Automation Anywhere Reviews

Automation Anywhere is an RPA tool we use to automate common workflows that interact with various enterprise applications. These workflows can involve tasks like data generation, sending emails, or completing transactions within those enterprise systems.

We implemented Automation Anywhere to automate our workflows and save time.

In the past, these tasks were handled manually, leading to a lot of repetition. Automation Anywhere has eliminated that burden, making these same tasks much easier and significantly faster to complete.

We implemented AI-based automation that combines documents using intelligent document processing. This involved integrating generative AI to automatically create responses based on the data extracted from the documents. This automation streamlines the process and delivers the desired business output to end users.

Automation Anywhere caters to business users with its user-friendly interface, allowing them to build automation with minimal technical expertise. Our large business user community exemplifies this – after a five-day training program with hands-on exercises, they're empowered to independently develop their own automation within three to four days. This highlights the platform's ease of use from a business user perspective.

To ensure our business users can leverage RPA, we provide training through Automation Anywhere University. This platform offers in-depth coverage of both use cases and technical aspects, along with customized training that helps users directly connect their daily tasks to RPA methods. This blended approach has proven to be very effective.

Non-technical users can overcome the learning curve in four to five days.

While Automation Co-Pilot is a strong solution overall and integrates well with web applications, integrating it with legacy systems may require some effort on our part. However, this effort is typically minimal, taking just a few days to achieve successful integration. We're currently testing Automation Co-Pilot and exploring its potential for AI integration, which reinforces our belief in its overall value.

Based on our POCs, we project that Automation Co-Pilot will add value to our projects.

Automation Co-Pilot helps free up our staff's time on projects.

Automation Anywhere's service and customer support are improving. Their management prioritizes strong relationships with customers, evidenced by frequent collaborative meetings. This focus on customer solutions, along with other efforts, contributes to a clear upward trend in their overall support effectiveness. They've been a valuable asset to our organization.

Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize how we implement automation. Our organization sees a significant opportunity to leverage generative AI within the Automation Anywhere landscape. As a bot-focused organization, we have achieved a 30 percent automation feasibility rate. By combining automation with AI, we can achieve a 70 percent rate. This represents the kind of scalability we envision for our organization.

Our organization is expanding its use of Automation Anywhere. We have two main approaches: governance is handled through a dedicated platform integrated with Automation Anywhere, while bot deployment utilizes a separate web platform built with XTML or Java that interacts with Automation Anywhere for bot execution and deployment.

Integrating automation and APIs with Automation Anywhere streamlines workflows significantly. Users save time and effort since most integrations come with clear documentation readily available before the standard setup process, ensuring immediate functionality. Automation Anywhere's documentation serves as the primary resource for all integrations, and users can find most information there. For any remaining questions, support channels are readily available for further assistance.

Automation Anywhere has significantly reduced our operational costs and freed up employee time. With thousands of automated processes running on our platform, we're saving thousands of hours of work every month.  

Automation Anywhere offers a complete suite of development tools to empower developers for various enterprise automation needs. These tools include packages specifically designed for SAP integrations and other commonly used enterprise applications, making them highly efficient for building automation across different use cases within large organizations. Additionally, the web-based nature of the platform adds further value by enabling easy access and collaboration.

Automation Anywhere risks falling behind by focusing solely on Robotic Process Automation when competitors offer more versatile and adaptable solutions that integrate AI for a more intelligent automation experience.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for three years.

Automation Anywhere offers a 99 percent uptime, ensuring a reliable and stable platform for its users.

Automation Anywhere is capable of automation at scale.

The technical support team is knowledgeable and efficient, readily guiding users toward automated solutions. While some complex issues may require additional data validation, they consistently deliver resolutions within established timeframes.

Getting started is easy - the initial deployment follows standard procedures and can be completed in as little as two days for a simple use case. Complex setups may take up to a month, and the number of personnel required varies from two to ten people depending on the specific needs of each project.

Automation Anywhere falls within a mid-range price point when compared to other RPA tools on the market.

After considering UiPath, Microsoft Power Automate, and Automation Anywhere, we chose Automation Anywhere due to its ability to handle growth in our automation needs and its strong data security measures.

I would rate Automation Anywhere nine out of ten.

Upgrading Automation Anywhere can be challenging, especially when migrating from a client-server architecture to Microsoft's. However, within the Microsoft architecture itself, upgrades are significantly smoother and can be completed within a four to five-hour downtime window.

While Automation Anywhere itself doesn't require application-specific maintenance, we still need to perform regular maintenance on the server it's running on. One person is enough for the maintenance.

The time to maintain bots varies depending on their purpose but typically ranges from one to four days on average. 

Automation Anywhere is best suited for enterprise-level deployments due to its robust features. However, for smaller-scale needs, other options might be more efficient. If you're dealing with a large organization, Automation Anywhere is a strong choice. I recommend trying it to experience its microservice architecture, which allows for scalability and agility, as well as its integrated AI capabilities. These features provide a powerful and user-friendly platform for automating tasks.

Automation Anywhere is a leading global RPA solution provider. Its platform is used by companies worldwide, including many Fortune 500 enterprises. Automation Anywhere is known for its innovative approach to automation, offering both cloud-based and on-premises solutions. It specializes in developing bots to streamline operational and business processes, making it a prominent player in the RPA market.

Automation Anywhere can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid platform.

We implemented Automation Anywhere to streamline our operational processes and automate repetitive, mundane tasks. Our bots operate in both attended and unattended modes. In attended mode, bots collaborate with human operators; in unattended mode, they autonomously execute tasks from start to finish. These bots work 24/7 without human intervention. Automation Anywhere is particularly valuable in the BFSI and IT operations sectors, where it can significantly automate business processes. Our enterprise currently utilizes over 5,000 bots daily, resulting in substantial cost savings and improved efficiency. The cloud-based platform's seamless integration capabilities and regular product updates ensure its continued leadership in the automation market.

Due to data protection concerns, the financial services industry has not fully embraced cloud technology. However, the retail and healthcare sectors have migrated to the cloud and identified significant opportunities. Real estate, vertical healthcare, and smart city transportation are well-suited for cloud adoption. These industries often face a high risk of human error. Automating processes end-to-end with RPA bots can mitigate errors, enhance company value, and streamline human work. Cloud-based RPA allows for easy scaling of bots to meet fluctuating workloads, ensuring efficient and cost-effective operations, even during peak demand.

Automation Anywhere makes it easy for business users without coding skills. It offers a low-code product that allows citizen developers to create bots without writing a single line of code. These developers can drag and drop information to automate activities, streamlining tasks like financial operations and daily routines. By providing basic details about the properties they need to operate, citizen developers can quickly build bots that can be deployed to production and triggered manually or automatically. This technology empowers individuals to create multiple bots tailored to specific needs, such as HR bots or onboarding processes. In the financial industry, it facilitates daily validation activities and data transfers between servers.

The learning curve for creating basic bots is approximately one week for non-technical users. However, complex bot creation requires coding knowledge, typically in Python, C#, or DLL. For those with a background in backend coding, such as C# or Python, an additional month may be needed to understand the intricacies of RPA or Automation Anywhere fully. The learning time ranges from one week to one month, depending on the individual's skill level. 

Automation Anywhere's new version introduces Copilot, a feature that allows users to create a basic bot for a specific task. These bots can be deployed into a production environment with minimal adjustments, leveraging AI capabilities.

Copilot's seamless integration with our organization's daily applications will be valuable as we transition to an AI platform. This integration will significantly enhance productivity, accelerate our automation efforts, and reduce time to market. Additionally, Copilot will enable us to create a multitude of bots more efficiently.

Copilot can significantly reduce our staff's workload by generating templates for bots. These templates require only input parameters to be specified, saving up to 30 percent of their time.

AI currently offers a variety of APIs that can be combined to create customized strategies tailored to specific customer needs for service provision and operations. By leveraging generative AI and advanced tools like generative AI bots or Copilots, businesses can develop and deploy automated processes to streamline daily activities. By carefully identifying non-automatable processes, generative AI can assist in addressing these challenges and improving overall efficiency.

Automation Anywhere's versatility allows for seamless integration with various tools and applications. It can effectively communicate with any system, and APIs can be developed to facilitate communication with any desired tool. There are no limitations to its integration capabilities. Its user-friendly interface and well-maintained documentation make it easy to follow and create bots for automation on any platform. CI/CD pipelines can be used to deploy these bots efficiently.

Automation Anywhere offers packages that can seamlessly integrate automation into our workflows, APIs, business applications, and documents. By extracting operational activities and pushing them to databases, we can enhance bot productivity and improve overall business efficiency.

Cognitive services and PDF file automation should be refined. The integration process should be simplified, perhaps using API-based activities. If a response comes in JSON format, these features should be readily available, allowing for easy information extension. This will enable developers to perform tasks and view accurate results quickly.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for almost six years.

The stability of Automation Anywhere is not a concern when deployed on the cloud. 

Automation Anywhere's ability to scale automation is impressive. We will begin by identifying business processes and then involve subject matter experts to determine the number of bots required and their priorities. This will guide our automation journey, which can commence immediately. Licensing and deployment will be swift, especially if cloud-based. On-premises deployment depends on our infrastructure. The entire bot facility can be ready within a week. For development, a dedicated center of excellence team can prioritize bots and commence activities accordingly.

The deployment complexity largely depends on the integration process. If integration is straightforward, a citizen developer can acquire the necessary skills within one to seven days and begin developing. For complex analyses, prior knowledge of external environments, such as C# or Python programming languages, can significantly reduce the required code length within the Automation Anywhere platform. While Automation Anywhere doesn't offer a traditional coding structure, it supports integrating other languages and components, enabling activities with fewer lines of code.

Automation Anywhere offers a subscription-based licensing model for cloud, on-premises, and hybrid deployments. A single license allows for 24/7 bot execution, whether performing a single task or multiple tasks at various times on a single machine.

I rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten. It is one of the top three RPA solutions.

Users need at least two years of experience in a specific coding language for complex automation scenarios. This is a requirement. They will primarily work on integration, as Automation Anywhere bots do not handle this completely. Writing code to call external APIs or web services requires thorough knowledge. Users can create Python code to add to bots for triggers. For complex bots, at least four years of experience is needed, not just in automation but also in other areas. This knowledge helps with architecture, bot execution, and future scaling. To create reusable structures and portions, users should start by drilling down and identifying them. These reusable components can be used in multiple bots or processes. This approach can simplify complex scenarios by breaking them down into smaller, repeatable tasks. To handle such complexity, users should have at least four years of experience in a typical development environment.

There are two distinct approaches to upgrading Automation Anywhere. Automation Anywhere handles the upgrade process for its cloud-based solution whenever a new release becomes available. However, on-premises upgrades require scheduling a call with Automation Anywhere to plan the process. It's crucial to have a well-defined disaster recovery plan in place for on-premises upgrades. This plan allows Automation Anywhere to maintain a single active platform for upgrades while ensuring the other platform remains available for production. Once the upgrade is complete, the other platform can then be upgraded. In contrast, cloud-based customers can rely on Automation Anywhere to manage the upgrade process without additional effort.

Every day, technology evolves. Maintenance is necessary when components change, or new versions are released because specific code segments may become obsolete. We must closely monitor the entire ecosystem for errors and swiftly resolve them. Bugs can sometimes arise due to technical coding, so we must address these issues or share detailed platform information with Automation Anywhere for their analysis. If a core issue is identified, they will take the necessary steps to resolve it. They may request that clients modify their environment, application, or component handling for technology or third-party matters.

The maintenance requirements for Automation Anywhere vary depending on the situation. Minor issues can be quickly identified and reported to Automation Anywhere, who will respond within 24-48 hours based on the purchased services. Our system administrator can resolve minor issues. Audits may be conducted in a development environment, where estimates for time and effort can be determined. Cost and time estimates are not fixed and depend on the specific issue.

The bots are maintained daily.

We have varied use cases and have worked in different business areas. Customer service is one of our biggest business areas, along with investments and finance. We also have some risk compliance, legal, and HR use cases involving about 50 different applications.

Automation Anywhere has freed people's time and effort to do more useful things. Some smaller teams have a lot to work on during the holidays. The solution has improved error reduction and work-life balance. It was all the more useful during COVID-19 when we worked from home for four years. RPA was a godsend. People could do things more easily. We continue to grow our program through this year because of the benefits it provides.

We really like all the features of the solution. The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use. In 2018, we assessed four different products available on the market. We chose Automation Anywhere because it seemed to be the easiest and most intuitive to use for non-technical people. That has always been our model. We are a very citizen developer-focused organization in terms of RPA and intelligent automation.

The integration of Automation Anywhere with our business applications is excellent. We haven't yet encountered an application with which it doesn't integrate. That's the point of Automation Anywhere or RPA. You use the applications as is. It sits as a bridge or a layer on top of your existing application and does a fabulous job.

We have integrated very few use cases into our workflow. We hope to do that a bit more with attended automation and Copilot. We have no complaints so far regarding documents, but we hope to do a little more with that. From what I've heard, you have a lot more API integrations available now than before. We would like to assess them and use them.

Automation Anywhere has definitely improved work-life balance and error reduction. Our audit and compliance team regularly advocates for the RPA team. They reach out to different business areas when they're auditing them. They are absolutely one of our biggest advocates. We have seen an overall improvement in employee morale with the various benefits we have gotten apart from the obvious time-saving.

The biggest metric that we use is annualized automated hours. I think we have saved about 50,000 annualized hours. In addition, we have saved another 50,000 hours for automated monitoring where people aren't needed. It has saved us a lot of time.

Automation Anywhere is excellent at providing automation at scale.

Through my sessions yesterday, I'm absolutely very interested in the benchmarking process that comes as a part of the Pathfinder program. We are also hoping to use Copilot very, very soon.

We haven't used Professional Service Accelerators yet because of how our program is structured. We started five years ago. We do everything in-house, including training and development. Our citizen developer program is quite robust. We have been able to do all our migrations and development ourselves.

My favorite aspect of the Imagine event is connecting with many different people. I've been coming to the Imagine event since 2019. Every time I come here, listening to all the keynote speakers on the first day makes me realize that the world is moving at such a fast pace, and we are so behind.

You meet people and realize that these are all possibilities and opportunities for us to be a part of this revolution. It's amazing, and it always feels great to come to the Imagine event.

The most important part of the Imagine event is the people. We have worked with Automation Anywhere all the time. We have worked with excellent people, whether it's the customer success team, the accounts team, or all the leaders at Automation Anywhere. It is wonderful to meet all of these people and hear and see what their vision is and what their thoughts are.

The highlight of every Imagine event is all the products and services that are coming in the near future that we could use or leverage. It's really exciting. It's just me this time, but we usually have more people at Imagine. People are generally very excited to come and be part of it.

With Automation Anywhere or RPA, the way we automate things now is different from traditional automation. The focus of our organization has been to help nontechnical business people automate their own processes. It makes it so much easier for them to learn to automate their own work as opposed to traditional automation, which was mainly done by IT.

It is extremely easy for business users who do not have technical skills to use Automation Anywhere. We use the Automation Anywhere training. We train our own citizen developers within the organization, but the training program is based on what Automation Anywhere provided us at the beginning.

While we have to teach business users how to use basic technical things, we also have to teach technical people how to approach business and business processes. That's a part of our training program. Apart from that, it's very intuitive and straightforward. It's equivalent to a six-month-old who can operate an iPhone.

We take our cues for the solution's learning curve from the Automation Anywhere initial training. We think it takes about six weeks for people to learn to use Automation Anywhere effectively, and we build that into our training program. We cover the basics in week one. We take a use case and work with that in week two. People continue working on their use cases in the third, fourth, and fifth weeks.

In week six, we target to put the use cases into production and cover more advanced topics. We have continued collaboration with our developers to learn new skills. I think six weeks is the amount of time needed for people to be comfortable using the tool on their own for their own use cases.

On our platform, we have about 50 other applications integrated with Automation Anywhere. We have expanded our program from RPA to intelligent automation. Intelligent document processing, Alteryx, Power Automate, and Automation Anywhere actually work hand in hand. While Automation Anywhere is still our main automation orchestration program, we integrate these other automating applications along with it.

I could personally use automated testing, which we currently do not have in Automation Anywhere. When we looked at the document processing IQ Bot, it didn't work for our documents. Since I haven't looked at it recently, I don't know if it needs improvement now. I'm sure the current version is much better.

We started using Automation Anywhere at the end of 2018, so, it's been five years and counting.

We have no complaints about the solution's technical support. I rate the entire customer success team a solid 11 out of 10. That's my comparison scale. Over the last five years, we have had five customer success managers, and all of them have been excellent. They had different personalities and different ways of working, but all of them were excellent. The last four are personal friends now.

Positive

We started seeing a return on investment after the first year and a half of using Automation Anywhere. The growth has been a little bit slow but steady during the time we were all working from home, but I'm hoping for it to grow again over the next 12 months. We'll probably have bigger and better stories to share at the next Imagine event.

I think the solution's pricing is reasonable. Setup cost is what you expect in the industry so far, and the licensing is at par. However, I like the ease of licensing and the flexibility in scaling up or down. We have done that over the last few years. I am looking forward to moving to the cloud between now and the end of August. That will change the licensing model a little bit.

We do not have Dev Stage licenses. From what I understand, it's going to be a pool that we pull out of. It'll be different, but I think it'll give us more flexibility.

We did not use a different RPA solution before using this. We assessed four different products, starting at the end of 2017 through 2018, and realized that Automation Anywhere is the best fit for us. We still think the same because it works great, and we have no reason to complain. We haven't had the need for any other product just yet.

For our current setup, Automation Anywhere is set up on a private cloud on-premises. However, we are working to move to the Automation Anywhere cloud. We are assessing and going through the initial steps. We hope to be on the Automation Anywhere cloud by the end of this year.

Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.

I have been using Automation Anywhere since last year. I have used Automation Anywhere in several automations. For one of my precious clients, we had to trigger the bot when a mail arrived with PDFs, and there was a web portal where we needed to store the data from PDF. I use many Excel automations with Automation Anywhere and web automation majorly, and sometimes I use it with API integration as well.

Document automation is really helpful, even for a developer who is using the tool. I have used Automation Anywhere in several automations.

In Automation Anywhere, they could improve certain aspects. I also used Microsoft Power Automate where we have one initialization of variable that can be used anywhere in any subflow. If there are 10 subflows, we can use one variable everywhere without creating a new one. However, in Automation Anywhere, if you have created a flow, subflow, or subtask, you will create one variable STR name. Every time you have to use input-output scope for that variable to use in other subtasks as well. Automation Anywhere should implement this feature. They should also decrease their cost. Automation Anywhere is good, but Microsoft Power Automate offers unattended machines at a very competitive cost.

I have been using Automation Anywhere since last year.

I have never come across any lagging, crashing, downtime, or any sort of instability with Automation Anywhere.

Regarding scalability, I have used Automation Anywhere for many small clients as well as complex bots. It is scalable as we can work for small and complex bots, and we can run attended and unattended processes.

Support for Automation Anywhere is wonderful. I had an issue related to Chrome not working with the latest update. Automation Anywhere released a patch or updated version. When Chrome was not working properly, I contacted support and they were really good. They helped me extensively and even came on call to support me.

When comparing Automation Anywhere with Power Automate, it is sometimes a client need or developer choice which tool is used because both tools have their own pros and cons for a particular project. I appreciate both tools as they provide similar capabilities.

For the initial deployment of Automation Anywhere, it was a new thing to learn. For about a month, I found it difficult because I did not know about the various actions available in Automation Anywhere or other RPA tools. Now most things are clear. Whether using Power Automate or Automation Anywhere, I know which actions to use for specific tasks.

Automation Anywhere does not require any maintenance on my end.

I do not know the exact numbers regarding the pricing of Automation Anywhere, but through discussions with leads and higher management, I learned there is a vast difference in pricing.

Automation Anywhere is good, but Microsoft Power Automate offers unattended machines at a very competitive cost.

When developing automation or software bots, it is sometimes a client need or developer choice which tool is used because both tools have their own pros and cons for a particular project. Both tools provide similar capabilities.

I started my professional career in the RPA field using Automation Anywhere. When I entered this field, I was completely new and came across various RPA tools, with Automation Anywhere being one of them. When developing automation or software bots, the choice between tools often depends on client needs or developer preferences, as each tool has its own advantages for specific projects. I rate Automation Anywhere 9 out of 10.

We have multiple entities and businesses in our organization, which leads to various use cases. Specifically, there are numerous SAP use cases where we perform automation. Additionally, there are use cases with application automation and document automation.

By implementing Automation Anywhere, we wanted to automate repetitive tasks done on a daily or weekly basis and utilize the time saved for other tasks. We wanted to save time and costs.

It integrates well. We have SAP CRM and browser automations. We also have document automations. We also have API integration.

We have multiple bots running. It saves time. If manual invoice processing in SAP takes two to three hours on a daily basis, a bot can do the same job in half an hour. We are saving more than 70% of the time.

The feature that I currently like is Agentic AI process automation, where we use LLM models to automate our processes. I have heard a lot about it. I am eager to learn more about it and implement it in my organization.

It is very easy to use. You do not require any prior knowledge. Through Automation Anywhere University, you can learn it and implement your use case. A non-technical person can learn it within a month. For a technical person, it is easier to understand the loops, conditions, and workflows. A technical person needs only 10 to 15 days.

One improvement would be to implement a log mechanism within the workflow, similar to other automation tools. Currently, the log mechanism uses a text file. If we want to monitor a process, we need to check manually.

Another improvement would be to facilitate copying code blocks between projects, as currently, it is not possible to copy and paste them either locally or on the web.

I have more than six years of experience as an RPA developer and have used other tools. I have been using Automation Anywhere for the past two years.

It is very stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.

It is scalable. I would rate it ten out of ten for scalability.

We have about 1,700 automation users. We are a big organization with multiple locations globally. We develop automation for multiple departments and multiple entities.

Their technical support is good. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have used UiPath and Automation Anywhere. Both are very good. Automation Anywhere is cost-effective compared to UiPath.

The deployment is fine. It is very easy. 

It is completely on the web. We have our own licensing management tool. Anyone who has done internal training can request the license. A dedicated license is generated for you for a few hours or if needed, permanently. We have a dedicated portal for deploying our projects.

The upgrades are also easy. It does not require much maintenance.

We have multiple communities for automation. We have citizen developers and we also have expert developers. To identify the use case, we approach the entities and ask them to identify any mundane, repetitive, or complex task. We have a perfect pipeline for automation use cases. When a use case enters the feasibility check, an expert assesses its feasibility based on multiple parameters. If feasible, we proceed with development, prepare documentation, and design all solution documents. Next, we prepare the architecture, and development commences. After development, we conduct several rounds of UAT. Before deployment, we conduct a pre-delivery check with a dedicated department, ensuring best practices and proper exception and error handling. Once approved, we proceed with deployment.

In our organization, we are the first ones to work closely with the Gen AI and AI topics. We have a few opportunities to use the Gen AI capabilities in automation.

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

I work for a company, and we mainly automate tasks that we deem necessary, which are often repetitive and mundane. Anything that can be automated to save costs, from the finance and manufacturing perspective, is automated.

We are currently considering how to use it for document automation so that we can read unstructured data, such as invoices, that is a little bit messy and hard for a standard rule-based OCR to understand. We are also looking at an AI solution that could do that for us.

In terms of integration, we use tools like SAP. That is a big one. We have integrated Python scripting a lot. We also use Active Directory.

The advantage of Automation Anywhere is that it automates the mundane jobs that are brainless or take up time out of people's day that they could use to do other tasks. That was the main challenge that we wanted to address by implementing Automation Anywhere. We wanted to free up time in other areas by automating jobs that would make good candidates to do so.

It is built keeping business users in mind. Every single human being who uses a computer uses a UI, so automating those clicks is not a very complicated thing. You are just telling the computer what to do. In that respect, they try to make it as simple as possible to use things like Excel, send emails with Outlook, and automate clicks on a computer. That part is done well.

Allowing business users to trigger the bot means that I do not have to worry about scheduling or triggering the bots. I can just give them the keys to the car and let them do whatever they want to do. It saves time. We spend less time micromanaging and more time developing.

I have heard from people who are using these bots that it is saving them hours every week, every day, or so. They start to see those time savings instantly.

AARI allows business users to trigger the bot, so I do not have to schedule everything. This convenience allows users to utilize it as they need. I can set it up to provide users with a form to fill in all required information, and then the bot operates based on those specifications. AARI is very convenient, and that is their biggest selling point.

I have found that Automation Anywhere is prone to bugs in handling Excel. It breaks and gives vague error messages. I have had a lot of experience with that and learned that it is better to write a Python script instead of using Automation Anywhere's package when dealing with Excel because it is buggy and tends to break, unfortunately.

I have only been using it for about seven months.

I do not remember having any problems. It usually does not lag or crash. Some packages, like Excel, can behave unpredictably, but I have never had any issues with the application itself.

I do not have much information about scalability. When use cases come, I just build them and move on.

Before Automation Anywhere, I used Power Automate by Microsoft. I prefer Automation Anywhere because it is more robust. It allows us to build more powerful applications. Power Automate was great for small-scale things, but it had its limitations.

It was already deployed when I got here.

In terms of maintenance, the updates happen monthly. I do not have to do anything, but there is some maintenance when users want to get connected to run bots. There is a little bit of upkeep that happens there. Other developers sometimes do not have the necessary permissions. That process is not particularly painstaking. It is usually painless. There are two or three of us involved in the maintenance. We spend very little time on maintenance. It does not happen too often.

In our organization, there is a fairly steep learning curve because we have a very particular framework in terms of the way that we handle our bots and our processes. This is likely not the case with other organizations that do not have a similar framework. We like to break down our bots in a very particular way, and we like to control our bots' inputs with configuration files and use Python scripting to handle a lot of work rather than using Automation Anywhere's packages because it is more effective, but then there is a little bit of a steeper learning curve.

I never had to train somebody who is not technical on how to use Automation Anywhere, but you could teach someone how to make something super simple in 30 minutes, and then give them an hour. You can quickly teach them how to send themselves email reminders or do something similar, so you could get going pretty quickly.

Overall, I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten. It does what it does well.

I train new analysts and developers how to use Automation Anywhere, so my use cases are rudimentary. We automate many internal processes, such as our monthly reports, employee onboarding, and time cards. On the client side, we focus on finance and accounting use cases, such as order to cash, procure to pay, record to report, etc. I do a lot with revenue ops and revenue cycle automation.

You can create synthetic data to test automation capabilities without using real data. For every RPA delivery lifecycle, you can use synthetic data instead of production-grade data. If you need to beef up your artifacts or documentation, you can use Generative AI to have more complete or comprehensive artifacts as a part of your delivery artifacts.

Document Processing has been a higher priority for our clients this year. Automation Anywhere can meet that need in two areas: FortressIQ transactions and the IQ bot capability.

Automation Anywhere has significantly improved efficiency within my organization. For instance, we reduced the time to enter orders from five to ten minutes to less than a minute in one use case. This has given full-time employees significant time and enabled us to process more orders. We save a ton of time using automation to onboard folks and for our time cards.  

Automation Anywhere's most valuable features include its end-to-end capabilities within a single platform. It offers desktop automation, unattended automation, a recorder for tasks, and advanced IDP capability, which means that I can handle everything from basic cutting and pasting to advanced use cases. With Automation Anywhere, I don't need multiple other tools to automate end-to-end processes. I only need one additional chatbot tool, assuming conversational AI is part of the solution. If I don't have chatbots, all the capabilities are built into the platform.

It's the second-easiest platform we use. Blue Prism is the easiest for non-technical users, but Automation Anywhere is also straightforward. It has a drag-and-drop interface that helps people who have used visual tools and a recorder for rudimentary task automation. If you're not a professional developer and haven't gone through the process yet, it's pretty easy to build a bot without much training.

When I took the training, I did 40 hours of basic and 100 hours of advanced. If I had learned it from scratch, my experience would be different. It was the last platform I learned out of the three. I had Blue Prism and UiPath under my belt before I learned it.

It takes 40 hours to train a non-technical user in basic automation. A process analyst only needs eight hours, but if you use the platform outside of Bot Insight, you need 40 hours to be proficient. 

Automation Anywhere is easy to integrate for all the standard use cases if you have an API. Otherwise, you'll need to build a custom plugin or use computer vision. You can integrate workflows, APIs, business applications, and documents. 

The IQ Bots need more out-of-the-box models to lessen the time required for model training. Their competitors provide more built-in models, which enhance capabilities in document processing.

Automation Anywhere white-labels the Shibumi platform and calls it COE Manager. They could expand on that platform to reduce the development time and manage robots in production. The COE tool could do more. I think that's another place where they can expand their capabilities.

I started using Automation Anywhere in 2019, so I'm on my fourth year.

Stability issues are typically avoidable. Proper infrastructure setup and understanding are crucial for robot processing speeds. Infrastructure is critical, and you must ensure you design these bots to identify all business exceptions In the bot hardening process and the RPA delivery lifecycle. System exceptions are unavoidable, so you need to fix them. But outside of that, there isn't an inherent latency based on legacy software or anything else.

Automation Anywhere’s ability to provide automation at scale is on par with its competitors.

I rate Automation Anywhere eight out of 10. It's on par with competitors, especially if you get the enterprise version. They're a leader in the cloud, with more cloud clients than any of their competitors. 

Positive

I have used UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere. Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere are similarly easy to use. Automation Anywhere comes with all the digital capabilities you need right out of the box. They added those capabilities through acquisitions, but they own them outright. Blue Prism is easier to use but doesn't have all the same features.  They were late to market with their RDA capability, And I would say their IDP capability isn't as accurate, so it's not as highly rated.

Given its web-based architecture, the initial setup is genuinely straightforward. The hardest thing is a hybrid setup because you have to remember the rules for each one. Depending on the web browser, you have to have a certain amount of power and bandwidth at your disposal. I don't know that I would manage the environment myself. I'd rather have hybrid to cloud so that AA could manage the upgrades for me.

 Larger, multi-tenant deployments typically take three to five weeks, while a single device on a VM can be set up in two to three days. When we sell it and do it for infrastructure, we use senior consultants, so it's 1.5 resources. Depending on how complex the configuration is, we may need more senior consultants, but one architect plus a consultant is usually enough to get it done. 

Automation Anywhere requires some maintenance. We provide managed services to our clients for break-fix and business or system exceptions, but Automation Anywhere handles all the upgrades, patches, etc., as long as it's in the cloud. 

 It's difficult to say how much maintenance Automation Anywhere needs because it varies based on your environment. Sometimes, your environment isn't set up correctly, so the service crashes a lot, and you spend a lot of time resetting services and restarting processes.  

It also depends on the configuration and the number of automations. My largest client has 400 automations in production, so it's a full-time job. They say one person can manage that many, but I don't think that's a healthy number. It's more like 140, depending on the SLAs and use cases. An IT resource can fix most system exceptions, but business exceptions require somebody who's at least minimally basic-certified and ideally advanced-certified. 

In other cases, the automation wasn't built with the best practices in mind, so the process will time out and take longer than a human. Many things can cause maintenance and uptime to increase. Ideally, you want to do load management with the bot, so you're sharing the work. You want a utility available if the workload increases or a bot goes down. Lastly, you should ensure enough onboard memory and bandwidth for the automation to run.

The time to value varies depending on the size of your project and its objectives. It takes four to six weeks to produce a viable project if your goal is to prove that you can automate a process in your environment and realize value. Medium-to-large high-value automations might take six to 10 weeks or more. Once you have 10 processes in production, you'll see a return of two to five times the investment.

Complaints are generally about the cost of IQ Bot, which is higher than its competitors. The base model’s pricing is comparable to other platforms with attended, unattended, and IDP capabilities as well.

I rate Automation Anywhere eight out of 10. They're one of the leaders. I don't want to give a bad score, but no one is a 10 because there's always room for improvement. While the market share doesn't reflect it, they're tied for first place, in my opinion. 

I recommend doing the training before you purchase Automation Anywhere so you can understand the terminology, components, capabilities, and best practices. You should also get a partner to help you avoid all the hang-ups and pitfalls of adopting and monetizing new technology. About 70 percent of solo implementations fail.

Jersey STEM is an all-volunteer organization, which means that we have interns doing development using donated systems. The beauty of donated systems is they're free. The challenge of donated systems is that there's a lot of data that isn't correlated, and the systems don't talk to each other, so we use RPA to establish some communication between the systems and gather data into a central coherent location.

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization by giving us a relatively easy way to gather all the data we need. We have data from HR, volunteer-matching systems, and grants systems. Automation Anywhere has enabled us to automate data gathering and posting that data into usable forms.

Before implementing Automation Anywhere, we processed these tasks manually by getting data from websites, putting them into spreadsheets, and going from spreadsheets to databases. Attempts to automate that using other tools were pretty onerous. 

Automation Anywhere enables us to simplify the process and see results much faster. Previously, it would take six to eight weeks to get results. With Automation Anywhere, we're getting results in two to four weeks, which makes the business happy. When I say business, I must remind you that these are all volunteers with little time on their hands. They're doing this with full-time jobs. Our goal is to make their lives easier with Automation Anywhere.

Jersey STEM primarily uses Google, so we use tools like Google Sheets and Google Docs. The automations all have to do with the Google ecosystem. Additionally, we must integrate with all donated systems, including HR, volunteer-matching, and grant systems that are donated to us. Jersey STEM is building the data warehouse as we gather all that data.

In a volunteer organization, employee capacity and compliance are not the primary metrics. Because we have an all-volunteer crew, we don't have them eight hours a day. We only have them for a couple of hours a day. We want to do anything we can to better utilize those two hours a day so that they're not spending them moving data around in spreadsheets. 

I have some metrics at the top of my head, but they're a little abstract. Accomplishing what we've done so far with the bots in production would take 40,000. It's not a direct correlation of full-time employees because that's all work that would not have gotten done because they don't have time for that kind of nitty-gritty work. 

Automation Anywhere has saved us a lot of time but not so much cost because everything is donated. If you have volunteers and they're giving you two hours a day, it is better to spend time on intellectual work rather than repetitive mundane work. That's the big bang that Automation Anywhere gives us.

Automation Anywhere's ease of use is the most valuable feature. We have interns doing RPA development, and it takes them about four weeks to get advanced-level certification. And within four weeks, they're productive. It's user and developer-friendly, robust, and scalable. We started in March with four bots in production. We have four more bots about to go online, which is pretty quick in the RPA world.

At Jersey STEM, we haven't put Automation Anywhere directly in front of business users. We don't have citizen developers because most processes we tackle are back-office automations. In the fullness of time, we will put citizen developers to work. I'm confident they will pick it up fast because Automation Anywhere does a great job of simplifying the process of building automations.

The learning curve for Automation Anywhere is quite simple. I had four interns do some basic training online. We did a three-day course with them to get them the advanced training, and they were productive within four weeks. They are in the process of building more bots. At this stage, we may be in danger of having them run out of work because they're working so fast.

Integration is the primary reason that Automation Anywhere process-building is so simple. All the building blocks are handed to us. It removes the guesswork of what has to be connected to where. We can pay more attention to the logic of the process rather than the mechanics and infrastructure of the process.

The only thing I would advocate for is making Automation Anywhere's developer environment Mac-enabled because many of our graduate students are coming out of school with Macs. Everything else in the Automation Anywhere world is built for Windows.

We've only been using Automation Anywhere at Jersey STEM since March of this year.

Automation Anywhere has been rock solid for us. We have had no issues.

We have yet to find out the limits of Automation Anywhere's scalability because we're only starting. We have a control room with one attended bot runner. I can imagine that within the next year or two, we'll need to scale up. Given the way Automation Anywhere is architected, I am confident that scaling up won't be a problem. 

Deploying Automation Anywhere was relatively seamless. I've been using Automation Anywhere since version 10 and was a solution architect for version 10 and version 11. An on-prem deployment requires a computer science degree to understand because there are so many factors involved. With a cloud deployment, everything was done for me. The only thing I had to do was provisioning and configuration. It made life a lot easier. I could complete it on my own in about two weeks.

It's too early, but the ROI will not be measured in dollars and cents. It will be measured in our ability to get data faster. For example, if we have a base of volunteers waiting to connect with us, we can connect with them much faster. If there are grants to be had, we can get to those grants a lot faster. 

The difference between a volunteer organization and a typical business organization is that our funding has to come from outside. We have to find it. Help comes from outside. We have to find it. The return on investment is getting there quicker.

We purchase Automation Anywhere through a service partner that's also helping us with those costs.

I rate Automation Anywhere nine out of 10. It's a solid nine and a half because I don't give out tens. 

The Imagine event has been highly informative and useful for me. It's informative because I'm learning all about the generative AI coming down. That's been the focus. It's useful in that I've made lots of connections this year. When folks find out about Jersey STEM's goal, they're interested in volunteering. I have a whole bunch of new people to talk to who will help us with our future endeavors.

The Imagine experience is a full-on fire hose of automation, but it's a lot of fun. All the presentations have been geared to keep people's attention and to be entertaining. It's a brave new world, and there's a wow factor here.

I would invite folks in my field and other volunteers. It would be self-serving because our volunteers would make more connections, get more people to help, and also learn about the possibilities of where we could take Jersey STEM from a data infrastructure perspective.