Automation Anywhere Reviews

We have an ITMS Service Desk that has a lot of tickets coming to it. As an enterprise, there are too many applications there, which are being used by employees. This service desk enables them to address all the issues which they are facing, whether it is on the application, infrastructure, etc. There is a group who manages all these tickets coming through ServiceNow. These numbers are huge. To manage these services or change requests, we use Automation Anywhere when it is not possible to use either an API or do scripting.

My company is using the latest version.

I have one application that does not publish any APIs. However, there is one activity where every employee needs to be registered in that particular application. Now, we use Automation Anywhere for this. So, we get the data from the source data using the front-end of that application through the Automation Anywhere script. Then, we do registration of the employees into that application. Previously, this was being done by people on our service desk. Now, we are using Automation Anywhere to do this activity. This has saved a lot of time. 

Just for this use case, we had around 300 tickets coming in every month. We went live last month and the tickets went down to around 80 as of August 20th. While it might touch around 100, over a period of around six months it will become zero because we have not removed all the legacy data. We are just doing it from the go date of when we went live. The target is that it will be zero after three months. So, it's working well.

A work in progress is a request which came in from employees using ServiceNow to create a VPN account for them. Today, this is a manual process where the service desk people have to raise a ticket to another team who create the VPN account for the employees. This is why we are currently automating this process.

I like that it can login to any system as a robot and do the work that humans can.

Automation Anywhere is unable to connect to the database directly. What we are doing now is directly writing the PL/SQL scripts and trying to push the data from the database into Automation Anywhere. This feature is available in UiPath, but not in Automation Anywhere.

I am unaware if Automation Anywhere is able to read unstructured data, build some intelligence around it, and then push it into the application. We do have some requirements in our organization where invoices are scanned, and based on the data, hard copies of the data are fed into some applications. Today, we are using different tools for these features, but if it is available in the tool, then that would be good.

We are a midsize company in the Indian market running one or two bots. 

From a scalability perspective, I don't think there will be any issues. It is pretty good.

Support-wise, it is great. 

We installed this on a cloud infrastructure and had a lot of challenges. However, there was a dedicated support person who was helping us to do the installation.

The initial setup was definitely complex. Layman people cannot do it. People with a bit of knowledge need some help from Automation Anywhere.

It took a month and a half to do the basic installation of this software along with some internal processes related to our firewalls.

We had a dedicated person from Automation Anywhere who was supporting us at the time of the initial installation.

While our Automation Anywhere's implementation is in a premature stage, it has really decrease the workload on our service desk. We are looking to decrease the ticket counts too. I definitely see this solution helping us in the future.

Our tickets have decreased. We have more than 40 uses cases. We definitely see some ROI in the future from this product.

In the Indian market, I feel that for mid-size companies, such as ourselves, that having multiple bots costs a lot. If Automation Anywhere wants to expand in the Indian market, they will need to look at their pricing.

One of the major reasons that we went for Automation Anywhere was a global MSA, which our company has with Automation Anywhere. They wanted us to use this particular tool for our end customers too. 

I am part of an internal CIO team, where our customers are our employees. However, as an organization, we had a global agreement with Automation Anywhere where they wanted to deliver this tool to the end customer as part of their solutions. Because of that agreement, we went with Automation Anywhere.

My team (who uses both Automation Anywhere and UiPath) says that UiPath has better modules and functionality than Automation Anywhere.

I'm seeing some results in the use case for whatever we are trying to automate. So, it has been really helpful.

Don't use an RPA tool for any problem statement. I've seen people use any RPA tool available for their problem statement just to say that they are using some type of RPA. E.g., We had a use case where we had to read information from an Excel table and generate a report, so people started using Automation Anywhere. However, it would have been better in this scenario to use Power BI by creating scripts.

We use this solution for automating tasks such as:

• Manual journal entries on monthly closing
• Travel and expense claims processing
• Net sales monthly closing checks
• Logistics master data maintenance for every new shipment
• Vendor creation on master data for every new demand
• Order confirmation reminders automated for vendors 

We are just using it as one of the automation technologies. The major automation has already happened over SAP on the backend since the whole company globally runs on a single ERP. However, where conventional methods or basic solutions don't work, it definitely helps to use AA software.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the SMART Recorder.

The overall developer client has an easy-to-use UI.

The Control Room, scheduling features, and client repository are really good features that make day-to-day bot development and enhancement quite quick and easy.

The PDF Integration feature is also quite helpful, as well as the Send email command that helps us skip a lot of Outlook-based steps that are not necessary.

More support required to be embedded in the SMART Recorder for SAP objects.

IQ Bot should be available embedded as a feature on the developer client and not as a separate product.

Some NLP AI is required to work in combination with RPA, especially for reading unstructured emails. 

This solution is quite stable. We get one or two tickets in the whole year due to any downtime and that is never due to AA.

AA is the easiest and the best when it comes to scalability.

Technical support for this solution is the quickest and the best. I always get a response within the same day and their support matches our SLAs.

It was a little complex due to the IIS Manager and a lot of other features but with version 11 and beyond it is much easier to install and configure.

We performed the implementation in-house.

While calculating the setup cost you should account for the server, virtual machines, product licenses, maintenance costs, and running costs.

Before choosing this solution we evaluated UiPath and Blue Prism.

Be careful with the installation of this solution. It is better to do it with support from the vendor at first.

We use this solution to automate the following task:

• Open MS-Excel-File from Folder
• Update the data with keystroke-command
• Wait for calculation of the result
• Save the file
• Loop the command above for each file in the folder
• Send email-notification to the task owner
• Send Quality Check to task owner (.pdf-command)
  
• Error handling (where applicable)

This solution gives us greater employee satisfaction because manual recurring work has been reduced. We also have a savings of manpower, independently of office-hours thanks to bot scheduling.

We redesigned tasks before the implementation of bots, and have higher stability through standardized Bot Runner.

We find several functions valuable, including:

• The Files/Folder command makes it easy to work off each file in a folder. I don't know how else to do this command.
• The Variable Operation makes it easy to work with variables. The system variables catalogue is helpful.
• The Send eMail Command helps with the flow of information.

In the Microsoft Excel features, it needs a command to wait for a calculation to complete.

In Microsoft Excel, why isn't it possible to share a session in different tasks? It's complicated to program all of the commands in the same tasks (loss of overview).

The Filter function only supports four commands (Mouse/Key/Delay).

In the Optical Overview for the Loop command, an if/else would be helpful.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

It takes a lot of effort to build up the internal infrastructure/topics like Virtual Machine/Security/development-Governance/Usecase-Management.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

In our banking center, we are using Automation Anywhere for loan settlements, credit card transactions, and reconciliation forms. It has been easy to use.

I like working with most of the commands in Automation Anywhere, such as object cloning commands.  I like MetaBot for automating Citrix.

They need to improve the speed. It runs too slowly.

There are some setup limitations:

• There is no direct passing mechanism to manipulate adjacent data and send it back to the server. 
• There is not one task that lets you debug everything.

Version 11.3 already has a lot of things that we want: quickness, ease, bigger, and more functions.

It is 90 percent stable. 

10 percent is due to network issues, slow performance of the application, or failed bots. These happen infrequently though. We implemented some fallback mechanisms around the network issues.

Scalability is fantastic. We can build anything out of the application. Though in some places, there are limitations. Fixing those would be good.

We are deployed in five different regions.

We are using the technical support. They are fantastic, but sometimes we aren't getting the expected outcome that we want from the tech support team. We would like to see this improve.

The initial setup is not that complex. We just download the software. Anyone can go and download it. It can be downloaded with two-way server. Then, the next step is to get a license for development and other things. Once development is done and it has been move to product, the client can use it.

I would recommend using this product. It is very useful. We can automate anything through it. There is much flexibility. It provides a robust mechanism, which is good.

We look at process which are feasible for automation on a case-by-case basis.

We have many use cases. We are solving business problems for our clients. E.g., it could be as simple as doing data entry or creating a mashup solution with intelligent automation, which is a buzz word these days. It can also be as complex as having AI integrated with RPA. It depends upon a lot of use cases. This is what we are solving.

We are the partners of Automation Anywhere, so we are solving our client's problems with Automation Anywhere as an enabler. In addition, we are a consumer of Automation Anywhere.

We have digital workers with us who assist us in doing our work in robotic process automation. They solve all the problems where we need to do mundane activities and tasks that users should not be doing. Users should be utilizing their brain part, then the remaining roles and activities should go to the digital workers that we have.

We have automated that complete process of code review. The bot is solving the problem of ensuring the compliance of reviewing code. People used to generally skip the code review process because it was exhaustive. Bots can review the complete standards of the code, whatever is there, ensuring the compliance and eventually saving time.

The most valuable feature of Automation Anywhere is the unattended mode. Switch off your work when you are out of your office. The bot auto logs into your desktop and asks what they should do be doing, then it works. Tomorrow morning, you come back into the office, you have the output on your desk.

We used to face a lot of challenges with older versions, like auto login. 

Nothing is perfect. The tool should always evolve to the better and more efficient.

If we are talking about evolving, then we are talking about intelligent automation. There should be more features included in the package with this type of software. For example, IQ Bot is something that we used to have and was working well. However, there are other use cases of machine learning and complex cognitive solutions. Those should be included in the package, as they will solve major problems which we face today of unstructured data. This is part of the evolution process and these changes won't happen in a day.

The latest version is very stable and reliable. I have a lot of confidence in it as we deploy this bots at the client site. I have confidence that the bot will auto login in the night and do the work.

If you have 500 digital works for an enterprise, then someday you will need to update. Automation Anywhere is not very scalable because the update and upgrade process requires immense effort from the IT organization to do a tool check. 

Automation Anywhere Control Room should update to the newer versions with one click, including the newer features. There should be minimum effort required from the IT organization. The major resistance from any organization is from the IT organization because they have a lot of dependencies and will sometimes resist doing changes because they have  other activities and applications to manage. Future versions should minimizing their work.

I have used the technical support a lot of times. It has improved a lot. The response time has been very good. 

We used to face many problems for auto login and scheduler. It is lot of tickets for these problems, but Automation Anywhere was very responsive at that time. While they didn't have a ready-to-go solution, they ensured in the next release those improvements were there and now it is very stable.

The initial setup is not straightforward, but it's not complex. if somebody knows how to do it with an SOP, they can do it. The setup is tedious, but it's doable. 

We are a consultant for the deployment.

We have seen ROI with this product. With this product, we go for any RPA use case. If it is not solving anything or giving quantifiable benefits, it does not make sense.

I've been involved with my clients in recommending Automation Anywhere.

It is a good tool and one of the market leaders. The ease of implementation is very good in Automation Anywhere compared to other tools. If somebody is just starting out, Automation Anywhere is the best tool to look at to rapidly start because it delivers quickly robotic process automation.

The market is very dynamic. The product needs to be constantly evolving.

They have improved the product a lot since I started working with it.

Our company's main application is the SAP application, so we are trying to automate SAP and associated manual work processes.

We do plenty of manual processing every day. This is repetitive work where an employee will come and do the same task. The tool helps us to avoid those repetitive tasks and save dollars.

The most valuable feature is that it supports MetaBot for SAP applications. This is very useful for us when automating. Due to some failures with the MetaBot recording option, we are also trying to capture the things using object cloning, which is a good option too.

In version 11.3, they have a good security option. Tool-wise, it's pretty good to work on Automation Anywhere. If you compare it to other tools in the industry. It is very user-friendly and easy to develop processes. We liking using it very much.

They have launched the recent version A2019. That version will be very helpful for us.

Sometimes, the MetaBot fails using the recording option.

In previous versions, there were some limitations. There wasn't proper security when it came to credentials. We tried storing credentials, but the security level wasn't great.

When a bot is in production, sometimes the keystrokes will not work. I am not sure why, and we have tried to contact technical support. They said that they don't have an answer for this. It happens in the the remote environment when we are deploying a bot into AWS machines. So, technical support said this happens in AWS machines sometimes: If the bot is running and the machine is locked, then at that time, the key strokes will not work. They have provided that solution, but we are trying to avoid keystrokes now.

Unwanted windows are popping up. We have to train a bot to recognize the window if it comes up, know what it is, and click it. If it is interrupting our bot, I just want to avoid that window, because I am getting failed logs. 

It is not 100 percent stable. We are trying to process a flow and will receive unexpected windows. The issues is that Windows will upgrade something on the back-end and the bot will fail. This is not a development issue. It is a Windows issue from their upgrades and pop-ups. We are trying to avoid that.

So, we are trying to develop an IQ Bot because of this. As of now, we haven't tried the IQ Bot, we have just installed IQ Bot and are trying to develop it. We have to train IQ Bot. 

Nothing is stopping us to increase our scalability. The scalability is good.

Technical support from Automation Anywhere is pretty good. When I raise a ticket to them, they respond very quickly and try to resolve the problems which we are facing day-to-day. 

We are now very stable with the tool and not having any issues. When we started with Automation Anywhere, we had issues. We contacted technical support, and they helped us.

When this technology first came to market, I thought it was about robotic things, which we cannot do. However, when I started to learn about Automation Anywhere, it's completely different. It's a user friendly tool with drag and drop commands. A person just needs technical, logical thinking.

When we started, we were not aware of the entire architecture of Automation Anywhere. It was like a new technology. I have a partial technical background, so I could easily understand the tool and its architecture. However, I observed that non-technical team members could also easily understand Automation Anywhere's commands. They way that the bots are built makes it very easy for non-technical people to understand the logic pieces if they have logic skills. They can develop bots. Compared to other tools, where users should have some technical knowledge, this is an excellent differentiator for Automation Anywhere.

We have developed 20 bots in our organization. We have a pretty good ROI as of now. 

Go with Automation Anywhere. It is a very good tool. It has an easy to develop process.

You need to set up the proper architecture or you will fail in setting up your process.

Our use case is spread across multiple areas: 

1. We are using it in finance: automating the month-end process. 
2. There are a lot of review processes that happen every week. We are in the middle of that.
3. We have a product lifecycle management process that when we close the books on a product, information needs to go into multiple systems. We have another bot in system for this.

These are the three things that we have in production right now.

A project that we automated: A person used to spend about eight to twelve hours every week to finish the process. The bot finishes it in half an hour. Now, the person just reviews it, then passes along the information. This has helped our organization because originally EMEA and APAC would not receive the files the same day that they were processed. But because the bot only takes a half an hour, everyone can now receive the files on the same day.

We know the process. It doesn't deviate.

Speed: A process that would take two days for a person every month to do is now completed within two hours.

Right now, the audit trail sits in file systems. I would prefer it to be in a database where it is queryable and searchable. 

Another major downside is an upgrade. If I have to switch over from single sign-on to non-single sign-on, etc., then it's a complete reinstall. When I do a complete reinstall, I lose a lot of information because it's a new instance. I'm not able to bring information from the old instance and my metrics are all gone. I basically have to reset the whole infrastructure. I would like to see an option to switch over to single sign-on post-installation. It should not have to be a reinstall. It should be part of the installation or configuration.

I wanted to see a cloud version and mobile app but those will be available in the A2019 version.

I would like the bots to be more automatic without having to check emails, which is how we have our tool setup. Going forward, the bots should be more interactive.

So far, the stability has been pretty good.

We did have some issues when our database server sort of crashed. A lot of processes went uncommitted, so we had to engage the Automation Anywhere support team. They came in to clean up the database and bring the server back up. Otherwise, we have seen pretty good stability.

So far, the technical support has been really helpful. We were even able to engage the customer success team when we needed them. They have helped us solve our problems, which is very good.

We had a major issue when it came to single sign-on. We couldn't get it working. There was a bug in Automation Anywhere that eventually got solved just a few weeks back. However, we have not implemented it. We have had hiccups with the single sign-on, but otherwise it was a smooth setup. We are not using single sign-on because of this bug.

We used our implementation partner for the deployment and implementing the bots. Our experience with them was good. Most of them are good developers. They have been able to solve a lot of issues and build a lot of processes.

We have seen ROI on two out of our three bot processes. We see ROI from hours returned back to us.

It is a lot easier to debug Automation Anywhere than UiPath because of the code. Our clients like Automation Anywhere which is another reason that we picked it.

Automate several smaller processes within departments. Show the benefit there before implementing an end-to-end solution. This will get people excited about the solution and kick start the process.

We got our workloads for issues and our bugs fixed, which is why I rated the product a 10 out of 10.

We primarily deal with a SAP business model. We use Automation Anywhere for logging into websites, entering data, moving information around, and sending emails to end users.

We are currently using a cloud deployment model.

The product has saved us a lot of time by reducing manually tasks, like entering data into Excel.

The object cloning strategy feature is the most valuable feature.

I would like the product to have more capabilities going forward.

We are not getting consistent behavior from the tool We would like to see this improved and the product more stable.

I would rate the technical support as an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It did not take more than a few minutes.

I would definitely recommend Automation Anywhere.