Automation Anywhere Reviews

Automation of AP 3 Way Invoice Matching Process. Details from PDF invoices with the corresponding data in terminal. This project involved applications like Outlook, Aurora Terminal, PDF reading by IQ Bot, and Excel. The current scope of the project was to process around 600 invoices per day from 20 different suppliers which has saved a lot of time for the end-user. It has been deployed in production and the customer is pretty much happy with the performance of the bot.

On-Premise installation of CR with 1 runner and 2 creator license.

IQ Bot

16GB RAM

It has improved a lot. We could identify a lot of manual processes that can be automated for our customers. The scope of automation by using Automation Anywhere has become wonderful. IQ Bot and AI sense are the incredible features provided.

The features and the architecture of Automation Anywhere make it easy to analyze any process and conclude good candidates for the automation. The flow chart view helped our customers understand the code pretty easily. The handover or knowledge transfer also becomes very comfortable. 

• The most valuable features I see on the actions added have a lot of commands that were unavailable in older versions.
• The concept of packages with the flexibility of adding our own package. The packages for running Python Scripts, different packages for excel, and it has the option to work with Excel if it is not installed in the machine.
• Exception handling with try, catch, finally and many other actions introduced.
• Concept of different data types.
• The different views for writing code like Flow or List or Dual.

1) We have encountered some issues in the actions like Terminal Emulator-> Send Key -> Page Down/Up not working.

2) We found difficulties while copy-pasting commands after the end of "IF" condition and "Loop".

3) A scroll bar will be good in the "Flow" tab.

4) When any command is double-clicked, if the command opens in a popup window as we had in AA desktop versions, then that could have saved some space for development as the code writing section seems to be less which creates difficulties when there are loops in the loop.

5) Email trigger was also not working.

I have been using AA for four months.

Currently, it is a beta version but has pretty good performance stability. There are issues in some packages. I hope with all the updated packages the solution will be much more stable.

For example: Terminal Emulator-> Send Key -> Page Down/Up command is currently not working.

Excellent.

Supportive but takes longer time to respond.

I always used Automation Anywhere from version 10.5 to A2019.15

It was easy and straightforward.

In-house.

ROI of the current project delivered saved 4 hours of time per day of the end user.

The setup cost is less than other solutions in market

Blue Prism. I personally did not like the way and features provided for developing bots.

It's an awesome solution for automation.

Currently, our primary use cases are for the automation of medical appeals and charge processing. 

We are currently on the 11.3.4.2 version in our production environment in a HA configuration. We use bare-metal servers for our production Control Room. All of our bot runners are Windows 10 virtual machines. We are in the process of adding A2019 IQ Bot and Control Room servers into our production environment. 

In our Dev/UAT environments, we have added A2019 Control Room and IQ Bot servers in addition to our v11.3.4.2 servers.  

It has allowed us to generate additional revenue without having to hire additional people. Our fleet of bots is able to complete the work of roughly 40 FTEs. Without automating these tasks we would have had to hire additional staff or offshore this workload. 

We have largely targeted processes performed by offshore contractors in order to reduce our reliance on overseas workers. Where we have automated processes performed by onshore workers we have been able to reassign impacted users to more productive work. 

I don't think one feature is more valuable than any other. In my opinion, the value is in the totality of the platform. It is easy to use for our developers with a well laid out UI and many canned tools. The Control Room is very easy to navigate and mostly intuitive to use. 

The AA Client is easy to install and configure. I have found it very easy to integrate into our environment. And with the right vision and direction can be used to automate very complex tasks with plus 95% reliability and uptime. 

I am currently on 11.3.4.2 and the analytics feature of AA, Bot Insights, needs improvement. It is not easy to implement. It is not intuitive for the developer as you have to mark variables for analytics. Because it is very clunky you either have to build "helper" bots to display your bot analytics or use another platform like Tableau. 

I would also like to see improvement in the segregation of roles. I still do not understand the login in not allowing the Control Room Administrator to also be a Bot Insights Administrator. 

I have been using AA for 15 months.

I have found no stability issues with Automation Anywhere.

I have found the platform to be very scalable. We have seen no limitations thus far.

Customer service and tech support have always been responsive, knowledgeable and quick with a solution.

This is our first RPA platform.

I found the initial setup to straight forward. Automation Anywhere has been a great partner through the entire process.

In-house implementation

Our ROI was roughly 10 months.

RPA solutions are not cheap. There will be a large cost to implement any RPA solution but ROI can be huge and very quick if you are not timid. Do not go slow. Embrace the platform and it's huge potential and your RPA program will be a cash cow for your organization. 

We did evaluate UI Path and Blue Prism before choosing Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere provides a tool for RPA. We can create software bots that mimic humans. The RPA solution is created to work for repetitive tasks and to use human resources for a creative perspective. Automation Anywhere provides the best feature to make a software bot for processes. We use it for SAP, HRMS, SQL, etc.

Environment: we have a V11.x environment and A2019 cloud-deployed environment on AWS Cloud. Right now we are doing a migration process from V11.x to A2019.

Automation Anywhere provides an RPA solution for my organization. We automated many processes through Automation Anywhere in which productivity increased. We also implemented the IQ Bot by extracting invoice data to CSV format and uploaded it to Oracle E-Business Suite. We implemented Automation Anywhere in many department processes. We have two unattended bot runners. We implemented more then 40 processes until now. I used both V11.x and A2019 and I like more A2019 than V.11.

Automation Anywhere provides many features for automating processes.

1. V.11 has three different recorders but A2019 Automation Anywhere created an all-in-one recorder called Universal recorder which more reliable to use.

2. One of Automation Anywhere's best features is the IQ Bot. In V.11 we created many instances & train many groups. In A2019 Automation Anywhere updated IQ Bot to provide more accuracy. They included Python scripting for validation. Before that, we used Macro for validation.

3. Automation Anywhere provides more commands in A2019 and also provides a feature called Packages through which we can update commands that we need.

Automation Anywhere changed OCR features in A2019. My suggestion is to improve the OCR command scope and usability. We use OCR for PDF data extraction as we use in V. 11.x product.

Automation Anywhere has a perfect structure of working. Automation Anywhere has the best product structure. It also provides support for customers and they respond in 24 hours.

They still provide updates on packages to get more accuracy in process creation. The automation has already improved very much.

I have been using AA for 1.5 years.

Through Automation Anywhere, we can create stable bots for processes.

Through Automation Anywherl, we create bost for process and it very scalable & secure. 

I only use Automation Anywhere tools V 11.x &A2019

The initial setup is easier than the migration. We have to follow the steps given by Automation Anywhere for the initial setup. If we have any issues with the setup, Automation Anywhere provides support.

We implemented in customer environment. 

We have to calculate ROI before the process creation to get clarification and to understand the benefits of automation. 

Automation Anywhere provided the best quality for products like iPhones. 

Before using Automation Anywhere I checked Blue Prism & Ui Path but I preferred Automation Anywhere because it is best in quality. It also has IQ Bot for unstructured data converting in structure.

Use case: Extraction from Main Frame Application

Solution : 

The bot will log in to the email box and then picks the invoice no, order invoice amount, and surcharge details. 

Based on a single line item and multiple line items, the bot will log in to AS400 and feed and check all the information. If there is a discrepancy then the bot will update it based on the tolerance limit. If there is no discrepancy, the bot will accept the orders. The bot will validate costs in Excel and AS400 application and it will allocate cost for each invoice.

Easy to access: Without the need to download and install software on a local machine, we can access the RPA application from virtually anywhere.

Easy to use: Automating a business process is as easy as logging in, clicking, and automating any kind of business.

Value for time: with the help of Enterprise A2019, we can get instant value. We can log in, set up automation, and go live within minutes, giving an immediate return on your investment.

Scalability: With help of Enterprise A2019 is a highly scalable application, we can deploy a few bots and automating any kind of business processes.

1) By using Workload Management in Automation Anywhere a lot of manpower was reduced. 

2) Credential Manager used to keep customer/client information's more secure.

3) The product is dedicated to the business user and comprises advanced capabilities to offer an intuitive interface for the business user and bot developer.

4) This platform is easiest to use, avoids complexity, and ensures fast adoption & rapid deployment. 

5) It not only fulfills the requirement of the digital workforce but also be flexible to evolve with the business needs.

1) Needs some improvement in IQ BOT:

* while uploading input files we are facing issue with grouping even the same kind of PDFs

* consuming of CPU utilization and requiring more RAM

2) It is not able to use OCR effectively and has limited usability.

3) Handwritten documents are still a drawback.

4) Some of the control room GUI can be improved, it is also difficult in terms of control room management.

5) If Excel gets hanged Automation Anywhere does not give any notification.

6) Needs improvement in image recognition.

7) BOT insights taking more CPU utilization.

I have been using AA for three years and five months.  

Automation Anywhere is a stable RPA application.

Enterprise A2019 is a highly scalable application, we can start small by deploying a few bots and automating any kind of business processes.

We are satisfied with their customer service and technical support.

We have used Blue Prism for Automation. Cost wise it is higher than Automation Anywhere.

A2019 has zero installation required.

We didn't look at other options while choosing Automation Anywhere.

UiPath and Kryon.

There is only one option Automation Anywhere for cost-effective RPA.

Our primary use case is to automate the Client's workflow of reading a ticket from ServiceNow and then assign it to different bots which in turn performs the validations of the tickets with respect to different regions of the client's parameters. After the completion of the validations, the bot will update the ticket as per it's status and then send the hourly output report to Client's operations team. In between, if the bot fails, system exceptions or some business exception scenarios, human team will do the rest of the task.

Automation Anywhere has improved my organization in the following ways:

1. Repetitive tasks have been automated and hence the employees work in crucial logical thinking processes.

2. Tasks now don't depend upon the unavailability of certain employees/colleagues to be completed. Also, bots can run all day long which also affects the overall budgets.

3. Centralized Backup, Security & Disaster Recovery, Bot Insights, Workload Management, ROI Calculator in COE Dashboard.

1. IQ Bot, Automation Lifecycle Management, Workload Management, Centralized Backup, Security & Disaster Recovery

2. Image Recognition and OCR activity

3. Drag and Drop activities eases the task to write codes.

4. Control Room is very useful for bot's activity insights

5. Easy to use activities and almost all the artifacts available in the official AA's docs and forums can solve complex codes.

6. Certification exams are too good and almost cover all the required knowledge to be sound in working with Automation Anywhere.

1. User Interface can be simpler.

2. Master Certification now paid (previously it was free of cost) which sometimes creates hesitation to go for it.

3. Though the courses in the certification's learning hub are great and awesome, there is some more space for adding more explained contents.

4. Citrix automation lacks the perfect end to end automation.

5. Web Automation fails when an automated Screen Resolution is changed to some other resolutions. 

6. Pricing with respect to the competitors is more.

I have been using AA for two years. 

Performance is up to the mark with limited constraints of applications to be used. An application must be of a certain version provided by certain organizations and thus discontinuation of the said applications affects a lot while maintaining the bot.

Scalability is very high. There's no limitation of the number of bots to be used simultaneously and in a single port/machine/ID.

Technical Support provided almost all the solutions we had.

We had used a different solution for the following prominent reasons:

1. Cheaper price for same type of tool.

2. Citrix Automations.

3. Unavailability of required configurations that supports Automation Anywhere

Since the IT team and Infosec looked up for the setup, I don't have much idea about this.

Since the support for IE is discontinuing soon, we are now moving the base code to EDGE Chromium. ROI will be recounted after that. Previously as per the efficiency, we decreased the numbers from the process.

The installation is a bit of hectic process and also the price is more in market compared to other competitors.

UiPath, Blue Prism, AssistEdge

The use cases I have worked on made use of automated flow across multiple applications along with processing Excels and emails. We were also able to leverage a single tab for processing the entire flow of the record across three different applications. We also used the Analyze package to view the Business dashboard in the dev environment. The only drawback was that the export of the BI dashboard to the other environments is not yet available. The environments used were dev, staging, and production. The bots were exported out and imported into each environment.

Automating a tedious manual process has helped to reduce manual work and the time taken to process the records. It has also eliminated a great deal of errors because of manual processing. Since the manual process was being automated, we were able to set down sharp rules of validations which cleared out unnecessary manual interventions. Automation has also enabled uniform delivery to the customers with the emails being sent way ahead of time. This has greatly improved product delivery from our end.

The addition of excel advanced to directly append worksheets, add formulas, etc was very beneficial and made the code development faster. 

The usage of steps helped in the segregation of code blocks making it more readable and understandable. The usage of keystrokes in A2019 was much better than in v11. Also, the direct inline usage of the python scripts enabled s to handle various manual processes. 

Using the email and the file triggers were very helpful as we were able to directly execute the bots on the trigger.

We had a few setbacks because of bots getting queued and unable to force delete a task bot which kept persisting in the control room. These features should be included in future releases which will be highly beneficial. Also when the upgrade happened from .14 to .15, it did not allow for the existing task bots to be checked in. The upgrades should work seamlessly to enable high efficiency of the AA product.

We need the Business dashboard to be exported to other environments. Also for the availability of G-Suite package in the enterprise edition.

I have been using AA for six months.

A2019 needs a few more upgrades to make it more stable and robust but the AA support to handle the shortcomings has been great which has enabled us to make full use of the product.

A2019 is highly scalable and there is a lot of scope for upgrades.

Technical support was prompt and we were able to resolve most of our issues quickly

Earlier, I had used v11.3 of Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup was complex because of the confusion with the Pure cloud version. 

In-House

Our ROI is high.

There was a little confusion in terms of the setup costs for the pure cloud version because it was a bit misleading when we understood that all the Control rooms and the bot creators and runners would be on the cloud. The provisioning for the bot agents was not understood immediately.

A2019 is a very good product, there are still some upgrades to be completed, like the functionality of the GIT repository, G-suite package in the enterprise edition. One more advice would be to ensure seamless upgrades so that our current development is not hampered.

I work in the Management Consulting domain and hence am working with huge amounts of data, using advanced Excel formulae and creating reports and dashboards for clients is a routine. I primarily used the RPA AA2019 to automate and streamline few weekly reports which track KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for few products. Also, I automated the process of Quality checks which we perform after creating the reports. Another use case that I have automated is sending a Zoom meeting invite through outlook. The user only needs to enter a few details like attendees, date, and the time of the meeting.

My organization i.e ZS has been a partner of AA for the past couple of years and this year the organization decided to reach the next level by introducing a pilot program wherein many associates are onboarded to the AA2019 tool and can implement robust and efficient solutions using the same thereby increasing productivity across the organization. This has been a success and we are planning to scale the program to a much wider audience within the organization. The saving of efforts within my project has been to the tune of 20% as of now and I am sure that it will improve as we explore the tool more and automate many more processes.

The Capture command has been a lifesaver for me in each of my use cases and the advanced Excel functionalities like running macro, reading and manipulating data, etc. It allows the bot creator to leverage the inbuilt functionalities that AA2019 has to offer to a great extent. Also, the functionality of designing child and parent bots help me to design the process in a modular way. Additionally, the error handling capabilities of the tool has really improved the troubleshooting experience when we encounter an error.

The AI Sense functionality is what I believe can be improved since when I tried to use it for automating a use case involving a Citrix Virtual Machine, it was unable to capture objects consistently. This feature can be made more intelligent and less bulky in terms of the downloadable package size of the code in the next release and also the VB/Python scripts which we can use in conjunction with the AA2019 functionalities is what I believe would help in automating many processes end to end.

I have been using the Automation Anywhere 2019 tool version for the past six months.

I would rate it an 8/10 since I believe if the AI Sense capability and handling MS power point functions is further enhanced with the next release, then it would make a much larger impact.

It is very much scalable in my opinion and should be used by big organizations lokoing to save costs and increase productivity.

The setup was a bit complex. There were many IT approvals that I needed to take.

I am currently able to save 2-3 hours of manual effort per week.

Project 1: Built an unattended bot to automate a complex Audit process for a healthcare client. There are 90+ bots deployed and it is processing 1000+ cases of different types every month.

Project 2: Built assisted bot for a healthcare client. It was used by customer service representatives. Unfortunately, this process was not used for a long time due to latency issues and a functionality gap.

Project 3: Working on migrating the Audit process automated using Automation Anywhere v10.5 to the new version, A2019.

AA has helped to automate a complex Audit process. The process was tedious to the auditors, as they need to log in to a number of applications to collect audit data for validation. It involves web, desktop, and mainframe applications (total of 20+ applications of 40+ roles).

The whole process was automated such that the bot will log in, collect screenshots, build the PDF, and then report the results to the auditors. This saved auditors from doing the mundane manual task of logging into multiple applications independently. Also, the auditors had to manage credentials for all of the applications before, whereas now, the bot takes care of storing the details in a secure vault.

The most valuable features for us are:

1. Object cloning with an option to enter wildcard selection was very useful when working in a web application that generated dynamic HTML content.
2. The Terminal client options have helped in automating terminal applications effectively.
3. The Windows capturing features that allow for automating desktop applications works seamlessly compared to web application automation.
4. Excel automation is one of the clean and very useful features that helps in reporting, as well as other Excel-related operations. Having the option of using Excel as a database helps with performing logic.

Areas that can be improved are:

1. For assisted automation, the AA bot needs the facility to be triggered through an application interface after collecting input from the user. There is no inbuilt option available in AA to collect all the inputs in an interface. In our case, we built a desktop application to collect all of the user input and, on submit, the .NET code will run the ATMX file.
   
   Can AA provide a simple user interface through which a user can collect input and submit it to trigger the bot?
   
   
2. It needs an option to change the Windows resolution.
   
   
3. It needs to have an option to select an object after a three to five-second delay. It is useful in the case of menu selection and this option exists in other tools.

We have used several versions of Automation Anywhere since 2019, as follows:

• 2019 May - 2020 January: Used Automation Anywhere v11.3
• 2020 March - 2020 October: Used Automation Anywhere v10.5
• 2020 October - Current: Migrating from AA 10.5 to A2019

We have used WorkFusion RPA, which had options for machine learning features first.