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Espressive Barista vs Samanage comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Automation Anywhere
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
661
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (2nd), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (2nd), Process Mining (1st), Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (1st), Agentic Automation (1st), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (2nd), AI Legal & Compliance (1st), AI Finance & Accounting (1st), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
Espressive Barista
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (38th), AI-Powered Chatbots (9th), AI-Agents for HR (2nd)
Samanage
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Help Desk Software (25th), IT Asset Management (16th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (25th), License Management (8th)
 

Featured Reviews

Venkat Sivaprakash - PeerSpot reviewer
Management Consultant at Accenture
Has significantly improved document-driven workflows and reduced processing time across finance and HR functions
Automation Anywhere has evolved significantly and upgraded itself to provide agentic AI and AI-based automation solutions for document automation. The product has matured considerably over time. We can create workflows that can call an API. We can include prompts in particular workflows for ChatGPT-related functions, connecting to an LLM and RAG to perform tasks. For document automation, modern features are available to train documents, ensuring high accuracy and repeatability over time. The system is very easy to use. I recently completed a course in document automation, typically designed for people involved in coding and technical aspects. Though I understand coding comprehensively, I don't do actual coding. The course was very accessible. Currently, extensive coding isn't necessary due to the hybrid model incorporating GenAI aspects, low-code, no-code capabilities, APIs, and numerous pre-built objects in Automation Anywhere. The features include GenAI-driven prompting methods and workflow creation capabilities. In these workflows, we can create decision boxes and call APIs without coding. We simply pull objects, drop them, connect them, and add minimal coding when needed. The most crucial aspect isn't coding but rather sizing the automation and fleshing out the details. Automation Co-pilot takes notes and performs automated analysis. It can extract details from videos, summarize conversations, and provide detailed information. During calls, it identifies instructions and performs tasks such as preparing reports and reconciliation. Automation Anywhere can also connect with Microsoft Co-pilot. Through Co-pilot, real-time operations can be executed, allowing direct interaction between vendors and automation through this component.
Jim Lobao - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager for End User Support Services at Five9
Has helped enhance our support ability, reduced our resolution time, and reduced our service desk costs
Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement. We haven't yet found anything that resembles true AI that can learn autonomously without human intervention. However, Barista does help us identify and address some of these areas, allowing my team to step in and create intents and responses to questions. When a user asks a question that Barista doesn't immediately understand, we can recognize the pattern, capture it, and link it to a common intent. This is highly beneficial for acquiring such data, but it's a reactive approach and still requires curation. Natural language processing still has some way to go. One of our challenges is that our internal employees haven't yet adopted a natural way of interacting with Barista. Getting people to be concise and to the point, rather than being verbose as if they were interacting with a human, has been an ongoing challenge. While they may feel comfortable being conversational in Slack, expecting a human-like response, Barista is a different entity. Barista isn't interested in their recent vacation; it just wants to know they're locked out of their account. So, some users may assume Barista understands their intent when they say, "I'm back from vacation and locked out of my account." Barista, however, may interpret this as a request for the holiday schedule. Therefore, we're gradually educating our users to adapt their communication style for better success with Barista. Conversely, we desire Barista to adapt its behavior based on the interaction, the language used, and the way people communicate. I wholeheartedly desire an AI that can continuously learn and adapt to our organization's evolving needs. This is the most challenging aspect, as it involves understanding our organization's terminology, procedures, and toolsets. We've made significant progress in this area. However, from an NLP standpoint, we still face challenges with our nearly 3,000 Slack channel users, each with their unique communication styles. People ask questions in various ways, and sometimes there are misunderstandings. They want to interact with us naturally. However, we still struggle with natural language processing. People don't always realize that the bot is a virtual agent designed to be concise and efficient. Sometimes, less is more. It's been a difficult transition for people to grasp that they're conversing with a virtual agent, not a human. They still expect human-like interactions, such as discussing their weekend or holidays or simply pasting screenshots of errors. However, the bot can't interpret screenshots. If they provide the error code and some context about the application, the bot can better understand the issue. So, the key challenge is bridging the gap between human expectations and the bot's capabilities in terms of natural interaction.
MC
Consult at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Detects incidents quickly, improves our SLA performance and solves issues faster
We mainly use it for incident logging. We'd like to add service request functionality, but we don't have the knowledge to configure the requests and the workflows properly. We'd like to integrate our workflows with the incident management, so we use it to manage our work better. We'd like to implement the service request feature. Right now, we just record everything as incidents. Some activities can take a long time, maybe one or two weeks. This makes it hard to maintain a good SLA, even if we work hard. So, response speed and workflow improvements.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The capacity to use Automation Anywhere in the cloud is the most valuable feature."
"If we count the integrations that we have done with Appian, which is where a lot of our savings is from, we are well over a million dollars in savings."
"The built-in features, such as the connector builder and AI development tools, are easily accessible, keeping the software up-to-date."
"Tasks now don't depend upon the unavailability of certain employees/colleagues to be completed. Also, bots can run all day long which also affects the overall budgets."
"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."
"We are having a very good experience with this product."
"Automation Anywhere is the best."
"It helps increase productivity by 20% to 30%."
"Given Barista's out-of-the-box content for common industry applications, the value is pretty good right from day one."
"The solution is available to support us instantly as required."
"We have the ability to alter phrases, create new phrases, or enhance phrases, or change paths. From the dashboard, we are able to get a lot of information we need about what people are asking, where they are dropping off from conversations, and where they do not get the information they need."
"I like Expressive Barista's integration with Microsoft Teams."
"When it comes to neutral language processing and conversational AI, it's very good, very solid... We all have different ways of speaking or writing in English and the application does a very solid job of recognizing what's being asked regardless of how it's being asked."
"Our department received about a 70% deflection rate, so that was really great."
"With respect to its natural language processing capabilities, it recognizes things that you wouldn't think it would recognize. Even in cases where it doesn't, it's pretty easy to go in and make the adjustments that are needed."
"Given the out of the box content for common industry applications, we got good value out of the solution right from day one."
"I would recommend Samanage from the IT support perspective because it's a great ticketing system and the only downside is the site shutdowns and the messy nature of the UI and UX."
"The solution has a great filtering feature."
"The best part is the ability to keep records, especially incident records. It's easy to use the tool to store data and monitor it."
"Samanage has not only taken over asset and inventory management, but it also has the ability to function across departments, making it easy for end users to submit help desk tickets for IT, HR, and Finance."
 

Cons

"For me at the very beginning when I started working with that, the technical setup was extremely complicated and extremely problematic, and we spent half a year to really make the software work."
"I would like better support. The technical support is mediocre. The support is sometimes really good, and sometimes it is really bad."
"In the debugging mode, it writes all the logs to text files, but it doesn't ever clean them up."
"Companies need to better justify the ROI before usage - otherwise, they might spend money on things unnecessarily."
"The installation piece was sort of complicated because we are new to the business."
"Logging into Automation Anywhere takes some time. I use it frequently, and each login currently takes some time. A reduction in this time would be helpful."
"AA sometimes poses compatibility problems with new web browser versions like Chrome."
"As we expand our components of the Automation Anywhere platform that we utilize, we need better connections between them."
"There aren't very many things that this product needs improvement on."
"What would make things easier is more detail, out of the box, about what is helping out of the box. We're struggling a little bit to get that data. We want more information about what Barista has brought in that the employees are using, out of the box. We want more visibility into the things that we ourselves haven't done the interaction for."
"My only comment would be if they wanted to use this as an IT service management tool, maybe they could think about Barista making tickets and having change management and problem management capabilities."
"Espressive Barista's natural language processing and conventional AI still have room for improvement."
"The knowledge management could definitely be improved."
"I would like to see the continued expansion of all of the automation capabilities."
"The reports provided by the solution are not customizable."
"I would like to see improvement to the out-of-the-box verbiage, with the questions going to the right place."
"The setting up process is not quite easy. It's quite difficult."
"There are definitely areas for improvement, but so far, so good."
"The system shuts down about once a month which is frustrating."
"We've had some problems with the system shutting down about once a month. It sometimes takes five or 10 minutes to start working again but it can also take hours."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the cost of Automation Anywhere as a six out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"Cost is the biggest area in need of improvement for Automation Anywhere. Annually it's $250,000. That's what deterred us right away."
"Automation Anywhere's pricing is significantly higher than other RPA solutions."
"Annually, we are paying almost one million reais."
"It is reasonable, but it can always be a little bit cheaper."
"I advise others that even as of right now, the setup cost and licensing cost to automate bots on Automation Anywhere is steep but it is worth the investment!"
"It costs up to $1,200 per license."
"Talk to your manager and try to procure an automation license for training. This will allow you to train people, so you can move to automation."
"The pricing isn't overly burdensome. It's going to be interesting to see how new models come in with new capabilities but, as it is, as a base system, it's pretty good."
"It is expensive. It's not a cheap thing."
"User-based licensing has been working well for us, and we believe we are deriving significant value from it."
"The solution is affordable."
"The price for the licensing is fair."
"It is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Construction Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business157
Midsize Enterprise83
Large Enterprise553
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise6
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It depends on your use case. Is it simply to automate a couple of processes? Is it to augment a human team? AA is ver...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
From my experience using AA tool, it depends on the applications that you want to automate, because there some applic...
How good is Automation Anywhere for RPA processes?
It is a highly preferred RPA tool. You can check my Automation Anywhere Review to know more.
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Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
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Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Information Not Available
SXSW, PRA Group, Fandango, Inteva Products, Amherst College, Tensator
Find out what your peers are saying about Espressive Barista vs. Samanage and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.