Automation Anywhere Reviews

Automation Anywhere is similar to Blue Prism. We do a lot of process mining and RPA tasks. We've used it in some very large companies. It's for automating activities in large service centers like home loan originations, insurance claims, or for service desks for utilities for telephone companies.

Companies were trying to eliminate a lot of manual processes that were being handled by people at keyboards and some of the repetitive nature. A lot of it is the front-end handling of incoming phone calls or incoming service requests that might be sent via email or text. Rather than having people look at the request on a green screen or on a website, the robots would actually handle some of the routing of the requests or the routing of the documents. For example, for a home loan application or some kind of claim. A lot of the time, most of the companies have people sitting in a service center, receiving those requests and reviewing them. However, now, a lot of the inputting of the data can be handled by the robot.

The solution is easy to deploy. It scales. It's easy to configure. They are pretty generic. There's not a lot of difference between any of the three big RPAs. 

Automation Anywhere is very focused on the Microsoft world. They don't do anything other than Windows and Microsoft, whereas Blue Prism and UiPath compete with other platforms.

The learning curve is low. It's faster to learn than the others.

Some people in my company have used the Co-Pilot functionality. Right now, they use Salesforce, although they have their own RPA now and they are going to replace it with MuleSoft's automation.

Automation Anywhere's ability to provide automation at scale for Microsoft is excellent. 

The integration of RPA bots, APIs, or business applications and documents is pretty robust.

They should consider being more multi-platform.

I've used the solution since 2018. I've used it for about five years. 

I've never used technical support.

I've also used Blue Prism in the past.

My understanding is that the initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The project would dictate how long it would take to deploy. It could take a couple of days to a couple of months. There's a question of governance proliferation and compliance that needs to be considered in RPA. The internal policies would affect the overall setup. 

There is maintenance in the form of updates. It doesn't take much maintenance. We don't use bots and therefore do not need to maintain them.

I don't have any thoughts on pricing or licensing. 

For someone who wants to use an API integration instead of a robust process automation solution, I'd advise it depends on the culture of the company, and the complexity of the integration that one wants to do. Depending on the culture, on average, it's a 50/50 split. There are some environments where RPA is the right thing to do since it's quicker. It's faster. It's easier to manage them from the perspective of just configuring the conformance and compliance with internal policy. However, in other parts of the same organization, you might need API integration depending on what you're integrating.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. Nobody gets a ten. Nobody's perfect.

I worked for a call center company and most of the use cases were related to developing automation for our clients. We also created some automation for internal processes.

The integrations of Automation Anywhere with the mainframe application for banking companies are among the most valuable features. Banking companies have a black screen (a text-based user interface) used in some banking core systems. In our case, we were able to create very good solutions integrated with that kind of platform using Automation Anywhere. 

Also, if you need to use OCR automation to process standard invoices and send the information to another platform, that is also a very good feature.

The goal of any automation is to provide efficiencies. I would like a way, within the platform, to track the benefits. If you are the center of excellence manager, you need to show to the C level the value that you are adding to the company. The unique way to show that to the C level is how much money you are bringing into the company or how much money you are saving the company in costs. I would like a default feature where each bot gives us data on all the benefits it provides from its process.

They also need to improve and work very hard on the user experience to democratize automation.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for four years.

It's a very good platform in terms of stability.

Automation Anywhere has very good scalability when you want to scale an existing bot.

It is very easy to contact them and receive support from them.

Positive

We were working with a local system.

The initial setup is very easy. If you are not setting it up in a virtual environment, it takes between half an hour and one hour, maximum.

We have deployed it on the cloud, using AWS.

There is no maintenance of the solution on our side.

My team did the setup.

These types of companies, in automation, need to evaluate their business models. They sell it by license, but if they could charge by case or by interaction, that might be better. Right now, it's expensive when you want to scale or use them for simple processes.

I know my Automation Anywhere, UiPath, Blue Prism and, now, Microsoft Power Automate. If you want to automate a simple process, these solutions are very good. But if you need to integrate different platforms or systems using an API, or if you want to widen the scope of automation to create an automated process, end to end, that is going to be difficult for any user. You need to be a developer with very good programming skills. If you are going to automate, for example, downloading emails, Automation Anywhere is okay for non-technical users. But the license is very expensive, so you have to weigh the benefit that you are going to receive.

For me and my team of around 150 developers who are engineers, the learning curve was very easy. For them, it took two or three months because they were already familiar with the logic. Automation Anywhere has good information on the web where the guys can access material and forums to learn about creating different types of automation.

The benefits, for us, from Automation Anywhere are more related to the business case than the tool. You need to have a very good approach from the business analyst's perspective to understand the added value that an automated process can bring to the company.

The most important thing is to train the business analysts in your company to identify what the best processes are to automate, to get the most benefit from the tool.

Overall, this is a very good tool if you have all the permissions and accesses, and you can work without any virtual environment, like VDI or Citrix.

Automation Anywhere is used by our customers for automation support.

Developers can easily utilize Automation Anywhere. For individuals with no prior knowledge, there is a university website available for training, and I also provide assistance in training my customers.

Automation Anywhere has a short learning curve. It takes five days to train new users.

We have seen the benefits of Automation Anywhere right from the start.

Automation Anywhere ability to provide automation at scale is good.

Automation Anywhere can quickly and easily integrate with RPA bots, APIs, and business applications.

It has helped our organization increase automation consumption.

The dashboards are excellent.

The regional distribution in Turkey can be improved.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for six years.

We have two customers who use Automation Anywhere on the cloud and two customers who use it on-premises.

Automation Anywhere is highly stable.

Scaling Automation Anywhere on-premises is difficult, but in the cloud, it becomes easier.

The technical support team is extremely responsive.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment can be completed by one person within an hour.

The implementation is completed in-house.

The cost of Automation Anywhere is high in Turkey due to the weak economy.

I rate Automation Anywhere a ten out of ten. I recommend Automation Anywhere to others.

APIs are easy to connect, and I highly recommend integrating APIs over robot process automation.

Automation Anywhere is easy to maintain and update.

We maintain 50 bots, and each of them requires five minutes to install.

We only use Automation Anywhere on the RPA site because our internal Automation Anywhere customers are varied. Since Automation Anywhere doesn't have an office in Turkey, our customers there work on UiPath. We are automating some business processes based on a checklist. Automation Anywhere is also used for a few OCR projects that involve scanning documents or images and extracting the information. We can automate those jobs with RPA technology. 

Automation Anywhere is user-friendly. Business users can easily use the solution to automate tasks like sending emails without any technical skills. Of course, you need some analytical thinking skills but don't need to know how to code. All the activities are in the tool if you want to replace or manipulate the text. While UiPath requires some development skills, any business user can use Automation Anywhere. It takes about 10 to 15 days to complete one process. If it is more complex, it might take around 20 days, but it's usually around 10 days. 

You can automate any system within your environment. There are various systems that Automation Anywhere can integrate. You can use it for web, desktop, or cloud automation. There are no restrictions on what it can automate.

The training Automation Anywhere provides is excellent. Anyone can easily learn about the solution. They also have a free trial version that you can use online. If you practice daily, learning the solution takes about two or three months. 

Automation Anywhere should make it easier for developers to manage queues and exception handling.  The OCR component could also be better. We have had to use other OCR tools to get information from the account documents. 

I have used Automation Anywhere for four years.

Automation Anywhere is a professional enterprise tool that can scale to meet all our business requirements. 

I rate Automation Anywhere support nine out of ten. We have used support a few times for one of our customers, and they respond quickly. If the issue involves a critical production system, they respond to the request on the same day. We can schedule a meeting to solve the problem together.

Positive

We also use UiPath. Implementing projects in Automation Anywhere is easier, but UiPath is more useful for DevOps. On the technical side, the two solutions are similar, but there are differences in the front end. UiPath is faster. Automation Anywhere runs a process in two seconds, but UiPath takes milliseconds. 

You can develop any process with these tools, but our Turkish customers prefer UiPath because it has an office in Turkey so that we can take support in our mother language. Both of them meet our requirements.

Deploying Automation Anywhere is straightforward. It doesn't take much time. All of the processes need some maintenance because the processes running in the system sometimes don't work. We need to rerun the processes or change the elements. We have a 17-person team, and three of us are responsible for maintaining. The time spent maintaining bots varies. Sometimes, the issue is easy to fix, but if you need to change the flows or do some development, it may take two or three days. 

I rate Automation Anywhere nine out of ten. It depends on your skill. I would rate it higher for non-technical users. 

We were looking to replace employees with a robot for repetitive and tedious tasks, to save time.

Automation Anywhere is saving hours and hours of employees' time. We can do the same tasks with fewer employees. 

We have increased the automation of processes in our organization. It is really obvious how automation has improved the performance of our processes. We have two tracks of automation. We do traditional automation using application management and integration, and that is done by a big team. But we can compare our small RPA automation team to that big team. Both are increasing automation in our organization, each accounting for about 50 percent of our automation.

There is definitely another business benefit from using it: Processes have been re-engineered after being reviewed.

There are ready plugins and connectors to integrate with APIs for common systems like Oracle or Microsoft.

There could be improvement in the reporting and insights into the ROI. The ROI tool that shows the performance and the return on investment is not very accurate. I have developed my own tool to do that instead of using the native tool that comes with Automation Anywhere.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for four years.

It is a stable product.

The system can be expanded easily if you scale up the team or the process itself. It's the perfect product for that. It's definitely scalable.

We didn't have a previous solution.

There were some difficulties regarding the connection of the servers and performance issues, but we overcame them by reading about the product and seeing how things can be done. We also opened tickets with Automation Anywhere but it took them a long time to respond. There was a ticket that never closed during six months. But with an upgrade to the new release, it disappeared automatically.

Automation Anywhere has a learning curve, but it's not that hard and it's not very easy. Someone without tech skills can learn it by taking courses. When you try, you get into some problems, but in the end, it's nice and not hard. I haven't tried training non-tech people to use it, but in general, it may take people without a tech background about three months to learn it.

From time to time we need to do some maintenance of the infrastructure servers and make sure that the CPU and memory utilization is optimized. Occasionally, we need to increase the memory. There are two or three people involved in the maintenance from our organization's application support team.

The solution is quite expensive. Not every organization can consider this option. That's one reason they might go with real integration via API.

There are additional support costs. We didn't buy the support because we have a capable team that is doing the job.

We have seen options from the competitors, and we decide to go with this one. There were many aspects to our decision, but the main ones were the cost of the solution and the support available in our country.

I would recommend Automation Anywhere as a serious option. You will find it easy to use, overall, making it a very good choice.

When it comes to deciding between an API integration and RPA, integration is the best option, not automation. If API integration is available and ready to use, it's better to go with that option. However, sometimes, based on my experience, there are cases where you don't have control of those things and you have to think of other solutions. For us, the alternative was automation using RPA. But when an API integration is possible, I prefer to go with that option, rather than going with the RPA. When that is not possible or easy to do, we go with RPA.

We have used it for many projects and many different types of companies. For example, we have used it to solve problems that companies have with backups, as well as issues of integration with legacy systems. We also use it for human resources and suppliers.

With Automation Anywhere, we can digitize a process, optimize it, and reduce the cost and the time that process takes. It has also reduced failures in processes.

We have used it to increase automation by 100 percent.

The development tools are very good. It's very user-friendly and easy to develop and deploy with Automation Anywhere. Ordinary people, within a few weeks, can develop a bot using the tool. It's very easy for business users, who don't have technical skills, to use.

The learning curve is low. Within two months, non-technical people can be trained to use it.

Administration of the environment of the solution is also a valuable aspect. Scheduling the bots and the Control Room are very good.

Another element that is easy is the integration of RPA bots, APIs, business applications, and documents.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for four years.

It has good stability. It's a 10 out of 10.

The platform gives you an environment that you can easily scale within your company. The scalability is a nine out of 10.

Their technical support is good, but it could be better.

Positive

I have not used another RPA solution.

ROI is very good. We measure processes that we automate and calculate the reduced cost.

It's the best RPA tool, but the pricing could be improved.

Whether to use an API integration or an RPA solution depends on the use case. If there is a possibility of using an API integration, it could be better because the integration can be more secure. But if you have a legacy system where API integration is not possible you can use Automation Anywhere. It also depends on the expectations of the customer. Sometimes, the implementation via Automation Anywhere can be faster. If the customer doesn't have a lot of time and you need to deliver the solution, RPA could be the best solution.

And Automation Anywhere doesn't require any maintenance.

Automation Anywhere is one of the best tools on the market. It's a little expensive but if you implement it in your company, you should see return on investment.

Our primary use cases for Automation Anywhere (AA) are billing, email automation, and ticketing.

Most of the features of Automation Anywhere (AA) are good, but one big feature which I really like is its OCR (optical character recognition) feature.

Another important feature of this solution is how it handles variables, e.g. my engineers don't need to have complete programming expertise, and they don't need to declare variables and get variables captured on the fly.

I also find the accuracy rate of this solution valuable, and I like that it performs better after implementation. Most of the features of this solution are amazing.

Multiple things still need to be improved in Automation Anywhere (AA), and the key thing is its error handling command, though it has come a long way from the previous version. This solution still has a lot to improve on error handling, especially when compared to other platforms that are doing very well.

Another area for improvement is its file handling. Automation Anywhere (AA) now supports automating file-related operations, but that still needs to be improved. We can directly import and do the script, e.g. the script feature is new and is found in the latest version, but still needs a lot of improvement.

An additional feature I'd like to see in this solution is more scripting integration. Integration needs to be fluid, e.g. integration of different items are in the latest version, but it always comes with limitations.

If a more fluid integration can be built into Automation Anywhere (AA), I can go and unpack a project file, open it, then from there, I'll know that we need to extract the data. Currently, the native RPA takes a whole lot of time to open a particular file, then read the data. It's always easier to utilize the data frame, read and slice the data, then take what's next. In that note, we can enable the RPA within itself, e.g. in-house data solution that can be integrated, making it a better solution. There is an integration feature in Automation Anywhere (AA), but it's not that fluid, and it's not easy to integrate. We always have to build something outside and integrate the whole process, and this needs to be improved.

I have experience with Automation Anywhere (AA) within the last 12 months, and I've been leading projects in a product manager capacity. I've worked with this solution for three years, using the previous generation and the latest generation, e.g. the 2019 version. I handled the implementation of the previous version and the transition and migration to the 2019 network.

Automation Anywhere (AA) has a lot of stability issues. It needs a lot of maintenance. If it runs 24/7 in the server, it's fine, but on the development machines or the VM (virtual machines), it isn't. We really need someone to attend to it, e.g. that person has to monitor the VM, then if an issue starts from the control room, we need to identify what's going on, then we may need to do something to the machine, or to the application. This is a problem in the previous version and the current version, and this solution hangs at times, for no reason at all.

Automation Anywhere (AA) is scalable, but we have not tried to scale it to a larger instance. The implementations we currently have are on-premises, and our costs are limited. We test if this solution works fine for the demos with clients we have worked with, but on the production side, we haven't tried to scale it for more than 20 or 30, and that's the limit we have.

I've contacted and escalated to the technical support team for this solution multiple times. I would rate them 3.5 out of five. They are quick to give support, but it could vary. Their second level technical support are good, but their first level technical support require a lot more insight into the tool and how they're handling issues.

The initial setup for Automation Anywhere (AA) was straightforward, but the current deployments we are working on are a bit complicated because these are switch solutions, and they are not straightforward.

We have multiple systems communicating with each other, e.g. the SaaS systems we need to interface with, then we have other data that we need to introduce to these systems. Because Automation Anywhere (AA) is an on-premises platform, we are looking into whether implementing or deploying it will be safe, but I believe it is safe. In most cases, when it comes to switch solutions where you want to switch your RPA on top of other automation or other technologies, it can be complicated, depending on the technology you're with. It can be complicated when you want to integrate with other systems.

We're paying for a yearly package for Automation Anywhere (AA). It's not a standard license. It's a license package, e.g. it comes with the fee for automation, or the license for the product, and anything beyond that, we pay a base fee, and whether we utilize it or not, it's paid for, and it has to be allocated. That's the current deal we have. What would be better is for them to have different packages for different types of organization.

As Automation Anywhere (AA) is an RPA platform, we have development users and end users, e.g. we have 14 developers who are working on it, and they are direct developers, then we have six citizen developers from the business side, who are certified and are using this product.

Automation Anywhere (AA) always requires maintenance, so we always need maintenance engineers to monitor the application around the clock. Because of cost implications, most clients don't use cloud solution assets, e.g. they use on-premises, which means a lot of maintenance is required.

My advice for people who want to start working with Automation Anywhere (AA) is to get a certification first, and then they also need to determine their purpose, e.g. what kind of case they want to work with. When their certification is ready, they still need to keep learning, especially when they run into issues. They should always get in touch with the forum, or they should get whatever knowledge or information they can take from their certifiers, or whatever organization they got their certification from. There is a learning curve, and it can either be quick to learn, or hard to learn.

I would rate Automation Anywhere (AA) an eight out of ten.

We are in services. We are consultants and we use these automation tools to automate processes for clients. I'm not using it for my own organization, however, I'm using it for clients' organizations.

Use cases are largely cross-business process automation, back office automation. It could be used in finance or accounting. It could be in underwriting, if it's an insurance client, for claims processing.

We have done automation largely in the lending space, including wealth management and customer onboarding. 

The solution helps with reducing operational costs, which can be reduced by up to 30% to 40% in savings in terms of operational cost. That's your basic benefit, which is delivered quite well.

It's usually the RPA functionality that I prefer, which is more widely used. They also have an IQ Bot for document processing, which is a bit of advanced OCR. That's not used as frequently as their RPA tool.

The stability is good.

As it is on the cloud, it's quite scalable. 

Their OCR is a bit expensive, meaning the IQ Bot. There are a lot of customers who don't want to use it due to the price tag. Maybe if they price it more aggressively, it could be widely used as well. Otherwise, it has pretty much industry-leading functionalities, similar to any other RPA tool. 

In general, their roadmap is well defined and we are pleased with its offering. 

I've used the solution for about two years. 

The solution is pretty stable. It's good. Whenever there are issues, there are frequent platform upgrades provided by the vendors. It's very stable.

The scalability is great as it is on the cloud. It can be scaled up pretty fast.

On average, I would say, per company that we've seen, there are close to 50 to 100, users - depending on the size of the organization. If it's a small bank, they have somewhere around 20 to 30 users, however, if it's a large company, it's closer to 100 to 200 users. We work with the solution on a daily basis.

We tend to contact technical support once a month. We deal with them pretty regularly. 

I'm also familiar with UiPath. UiPath and Automation Anywhere are often used in many organizations. UiPath can be on-prem or on the cloud, however, AA is basically now on the cloud. 

What we've largely seen is clients more using VBA or .NET-based automation solutions. Before moving into these platforms, either an Automation Anywhere or UiPath was used.

The initial setup is pretty simple and if any issues are noted, the vendor can assist.

The platform can be set up in two to three months. I have not seen clients directly start on the cloud version. Usually, people have had on-prem which they have migrated to the cloud. Basically, the on-prem setup took two to three months. Maybe if there are new clients who are starting directly with cloud, it could be lesser, maybe a month or so. 

From then on, subsequent automation of processes can take anywhere between two to four months, depending on the complexity. If you have a simple business process, for example, invoice processing or claims payment, that can take one to two months. If you have something more complex, that can take anywhere between two to three months.

In terms of the amount of maintenance, it depends on how many processes have been automated. Usually for a small-scale setup, if there are 50 bots or there are 50 automation, there could be maybe 5 FTEs required to maintain it. If the operations are large, with thousands of bots, the team size can vary anywhere between 30 to 50 FTEs. The larger the operations are and the larger number of processes that have been automated, the bigger the support team requirements are. On average, 1% should be able to support 6 to maybe 10 automations.

There's support from the vendor, so I don't see a major challenge in setting this up.

While the RPA is still competitively priced, usually IQ Bot is expensive. That's what we have seen.

For the OCR, my understanding is that it's a one-time cost. I've seen instances where it's $15,000 or so and on top of that there is some cost on every document processed or maybe a bunch of documents. Per every 1,000 documents processed there is a cost that is recurring. That said, the initial one-time cost is quite high.

We are AA partners. 

I would recommend the solution based on its scalability and stability. 

Generally, people who adopt these tools do a tool assessment between multiple vendors. Usually, we have seen that it's either UiPath or Automation Anywhere that is shortlisted. These two seem to be the most preferred options.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.