Automation Anywhere Reviews

We use it to augment our staff and remove some of the manual processes in our business.

Our team, consists of two college kids who are doing almost all the work, along with a couple of business people to help teach them what is going on. The ease of use has been pretty simple, or they would not have been able to catch onto it so quickly.

With the new regulation on China tariffs, we were hit with a regulation that we weren't prepared to take on. By using a few bots, we were able to satisfy the requirements for that regulation without going into programs and making changes.

We have automated our China tariffs, some invoicing stuff, a lot of processes for finance, and some mundane closing tasks.

We have had a lot of great success with attended automation. The business has taken a hold and embraced it. So, we're very excited about it.

I would like more with OCR and data capture. We are partnering with IBM to help bridge this gap, but Automation Anywhere should continue to expand on their product line and provide these capabilities, as well.

The installation and setup for the bot runners and bot creators need improvement. The installation and setup for the control room is also a difficult task. Therefore, improving the ease of implementation would help out a lot.

We've not had any problems with the platform going down. Right now, it's been very stable.

We're still pretty small, so we haven't had a need to scale out too much. 

We have seen the roadmap for scaling out, and it doesn't look to be too difficult. So, we should& have a problem with it.

We have only had the tool for about eight months. From start to finish, we have put over a dozen bots in place, some of which are highly complex and took a lot of weeks to properly deploy.

The tech support for Automation Anywhere has been really good, so far. We haven't had to call them very much, but when we have, we have received a good response.

This was our first bot solution. We did do our research and looked to our partners to see what they were using, then created a shortlist. This product was on everyone's shortlist. Also, they partner well with IBM, and we have partnered with IBM for years. This made it very attractive and was the key selling point.

The initial setup was pretty complex. Everyone who offers this platform is still trying to find the right tools which go with it. Without an integrator, we would have had a lot of difficulty getting it set up ourselves. 

As this product matures, it will continue to get easier to set up.

We used an integrator (BP3) for the deployment. They've been tremendous to work with, satisfying all of our needs.

We measure our ROI mostly by time saved, from a real person doing a task versus a bot. In some cases, we have been able to recoup revenue because processes weren't being followed correctly. Because the bot was doing the task the same way every time, we have recouped some revenue that we had lost in the past.

We save 34,000 hours of time per year and have recouped up to $6000 in lost revenue.

We have a three-year contract with Automation Anywhere.

UiPath was also on our shortlist.

Every piece of software has its goods and bads. For your organization, you have to ensure that the goods outweigh the bads for your use case. This solution has been great for our company in almost every way possible. Obviously, we made a good choice. Therefore, I would recommend taking a good, hard look at Automation Anywhere as your bot platform.

With the latest version, I know they have improved the UI. That will already be a big help,

Return of investment has been pretty easy, so it has not been a problem with getting funding for this solution. Our executive team was immediately involved, where I know with most IT projects, they really don't care until they see the output. They had done their research, as well. So, they were really excited for us to take on this endeavor.

Our primary use case is to automate all the back-end processes, which are accounts receivables, accounts payable, automatic settlement, and a lot of processes in the supply chains. Afterwards, we move onto the front-end transactions.

It provides, not only hard benefits, but also soft benefits. This means to leave the human capital (which they are required to do); leave the human mind free of all voluminous repetitive tasks. Let the workers do the work that they are intended to do, which is thinking. The bot can work for you. There is no comparison to the human mind. 

The customer engagement is really deep, and they work with the “gemba”. They work with operations very closely. I also believe they have a good product roadmap. 

I’ve already mentioned the future of our human mind and thinking are limited. We only think in arithmetical progression, not GP.  So, I have no answer for this.

When you scale up, like on Proof of Value (PoV), it’s okay. You can have one full, dedicated person working on the site. However, when you scale up, and imagine there are 150 people including bots in an organization of 20,000 people, then they need to be loved and cared for (every single one of them). They will need much more support, because it is a new thing and it’ll never fail because of productive partners. It will fail if people on the “gemba” don’t adopt it.

We are in the Proof of Value stage, not proof of concept. Like any business, production lines, or bots, there will be outtakes that you’ll have to deal with and build up.

If you ask me, my personal belief is you can’t even begin to imagine what you can do.  You can imagine, but you are limited by your own imagination and thinking, so you can go exponentially. 

On a scale of one to ten, Automation Anywhere would be a seven to eight.  

From my point of view working in the market and examining at it, this market needs more skill sets. This market needs more bilingual people and some more process-oriented people who can understand the business processes and help the customers grow.

Every industry has its own unique business processes, but this market is short on labor, even in skills, and also in terms of people who can articulate the value of process automation. That is a value piece from Automation Anywhere’s side. These guys need to build a good team.  

There were five big criteria:

1. Cost. 
2. Features and functions. 
3. Global and local support. 
4. Customer service. 
5. Technical support. 

In our office, there was a full team with a full process and close to 10 to 15 people from procurement, technology, business, and also “gemba”, as I keep calling operations. They went into the evaluation and had a very scientific way of doing so. 

There was another partner who we felt was very close, but the edge was the customer service and the support. That was the edge.

It was very easy and simple.

We brought in a partner. However, it was very easy the way things, and if someone has moved in the industry and business processes, they can do it. It was not that difficult at all.

Of course, yes, we have seen ROI. Especially in this market, human capital is valued in an ageing society. If you don’t find skilled people, who’s going to do the job? If you remove the neutrality of people and build it through the bots, that is the best way to do.

For my company and me, we come from a good technology company. Every company is a technology company. Without technology, you cannot live. When you are building up your back-end processes, especially in the shared services, what next?

In the Asian markets, they have come to a point of maturity where labor is the normal average. Looking at China, the Philippines, Malaysia, or even India, these markets are becoming more exponentially expensive. Therefore, what is our next wave of forward industrial evolution? To me, these digital automation RPAs going into artificial intelligence and machine learning are the areas of industry that we’ll need to move into very quickly. We need to take a very conscious call in preparing ourselves for the future.

Did we try some other solutions, to that extent, of automating the right business processes? I don’t know. 

Was the solution good or bad? I don’t know. 

But the perceived value of it, either in terms of real value or dollar value, or in terms of releasing the sources to do better thinking work, those are the areas where personally I was not convinced. So, let’s try something which has a more futuristic outlook. I call it glocalization, globally present and locally present. That was the whole idea behind our inception into reality.

The moment you say you are a vendor and looking at your contract, your relationship is over. You want business partners who can help the industry. We know how to make beverages, and for example, we make the best. I hope so, and I’m confident. We need some partners who know their stuff as well, and who understand the pain points of the industry and can help with them. Those are a couple of criteria which can make you successful partnerships and business relationships, not a vendor.

I would rate this product an eight.  

If I fast forward two to three years. At that point in time, how would it look like? Maybe we have the same amount of enthusiasm, or if it we become very big, then we may become less agile. If you are small, you are more agile. The moment you become big, it goes into its own dimensions.

I’d would advise, first of all, if you are an end user like me, don’t think of yourself as a customer. You have to see your customer as your “gemba”, as the people in operations. Your product partners, implementation partners, and you are responsible for servicing the customer. Thus, it will always be a win-win game for everyone. Don’t try to put a blame on the product or the partner. You are all equally responsible, and need to put your skin in the game. Just go ahead for it. 

Foreign Language: (Japanese)

この製品を主にどのように使用していますか？

我が社の場合の主なユースケースはまず、自動バックエンド業務全般です。これは通常APつまり未払金と売掛金、それにサプライチェーンの多くがあります。後はフロントエンドコミッションです。

Automation Anywhereのどんなところに満足していますか？

顧客関与が非常に深く、彼らは現場でよく働くと思います。 業務部と密接に協働してくれます。それに製品ロードマップが良いと思います。

では、彼らと築いた関係に満足しているということですね。

当ソリューションを使用するとどのようなメリットがありますか？御社が機能する上でどのような改善をもたらしましたか？

はい、後で話しますが、大きな点の1つはハードメリットだけでなく、ソフトメリットでもあります。つまり、実際にすべき仕事に人的資本を使うことです。それは少なくとも人間の精神を大量の反復作業から解放することにつながります。彼らがやるべき仕事をする。ボットは私達のために仕事をしますが、人間の頭には及ばないと確信しています。

 には考える力を発揮させる。

当ソリューションの安定性に関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか？

それはまだです。まだ価値実証の段階で。実証実験を多く行っています。でもどんなビジネス、どんな生産ライン、どんなボットでも同じように対処して構築しなければならない支障はあります。

当ソリューションの拡張性に関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか？

それはまだです。まだ価値実証の段階で。実証実験を多く行っています。でもどんなビジネス、どんな生産ライン、どんなボットでも同じように対処して構築しなければならない支障はあります。

Automation Anywhereのテクニカルサポートを利用しなければいけなかった経験はありますか？ある場合は、サポートをどのように評価しますか？

はい。 10が最高の評価とすれば、彼らは7から8ですね。

10に達するには、何が必要ですか？さらなるサポートですか？

私の見解では、この市場は－私はこれまで様々な市場で働いてきましたが－この市場にはさらなるスキルセットが必要です。より多くのバイリンガルの人々、そしてビジネスプロセスを理解して顧客の成長を助けるプロセス指向の人々が必要ですね。

具体的な例を挙げると？ ビジネスプロセスやスキルセットについて？

どんな業界にも独自のビジネスプロセスがありますが、この市場は明らかに労働力が足りません。労働力が足りない上、スキル、それにプロセスの自動化の価値を明確に表現できる人がいません。ですから、Automation Anywhere側からの価値観で言うと、彼らは良いチームを確立させる必要があると言います。もっともっと。

もちろんです、はい。でも 拡大の余地はあります。急激に進めるための余地、そして急激に進めるなら、パートナーも同時に成長する必要があります。生態系全体が成長する必要があるので、ビジネスが成長するだけでなく、生態系が成長しなければサポートも難しくなります。

Automation Anywhereからのサポートを直接受けていますか？

そうです。直接…名前は言いませんが、製品部で指導を受けたパートナーがいました。というのは、製品を最大限に活用するためには、全機能を探索する必要がありますので。

初期セットアップはどうでしたか？簡単、それとも複雑でしたか？

とても簡単でシンプルだったと思います。

自分達で、それともパートナーを使って？

パートナーを連れてきましたが、そのままでもとても簡単だし、ビジネスプロセスで移動したことのある人になら誰にでもできます。全く難しくはありません。

当ソリューションの次のリリースに含まれていたらいいなと思うのはどのような機能ですか？

すでに言いましたが、人間の思考の将来は限られています。私達はGPではなく、自動化の進歩で考える。だからこの質問への答えはありません。

現在のバージョンで改善されると思いますか？

まだ完全に見れていないので、改善に関して答えるのは難しいです。

スケールアップをすると、価値実証でのように、現場で働く専任スタッフを1人増員することはできますが、その場合、規模を拡大して2万人の組織内でボットを含む150人がいるとします。その一人一人が親身なケアを受ける必要があります。そうすると、もっともっと沢山のサポートが必要となります。というのもこれは新しいものであり、失敗すれば、これは生産パートナーのせいではなく、現場の人間がそれに適応しないからなのです。

ROIは出ていますか？

もちろんです、はい。言うまでもなく。この市場では特に人的資本が少ないです。高齢化社会で熟練した人がいない。なら誰がその仕事をするのでしょうか？ そこで人の中立性を取り除いて、ボットを使って構築するのです。それが最善の方法でしょう。

新しいソリューションに投資をする必要があると思ったのはどうしてですか？

私自身そして我が社は素晴らしいテクノロジー会社を経て来ています。先ほど申し上げたように、このテクノロジーについては後でお話しますが、会社はすべてテクノロジー会社です。テクノロジーなしでは生存はできないし、特に共有サービスにおいてバックエンドプロセスを構築するなら、必要なものは何でしょうか？アジアにおけるこれらの市場では、労働が通常平均という成熟の地点に実際に達しています。中国、フィリピン、マレーシア、もしくはインドを見てください。これらの市場は急速に高価になってきています。では今後の産業革命の波は何か？私の思うには、これらのデジタルオートメーションRPは、人工知能、機械学習へと移行します。これらは非常に迅速な移行が必要となる分野です。 そこで私たちは未来に向けて意識的に自分達自身を準備する行動を取ったのです。

以前に別のソリューションを使っていましたか？その場合はどうして変更しましたか？

これまでにいくつかのソリューションを試しましたが、適切なビジネスプロセスを自動化したかどうかは分かりません。そのソリューションが良かったか悪かったかも分かりません。でも、本当の価値、あるいはドル価値のどちらかの観点で認識した価値、またはより良い働き方をするために情報源をリリースするという観点から言えば、私個人的にはあまり納得していませんでした。なので、より未来的な見通しのあるものを試そうと思ったのです。私はそれをグローバリゼーションと呼んでいます。グローバルに存在し、ローカルに存在することなので、これが発端から現実までの背景の全体像です。

他のベンダーも検討しましたか、それともAutomation Anywhereだけでしたか？

12のパートナーから選出されたプロセスから始めました。

ベンダーを選ぶ際、決め手となる、その他の条件は何ですか？5つのうちトップの2つはどれですか？

違う答えをしたいと思います。まず彼らはベンダーではなく、ビジネスパートナーです。なのでその定義は違うと思います。彼らが、自分達はベンダーだと言い、契約を見始める瞬間、私達の関係は終わりだと思います。欲しいのは業界に役立つことのできるビジネスパートナーなんです。例えば、私達は飲み物を作る方法を知ってるとします。最高の製品を作っている。私はそう思うし、確信もしています。ここで必要なのは自分達の製品に精通していて、業界の支払いポイントを理解し、助けてくれるパートナーです。こういったことがベンダーではなく、成功するパートナーシップやビジネス関係を作るための2つの条件でしょう。

Automation Anywhereを選んだわけは何ですか？

条件を決めていました。5つの大きな条件が。もちろん、コスト。まず、特徴と機能。 グローバルおよびローカルサポート。3つ目はもちろんカスタマーサービスです。そしてもちろん、テクニカルサポート。私たちのオフィスは完全なチームがあり、完全なプロセスがありました。 調達、技術、ビジネス、そして私が「現場」と呼び続けている運営からの10〜15人近くが非常に科学的な方法で評価を行っています。 非常に密接だと感じていたパートナーがいましたが、決め手は明らかにカスタマーサービスとサポートです。それが最重要です。

Automation Anywhereについて、その他に付け足すことはありますか？

いいえ、何もありません。皆さんのご清栄をお祈りすると同時に、Imagineを東京デビューさせてくれた彼らに感謝します。彼らはロンドンへ行き、ニューヨークに行き、今ではインドにも進出したことを知っているので、うまくいけば私たちの市場はこれから持つべく相互作用から恩恵を受けることでしょう。

製品、サポート、環境の全体に1から10の評価（10＝最高）を付けるとしたら、どのように評価しますか？

8

特定したものではないです。2、3年時間を早送りしたとしたら、どうなっているでしょうか？同じだけの情熱を持っているか、もしかしたらとても大きくなっているかもしれない。だとしたらアジャイル性を失います。小さければもっとアジャイル性があります。大きくなった瞬間に自分だけの次元に入ってしまうんですね。

このソリューションあるいは同様なソリューションを探している、同社あるいは他社の同僚の方に、どんなアドバイスをなさいますか？

まず、私のようなエンドユーザーであれば、自分を顧客とは考えないことです。自分の顧客を現場の人として、運営の人として見る必要があります。 製品パートナー、実装パートナー、そしてあなたは内部にいる顧客にサービスを提供する責任があります。だから、これは皆が勝つことのできるゲームです。製品やパートナーに責任を被せてはいけません。皆で同時に責任を負い、ゲームを進めるべきです。

We use it to automate all kinds of business processes. The primary use case is the RPA platform, even though they have the cognitive platform and the analytics platform. We use it for so many different things it's hard to focus on one, but it's automating business processes in our banking system.

We're interfacing a lot with Excel, our ERP systems, some legacy systems, the databases, file folders, text files, CSVs. It's hard to pin down one.

Through the software, we have been able to reduce the time that we spend on manual, repetitive tasks, so that we can focus on activities that add value to the business or to our partners and customers. The most important things are saving time, increasing control, and increasing automation.

If you ask our CFO, I think he would say that the most important thing is that we saved some money, with more efficient operations, etc. But I feel the ability to change from doing non-value-added tasks into work with added value is important.

We have saved the equivalent of about $40,000 to $50,000 by using it, during my time here. That's a lot. We recently did a large migration that saved us a lot of time on things that were going to be done manually. We were able to automate it and we saved around $15,000 to $20,000 on just that migration. That's quite substantial.

One of the features that we have used the most is an action in the Workbench called Object Cloning. We find that very reliable and very useful for implementing different business processes.

In general, the security and role-based access control - credentials security - are also important. We have a high focus on security in the bank. It's obviously a very highly regulated environment, so security is a top priority for us. To be allowed to automate different processes, we need to have a good set of controls around who is allowed to do what, and what credentials people can and can't use. It allows us to manage access to make sure that we have full control.

Other things that I also find very useful are the Bot Store and the Apeople community. If we run into troubles, we can always ask the forum and get an answer. People know if there is a pre-existing bot in the Bot Store that we can use to solve a problem. It's very useful to take advantage of the community. When they launched the Bot Store, it was a unique thing in the RPA market and it is providing tremendous value to a lot of businesses.

Also, their MetaBot tool is a very useful building block. We call it Lego bricks, here in the Nordic region. So if you build a wheel for your car, you don't have to build three more, you just use the same wheel over again. That's very useful and it makes the development phase even quicker. I hear other people talking about how they're spending three months on one process and that's a bit crazy. We deliver new processes every week and we estimate a process should not take a lot more than two weeks. But on average, we're spending two weeks per process, to get from idea to production.

The main things I've found that could be better are small things that can be annoying when you're using them a lot. I would recommend they add a feature where, if you mark the start of an "If" sentence it will highlight the end of the "If" sentence. That would make it easier to get a better overview. The small things are the most important in our day-to-day work with their software. Incremental improvements for a better overview or better user experience would help.

Also, we would like to see more options for merging and un-merging PDFs. More flexibility there would be good. We've figured out ways around this and, using their software, we've been able to do everything we wanted to do. It just took a bit more time to do it. We were on version 10.5 and in their Bot Store they actually had a bot that did exactly what we wanted to do, but it was for Version 11.0.

I find that they are making a lot of improvements that we are able to take advantage of with every release. I can't really think of something large that's missing.

It's been very stable. I can't really put my finger on things that haven't been stable that are under Automation Anywhere's control.

There have been some troubles for us when it comes to doing monthly Windows updates. That always turns off the Bot Runner machines and we have to do a complete, new log-on once a month on those machines. But we are aware of it and it's on our side, not Automation Anywhere's side.

Other than that, the runtime might differ. Sometimes it goes very fast, sometimes it can go a bit slower but I think that's also due to the speed of internet access as well as the computers we're running it on. Some of them have less computing power. We don't have the perfect virtual environment yet, so we're still working on improving that. But we can't blame Automation Anywhere for our having a legacy infrastructure.

In general, it works very well and we're really happy with the stability.

The scalability is good. I think we haven't really used the Bot Farm product yet, but that looks very exciting. We're planning on moving the infrastructure into the cloud and it's then a very interesting prospect to be able to scale up from 100 bots to 1,000 bots with just the click of a button. To my knowledge, it's probably the most scalable RPA software out there. We haven't really met any major challenges when it comes to scaling up, other than our own computers. But that's an in-house problem, not an Automation Anywhere problem.

I've talked to people using other RPA vendors and they have said they face some major issues once they pass 40 automated processes, but we haven't really faced those kinds of challenges. It has been running smoothly.

It's very scalable and it's easy to have control. There is a good audit log in the Control Room. And there is the ability to create your own roles and have strict, role-based access control where you say: This role is able to run this bot on this machine but it's not able to run another bot on the same machine. That's good from a security standpoint.

Technical support is really eager to close tickets as fast as possible, which is good. But as with any support, it can sometimes feel like it's slow because they have to do these standard checks to rule things out. Even though I say I've done them, they have to do them anyway. They have to be able to say, "Okay, this is checked off, this is checked off, this is checked off. Alright, now we can move to the actual issue." It can be a bit slow at the start, but they're always able to resolve our issues.

In general, I'm very happy with it and I can understand why they have to do those checks because if it's a stupid error, it's good to identify that early.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. I've actually done installations of Automation Anywhere and I have no IT background. I've been able to set it up on a server and some virtual machines and get everything working.

The deployment took some time for us, but that was due to a lack of a good environment on our side. To do a clean install would take some three or four hours to get everything up and running, depending on what kind of machines you have. If you have all the accesses you're supposed to have it can take a very short time. But, if you're installing it in an enterprise environment, it can take longer because you might not have all the accesses. At least for me, coming from the business side, I don't have all the administration accesses that I would need, but that's not Automation Anywhere. Overall, it's pretty straightforward and doesn't take a lot of time.

For our implementation strategy, we started out with a pilot, together with a consulting partner. We automated two processes and created a proposal for an operating model, governance, and a framework. After that, we just tried to pump out new automations as fast as possible to prove the value to upper management. After a while, we got some traction and we went from being just me in 2015 to between 12 and 15 people now. Some of them are not working full-time on it but we have at least 12 full-time employees working on RPA across our organization. We started out in Norway, but now we also have operations in Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, with people working full-time on automation in all of those countries.

All the developers are doing some maintenance. We don't have anyone who is assigned to doing only maintenance because we all find that a bit boring. We share the responsibility among all the developers so that everyone has the chance to do new processes and maintenance when needed.

We have a two-pronged approach there. The processes that are important for business continuity, the business-critical processes, are often maintained proactively. We are notified that a change is coming to the system, so we need to test it out and make a new version that will work when the upgrade of the system is live. So we're proactive in those kinds of processes. Non-business-critical processes are maintained reactively. We try to do it in the most sensible way possible, but there's always room for improvement, obviously.

We put a lot of responsibility on the process owners. They're responsible for notifying the RPA team in case of any changes in the graphic user interface or changes to the process, because of new rules and regulations or any other reason. The process owner or someone in his or her team will always know if there is a change in the user interface or the process.

If there is an error in the code, it is the RPA team's responsibility to fix it and we do most of that ad-hoc, when it happens. We always have some resources available to do those kinds of things and that's taken into account when estimating how long we will spend on creating a new process. We know that something might happen during that week or those weeks, so we add some padding.

In addition to the developers, we have a lot more people using the Control Room to schedule the processes.

So we tried to run fast and then we took a step back and re-evaluated. We built an even better framework, redid the infrastructure, put more thought into the security aspect, and we have industrialized our implementation. We still have some issues when it comes to our operating environment, but that's not Automation Anywhere's fault; that's more in our IT department's hands.

We used Accenture, they're our technology partner in Norway. We had good experiences with them, but I think it could have been better planned on both sides. We were not able to mirror their organization as we should. Ideally, we would have been more self-sufficient after those ten weeks, and it was only by chance that I had the time to be present during all ten weeks, every day, in the project. If we didn't have the people learning how to develop, how to do the business analysis side, and working closely with them, we would have been in some trouble going forward.

The project was a success either way, given where we're at right now. But they should have been a bit clearer on how much time people would need to spend and what was expected of us. It's always better to make the customer self-sufficient.

I think they also proposed a bit too-ambitious operating model with a bit too many people from the get-go. That was not that well received by our management. We're a larger organization right now than what they proposed, but I don't think that our management would ever have accepted or have had the guts to do the leap of faith and say, "Okay, we will have six people working full-time with RPA from today," in 2016. They didn't know the potential and didn't really see that we had that many manual processes.

These are small things. In general, we're happy with what they did. It's just that if I were to point my finger at something that could have been done better, those are the things that could have been done better.

Regarding the number of people involved in the deployment, from Accenture's side there were two developers, two business analysts, and one project leader. On our side, we had a project leader and seven or eight other people, but eventually, it was just me and the project leader who spent our full time on the project, while it was going on. Everyone else was also doing their day-to-day jobs. And with all those people, it was still too few.

We have triple-digit returns, in percentage. I feel it's worth every dollar we paid for it. We have seen a lot of the returns in operations and back office because we had so many manual tasks there.

A good example is a process that we automated where, on that specific process, the return on investment is above 30,000 percent. The total cost of ownership is around $1,000 and the return is something like $400,000 in direct cost savings. And that's still increasing. It's an ad-hoc cleaning job that we're doing, but for every contract we change, we save about half-a-dollar per month, per letter we're sending. It amounts to a lot.

We spent one day creating that process and four days running it so the cost of ownership is really low. Those kinds of processes are unicorns. You won't find them in every business and you have to have the right people and the best ideas. But we were lucky to find that process and, by itself, it has paid for a lot of the license cost.

We just did a round of price comparison on a global scale and found it's so hard to compare the license prices. But, Automation Anywhere, in general, is on the same price level as the other vendors, a bit lower in some cases. 

If we're thinking about the list prices, the Enterprise platform license fee is quite high. If you have five Bot Runner licenses, five bot creator licenses, a Control Room, and an Enterprise License fee, Automation Anywhere is much more expensive than the others. But if you have a global agreement with them, the Enterprise platform fee is shared between all the entities that are using Automation Anywhere. In that scenario, it would be a lot cheaper. The prices are quite okay.

We evaluated Blue Prism at the time.

We did the assessment together with Accenture and I think they actually recommended Blue Prism vs Automation Anywhere. I find that a lot of the consultants in our region are recommending Blue Prism or UiPath because they have generous compensation and incentive packages for the consultants who sell their products. I'm not sure if Accenture would recommend Blue Prism if they didn't have some interest in it. If they were totally agnostic, I'm not sure if they would have done the assessment the same way. But it's hard for me to say.

If I were going to do a new evaluation today, I would evaluate Automation Anywhere vs UiPath, but I would still choose Automation Anywhere. I've seen demos of both Blue Prism and UiPath and I think the basic capabilities are the same - they're all based on the .NET framework and you can kind of do a lot of the same things with them. But when it comes to the scalability, security, etc., I think Automation Anywhere is superior.

Another major factor that played a role in why we chose Automation Anywhere was their prompt replies to any questions or issues.

I'm not sure how this part is with the other main providers, but Automation Anywhere has a really good customer success program. I have a customer success manager that I'm in contact with daily. He helps us elevate our issues to the correct people and makes sure that, if we have any action points that are pending on someone at Automation Anywhere, they are resolved as quickly as possible. The follow-up from Automation Anywhere's side has been fantastic. They give us information about what's in the roadmap and what's to come, and if we need any additional information for our IT teams or our management team - anything to would help us with information - they are available to do calls and presentations.

My advice is to get started and get help. It's very useful to have consultants come in to help you get started. That will kick-start your implementation journey. Also, look at it as a journey. You won't get to an end-state where you will say, "Alright, now I'm done," because you will have to improve your implementation at all times, keep progressing, moving towards AI.

In my opinion, the vendor you choose in the first year is kind of irrelevant. But when you come to a point where you're about to scale up, then it's important to be associated with the best vendors out there. For us, being a customer of Automation Anywhere puts us in a really good place to keep progressing and keep scaling up.

It's important to remember that we are not doing a full integration here, we are doing RPA. It's okay to do 80 percent of a process - the high volumes - and then do all the exceptions manually. You won't necessarily get a good enough return on spending an extra month to do all the exceptions. You want to go live with the volume that represents the 70 or 80 or 90 percent, as soon as possible. Then see if it makes sense to handle all the exceptions, the last ten to 30 percent. It's important for us to be able to deliver fast, as well as securely and controlled, and with the MetaBot and the other tools that we have through Automation Anywhere we are able to do that.

We have automated in excess of 60 processes running on 17 Bot Runners, which are like machines we can operate 24/7. We have 15 bot developers and we are closing in on capacity so we would have to expand the number of licenses soon. 

Our plans for ramping up are about pumping out new processes every other week. We're working Agile with the RPA so we try to do short sprints and deliver something every week. The usage increases every week actually. I'm not sure if we are planning to have even more developers because we don't want to be in a position where people don't have things to do. We would rather have some backlog rather than having to fire five developers.

We are planning to continue on the same pace and ramp up the number of bots, rather than the number of developers. We did a proof of concept last year with Automation Anywhere's IQ Bot which was very successful. We did not, however, have time or resources available to implement that last year. Hopefully, this year we will have time and we will make the purchase of the IQ Bot license and start using their cognitive platform. We're thinking about implementing their analytics platform as well, because that's very useful for keeping track of our progress.

I would rate Automation Anywhere at nine out of ten. There's always room for improvement and, of course, we would want cheaper licenses and would want them to add even more things that we haven't thought about to their product. Still, we're really happy with the software provider that we're using.

Most of our use cases are for primary supply chain management. We have a lot of business processes and back office automation that we do primarily for our product people and our finance team. Most of the work is automation done in supply chain management, product setup, and product administration. 

I have been using this solution for almost four years and one year at my current company.

We have automated our critical functions, like supply chain management and purchase orders. Overall, there's been a direct benefit from it so far. We just completed our Phase I project this year. We have staff who have been moved out of the mundane tasks and are now doing value-added activities. 

Object cloning is the primary way of capturing inputs from screen scraping or mimicking the user flow, and it is 70 percent of the work that we do using Automation Anywhere.

We have a few issues which have persisted. These end up restarting the machine. We are hoping in version 11.3 of Automation Anywhere, our compatibility and infrastructure issues will be resolved. 

If you are using object cloning, it is stable. However, if you work with image recognition and custom objects, there are stability issues. 

We are on version 10.5.7. We have upgraded bits of it to 11.3, but it is still not operational on 11.3. We are currently working on migrating our infrastructure to version 11.3.

We are still small from a robotics implementation standpoint. We are just about 20 bots right now with no issues. If we scale up to 500 bots, I am not sure how the infrastructure and systems will behave, but I have had a good experience from a scalability standpoint on the tool so far.

I have a team of about 25 people with six people in support with the rest in development. At any given time, we have more than 50 people running Automation Anywhere.

This particular ticket management system works well. It's a reliable. If we need to a raise ticket for any issue, there is an escalation mechanism. Though, I have not used it. I try to utilize our customer success manager to be able to right person from Automation Anywhere. My experience has been good, though not excellent, from a support standpoint.

We were not using a solution before Automation Anywhere.

In version 11.3, the setup changed. So far, it has been simpler. Also, in version 11, they have changed the design into a Java Jetty architecture, which is more stable. However, we were not familiar with it, so we had some issues with it. Thankfully, Automation Anywhere diligently answered our calls and helped us through the installation. It wasn't easy to install on our own using the guide. We needed support from a technical entity from the support site to be able to do it.

It needs a lot of coordination between the DBAs, which is a separate team within our organization, the infrastructure team, our team, and the Automation Anywhere teams to execute the deployment. Getting them all together was a good three hours exercise just to install.

Two people from my team worked on the deployment, one of them being a DBA.

I have a technical team of support members who know our internal infrastructure. We built it in-house and the support is not outsourced to any IT vendors. We take care of the infrastructure provisioning, support, etc. We do everything ourselves, along with the help of Automation Anywhere.

I have a deployed team of six people for maintenance. 

We have seen more efficient processing and less number of errors due to quality control.

Savings have not been able to catch it that much. I believe there is huge potential here. This year, we are focusing a lot on the indirect benefits of speeding up the process. For example, we want our key customers to benefit, or buyers and suppliers boost up their business to receive benefits indirectly by freeing up their time.

They give us a good deal on the licensing because we bundle and customize things. If you ask to get a bulk business deal, you will receive more benefit. If you take other products from the suite, like IQ Bot, you can also receive a deal on the licensing. 

We have also worked with them for so long now that we have developed a relationship.

My current company looked at UiPath. We decided to go with Automation Anywhere vs UiPath, because of cost, reliability, and scalability.

We do look at companies like Microsoft Azure to do unstructured data processing for us.

It is a good with a good support app, but I would like it to work 100 percent of the time.

We are looking to increase our usage in the future. First, we need to locate the opportunities to automate within our organization to automate which are good contenders for RPA engines. We are also trying to standardize our processes to push more processes into the automation pipeline, leading to expansion. We are getting Automation Anywhere to assist with this as part of our Phase II project, and increase our bot usage by the end of the year.

If you are implementing it, you should have a good business case. Know what you're using it for: Is it for your direct or indirect benefits and what is the business value that you're going to bring in on the tool. Providing the tools for your business are important before onboarding it. Once you have onboarded it, you will need a good, capable team in-house to be able to keep the infrastructure maintained. 

Start slow. Don't start with a huge approach, then you decide that you failed. Do some proof on concepts. Ensure there is work for your organization. Gain the trust of your stakeholders. Then, take baby steps to move forward.

We have used Automation Anywhere to develop different software bots. We currently use version 10.7 for Windows 10 and we are in process of migrating our version to 11.2. We have automated important processes like creation of purchase orders from attributes that are in a Sharepoint form, and upload of exchange rates in our ERP system from data that is available in websites (central banks). We look at automating processes that are manual, repetitive, and rules based.

AA has allowed the generation of gains in productivity by automating certain processes, moving the hours from FTEs to a software robot, thus creating a digital workforce. The employees who were working on those manual activities are now focusing their time in the critical analysis of their processes. Here a few examples:

• Load of daily exchange rates - 840 hours/year saved
• Creation of purchase orders in Oracle - 1056 hours/year saved
• Processing of bank account statements - 600 hours/year saved

• The user friendly interface enables a quick learning process by any developer, and the ability to interact with virtually any system.
• MetaBots - This is an intelligent component/functionality that makes connection to websites or web forms a breeze. This functionality also works great with our corporate ERP system.
• Technical support - Very quick, efficient, and acknowlegeable. They were able to address all our inquiries very satisfactorily.

• Object cloning - This component seems to be unstable in version 10.7. We have run tests in version 11.2 and they seem to work much better there. During development/test cycles it is common to see object cloning components that were working previously stop full of a sudden. In these cases we usually migrate those components to MetaBots.
• Schedule queue - Scheduling is allowed at intervals of 30 mins. Having this interval reduced to 15 mins would allow better control of taks that run more quickly. The ability to schedule bots to run in different time zones would also be a great addition.
• Control Room - Enabling the ability to customize it would be a great addition. In version 10.7 we need to pay attention to the URL to differentiate between Dev, QA, and Prod. We could also use the function to create our own custom dashboards.
• Give MetaBots the ability to work with objects in applications running on a terminal server. This functionality would be a great help to developers.

Less than one year.

The solution in general is very stable, we haven't found any problem with bots deployed to the production server. As far as development goes, object cloning is a component of the solution that seems to be unstable, as it apparently stops working for no reason. Once deployed to production, everything is very smooth.

Scalability is associated to the number of bot runners purchased. More bot runners can be purchased at any time depending on how the demand grows, and AA offers the ability to process bots in a platform called bot farm.

AA Technical support has been contacted for different reasons, including validation of bot developments. In all scenarios, support was very responsive, efficient, and acknowledgeable, resolving all issues very quickly. Support is available 24x7 with tickets being raised either by their own ticket system or by direct calls. The customer service manager engages with the SPA in the company via phone call every quarter, to check on the customer satisfaction.

We previously used the product Automate. That product had issues working with Java forms, which were extensively used by our ERP solution.

The basic setup was straightforward. Deployment took two months. Our implementation strategy consisted of three servers, one for Dev, one for QA, and one Prod, as well as five bot runners: one for Dev, one for QA, and three for Prod. Finally, we have one administrator and one backup. AA provided the needed support to get the solution up and running quickly and smoothly.

Our company has a long-term partnership with TCS. We are currently using their consulting support, which has been good. TCS is able to engage with top professionals in the market.

We started utilization of the tool with a target of generating productivity, specifically by saving 10,000 hours between August and December 2018, regardless of the number of bots deployed.

Automation Anywhere is costlier than the general competition. I believe that it is consistent with their market share and with the benefits AA has to offer.

We evaluated Automation Anywhere vs Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere vs UiPath.

Automation Anywhere is a great platform. It is the tool that allowed us to bring back to life former plans to create our digital workforce. One suggestion is to go with the most recent release, both for the app and Control Room. Versions after 10.7 are the ones with enhanced functionalities.

We purchased ten developer licenses, all of which are in use now. The developers are responsible for deployment and maintenance along with two administrators. We have a target to be met and it requires extensive use of the product. This target will certainly be increased in 2019.

We primarily use the solution for business process automation. We use it to help us with background processes.

It's a very stable solution.

We have found the solution to be very scalable. 

The solution, in particular, is simple to set up.

There are quite a few very strong features available to users.

I haven't really used it long enough to critique too heavily. I need some more time to do a deep dive into its functionality, which I haven't done yet. 

The solution should have a more robust forum to help users navigate the solution, learn about it, and get help when they need it.

It should have a better marketplace where you can gather various workflows, et cetera. It would be an ideal place to find pre-built workflows, for example. 

I've been using the solution for maybe one year.

The stability of the product is quite good. It's reliable and offers good performance There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

It's quite scalable. We have many users on the solution. 

I'm not sure if I have ever actually contacted technical support. I can't recall dealing with them directly, and therefore would not be able to comment on their services. 

I'm also familiar with UiPath.

In general, when you set up the cloud solution, it's very, very easy. It's not overly complex. The on-premises version does take a bit more work. It's a bit more complex. That said, it's not too hard to handle either. 

The deployment is pretty fast. You're looking at maybe a 15-minute setup.

There is a community version, which is free. they also have a yearly paid license. 

I would recommend the solution to other users and companies. 

Overall, I would give it a rating of eight out of ten.

We are an integrator. We are selling RPA products to various customers. They have different use cases. 

We have cloud as well as on-premise deployments of this solution.

It is an easy product. It is easier and less complex than any other RPA tool in the market. It is a popular product.

Some of the machine learning (ML) components are still in development. They deployed many of them, but they are doing some improvements on the machine learning part.

I have been using this solution for one year.

It is stable.

It is scalable. It is suitable for enterprises.

Their technical support is good. I get very quick support whenever I face an issue. I raise a ticket, and the Automation Anywhere support team is available.

The deployment of Automation Anywhere is much easier as compared to any other RPA tool in the market. The solution itself is browser-based. So, we don't have to install complex software.

Its price is competitive with all other products in the market.

I would rate it an eight out of 10.

We are a factory and supplier corporation, e.g. we focus on the financial and automation niche, but mostly financial. Our service is implementing automation, e.g. we implement Automation Anywhere (AA) for customers. It's a tool for automating processes.

Automation Anywhere (AA) is easy to use and understand, even if the user didn't have previous experience with RPA (robotic process automation) software before. This solution has many tools for automation. It's good even if you're just starting with RPA software, e.g. we don't have to decide on the whole productivity process, so we can put in the costs step by step first, then put in the details after.

Other solutions require you to know the codes first and make decisions on the whole process. This means that with other RPA solutions, if the user doesn't have the experience, it will be difficult for them to use and decide on those automation programs, which is not the case with Automation Anywhere (AA).

An area for improvement for Automation Anywhere (AA) is its organization or utilization, because if it's your first time to initiate automation, you have to convert it properly, and you have to develop the amendment path through the automation path, but you have to pay a subscription for it first. The first part is difficult because if you buy the full package without having much experience with the product, it could be difficult to utilize the process from manual to automation.

There are some limitations in the migration from the manual process to automation, because currently, Automation Anywhere (AA) is trying to develop transfer from on-premises to cloud. There's a limitation in migration.

The setup and deployment processes for this product also need to be improved, e.g. made easier.

I worked with Automation Anywhere (AA) before, and I helped a developer team provide it to the customer, and that was last year. We implemented it. I've been dealing with the solution in the last two years, but changed my focus to analytic solutions for a year.

Automation Anywhere (AA) is a stable tool.

Scalability for this tool is good.

It's difficult to set up Automation Anywhere (AA) on the on-premises environment. It's also difficult to make preparations for it. You have to be ready so it can support the automation process. That was what people experienced in the on-premises deployment, but I'm unsure how it is when it's set up on cloud. Setup could be easier if it's done on the Cloud.

If you have a person who knows the utilities of this solution, setup will take one to two weeks.

Our clients are paying for a yearly subscription of Automation Anywhere (AA).

Automation Anywhere (AA) is very easy to understand, but automation is something new here in Thailand.

We have 20 clients using this solution. For deployment and maintenance, we have a technical team made up of 10 people, with one vision analyst.

We have an automation hypercare team responsible for supporting customers after we've deployed Automation Anywhere (AA).

I would recommend this tool to others who want to start using it, because it's a good tool.

I'm giving Automation Anywhere (AA) a score of eight out of ten.