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IBM Datacap vs Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition 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

Automate
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (5th)
IBM Datacap
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) (6th)
Redwood Software - Finance ...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (15th), Financial Close Software (7th)
 

Featured Reviews

Jane Rachma Kiniti - PeerSpot reviewer
Automate has streamlined workflows and increased efficiency with powerful automation
The best features of the solution are the flexible automation features, it is rich with beautiful connectors, and it is easy to use with little to no coding knowledge required to get started, so anybody can use the tool. The intuitive interface of Automate has an intuitive design, which makes it easy to learn and use even without a strong technical background, and it has a drag-and-drop interface, which makes everything so easy and straightforward. The error handling capabilities in complex automation tasks are powerful, as it handles all types of tasks, whether complex or simple. I've never faced any problems even when dealing with complex tasks, so everything is super smooth and highly reliable, even when dealing with big tasks, as it has never slowed down. Automate's compatibility with existing IT infrastructure has impacted our business operations positively by providing smooth integration with other software that we use, such as Gmail, Jira, and Microsoft 365 apps, which gives us a unified platform instead of having to keep switching from one software to another, saving a lot of time and streamlining the whole workflows. The automated analytics have helped improve our business processes since it has increased our efficiency by automating our everyday tasks, freeing up time for us to focus more on strategic activities such as analyzing data and developing new business strategies. It is also cost-saving. By minimizing manual labor, it decreases human errors that can lead to costly mistakes. By automating the tasks, it helps to save costs, and it also improves our accuracy by reducing these errors to ensure that tasks are done almost perfectly.
DeekshithShetty - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Amarjeet Kamble - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly and enables automation in finance, HR, and SDM
There is room for improvement, considering no tools having everything inside it is right. So the room for balancing improvement lies in automation enhancement with respect to the feature areas, considering dealing directly with Excel and reviewing it to do some additional stuff for it in the end system so that reading the right thing, picking up the values, and everything. Right now, you can do it with a little bit of custom scripting in addition to eight. But rather than custom scripting, if we can have a direct feature integrated inside this tool, it will be a major achievement. So, it already has that capability, as you can do custom scripting, and you can go ahead with creating your own. But the direct functions are not available. That's where we are lagging behind. However, importing the values or importing the service can be achieved. So, that is where I can see the room for improvement. In this particular area, the entire system can be improved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The intuitive interface of Automate has an intuitive design which makes it easy to learn and use even without a strong technical background, and it has a drag and drop interface which makes everything so easy and straightforward."
"The product effectively handles all the tasks we require."
"We have found the pricing to be very reasonable."
"The pricing is excellent. I would give them perfect marks in that regard."
"The most valuable features for my client are timing and scheduling."
"Fortra's Automate has effectively replaced the workload of an entire employee, saving us significant time and money."
"The automated analytics have helped improve our business processes since it has increased our efficiency by automating our everyday tasks, freeing up time for us to focus more on strategic activities such as analyzing data and developing new business strategies."
"The most valuable feature is the drag-and-drop interface, which is very Windows-like."
"It is highly extensible, which we found to be most valuable. It is a very extensible solution because it is based on configurable rule sets. We were able to amend and adjust the solution and very easily add custom code and custom components. It does require some programming experience, but we found that not to be an issue. We liked its extensibility."
"Very scalable and stable data capture and extraction solution that's very simple to install."
"The solution offers many features that are beneficial for customers."
"The feedback from our clients that this solution has increased their efficiency and their turnaround time on opening any account for end users, thus attracting more customers."
"The installation of the solution is very simple."
"It helps companies figure out how to use advanced imaging techniques, processes, best practices, and other tools."
"The OCR extractions are very good, almost 100% accurate now."
"It reduces human error and saves time."
"So the best thing is ease of use."
"The out-of-the-box finance modules within the Redwood Finance framework help to speed up the process, versus designing and writing generic BOT code."
"Redwood has a great feature where it logs every transaction. So, at any point, we can see every step taken for each transaction. It creates an audit trail of the entire process execution. It is a really good feature. This eliminates the need for extra coding or report generation. The audit report is readily available within the tool itself."
 

Cons

"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."
"The interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"I would prefer not having to log in to update a ticket; being able to respond via email would be beneficial."
"Some challenges include the system being too loaded or delayed in taking instructions and responding quickly as needed."
"Error messages should be better. For error status, there should be better documentation because a lot of times, error messages that you get are quite vague. For example, you get a message saying that the workflow has run into an unknown status, which is vague. It just tells you that it failed, but you don't know how or why it failed. It makes debugging difficult."
"The documentation is not that great."
"I currently have three bugs open with them that I don't know if they are addressed in the new release."
"I would like the updates to be easier to deploy. Integration with Amazon S3 is somewhat lacking."
"What could be improved in IBM Datacap from a technical perspective is having everything together all in one place, rather than having several different interfaces. The addition of cloud-based OCR technology would also make this solution better. There's also room for improvement for their technical support."
"One of the things that we wished for was to have an easier way to carry out the customizations. Currently, if you want to customize data, you need to have a developer with C# knowledge. If IBM could implement a no-code or low-code platform for Datacap, it would be easier to adjust it without needing a developer, which was always the most difficult part."
"I would like to see the product have the ability to process more documents in parallel. Right now, it is a single queue. Therefore, if you want to really test the load and stress test it, having multiple instances and the ability to scale it up would be great."
"I would like better ease of use and more support options."
"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."
"The technical support is horrible. They have downsized the support teams too much. They've outsourced some of them along with some of the development, and they're just stretched too thin."
"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."
"I would like to see integration of Watson AI technology into Datacap."
"The room for balancing improvement lies in automation enhancement with respect to the feature areas, considering dealing directly with Excel and reviewing it to do some additional stuff for it in the end system so that reading the right thing, picking up the values, and everything."
"would like to see AI integration for automation in future releases. Post-automation, I envision a generative AI model. If I could ask the bot questions like the number of invoices or their current status, it should be able to provide answers directly."
"Mapping the process steps to an existing R2R process quickly would be a definite step forward."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe the price falls within a reasonable range, which significantly influenced our decision regarding the product. This aspect is crucial for any technological solution, especially in our country where enterprises might be hesitant to invest heavily in something untested or uncertain about its practicality and potential returns."
"From a distributor's side, one of the biggest selling points is its price point. Without going into any numbers, compared to UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism, we're significantly cheaper. The main difference is that other competitors usually charge you per process. However, in Automate's case, it's priced per bot. So, a bot can run multiple processes at the same time, but you are only priced for a single bot."
"From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point."
"The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate."
"It has gone up in price. The price of Fortra's Automate has increased since we first started using it. It does a lot but also costs a lot. It was a lot more affordable before Fortra owned the software."
"Once you buy the software, you just pay for the support for backend help."
"I'm only involved in running the product and maintaining the systems, so I can't speak to the cost."
"While solutions like UiPath and Blue Prism cost around $11,000-$12,000 for each license, this product costs around $7,000 and you can keep it forever."
"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."
"It varies, and it depends on the client's requirements and negotiations. Nowadays, Datacap is also included in the IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation."
"It is an expensive solution."
"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."
"Pricing needs to stay competitive."
"If you want IBM Datacap on cloud, which is a service run by IBM, the price can be quite expensive, but if you want to just purchase the licenses and own those yourself, then the price is very competitive."
"In Egypt, we have exchange rates that change year to year, and currently, we're facing an increase in the exchange rate between our Egyptian pound and the dollar. Since we have been using IBM DataCap two years ago we had a good price, it was not expensive. However, I cannot say now if it is expensive or not because of the exchange rate. Additionally, I don't have the data of other competitors and I don't know the prices."
"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."
"The licensing was purely based on the number of transactions being processed in production."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
19%
Performing Arts
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Recreational Facilities/Services Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise12
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about HelpSystems AutoMate?
We use it for specific cases, mainly secure file transfers, which are vital for us. And it works for us.
What is your primary use case for HelpSystems AutoMate?
My main use case for Automate is to deliver enterprise-scale script execution jobs, which means we are using Automate...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortra Automate?
Until now, I have not specified any other tech products except Microsoft Power Automate, N8N, and Make.com that I've ...
What do you like most about IBM Datacap?
The installation of the solution is very simple.
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 do you like most about Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition?
Redwood has a great feature where it logs every transaction. So, at any point, we can see every step taken for each t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition?
The pricing is very client-specific. It's not a one-size-fits-all price. They don't have a single price for everyone....
What needs improvement with Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition?
Everything seems to be working well. However, I see value in integrating AI for automation. So, I would like to see A...
 

Also Known As

HelpSystems Automate, Automate
Datacap
Redwood Business Process Automation - Finance Edition, Redwood Robotics, Redwood Finance Automation
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aldergrove Financial Group, Preferred Health Professionals, Mindbeam Technologies, First Credit Union in British Columbia, Vestcom International, Prime Liberty Benefits, University of Tampa, CNLBancshares, World Precision Instruments, BJ's Restaurants, Globe Pequot Press, Accudata Technologies, Norton Healthcare, Pacific Toxicology Laboratories
Turkcell, PowerSouth Energy Cooperative, Central Nacional Unimed, Conqord Oil
ArcelorMittal, Alliant Energy, Allianz, Arla, Bacardi, CPS Energy, DSM, Faurecia, Genetech, Jabil, Jumbo,
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Datacap vs. Redwood Software - Finance Automation Edition and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.