Automation Anywhere Reviews

I have used AA to automate various business processes varying from HR and AR teams to Sales.

Starting with HR, we have automated various processes from auto-downloading the data and uploading it to a database without human intervention, to combining multiple file data into one.

For the AR team, we have automated the process to download data from the server and generate the AR report, then updating the dashboards for senior management.

For Sales, we created a form where the Bid Manager would update pursuit details and the tool would pull that data and then send the request to required teams for SPOC allocation.

For HR, the automated download and upload of data (every half hour) resulted in getting the latest performance data to the BPHRs in real-time, as per their access. This helped in saving the manual effort every time a report is asked for including the downloading and sharing of data, as per the access. This way, the BPHRs would directly log into the dashboard and see the data.

Similar effort savings were recorded in other processes as well. Automation of such tasks helped in clearing the bandwidth of the users and requestors alike and saved a lot of to and fro just asking for the latest data.

Automation also resulted in tracking, analytics, and defining a structure for the processes that would help in faster onboarding and easier handover.

Object cloning, Excel, web recorders, database, if-else, loops, and string are some of the most commonly used commands, by me.

Pulling data from web pages using Object Cloning has been an absolute delight. It is very accurate and runs flawlessly.

Up until v11, the Excel commands were very limited compared to what Excel has to offer. We had to use macros mostly, to cover up the gap and avoid using keystrokes. However, A2019 has Excel Advance, which has a lot more functions and covers that gap significantly. 

We are still exploring all the new features and functions of A2019, but one thing I noticed was that it has introduced variable type. While helpful at certain places, I miss the previous method, where one variable can handle any type include a string, numerical, or boolean value.

If the option were available to use the old generic-style variable type, it would be helpful. Now, I need to create one variable for holding a numerical value and convert it to a string value to display it on a message box, which is a little inconvenient. This is purely based on past experience. Once I get used to it, I might find it better and more convenient.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for the last three years. Started with v10 to exploring vA2019, AA has come a long way with excellent features and updates with A2019.

For the HR process, a macro script was created to download data. But the main requirement was that the screen should be locked. As in the working of the tool should not be visible to people around. Hence, the macro script was not working, on lock screen as expected. This is why we moved to AA.

We able to able to replicate the downloading of files and uploading it to database using object cloning and database functions provided by AA.

Most of our ROIs were calculated based on the FTE hours saved since the teams were internal. for some projects it was around 4 hours weekly to 13 hours weekly for others.

The Sales team would take care about pricing, since other teams were also using AA. Licensing was modified based on the runners needed as per the projects. Number of developer licenses were fixed.

We had somebody to teach us about AA, so we directly started with it.

The primary use case of this solution in my environment is to use bots to extract the important logistical information from each of the customer Microsoft Excel sheets. Next, the information is transferred, to be entered into the government official logistics documentation.

Prior to submitting the data to the company warehouse management system, it is checked and balanced. The same needs to be done before submission to the official government website.

It helps my organization to further improve the management and assigning of tasks to its human resources.

Through the use of Automation Anywhere bots, no longer do the staff in my organization need to carry out the task of transferring data from Excel sheets to our data or the government website. Thus, as all of these processes are being automated, this manpower can now be shifted to be used in other areas that can be beneficial to the company.

The most valuable feature is IQ Bot, as it allowed us to train it to extract important logistical information from customer PDF documents, irrespective of the format. This is valuable because not all PDF sheets have the same format. Many customers tend to use various formats to represent their data. Hence, with IQ bot, even with the wide variety of different PDF formats, the bots would still able to help us extract what we needed.

I hope that Automation Anywhere can further optimize its bots to help automate tasks with Microsoft Word documents and Microsoft PowerPoint documents because, in most organizations, there is a lot of reporting required. Hence, it would be great and more cost and time-efficient if there is a way to automate everyday tasks such as Microsoft Word Report Generation and Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation Generation.

Further, I would also recommend that Automation Anywhere assist users with automating tasks such as the monthly payment of essential services. For example, automating payment of utilities like the water bill or electricity bill, online.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

The scalability of this solution is fantastic, as the bots can be run on multiple machines at the same time.

The customer service is fantastic and they always provide reliable feedback and help.

We did not use another RPA product prior to Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We have an in-house developer as well as a vendor team. The vendor team has a high level of expertise.

The ROI in terms of finance cannot be disclosed due to company policy but the bots have made the everyday process of extracting logistics information from customer Excel sheets or PDF files much more efficient and faster than the traditional manual method.

I advise others that even as of right now, the setup cost and licensing cost to automate bots on Automation Anywhere is steep but it is worth the investment!

We considered other Robotic Process Automation tools such as UiPath and Blue Prism.

We have been using RPA for the past seven years and have dealt with a lot of other RPA vendors. We have many use cases across all of the verticals like technology, HR, Finance, Mortgage, Insurance, etc.

The current one, on which we are focusing is Mortgage use cases. We have proven experience in all of the verticals with different use cases. Especially when it comes to the environment, there are no restrictions in that regard because it's all based on the client's requirements and their expectations as well. There are a few clients that came with a Citrix gateway, others use the VDI based approach, and still, others bring their own operating systems.

One thing that I want to highlight AA for is their security standards. It's an easy win situation when we present this to our clients. The CyberArk integration and setup are really amazing and it helps us to win deals for new projects.

Especially on the Cognitive capabilities, AA enables us to adopt third-party extensions and products, which is very useful to accommodate more use cases and push the RPA practice to the next level.

The most valuable features are the IQ Bot and Process Discovery.

1. IQ Bot - In earlier days, everyone started with RPA by mimicking the users' actions and achieved some automation expectations. But nowadays, apart from the basic action, there is a need for intelligence like Machine earning, Deep learning, and Artificial Intelligence. The IQ Bot accommodates such expectations. There are a lot of pre-trained workflows available and a lot of capabilities to involve users to train the model.
   
2. Process Discovery - The next trend is Process discovery and it involves automating the identification of process requirements for activities and then automatically developing the workflow.

The dedicated BPM from AA should help to cover more use cases. I would strongly say that AA should have a more advanced BPM tool to support the process/use cases attempted in the project. Instead of depending on other open-source BPM products, AA should provide their own BPM for attended automations.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for two years.

Stability-wise, this product is excellent.

The scalability of AA is excellent.

Technical support is excellent.

We have more than seven years of experience in RPA and with different vendors and a lot of different tools. We used the same approach but the recent updates and growth of AA have helped us decide to make use of it

The initial setup is straightforward.

We implemented in-house, with the help of vendor support documents.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Automation Anywhere is that 

It's not always necessary to tie up or utilize unattended bots or achieve 100 % automation. A lot of opportunities are there with the ratio of 80:20 (80% automation and 20% manual intervention) or 70:30.

Our primary use case is automation development supporting internal business operations at KPMG. We have 100+ live automations, with v10 and v11 deployments.

Using this solution has freed internal operations employees to do more "human value-add" work by removing mundane manual tasks. It has improved the quality of these tasks through automation and enabled us to do things we couldn't have previously done due to time and cost.

The most valuable feature so far is Task bot deployment. We hope to expand to IQ Bot this year.

Automation Anywhere's interaction with Excel is a key benefit.

Currently, Automation Anywhere's debugging functionality is minimal.  Most notable is that it works on only the top-level task (not on sub-tasks called by the top-level task).  This limits its practical usefulness.  Increasing the robustness of the debugging functionality would be very helpful.

Additionally, implmentation of a "global" variable concept (variables shared across tasks) would be very useful.  AA's variable mapping between tasks is cumbersome.  

We have been using Automation Anywhere for three and a half years.

We use automation for a tax invoice process, finance process, and human resource process.

In the tax process, it collects all tax invoices from a folder, then AA reads a QR code on the document to confirm, then extracts it to an Excel sheet for the success process and failed process.

For finance, AA calculates the tax type on each project. After that, AA inputs the data into the ERP system for further processing.

For the HR department, AA will shortlist the candidates on the portal. It will then send an email to qualified candidates to follow further instructions for testing. Then, AA will collect the results of the test and send them to the HR staff to process further.

On the tax, finance, and HR processes, AA will automate collecting documents, then extract them into an Excel file, and also do the confirmation using a QR code. In the past, these processes were completed by three or four staff over one to two days. Using automation, these processes are completed in between one and two hours, using one robot. With these savings in time, the staff can do more in other areas. 

These advantages improve staff productivity and creativity. It also means that they do not need more overtime. As a result, it will impact positively on the company overall. 

It's a cloud-based solution, so we do not need any on-premises server. Having a cloud-based deployment provides more flexibility because we just need an internet connection for connecting the agent into the AA cloud.

For a few workflow processes that need credentials, AA provides more security for this. Their encryption is to ensure that our credentials are always secure and cannot be accessed by unauthorized people.

The dashboard can be accessed by several roles. User monitoring, for example, can view the dashboard, watch how many robots have failed, and other stats, but they cannot change how the robot works.

For the short term, in this pandemic era, they should have a feature to write and save directly into Word documents, Office 365, or Google Docs. As it is now, it can only save to Excel files.

In the long term, in the cloud era, it would be great if they had an API or connection into other cloud services, such as SaaS, IaaS, or PaaS. This would mean that their automation ecosystem would be more complex, helping to improve our productivity and creativity.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for about a year.

Stability-wise, this is a good product.

The scalability is good.

We have not yet tried to contact technical support.

Before AA, all of our processes were done manually.

The initial setup is straightforward, as this is a cloud-based deployment.

We implemented using an in-house team.

Our ROI is approximately USD $40k to $50k.

The cost of this solution is a little bit high, but it is worth the price.

We evaluated UiPath before choosing Automation Anywhere.

So far, all the features and services match today's technology, and we expect it will remain current for at least the next two to three years. I hope that they keep this great work on RPA.

My primary use case starts with downloading an inventory file in IE and then storing it in the database. This uses DB variables that interact with the banking application.

Through its automating system of generating quotations, it is much easier for us to track back the same customer data. It is giving us a real-time capability for generating reports.

Automation anywhere has equipped us with amazing tools including Bot Insight, IQ Bot, Discovery Bot, etc. The Discovery Bot is used to search the entire task in the system that can be automated. It keeps much value in our organization.

Extracting PDFs is very easy using Automation Anywhere. Its strong points are that it is easy to use, easy to deploy, easy to share, and has multi-user support. Different devices can be used to execute the bot.

The Bot Store provides some utilities for free, which can then be integrated into my workflows easily.

Using automation has reduced between five and eight FTE in our inventory download and update task. This is more generic to the RPA space than AA specifically, but we tried to automate a large, high FTE, end-to-end process as a POC.

AA is user friendly.

The most valuable features are the web recorder, which is used to extract structured table data, the Metabot to handle smart process automation (SPA), Object Cloning, variable assignment, and Message boxes.

IQ Bot is a unique offering from AA that allows you to extract information from semi-structured documents like PDF invoices, using built-in ML. The ability to train documents and easily review any that fall outside of the model is excellent.

AA has good coverage in terms of out-of-the-box functionality for bot development and management. A2019 has some great new features that take this further, such as the ability to create custom commands for your organization, which helps code reuse and development.

Comparing the code from dev to QA or production should be in some easier way.

Pausing the bot and resuming it in Metabot should be easier.

The Control room audit logs should be moved to an archive for those that are more than six months old.

The error handling capability is good but we are facing difficulties when there are multiple tasks in the same project. I want to be able to handle errors that occur in sub-tasks and it would be better to introduce a global error handler so that we can debug all of the relevant tasks.

I would like to have a project sharing hub like GitHub, inside of the tool, which will help to consolidate project files post-deployment.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for the past four years.

We experienced continuous bot disconnections in our environment. Once we validated it with the AA support team, they suggest for version upgrade and it solved our problem.

The technical support team has good knowledge of the product. They understand problems well and then provide solutions. 

My recommendation would be to start with some simpler processes. This will build your capability and understanding far more quickly. Automating processes that utilize a lot of different web applications can be tricky without additional input/error checking. Be sure that your code is resilient enough to ensure inputs get transcribed accurately and pages/content are loaded before executing more lines of code.

In one of my insurance domain processes, I need to extract the details of customers from an input Excel file and I need to update details like Address, DOB, and Names, all based on their requests in a web-based application.

With respect to our environment, we used Excel commands for doing operations and we faced a few Excel issues in production. Everything was fine in Dev and QA. Then we used Excel as a DB and it provided a permanent resolution.

This product has helped us a lot by improving and growing the business in different domains. Initially, when we have started RPA with AA, we implemented it for only one domain. Now, we are in a position to automate most of the processes across domains.

In V10 and V11, most of the Windows and web-based commands are helpful. We mostly use the Database commands in order to make the process faster and more secure, rather than using Excel or a CSV for reading the input files.

When we think from a business perspective, business applications are more compatible with their specific browsers. Let's say one of my customers is using Firefox, which is the most compatible browser for their application, when we try to automate that with AA, we don't get accurate and stable results. They need to make the AA stable across all browsers and I hope to see it fixed in the next version.

As I mentioned, if we don't close an Excel file in a safe manner, then when we try to open it or another Excel file in the same place, most of the time it will lead to issues. As we are working with unattended automation most of the time, no one will be available to take care of those issues when they happen

I have been working with Automation Anywhere for the past four and a half years. I have worked on versions 9, 10, and 11. Currently, I have started working hands-on with A2019. You are moving to A2019 very soon. 

AA is not stable across all different browsers.

RPA is what I have been working on since my career started. 

I can suggest Automation Anywhere.

I tried multiple options but I found that Automation Anywhere has better options when compared to all of the other tools.

Automate Business processes pertaining to various business units. We used Automation Anywhere Control room and different versions of AA 10.x and AA 11.x to deliver Robotic Process Automation Solutions for different clients. Automation Anywhere helped multiple clients to save a lot of data entry time and have automated almost every repetitive task. AA control room helped to manage the operations of both Attended and UnAttended automations and have helped a continuous run of the bots saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Automation Anywhere helped our organization to get our training and implementation needs successful by providing both community edition and partner edition. Automation Anywhere seamlessly handed off exceptions to employees from Automation Anywhere bots. It helped to better manage  Automation Anywhere bot capacity, as well as to reuse and repurpose the bots in the cloud. 

It helped in Monitoring Automation Anywhere bot progress and report on bot usage and value in the form of Insights provided instant details of the savings and work in detailed analytical charts.

A 2019 dual-mode is very useful and the Control room type of setup for use of A2019 Client is very useful as it eliminates disconnection issues. Also, the broad range of Commands and elimination of the need for Metabots is also very helpful in Automating the increased number of variable types cover an expanded range of web and window components. 

Bot insights and IQ bots are both valuable features if implemented in a cost-effective way for larger enterprises, Bot insights provide analytical details of the ROI that is generated by running bots and IQ bots help to automate document processing in an intelligent way minimizing the cost of document processing and hence saving a lot of employee time and money for any enterprise with a large volume of pdf data.

Version A2019, the Number data type variables should be available to display in "Message Box" command. This will help in debugging. At the present, a type conversion is needed to display it in the message box. There should be an efficient way to integrate AA 11.x. meta bots into AA2019.

Also, the Master certification should be provided free of cost for partners. More practical samples and examples of bots using new features in A2019 should be available in people Documentation. A2019 presentation material for proposing A2019 as an RPA choice should be provided to partners.

I have been using AA for six years.

Excellent

Straight Forward

7