What is our primary use case?
I am working for a financial organization, and we have implemented more than 100 Automation Anywhere bots in our organization from 2018 till now. Our organization holds all the teachers' annuity and 401k funds, and we automated a lot of use cases related to customer information updates as well as payments for those who are already retired, including pensions and related services.
Currently, my company is evaluating building some agnostic processes and creating our own LLM to consolidate data into a single data store. Once that LLM model is ready, we see an opportunity to automate many things using Automation Anywhere by calling those LLMs rather than multiple applications. Our top priority currently is document automation, extracting data from documents, which we have also been doing for the last three years. At the enterprise level, a separate artificial intelligence team is working on building an LLM that can be utilized by all other application teams.
How has it helped my organization?
Earlier, if a customer called our organization or created a ticket asking for their financial statement, it would take a couple of days to get that, but with Automation Anywhere, they receive their financial statements while still on the call.
Automation Anywhere has helped us save money, as we track use cases with ROI, resulting in FTE savings. For instance, last quarter itself, we processed almost six million transactions using Automation Anywhere, which involved around 70 bots running 24/7, saving about 150 FTEs.
Overall, it is pretty easy for non-technical business users to use Automation Anywhere. One week is good enough to train them, and it is 90% easy for them, except for some technical terms or knowledge required.
It integrates well. We have integrated various tools with Automation Anywhere, including PeopleSoft, ServiceNow, IBM Case Manager, Workday, and Clarity. We have integrated CRM tools, HR systems, and some homegrown applications and workflow systems. With IBM Case Manager, we were able to integrate Automation Anywhere for end-to-end process automation, handling case creation to completion.
What is most valuable?
What I appreciate the most about Automation Anywhere is that it does not require any technical knowledge; if we educate business people, they can automate their daily tasks and activities. It is easy to use for non-technical people, with a simple drag-and-drop interface, so they don't need to be technically savvy to automate their processes.
What needs improvement?
To improve the product, one aspect that Automation Anywhere can work on is archiving legacy data effectively. Currently, data older than current versions remains on the server, slowing the system down.
Additionally, they should introduce a generic RE framework for better framework creation within organizations, along with enhanced task statistics captured at the transactional level rather than just the top level.
Their support should also be improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Automation Anywhere for almost eight years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability can be of two types: process-wise scalability where common functionalities are created, and infrastructure-related scalability where we forecast loads for upcoming quarters to adjust our current capacity accordingly.
How are customer service and support?
I have contacted technical support multiple times. Especially when I was involved with IQ Bot and earlier A360 versions as a beta user, I faced numerous issues that required direct collaboration with the support and engineering teams for immediate resolutions or feature enhancements.
I would rate Automation Anywhere's support a four out of ten because the support is horrible for all customers. Response times and resolutions are significantly downgraded, leading to a frustrating support experience that ultimately harms the client-vendor relationship due to lengthy email back-and-forths instead of direct communication.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
It requires a bit of technical background from the server and infrastructure standpoint. If someone knows middleware, it is pretty straightforward. There can be hiccups here and there. Especially in the earlier versions, there were a few challenges, but it is now streamlined in A360. Everything is pretty easy.
Upgrading Automation Anywhere can vary in difficulty, with package version upgrades being easier than transitioning from version 11.3 to A360, which is tougher and requires significant setup work, including roles, accesses, and schedules.
What about the implementation team?
I handle the whole deployment and system upgrades personally. I am supported by a couple of people working offshore for any issues. Overall, I manage all upgrades and installations, while the two others assist anyone needing help with particular VDI or bot issues.
What was our ROI?
I see the benefits of Automation Anywhere based on the ROI factor. While immediate customer satisfaction is noticeable because customers are able to get their statements quickly; from an organizational standpoint, it shows a return on investment within six to twelve months.
Automation Anywhere has helped us save money.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The current pricing for Automation Anywhere seems a little higher compared to competitors Power Automate or UiPath. Automation Anywhere is perceived as pricey due to the support model charges ranging from 20% to 30% based on the plans. A lot of organizations are moving from Automation Anywhere or UiPath to Power Automate.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I was working at this company when Automation Anywhere was evaluated and deployed. I was one of the core members to identify what tool to use for RPA technologies for this organization. We evaluated Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere in late 2017, as those were the two RPA vendors available in the market. We identified Automation Anywhere and began onboarding from there onwards, working from scratch to implement it at the organization.
What other advice do I have?
I connect with business leaders to review the processes and identify who is manually doing these processes. I connect with business leaders every month to identify the best use cases that need to be automated. We identify the processes that need to be automated or have chances for automation. We evaluate the ROI, and based on that, we go ahead with the implementation. We assess the ROI and compare the processing speed or delivery speed to customers and customer satisfaction as our measures to keep track of statistics for human versus automated processes.
We are not using the Co-Pilot, but I work with community forums and help others, gaining hands-on experience with the Co-Pilot. For real-case scenarios, we are not exploring or introducing the Co-Pilot to the business as we are still working in a hybrid model due to market conditions. Once the market stabilizes, all businesses will be happy to explore the Co-Pilot or Discovery in the future, maybe at the end of this year or so.
I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.