Automation Anywhere Reviews

When we started using Automation Anywhere, it was the elimination of mundane tasks, to free up employees who were doing repetitive tasks, and to ensure they could do better quality work. So, we started off with the finance department, where we permitted our accounts payable, as in the billing process. Now, we have slowly moved on to other departments, like HR, quality, and projects.

Since our implementation, I can vouch for the fact that it is very easy to use. You do not need to know a lot of coding, even the business users, who have virtually no idea of coding, can easily operate it. They can run their bots and have the analysis ready for higher management. This is something which provides a great ease of use, and also in part why it is scalable.

Initially, once you have set up the solution and the implementation is done, then it doesn't take too long to scale up bots from one to a 100. Other than that, the professional services team (the customer support team and customer service manager) is committed to your success. This is a good sign, as they help us to achieve our business goals.

If it is in the cloud, then you have a lot of scope of doing it even faster because you spend a lot of time in installation of virtual machines (VMs) alone. So, they are coming out with that, which is good. 

I believe that if there is some functional expertise within the organization, this helps in improving the process timelines even more because our current architects are totally IT-based. If they have some functionalities, that would help in automating processes faster. If we want automate some Automation Anywhere processes, we have to do it from scratch. If they are already there, we can use and scale them, then when can customize them. This is something worth thinking about.

As of now, we have not seen any major problems. It's quite a stable product. It's reliable also because we have seen quite good straight-through processing. 

We quickly moved from one bot to 15 to 20 bots in about two or three months. I've seen other companies do even better and go to around 500 to 600 bots. So, scalability is something which is pro for Automation Anywhere always.

I would break it down to two separate departments:

1. The Professional Services, who help us in automating the processes, have been quite phenomenal. The support that has been given, not only automating, but also re-engineering of the processes for the better has been great. 
2. Technical support is quite proactive. They have bettered their customer support portal. They made it better.

So, we have not faced any issues as of now in this regard.

The initial setup was quite complex. We have faced an issue. During the initial implementation stages, it took longer than we expected. It affected our timelines to a certain extent. Once that was done, it was quite seamless. I think now that they are coming out with a cloud solution, this will help a lot in reducing the implementation duration. It will help future clients get results even sooner.

As it has been a good experience until now. The product is good and helps in solving business problems. Because of the ease of use, I would definitely give it around an eight point five (out of 10). So, eight point five (out of 10) would be my number.

We have quite a few use cases that we have built. Not one, but many. I see a lot of value in the cognitive part of it: the IQ Bot. In the traditional RPA market, people have been doing it for a very long time now.

There's one use case that we did it for a U.S. organization for their accounts payable process. That's the biggest use case that we did. We took that and showcased it to all our customers, so they could get confidence. By doing that, we got three to four more leads out of it, increasing the business. That's a huge use case where we showcase the capabilities of IQ and its strongest aspects.

The cognitive is where everyone is heading to in the RPA platform. What really helps RPA to grow is the cognitive part of it. That's where the product is really good. Initially, it started out as RPA, but now there is a cognitive aspect to it. That's a key value to it.

An interesting thing: If you look at AA, the OCR capability is actually from a third-party. They don't have their own OCR in there. They use ABBYY or Tesseract. They should have their own engine built-in with their own IP. It increases the value rather than trying to use a third-party solution. That's where I see a lot of value.

As a product, it's been always very stable. The only thing that we wanted was it to be on the cloud. We saw at Imagine yesterday that now it's on cloud and will be more stable and accessible. People can start building bots in the click of a second. That's the good part. It's more stable now because it's on the cloud.

I don't think there were any challenges. Everybody who wants to do RPA can start very small. They do a PoC, build a few bots, and then they scale up. I don't see a challenge as long as you have the right people doing what they are trying to do. A lot of use cases in our organization are only two to three bots initially, and now, they have 40 to 50 bots. So, I don't think there is an issue in terms of scalability at all.

Technical support needs to be much faster. I also had the project delivery. I had six clients whom I looked after. Whenever we got stuck, it was all about sprinting. There was a two or three week sprint. Within that, if you just wait for two to three days, it doesn't make sense. The support needs to implode, because I was just talking to a customer now who came directly and asked us, "Can you give us a dedicated support team?" It's feedback from our customer that support takes too long.

It's just the time; the pure amount of time. Imagine processing 5,000 to 6,000 documents, how much time does that take if a person does it? It saves on the quality of work, because the quality can be bad when somebody's doing it. If a bot does the work, it's faster and comes with good quality. These are two important things along with the cost saving in the long run. That's where the value is.

I would rate it between a seven and eight (out of ten), which is good. I want it to improve on the support. They really need to improve on the support model. Also, the cognitive bit needs to be enhanced. I know that there are other products on the market who do much better than the product that we have. A lot of work can still go into it. One thing, it still cannot do is cursive writing. IQ Bots still cannot read cursive writing. That's where a lot of development effort can go into it and make it a great product.

I actively participate in doing all the data analysis and robotics things in the company.

I work for a Genpact. Its a Genpact India, which is privately maintained. It's a US-based company. We work for a different type of a client. It's not only about healthcare. We work for a financial domain and financial development domain. We deal with different types of analysis, where we apply all types of robotic automation processes along with machine learning algorithms, if required. It all depends upon the client and what they require to done on their behalf.

This solution is all about robotic process automation (RPA), which we deal with. We know that in real life, we have hectic work day-to-day and the volume is increases. Doing manual intervention leads to error. That's why everywhere it feels like we are implementing robotic process automation. In a traditional way, we used to use that RPA console, but this tool helps us do RPA and saves us time, improving our quality. This is required at any level to get a better ROI.

It's all about the client requirement. About six months back, we received a request from a client who wanted us to automate their process. We gave different solutions to do it. They came up with a solution, and said "Okay I want you to go with RPA using this automation tool".

That is how Automation Anywhere came into the picture. It took almost two to three weeks to first learn because we were not aware of how it works. As a consulting company, you need to take a project first because that is the important part. If you miss the project, it will go to another company. So, we took the project and learned about how to involve all these things. We built a team who understood the process, what needed to be done, and what did not need to be done in this particular process, then we took this project.

Based on using this RPA tool, Automation Anywhere, we delivered successfully. The client was happy because they suggested it and gave us the idea. We didn't have to worry about how it would work. So, it was fine for us.

When you look at the volume to process, it takes time. You have a mindset that you may fall in error. If you want to reduce both those things, you need to come up with a solution that will give you both those things together: One is quality, which you are always looking at, and second, your costs. This also saves the cost because you need to hire 10 people to do VBA automation, that will take time. If you use tools which are already enabled with Automation Anywhere, you can enable and use them wherever you want. I feel good comfortable with this particular tool.

I suggest that they add some features in dashboard, where you can say, "These type of features are things that people like more." You want to add those to your project and showcase them to the client so they will be happier. Because you know what features people like if you give a suggestion, that is good for everyone.

I could not say it's a stable product, because when you move in the market, there are many companies are there. They are coming with the different features about your machine learning algorithm, and we should have something predefined.

We already have in Automation Anywhere something that is giving me suggestions. The moment someone is capturing data or reading data, you might suggest, "Okay, you want to do these things." It means that you are giving a suggestion based on the prior historical data that you have collected from different clients. If that is getting enabled, then it would be good because I would not have to worry about what features I would need to add. We know that the client might be looking for these types of features.

I feel day by day there will be an implementation coming up and we will be adding new features. I will look forward to using their services for this.

A tedious task, they have reduced it to a normal task. So, I feel comfortable because Automation Anywhere (the company) is working toward minimizing our efforts, and we are happy with that.

If the process was totally VBA-driven, e.g., sending a mail to a client and attaching so many document to emails, that's very tedious stuff. Something might happen if you do it by VBA automation. E.g., if you're Excel is not responding or what will happen if your system will get hung. The Automation Anywhere tool is in cloud so we don't worry about that. It's all about Internet speeds and servers that are stalling out. I feel that it save us time and provides ROI as a monetary benefit because it reduces FTE, the number of headcount working for a particular project.

I was just aware of this particular tool apart from using a VBA tool for normal automations, I am happy with this tool. I will not be going with another tool. There is always a market open so people can go and switch. However, I feel this is a good tool for day by day. Everything coming over is new, which is very good.

I feel giving them an eight to nine (out of 10). There should be always improvement for any product which comes out the market because there is also a competitor inline with them.

I am leading a team of RPA COE.

I'd like to explain something about the organization. We are a pioneer in mortgage real estate. For more than 20 years, we are serving US based clients and mortgage banks. The main purpose of using the Automation Anywhere is to have something which is more than RPA that is artificial intelligence. We wanted to combine all these skills so our client can get all the benefits. We do not want to train our bot constantly. We want to have something which has a self-learning bot.

This is why we opted for Automation Anywhere and are using IQ Bot. Because we have a machine learning compounded into it, which means by using this tool, our bot is self-learning so we don't need to train again. That was the primary reason.

RPA serves us as a tool or process that improves the efficiency of any organization. Being part of a BPM, we know we cannot go ahead and have more people all the time for any process. At this stage, we need to do something so we can do two things in parallel:

1. We can reduce the costs. 
2. We can improve the efficiency and accuracy. 

This is what we were able to do using RPA.

One of the most valuable features is IQ Bot. If you compare Automation Anywhere with any of the other organizations, we may get same type of RPA solution, as there are multiple organizations. But, IQ Bot was one of the primary reasons to choose Automation Anywhere. Using IQ Bot, we can extract more data out from the documents that are unstructured. Therefore, we need to do two things at the same time:

1. We need to extract the information from image-based documents
2. We need to make sure that the efficiency and accuracy of the extraction is improving with each extraction.

That is a primary feature of IQ Bot and the main reason that we opted for Automation Anywhere.

IQ Bot is the primary reason that we are using this. We are the one who started using this sometime back. What I realized is that it is just a product that came to be into existence. There are a lot of things that can be improved with a lot of scope. We are already engage with Automation Anywhere, giving our feedback, so they can improve. For example, they can improve the scope of extractions. IQ Bot does have some limitations. We have received assurances that in future releases this problem will be solved, and we should be able to do more extractions based upon future releases.

This is what I mentioned about things that they need to improve. They are working on scalability, but I'm expecting them maybe a faster pace for the thing already in place. They need to improve the extraction and accuracy. It's a sort of a journey that we started with a few fears that may end up with a 100 or 200 fears. These are our expectations from IQ Bot. We are quite hopeful that a future release will solve this problem.

It's a good to some extent. We faced an issue where the IQ Bot was very unstable. There were out days, but it's just good their support team is quite helpful. Whenever we set up new environments, we may face these type of issues. However, these are technical challenges which we might expect from any tool. These are new things for everyone, even for Automation Anywhere.

Initially, we faced stability challenges with the IQ Bot server, but now those are stable as compared to previous versions.

It was quite straightforward, considering that people are able to understand what they need. The need is clear, so it's a pretty straightforward solution.

We did not exactly look at another product, but being within the industry prior to this, we used a few different products. The main reason for not choosing the others were they were lacking artificial intelligence and the machine learning component, which has the algorithm within it. 

Automation Anywhere has been more sustainable and scalable.

There is still a lot of scope issues. There is always a gap between the customer and what they sell us. So, the customer is never satisfied. I want to give an eight, nine, or 10, but I still have a lot of expectations from Automation Anywhere, so I'll go for a seven (out of ten).

We have headquarters in London and we also have a presence in the US, Dubai, and a global development center in Hyderabad. We specialize in digital services such as our own chatbot platform, and we are also working on a specific OCI platform called PixTract which would complement existing RPA tools as well as many other projects which are relevant in this scenario.

As we are a partner of Automation Anywhere, there are quite a few use cases that we believe can provide good solutions for most organizations. We are looking at showing that Automation Anywhere is a good solution in terms of automating a lot of centers out there. There a lot of mundane tasks which happen in such centers and which include a lot of processes. I believe that automation can really do a lot of justice [in such cases]. It could be invoice processing in insurance or it could be claims processing in any type of insurance. [It can be used for] automating a lot of manual processes. I see a lot of areas where we can actually do it.

As we speak, we are talking to an insurance company. We are planning to have a PoC on their invoice automation and I see great potential with it.

IQ Bot is something which is going to disrupt the market in the future. We, at Avenir Digital, are particularly impressed with the evolution of IQ Bot and the kind of disruption it is bringing to the OCR space. We are also looking forward to leveraging IQ Bot in addressing a lot of other areas apart from automation or RPA as a tool. We would also want to take IQ Bot to the next level and into other areas.

When talking about IQ Bot, we are talking about computer vision, we are talking about OCR in particular. Thanks to the Digital India campaign, most Indian organizations are actually looking forward to automating their manual process in terms of scanning their ID cards, their bank cards; a lot of validation that happens manually. Everything can be automated and I believe IQ Bot could be a significant contributor there in automating all these. That is one area that we are looking forward to.

The new version 6.5 has come [out]. They are still working on the handwritten format — they want to get more accuracy in handwritten forms, which might take some time. It's everywhere, because the algorithms are evolving and the technology is only going to become more and more accurate. That is one area where we are really looking forward to understanding how IQ Bot can really leverage handwritten forms and also make significant progress into what could be called the "untouched places" at the moment - as far as rural India is concerned.

We have worked with various tools over many years and we believe that Automation Anywhere is one of the most stable platforms. When it comes to concurrency, it provides a great platform for large organizations to go ahead and use this. I believe this platform is very stable.

More than the technical support, we have been relying on presale support. In the future, we might need the technical support as well, when we locate complex use cases. But the presale support and the partner-enablement support have been a great help for us until now.

It's getting simpler day-by-day. The innovation that Automation Anywhere is taking up in terms of getting started in setting up their environment, is making it simpler. I see no problems. It's only going to be better and better. It gives a perfect platform to jumpstart. 

More than that, the initial training that we are being provided also helps us in getting a good, smooth start.

Our general approach to RPA implementation is to go with a PoC first; do a discovery followed by a pilot if needed, and then do full-scale development. That way we can make sure that our customer fully understands the potential and the relevance of the tool.

The reason I'm giving Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten is that no product is perfect.

In our company, we are following a different structure in this case: How we are going to develop the tool and what are the key nodes that we need to concentrate on. Though, we always concentrate on this type of information. Lastly, we are talking about the accuracy of the output. These are the scenarios that we are coding all the time. 

There are a lot of features that are valuable from Automation Anywhere. If I want to automate something in a browser or some other applications today, then it is done in Windows or the web. I don’t want to bother with anything else. I can do whatever I want. This is what the most valuable feature in my point of view.

Automation Anywhere is a valuable tool. As a developer, I can do whatever I want. If I want to do automation with the web, Windows, etc., e.g., mainframe or SAP applications, we can do whatever we want with automations using Automation Anywhere. If I’m going to automate a web-based application, I can use object cloning. There are multiple options available to do the automation. Each and every point’s valuable for me.

We face some issues, but we can’t prove them again. They occurred sometimes, but don’t occur again. For example, I record a video when a bot is running, and it is working fine. Another time it is not working. We face issues with Excel file creation. I’m trying to create a file in Excel .xls. It is getting corrupted. In these type of scenarios, I am not able to prove the issue from my end. I give suggestions as a developer, and these are in the notes, and I have already raised a ticket. I got information from the support team as well.

Comparatively, in previous versions, we had some issues. So, they are trying to improve the tool to be much better than the previous versions. This is an improvement that we need to achieve. Finally, we need to find accuracy and output. These should be the best and working on target.

From our technical support, we receive a lot of suggestions. If you do it in this way, it will make your output easier and much better. So, the suggestions are very important when we are developing tools and bots. From Automation Anywhere technical support, we got a lot of information like this. If we have any doubts or need any clarification, they are ready to support us all the time (within a particular time) until we get a response. That is the main point that I want to highlight here.

We are facing some issues when installing the software because of the antivirus. It won’t allow us to install it. We need to disable some features during the installation of it. Sometimes if the bot is running, we need to disable it. This feature needs to be made available, but made better than this.

The tool is a huge time saver. If I want to do something manually, it will take half an hour, but the bot can do the task within minute or seconds. In a day, month, or year, this will be a huge amount of time for me. A reduction to a fraction of seconds will be a big impact.

I can give it an eight (out of 10). More implementations should to be added to the tool. This is a suggestion from my end to make it more powerful from the previous versions.

I have had an opportunity to work on Automation Anywhere a lot. I have worked from version 8 of Automation Anywhere through versions 9, 10, now 11, and they are going to launch a new platform A2019. I have also worked on other modules of Automation Anywhere, like IQ Bots, MetaBots, Bot Insights. 

There was a process that we built as a reusable process that can be reused. It was a use case used by multiple companies, which can be used by multiple companies. We built it to be reusable so it can be just plugged and played. If you are a vendor or want to purchase that product from us, we can configure that product very quickly and give it to you. That was the use case which started a big change. It was a finance and accounting process.

This helped my organization, because if I want to build that solution from scratch, it would take almost ten to twelve weeks for the development. But if I have a reusable solution for that part and a company needs it, I can just customize it and give to that company within two weeks time. So, I save ten weeks of development time. It only requires customization of two weeks so my company gets good profit and the end customer is satisfied with the work that we have given them. It's a win-win situation for both of us.

The best part about Automation Anywhere is the easy to use UI. It's very user-friendly. You have everything that you want in front of your eyes. You just have to drag and drop, then build your logic accordingly. That's the biggest changing factor compared to other tools.

I would like to have reading from a handwritten text, which they are bringing in the next version. That will be a good thing.

The older versions, like version 8 and 9, were not very stable. With the changes that they have brought into the picture, it's now a very good tool and much stabler.

Scalability is easy with Automation Anywhere if you are on a cloud platform. 

They have a built-in feature for queuing so you can scale your product. It's a workload management feature so if you have fewer volumes than you can run on one or two bots. If you have a larger volume, then you can scale up to any number of bots. Scaling up or down works in real-time.

Their support team is very good.

It depends on how professional you are. If you are good, pro user, it will be easy for you. Even if you are a new user, there is an express version of installation that you can use and install it very quickly. If you are a pro user, you can always go with the custom mode and the installation is still very easy.

I have worked on other tools as well. I have worked on UiPath, Blue Prism, and Pega Robotic Process Automation.

I would like to give a nine (out of 10) to Automation Anywhere.

They are doing a great job. I don't think there is an area where they need to improve because they are doing a great job and improving themselves.

I have overall 10 to 12 years of experience in RPA. I started RPA doing VBA. That seemed like I needed coding, and for coding alone, I wasted more time. I came to know Automation Anywhere, which is a product that automates RPA processes in an easy manner. 

I was interested to learn it. I had an opportunity to attend training for Automation Anywhere for almost one month. I started with version 10.5. It was really interesting.

From the beginning, before I interacted with Automation Anywhere, I thought that I would also need to code something using the details, then it will take more time. That is not the case. If I want to automate something, I can easily drag and drop. There is any function that I need for a business case or some critical thing that I need to automate, then we can create a condition, have a API, use Excel automation, or do everything together. 

Most companies in the industry are facing the task of automating unstructured data or repetitive tasks. It's too difficult to use some of the other RPA tools, VBA, Java, .NET, etc. So, when I try to automate something using Automation Anywhere and I want to consolidate something when there are a hundred Excels in the folder, I can easily use my files and folder option. I can put in a condition without a need to code. I can just drag and drop. I can open Excel, select all those things, and put it altogether, then send it to my client. So, it's very easy to interact with Automation Anywhere.

The most valuable feature of Automation Anywhere is the value of feature lessons, like I had a session for A2019. I attended a session for 2019, which is very impressive. It's weightless. There isn't another system that I have found like this in version 11.3. Every system is busy. With the new version, I can easily open my browser and navigate. I can automate it wherever it is, and that's really interesting.

I face little challenges when I move code to production. In Automation Anywhere 11.3, when the bot is running until it loops 24/7 in my development and UAT environment, we don't have our antivirus on it. When it comes over to production, there is an antivirus running on it. However, we don't know what time it will be scheduled. My client is taking care of that. So, when I raise a ticket with Automation Anywhere, they share some suggested documents to exclude those lists from antivirus. When I approach my client, they want to exclude those things because they are treating them as maybe not secure.

What I am suggesting, when using A2019, if there are any additional features to exclude those antivirus scans until after my task is completed, then the antivirus can start scheduling. Then, I can easily tell the client that the priority are running and the Automation Anywhere scans can wait until after the release.

I had a chance in Intellect Design Arena to go from installation to deployment. This was the first process with RPA in Intellect Design Arena, so people were thinking it's the first project that we have with Automation Anywhere. However, we are very experienced and can automate nearly anything.

It's obviously reliable. It has a reusable component. If you compare some of the other RPA tool, they are more difficult to explain. We need to create one solution design with a low level and high level each for everything. When it comes to Automation Anywhere, and someone has joined, they can easily understand the way of the coding. When you see the code of the structure that we do, it's really impressive and anyone can easily understand it.

Their guys will take maximum only two hours to solve the biggest problems. If I need any clarification, I will raise a ticket. However, their people won't message me when replying back, "Are you checking this setting?" Their people will call me and ask, "How can I help you? This is the issue. Have you followed the steps by testing or calling it something different." Instead of sending a mail and wasting time, their people will directly call me and ask, which is the best thing with the Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup is easy. As a first step, it will ask for the location. As a second step, if you want to add an SSL certificate or database. There are just four steps of installation. It's very usable. Anybody can easily install Automation Anywhere, if they want.

I have used UiPath and a basic version of Blue Prism. 

When I compare it with other RPA tools, Automation Anywhere seems pretty good. It's a user-friendly tool. Anyone can easily understand it. If there is an error, you can easily debug it from the developer level. In Automation Anywhere, the error handling happens in the easiest way. In case of an error, we send an email. It's not too difficult code to understand. There's only beginning and ending error handling, which is easy to understand. 

I would rate it an eight (out of 10).