Automation Anywhere Reviews

I work with clients who are in banking, the financial sector, and the accounting sector. It mostly involves work with Excel, SAP, and BI. A typical use case starts with downloading data from SAP, manipulating it in Excel, sending relevant emails, and then receiving the responses.

This solution has helped us bring in more clients. We are able to satisfy our clients in ways that we did not think was possible. When we started interacting with our clients, the expectations were pretty low. We were hoping to automate ten processes. Now, with the capability provided by Automation Anywhere and our coding knowledge, we have put everything together and have automated approximately one hundred processes. So, the clients who expected ten and ultimately were given one hundred were pretty happy. The company image has been boosted, as well as the trust and confidence in this solution.

One of the strongest aspects of Automation Anywhere is the ability to have custom MetaBots through images, or through the use of DLLs or APIs. This functionality was introduced in version ten.

This solution is easy to use and easy to learn compared to Blue Prism, UiPath, and others. You don't need to know C# or any other programming language. It is helpful because you can build DLLs, but if you don't then you can still manage. You can use Automation Anywhere from a non-coding background. If somebody is not familiar with RPA then they can still swoop in and get experience by doing automation projects.

They have a good community online with a lot of documentation and videos available. 

I would like to see this solution made to be a little more robust. As a coder, I have written more than one hundred functions and I can do high-level testing, but I can't do the low-level testing of complicated use cases. I think that AA has to look at it from that perspective. Hire a few developers, give them some complex work or use cases, let them work on it, and then check for stability when there are two or three tasks. For example, one task runs, the output goes into another task, one window opens, then another window opens, and you interact with multiple interfaces. This type of testing may be how they'll get to know what is wrong with the application.

I would like to see more Excel functions built-in. Currently, they have forty-five or forty-eight functions supported, but I have written a DLL that includes one-hundred functions. They can do many more than forty-eight, and because we are dealing with accounting and finance, Excel is used a lot. We need Excel and we don't want to always have to depend on a custom-built DLL. When using a DLL, ninety percent of the time it won't be uniform for all of the processes. This means that I have to modify it, rebuild the DLL, and deploy it again. Native support would be much better.

Web automation capability needs to be improved.

I would like to see more features in the next release of this solution, including data tables, spying, and cloning.

IQ Bot is bad and needs a lot of tweaking. It needs to have thrust because right now you use it and it doesn't get off the ground. It just stays there. They made us believe that there is potential, so they have to fulfill it. For example, they speak about this ML component in IQ Bot, but I know that it doesn't exist. There is no ML component there, and I would like to see one kick in when IQ Bot fails to extract data. It should start automatically, and maybe ask us for some guidance at the beginning on how to do the work. With the ML component working, IQ Bot would be very good.

I would rate the stability of this solution somewhere around an eight out of ten. Although it seems to be very stable, perhaps ninety-nine percent of the time, when you need it the most, it stops working. Object cloning, for example, even when you go through DOMXPath, and even if you map the exact path by going through the Object ID, the DOM, you collect the DOM and then you map the exact object, it hangs sometimes.

Scalability is very good, except in the case of IQ Bot.

IQ Bot has problems with respect to scalability. As an example, consider that you want to upload one thousand POs per day. You have two machines, and you want to split the work, but there is a problem. IQ Bot is going to put the output into the same output path, but how do you know which machine has generated this output? How do you map it? This is an inherent flaw that hinders scalability in the long run. IQ Bot doesn't even let you know whether an output has been generated. They have a database, and I built a custom bot to look at their database to find out if the output has been generated, or not. However, people have told me not to touch this database because it is proprietary.

The other point with regards to scalability is that it doesn't just happen out of the box. You do not just add a hundred more machines and have it work in the same manner. You need to use it in tandem with an SQL database, or another application like Tableau. If you do then it will be very strong and very robust. It will be loosely coupled but highly scalable.

I have corresponded with them and I would rate technical support a nine out of ten. I do not want to be too hard on them but what I've noticed is that they will support people, but may not fully understand the technical aspects of the components that they're using in Automation Anywhere. So, if you were to ask them, "How do I get to the Moon?", they would answer, "Just build a rocket". They won't tell me how to build the rocket. If they would connect developers to their own backend engineers then that would be really helpful.

The initial setup of this solution is a little bit complex, but if from the start you know where to go, what to click, and exactly what each button does then it will be very useful. If you have somebody to guide you then it will be much easier.

We implemented this solution ourselves. We developed the Bots like we always do. We uploaded it to a repository and moved it to a production environment that we set up. We then synchronized all of the files that are required to be present in the production environment. Finally, we provided support for a week after the deployment.

We have saved a lot of time and replaced a few FPEs with this solution. It is a one-time investment for a year. You may replace people or alternatively put them elsewhere to work on better activities. This solution saves money for our clients, which is a good thing.

I have seen my colleagues use UiPath and web automation is excellent. I have been involved in hackathons where I have used Automation Anywhere for web automation, and I have struggled. In web automation, if UiPath completes it in ten seconds, then Automation Anywhere will take seventy to eighty seconds for the same task.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are primarily using this solution for banking, healthcare, and Agile processes. We implement automation solutions for our clients.

I have been using this solution for the past three or four versions, and the look and feel have improved a lot. A lot of functionality has been added, including control room features and deployment features. It takes some time to analyze and overcome the technical aspects before deployment, but now, we know that we have an easy time in development and deployment.

Our solutions are easily understood by the client and they do not have any difficulties.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the ease of using it. Even as we were getting into RPA for the first time, I found it easy to understand this tool.

The terminal emulator and the automatic scanning of PDFs are good features that you can do really easily.

We would like to be able to directly implement automation for Word documents and XML. Currently, we have to write a script or some code in Python, and there is no direct solution. Basically, I'm expecting some things that are more innovative.

It would be great if technical support were a little faster.

I would like to see more documentation for automation.

This solution is very stable, even though it is growing in an aggressive way.

We are implementing complex solutions in health planning care, HR, and banking, so there are a lot of things that you have to consider when it concerns data and the information. Sometimes we get an error where the port will hang, or the solution will change over a period of time, but generally, the solution is scalable. I would rate scalability an eight out of ten.

Technical support for this solution is good, but sometimes to takes a long time for them to get back to us. Sometimes we face technical issues while we are downloading, and there has been a delay in getting support. If this could be minimized then it would be great.

I have worked with other solutions and information providers before, and this solution is easier to use. 

The initial setup of this solution is pretty simple.

It takes approximately a week and a half to set up automation. We have already had some examples and demos, so setting up is very easy. Learning will take some time after that.

We perform the integration for this solution with our in-house team.

We have seen ROI since implementing this solution. We started with the HR processes and we are using healthcare information. It has given a decent ROI. We used to have fifteen employees, but now there are two or three who manage and support the bots.

Choosing this solution for our clients concerns multiple aspects. I have to think about the complexity of the solution and how much time it takes compared to other solutions. These things considered, Automation Anywhere is a decent competitor and gives a better solution. Even through the development and debugging phases, it give very good performance without scalability issues.

We have worked with both Blue Prism and UiPath

For anybody who is learning and wants to use RPA, I would suggest starting with Automation Anywhere. There are many things to consider including the technical capabilities, the length of time for development, the number of pieces that there are, what the support is, and how easily the bots are deployed.

This is a good solution, but some pieces are missing and there are issues with support.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for application automation in both web-based and Windows applications.

Our automation is specific to the insurance and hospitality industries and has to do with automating email, PDFs, and updating them inside our ERP application.

This solution allows us to more fully automate our clients' specific tools.

The automation of data entry is the most valuable feature for us.

Built-in HTML features are lagging in this solution, whereas in UiPath, they are very good.

We would like to see more improvements in the ability to retrieve region data because, currently, this is the reason that some of our automations fail.

The stability of this solution is good, but it still needs to improve. We are not confident with its capability to automate in every case.

This is a scalable solution. For us, we will be scaling more into the future.

We have not used technical support for this solution.

We have used UiPath, and some of the features in that solution are superior.

My backend team handles the implementation of this solution.

There is a return on investment. The automation and scalability provide benefits in terms of reinvesting or reusing what we have developed.

This is a good tool to work with.

Our automation is running well, but there is a lag in features when compared to other Windows tools that are coming out.

My advice for anybody who is considering this solution is to consider the type of automation that needs to be done. If it is not overly complex then this is a solution I recommend.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are running the Control Room and the Bot Runners.

Currently, we have two processes in production, and another three are currently under development. Those in the development stage are running efficiently, but there are bugs here and there. Even for the processes that are in production, we have constant involvement, where we bring them back for more development and then return them to the production environment.

Our primary use case has to do with automating payment tasks. We process about thirty-five hundred invoices per month, which is a substantial amount. At the moment, we process about fifteen hundred, and our goal with automation is to reach thirty-five hundred.

At the moment, about twenty-five percent of the volume is covered by the RPS side of things. The rest of the work is done by hand, and our goal is to reach seventy-five percent by the end of this year.

This solution has allowed us to reduce our idle time by about thirty percent.

In terms of FTEs, we have cut approximately three, and hour goal is to cut fifteen by the end of this year.

The IQ Bot is very impressive to us. We have tried several tools in the industry, and we have not been able to automate to the same level as provided by this solution.

The stability of this solution depends on the processes, but I think that there is room for improvement in this regard. We are using Microsoft Dynamics, and it would help if they had a set of standard development specifications for each of these solutions. 

We are having some challenges when it comes to stability. Things have kept stable for three to four months at the moment, but we are still working on stabilizing the bots. We are hoping to have everything stabilized within the next few months.

The scalability of this solution is very good. We have operations on the other side of the world, such as South East Asia, so we tend to have different languages. The IQ Bot is able to read these languages, which will help us to expand into other regions, as well.

I have dealt with technical support for this solution and they are one of the best, I would say. Their response time is very fast and the knowledge that the tech team has is impeccable. All of the issues that we have raised were solved within a day and this has been very helpful for us.

The initial setup of this solution was sort of complex for us. We are at the initial state of it, and it is quite challenging because we didn't know what the technology was all about. Each and every day we learn new things, where it is not the same thing that we had learned before and already implemented.

We partnered with a consultant from a company in Sri Lanka and they are assisting us with the implementation. This includes development and scaling. We give them the strategic plan according to what we want, then they evaluate the process and let us know the architecture. We may also get involved with the architecture in cases where they might not have the in-depth knowledge of our systems.

Our long term plan is to have a COE where we will have our in-house developers. This will help in development, as well as post-production.

We have not yet seen ROI, but our estimation is that it will occur within three years. We have made a huge investment in this solution.

The bugs that we have had are generally not because of the product. We have had one product bug, and it has already been taken care of, although it is not released yet. It will be included with the next release of the solution.

The bug is related to popups, where those commands are issued but we cannot give them in the development stage. It is a major drawback in our process. Because of this, certain processes have a two to three-minute delay, and that's a major impact on one of our processes. It does have something to do with a third-party application for which nobody has applied an automation tool. I wouldn't say that it is a major bug, but it should be rectified in the future.

We are now looking at the AI side of this solution, and have started using the IQ Bot.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to invest small and see, rather than going for a bigger investment all to once. See the ROI and then evaluate again. We had issues with the business users because they were not confident enough to use the Bots. At that time, they were much more comfortable using the hands-on, manual approach. Try one use case and then expand.

I have not evaluated all of the features so my rating might be higher when I do.

Compared to other products, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it for our product setup and rating products on our website.

We take raw data and manipulate it, then we feed the information to the bot. The rest of the process is automated using the bot.

We have seen increased productivity. What use to take about two days to finish with laymen doing computer work, a bot can finish it within a seven to eight hour time frame. That means we are removing a lot of man-hours.

Automation is less time consuming and very quick.

The features are pretty easy to use, like the drag and drop feature. It is easy and understand, even a layman knows how the application works. All the basic stuff can be done by anybody.

I want the tool to be more stabilized. After three or four hours, the navigation keeps changing. We will be running error handling for 8,000 process and the system will fail. We need it to be more stable.

I would like a detailed description of all the features in a PDF explaining their significance and what they do.

Stability-wise, we have found that it works pretty well. At this stage, it can work around 24 hours. However, the system does malfunction. We need to have a bot ready to back up another bot and spin up the data in case of a failure.

We need the solution to run without errors before we can scale more.

The initial setup was straightforward. Our processes are not largely complex, so we understood the background of how it was being set up.

We used a consultant. They came in and helped us with the setup of the products.

Automation Anywhere is user-friendly.

We are working with our clients using this solution. Often, they are automating some of their retail and marketing processes, including the generation of bills and statements in finance.

Our clients are using a hybrid cloud, with their own VM environment.

One of the recent projects that I worked on was for a complex financial process in a bank. It involved automating several manual processes. The data had to be retrieved from SAP by means of a file and then imported into an Excel worksheet. My suggestion included implementing an SQL server and then automating the process using this solution. Instead of the series of manual tasks, they now only have to verify the final result, and it makes life much easier.

We are assisting our clients by improving the way they do things. This is a great platform, and we are implementing the logic into the bots that they are using to automate.

The user interface and tools are good.

In the next release of this solution, I would like to see more OCR agents included.

My customers would like to use the IQ Bot without having to invest more money in purchasing another license. If it is not possible to include IQ Bot in the basic package then, at least, the OCR features and the TaskBot can be enhanced. This would allow us to include small-scale industry, as well as large organizations.

There is an issue with security where users can see the values in the credential vault. Because of this, we don't see the point in creating values inside the vault.

This system should be able to handle situations with very there are very large volumes of data in Excel.

Stability depends on your skillset, and how you have written the code in terms of logic and handling errors. If you have built the code properly, in a systematic way as it requires, then it will definitely be stable. If instead you randomly do things that you needed to be done today, I don't think the stability of the bot will be very good.

Stability is good now, although we have had problems in the past. For example, when we were processing very large amounts of data in Excel, Automation Anywhere failed. The volume was in the millions of rows of data.

The scalability of this solution is good compared to others.

We have not used technical support for this solution.

In addition to this solution, I have good knowledge of Blue Prism and UiPath.

Initially, I found the setup of this solution to be complex.

Before getting started we had to install the SQL server and perform the migration. Then, it involved user accounts. You have to create a new user and add the details, which is quite complex. Then, whenever you are installing the Enterprise Edition, you have to perform setup that includes the IIS settings. Overall, it was quite hectic, and some of the people were not able to do it.

The implementation of this solution is something that we assist our clients with, but it depends on the situation. Different organizations have different ways of implementing. For the most part, I create the packages and give my work to the COA teams, and they finish it themselves. When they are not able to do that, we help them further.

We are using MetaBots as well as TaskBots.

There are lots of features that are still not there in version 11. I know that version 12 is coming, but I do not know much about it.

This is a solution that I recommend. We began with the free license, but if you are going to use Automation Anywhere then you have to purchase the license. It's an investment. With UiPath, the development license is free, so it depends on the situation. In general, if the client is ready for automation then I suggest this solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is working with different applications, like Excel and SAP. We get the data and reports, then produce results with Automation Anywhere. For IQ Bots, we're still working on it for data extraction.

I think version 11.3 is good, but I am looking forward to working with version A2019.

The drag and drop is valuable because you can easily read the commands and know what a particular line of code is doing. 

The error handling and troubleshooting are very good. It is easy for a developer to know what happened in any particular line of code.

I would like Automation Anywhere to integrate with Google activities, like Google Sheets. While this should be available in A2019, I would like it to be scaled more.

Version A2019 will have better error handling. They are also adding Python script.

I would like them to add dictionaries to it.

From variable to variable, it is giving me blank code. We have seen this in the IQ Bot, but not in the main code.

Sometimes, I have to restart the automation services to make them work properly.

The scalability is good. We have five bots that we are currently scaling. 

We are looking to invest more in Automation Anywhere.

We contact Automation Anywhere's technical support via email. I would like the support to be faster. Their response time is one to two days. Their customer care could be faster.

Our IT did the initial deployment.

We measure our success with our customers' happiness.

We have seen some return from the product.

I would recommend Automation Anywhere. You can test the tool before purchasing it.

Primarily, we have it deployed across multiple verticals in finance and are looking to expand that to other areas, like engineering and supply chain within the organization.

We use the RPA solution and are looking to explore the IQ Bots.

In finance, it has helped us deliver on productivity and provided us with FTE savings. It does improve transaction accuracy as well. In these ways, it has really helped us.

The ease of use and its ability to change the code when something in the main process or core process changes. The ease of use is really good. 

We have some ERPs tools which are not compatible with Automation Anywhere because they are legacy systems. We find that Automation Anywhere does not work with these at times. Just enabling the usability of Automation Anywhere on some of these legacy ERPs would help us, as we struggle regularly with this issue.

It has been pretty stable.

It is pretty scalable within the functions that we have deployed. We have increased the number of transactions compared to what we started off with. We see its usability across functions as well. We can use the same bot across other functions if you have capacity.

The customer service that they provide is good. They have good turnaround time with fast responses whenever there is an issue. They give us the right solution.

We set up all three of our use cases, which were simple, medium, and complex.

We have seen ROI. Our business cases only get approved if there is an ROI.

We evaluated the UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and WorkFusion. We evaluated them before latching onto Automation Anywhere.

We chose Automation Anywhere based on its simplicity of the usage, its ability to interact on our transactions and processes. Those were the two primary drivers that helped us decide.

Streamline your processes and simplify them, then bring in RPA as a solution.