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reviewer1454262 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Specialist - Senior at HCL Technologies
Real User
Reasonable-priced, good error handling, and it saves us time doing routine work
Pros and Cons
  • "By using this, we are saving time and we no need to do routine work, as it is now automated and the result is shared with all of the end-users."
  • "In A2019 it does not display the exact running status, but rather it displays the previous one."

What is our primary use case?

I have automated the applications that we use for daily checks. We automate the application health check functionality, capture the result in an Excel sheet, and share it.

By using this, we are saving time and we no need to do routine work, as it is now automated and the result is shared with all of the end-users. We are able to navigate if any further application changes.

It captures all of the day-to-day activities and monitors the jobs at the time we specify. It helps with all technologies.

How has it helped my organization?

Automation Anywhere, by the name, can be used anywhere for automating tasks. Everywhere automation and anywhere automation. By using AA, we are able to reduce the time and manpower spent on tasks.

We can also have data updates in form of email, which can be saved for later usage.

It is very easy to understand the code.

AA helps in moving people's current trends using the current technology. AA is an RPA tool that makes robots do all of the work or jobs as assigned.

AA is a good tool for all technologies in all organizations.

What is most valuable?

The features I found valuable based on my usage are:

  • Error Handling helps to find the exact error line in the logs.
  • Email can be used to send emails to any number of users.
  • Excel advanced and basic modules help to execute most of the commands in Excel.
  • OCR captures the exact text.
  • Keystroke shortcut is used within the shortcut, like TAB or ENTER.
  • The universal recorder captures the specific options that need to be captured.
  • The mouse click option can be used to capture exact actions.
  • The delay function can be used to make applications wait for a specific time.

What needs improvement?

In the Universal Recorder, we face minor bugs in A2019. For example, the browser closes and using the recorder.

There are some minor bugs in the universal browser. In cases where Microsoft Silverlight is used, it doesn't capture the button.

In V11 we use OCR, it captures the image and displays the text it captured. However, in A2019, it only captures and does not display the text.

In A2019 it does not display the exact running status, but rather it displays the previous one.

In V11, we used to add images in email message boxes with the current date and time but in A2019, we are unable to do so 

Buyer's Guide
Automation Anywhere
April 2025
Learn what your peers think about Automation Anywhere. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.
847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working on Automation Anywhere since February 2020.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

The first-ever RPA tool that I used was AA V11.

I started with AA V11, completed the Advanced and Master certifications, then moved to the next version, A2019.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

AA comes at a more affordable price than the other tools.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

AA is the best tool compared to others in the market such as UiPath, Blue Prism, and ProcessRobot by Softomotive.

What other advice do I have?

I am expecting that in the next versions of A2019, more actions will be added.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Automation Developer at Schlumberger
Video Review
Real User
Reduces number of FTEs required to do a process. Technical support could be much better with their responses.
Pros and Cons
  • "It has helped us to save a lot of FTEs for our solutions that we have provided to our companies. Suppose a job which was done by a group of eight to nine people on a daily basis for 24 hours was taking a lot of time, so we created a bot with Automation Anywhere. It was done with a bot working 24/7. It reduced the numbers of guys required to do that process."
  • "Now, it is a big complex to download the product and install it, then again to install the patches. So, it takes a lot of time to download it."

What is our primary use case?

We generally do stuff to automate websites and SAP that we have in our company.

How has it helped my organization?

It has helped us to save a lot of FTEs for our solutions that we have provided to our companies. Suppose a job which was done by a group of eight to nine people on a daily basis for 24 hours was taking a lot of time, so we created a bot with Automation Anywhere. It was done with a bot working 24/7. It reduced the numbers of guys required to do that process.

What is most valuable?

The cognitive solutions that it provides.

The feature to automate the use case by simply extracting data, putting it into SAP, and automating the data. This is mostly website based, which is pretty easy for us to work on.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see some more with the Excel commands that they have. Also, with the cognitive, that is coming up we need to see what else they have, e.g., some SAP features to enhance the product more.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is moving to a stable version right now. Version 10.5 was more stable and version 11.3 is having some glitches. But, we are moving to a newer version. Let's see what that brings to the table.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support could be much better with the responses which we get. Also, guys come to our company and help us whenever we have some big challenges, so it is quite good. However, it could be done in a better way.

How was the initial setup?

Now, it is a big complex to download the product and install it, then again to install the patches. So, it takes a lot of time to download it. But, the newest version that they are coming out with is web-based so it will be quicker on the cloud. As the CEO said, "Booking an Uber takes more time than downloading Automation Anywhere and even making the first bot."

What was our ROI?

It has provided us ROI.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

It is a bit close, but I feel UiPath has an edge over Automation Anywhere.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the product a proud seven (out of 10). It could be improved more. With the newest version, we need to check the product. I am giving it a seven (out of 10) as a developer and because I'm using it daily.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Automation Anywhere
April 2025
Learn what your peers think about Automation Anywhere. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.
847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Project Manager at ANZ Banking Group
Real User
Saves us man-hours, headcount, and processing time
Pros and Cons
  • "We have automated the equivalent headcount of 500 FTEs since we started. Those people haven't been laid off. They are just doing different types of work activities."
  • "We have been looking at processes which can easily transition into a large scale environment, where you can have cloud or hybrid model. However, being a bank, some of our processes are critical and we would like to hold those on-premise. This limits us with our usage of Automation Anywhere."

What is our primary use case?

Being a bank, we have a lot of processes which we have automated. I am a Project Manager for HR functions. The majority of my processes are in terms of income and skills processing. Those are all automated.

How has it helped my organization?

We were one of the few to start up this journey with Automation Anywhere. Interestingly, the majority of our processes were determined to be boring. People did not find them to be very interesting. Those processes have been automated. Being a bank, we have some sensitive processes which we cannot automate. Those processes have been given to human intellectuals. Otherwise, the majority of our processes are automated.

It has boosted our processing time by seven times. Typically, something that has taken eight to 10 minutes now can be done in two to three minutes. So, we have seen some value-add there. 

Resources are being processed earlier and involved in a different type of a governing kind of role. This sort of builds a layer for them to move and scale up. The solution is fast and easy to deploy. Our use cases lasts for two to three sprints and we can churn out solutions very fast.

What is most valuable?

We do not have a server type of an environment. We use a desktop version of Automation Anywhere which is easily customizable and quickly built-in. We do not have to go through major security iOS applications, etc. These are all enterprise applications that we have onboarded. Each of our functions take their responsibility of building their bot and deploying it. 

It is fast and reliable. 

What needs improvement?

Older versions of Automation Anywhere required specific skill sets to use it. It is no longer like that.

The version A2019 GUI allows you to drop and drop.

For how long have I used the solution?

We started our journey in 2013 or 2014.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

As far as version 10.1 is concerned, we have been using it for the last two years. It is okay. As an organization, we look forward to next version. However, being a bank, we have certain processes that we have to follow. We are happy with the version that we are using and haven't experience downtime.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have been looking at processes which can easily transition into a large scale environment, where you can have cloud or hybrid model. However, being a bank, some of our processes are critical and we would like to hold those on-premise. This limits us with our usage of Automation Anywhere.

How are customer service and technical support?

The support that we receive from Automation Anywhere is really good.

We have specific customer success managers as a platinum partner. We have support extended to us when we have any type of concerns and issues. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very straightforward. It didn't really affect our processes at any levels, which really helped. The process was fast and easy.

The support team kept our team calm.

What about the implementation team?

We have an in-house Automation Anywhere team who supports us.

What was our ROI?

It saves us man-hours, headcount, and processing time.

We have automated the equivalent headcount of 500 FTEs since we started. Those people haven't been laid off. They are just doing different types of work activities.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate other vendors beside Automation Anywhere. 

Automation Anywhere was a pioneer in the market at the time that we were evaluating vendors. It was a good match.

What other advice do I have?

Explore the new version A2019 that is coming out. It is user-friendly and can be onboarded quickly.

I would love to use the next version A2019 that is coming out.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Technical Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Enables us to automate processes that should not be manual but development and support are sluggish
Pros and Cons
  • "Automation Anywhere helps improve our organization by allowing us to automate processes that should not be manual."
  • "Technical support is not very good and they sometimes promise what they cannot deliver. They promised us that they would implement multitrigger and according to sources delivery of that functionality is not in their plans."

What is our primary use case?

We have a lot of business use cases that we are using this tool to automate processes for. These include different business verticals, like credit, fraud, enterprise operations, and marketing. Each team has a separate dedicated RPA (Robotic Process Automation) team of its own.

We primarily automate processes for the banking and financial sectors. This means all credit related stuff, such as loan applications and operations.

I'm working on enterprise operations. We have different business processes that our business folks handle manually and our job is to automate them using RPA and the Automation Anywhere tool.

We are using the tool on-premise.

How has it helped my organization?

Automation Anywhere helps improve our organization by allowing us to automate processes that should not be manual. An example which we are working on currently is that we have a business process wherein we get emails from our business customer support providing monthly statements. Currently, we have a dedicated team who are taking the requests, going to our web, downloading the statements, and sending an email.

Because this does not have to be a manual process, we are currently working on automating the entire thing. So we'll be freeing up resources through automation which will save us close to 750k in a year.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature for me in the current tool is the ability to develop the code quickly. This is a feature which is out-of-the-box. It has about 90% of the things that we want, just included — a plug-and-play kind of solution. That helps us in quickly developing bots. It's robustness to access Excel documents is a useful feature because we use Excel a lot. So that kind of gels pretty well with what we need from the tool. So these two features are something which I can consider most valuable.

It is easy to use. You can get up and running using the training. It's pretty easy to get started with the tool. Only our technical team is involved in the development Automation Anywhere and bots, which is the direction our organization has chosen. We don't encourage non-technical team people to deal with it. That's our strategy.

We just did the PoC for IQ Bot, and it went fine. We have quite enough workload to be productive for this quarter, so probably early next year is when we are planning to start using IQ Bot.

What needs improvement?

One thing that they have to fix is scalability. We are scaling at a fast pace, and they promised us that they would implement multitrigger. If they don't get that enhancement out it is very inconvenient. When we asked when they could deliver the stable version of that feature, they said it would be sometime in August or September. But when I discussed this enhancement with one of the product owners, it doesn't look like they have had that on their development roadmap for even a September or October time frame.

But that's something which we are desperately looking for because we are scaling at a massive level, and without that feature, we are doing a lot of workarounds. It is a wasted effort. It would also be a good addition to the product. I am sure in a lot of organizations, are also facing that need or they'll come eventually to it. We have interacted with our customers and our partners and they agree. Some are already also in the same boat.

We would definitely like to see the Workload Manager (WLM). We thought that we would not need it. We thought that with the WLM feature, they were making a mistake and going nowhere. But right now, first and foremost, it is the most important feature I would like to have. The rest all are secondary for me. There are other organizations desperately waiting for that product. I don't see that the release will be happening soon.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have using this solution for a year and a half.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product overall is pretty stable. We do not see any big issues on the stability risk, so it is pretty decent in that way.

As with any other solution, it is evolving. We had our own challenges with the tool, but it is getting more stable as we progress. There is a learning curve.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are using it on a pretty large scale. We currently have close to 60 bots running in production, but in the coming couple of months, we will scale up close to 120 bots. We have plans to scale up much larger, then eventually move to the cloud. That is in our roadmap.

A big problem that we are facing with the tool is that it is not scalable. For example, we have processes that are going to run for 36, 40 hours. It is running as a single trigger. Currently, Automation Anywhere doesn't support multitrigger. For multitrigger, you develop a solution once and install in multiple machines and run parallel. AA doesn't support this so we had to do workarounds to make that achievable.

We also got a tool from Automation Anywhere that was supposed to fix or patch a problem, but it didn't work. It was a horrible, pathetic product that they brought out when it wasn't ready. We had such a very bad experience using the extra feature. We worked with Automation Anywhere to get it to function. They also said that they don't know that the tool will work if you set it up because someone developed it and he left the organization. That feature is still not there in Automation Anywhere. Even in higher management, they instructed us not to use that feature, even for basic functionality. That's how bad the product was. I just discussed it with one of the product owners about the same, and they also kind of agreed that the solution was brought out prematurely. In all, they wasted our time on something that did not work.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have tried to use tech support for this product and it was a pain. When we interact with them, we get all the lower level customer tech support. They have no idea how to solve feature problems. We might explain to them that a feature doesn't work right and only after four or five interactions, we asked to be escalated to a person who has good technical knowledge.

A person came on-premises and tried to explain a few things we had trouble with. We were much ahead of where they were because we did all the testing already. We could tell them more about what was working and what is not working than they knew. Again that person agreed that someone did the design and he left the organization. The person who came, who is representing the company didn't have complete knowledge of the product he was sent to fix. He just said to not use that product. Period. It is not the resolution we were hoping for.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We had already decided long before which product we were going to choose to use so we did not actually consider other products and used this first.

How was the initial setup?

We scaled up pretty fast. Initially, it took a couple of months for our pilot, then we were up and running pretty fast.

We follow the same standard methodology which Automation Anywhere recommends for creating bots. When going through the process, we try to optimize it before we start doing development, then making sure the process is suitable for automation. It's a standard process that we follow across the board.

What about the implementation team?

We have a consultant. and a vendor partner who worked on the installation. We are struggling with our vendor partner also. They are not up to the grade when it comes to knowing the product. So we are having a lot of challenges with our vendor partner setup.

What was our ROI?

Knowing about return on investment is not in the normal scope of what I do. But we have a lot of bots running which are saving time and effort while being more accurate, so I'm sure the company has an ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Automation Anywhere University is pretty good. They make it available free for everyone. You can download and learn from it. The courses are tailor-made. It's pretty decent. One can just go through the courses and start developing bots straightaway.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have evaluated other products: UiPath and Blue Prism. However, we chose Automation Anywhere for security purposes and the Control Room, so that it can be centrally managed.

Because I have experience with multiple RPA tools at an insurance-based company or a telco, I saw and worked with other tools, like Blue Prism, which are more efficient than Automation Anywhere. But as in financial institutions, like the banking sector, Automation Anywhere and some other products are predominant.

What other advice do I have?

identifying the processes which need automation. If you're just trying to start up with your automation journey, the recommendation would be to identify low complexity fruits first, so everyone can get a taste of what automation can bring to the table. Then try to go for complex things, because if it fails, this will be a big obstacle in your journey. So, take smaller steps, then once everyone gets a taste of what automation can bring, there is no stopping necessary. Start slow, but scale and learn fast.

On a scale from one to ten, one being the worst and ten being the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere around six or seven. The reason it is not a higher rating is for one critical thing: as your code gets longer, it is difficult to analyze. It's just lines of code going from top to bottom. It is pretty good at developing the code and does make things faster. But analysis is not effective. If I had to choose between six or seven, I would have to choose the six. 

The important thing for those considering the solution is to analyze what business processes are in place and select a tool appropriate for what needs to be accomplished.

We are not yet integrated with other applications. We are trying to integrate Automation Anywhere with Splunk, which is a dashboard that shows all the information in a dashboard. However, that's in the pipeline for early next year.

We do not use the Bot Store because we don't know the authenticity of the code that is running underneath. As a leading financial institute, we want everything to be transparent. We can't take code built by someone else not knowing where the data will go.

We do not use Citrix automation.

We do not use attended automation.

My advice is to really evaluate your business process before you choose a product.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user1180137 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Analyst at Merck KGaA
Real User
Decreased the workload and tickets on our service desk
Pros and Cons
  • "Just for this use case, we had around 300 tickets coming in every month. We went live last month and the tickets went down to around 80 as of August 20th. While it might touch around 100, over a period of around six months it will become zero because we have not removed all the legacy data. We are just doing it from the go date of when we went live. The target is that it will be zero after three months. So, it's working well."
  • "Automation Anywhere is unable to connect to the database directly. What we are doing now is directly writing the PL/SQL scripts and trying to push the data from the database into Automation Anywhere. This feature is available in UiPath, but not in Automation Anywhere."

What is our primary use case?

We have an ITMS Service Desk that has a lot of tickets coming to it. As an enterprise, there are too many applications there, which are being used by employees. This service desk enables them to address all the issues which they are facing, whether it is on the application, infrastructure, etc. There is a group who manages all these tickets coming through ServiceNow. These numbers are huge. To manage these services or change requests, we use Automation Anywhere when it is not possible to use either an API or do scripting.

My company is using the latest version.

How has it helped my organization?

I have one application that does not publish any APIs. However, there is one activity where every employee needs to be registered in that particular application. Now, we use Automation Anywhere for this. So, we get the data from the source data using the front-end of that application through the Automation Anywhere script. Then, we do registration of the employees into that application. Previously, this was being done by people on our service desk. Now, we are using Automation Anywhere to do this activity. This has saved a lot of time. 

Just for this use case, we had around 300 tickets coming in every month. We went live last month and the tickets went down to around 80 as of August 20th. While it might touch around 100, over a period of around six months it will become zero because we have not removed all the legacy data. We are just doing it from the go date of when we went live. The target is that it will be zero after three months. So, it's working well.

A work in progress is a request which came in from employees using ServiceNow to create a VPN account for them. Today, this is a manual process where the service desk people have to raise a ticket to another team who create the VPN account for the employees. This is why we are currently automating this process.

What is most valuable?

I like that it can login to any system as a robot and do the work that humans can.

What needs improvement?

Automation Anywhere is unable to connect to the database directly. What we are doing now is directly writing the PL/SQL scripts and trying to push the data from the database into Automation Anywhere. This feature is available in UiPath, but not in Automation Anywhere.

I am unaware if Automation Anywhere is able to read unstructured data, build some intelligence around it, and then push it into the application. We do have some requirements in our organization where invoices are scanned, and based on the data, hard copies of the data are fed into some applications. Today, we are using different tools for these features, but if it is available in the tool, then that would be good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are a midsize company in the Indian market running one or two bots. 

From a scalability perspective, I don't think there will be any issues. It is pretty good.

How are customer service and technical support?

Support-wise, it is great. 

How was the initial setup?

We installed this on a cloud infrastructure and had a lot of challenges. However, there was a dedicated support person who was helping us to do the installation.

The initial setup was definitely complex. Layman people cannot do it. People with a bit of knowledge need some help from Automation Anywhere.

It took a month and a half to do the basic installation of this software along with some internal processes related to our firewalls.

What about the implementation team?

We had a dedicated person from Automation Anywhere who was supporting us at the time of the initial installation.

What was our ROI?

While our Automation Anywhere's implementation is in a premature stage, it has really decrease the workload on our service desk. We are looking to decrease the ticket counts too. I definitely see this solution helping us in the future.

Our tickets have decreased. We have more than 40 uses cases. We definitely see some ROI in the future from this product.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

In the Indian market, I feel that for mid-size companies, such as ourselves, that having multiple bots costs a lot. If Automation Anywhere wants to expand in the Indian market, they will need to look at their pricing.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

One of the major reasons that we went for Automation Anywhere was a global MSA, which our company has with Automation Anywhere. They wanted us to use this particular tool for our end customers too. 

I am part of an internal CIO team, where our customers are our employees. However, as an organization, we had a global agreement with Automation Anywhere where they wanted to deliver this tool to the end customer as part of their solutions. Because of that agreement, we went with Automation Anywhere.

My team (who uses both Automation Anywhere and UiPath) says that UiPath has better modules and functionality than Automation Anywhere.

What other advice do I have?

I'm seeing some results in the use case for whatever we are trying to automate. So, it has been really helpful.

Don't use an RPA tool for any problem statement. I've seen people use any RPA tool available for their problem statement just to say that they are using some type of RPA. E.g., We had a use case where we had to read information from an Excel table and generate a report, so people started using Automation Anywhere. However, it would have been better in this scenario to use Power BI by creating scripts.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Director of Business Process Improvement at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
We have established more reliable enterprise business processes which we can run 24/7
Pros and Cons
  • "We valued the ease of use, when we were thinking about scaling out to the business. The recording feature, while not a developer tool - it is a tool for a business user who may not possess the thought process of a developer - we valued that in our evaluation."
  • "On the cognitive side, some of their competitors, when we were originally shopping, were a little more advanced in that space. Making use of probabilistic outcomes and presenting them to a business user is a feature that, at the time of our evaluation, did not feel like a strong, mature solution for Automation Anywhere. Nevertheless, they won our business. That is one feature where I feel they are trying to make investments to address those gaps."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for back-office administrative business processes, within order-to-cash. We have an end-to-end process automation that supports customer billings. We also have task-based automations that process either customer credit memos, or credit and re-bills, working within SAP.

We started with the solution on-prem and we have shifted to an AWS cloud environment.

How has it helped my organization?

It has allowed us to establish more reliable business processes, when transacting in our enterprise systems. It has improved the reliability of our monthly billing processes that, in the past, was dependent on manual, nine-to-five types of activities. We can now schedule those activities, process 24 hours a day, and then we review exceptions. I would emphasize and underscore the reliability aspect and the ability to process 24/7.

It is highly reliable, both from an uptime perspective and regarding data-quality and input into the systems. It's doing the same thing, every time, with 100 percent accuracy.

To put it in terms of hours, we are approaching 10,000-plus hours of capacity on an annual basis.

What is most valuable?

There aren't any features that are specifically valuable. We are not using IQ Bots.

What needs improvement?

On the cognitive side, some of their competitors, when we were originally shopping, were a little more advanced in that space. Making use of probabilistic outcomes and presenting them to a business user is a feature that, at the time of our evaluation, did not feel like a strong, mature solution for Automation Anywhere. Nevertheless, they won our business. That is one feature where I feel they are trying to make investments to address those gaps.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Automation Anywhere ( /products/automation-anywhere-aa-reviews ) since January of 2018, so a little over a year-and-a-half.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The platform has been very stable. There have been a few Control Room issues when adding new VMs, but overall it's very reliable. I'm pleased with the performance so far.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are pleased with Automation Anywhere's ability to scale. We are convinced that it is a platform that we can scale, and we are convinced that it can function and operate within our environment.

We have six-plus use cases in production today. But those business processes are very complex. They are touching many systems. Our definition of a bot is a business process, not a task. Some companies call a bot a task. We don't do that, we call it a business process. We have six business processes that are running, which are very complex in nature. 

Regarding the scalability of a single business process, we have found that to be very easy. We have found Automation Anywhere to be very friendly when it comes to that. We add capacity in the form a virtual machine and a license to scale and meet the needs of the business.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have not dealt directly with Automation Anywhere's tech support. Historically, they've been pretty good. I'm relaying that from my systems integrator and my helpdesk support. I always ask if they are getting what they need when they need it and the answer is yes. I'm pleased with the feedback I'm hearing.

How was the initial setup?

The original setup was easy. What was difficult was adding licenses. I went a month where I was paying for licenses that I couldn't use, for various reasons. That was painful.

I'm not familiar with how long it took to stand up the environments. It was pretty simple from a PoC point of view, with the free trial licenses that were made available to us by AA in conjunction with their preferred systems integrator. That was fairly painless. Standing up the production environment was relatively painless as well. We had no problems whatsoever there. However, as we scale and add licenses, we have challenges.

What was our ROI?

Based on our use cases, we have seen a return on our initial investment for the PoC, and we are continuing to leverage the platform as we scale.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Price is where I'm least satisfied. Other vendors are more willing to offer discounts.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at Blue Prism, UiPath, and WorkFusion. Those were the vendors that were strongly considered when we were evaluating Automation Anywhere's capabilities. There was a laundry-list of others, prior to those, which we evaluated from a market-research point of view.

We valued the market presence of Automation Anywhere. We valued the ease of use, when we were thinking about scaling out to the business. The recording feature, while not a developer tool - it is a tool for a business user who may not possess the thought process of a developer - we valued that in our evaluation. Those were the two major factors. 

And at the time, the commercial terms as well, the one-year commitment, was appealing to us when we were shopping the solution. We didn't want to sign a multi-year deal on a technology platform that wasn't proven out to our business. That was another factor which gave us comfort as part of the decision-making process.

What other advice do I have?

At the start, I advise picking a portfolio of use cases to start with. Some will over-perform and others will not. Think of it in terms of a portfolio approach to sell the concept to your organization. My second area of advice would be: Do not automate systems that you do not own or control, unless you are willing to accept the degree of maintenance associated with that automation.

The biggest lesson I've learned so far from using it is that it's not as easy as the salespeople say. The biggest challenge is that not all automations are created equal. To give you some context, there are automations that I still don't have in production which have taken me over half-a-year to build. You talk to a sales guy and he says, "Hey, you can build an automation and be up in two weeks." Yes, but will that automation add a drop of value to the business? Probably not. The challenges are around stabilizing our complex automations.

Anything Google-related is challenging. I didn't really receive any help from our systems integrator or from AA when it came to the Google platform. We paid, extensively, to learn the hard way.

As part of our CoE, we rely on a third-party for development and maintenance of our automations. That means we have no users of the solution in our organization. The third-party has access to Bot Creators, they have access to our development environment and Control Room. They promote code to production and maintain the automations.

We have plans to increase our usage of the solution in the future. It is our intention to build an internal capability, over time. The processes we are looking to automate are more within order-cash and back-office. We have some administrative, travel, maintenance. Our IT ticketing system spawns maintenance; there's also account-creation and maintenance. That's an area of focus for us. And we're exploring reporting capabilities which are on the simple side. That's the area where we're targeting internal development and building an internal competency. It's what we characterize as simple automation use cases.

Overall, Automation anywhere is pretty good. It's not perfect but it's up there. I don't have a point of reference, other examples, but I think it's pretty good at what it does.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Businessb9e8 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Transformation Manager at a maritime company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Bot Insight analytics was a key factor in our decision to go with this solution
Pros and Cons
  • "One of the most valuable features is the different possibilities it gives you to manipulate the interface screens that you're working with."
  • "Having some more pre-mapping and pre-setup analysis of what you're going to be doing with it would be helpful."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for automating manual processes that are done by people now, data-entry type tasks.

How has it helped my organization?

We're using it to process line items in invoices. We get the invoices via Excel and we have to validate the accuracy of the line item charges. We get them once every two weeks and there are about 30,000 to 40,000 line items, and each one has to be validated. With a person doing it, it would cost more money than it would save to catch the defects. But to have a bot do it is much better because a person can only sample a certain amount. Now, we can have the bot check all of them.

What is most valuable?

There are a lot of valuable features. It's a very complex piece of software. One of the most valuable features is the different possibilities it gives you to manipulate the interface screens that you're working with. It's helpful to have a certain solution already baked into the environment. 

You really need a four-hour conversation about specific features because there are a million moving parts inside of the software. It's not that one feature is so helpful, and that I decided to purchase it over something else because of that.

What needs improvement?

Having some more pre-mapping and pre-setup analysis of what you're going to be doing with it would be helpful.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Automation Anywhere for five months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. The only issues we've had with the product have been responded to pretty quickly. We've also had some infrastructure issues on our side. But on the Automation Anywhere side, it's been pretty good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

So far, it's scalable.

We have four developers doing the developing in Automation Anywhere. We set it up so that things are triggered automatically by somebody putting a file in a folder. Right now, we have seven bots in production for seven departments.

The four developers handle deployment and maintenance of the solution.

We're looking to increase usage of the solution. We're doing a workshop in a few weeks to bring a lot of our managers in to get them thinking about things that exist in their areas that can be automated.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support, so far, has been pretty good. We haven't had any major issues and the ones we did have were answered pretty quickly.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

This is a brand-new implementation. We didn't have a previous solution.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was a pretty complex undertaking. We're a global company. We have our virtual IT management done in Switzerland, while our hardware is in New Jersey. So to get the different stakeholders of Automation Anywhere within our company working together to iron out the Control Room stuff and the virtual side of things, as well as the on-prem software side of things - to have it all connecting properly - was a pretty complex implementation.

The setup of just the developer environment and the actual Bot Runners took about three weeks. As far as building the bots goes, we haven't scaled as far as we can, yet.

We didn't really have a deployment strategy, per se. We just followed the action items that we were given to do by Automation Anywhere. We're still working on how to implement it across our organization. We have Automation Anywhere coming in with some Professional Services people in a few weeks. We still have to work on getting things moving with the managers, teaching them what are good processes to automate, etc.

What about the implementation team?

We deployed ourselves. We own a technology company, so we had that benefit.

What was our ROI?

So far, we haven't seen return on investment, but I think we're getting there.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Yearly, our licensing costs are about $90,000 to $100,000. There will be additional licensing costs when we add more Bot Runners to our infrastructure.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated UiPath. We went with Automation Anywhere primarily because of the bot analytics, called Bot Insight. The analytics capability was a big one. UiPath didn't have the kind of functionality we were looking for in analytics.

What other advice do I have?

Definitely do a very thorough infrastructure assessment first and make sure you're all set up there. Do some testing of the solution on any proprietary software that only exists inside of your company. Have a good understanding of what you're looking to automate. Don't just take a manager's word for it, but really look at it yourself to make sure that the process doesn't have any decisions that have to be made by a person or that there aren't some small things there that might stop you from automating.

I would rate Automation Anywhere at eight out of ten. It would have been good if they had helped us be a little bit more realistic about feasibility. If they had asked us for some examples of processes that we're looking at automating and had pre-tested some of those, it would have been helpful. The expectations of what we thought was possible, versus what appears to be possible, were a little bit off. They should investigate, early on, exactly what you're trying to do to make sure it's a good fit and set expectations.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
SeniorIT8b1c - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Design Analyst at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
While the bot creation process is simple to understand, the Control Room can be confusing
Pros and Cons
  • "The interface is a lot better than a lot of other tools which are out there."
  • "In the debugging mode, it writes all the logs to text files, but it doesn't ever clean them up. We had one that got to 200K, and it bogged our whole machine down. We couldn't figure out what was going on until we found out that we had a 200K file sitting out there. We would like some sort of maintenance on the log files going forward."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is to free up people to do more cognitive tasks, taking those repetitive tasks and doing those for them.

How has it helped my organization?

We have quite a few good use cases going on, such as:

  • We have a credit card deactivation process, where we determine someone is leaving the company, then we run different reports. Then, it deactivates their credit card, so they are unable to use it anymore. This saves us in extra expenses, e.g., if they were to make charges after they left the company. 
  • We have saved a lot of money on taxes based on the stuff that we run. 

We have a plethora of good use cases saving good, hard dollars.

What is most valuable?

The client and the way the code is laid out are very nice for developers. 

The interface is a lot better than a lot of other tools which are out there.

It is pretty easy for developers to use. I have trained quite a few people, and everyone seems to pick it up pretty well.

What needs improvement?

In the debugging mode, it writes all the logs to text files, but it doesn't ever clean them up. We had one that got to 200K, and it bogged our whole machine down. We couldn't figure out what was going on until we found out that we had a 200K file sitting out there. We would like some sort of maintenance on the log files going forward. 

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have seen some inconsistencies with stuff, environmentally.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The company started the pilot a year and a half ago. That phase was probably six or seven months. Then, it took a little over a year to get it up and running. We also did an upgrade to the newest version, and that took some time. Overall, it took about a year to scale up our bots.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

This solution was brand-new. This was our first run on RPA.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It was just a normal on-premise setup for three environments.

What about the implementation team?

We used a consulting firm for the deployment. They were good. 

What was our ROI?

Currently, we are not looking to eliminate people. We are looking to save time or generate revenue. Cost avoidance is pretty big for us.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We have 10 licenses right now.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

It is pretty easy to use. Personally, I do a lot of development, so I like the line-by-line code versus some of the other solutions, like Blue Prism or UiPath, which have a more drag and drop workflow. 

What other advice do I have?

Give it a try. It lives up to what it says it can do, for the most part. It really does help free up stuff. Just make sure you pick the right processes. A lot of the issues that people have with it are with not selecting the right processes for what the tool can do.

We have had some success integrating this solution with other applications. We have also had some failures. We had some issues integrating it with SAP, but we started using MetaBots to do that, which seems to work really well. It does seem to work pretty well with most applications that we have integrated it with.

The bot creation process is good. It is pretty simple to understand. If anything, the Control Room is the most confusing part, but it is still pretty simple. 

I have not taken courses on the Automation Anywhere University, but I have been using this solution for a long time. So, I would be the right clientele for the University.

We haven't really done anything with the cognitive document processing nor Citrix.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Automation Anywhere Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: April 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Automation Anywhere Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.