Automation Anywhere Reviews

I am the manager of our intelligent automation COE within HR. We operate in a federated model. I lead the HR team, and there are similar teams that exist across the company in five or six other areas.

We have plenty of use cases within HR specifically. We have automation for candidate-facing opportunities before people join the company. We especially have a lot of automation opportunities for our recruiting. The human capital management platform that we use is an SAP product. We use SAP SuccessFactors, so naturally, a lot of our automation opportunities come through that platform. There are a lot of emails and notifications to managers for talent management, talent acquisition, and all the way through to payroll, or anything that falls underneath the HR function. Nothing is off limits, and we have pretty much touched most of the functional areas within the department.

In terms of comparing the processes and tasks automated using Automation Anywhere versus how they were done prior to implementation, a lot of the processes had remained the same, especially in the early years. A lot of people were leveraging RPA platforms to recreate processes the way a human was doing them, so the look and feel were very similar to how a human was doing a process, going across applications over the UI, whereas now, there is a heavy focus on process improvement. A lot of people are leaning into process improvement or re-engineering a process before it is automated and making sure that we are automating the right thing. 

It allows for more reliable dynamic automations if you can leverage something out of the UI. You can leverage a database or an API versus automating something similar to how a human would click through a screen. There is definitely a heavy emphasis on design requirements or completely changing a process from a functional perspective, which takes a lot of work, but your automation is easier to create and maintain in the long run.

Before Automation Anywhere, I have used other RPA platforms. From comparing it to others, it is very intuitive. I do not have a development background, but I lead a team of developers. I am trying to manage and teach them how to use the tool as well. I find that it comes across as very easy to use. I have seen a handful of new developers pick it up within a couple of days. They are able to understand the UI and create their first couple of automations within a few weeks and then they get running with very complex things within the first year. It is very intuitive to use. There are definitely a lot more capabilities coming out, but it is all within the same platform. If you know how to go through the platform, they make it very easy to deploy technical solutions.

Automation Anywhere is one of the easier platforms to learn. There are a lot of online resources, and they also have a community forum. If there is not a video on how to do something explicitly and you have a question, in their developer community, people are quick to respond. You can also simply Google something or look at their website, and you will be able to find an answer for it. Especially after you go through the first couple of days of their university's online training through the community version or get your hands on automation, it clicks pretty quickly. When you see it once and learn everything that is in the platform, everything comes pretty quickly after that, so the learning curve is pretty shallow. 

In terms of the tools that are integrated with Automation Anywhere, we are doing a lot of work within ServiceNow. I just became aware they have a thing called Connector Builder, which basically allows us to build connections right there within Automation Anywhere with ServiceNow. There are other integrations with SAP or Active Directory right there in the developer's toolkit so that they can build automations with it. This makes integrating with your system of records or whatever systems you are automating a lot easier.

We have not done any integrations with document automation. That is a big use case that we are looking at. I know intelligent document processing has come a long way, so I am very interested to see how seamless that integration works out. In terms of being able to integrate and leverage any of our SaaS platforms or on-prem applications that we are automating, we have not seen any limitations to it. We have been able to automate everything. Being able to use API task paths or just expose more endpoints from an API perspective makes the developers' lives a lot easier. It is technically a little bit harder, but if you are able to use APIs, then integrating that way will alleviate future maintenance for automation. It is definitely useful to have that in the platform.

Automation Anywhere has had a big impact on the business. I can speak mostly from an HR perspective. All of our automations that are currently running in production save about 2 million dollars annually, both from a cost savings and cost avoidance perspective. Certain things have a dollar amount. There is a dollar amount associated with a transaction that we can automate, and then we can also inject that time back into our employees' days. Freeing up that capacity allows them to go use their human decision-making skills on more advanced and complex projects and allows automations to do that manual, repetitive, and mundane work. Hours-wise, I do not have a metric, but we are able to save 2 million dollars with our portfolio. We are continuing to add new automations, which makes that number go up and up. 

In terms of time savings, it has been super helpful. We are able to give employees their time back.

We have not had any issues with scalability. Everything from our licensing structure and being able to deploy bots across the enterprise is pretty efficient. Being able to get the most out of our bot runners and start looking at bot performance and utilization across those machines has enabled us to get the most out of it. We are able to deploy everything that at least HR needs right now. I know some of the other companies or departments might need more bot runners to keep up with that scalability. When it comes to end-to-end automation and working across COEs in a federated model, that is a different story. We have not tackled that yet, but in terms of being able to deliver work for HR at our company, Automation Anywhere has been a huge help, and there were no issues in terms of getting the job done.

Automation Anywhere offers a lot of programs to get involved. I recently became involved in their MVP, the Most Valuable Pathfinder program. That is a smaller group in the Pathfinder community that allows us to see early access to what is coming and things that will be showcased at Imagine or the products clubs. We sometimes will be able to get early access to dev environments to go poke around and see what is coming. That helps leadership also see what is coming and be able to make a decision on whether or not to buy new features or capabilities. It gives us a little bit more time to go out to our business stakeholders and the people we are automating processes for and say that there is a use case here. Could we apply some new technologies? 

Four or five years ago, we looked at everything in terms of whether we could automate a functional process, but now, there is a lot more coming with Generative AI and intelligent document processing. There are product clubs and community forums to see how others are leveraging the same tools. It is super helpful to see how other people are applying the same technology. It may spark some interest throughout our company.

The most valuable feature of the platform right now for us is just getting the most out of the tool. When I first joined the company, we were on version 11, which is the on-premise version of Automation Anywhere. Getting over to the new cloud platform A360 has enabled us to get the most out of general RPA or robotic process automation. There are plenty more tools that we are looking at, but just being able to automate functional processes, whether through the UI or APIs, to alleviate that manual work from the department has been really our bread and butter. That is where we see a lot of the value for the company right now.

From a platform perspective, our model has been getting operational data back out to our automation owners. We are a pretty small team. We have about 70 automations in production. Everything that we automate, we naturally own a fraction of that just from a technical perspective. Having a team of developers, you want them focused on building new things. We are at an inflection point where we have automated so much that just keeping the lights on certainly takes 20% to 50% of the time, depending on the time of year. Being able to enable the stakeholders is one of my main focuses. If we are automating their process, I want them to continue owning that as much as possible. We are just expanding on the bot insights. From a security perspective, there have been some challenges for us getting our customers in there from a role-level security perspective and making sure that they have full access to the control room and their automation after it is automated. Being able to manage a digital worker has been a big focus. That is what I am looking to get the most out of the tool right now.

I have been in automation for about seven years now. This is my second or third year with Automation Anywhere, specifically. I just went over my two-year mark. This is the beginning of the third year using the platform.

The stability of Automation Anywhere is fantastic. The platform itself is very reliable. Automation, in general, can be finicky sometimes, and it will break. That is business as usual, but in terms of the platform, reliability, and uptime, it is good. If there are patches, by being on the cloud, we get them faster. Fixes and new features are constantly available to us. We have no complaints there. It has been a great journey.

I have not had any issues being able to deploy solutions for all of HR. The platform has everything to offer that we would need to automate for our company.

Their customer support is very good. There are very few times when we have to go out and open up a ticket, but every time we do, we get very timely support. We seem to be getting connected to the same reps, which is super helpful to build that relationship. If we cannot find a knowledge article or something online, they point us in the right direction or let us know if there is a patch or something else coming that will fix it for us.

I have used a competitor. I worked with UiPath for about four years before Automation Anywhere. There are a lot of similarities in terms of conceptual robotic process automation and similar trends in terms of intelligent document processing, process mining, and task mining. I am sure they all have features around Generative AI.

It was deployed before I joined. In terms of the deployment model, it is probably fully on the cloud, but I am not too sure. When I joined two years ago, we were on version 11 on-prem. One of the biggest things I had to do was migrate us from version 11 to the cloud version.

Even if we do not automate anything and just keep the automations that we have running, that is going to save around 2 million dollars year over year for our HR group. Continuing to expand into new automations will drive higher ROI. So, year over year, even if we do not continue to automate anything, those savings and those hours continually go back into the business.

I do not have any experience with pricing and licensing. We have an admin team and IT team that handles a lot of the infrastructure and technology, so I would not be able to speak too much about that.

Automation Anywhere was evaluated before I joined my current company, so I cannot speak much about that. I know they worked with an implementation partner, and that Automation Anywhere was obviously the chosen one.

We do not use Automation Co-Pilot. It is definitely one of the items or features that I am very interested in. I was excited to get my hands on it during the bot games today at the Imagine event and see how it works. You can give it a string of text, and it will generate code for you right there in the control room. That is super helpful. I am looking to see how my developers react to that as well. I am sure that would save some time from the developer aspect. There is another aspect for business users. I certainly think there are some use cases there that they would be interested in looking at.

My favorite aspect of the Imagine event has been connecting with everyone in person. I work remotely, so it is nice to see people in person. We get to sit in a room and do the bot games again. We get to see some cool new features and everything around Generative AI. I do not hear the term RPA so much. The big focus in the world is Generative AI. There are a lot of keynotes, and we are able to see how people are starting to apply it early. There is a lot of excitement. It is an exciting time, and I am very interested to see how we will be able to leverage Automation Anywhere with the new technologies.

The Imagine experience is energetic. The world of Gen AI feels like a bit of a playground. It is generating a lot of buzz all the way up at our executive level, and I am sure it is the same for a lot of people. I see the wheels spinning for everyone. There are ideas, and it is good to see everyone saying to start small. It felt a little bit daunting how we are going to apply this, but it is nice to see everyone reiterating the same thing, "It is coming, and you have to be careful. Start small, and it is a journey." It is nice. It is a good pivot.

If I were to invite people to the Imagine event, I would say that it feels like a tight-knit community. There are probably a couple of thousand people here. Seeing familiar faces and being able to meet everyone and talk about some of the same struggles that we might be seeing is good. We get to know how others are thinking through it. Being able to see the new technologies is awesome. That was one of the main reasons I wanted to come. It forces you to take a look at what is coming next and how others are applying it and start thinking so that you can make a decision on where you can help your customers with it.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a solid eight out of ten. It is not perfect. There are probably a couple of little things, but being with the tool for two years, I have seen so much being changed. It is a playground. There are plenty of features and capabilities. We are just scratching the surface, so I am excited to see what is next. It is very good.

There are many use cases. It is simple to automate tasks or processes related to the active cycle for invoices and similar tasks. It is useful for automating processes in industries like manufacturing and banking. The use cases are correlated with the needs of the customers.

By implementing Automation Anywhere, customers are simply trying to have a more standardized process. For example, there is a better quality of data for manual inputs in various applications. They have more rapid processes, and they can free people from repetitive tasks. These are the most common situations that we solve with this technology.

We have not had any big problems with the technology. We have achieved the results that the customer expected. We are usually able to achieve the expected ROI with the processes of the project.

Automation Co-Pilot helped increase productivity. For employees, it was quite good. I did face some problems with the user interface that we had to build to interact with the user. There were some blocks in this interface that were hard to understand. From a business user's perspective, it is quite easy to use. From a technical perspective, it is a little bit harder to build a bot using the Co-Pilot features.

It helped to free up staff to work on other projects. Every time we automate a task, we are freeing user time. They have more time to focus on more complex tasks. They can achieve better results in terms of compliance of the data that they are inputting into the systems. The data is accurate and reliable, and they can do more in less time. They can easily meet timelines for various processes.

In terms of integration, we could integrate the pretty old type of browser web applications without many problems. We usually use various ERPs, such as SAP, Oracle, or NetSuite. We sometimes integrate by using APIs. We have Google Drive or Microsoft Teams folders, SharePoint, and so on. We integrate pretty much everything with Automation Anywhere. For some technologies, there are some libraries for integration, such as for Salesforce or ServiceNow, and for some other platforms, you have to build it yourself.

It is easy to understand how to use the tool. For a developer, it is very easy to understand the opportunities and how to use and learn these features. It is very business-oriented. It is very easy to understand the capabilities and the features that you can use. You should have a technical overview and a technical understanding, but it is easy to understand. A non-technical person can learn it in a month. However, this person must be involved with a technical team. A person cannot understand the implications of using this technology and its architecture on his own. A business person can learn to develop some features but to move to the next level, a business person would need some help from IT.

The main problem that I have with Automation Anywhere is the support. When I have problems that I cannot solve by myself, it is hard to achieve a good result with support. Language is another issue. From a technological perspective, I have not had many issues with Automation Anywhere, but the support is somewhat lacking compared to other technologies I use.

There are times when I have some problems with the cloud. I sometimes experience errors with the Co-Pilot feature that make me feel the system is not 100% stable.

It is able to provide automation at scale. This is one of the best features of Automation Anywhere, but if you want to scale, you need technical support.

Its usage depends on the customers. We have different types of models, but usually, it is used at an enterprise level.

It is hard to achieve a good result with their support team. The support in Europe seems to be receiving less investment, so I usually cannot have support in my language. For some customers, this can be a problem. Some customers speak Italian rather than English. 

Neutral

We have more customers on the cloud than on-premises. I am personally not involved in the deployment, but the initial setup is straightforward. It is not complex. Upgrading Automation Anywhere is easy.

The number of people required for maintenance depends on the number of automated processes. For 20 automated processes, you might need one person full-time per month. This can vary a lot on the type of process that you have automated.

You have to work at least a year on that technology, but obviously, it depends on the effort you make. If you have one developer or five, it makes a difference.

It is reasonable, but it can always be a little bit cheaper.

Those who want to use Automation Anywhere should have at least one expert on their team. This can significantly speed up the implementation process and the understanding of the problems. It can be a game changer. 

Overall, I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten.

Our primary functionality is built around screen scraping applications. We collect data from one application and either generate reports or use it to complete a user transaction or a customer transaction. For example, I have automation that handles bill pay. A request comes in, we verify it, and then we execute a bill payment transaction.

When we first started, the motivation was not wanting to be left behind in the latest and greatest opportunity for automating desktop applications that are boring and time-consuming but are still very important for the company's business operations.

We were able to see its benefits immediately during our proof of concept five years ago. We were able to take five users of daily work and reduce it to one user of support work. It was very significant.

Prior to implementation, these processes were done by the business units manually. Post implementation, the solutions are IT-based. As a result, IT now has additional responsibility for the business automation, just supporting the business function. It is one thing to build the software. It is another thing to maintain it and keep it running in production. There is a pretty significant lift or burden on the IT side that was not there during the manual executions.

I like the diversity. Every year, maybe even every six months, new modules are introduced to the program, and module enhancements are added to the toolbox to make automating various applications or situations easier. For example, the email module has been enhanced over the years to support all the latest authentication technologies. That is very important as we move away from username and password and embrace multi-factor authentication. Without the ability for these modules to stay in sync and up to date, we would not be able to use them. 

On the document automation side, the document learning features are not as robust as one would expect them to be. When I am doing document automation and a document fails due to low confidence in populating a field, it requires manual correction. Automation Anywhere states that if I correct enough documents, over time, the automation tools will learn where those error situations are and automatically fix them. We have not seen that feature work as advertised.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for roughly five years.

We have not had any issues. I am very impressed with its availability.

It scales quite well. I have not found an application that has exhausted the capacity of the system to execute. If we need to handle more transactions, we simply need to add additional bot runners. We currently have three bot runners in production. If we needed five or ten, I could have five or ten in a couple of days.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rank their technical support group a nine.

Positive

We have two other solutions in-house other than Automation Anywhere. They are very specific to the tasks they are handling.

It was pretty easy. I took a proof of concept that took nine months to build. Since I could not copy it from the proof of concept environment to our brand-new tenant or control room, we had to reprogram it. The reprogramming and testing took three months. Now, if you put all those numbers together, you probably could say it took us a year to build that first application.

It requires operation execution maintenance by my company and my IT group, but it does not take any Automation Anywhere resources to maintain it now. They maintain it at the cloud level and do a good job.

Two people were involved in the implementation.

The pricing is fair. My company is part of a big organization, so the pricing is very advantageous.

Five years ago, we evaluated four products, and Automation Anywhere emerged as the top choice. It offered the best cloud solution compared to the other vendors or providers. Now, if I took those same four vendors and evaluated them today, I might come up with a different answer. The industry has changed drastically just in the last three or four years, and if we did a reevaluation and could start over, chances are everyone, including Automation Anywhere, is on much better footing today than they were five years ago.

In terms of our AI approach, we are very cautious with AI. We are a Microsoft shop, so we are limiting our AI exposure to an Azure tenant-based AI resource. We are probably building our own LLMs to manage the intelligence or the exposure of intelligence to the AI engine. I do not see us ever using external AI modules.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine. 

I utilize Automation Anywhere for automation purposes. Recently, I completed a project for a client in the telecom sector. The project involved automating their monthly bill review system for customers. Previously, this system required on-site employees to check millions of invoices each month manually. A dedicated department then verified these invoices, sent them to customers, and verified payment status after payment. This process was time-consuming. We used Automation Anywhere's RPA and OCR capabilities and the AI document processing module to analyze document structures and verify tabs. We then automated various steps like accessing the portal, applying checks, and sending invoices via email. Now, the entire process is automated, triggered by a robot each month.

The main challenge which organizations want to address through any implemented RPA solution is the repetitive nature of their tasks. Instead of having ten employees perform the same monotonous task from nine to five every day, a single RPA robot can handle the workload, freeing those employees to focus on tasks that require human intervention. Automation is ideal for repetitive tasks, such as processing millions of invoices monthly, which can now be managed by a few RPA robots working around the clock. This allows employees to explore new opportunities, which is the primary goal of automation and the main reason for using RPA or any automation technology. Most automation technologies have features that enable this shift. However, automation is not suitable for all tasks; tasks requiring approvals or human judgment cannot be automated.

The deployment model varies depending on the client. In Pakistan, I worked with several clients using ABL who opted for cloud deployment. However, clients dealing with highly confidential and sensitive data, such as banks and telecommunications companies, prefer on-premises solutions. In contrast, clients in sectors like healthcare might be more open to utilizing cloud infrastructure.

Automation Anywhere has enabled repetitive tasks previously done manually to be automated.

Regarding RPA, ever since generative AI was introduced, we have ChatGPT and Google Gemini. The advent of these generative AI models has shifted the automation landscape. Automation has moved from Robotic Process Automation towards Intelligent Process Automation. The difference between RPA and IPA lies in their ability to handle changes. For example, if a website form changes its layout, a traditional RPA bot might fail because it can't identify the fields or buttons in their new positions. However, with IPA, the bot is intelligent enough to understand the fields' requests and can still process the data regardless of UI changes. Besides this, numerous other IPA use cases leverage Large Language Models and generative AI. For instance, a company could have a trained dataset monitored by an RPA bot, which then uses generative AI to create and send daily reports to top management, analyzing current numbers concerning past performance. This is a fascinating area that I've been exploring and working on lately.

For business users without technical skills, automation is achievable depending on the complexity of the task. Simple processes like sending custom emails from an Excel list can be easily automated with basic tutorials. While time and practice are necessary for mastery, basic automation can be initiated with just a few introductory videos.

We recently started using Automation Anywhere Copilot, so we haven't had the opportunity to integrate it with many of our automations. However, we have integrated it with SAP, where the bot reviews SAP data and provides the user with the required information at runtime. I have utilized this feature, and it's quite interesting. They also offer integrations with many other software, so the integration level is relatively high. Regardless of the type of features the business uses, whether they are using Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, or even AWS, integrations are available. They provide custom APIs that can be used for integration.

Automation Copilot helped increase our productivity by 60 percent.

Copilot has enabled staff to focus on other tasks by automating processes. For instance, the business department aimed to automate 350 processes this year, but by September, they had already surpassed that goal with 370 automations. Similarly, last year's target of 250 automations was exceeded, reaching 300. This increased efficiency has significantly improved workflows.

Our primary application of Generative AI for our telecom client is to detect service outages, such as when an area experiences a loss of service. We've been strategically planning our Generative AI approach for this year and the next, focusing on utilizing RPA to identify potential solutions and valuable insights within our data. For instance, in the context of outages, we aim to pinpoint the areas with the highest outage frequency, understand the reasons behind those outages, and correlate that information with customer complaint data. By analyzing metrics like complaint resolution times and outage resolution times, we can create a benchmark that helps us identify areas where we can enhance our customer service.

The amount of time Automation Anywhere helps save is dependent on the automated task. For example, the bill review task we automated helped save 10,000 hours per month.

We have several custom ERPs used internally but primarily rely on Microsoft Dynamics. We have a BCRM portal built on the Dynamics portal, hosting both our BCRM business-facing and CRM customer-facing systems. We also utilize Excel with VBA macros and other platforms, including Kofax for OCR. Kofax's Arabic language detection capabilities are crucial for processing UAE ID cards containing Arabic text. Kofax is our organization-wide OCR solution, integrated with Automation Anywhere. Overall, we have integrated Automation Anywhere with various software solutions.

Integrating Automation Anywhere into our workflows, APIs, and business automation is simple. RPA functions like a digital employee, and we can instruct them to perform tasks. Any activity currently done by a human employee can be done via RPA. However, the crucial question is whether it should be automated. If a task is performed infrequently, such as once every six months, creating an automation is inefficient. The time spent developing the automation could be better used to complete the task manually. Automation is ideal for repetitive tasks performed frequently. If a task isn't repetitive, automating it might not be beneficial. Regarding the capabilities of automation, nearly any work an employee performs on an organization's system has the potential to be automated.

Automation Anywhere has a persistent click-related issue that can make automation difficult, particularly in unattended environments. Even the Automation Anywhere team is aware of this problem, which has existed for several years. When automating tasks on a website, clicks may not work as expected in an unattended environment despite functioning correctly otherwise. The Automation Anywhere team has had numerous meetings to address this issue, but a solution remains elusive.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for almost four years.

Automation Anywhere's ability to provide automation at scales is dependent on how well it can integrate with every platform. I would rate the scalability seven out of ten.

I compare all other RPA tools to UiPath, which has excellent support—I'd rate it ten out of ten. In contrast, I'd rate Automation Anywhere's support six out of ten.

Neutral

In addition to Automation Anywhere, we also use UiPath, and Power Automate.

It ultimately depends on the client's preference for an RPA solution. In my opinion, UiPath remains the leading option in the market, unmatched by any competitor. Automation Anywhere currently holds the second position, but I anticipate Power Automate surpassing it in the future. However, UiPath is considerably ahead of the competition, leaving Automation Anywhere as a distant second. While Automation Anywhere is a suitable alternative, UiPath's high pricing can be a factor in the decision-making process. A lot of our clients choose Automation Anywhere because it is cheaper than UiPath to implement. Power Automate is the solution often chosen by businesses that already have other Microsoft solutions integrated into their environment.

The primary distinction among these RPA tools lies in the connectors and capabilities offered by Power Automate. Many businesses already utilize Power BI and Microsoft Dynamics, with most BI-related software relying on Tableau or Power BI. While some smaller-scale operations may still use Excel for dashboards, it's becoming increasingly uncommon. Power Automate's built-in custom connectors for Microsoft products provide a significant advantage. Overall, Power Automate has proven to be a game-changer, exceeding expectations with its features, custom connections, and level of support. While not currently the case, it's conceivable that with further enhancements, Power Automate could eventually surpass Automation Anywhere in the market.

While I wasn't involved in the initial deployment, I contributed to the migration from version A11 to A360. This was a major undertaking, spanning six months and presenting numerous challenges. Despite encountering various issues, we ultimately achieved a successful migration.

Cloud deployment is straightforward, while on-premises setup requiring server configuration can be challenging. A cloud deployment typically takes no more than one business day.

We have two teams: the operations team and the development team. The operations team handles deployment and typically consists of one or two people. The development team's size varies depending on the number of processes requiring automation. For fewer processes, one developer may suffice; however, we may engage five or even six developers for numerous processes.

Automation Anywhere provides good cost savings.

Automation Anywhere's price is considerably better than UiPath's.

I evaluated Robocorp from a POC point of view.

I rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten.

Challenges in implementing Automation Anywhere depend on the process being automated. For instance, if your organization adopts Automation Anywhere, infrastructure won't be the primary concern as their cloud setup is straightforward. The real challenges lie in the processes themselves. RPA automates processes, so if, for example, in bill review, some invoices are unclear due to being scanned images, the robot might struggle to process them correctly. This is a process-related challenge, not an RPA implementation issue. To address this, instead of incorrect automation, we set a confidence threshold, say 80 percent, below which invoices are flagged for manual review. Thus, RPA implementation focuses on the process itself. Businesses have numerous processes across operations, products, clients, and consultations. The key is to identify these processes and determine suitable solutions. RPA involves instructing the robot on the required steps, which it follows diligently. However, even if ten employees perform the same task, each might have their own approach. Therefore, understanding the process from the user's perspective is crucial to identifying the optimal workflow. This ideal process is then programmed into the robot, ensuring consistent execution. It's important to remember that RPA, including Automation Anywhere, has limitations and cannot deviate from its instructions or make independent decisions.

Automating more complex processes requires a deeper understanding of coding concepts like loops, regardless of the automation scale. I teach UiPath Studio X, which is designed for business users without a coding background. It is a good starting point. Training in Studio X includes teaching basic coding concepts, emphasizing their connection to familiar Excel functions. This approach helps users understand the logic behind automation and bridge the gap between their existing skills and new concepts.

The learning curve for RPA automation, depending on your desired level of mastery, is manageable. It is key to understand all the features and how they work, including the AI-powered ones. Basic RPA automation can be learned in about four to five months, allowing someone to start working as an RPA developer. However, working on an actual project for a year or a year and a half is recommended to become a true expert. This provides ample time to learn the ins and outs of Automation Anywhere, understand the challenges, and develop solutions.

Upgrading Automation Anywhere to a newer version on the same platform is straightforward, but our migration from the obsolete on-premise A11 to the cloud-based A360 required moving every single business process, which was time-consuming. Apart from that specific migration, version upgrades are generally not complex.

Bots running on a cloud platform require continuous maintenance. While the cloud platform can monitor the bots, human oversight is essential to identify and troubleshoot issues like crashes. Large clients may necessitate a dedicated maintenance team working shifts to provide 24/7 monitoring and support. These teams typically monitor the bots' control room on a separate screen while performing other tasks. In the event of a crash, they investigate the cause and, if unable to resolve it, escalate the issue to the development team for further assistance.

We use Automation Anywhere most of the time to automate Excel and the SAP system. I used to work for Bajaj Electricals. We are the vendor of Bajaj Electrical India Private Limited. There, most of the data are being pushed into SAP. We are getting data from SAP and manipulating it, and we are preparing reports every day.

The most valued feature of Automation Anywhere is its Excel functionality. Earlier in my career, I used Process Studio as my RPA tool. There was no flexibility of retrieving single cells. We used to fetch the total Excel and we used to apply the filters to get those cells. Automation Anywhere has the flexibility to extract data from Excel.

For non-technical users, some technical knowledge is needed in Automation Anywhere, so they cannot use it as flexibly as developers can. In my earlier career, when using a data table in Automation Anywhere and wanting to merge columns, there was a plugin called Group By. In Automation Anywhere, we have to create variables and append the data to a single variable one by one to get that flexibility. Having an activity for grouping columns would be great. For reading data from Excel, providing a single button to fetch all data columns would make it more flexible for developers. For filtering purposes in Automation Anywhere, we have to apply if conditions and additional conditions to get the appropriate data. Introducing filter activities would change the perspective of developing.

I have been using Automation Anywhere in my career for two months.

In terms of crashing, I have seen some crashes, but they were from other software such as SAP, WinSCP, and Outlook. There were no issues from Automation Anywhere.

The bots in Automation Anywhere are totally scalable. If the developer builds robust robots in parts, then we can use those parts for other processes by integrating them. I have built bots in many parts, such as SAP login. After performing applications, we close all applications. We have built those bots, and we call them once our process is done, so it will close all applications and erase the caches.

I would rate technical support for Automation Anywhere a six.

I have used Process Studio as an alternative to Automation Anywhere. I prefer Process Studio more than Automation Anywhere. Process Studio was launched around 2017 and managed to get into the IDFC First Bank headquarters. According to IDFC use cases, Process Studio was trained and built with more flexibility for business use cases. Automation Anywhere is not as flexible as Process Studio. In Automation Anywhere, performing activities such as downloading, fetching, and data manipulation requires 20 to 30 lines of code. Process Studio gives multiple windows in a single activity, making data manipulation easier. For reading Excel, XLSV, XLSB, XLS files, there was a single plugin. Process Studio's plugins are more flexible than Automation Anywhere.

Having used Process Studio, the initial deployment for Automation Anywhere was not difficult for me. I referred to YouTube videos for guidance. The only challenge was figuring out how to input my device name, which took one to two days until colleagues helped. If some data could populate automatically after installation, it would be beneficial.

For a beginner, Automation Anywhere is a great tool. I have learned UiPath also, which comes with complexities but has frameworks for smooth business flow. Automation Anywhere comes with a beginner-friendly interface. The tool can be learned within five to ten days of training. We haven't used the Automation Co-pilot yet. Once a developer knows all the activities in Automation Anywhere, upgrades become less necessary. Integration with WhatsApp business use cases to send messages would be beneficial. Integration with additional systems beyond SAP, WinSCP, and PDF would make it more flexible in business scenarios. Automation Anywhere can contact me in the future regarding questions about this review. I rate this solution 9 out of 10.

As a consultant, I have worked with various clients, including banks, insurance companies, healthcare providers, and different tech companies. Each company has distinct use cases. RPA tools are capable of automating any task. We usually automate processes that are repetitive. Automation is always rule-based.

Co-pilot certainly makes the job easier if the client has a subscription. It allows me to analyze desktop flows and activities and create flows using natural language. Natural language processing using LLMs has become an integral part of IT. This tool lets me create flows using natural language, repair automation errors, and answer product-related questions. It is there to assist us in creating automation tests, CI pipelines, etc.

There are many areas for improvement, especially in the developer environment. Providing a desktop version rather than focusing on the cloud is essential. Only UiPath offers a studio environment for desktop application development. Automation Anywhere lacks a desktop version and is solely web-based and cloud-based.

Automation Anywhere is not so easy for business users who are not technical. It is at the medium level. UiPath also provides UiPath StudioX to enable business users to automate easily.

I have used Automation Anywhere for four years. I have also used UiPath for four years.

The support is good. I have faced difficulties with every RPA tool. Automation Anywhere has a good support system but has room for improvement. UiPath has a huge online community for support. They have a lot of active users.

Neutral

The solution we use depends on the client and their budget. 

UiPath is exceptionally more expensive than Automation Anywhere. UiPath is far ahead of its competition, but in terms of finances, Automation Anywhere offers better value and is more effective for organizations seeking cost-effective solutions. Small clients tend to go for Power Automate or Automation Anywhere, whereas large clients go for UiPath.

RPA solutions like UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Power Automate, and Blue Prism can be learned through their academies. When I graduated, I did not know what RPA was. I joined as an intern and was told to go to the academies for these solutions and do the courses. They have developer fundamental and RPA fundamental courses. They also have advanced-level courses of 30 hours, which are free of cost. It took me about two months to learn these solutions. I might have had an edge because of my technical background. For a non-technical person who is willing to put in two or three hours every day into learning, three to four months would be good to take themselves to a level where they can start developing automation at a medium scale. Complex automations happen from experience when you are working with different types of clients. Generally, two to four months is a good period for someone to get a grasp of RPA.

The focus is shifting from RPA to IPA or Intelligent Process Automation. For example, I have done automation for a website task. Previously, when the website changed, such as when a button was shifted, the automation would fail. With Intelligent Process Automation, the bot is intelligent enough to realize the changes that have occurred. It understands what my flow is and what I am trying to achieve. It is then able to modify itself in such a manner that it still works. This is something that RPA has been transitioning toward.

Overall, I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten.

As a financial services company, we have a variety of use cases for different areas of our business, as well as some of our IT partners. We have automations that help perform payment extensions on customer accounts. We have automations that track email communications on accounts that are in collections. For our IT partners, we have bots that perform password resets for applications that our IT team supports, as well as the provisioning automations that we use to grant access or change access for team members at our company.

They have been informative in terms of new features, components, and capabilities that are available to us as their customer. We have a regular cadence set up with our account manager and our support manager to ensure that we are able to leverage some of those new components. We have had the opportunity to test or play around with some of the new features being rolled out to see if it is something that we would be able to introduce into any of our use cases at GM Financial.

During the development and the discovery phase for the use cases, while walking through a use case with the process owner, we were able to identify some opportunities that could have helped them before the process was automated. By seeing where they were struggling with manually performing the process and automating the process, we have been able to give them a lot of time back with the use of some of the features.

It is fairly easy to understand. The courses that Automation Anywhere University offers, especially for citizen development, and even for those who are getting into development, have pretty simple course content. It is not overly complex or too technical where somebody could get lost in the instruction. It is fairly easy for anybody who does not have that technical background to pick up and use. If anything, it would probably give them an opportunity in terms of what background they want to understand more to supplement or complement what they learn from Automation Anywhere University.

For a first-time user of Automation Anywhere, there is not a huge learning curve. The content and the instructions through Automation Anywhere University are comprehensible. It is easy for somebody to practice, learn, and build on top of what they have learned. As different use cases come around, there are different opportunities to use some of the different features or variables in development. It will help strengthen how they learn or map out how to use the tool.

We have dependent environments that our automation will log into or interact with. There are applications that our automations interact with or are integrated with. We have automations that are using Salesforce and SharePoint. We have an FIS platform for automations servicing customer accounts. We have various applications and third-party websites that our automations interact with daily.

We have automated processes that were heavy with human interaction. Through automation, we have been able to allow those human resources to be reallocated to other areas of the company, doing different processes manually. These automations are working daily beyond normal business hours, on weekends and holidays. Business partners that are benefiting from the automations have been able to distribute those resources to other areas.

Automation Anywhere has most definitely saved us time and costs through automation. Our business partners are able to receive the benefits of automation and distribute those human resources to other areas of their business. By saving time and costs associated with those human resources, less overtime is being paid. Especially for processes that are dependent and have time-sensitive SLAs, we are not accruing any penalties or anything like that. We are able to leverage automation to avoid those costs. It is not only from a time and cost perspective but also risk avoidance. Risk avoidance is something that is not necessarily highlighted when it comes to automation, but I feel that we have also been able to avoid risk.

We are looking at the different programs that Automation Anywhere offers. We are engaged with our account manager on Pathfinder, and we are able to leverage the ability to map where our program currently is and where we want it to go. We are putting some key ideas, thoughts, and time frames around where we want to be when it comes to building our automation program at GM Financial.

Right now, when I look at the platform for Automation Anywhere, the ease of use for the control room from a production support standpoint for our L1 and L2 team members has been amazing. With our conversion from v11 to A360, there has been better ease of development of components within the control room for our development teams. Obviously, it is apples to oranges, but the experience since going to A360 has been amazing. We have been able to establish some reasonable components, which has made our delivery efforts a lot easier since we have been in A360. From a support perspective, the ease of use with the control room and being able to manage those devices in the control room has been easy for us as well. 

If I look across the use cases that we have, there is more opportunity for us to collaborate with Automation Anywhere to see or maybe explore some potential opportunities for new capabilities within the platform. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of anything that they would need to improve on, but there are probably opportunities to explore some potential use cases where maybe there is a feature that is not yet available. We can discover and pioneer something together.

At GM Financial, our journey began in January of 2020. I have been supporting the development team that has been building bots in Automation Anywhere since 2020.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate my experience with the support of Automation Anywhere a ten.

They are very responsive when our platform admins or our developers need to open up any cases. We have a weekly support cadence with them as well as an account cadence with them. In the different areas that we receive support from Automation Anywhere, they are very responsive and very attentive to our needs.

Positive

When we started our RPA journey in 2018, we had a third party. It was outsourced to a third party that had a proprietary tool. We managed to do that for a few years, but being able to host, support, and build internally was a key factor for us. When the company decided to look at possible solutions to deliver these services, Automation Anywhere was what they selected. When we moved to A360, we took those automations that were hosted externally and brought them into our portfolio as well.

Deploying Automation Anywhere was definitely a learning experience for us, especially when we stood up the platform and tried to understand the deployment flow internally for the team. Our platform admins who do the actual deployment got their system before the support team that helps with the checklist of activities before the deployment takes place. That is where we had to learn and set up our framework to get it deployed.

Prior to actual automation deployments and getting the environment set up, we had to work with our infrastructure team. We had to make sure that we had the right resources in place and that those resources were working adequately before we launched our first automation onto the platform. Internally, we learned some lessons along the way. That is a part of the course for anybody who is deploying a new solution in their infrastructure. Overall, it did help us learn the importance of having a good framework in place so that if we need to build, expand, or change anything, we would be able to accommodate that appropriately.

We have most definitely seen an ROI internally with our development and production support teams. Even our business partners are receiving that return on investment because we have been able to help them realize the benefits that they are getting by automating their business processes. That return is not only to the IT team; that return is tenfold to the business.

I am not engaged in that portion of it; my leader is, which is good because then I do not have to have many discussions.

During the exploration phase for finding the tool for GM Financial, we looked at other tools like UiPath. I believe Blue Prism was another one that was being evaluated. Automation Anywhere was also in the mix. They were also trying to determine if they wanted to continue to host externally, but all in all, Automation Anywhere was where they went.

We are starting to get into an Automation Co-Pilot use case where we can showcase or pilot that with the business. One of the things with technology is that it is a journey, especially for an older financial services company like GM Financial. It involves adapting, understanding, and educating on new technologies and features. Before we can deploy things, we have to prove them. We have to show them. We have to help them understand what the benefit of using it is going to be. We are getting ready to pilot our first co-pilot using Automation Anywhere, and that is for our customer service or customer experience department.

My favorite aspect of the Imagine event is the opportunity to network and also to see Automation Anywhere showcase any new capabilities and enablements that are available to Automation Anywhere customers. At the keynote session yesterday, it was really nice to see how somebody is recognizing that a lot of times, departments within IT are siloed. They are working through challenges to be more collaborative and engaging to improve the services that we deliver when it comes to automation. Learning and hearing those things and listening to different breakout sessions confirms that we are not alone on our journey when it comes to our RPA program and other things because Automation Anywhere is not just RPA. It is good to know that we are not alone, and it is good to network with people who are experiencing the same challenges or opportunities that we have. All the information and the networking are my favorite things of all the Imagine conferences.

The Imagine experience is fun. It is exciting just because of the fact that we all have these opportunities within our grasp. It is just how we choose to go after it or how we choose to engage. There is the excitement of brainstorming or sharing ideas with people across different companies or services. You feed on that energy, take it back home, and work with your teams to continue to deliver and support.

Three reasons that I would highlight for colleagues and fellow team members to come to an Imagine event are:

• The content that Automation Anywhere shares about upcoming enablement and capabilities that are going to be made available to them.
• The information shared and networking is done with people from other companies across the globe.
• The events in breakout sessions are hosted at different times during the day.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a ten out of ten. I have not had any negative experiences with Automation Anywhere.

We have a pretty big shop nowadays. We have 324 automations in production. Our use cases were concentrated on loan services. Most recently, our initiatives have been targeted in the control space - automating the things that make the bank go around and seeing that the bank is in a good position every day. 

We have a backlog in the hundreds, automation is not something that we'll finish anytime soon. It's definitely a marathon to finish all the things that we need to do.

In 2017, there was a lot of hype around RPA. They paved the way for us to see those benefits, and we continue to grow every year. 

In those early days, we had 28 automations in our first year. We thought we were pretty proud of that number. In 2023, we created over 100 automations in a single year and moved those to production. The volume and the increased capacity for our businesses improved. The employee engagement, when we talk about bots now, is much better. It's "how can we help?" There are no real concerns of "They're going to replace our jobs." Over seven years, our automations have grown, and we've matured with them. 

There are several aspects that we value. The control rooms, monitoring the performance, and making sure everything is up and running has been a great feature. From the design and capacity of the developers' perspective, the intuitive interface is excellent. It's a workflow-driven design session. Following the flow of the users alongside the code makes for an easy automation that everyone can understand.

Automation Anywhere brings in and changes the way we do process automation. Everything was very manual beforehand. We'd have to do batch processes where integrations of systems were pretty costly and took a lot of time. Mapping database fields from screens down to the next system was more difficult versus with Automation Anywhere, you get the visual input of the screens. You can click on those fields and not have to do the data mapping or extract them. You can correlate them to other systems almost instantly individually. 

Automation Anywhere is easy to pick up for business users. Initially, we trained 45 people. Whoever raised their hands, we said, "We'll train you." About 65% of those initial trainees were from the business side. A couple of years later, we noticed that the people who created the automation did really well. They were receiving promotions. Then, all of a sudden, we didn't have the people to support our automation needs since those original trainees moved up. We made a shift and said, "Hey, business users, you want to come to technology? We're going to centralize development." 13 said yes, and we kept building out. Now we're a team that's 40-strong.

The learning curve is pretty quick. Automation Anywhere provides a lot of training courses to support you and there are individuals assigned to your account. The learning curve is short from our standpoint. We spend two weeks with anyone who comes in, whether they're a previous developer or a business person. We find that simple automations can be completed within that training period. Within six months, some of the most complex items people are able to handle.

Right now, our 324 automations touch around 120 different systems. Our core platforms are integrated. APIs are being used for SharePoint or imaging systems so  thatwe don't really have a reliance on the UI. With the integrations, we just continue to grow. 

The integration of Automation Anywhere into our workflows, APIs, business applications, and documents is great. There are several phases to this one. Automation Anywhere, just the design, the tool, allows you to jump in with workflows initially and lay out the complete automation, and then you can get into the details. For us, it's particularly powerful as it aligns with the different systems that we work with, as well as providing connectivity to the underlying systems, seeing the screens to get into the details of that workflow, making for a great design process for our automation.

Our automation program has positively affected our business in terms of employee capacity and compliance. It's affected all areas. When we think of the capacity, I can go back to 2020 in the early days of COVID and with a payment protection program specifically. We had 9,000 tellers who no longer were going into the bank. We pivoted to an SBA program and had those 9,000 tellers calling a variety of small businesses. We still needed 1,000 more people to do the due diligence. That's where RPA shined. We were able to fill that capacity gap and immediately become one of the top three players in the space. 

When I think of just day-to-day employee engagement, we're focused on the controls of the bank. Those happen maybe once a month, once a quarter, once a year. So those are activities that you really have to prep for and document really well. RPA does the same thing over and over really well, and those controls are assured to be done and executed in the same fashion over and over.

Automation Anywhere has helped us save on both time and cost. When we think of we run around 750,000 hours of runtime on bots per year. That would be a significant amount of employees. That's about 450 to 500 employees' worth of work done every day. Just the overall capacity provided by automation would be hard to replace.

Automation Anywhere's ability to provide Automation at scale is impressive. We've obviously pushed that limit. We're at 324 automations. That's over 4200 tasks executed every day. From a scale and monitoring perspective, we know which bots are running, which ones may be going slow, and which didn't run. The ability of the control with room to monitor allows us to jump in and help out when necessary. That is paramount to our success. 

Automation Anywhere helps us find value. We do use professional services from time to time to augment both our capacity and capabilities while finding new ways of doing things. This is a very fast-moving environment. The things that we did five years ago are gone. We threw them away. We upgraded to new versions and have new capabilities. Keeping up with the latest and greatest is always a challenge. There are also new ways of development and sharing those findings, whether it's a webcast or part of the Pathfinder program; we're always curious about what's next with the product.

The tools are fundamentally solid. However, when I think of self-healing, such as automation with a new prompt or a new Windows patch occurring, being able to handle those kinds of things on top of what Automation Anywhere already does and that automatically click through and do the reboots that are necessary to just have a clean run would be ideal. That way, no one has to wake up in the middle of the night and adjust something. That would be amazing. 

Our company has been using Automation Anywhere for seven years. I've been using Automation Anywhere since 2017.

From a stability perspective, whether it's servers or virtual desktops with agents, we have very few issues. We have multiple servers and have never experienced downtime. We have had one or two nodes go down based on hardware issues, however, it's resilient. 

We're now at 324 automations, and it definitely scales. The screens prioritize things, and you have dashboards that say what's working and what isn't. Those types of activities help drive us to where the problems are and show us what we need to resolve them.

Technical support is solid. We pick up the phone and call and create tickets. We get responses almost instantly. We've had many nights trying to figure out how things work on our network or looking at logs. They've been great about jumping in any time we've asked for help. 

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution.

Throughout the history of development, people have tried to automate things. We've never used a tool that had the control room and the features, the scheduling, and the complexity that it could handle. When Automation Anywhere packaged the whole bundle together, that was the differentiator that really drove us to it.

When we think of ETL, all the standard tools, whether it's SQL or Oracle, we still have all those. However, for speed and simplicity and getting things to production fast, we'll leverage Automation Anywhere.

Many other options often require a data expert. You have to go to database tables to do automation or ETL-type activities, and you have to schedule that and know if there are conflicts within other systems. Plus, if there's downtime, you may not be able to run pieces. It's true coding. There is testing that's also required and the delivery time is not measured in weeks. It's measured in months. We'd all like everything to integrate seamlessly. That said, the real world comes into play, and I'm glad we have Automation Anywhere to fill everything out. 

Setup for us was probably the longest lead time. We're a bank, so we always have to scan the code base. We want to jump in, understand the connectivity, and understand how things are going to happen. There are a lot of planning-type activities before the install. We started in 2017 with version seven of Automation Anywhere. We went through version ten, then moved on to the A360. Each experience became better and better.

We have a PCI-compliant installation as well as our normal normal network.

Our experience deploying Automation Anywhere was seamless. From a server perspective, we run about a dozen servers in four dev IT QB production environments. We'll continue to do the first servers in dev and move to migrate them all the way through production. For any issues that we have along the way, customer service is right there with us to troubleshoot.

We've seen an ROI via hard saves. We define a hard save as someone having to leave the bank or a contract has to leave. We are net positive in our spend. We've managed to prioritize the highest use cases from a cost-saving perspective.

We find it comparable to other products out there. I wouldn't say huge differentiators from that perspective. 

We looked at autoIT to look at for specialty use cases. 

The very first bot that was rolled out was on my team. I've been able to see the control room and the code in progress and evolve over the years has been a pleasure. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

From an RPA perspective, it has all the core functionality. We can automate the bank's systems. The reliability, performance monitoring, and development time are excellent. In 2017, it used to take us six to nine months to develop. That was slow. Fast-forward to 2024, and it takes six weeks, plus or minus two weeks depending on complexity, to deliver an automation.