Automation Anywhere Reviews

Get manual tasks done by automations wherever possible. For now, we only use task bots. We use them across whole EMEA at RICOH for different departments like: Business Services, SCM, Annuity & Services, Data governance, Finance and Sales. When I joined Ricoh, there were 30 processes in production and now we scaled up over 50 processes in production and counting.

By implementing Automation Anywhere, we wanted to get rid of the mundane tasks. They are better to be carried out by bots so that the employees can focus on tasks that need human decisions, not repetitive tasks. We also wanted better customer satisfaction.

We also have an email automation where people can write emails to us 24/7, and we create service requests inside Siebel. It is an Oracle app. 

With all process in production so far, we reduced the manual effort which led to more satisfaction by employees to get rid of the mundane tasks and focus more on tasks which need human decisions. Especially for our Annuity & Services department we have a quicker response time, and this led to more customer satisfaction.

Automation Anywhere constantly bringing new features in their product. Which will open more possibilities for automation out of the box.

The integration of coding languages like Python, JavaScript an VB Script will allow to extend the capabilities.

The bot store is also a good point to explore pre-built automation to integrate in your tasks.

To keep yourself up to date they provide Skill Booster learning trails for the new features and product updates.

The website has a lot to provide, but with this whole variety of information it is hard for me to keep track and navigate through.

AI agents need constant improvement, but this is by the nature of AI.

We had a use case for handwritten documents, which we were not able to extract safely, so some improvements on document automation would be great.

I am using Automation Anywhere as a developer since September 2021, so for almost 4 years now.

It is stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability because we can use the workload management feature.

We have approximately 20 people using this solution.

I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

Positive

Prior to Automation Anywhere, we were doing almost everything manually. We started with Automation Anywhere version 11 and later migrated to A360.

We have a separate team that handles the integration and setup. We are still on the on-premises version of Automation Anywhere. We are not using the cloud version. We have virtual machines running for us developers. We have a development environment where we use our own dedicated VMs. We develop automation on these VMs, and then we push it through the UAT and the last life cycle for production.

As far as I have heard from our team, they said it was easy to implement.

We started with version 11 of Automation Anywhere back in 2019. When I joined the team in 2022, we were migrating from version 11 to A360. I directly started in the migration phase where I could help with my fresh knowledge, because I was one of the first ones certified in A360.

Our central RPA team, which handles resources, currently consists of five people. I am not sure how many people from the service provider are involved, as they handle on-prem resources. On our side, we have five people pushing these things to production. As a developer, not much maintenance is required.

I am not involved in the pricing, but based on what I hear from our central RPA team, it is not very expensive; it is also not cheap. Its price is in the midrange.

We are not using the AI tools from Automation Anywhere, but we have created some of our own modules, which we are triggering in combination with Automation Anywhere in Python scripting language. We are using this combination for text analysis and problem descriptions from our customers. We are getting the sentiment score to categorize these service requests so that our agents can handle them better. We will, for sure, investigate if we can use Automation Anywhere's AI capabilities in the future.

I am responsible for showing and teaching new joiners how to work with Automation Anywhere. We also have some new citizen developers. We have asked different departments if they have some people on their team who are interested in this. They are not professional developers like me, but I teach them the basics. I also recommend they join the citizen developer training provided by the Automation Anywhere University. They take that training first, and then we do in-depth training tailored to the RICOH processes. It takes them three to six months, but it also depends on how much time they can spend on the training because they also have their regular work.

If you start using Automation Anywhere I highly recommend the Automation Anywhere University platform to start with the learning trails.

These are focused on three roles: Automation Lead, Automation Developer and Citizen Developer.

Also, great content on the Skill Boosters which will give you in depth training on a particular topic.

To scale your automation journey, good practice is building central tasks like “switching a responsibility” in Oracle with proper error handling that not every developer needs to implement these by his own. With these generic central tasks, it will also save time in terms of maintenance.

For any questions you might have, you can ask them in the Pathfinder Community where you get answers from Automation Anywhere’s global community of Pathfinders.

For companies starting new process automation implementation, I would advise not to tackle the largest processes at the beginning. Start with small ones to track benefits and demonstrate to the board what process automation has achieved in a short time. In the past, we tackled larger problems first and spent one or two years getting them to work end to end as expected. This was not the best strategy.

I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

We automate many tasks in our college laboratory using Automation Anywhere. We offer a course on Automation Anywhere. Students add it and complete many jobs using our lab systems. Automation is the future of technology. We want our students to have its knowledge. As a professor, I teach my students how to use Automation Anywhere, and we build many things for them.

Automation Anywhere saves cost and time. It helps to minimize human labor.

Automation Anywhere is very easy to learn. I learned it by watching video tutorials and documentation. It was easy for me. It took me a week.

For integration, everything is available inside the Automation Anywhere software. We can integrate it by using extensions or plugins. We have integrated it with Microsoft 365.

Automation Anywhere has made us more productive. No data got leaked from our software, and it is safe and secure.

Screen scraping is easy. I can easily collect data from any website using Automation Anywhere, creating and saving that data in an Excel or CSV file.

For the tasks that I do repeatedly, I can record processes using Automation Anywhere. I record mouse and keyboard actions and create a workflow for those activities. This minimizes my workload. The recording option is very useful. 

It has AI-powered capabilities that are very beneficial to me, along with significant analytical and reporting capabilities. It provides real-time data.

Logging into Automation Anywhere takes some time. I use it frequently, and each login currently takes some time. A reduction in this time would be helpful. When we enter the automation tool, it sometimes takes a while to refresh the page or perform drag-and-drop actions. Other than this, I am satisfied with Automation Anywhere.

I have been using it for more than one year.

It is one of the most stable and reliable RPA platforms. However, the stability also depends on deployment, system configuration, and use cases. If the UA of any application changes, the bot may fail unless updated.

I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability. It can support thousands of bots at a time.

We have 5 departments in our college using Automation Anywhere in the laboratory. A single class contains about 138 students, and in a department, there are up to 10 classes.

Their support is very useful. If any doubts arise, they clear them and provide training. We get good service from Automation Anywhere. 

We also have a good knowledge base and a large community forum. If I have any doubts, I can ask and get answers from experts. We also have dedicated account managers and technical experts to solve our problems related to Automation Anywhere. 

Positive

I have used UiPath. Automation Anywhere is a better and easier option. It is powered with AI features, producing intelligent bots. We can generate more processes using Automation Anywhere. UiPath is more user-friendly, but Automation Anywhere has IQ Bot which is very useful for us.

Its deployment is easy. Usually, we sign up for the cloud and choose a subscription plan. We then set up our control room and configure our bots. We develop and deploy them directly from the cloud. It is easy for us.

Automation Anywhere does not require any maintenance from our side, but the bots require a little bit of maintenance. We spend almost an hour on bot maintenance. We see how it is working. If anything goes wrong, we get informed and we then check it out. If there are any errors, we might have to spend more time, but in general, one hour per week or 15-20 minutes daily is enough.

In our lab, we buy it at a monthly price and offer it to every student. The students using it give some amount to us. As a return on investment, we have achieved a 250% ROI in six to nine months, and sometimes it increases up to 380% percent. Our lab monitor collects this data and gives it to us. We calculate and give the final result to the principal of our college. 

It saves us a lot of time.

It is affordable for us.

Automation Anywhere is good. It is perfect to use. The students like it a lot, and it helps with so many purposes.

I would recommend Automation Anywhere to others. It has good scalability and stability. Bots are resilient and reliable. We can easily integrate it with the cloud. Automation is the future, and Automation Anywhere is the best.

Overall, I would rate Automation Anywhere a ten out of ten.

My use case essentially involves in-house projects centered around invoice automation. They have their own mailbox where the client uploads invoices and payment information. My responsibilities include downloading, storing, and reviewing these invoices using automation. Additionally, I am tasked with automating scenarios that were previously manual processes. I am responsible for structuring the tasks, handling exceptions for efficiency, and ensuring automated email notifications are sent to clients if there are any discrepancies or missing values.

Previously, I worked with hospital automation. I had to create automation for hospital care to store patient data in some databases.

I have also designed a solution for document or file transfers and backups, as well as intelligent document processing, where I had to extract meaningful data from unstructured or semi-structured invoices. I had to train my bot to extract the required details from the invoices and store them in a database or a CSV file.

Going forward, I see a potential use of AI for automation related to chatbots, websites, and data visualization. I also see potential in doing repetitive tasks in a more thorough and error-free way.

It is pretty simple to learn. It is user-friendly, so people can learn it quickly. A person without a basic knowledge of IT or programming logic would need at least a month to understand how it works and how to code in Automation Anywhere. An experienced person would just require about 15 days.

I was previously a backend software developer, so I am good with coding. I work with multiple RPA tools such as UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Power Automate. I find these low-code or no-code solutions to be very easy. Automation Anywhere is pretty simple. It is UI-based with just the drag-and-drop functionalities. If I want to use any of the functionalities, I just have to search for that functionality and drag and drop it. After that, I only need to take care of the logic. It has been very helpful for me. It is very easy to use.

Automation Anywhere allows us to create unattended bots. These bots can work 24/7 with high accuracy and reduced costs. Last year, we made significant advancements with IQ Bots processing financial documents. It offered cost efficiency and reduced the errors typical of manual processes.

For our use cases, I integrated Automation Anywhere with Salesforce and some CRMs such as Zoho CRM. I also integrated the ChatGPT API. Automation Anywhere and other RPA solutions do a great job when it comes to integration.

They have done a good job in terms of licensing and cloud performance. They keep evolving with new technologies such as Generative AI. It works very well for processing any unstructured or semi-structured data. With OCR, we can extract meaningful data from hundreds or thousands of invoices.

The recorders are highly beneficial when automating web scraping or web automation tasks. With the recorder, I can capture all the XPath and HTML data, which can be selected in different forms like a dropdown list, radio buttons, or a click event. In Automation Anywhere, the recorder is one of the most valuable and used functionalities. 

Additionally, it includes features supporting PDF handling, Advanced Excel, Basic Excel, and XML Path. In a recent project, I integrated ChatGPT APIs with Automation Anywhere to manage email responses, enhancing communication with clients. 

Automation Anywhere has done a pretty good job with Automation Anywhere Academy. There are some certifications and basic courses in the academy. If you are working as a developer, as a business analyst, or as an RPA lead, there are separate courses for that. 

There are occasional technical issues, particularly with cloud operations. Sometimes, the bot struggles to initiate on the cloud, even when everything appears in place. This issue occasionally requires uninstalling and reinstalling a component on my PC, although I cannot recall the specific component involved. I often need to stop and restart system services to get the bot process working correctly, which can be frustrating.

I have four years of overall experience, including two and a half years as an RPA developer.

Occasionally, there are initial startup issues. Other than that, the platform runs smoothly, and the deployment process is user-friendly in both UAT and production environments. Assigning tasks to runner machines and developers is efficient.

The platform excels in scalability. 

Automation Anywhere community support is helpful. They are not always quick to respond, but they provide solutions.

At times, some issues require additional research due to inadequate documentation. Some errors were not yet encountered by others, so I could not find any solutions in their community. It required extra effort on my part to find a solution.

Neutral

I use Automation Anywhere, UiPath, and Power Automate. I have good hands-on experience with Automation Anywhere.

Drawing on my experience with UiPath and other RPA tools, Automation Anywhere is user-friendly and less complex. It ranks second or third in the RPA market, while UiPath holds the top spot. Automation Anywhere is effectively capturing market share through favorable licensing terms, and it continues to expand.

It is deployed in the cloud. 

The initial setup was handled by the system team in my current company. In my previous company, I manually set up the system, assigning roles like bot runner and creator through the control board. The process is easy. You just need to remember the steps.

In terms of bot deployment, you can deploy a fully functional bot in less than 15 minutes if you have a clear understanding of which machine is the bot runner, which machine is free, and which machine is already logged in. You also have to take care of the credentials. After deployment, you also need to test the bot.

Automation Anywhere has an advantage in terms of licensing. It is more cost-efficient compared to all other RPA platforms. It is a recommended solution when clients need a cost-efficient automation tool to perform unattended automation. 

When it comes to user experience, Automation Anywhere scores a nine out of ten for ease of use, even for those new to the tool. Non-technical staff can quickly learn it with the help of Automation Anywhere Academy. However, improvements are needed for lagging issues and undocumented problems. 

Overall, based on my experience with Automation Anywhere, I would rate it a nine out of ten.

Our primary use cases for Automation Anywhere focus around accounting and finance. We have some that have moved into our land department focusing mainly on lease records.

The benefit has been in terms of the bot taking a job that someone was doing and being able to move that person into another position. We have also seen a department with ten people being able to do the same work with two people. We were able to move those other people to more value-added tasks.

The valuable features of Automation Anywhere really are around the ease of use. Our RPA program focuses on citizen development, and all of the developers have full-time jobs as accountants, and then they work in automation on the side when time allows. 

The benefits of using Automation Anywhere focus on error reduction and moving people to work on more high-value tasks. We haven't focused so much on eliminating positions, but actually moving people to more valuable tasks. It helps to take away things that normally take a lot of time for someone to do, but don't add a lot of value to their job.

I really appreciate the user interface of Automation Anywhere, but I would like to see some improvement on some of the automation around screen processing. This includes adding some artificial intelligence on the way that bots actually can read the screen and know when things change and be able to adapt to those changes.

I've been using Automation Anywhere for around six years.

Automation Anywhere has been very stable for us. Control rooms are up, and we haven't had any issues or major issues where we had significant downtime.

Automation Anywhere scales very easily as we grow with our program. We're able to add bot runners as needed, as well as control rooms. It's very easy to add additional resources for the program.

Automation Anywhere support has been very good. We're able to put in tickets and request support, and we'll have a support engineer contact us and help us resolve our issues. 

I would give them a nine out of ten. The initial contact might often be a chatbot, which would be our initial response. However, many times, we need to talk to a real engineer to resolve our issues. Overall, it's been very good. Sometimes the chatbot can help you resolve your issues without having to further escalate.

Before Automation Anywhere, we did not have any kind of automated solution. Our audit partner came back and said that we should be doing some automation using an RPA product. At that point, my boss asked me to figure out which was the correct product for us to use, and we started our journey there.

During our deployment of Automation Anywhere, the first and most important thing that we did was to make sure that we got everyone trained. We spent a lot of upfront time training our developers, and that really paid off in the long term. We ran them all through Automation Anywhere's university, so they did all the online training, and then we brought Automation Anywhere in and did classroom training for our developers. That really paid off in dividends, and we were able to end up with a good developer base.

When we started with Automation Anywhere, we were on-prem with version eleven, and then we migrated to the cloud with A360. We saw a tremendous increase in productivity by going to the cloud. We currently aren't using any other cloud providers.

We primarily focus on natural gas production in Pennsylvania. Our office is located in Fort Worth, Texas. We have around 57 automations in production at this point.

The pricing that we received from Automation Anywhere in the beginning was very economical for us. We've seen a lot of benefit from what we spent to what we're receiving. From the beginning, it's been a very low-cost implementation for us.

When we started our journey with Automation Anywhere, we evaluated UiPath, Pega, and Automation Anywhere. We brought all three in to do a proof of concept, and from that, we determined that Automation Anywhere would be the easiest to use for our citizen developers. After the Automation Anywhere proof of concept, one of our accountants went back to her desk, and she was able to create a bot on her own.

My advice to other companies that are looking to purchase Automation Anywhere would be to make sure you have a champion for your process automation program so that you can get support throughout the organization. Automation Anywhere will be a trusted partner to help you through that process. 

I would rate Automation Anywhere a ten out of ten. As a solution for process automation, it's been very easy for us to use, and I don't think that we could have done it with any other solution.

I am an assistant professor in a DMI institute in our country. In our institute, we have to manage a lot of invoice billing. I have been using the bots to automate and maintain invoicing in our institute.

We have also been using AI. I have created many projects, such as a virtual assistant, to automate tasks in our institute.

Automation has been playing a significant role in every aspect of our institution. In our institution, it is very difficult to manually manage more than 1,000 people's data. I like the ability to automate and the bot feature in Automation Anywhere.

Previously, we were doing everything manually. We needed a lot of people to do the work manually. We need 20 to 30 people to manage invoice billing every day. With Automation Anywhere, it has become very easy for us to do invoice billing. It has saved us about 80% of the time. We only need 10 people now. Financially, it has helped us a lot because we can manage tasks very easily with few people. The workload has been reduced by using automation.

I like to make use of Co-Pilot with every task because it is very reliable. They have improved it a lot. I like to use it every day and integrate it with my software. A task that takes months can be done in weeks with the help of Co-Pilot. It helps us save time and do other tasks. It saves a lot of time for employees to do or prioritize other tasks.

In terms of integration, some of our staff have been using the integration of Automation Anywhere with Microsoft 365, but I have not integrated it.

The interface is really nice and user-friendly. Anyone can start right away. 

I have been using IQ Bot, and its accuracy can be improved. It could be more accurate. 

Managing all the bots in the control room can be a difficult task for a large organization. The control room features could be enhanced for better performance.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for around one year in my institute.

At times, I faced some issues with Internet connectivity, even though I had a good Internet connection. This happened at the initial stage, but over the last five to six months, they have improved a lot. Other than that, everything is perfect. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

It is scalable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.

The automation is used by 60 to 100 people on a regular basis. Around 50 to 100 people use it at intervals. They are not using it regularly in our institute. Overall, there are about 200 to 250 users.

Around 30 to 40 people are involved in maintaining the bots that we have been using. We usually assign them tasks to maintain the bots weekly. It takes a few hours. It is not a big deal.

Support is really good and genuine. I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We have not used anything other than Automation Anywhere. We were introduced to this by an employee of one of my friends, and we have been using it. We have not used any other solution.

For a non-technical person, it can be a little bit complex, but it gets easier with time. A couple of days are enough to learn and deploy it.

We have five to six people involved in its deployment.

It has helped us save a lot of time and money. It helped us a lot financially.

It is reasonable and affordable. If you consider the tasks that we can get done using this, the pricing is reasonable and affordable.

Overall, it is not very difficult, but initially, it can be a bit difficult to understand how the bot works. Over time, even a non-technical person can manage it. A week or ten days would be enough to learn everything and start using Automation Anywhere.

I would suggest starting small for anyone new to Automation Anywhere. I would also recommend learning and gaining experience from those who are already experienced. Other than that, it is fine. I would definitely recommend Automation Anywhere to everyone.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a solid eight out of ten.

We obtain use cases from the business and optimize their solutions by implementing Lean Six Sigma methodologies to eliminate process waste. We then follow this with end-to-end automation that requires no manual intervention. Automation Anywhere is the tool we employ to achieve this.

Our goal is not to solve problems but to automate manual tasks previously performed by humans. Rule-based processes require minimal human decision-making and are ideal candidates for automation. By using Automation Anywhere, we aim to replace repetitive human labour with machine efficiency.

For example, a business user performs the same routine daily: logging in, analyzing Excel data, and responding to customer emails. This repetitive manual work is ideal for automation. We use the Automation Anywhere tool to build a bot that mimics these human actions. The bot logs in, processes emails, responds to customers, and completes the entire process autonomously, from start to finish.

We use generative AI to process emails by determining customer sentiment and intent: happy, inquiring, dissatisfied, or angry. The AI makes decisions based on email content and automatically generates requests or tickets in ServiceNow, assigning them to appropriate users. This automation replaces the manual task of sifting through thousands of daily customer emails, allowing employees to focus on higher-value work. The combination of generative AI and Automation Anywhere automates this process efficiently.

Automation Anywhere increased productivity by 30 percent.

Automation Anywhere has significantly re-emerged in the industry over the past few years. The platform has introduced numerous features and a robust cloud deployment pipeline. The initial focus is on a cloud-based architecture and a new structure supporting third-party coding languages like Python, VBScript, and VBA. Document Automation, formerly IQ Bot, simplifies document automation development. Additionally, Automation Anywhere acquired Shibumi, rebranded as CWE Manager, to provide a pipeline for automation and offer detailed performance metrics, including ROI, savings, and bot health for business users.

AI is the future, and automation is a crucial component. Our healthcare organization, which manufactures products like gloves and masks and provides in-house hospitality to patients across the US, has significant opportunities for automation and AI implementation. With six data centres globally and a new CIO focused on cost reduction, we're aggressively pursuing cloud migration to Azure and have partnered with Google for AI integration over the next five years. These initiatives aim to streamline operations, reduce costs, and enhance patient care.

Throughout my experience, I have integrated nearly 600 applications with Automation Anywhere, encompassing a diverse range of software, including desktop-based, standalone, and web-based applications.

Automation Anywhere has significantly reduced costs in my organization. For example, a team of 20 employees previously spent six minutes manually entering 20,000 Excel records into an Oracle application daily. This process consumed valuable time and resources, including Oracle licenses and employee wages. Automating this task eliminated the need for one Oracle license by accessing the database directly. Our automation solution processes 10,000 records in just 15 minutes, drastically improving efficiency and accuracy.

Integrating workflows requires careful consideration of automation complexity, determined by the number and type of applications involved and the number of interactions within each application. We assess applications based on web-based vs. standalone, legacy vs. automation-friendly, and the number of fields requiring input. A complexity score is assigned. Zero to ten is low, 11 to 20 is medium, and 21 to 30 is high, and corresponding timelines for development, testing, QA, pilot, and handover are established. Once timelines are set, we focus on securing application access for developers, providing necessary test data, and coordinating with business stakeholders for UAT testing. After successful UAT, the bot is deployed to production for a monitored pilot phase before full-scale implementation. This approach is standard workflow management practice in our organization.

The savings from automation depend on the specific automation implemented. Some automation may provide minimal benefits to the business. For example, if a new automation is introduced and the business user spends only two percent of their time per day on the related task, the savings may be insignificant. To evaluate the ROI, we calculate the costs over five years, including development, support, licensing, and infrastructure setup. In the first year, the focus is on investment and implementation. While savings may not be fully realized in the second year, from the third to fifth year, the business can expect significant returns due to reduced human labor. The automated process can be continuously enhanced to adapt to changing business requirements. My organization has achieved savings of approximately one point five billion over the past year and a half through automation.

Automation Anywhere's most valuable features include generative AI, similar to Copilot, which will significantly benefit developers; low-code or no-code technology; and document automation capable of extracting data from structured and unstructured PDF formats, presenting it clearly and easy to follow. An upcoming feature will also provide graphical representations or dashboards to illustrate cost savings, ROI, and FTE benefits achieved through process automation.

The Copilot recently integrated into Automation Anywhere requires significant refinement and additional features. Essentially, it still necessitates manual review, which is inefficient. For example, instructing Copilot to write code for opening and reading an Excel file generates necessary commands but still requires developer input to specify target data, column numbers, and desired data. This indicates a need for further training to enhance the bot's capabilities.

Integrating Automation Anywhere with existing systems often proves challenging due to the prevalence of legacy applications that are not automation-friendly. Unlike modern applications with easily identifiable elements, these older systems require creative problem-solving to develop reliable and error-resistant automation. This challenge is common across the RPA industry, necessitating innovative approaches to data extraction. For instance, utilizing software development kits, XML files, or APIs can be more efficient than navigating through multiple application pages. Additionally, implementing fuzzy logic scripts is crucial for handling data entry errors, such as name variations, to ensure accurate matching and process success.

The learning landscape for Automation Anywhere offers various certifications and training materials. While the community provides a platform for interaction and resource sharing, not all training content aligns with the specific needs of developers. Additionally, the community forum, though helpful, doesn't always provide timely or comprehensive solutions to user inquiries. The company's internal structure, with multiple product teams, can also complicate the process of obtaining support and resolving issues.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for one year.

I would rate the stability of Automation Anywhere nine out of ten.

Automation Anywhere is a highly scalable tool, particularly evident in its ability to handle user concurrency, as demonstrated in document automation. Its scalability is supported by robust hardware and software requirements, high-performance document and file processing benchmarks, and the capacity to increase or decrease resources to match fluctuating demands flexibly. Essentially, Automation Anywhere empowers businesses to adapt efficiently to changing needs.

Automation Anywhere offers tiered support levels based on partnership status. Gold, silver, and platinum partners receive varying degrees of assistance, including dedicated support teams and prioritized ticket resolution. While their services come at a premium, the benefits include timely responses and efficient problem-solving.

Neutral

I have worked in various industries and have experience automating processes using different automation tools available on the market, including VBA, VBScript, and Python.

Automation Anywhere, while a formidable RPA tool, currently ranks second behind UiPath. Both companies are industry leaders, continually innovating to enhance scalability and reliability. While Automation Anywhere has made significant strides in recent years, UiPath maintains a slight edge in overall market performance. Compared to other available options, Automation Anywhere remains a top choice due to its robust features and reliability.

The deployment process in Automation Anywhere is relatively straightforward. We export the package from one environment and import it into another. However, each organization has its own unique deployment standards, often involving processes like change advisory board approvals. Therefore, the actual deployment method will vary depending on the specific organization's guidelines and procedures.

The overall deployment time for a robot is five minutes. A team was involved in this process. As the developer, I was responsible for obtaining the necessary approvals and moving the robot code from enrolment to deployment. Other organizations may have specific teams dedicated to these tasks. For example, they might have their own Centre of Excellence team that handles all deployments. Therefore, the deployment process can vary depending on the automation and the specific organization. In my current organization, we handle deployments ourselves, while in my previous organization, there was a separate team dedicated to this task. Prior to that, a support engineer typically performed these duties.

Automation Anywhere's pricing is significantly higher than other RPA solutions. We recently conducted a small proof of concept with their generative AI integration and received a quote of $75,000 for one year. In comparison, Microsoft offered a similar solution for only $20,000. This substantial price difference makes Automation Anywhere one of the most expensive RPA options on the market, second only to UiPath.

I would rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten.

I would rate the ease of use of Automation Anywhere as a six out of ten for someone without any technical expertise.

The learning curve for non-technical people is two months.

There are several areas for improvement in the implementation of Automation Anywhere. Many employees are reluctant to entrust their tasks to automation due to concerns about job displacement. While this is a common misconception, automation is designed to streamline processes and free up employees to focus on more complex and strategic tasks. From a development perspective, Automation Anywhere continually introduces new features, but there is often a lack of effective communication and training. To maximize the benefits of automation, developers should adopt a proactive approach, seeking creative solutions and considering the user-friendliness of automated processes.

My entire organization has close to 27,000 employees worldwide. Our enterprise team, consisting of 15 members including me, handles automation work for the entire organization. My team consists of six members dedicated to support activities, monitoring and assisting the robots. The remaining members are part of the development team, solely focused on development tasks.

Upgrading Automation Anywhere is a moderately complex task due to the numerous dependencies that must be carefully considered and planned for during any migration or upgrade. Yesterday, we successfully migrated our Automation Anywhere Control Room from version 32 to version 33. Prior to the upgrade, we underwent extensive preparation, including reviewing Change Advisor Reports, obtaining necessary approvals, and coordinating with the database team to create a backup of the Automation Anywhere database. Once these prerequisites were fulfilled, we proceeded to the server, uninstalled version 32, and installed version 33. The previously created backup was then integrated to ensure accurate data reflection in the latest version. While proper planning is essential, the upgrade process is neither overly complex nor excessively straightforward, making it a medium-level task.

We have a team of six dedicated to support and maintenance activities, managing approximately 250 automations across our organization. The level of maintenance required varies depending on the developer's experience and the complexity of the automation. Junior developers may create bots that are more prone to errors, leading to increased maintenance. However, senior developers or well-designed automations typically require less maintenance. In addition to support and maintenance, our team is also responsible for minor enhancements, bug fixes, and upgrades or downgrades of our automation systems.

We don't need to constantly monitor the bot as it runs according to its schedule. It performs its tasks autonomously, but manual intervention is necessary in certain situations. For example, if an expected input file fails to arrive at the scheduled time, the automation process will stop. In such cases, a support engineer must contact the business to address the missing file. Additionally, manual intervention might be required for downstream automation tasks, such as when a front-end UI changes on an application. These situations depend on the specific downstream application, business needs, and other factors.

I would highly recommend Automation Anywhere as a technology solution. I've been involved with it for nearly twelve years and have witnessed its remarkable evolution. From its early stages to its current state, I'm impressed by its potential for future innovation and problem-solving. Moreover, I've seen first-hand how Automation Anywhere has significantly benefited businesses by reducing costs and saving on full-time equivalent labour. In one instance, I observed how a single automation process could accomplish the work of ten people in just one hour.

The company called me to work on the goal of restructuring the team and putting everything in order. When I joined this team, I needed to assess the current state of the program, and I essentially had to reorganize the entire program. Fortunately, that's what I've been doing right now; I have experience managing Automation Anywhere, and it's a great tool for automation since it gives you a lot of flexibility to work with different applications.

From my perspective, the most valuable features in Automation Anywhere are the ability to connect to different systems of records. We are using it at a very basic level; we only use RPA and are not using Intelligent Automation or AI yet; it's not part of my contract. Document Automation is still growing and is not, from my perspective, 100% mature, yet the basic functionality of RPA is amazing. I really appreciate how you can connect and interact, regardless of the system of record, infrastructure, or platform, and that has given us a lot of power to help the organization interact and eventually automate their processes.

In terms of reducing manual work, I think Automation Anywhere could improve by incorporating better integration with DevOps. This is functionality; it's a methodology that cannot be integrated 100% with Automation Anywhere, and a lot of companies are requiring that right now. I think Automation Anywhere is in the right direction, however, a better task mining tool would be great. What we currently have with Fortress IQ needs to mature more, and I say this since people spend weeks creating PDDs documentation. If we had a user-friendly tool that could record sessions and generate PDDs in minutes, it would greatly assist our processes. I have seen tools similar to that, not with Automation Anywhere. It would be great to have it.

I started using the RPA Automation Anywhere in 2017, starting with zero automations. After seven years, we've ended up having around 120-some automations.

My assessment of the stability and reliability of Automation Anywhere or its bots depends on how you define your development strategies. If you have good best practices, reusable code, an effective framework, and a solid development methodology, bots can be very stable. We do have some bots that fail, however, they generally fail since we weren't good developers or due to a glitch in the system, not due to the fact that Automation Anywhere failed. We see issues. That said, those are often related to server maintenance and upgrades.

In terms of how Automation Anywhere scales with the growing needs of my organization, in the cloud, I don't see much problem; the cloud will scale based on our needs. The only concern I see is probably on the Bot Runner side; I need to support VMs, and my team is working to migrate those VMs to servers. This change will help me scale since I can have multiple Bot Runners on a single server rather than adding more VMs; increasing the power of the server allows for 20 to 30 Bot Runners to operate effectively.

We migrated to gold support last year, which is excellent. What I appreciate is that you have a technology partner who gets to know your environment, and that's very important. When I began at my previous company without gold or platinum support, I had to explain my environment every time there was an issue, wasting hours. Now that we are in gold support, they already understand our setup, infrastructure, and pain points, allowing us to address issues more efficiently.

Prior to adopting Automation Anywhere, my company used Excel macros, which are not an enterprise solution; they are more a personal automation tool. Some people were using Power Automate, still, that's not an enterprise solution; you cannot integrate it with the rest of the tools; it's just a Microsoft tool where you can only work with Microsoft products.

The primary drivers that led my company to choose an RPA tool and eventually Automation Anywhere are its capabilities to connect and integrate with other systems of records, not only with specific brands like Microsoft. When I started in 2017, we decided to use Automation Anywhere primarily for its ability to interact with various systems and it was regarded as an enterprise solution.

I have seen a lot of benefits using Automation Anywhere. We currently have around 50 automations running in production, and I am confident that we are saving several million dollars as a result. I cannot provide those numbers right now. Still, I can see many benefits emerging. We work very closely with the legal team, who have to do a lot of manual work; we basically help a lot. That's my main customer right now. The next important customer is technology and digital technology, and then finance. So from all those three teams, I'm covering probably 80% of the company. As a financial institution focusing mainly on financial advice, we will be opening a completely digital bank in the next few days.

I am aware of the existence of other tools, however, I have not evaluated them. When I started in my previous company, there was a prior agreement for me to use Automation Anywhere. When I joined this company, they were already using it; my understanding is they were at some point evaluating UiPath, however, the cost was a huge decision-maker.

I work in the banking industry as the Intelligent Automation Manager for engineering. I joined this company almost a year ago, and I worked before that for one of the largest banks in the US.

My advice would be to ensure proper planning before adopting Automation Anywhere. First, you must define your environment, focusing on security and compliance. Governance is key, and once you are set up, ensure you are developing proper metrics since you need to show management the savings generated from automations. Once you've established that, implement best practices and standards, create a framework, and I wish anyone good luck; they likely will be successful.

I would rate Automation Anywhere as an eight out of ten. It's a great solution, however, there are limitations with tools COE Manager and Document Automation. I have seen some restrictions in the system, and making improvements to tools Fortress IQ would enhance our experience. I understand Automation Anywhere's operational goals, however, maturing these tools would make it an even better solution from my perspective.

Something I have observed repeatedly, as a technical person who engages with various attendees at Imagine events, is the need for clarity when new solutions arise. AI is excellent. That said, my question is about data storage; will data be kept within our control? This topic is crucial for compliance and legal approvals. I think it would be beneficial to have more technical sessions demonstrating how new tools are implemented. For example, during a discussion on Document Automation at a conference, I was concerned about how data moves from on-premises to the cloud, as it could take us out of compliance. More information on these aspects would help people understand the implications.

We have had a number of different use cases for Automation Anywhere. As a higher education institution, many of the use cases have been for back office operations. 

Some use cases include automating expense reimbursement processes. This involves the submission of data after collection, validation of data, and several different steps in that process. 

We are exploring invoice reconciliation and invoice processing as a new use case. Many of the other use cases have been system-to-system data transfer where they don't have APIs, which has been accomplished through UI automation and RPA.

We chose Automation Anywhere to investigate the feasibility of using RPA in place of dedicating other team's time for developing custom APIs between systems. We wanted to tackle problems that we couldn't dedicate resources to solving with custom in-house development and bridge the gap between third-party external software.

The governance guardrails built into the Automation Anywhere platform have allowed us to develop solutions at a pace while adhering to our internal organizational policies.

The scalability of Automation Anywhere, the framework, and user interface are particularly impressive. When evaluating Automation Anywhere versus alternatives such as UiPath for RPA specifically, their tool works exceptionally well. Their customer support model has been fantastic at resolving issues. Security and infrastructure are other significant components why we continue to use them. 

The actual tools on the RPA side have been very nice to work with. When onboarding members of our team, being a lower-code platform with much of it being no code, it has been good to bring people up to speed. It's easy to bring both people from developer and non-developer backgrounds up to scale. Our developers have applied standard SDLC principles towards working within that platform.

With agentic process automation, there are several challenges we were looking to solve. GenAI infused document automation has been of great interest to us, especially in invoice processing for our financial side. With APA in particular, some use cases involve taking complex processes that could have large decision trees, and instead of dedicating time and resources towards fleshing out all those if/then statements or pushing exceptions to human middle processing, we aim to lower that scope and allow for quicker delivery time.

The Composer orchestration tools have been great in developing new solutions. Automation Anywhere started as a pilot at our CMU, where we are at the forefront of numerous computer science areas. It's part of our CTO's mission to embrace automation tools, artificial intelligence, and robotic process automation, bringing internal processes into the 21st century and beyond.

Automation Anywhere helps us overcome challenges in the age of GenAI. The platform has solved our initial challenges as we transition from being a pilot to a long-term customer. With GenAI, challenges revolve around use case identification and implementing AI in processes while ensuring governance and protecting sensitive information, government information, and student information.

AI governance and data protection are extremely important for our company. We are currently reviewing the Autopilot capability and evaluating document automation with AI capabilities for new solutions.

As we expand our components of the Automation Anywhere platform that we utilize, we need better connections between them. Currently, our shell framework, metrics, logging, and guardrails are done at an RPA or Bot level. As we take advantage of other features such as work queues, process Composer, and AI agents, we would prefer to see features around offering frameworks around those models or domains specifically that can encompass all of the subset features that Automation Anywhere offers.

Bot Insight is an available feature, and we can create our own custom metrics and logging in RPA Bots, but we don't want to have to send results to a logging subset bot after using an AI agent or higher components such as document automation. We need a native way in Automation Anywhere's framework to tie all that information together, including AI dashboard, governance dashboards, and document automation results.

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

Their customer support model has been fantastic at resolving issues.

Positive

In the RPA space specifically, we have not used any other solution that addresses similar needs before using Automation Anywhere. 

For internal technologies prior to implementing RPA, we had various solutions. For table-based and database-based operations, users were using spreadsheets. 

We are now able to convert certain things to databases, even without native APIs for certain software platforms, because we can leverage Automation Anywhere to bridge the gap between disconnected systems. In the specific landscape that Automation Anywhere competes in, we haven't used direct competitors. 

We have been replacing software developer adjacent technologies, custom script solutions, and low code/no code platforms with different features from Automation Anywhere.

Standing up the service itself had no significant challenges. There were a few small challenges, however, nothing significant that were nonstarters for us. Our teams were able to work around any issues. The biggest thing we had was was enabling SAML authentication to work with our identity management services. 

Other than that, standing up the service, connecting the host controller to our local VMs, etc., that was easy. There was a little bit of network stuff, and some of DevOps stuff. Thankfully, we have a great DevOps team. Working with Automation Anywhere is largely straightforward and seamless.

We have been happy with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Automation Anywhere so far. There is sticker shock with many new features, however, we definitely think that the end results can more than justify the cost. We are evaluating the use case and the resources needed to stand up solutions using some of these features. 

The cost versus return for the traditional out-of-the-box features has been very reasonable.

Since the evaluation phase, we have not considered other solutions that do the same as Automation Anywhere. We have been extremely happy with Automation Anywhere. The tools provided for the cost, scalability, robustness, and infrastructure have been very satisfactory, and we have not had a significant need to evaluate alternative platforms. 

This may not stay that way forever as this is an ever-changing landscape, but for the foreseeable future, we don't see ourselves evaluating alternative platforms.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Automation Anywhere a ten.