Automation Anywhere Reviews

We have so many use cases. One of them is in finance and accounts. We have customer billing portals where there are invoices and purchase orders. The bot goes through these and gives a roll-up of the billing numbers. It goes through each customer portal. One example of a customer is IBM. It goes to the IBM portal, it logs in with bot credentials to SAP Ariba, opens an invoice and matches the purchase order items with that invoice, line by line. It then posts that invoice for billing purposes in that customer billing portal.

With the above bot in place, the cash-collection process will actually improve.

One of our other use cases is that in our general ledger process, our accountant was actually doing cash-to-bank reconciliations. He was going into SAP, downloading the open items, and then going into the bank statements and comparing the balances. By using Automation Anywhere, we were able to automate this process and now a bot is actually working as a bookkeeper and it's trying to close all the open items of the previous month and the current month. It ensures that the unidentified balance between the bank and the SAP balances is zero.

That cash and bank reconciliation is part of our book-closing process. It used to take 20 days for books to be closed. It now takes between ten and 12 days to close the books. That's an eight-days reduction and that's because of only one activity we have automated. 

As we speak, we have automated general entries and the AR reconciliation process as well. The time needed for our month-end close has been reduced.

MetaBot is the most valuable feature. Other products have robotic functionality but MetaBot is a kind of functionality by which code is created. For example, if you log in to the SAP Ariba portal and the MetaBot functionality is used, then whenever anyone within our company has to use the SAP Ariba portal, they will not need to code the process again. It will become a drag-and-drop functionality so business users who do not have coding knowledge can drag and drop. Out of ten steps, that user is able to drag and drop six of them to MetaBot. He is left with only four steps that need coding. It saves a lot of time, but these functionalities cannot be achieved overnight. You have to invest time and energy, create a set of libraries.

There is room for improvement when this application is used in a Citrix-based environment.

Another thing I have noticed is that the previous version does not have log functionality. If an external audit is happening, those logs are not available to show what changes have happened in the application. But in the new version they improved it and now those logs are available. So when our external audit came, we were able to demonstrate that whatever changes are happening in the application are getting logged somewhere and saved for future reference. In the future, if any fraud happens, we'll be able to backtrack that fraud into that application.

Stability is good, but it totally depends on the kind of infrastructure the organization is using. If the organization using Automation Anywhere has a sound infrastructure, the stability is good. But if the infrastructure keeps changing, then the application becomes a little erratic.

Scaling is very easy. We were able to scale it up very easily.

For 2018, we thought of doing eight projects, but we completed 25. We're definitely planning to scale up, but scaling up does not depend on Automation Anywhere. It actually depends on our organization's strategic plan, and how fast we want to do it. As an organization, we want to be a tortoise in the journey, rather than being a hare. We want to have a consistent pace of implementation. Initially, we were like the hare and did some extra implementations, but now we are trying to match it up with the pace of the organization. Sometimes, too big a change can rock the boat, which we don't want to do.

But equally, we were able to demonstrate that this application can do wonders for the organization, help us to digitally transform the way we're working, and introduce a new way of working to any organization. Now, humans have started adopting bots as their new team members.

Automation Anywhere has a very nice support team, and it's just a call away. You don't have to log tickets, although that functionality is also available. I have a dedicated person at Automation Anywhere. I can call her at 12 am and she will pick up and ensure that the issue is prioritized and solved the next day for me. I like the way that is done. It doesn't cause me sleepless nights.

The initial setup is straightforward. They have a guidebook to help our IT infrastructure team to set it up. It was very easy. Anybody who does not come from a software background could read it and would be able to install the application and start using it. I have done it myself and I don't have a technical background. It's like downloading Microsoft Word and using it. It's very simple.

Our deployment took three months.

Our implementation strategy is PDCA: Plan, Do, Check, Act. We planned this implementation, and then did it. We then checked whatever was not done correctly in the first instance and acted on it to complete the implementation. We believe in having a very simple approach. We planned to do automation using Automation Anywhere and then we acted on it. Then we checked that out of, say, ten milestones, we were able to close seven of them. We acted on completing the other three milestones.

They're very flexible around pricing and licensing.

We evaluated:

• Automation Anywhere vs Blue Prism
• Automation Anywhere vs UiPath
• Automation Anywhere vs NICE 
• Automation Anywhere vs WorkFusion

However, the Automation Anywhere payment plan, the flexibility they have shown, and the customer service support were fantastic. At a customer service level, we don't want to buy a product and then struggle with the support they're providing.

Go slow. Don't rush into things. Try to adopt this implementation around the business strategy your organization has. Don't follow other organizations blindly. Have a digital policy around adopting this technology. Have a Chief Digital Officer, who is able to understand this and then internally sell it.

Don't go with a "big bang" approach, but rather, go with the right test use cases, and then try to actually solve a complex business challenge through this implementation. Don't implement it just for the sake of it. For example, when we implemented it our focus was not to implement robotics. Our focus was to use this technology to solve a complex business problem so that it makes a meaningful difference in the lives of people who are doing that process daily.

For example, now a bot is able to do customer billing for us and we are able to collect fast. It directly impacts the revenue. On the other hand, if the cycle closing month-end is fast, my CFO has more time for his final quarter closing. He has more time to go through what didn't go well, rather than struggling to close the books and not having time to do an analysis and get insights into what actually works. So we are trying to solve complex business challenges. We're not here to implement robotics.

We could use any technology but, up until now, this technology has helped us.

We have ten-plus users of this solution in the roles of bot manager and bot runner. There are eight people responsible for implementation and deployment and they are solution architects.

The primary use case is within anti-money-laundering: To take alerted cases and gather artifacts on multiple websites or applications, and then to consolidate those into a single file, in this case in OneNote, and provide that to the investigation team.

Primarily, this was all being outsourced because it's a lot of very tedious researching and collecting of the artifacts and consolidating them. Once that consolidation is done, those artifacts can be handed off in a structured format to another team which actually looks at the alerted information, at the details, to see whether it justifies the alert. They can make a decision based on the artifacts at that point.

In addition, with the solution going out there and being visible, we've had interest from the insurance side that wants to jump in. They've got several use cases that they would like to do. The capital markets group has use cases they would like to get involved, and the bank itself has use cases that it is just beginning now. It has ramped up a team already and they're going to start wanting to jump in too. Even groups like DevOps and some other groups that are more cost centers are wanting to jump in. Anything they can do to lower their costs helps out the bottom-line dollar for the whole company.

Looking at a company like ours, with so many different departments and processes and policies, and so many manual tasks, the use cases that we can have for both attended and unattended bots are pretty much countless.

There was a large number of individuals who were doing the data collection and artifacts collection, and they were actually a third-party. The solution improves our situation in terms of time, money, and resources. Plus, when you're dealing with a bank's information, there are additional complications of privacy concerns. If we can keep that in-house and have a bot or automated code take care of it, then there are fewer human eyes on the private information as well. It's a resource saver, it's a money saver, and it helps us with security, keeping more human eyes away from private or touchy information.

Its integration with source control is very refreshing. There could be a little bit more maturity around how to do some of the features, but not having to go outside the app, not having a separate set of procedures, allows you to check in and check out right from within the app. You can make edits and uploads and undo your checkouts. That integration is very nice.

It really does have a great dashboard. It has Bot Insight, it has MetaBots, and IQ Bots. It has so many features where it can read a file and loop.

Regarding the integration with source control, when there's a large number of operations the bulk operations need a little bit more maturity.

Also, regarding the UI, once you're in some of the screens there are fixed dialogues. They are a set size, so there's a lot of horizontal scrolls and vertical scrolls. Those are things that can be addressed in the future. The integration and having it inside the applications are far more important than these pesky complaints. But I get to a lot of scrollbars when I'm reading code. Sometimes I have to keep scrolling and moving up and down and it's a bit of a nuisance because I'm focusing more on navigating than on the actual logic that I'm trying to read through. A little bit more friendliness in the UI would help.

I came from OpenSpan and Pega and it's a different approach as far as the coding goes. One thing I feel limited in, in Automation Anywhere, is that sometimes they give these wonderful screens where you can do conditional loops or branching with the "If" statements and they'll have these built-in features for if a window exists or if a folder exists or if a process is running. But if I want to do something that is more purely business-related and is somewhat complex to write or is nuanced, I sometimes have trouble implementing that inside of the Automation Anywhere script. I feel limited at times with some of the looping and some of the branching and some of the ways to make procedure calls when I have a complex business issue. 

Where it's really great, where it's very simple, is for me to see if a window exists, to see if a process is running or if I'm waiting for a window to close. On the flip side, let's say we're in capital markets and they have a complex business rule for some of the analysis. I don't know how well the product would handle that case. I can't say that it can, I can't say that it can't, I just have concerns of how that would be done, at this point.

Coming from a couple of years of using a competitor, I do know exactly how I would do that in the other code and I do know it can handle it. One thing I can say is, even with that concern, I do know we can add scripts for JavaScript and Visual Basic scripts, so if we need to extend the product, we do have that option. I would like to see some other languages like Java or C# added to that as well, but I have questions about that. I may be able to do that through a MetaBot so that's a question I would have to ask support about, but I'm not there yet. Whatever limitations are there, I think we can still extend outside of the product.

If we're talking about the Control Room, those services stay up. We have them on a Windows Server, and I haven't seen it have an issue standing up, other than when we have some code that has gone rogue. When doing development and there has been a mistake in the code, we've had to redo the server a couple of times. Given that, I would say the stability is an eight out of ten.

We've had to change our configuration a couple of times. I'm only saying eight because I know there are scenarios that we haven't come up against and when we write code there are going to be times where Windows or the server has to be rebooted.

We did have one issue where it kept disconnecting in development but that appeared to be a VPN issue and we got help from Automation Anywhere on that.

Overall, it's very solid. I don't know that I could give a perfect score to any software out there.

The scalability is limited more by our money and our hardware than anything. The scalability really depends on how much RAM and how much network bandwidth we can do, how many servers we can apply. I know we can just keep adding to the cluster and I know clients could keep popping up. Since we're at the forefront of this, it has not been an issue. 

However, I do know that, within a year, when we start having multiple clients running and we have multiple developers in there, I may have a different response. But, again, I think we would just have to add more Control Room servers and more resources to the servers. We haven't hit a scalability limit issue yet.

The technical support has been very prompt. They've been very willing to help out and, in almost all cases, they've been able to provide an answer or solution relatively quickly. If anything, we have been the bottleneck because they have been more responsive and quicker than we were able to implement. They may want us to make a change or tweak, give us an answer within an hour, and we have to get permission or approvals to make that change in the environment it's in.

I think that's another huge plus for Automation Anywhere: their customer service and their customer relationship.

Our company didn't have any RPA enterprise-capable tools. I don't know what motivated them to learn about it. It may have come down from the executive level saying, "We want RPA, go figure out what it is." That's when they went and looked it up and started researching. They did like their competitive analysis of all the RPA software tools and platforms that were out there. They narrowed that down to ten, then to 5, and then there were three that they ended up with and did a matrix comparison. The matrix included risk, ROI, and cost and they came up with a weighted system. Automation Anywhere came out on top.

The initial setup is a complex process that they make very straightforward. Their installation is very quick. It was relatively painless. Any pain that we experienced was on our side because we had to make sure we had the right permissions or direct privileges, or that we had a firewall that was configured properly. We had a relatively complex site where we had clustered Control Rooms and we're using load-balancing. Within a day or so, we definitely have it standing up and, typically, within the same day, we have it configured. That's assuming we don't come into any complications on our side where we have to go ask for permission to get access to something or for a new certification. Overall, their installation is fantastic.

It took about two days to stand it up, to configure it, and then to smoke-test it, and make it productive.

The setup was prior to my coming aboard, by a couple of months. Our company had talked with IBM and Automation Anywhere, so the strategy was definitely to go through the documentation and to have an Automation Anywhere expert help with the development environment. After having meetings and reading the documentation, they had a hand-holding approach in development. Then they documented the steps. They went into the next environment, ran through their documentation, updating it because there were some changes in the clustering as well and the load balancing. They got that standing up and documented that. By that time, they felt comfortable in production. They were able to go through and repeat the steps without having to go back to Automation Anywhere or IBM for support.

We had to repeat the process here about two months ago and set up a new model and set up a new production environment and some more servers. That's where I get the couple-of-days timeline from. I was following their documentation with our internal guy who did it. Obviously, we had some guys that do database, some guys that do the Windows Servers, and then, myself; I was doing the actual client side. We're all on the phone at the same time taking care of it and it's less than a day.

In terms of the very initial setup, starting from the planning stage, I wasn't here at that time. I would say that it was about four to six weeks, but that's mainly because they had other stuff that was going on, so they were just having the weekly meetings until they got ready to try it. I do know they started talking in May and by the end of July, they had it done, but there were gaps where they weren't working on it in there.

The actual length of time may be about a week because we have to do a change request. We have to go through a procedure where we get approval from the business managers and the lines of business saying, "Okay, we're ready to go live. We're going to go ahead and push this into production," and we need to do backups and have a contingency plan. We then have a meeting and make sure everybody is okay with the current test results. Once all that's done, we can deploy in one night, have it smoke-tested, and have it running the next day.

For the actual deployment steps, you really only need one person but, typically, we will have the developer, a business person to do a smoke test, a Windows person and a database person; four people, only because we have separate roles here. Technically, it only takes one person, but developers don't have any permissions. But we need a developer in case something goes awry to help out the build person who's pushing it. If there's something they can't do, then they need the Windows person to handle any kind of Windows services. And if there's a database issue, you need a database person to run a script. Four would be max, but that's actually very typical in a lot of corporate deployments.

We're just getting into production right now and we're handling the first wave of production issues for getting it into production. Unfortunately, we got our code from a vendor that was helping out initially. Even though I've been here six months, I just got my hands on that code a couple of months ago, so we're having to do some cleanup.

We're really hoping by the end of next month or the month after to get a good idea of metrics on what our performance is, how fast we can work, the ROI, and the offset. We're almost there, but it's a little premature to determine ROI.

Regarding areas for ROI with this solution, the first one is that we will be able to terminate a contract for doing all this work that is going to be replaced with the bots. That immediately means lower legal costs, less overhead, less money that needs to be paid out. It's two or three bots that will be replacing multiple people. That's the initial type of ROI we can see.

It's a scale game, as well. The same code that we're doing is very applicable to a couple of other groups within compliance, within audits, which will be collecting very similar type of information from a couple of different apps. The ROI there is going to only increase because we'll have this reusable code that we can extend to other groups very quickly. I think that's why they chose this particular path. So hopefully, we'll be able to scale this ROI tremendously in the next 12 months.

Policies and procedures always change. The question is, can we be nimble enough? Can we build a platform that is solid enough, and have a pool that is talented enough to be able to produce bots in a cheap enough fashion to realize that ROI? So far, I don't see anything that would restrict that or cause that not to happen.

Automation Anywhere's pricing is competitive. That's obviously something that attracted our company to it. They're very well priced. I can't speak to let's say UiPath or Blue Prism. I do know Pega vs Automation Anywhere is somewhat comparable, but Pega also requires a lot more infrastructure and a lot more experience to get up and running. There's a bigger upfront cost to get Pega and they also want to push their case management, so even if you go RPA, they're going to want to get you to do the case management side of things as well.

The shortlist was Pega's RPA and UiPath. Blue Prism was in the top-ten but they were not in the shortlist because they never responded to calls. It was felt that if they couldn't respond to the sales calls how could they go forward?

Do your homework, talk with the team, get your questions, read through the documentation, and then decide on your platforms and make sure you really focus in on whether you need clustering and the load-balancing because those are going to make a big difference in your costs, your platform, and scalability. Get that worked out first.

Then pick a use case that is very quick and simple where you don't care about the ROI but what you want to do is make sure that you're testing your environment, that all your environments work, that you can do source control, that you can promote, that you can unit-test, that you can do regular tests, that you can do deployments. You can solve all those problems without the headaches of trying to figure out how to keep the business happy, how to keep the cost down, and just focus on making your environment solid.

Hopefully, that use case is something small enough that you can do within a month or two. Once it's deployed you can see how to support it, how you test it. Then you have time to focus on your standards. What are your programming standards? What are your deployment standards? What are your guidelines for coming up with change requests? Those things, ultimately, regardless of the code, are always going to be your success and failure points.

Bottom line, when you get down to it: The coding is not going to be the bottleneck anymore, it's going to be your procedures and policies around it, your project management. Focus on that.

Automation Anywhere has made it very easy for you to install, they've got the tools to make it very simple for you to create a quick, small application and to get out there. Again, forget the ROI the first time. Get it working, get everything panned out, and then, once you feel comfortable, pick a medium case or even an easy case but one that has a high ROI. Pick something that is very repeatable but that, if you can get a bot to do it, it saves you a lot of money. That would be your next use case. And that could even be your first one if you can't find something small and simple. Once you get the experience, you get it under your belt, move on to your more mature use cases.

The tool is flexible. The tool is very easy to pick up. I am concerned with some later cases though. When we get into some complex business logic or processes, I'm not sure how it's going to handle heavier business rules, so we'll have to wait till we get to that point and we'll have to hope that our customer relationship with Automation Anywhere will help us with more complex or tricky resources.

In our organization there are 16 of us using Automation Anywhere, and we'll be at 20 by the end of January. We'll see where that number goes. And that's only been the last six months. That's a big number to put on there, where we have a bunch of stuff going on and are trying to keep it in control and figure out our center of excellence and our standards and our practices. I know the other companies may go in and throw big numbers at it but we're at 20 and that number is only expected to keep growing. That's going to be limited by how many projects can be done, how much money there is for those projects, and how many people as resources we can find. Right now, our users are developers, testers, administrators, and we have a couple of project managers who have a limited administration view into it.

Maintenance depends on the bot itself. Initially, whenever we start with a bot, we always have one person dedicated to it. Depending on the what was found, one person for maintenance is usually fine and that usually dwindles. You'll typically end up with one person who has multiple bots or automations that they are maintaining, as time goes on. If anything, it's less than one person needed for maintenance.

Overall, I would rate it at eight out of ten. It's a very simple interface. It's a very straightforward approach. You can very quickly get in and get some proofs of concept going. It has logging and some reporting. Some of the things against it are when I compare it to where I came from before and some of the features that OpenSpan had. For a developer doing coding and debugging - developing the code for reusability and debugging the code - OpenSpan had some advantages that you can't easily overcome in Automation Anywhere. That would be the two points off in my rating of Automation Anywhere, not that I would give OpenSpan a ten either. I would probably give that an eight as well, for different reasons.

We use it for robotic process automation.

Several manual/repetitive/time-consuming processes were automated, giving back time to the process owner. In addition, for most of them, the process follows a single standard and additional controls were created.

• Easy to learn
• Easy to replicate knowledge

There are general performance issues which are probably being addressed in the latest versions. To clarify, we currently we don’t have any issues, but during our implementation we had cases for which we needed to open tickets with the AA helpdesk.

The stability is very good.

Scaling is a big job, but it is completely scalable. A whole new team/department needs to be created in order to develop and monitor robotic process automation.

Technical support is very good, quick, and effective.

The initial setup was very complex. We had several issues when trying to connect the different components, due to our firewalls. They were eventually solved by our internal IT and the AA technical team.

Deployment took three months.

Our implementation strategy was teamwork among our IT, the end users, and the software provider's technical team.

Pricing is too high for small-scale groups. The Control Room yearly fee is high, making it difficult to break even.

A case study was developed. We evaluated Automation Anywhere vs Blue Prism as an alternative. I wasn't part of the business case, so I did not make the final call as to why we went with AA over Blue Prism.

Put together a solid strategy to develop and maintain automations. Also, work closely with internal controls and internal auditing.

In our organization, we have four developers using it. In terms of how extensively the solution is being used, we have automated 24 macro processes and many more are in the pipeline.

Right now, we have about 15 to 18 use cases, from finance to project management assistance and business operations.

We are in the journey of fully embracing digital transformation, but still far from goal.

Even though we are saving some work hours, we face a new problem that is sort of a backwards problem: Now, we have the risk a person who used to do the job in eight hours taking six hours to produce the same amount of output, instead of producing more or working on new tasks.

It automates the simple, mundane tasks that people hate to do. This is pretty much the same with other RPA software. One differentiation point that we assumed against other competitive products was the ease of implementation, which we haven’t really validated. We have seen other tools, but we did not do any heavy investigation into what the reality was. So far, we are happy, or at least okay, with the way things work.

In terms of features to add, they seem to have good grip on the future to come, for example, they already have incorporated cognitive technology called IQ Bot which translates semi-structured data into structured data.  We have not tried it yet though.Working with this vendor can sometimes be challenging because their service quality on simple business operations like invoicing could be bad. I have received wrong invoices several times. Maybe this is a problem only with their new branch offices.

We’re having a problem with the maintenance. Failure reasons may vary, but a typical one is the timing difference of interacting systems. Sometimes, the interacting systems don’t respond fast enough to what the robot expects. If something is not good, it fails. We had to go through a large optimization phase where we had to find the right timing of how long the robot should wait. If you ask a person from Automation Anywhere, probably the right way to cope with this is to wait for a window to transition before moving on to next step, which you don’t want to do for every single step because that would put additional coding on our software. Therefore, that is a difficulty that we are having. When I discussed it with an Automation Anywhere representative, he said it is quite unusual having to spend so many resources on maintenance and troubleshooting. His recommendation was that they could do a code review for us, which is nice and hopefully it works. 

We are just in the path. This year, we are trying to do ten times more than last year. We are trying to do about 100 automated processes this year. I have confidence that the solution is able to cater our needs.

We just started using their technical support. Up until now, we were working only through our IT partner. The technical support that we have received so far has been accurate and fast.

We were not involved, so I’m not sure. I heard that it was fairly easy. 

We are right in the process of it. We are leaving it to the external IT partner who we used because they are the ones who programmed the previous bots. They would do the best job for migration.  

It is negative right now. What we are expecting, for one bot creation, is a six-month turnaround for getting ROI, but that is only the developer man-hour versus actual time saved. If we include all the licenses and launch activities that we have done, we are far from getting a ROI. It will probably take another one to two.

Before we did the actual implementation, we ran some PoCs with a consulting firm and they recommended Automation Anywhere, which matches our business model and the way we wanted to progress. 

It is not so much about the tool. It’s probably not even about the company, Automation Anywhere. It’s more of the internal issues that a colleague would encounter. There is only so little that can be solved by RPA. The real solution is in the BPR and other transformations that they need to go through. If they are expecting this to be a silver bullet for something, it’s not. They need to go through the due diligence of automating the right processes right.

We are a service department which handles toys and games. Currently, we are at the phase of selecting a representative from HR, Administrative, Accounting, and IT to develop our day-to-day operations. We have not implemented the solution yet. 

We have done the RPA for the tasks. We have developed it, but haven’t reached the stage of implementation yet. The PoC is done, and now, we are in the development.

Automation can reduce tasks and actual working hours. It ensures accuracy. Humans errors are inevitable when humans do tasks, so this issue will disappear. 

We looked into three vendors originally, but we thought that a control room, or the control feature, would be the most important aspect. It is why we chose this vendor. 

Yes, the support from Automation Anywhere has room for improvement. Because we have contracts with Deloitte, and now that Automation Anywhere has its Japan office, things would be smoother if we could pose questions directly to their Japan office regarding “Bottasan” and FAQs.

As far as stability is concerned, it is fairly stable. However, it does stop occasionally, so there is some instability. 

We only have four machines for the development and actual work. Once we are done with the development, we will implement it in groups. At this point, we don’t know about its scalability yet.

We are getting technical support as a consulting service. Automation Anywhere Japan is doing the technical part of “Bottason” for us. We are receiving our support as such, but as far as the daily incremental technical issues, we ask Deloitte for help.

We received the manual, so our IT department set it up. I believe it was relatively easy.

We haven’t seen any returns yet.

I would rate this product as a five out of ten. It is partly because our process has not progressed much, and also what I said about the support. We get the support from the company we have a contract with, but I would like to see more worth in the new Automation Anywhere Japan.

It’s good as an RPA company. For an organization who is looking to do some business renovation, the solution can work well depending on its purpose and usage. You can also expect good scalability. However, I wouldn’t recommend it to those who just want to increase their number of bots.

Foreign Language: (Japanese)

この製品を主にどのように使用していますか？また、パフォーマンスはどうですか？

我々の会社自体が、グループのシェアードサービス部門を担当しています。

人事、総務、経理、ITとあり、それぞれの部門から代表者を選んで、それぞれの部門の業務を実際、AAで開発をしているという段階です。ただ、まだ実装はしていないです。

業務自体の開発はAAでしてるんですけど、実装には至ってないですね。

POCが終わって、開発を貯めてるということですね。

からの感想でもいいんですが、当ソリューションのどんな機能に最も価値があると思われましたか？ 

製品を選ぶ時にもともと3社ほど対象にしていました。将来の開発、実装を見据えた中でやっぱりコントロールルームというか統制機能ですよね、そこが重要になってくると考え、選択しました。。

どのようなメリットがあるとお感じですか？特に御社の業務処理がどう改善できるとお考えですか？

自動化によって業務短縮ができること、時間的には拘束が減るっていうのと、あとは正確性のところです。業務を人がやるとどうしてもミスが出てしまうところは、その辺はなくなってくるかなと思います。

当ソリューションの安定性に関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか？

安定的だとは思います。たまには、止まったりっていうところがあったりするので、その辺で一部不安定なところがあるかなと思っています。

当ソリューションの拡張性に関してはまだ印象はおありでないですね？

今はまだです。開発機で4台とか、実機で4台なので、もう少し自分たちの業務がきっちり開発出来てからグループ内で展開しようと思っています。今の段階では見えてないですね、そこまで。

テクニカルサポートを利用したことはありますか？ある場合は、サポートをどのように評価しますか？

テクニカルサポートという…そうですね、コンサルティングは受けてます。テクニカルなところでもAutomation Anywhereジャパンから”ボッタソン”を提供頂いたりしています。

そういうサポートを受けてますが、日々の細かいテクニカルなことは、パートナー企業に訊いていますね。

初期セットアップには御社も関わってされましたか？セットアップは簡単、それとも複雑でしたか？どういった意味で簡単、あるいは複雑でしたか？

セットアップは一応マニュアルを貰って、弊社のITがセットアップをしたというところで、そうですね、比較的簡単な方だったと思います。

たまに止まるという安全性では改善が必要かと思いますが、将来他にも改善して欲しい点や欲しい機能などはありますか？

そうですね、Automation Anywhereからのサポートという所で、契約しているパートナー企業がありますが、－今AAジャパンが出来たので、そこでも”ボッタソン”以外の質問とかFAQとかそういうのは受けてもらえるとより、スムーズに運用できると思っています。直取引ではありませんが、我々は将来、AAの台数拡大したいという思い、目的はAAジャパンとも一緒だと思いますので。

ここまでで投資対効果っていうのはどうでしょう？

投資対効果はほぼないですね。残念ながら。

ベンダーをお選びになる際、最も重要だと思われる条件は何ですか？

今はやっぱり運用と育成の所ですかね。運用体制を我々できっちりやらないといけないのですけど、そこに関わって来るガイドラインとかも紐づいて来ると思いますし、あとは育成のところもどんどん数を増やしていかないといけないかなと思いますので。

他のベンダーは検討されましたか？最終的に当ソリューションを選択した理由は何ですか？

やっぱりコントロール機能というか、統制機能というか、そこが将来的に重要になってくるかなと思ったので、そこでAAが一番しっかりしていたと考えたからです。

このソリューションに1から10の評価（10＝最高）を付けるとしたら、どのように評価しますか？

5自分達がなかなか進めてないというのがあるんですけど、サポートの所ですかね。今は契約先とはあるんですけど、Automation Anywhereジャパンができたことによるメリットを強調したい。

このソリューションあるいは同様なソリューションを探している、同社あるいは他社の同僚の方に、どんなアドバイスをなさいますか？

RPAの企業としては非常にいいと思ってるんですけど、あとその目的というか、使い道とで業務改革を伴うような企業であれば、非常に有効性もあるだろうし、将来的な拡張性も期待できると思います。ただ単に、ボットを一杯作りたいという所に対しては勧められないかなと。

It’s mainly for back office tasks, such as accounting and supply chain management (SCM). Currently, we are implementing RPA for these back office tasks. 

We are not just doing RPA. We are tackling it along with the review of a business process as a set, improving the process and automating simultaneously.

The most valuable feature is that a job by RPA can be done three or four times faster
than a human without human error.

E.g., when the robot handles tasks, there are triggers. It could be triggered when it receives an email, when it finds a file, when the specified time comes, etc. As there are many outside points of contact, it’s hard to understand how they are prioritized when a trigger priority is the same. Since I wouldn’t know which trigger is being prioritized unless I actually give it a try, I want a clear understanding of it. 

Also, please make it possible to set a trigger with the control room. 

As far as the stability is concerned, some unknown errors do occur. While I am sure the Automation Anywhere is working to improve this, there is room for improvement. 

It is very scalable. The structure is a client server, so we can expand the environment quickly, if needed.

Currently, we are getting it through a vendor from who we purchased a license. So,
when we have questions, we contact them, then they contact Automation Anywhere’s headquarters. We always get answers, but it is a bit time consuming. Here is where I think some improvement can be made. 

We were given the manuals, so we did it ourselves. It was not hard or challenging. We
did receive support, but there were no issues. 

This initiative is not something that we expect will have a quick, huge impact. We are still in the process of expanding and penetrating the solution. We will enter the phase where we see targeted impact shortly. In order to achieve this, we would like to see the support by Automation Anywhere reinforced along the way. 

We did look at two or three other solutions. In our company, the people in each business unit would be creating robots rather than the IT programmers or specialists. With that in mind, Automation Anywhere can be user-friendly and simple since business unit staff can even create robots, and that’s one of the big reasons that we chose it. The other reason is that we wanted to have control and governance over the task assigned to robots. Those two points made Automation Anywhere’s structure a great match for our needs.

We have started using the solution overseas, and in some areas, including Asian Pacific, robots are made by the local staff. When they have questions, they want to ask questions in their native language, but the support is not available in some of the languages as of now. I’m hoping these language improvements will be something improved going forward

In regards to advice, if looking to reform your business process and automate in the same way as we did, they would need something appropriate. We chose Automation Anywhere. If you have a lot of simple tasks, you may want to process with speed and obtain something else. There are different tools for different purposes. Get the right tool and think about the way to do it for whatever you are aiming for.

Foreign Language: (Japanese)

この製品を主にどのように使用していますか？また、パフォーマンスはどうですか？

主に会計系、SCM領域のバックオフィス業務を主にRPA化しています。

当ソリューションはどんな点において最も役に立ちますか？

人の3-4倍くらいの速さでミスがなく業務が自動化される点と考えています。

当ソリューションを使用するとどのようなメリットがありますか？御社が機能する上
でどのような改善をもたらしましたか？

単なるRPA化だけではなくビジネスプロセスの見直しもセットで取り組んでいます。
プロセス改善も同時にできています。

当ソリューションの安定性に関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか？

安定性で言うと原因不明のエラーというのは多少発生しています。この点については
改善の余地があると考えています。

当ソリューションのスケーラビリティに関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか？

拡張性は非常にあると思います。クライアントサーバー型なので、増加したい部分を
必要に応じて迅速に拡張できると考えています。

このソリューションにテクニカルサポートを利用したことはありますか？ある場合
は、サポートをどのように評価しますか？

今は弊社がライセンスを購入しているベンダー経由でサポートを受けています。確実
に回答は頂けていますが、時間を要する部分もあり改善する余地があると考えていま
す。

初期セットアップには関与されましたか？セットアップは簡単、それとも複雑でした
か？どういった意味で簡単、あるいは複雑でしたか？

マニュアルを頂き自分たちで実施しました。セットアップは難しくなかったです。支
援も頂きましたが特に問題はありませんでした。

当ソリューションの次のリリースに含まれていたらいいなと思うのはどのような機能
ですか？また、それはなぜですか？

例えばロボットがタスクを動かす際にトリガーがいくつかある。メール、ファイル、
時間を指定など。トリガーの優先度が一緒の場合、これらトリガーの中でどれが優先
されるのかがやってみないとわからないところがあって、そういった所がクリアにな
っていると良いです。また、トリガーをControlRoomで設定できるようにしてほしい。
こういった点を含め、管理ツールの機能がもう少し強化されると良いです。

どのようなROIが見いだせていますか？データを提供してくださいますか？

初期段階から大きな効果を出そうという取り組みではないと考えており、現在は社内
にRPAを浸透させている段階です。これから狙った効果が出るフェーズに入ると思って
います。Automation Anywhereさんのサポートもより強化して頂く必要があると感じ
ています。

他にどのようなベンダーを検討していましたか？最終的に当ソリューションを選択し
た理由は何ですか？

他に2つ、3つ検討しました。弊社では、ITプログラマーやスペシャリストというより
も、業務部門の人にロボットを作成する前提です。Automation Anywhereはユーザー
に対して非常にシンプルで分かりやすく、業務部門の人でも作ることができるという
ことが一つ大きかったと思います。もう一つは、ロボットがやる仕事、タスクをコン
トロールするガバナンスの観点がありました。これら2点から、Automation Anywhere
のストラクチャーは弊社のニーズに合っていたため、選定しました。

このソリューションに1から10の評価（10＝最高）を付けるとしたら、どのように評
価しますか？そしてその理由は何ですか？

8

海外でも利用を開始しており、APACの現地スタッフが開発しています。質問がある場
合、現地の言葉で問い合わせをしたいのですが今はそれができない言語もあります。
こういったところで今後改善もあると思いますので、期待も込めて残りの2点。

他の会社でソリューションまたは同様の他のソリューションについてリサーチしてい
る同僚の方がいたら、どのようなアドバイスをすると思いますか？

色々なやりかたがあって私共みたいに業務プロセスを改革するのとセットで進めると
いうことであれば、…我々はAutomation Anywhere を選択しました。

本当に単純な業務が沢山あって、スピードを持ちたい、出したいというのであれば、
違うツールかもしれません。狙う業務形態にあったツールは変わります。

何を狙おうとしているのかによってツールは選ぶべきですし、やり方も考えるべきだ
というようなことは申し上げるかなと思います。

RPAs are often used in administrative processes, but we have applied it to our master data management for manufacturing. At manufacturing plants, there are not a lot of administrative processes. However, there are many tasks dealing with what we call our master data, so that’s where we have implemented RPA, to collect, search, as well as register the data.

In our efforts to efficiently manage the master data at our factories, the biggest benefit is the fact that we have been able to rein in what was an increasing number of engineers who were needed. We have been able to do so on the order of some 100 people, so that’s a major result.

The most valuable feature is the ability to define the RPA tasks automatically. There is a major benefit in the fact that it can be done without human effort. As long as the instructions are error-free, the bots will make sure it gets done. That’s where we see a big advantage.

I have submitted requests to Automation Anywhere regarding feature expansion. There are two major issues. The first is that I would like to see functionality that will improve development efficiency.  The second is to be able to schedule the management of bots. I asked for functionality that would reinforce the scheduling.

One of the characteristics of RPA - and it really can’t be helped - is that it is easily influenced by the application that works along with it. This is something we need to be aware of. For example, we had an occurrence where it stopped due to an error because the application it works with had been changed and there was a lack of communication with the IT department.

The capabilities for developing similar tasks are there and it's relatively easy to do. However, to accomplish that we’d need a group of IT engineers. That’s where we are not up to par.

We do utilize Automation Anywhere’s technical support via our partner. Since Automation Anywhere's Japan office was only recently opened, it seems the support has not been as good as support for other package applications. I feel that we haven’t been able to fully take advantage of the support yet.

It’s important not to just implement bots just for the sake of implementing them but to think about how bots can be used to make processes more efficient.

The reason we chose Automation Anywhere is that it’s easy to develop with it. It also covers the widest range of functionality and it is enterprise oriented. Furthermore, a group in Toshiba started using it too, which made it possible for us to share information with one another. That’s why we decided on Automation Anywhere.

The setup itself did not take that much time and effort. In general, members of our IT staff do the actual setup, so we had no issues with it.

We do see ROI in the sense of staff reductions. However, if we are to apply it to the general administrative area, I think it’s not as easy to get a real ROI.

In our line of work, we don't have that many simple administrative processes. I’m sure companies like banks have enormous numbers of such processes, but in our company, our staff would spend less than an hour per day on delivery slips. If we got RPA and a bot, that would end up being more expensive. 

Foreign Language: (Japanese)

この製品を主にどのように使用していますか？また、パフォーマンスはどうですか？

一般的にRPAと言われると事務処理に使われるところなんですけど、我々は製造のマスター管理と言われているところに適用しました。製造業で実際の工場の運営ではですね、事務処理的な要素は非常に少ないんですね。ただ、マスターと呼ばれているデータを扱う業務は非常に多くあって、そこでのデータの収集検索だとか登録という業務のところにRPAを適用しました。

当ソリューションはどんな点において最も役に立ちますか？

RPAのタスクと呼ばれている部分ですけれど、その定義が自動でできる、人の手をかけずに自動でできるという所に大きな効果を感じています。で、さらに指示する情報さえ間違えなければ、ロボットが確実にこなすという所でも、大きな効果を得ています。

当ソリューションを使用するとどのようなメリットがありますか？御社が機能する上でどのような改善をもたらしましたか？

工場の先ほどのマスターデータの運用の効率化という意味では、エンジニアの増員抑制ですね。百人規模の増員抑制が可能となったと言うことが一番大きいと思います。

当ソリューションの安定性に関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか？

安定性ですか？RPAの特徴と言うか、構造上やむを得ないんですけど、相手のアプリケーションの影響を受けやすいというところではその注意が必要だなと感じています。

そういったアプリケーション側の影響で安定性の問題が発生したことがあるということですか？

IT部門で連携が不十分で相手アプリケーションの変更があったのが情報がなかったりすると、エラーをして止まるということがありました。

当ソリューションの拡張性に関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか？

考え方だとか、類似作業への展開は比較的容易だと思います。ただ、それを実現する上でITのエンジニアの部隊を育成していくと、そこがちょっと今の所、なかなかうまくできていないところかなと思っています。

このソリューションにテクニカルサポートを利用したことはありますか？ある場合は、サポートをどのように評価しますか？

パートナーさんを経由してAutomation Anywhereのテクニカルサポートを受けているんですけれども、日本法人がまだ立ち上がったばかりということもあって、若干他のパッケージアプリケーションに比べると、まだ弱いのかなというのは感じています。

感じているというか、まだ十分、我々も利用できていないんじゃないかなとは感じています。

初期セットアップには関与されましたか？セットアップは簡単、それとも複雑でしたか？

セットアップ自身はそんなに手間がかかったとは思ってないです。基本、我々のITのメンバーがセットアップを実施していますので、さほど問題はなく、セットアップはできました。

テクニカルサポートと安定性の改善点以外に、当ソリューションの次のリリースに含まれていたらいいなと思うのはどのような機能ですか？

先ほどの発表でもちょっと最後に付け加えましたが、Automation Anywhereに対するさらなる機能の拡張をお願いしたいです。そこは大きく2つほどあって、開発効率を上げるための工夫が欲しいと、いうようなことと、あとボットのスケジュール管理ですね。スケージューラじゃなくて、スケジューリングをしたいというところを機能として強化して欲しいということをお願いしました。

RPAをお使いになって投資対効果は見られていますか？

先ほどの省人化という意味では非常に効果があったという風にみています。ただ、一般の事務職的なところに、投資してやろうとすると、なかなか投資対効果で良い結果を得られるのは難しい状況もあります。

事務関係では難しいのはどうしてですか？

我々の会社の社員がやっている業務は単純な事務処理っていうのが少ないんですよね。証券会社や銀行だったりすると、膨大な事務処理があると思うんですけど、例えばスタッフの調達部門であっても、調達の伝票の処理をするのは、本当に一日のうち、一時間もないくらいなんですよね。その作業をRPAに1台、ボットに1台にしたら、ボットの方が高くついちゃうとかですね。

Automation Anywhereの前に別のソリューションをお使いでしたか？

RPAを導入する上では、代表的な5つのパッケージの検討を合わせて行いました。

Automation Anywhereを選ばれた理由は何ですか？

Automation Anywhereを選んだ理由はですね、開発する上での容易性が結構高かったということと、あとエンタープライズ志向と言われることで、機能的に網羅している範囲が広かったなというところ、でさらに、東芝、会社のグループの中で導入を始めたところがあったので、情報を共有しながら進められるかな、という点でAutomation Anywhereに決めました。

ベンダーを選ぶ上で最も重要な条件は何ですか？

機能とサポート体制、この2つが大きな…

実際に導入をしてやっていくと、サポート体制はまだまだ。これはRPA全体ですけど。

このソリューションに1から10の評価（10＝最高）を付けるとしたら、どのように評価しますか？そしてその理由は何ですか？

8ぐらいですかね。

サポート体制の強化というところと、もう少し機能が欲しい、先ほど言ったような。

このソリューションあるいは同様なソリューションを探している、同社あるいは他社の同僚の方に、どんなアドバイスをなさいますか？

RPAを、ロボットを導入するということでなくて、業務の効率化にロボットをどう使うかということを考えて進めることが大事だなと思います。

TestingAnywhere is an Scriptless Automation Tool which is easy to learn and implement. A lot of features present in this tool are effective during automation. Test cases are created using one of five methods (web recording, object recording, image recognition, Smart recording, editor). These test cases are recorded, saved, and can be edited and enhanced. 

One more feature that is very unique is the conversion of Automated TestCase in to Executable (EXE) files so that testers can run them on remote machines too. 

We wanted to run the Automated TestCase prepared in TestingAnywhere from another tool. So the *.exe file came in handy.

I haven't gone deep in the tool, but so far it looks good.