Automation Anywhere is an RPA tool. The use case is the same for all automation tools. In my most recent project, I've used it for three-way invoice matching and sending it to the accounts for verifications. The process was a mixture of IQ bot, which is an OCR from Automation Anywhere, and then other RPA bots.
I've used it in health care, where people apply for insurance applications to the insurance companies.
I have implemented more than five hundred use cases as of now.
It's helped manage repetitive processes. If there's a repetitive process, that is our best use case, and we can pitch to the customer that we can make it shorter. Then we save them man hours and increase their efficiency and accuracy.
For example, mostly in finance, when companies are preparing the salaries and have to prepare 1,500 payments for employees, sometimes they make mistakes, and they have to spend time on that.
We can instead provide a fixed format for the robot that they have to follow every month, and it saves a lot of time, a lot of man hours. One of our customers here in the Middle East has saved around 10,000 man-hours for a telecom company with the help of 50 to 60 robots initially, and now the same company is using around 4,000 robots now.
It helps save time on manual tasks. Compared to manual input, the results are much better, faster, and more accurate. For example, we have clients that can now easily process 10,000 invoices in one day. They have around 55 employees for that. We can augment the workload with a root, and if an employee wants to take a holiday or needs sick leave, other employees don't have to pick up the slack. Robots can input information into the system.
The era of automation has changed. It's time for hyper-automation now. RPA is moving from just handling repetitive tasks to allowing for AI and offering automation plus conversational AI. It will help me. Soon I will be able to use it in WhatsApp, and all of the information can be entered, and you can initiate appointments, et cetera. RPA plus conversational AI plus AI-enabled OCR systems will be the future.
There are a lot of great features, especially the IQ bot. It has very good accuracy on invoices. Previously, we were dependent on different software, and now, we can build in Automation Anywhere only.
It's easy to use for non-technical people. It's not rocket science. A business user might take a few weeks or a month to learn it, and then they will be quite capable of doing things themselves. A technical person may learn it in 15 days. Everything needs time; however, the learning curve is not so bad. A lot of things are available to help with learning. If someone spends one or two hours a day, they will pick it up. You can Google information or watch YouTube videos. There are hundreds of demos, materials, and more free of cost.
We do use CoPilot. We try to build a center of excellence with all customers, and we're giving them training around any bottlenecks they have.
The solution has helped us increase productivity. How much of an increase differs from customer to customer. Usually, it improves by 20% to 30%.
There's lots of integration possible. We've integrated with business tools like Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce. We can integrate easily into various workflows and APIs. We can access APIs with just a few clicks. We can also build out a UI-based integration.
It's helped us save time. Every customer saves a different amount of time, percentage-wise. Some can save hundreds of hours. I've had a client save 30% of their time over the past few years thanks to automation.
There is a dependency issue around the control room. If the control room is not working, the bots will not work. When that happens, we have to wait for the control room to go back up. Other tools in the market do not have this issue. If something is down, it means everything is down.
I've been using the solution for three years now. However, I've worked with automation in general for six years.
The solution is stable. It's good software. It works well.
Technical support is good; however, sometimes it takes a while to solve problems.
I previously was using UiPath. It's quite easy to use. They are both very similar solutions.
I was mostly involved in the infrastructure, so I was not directly involved in the deployment. My understanding is that it is not difficult. However, when we upgraded it, we had challenges.
There is some maintenance required. Normally, it works fine. Sometimes, there may be migrations or updates required. Only one or two people need to handle maintenance. We don't maintain bots. However, we just deploy them. Maintenance can be completed by the customer, and it might take five to six hours or one day at a maximum.
Compared to Microsoft, the solution is expensive. However, compared to UiPath, it's fairly low - maybe 25% less. Generally, within the market, the price is average. It's competitive.
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.
We're a reseller.