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IBM Datacap vs IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
6.8
Number of Reviews
666
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 (2nd), AI Procurement & Supply Chain (1st)
IBM Datacap
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (7th)
IBM Robotic Process Automat...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (7th)
 

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.
DeekshithShetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Development Senior Specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
High-accuracy document processing with easy integration and good image enhancement
The OCR extractions are very good, almost 100% accurate now. The integration with other tools is very easy, with inbuilt actions to configure and directly export to multiple depositories. It is also good at image enhancement, including the removal of lines, which is helpful in processing and automation and ensures very little user intervention, thus saving time.
MA
Business Solutions Manager at valleysoft
Has improved analytics and reporting but needs better integration and support
To improve IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for the next release, there should be more integration with external systems, and more integration with IBM's data and AI platforms is needed. There is an AI part in IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for Machine Learning, but IBM has another platform specifically for data and AI, which is integrated right now. More features are hoped for in the future.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Our ROI has ranged from thousands to hundreds of thousands, depending on the type of process being automated."
"The graphical user interface (GUI) is very useful, since I don't know any coding languages."
"It improved on 40+ % of manual effort which was a pain point for project budget and Project team SMEs."
"Now they have a nice tool that is mostly stable with most of the features I could want being covered in the functionality of the product."
"You do not need to have IT skills. I come from a finance background, so I can attest to the fact that you do not need IT skills to use Automation Anywhere to leverage it on your teams."
"Automation Anywhere has minimized this risk, saving costs related to rectification and improving compliance adherence to avoid penalties in a tightly regulated industry."
"Automation Anywhere consistently ranks at the top, matching our vision and strategy for implementing transformative solutions."
"Datacap as compared to other products is a cheaper product, the stability and all the features are great, and the user-friendly features look good and you have less customization."
"At the forefront of my thoughts, the standout feature of this intelligent product is its remarkable capability. This project we're currently engaged in revolves around streamlining workflows within both our company and the customer's company. It entails handling information from various documents with diverse formats and types, even when they contain the same data. The ability to connect this information with the appropriate database and recognize it irrespective of the format or source is an extremely valuable feature. Moreover, leveraging machine learning is crucial since our customer deals with an extensive archive of over five million documents. Machine learning can significantly alleviate the backlog by becoming well-versed in various scenarios they might encounter during their work once we've completed our application."
"The second thing that I like about Datacap is the fingerprint capture which is easy to configure on Datacap. From the form of the document, if a document is redundant in the same department, we can configure the capture based on the form of the documents"
"It helps companies figure out how to use advanced imaging techniques, processes, best practices, and other tools."
"It's a stable product; we've seen other capture products on the market and our view of Datacap is that it's best-of-breed."
"There's something that's very unique about IBM DataCap. It provides me with a good solution for extracting, reading the QR codes, and scanning them. In this stage, we are working in a UIT phase before implementing this protocol in all our branches. From my initial observation, IBM DataCap is good, it is not working too fast, but in a good manner for us."
"Datacap has all of the features that we need."
"The OCR extractions are very good, almost 100% accurate now."
"This product definitely helps with cost optimization and brings a lot of optimization to repetitive processes."
"I am satisfied with the technical support."
"We are aiming, by the end of the year, to record about $10,000,000 in savings just by automating the processes that we have identified so far."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"IBM Robotic Process Automation has greatly improved the organization by improving the speed of performance, as the speed of the robot is estimated to be 20 times faster than the human being."
"The solution's ease of use is its most valuable aspect."
"The feature I found most valuable is the TCO."
"The solution’s performance is good."
 

Cons

"The scheduling is a little difficult at times."
"AI would enable improved automation and faster training times that would be reduced from one month to one week."
"It is not able to use OCR effectively and has limited usability."
"There's potential for Automation Anywhere to integrate conversational types of tools and AI into their tool set, which would be really valuable."
"The scheduling is a little difficult at times. Rather than setting up individual instances, it would be really nice if we had the ability to set repetitive jobs easily. Right now, if you want a job to run every 15 minutes, you have to schedule it a lot of times. I'd rather have the ability to just say 'run every 15 minutes.'"
"We are still hoping to see improvements in its ability to have the client answer automatically and reconnect when Windows updates are applied."
"In the A2019 community edition, while running its taking time to run RPA bots and having few bugs related to IQ Bot server connectivity and other things."
"The main request I have for Automation Anywhere is to focus more on technical demonstrations."
"Its weaknesses are primarily tied to the lack of available resources and expertise in the market to effectively support and provide solutions and services to each customer for seamless implementation."
"IBM's Problem Management Report team isn't that effective. They're not helpful at all in some cases, and it can take two to three weeks to escalate to a higher PMR level."
"When I scan a document in Datacap that has a watermark or the document is a little distorted, the image output is poor. It either becomes completely black, or there is so much distortion that we cannot read the numbers or the addresses mentioned in the POD. When we scan a document, we expect the output to be at least 95 percent accurate."
"Its weaknesses are primarily tied to the lack of available resources and expertise in the market to effectively support and provide solutions and services to each customer for seamless implementation. Expertise in this specific product is rare throughout the market. One key reason is the product's limited downloads. Additionally, archiving solutions are often perceived as complex and challenging, dissuading many companies from venturing into this domain. Consequently, partners who specialize in archiving solutions are always seeking straightforward, uncomplicated options that are easy to manage and meet customer expectations."
"IBM needs to improve on scanning and reading accuracy for unstructured documents. Additionally, an important missing feature is the ability to merge documents and present data across different UI screens."
"Reporting and analytics seem to often be something of an afterthought. With Datacap, they've started building out some dashboards, but one thing we hear from our clients a lot is, "Well, gee, we really love reports. What Datacap has is not really helpful. We'd like something better. We'd like more dashboards." That's one area where we've seen some feedback that the product could do better."
"The interface can be more intuitive."
"Recognition between certain numbers and letters could be improved. Sometimes this solution misreads five with an "S" for Singapore."
"One of the things I would definitely like to see is more of the machine-learning and cognitive capabilities."
"IBM Robotic Process Automation should be more stable."
"My impression of the support experience is lower than middle. I would rank it as that. They need to improve their support by having more experienced level one support."
"I would like to improve the efficiency of this solution and the Surface Level Agreement."
"Capturing GUI operations is very easy, but capturing IBM Logistics automation is hard. It does not always work with browsers or automotive applications like SAP."
"We would like a decreased need for customer support."
"We would like more focus on understanding AI and how it can be used to manage exception handling."
"The pricing of IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Initially, they charged a premium, but now the rest of the vendors have increased their overall pricing and Automation Anywhere is not that high at this time. It's pretty viable."
"The control room access gives the ability to create different roles, which helps when purchasing additional licensing."
"Considering the cost, it is a bit high, but worth the price because the output accuracy is high."
"I think it's $5,500 per license."
"They all are very competitive today. At the end of the day, it boils down to the negotiations that happen and what type of partner you are."
"AA comes at a more affordable price than the other tools."
"The solution's pricing is pretty decent."
"The licensing needs to be made simpler or shortened."
"This solution is the most expensive in the market."
"You save a lot of time and money, but the benefit is you have people who are able to run the systems, check to see if there are any errors at all, and there are a lot less errors than a human system."
"IBM could offer more competitive pricing. This would allow them to attain more users. Some of our clients are considering moving to a different solution called Encapture which is similar but offers more competitive pricing."
"Pricing depends on how much we use it. We pay per bulk quantity. We pay as you go. Therefore, it sort of depends on our usage of it."
"We were using the User Value Unit licensing, which means we get charged per active user of the system, and if I'm not mistaken, we also had it for the rule runner service. They had a PVU license model, which is a processor value unit. For each process that we have in our system, we pay a certain amount of money. We found the pricing to be quite steep. It was really an expensive solution in comparison to Kofax, which had a different licensing model and was actually cheaper overall because they charge per page and not per user and per process."
"It is an expensive solution."
"This solution offers seamless integration with other enterprise products, which is my area of responsibility, focusing on government sector projects. Larger enterprise projects don't pose problems. It might be suitable for small businesses as well."
"This solution offers seamless integration with other enterprise products, which is my area of responsibility, focusing on government sector projects. Larger enterprise projects don't pose problems. It might be suitable for small businesses as well."
"There is a free trial for one month, so you can use it to run your payloads or proof of concept. After that, you can pay for the license on a monthly or annual basis."
"The pricing is reasonable for this solution."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"IBM RPA is cheaper than other tools."
"I rate the pricing ten out of ten. So, the pricing is very good for me."
"The product has a yearly licensing fee."
"The product is reasonably priced compared to other tools."
"IBM licensing is annual and based on Virtual Processor Cores (VPC). This provides flexibility as part of the containerization environment."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Government
8%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business161
Midsize Enterprise85
Large Enterprise561
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
 

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Datacap?
Pricing is in the mid-range but could be more affordable, rated at four point five.
What needs improvement with IBM Datacap?
IBM needs to improve on scanning and reading accuracy for unstructured documents. Additionally, an important missing ...
What is your primary use case for IBM Datacap?
I primarily use IBM Datacap ( /products/ibm-datacap-reviews ) for data capture and scanning documents with OCR. Speci...
What needs improvement with IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
To improve IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for the next release, there should be more integration with external ...
What is your primary use case for IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
My customers' main use cases for IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are especially in the banking industry, particu...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
I recommend starting with the Academy to check the features and compare them with other competitors to choose the bes...
 

Also Known As

Automation Anywhere, Testing Anywhere, Automation Anywhere Enterprise, Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)
Datacap
IBM RPA
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Linkedin, Cisco, Juniper Networks, DellEMC, Comcast, Mastercard, Quest Diagnostics
Turkcell, PowerSouth Energy Cooperative, Central Nacional Unimed, Conqord Oil
The Hanover Insurance Group
Find out what your peers are saying about UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Microsoft and others in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Updated: October 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.