properly.

Currently, I have developed between 20 to 25 bots. From when I started, we have deployed as a team between 30 to 40 bots. Their status is as fully running on our client machines.

We collaborate as a team if any face roadblocks or issues, discussing among our colleagues. Then, we involve the Automation Anywhere support team. They are very good. We can raise a ticket and get knowledge from their team. They help us resolve any issues.

The bot creation workflow is pretty simple. We check for feasibility, and if it is feasible, then we go about creating bots for the task. We have some measurements for ROI. We check the return on Investment to determine if it's feasible or not. We check the typical measurements, then go for Bot creation. After creating the bot, we don't have a production environment after creating the bot. We just deploy and run that bot.

If the process is huge and involves 10 to 20 steps, then it might take from creation to production three to four weeks of time. If it is a simple bot, it involves just launching a website and scraping data from the PDF, then putting it in Excel. For that type of bot, we can build it in one week and deploy it in seven to 10 days.

The return of investment on Automation Anywhere very good because I have automated some processes, like scraping the data from websites and updating some applications, and if we deployed full-time employees on these tasks, it would take more than a year and a half. However, if we automate the process and deploy a bot, it can be completed in just a month of time. The ROI is very good because the output is very accurate and the speed is very fast.

Our company is investing a lot of money in Automation Anywhere. They have saved money wherever humans are working. They invest a lot of money in FTEs and other logistics, so the money saving is very pretty good with Automation Anywhere. While I don't know the exact figure, the tool is saving us millions of dollars as well as saving about 40,000 hours in the last year. 

Currently, we are using attended automation. We do have unattended bots but are in the process of procuring some other licenses. In future, we will make a few bots unattended as well.

I did the Advanced Certification on Automation Anywhere University. I have also done IQ Bot learning. I am currently doing a Masters Certification. The courses are very clear. Any user can understand the content. If you are a beginner, go with Automation Anywhere. If you have some basic programming knowledge, that is enough. You can easily learn Automation Anywhere. It is not a big deal, and you can learn with the certification.

If a person doesn't have a programming background or skills, they can use Automation Anywhere and build bots. It's not a big deal. It's easy for business users to use. You just need some basic programming skills, like Ethernet and loops. 

I heard from Automation Anywhere that version A2019 will be released in either November or December. It is completely cloud-based and contains two IDs. One ID is a flowchart diagram and another ID has some commands. Therefore, any business user who has some basic knowledge can develop bots as well.

Version A2019 will be adding a lot of new features.

I haven't had a chance to work on Citrix automation.