Automation Anywhere Reviews

Our primary use case is anything that is structured data and highly repetitive. We also see a lot of gain right now in paperwork, so AR, AP, and record to report. The cognitive product seems to be doing a really good job, and the pace of that going fantastic.

We have done a little bit of everything: 

• Oracle
• Salesforce.com
• Using Citrix, we did an order to cash.
• In the IQ Bot world, we seem to be doing a lot of AR and invoice-to-pay (those are the two that we see the most). 

We will be moving into medical billing next. Since we have done some really good prototypes with medical records, I think we are ready to go there next. 

One of the largest use cases that we have about a $10 billion company which does something like 20 thousand AR invoices a month. They had a solution in place. We actual replaced that IQ Bot, and we are hosting it out of San Jose right now. We are getting some phenomenal straight through processing. So, we took what would have taken 30 to 35 people and are able to do that little bit more accurately with about six.

Believe it or not, the first client that we ever did was a Citrix client. We cut our teeth on Citrix around the RPA product. It has some quirks to it, but it is becoming much better. So, we have quite a few instances of that Citrix machine in production at the client. 

The most valuable feature of our solution is the cognitive computing because that is coming onto stream a lot faster than you would think. What used to be in the middle of, "Can this be done or not?", is becoming, "It can be done." We are getting some incredible straight through processing rates with AR around healthcare and financial services. 

Integrating RPA and cognitive with other solutions is relatively straightforward. Originally, it came out that Automation Anywhere did screen scraping, but the technology is way beyond that now, where you can do object cloning, even moving into API. We have even coded a couple of APIs into the applications that most people will use. We actually do that now instead of going through a screen. 

Our impressions of IQ Bot are that it goes relatively fast at the pace that it is being advanced every six months, which is good. I believe that we have a couple of the largest installations of it in the U.S. right now. So, we are processing somewhere in the neighborhood of tens of thousands of AP and AR invoices. We actually have robotic operation centers on the West Coast and the East Coast. 

The IQ Bot has room for improvement. It is not that it doesn't do a lot of things today, it is just that it can do so much more. I think that that product is going to go crazy.

The next big thing that you are going to see is the analytics engine. I think people finally realize that you can do analytics on what the bots are doing. I think that you will see that come alive in the next six to nine months.

If you write them correctly and have good architectures internally, then scalability is relatively straightforward. This also applies to reliability. However, you sort of need to write a few before you get to this point. As more of these go to production, these are going to be the two big drivers.

Probably one of the faster scales that we have done is we did a prototype with IQ Bot that had about 500 invoices and a 1000 vendors. In about two and a half to three months time, start to finish, we went from the original amount to 15,000 invoices and 2500 vendors. I would suggest in that 90 to 120 day time frame, if you have done things properly and your architecture is good, that you should be able to scale at any pace that you care to.

We have seen both straightforward and complex initial setups. If you are behind a firewall, it is relatively easy to setup. When you are hosting the application, that is when it is a little more complicated (we actually host applications for people). You need to talk to the IT department, as you are actually outside of their firewall, then you are coming back inside their cloud. 

Depending on the architecture, it can be relatively straightforward, and it can be put up in just a day or two. Whereas, if you are hosting it and coming back in, it is a little more complicated.

What we did was we took the Automation Anywhere ROI calculations and added quite a few things to it. We actually ask 15 to 18 questions around process time, number of systems used, how people, and how many hours. Ultimately, we can stack rank those ROIs on a process, then we typically try to start with the largest ROIs first. So far, with what we have done, we have seen has been relatively close (as it is almost impossible to hit the ROI exactly), but the ROI on the product is good.   

No one is balking at the cost. They are market rates and will change, but no one is saying, "That is ridiculous or impossible." They are saying, "Show me the ROI and prove that the cost is accurate."

One of the things that will be good for the community will be to get the free version to download, which came out just a month ago called Community Edition. So, you can actually download it and try it for yourself. 

Ease of use is something that you need to get trained on. Once you have gone through the proper training, it is relatively straightforward to use. There is quite a bit of online training on their website, as well as in the Community Edition. After 30 to 40 hours with it, you should be pretty good with it.

One of the promises that we made to Automation Anywhere when we started was that everyone in our company would be trained and certified. Even as a Board Member, I am certified. 

Bot creation is relatively straightforward. Probably within 20 hours, you should be pretty good at it. There are some nuances around it though that I think separate first time developers versus seasoned developers. What you will see in the marketplace is how easy it is to develop one compared to how easy it is to develop one that runs in production 99.9 percent of the time.

Across the board, I would give it a nine out of ten. There are some areas that they can move up into, but they are working on it right now. I am assuming that everybody is working on it, so we will stay in that nine range.

Go do your homework. Call some of the larger clients because they seem to face the largest problems. Automation Anywhere has five to ten gigantic accounts that you can just talk to. Ultimately, I would just be careful in the way that you implement it. It is like any tool, if you know what you are doing, "Great," and if not, then you can make a mess. Therefore, be careful and know what you are doing.

We use it for backoffice processes. We are part of a shared service, so we do billing, credit, collections, and those types of processes.

We have done close to 50 projects in the last three years. AA improves our speed as far as moving files goes. It also helps in getting people prepared to work on a daily basis. We have a lot of jobs that run at night so that when people come in in the morning, everything's ready to go for them.

For example, we have two very separate systems which need to talk to each other. It sounds very simple, but we have a job that takes a file from one system and loads it into another. But it has to do that close to 1,500 times in the middle of the night. It's a job that used to be done manually by 150 people in 150 different markets. Now, it's something that's done during the night, and when they come in it's all completed. So it was a very simple task, but there was a lot of volume. It has saved everybody a lot of time and it has saved a huge amount of manpower. It saves us thousands of hours a month.

It's also very useful as far as interacting with employees. Employees can kick off jobs on an as-needed basis rather than scheduling them. It's always very helpful to have a tool that's interactive with the employees.

One of the most valuable features is object cloning, the ability to get into websites and do things faster.

I also like its usability. It's pretty easy to learn, pretty quick to get things taken care of with it. Our average developer is up within 30 days. We have our own training program. We don't use anything from AA for training. We've been doing it long enough that we created our own.

In addition, the user interface is easy to use. It's fairly user-friendly when you don't know anything about it and open it up for the first time.

The scheduling is a little difficult at times. Rather than setting up individual instances, it would be really nice if we had the ability to set repetitive jobs easily. Right now, if you want a job to run every 15 minutes, you have to schedule it a lot of times. I'd rather have the ability to just say 'run every 15 minutes.'

There could be some improvements made in the Control Room. I really like the concept of the application that they've got, so you can now access the Control Room from a mobile device, but there's only a lot of potential, there's not a lot of functionality there yet. That would be a great place for it to be able to expand, so you could have full functionality of the Control Room through a mobile device.

And in general, I would like to the solution to get into more machine-learning/AI. I know that the IQ Bots are looking to go there, but there's definitely a lot more potential there as well.

We haven't had any problems with the actual application going down. We really haven't had any issues. We have issues with third-party products going up and down, but we've never had AA just stop.

We're a small user, so we haven't had any problem with scalability. We've talked to a lot of people who have used it on a much larger scale. For us, it's very easy to add TaskBots. We're more than satisfied with the scalability.

We're always looking for expansion of the solution within our company. We use most of the commands available. There are very few that aren't applicable to what we're doing. We're always trying to get the solution into other departments within the organization itself. We use it a lot within the shared services, the area which we own. But outside of the company, we have several projects that are not within the shared service and we're always looking to talk to the other departments and get them involved.

We have 25 bots, meaning 25 licenses. Our core team that does development has four people plus a project manager.

Tech support has greatly improved. Three years ago we didn't necessarily have the best experience, but over the years they've gotten better.

As a side note, we go through a third-party first, through ISG. That's through how our service model works. Then ISG gets AA involved if they can't answer the question. We don't necessarily directly contact AA. Most of it's through the third-party provider, and then AA eventually.

ISG is great. We really haven't had a lot of problems. When we implemented version 11.3, we went so quickly - we went with it right when it came out - that there were a few questions that ISG wasn't aware of yet because it was so new. We went to AA through ISG and they were able to answer the questions right away. But for the most part, ISG is very on top of it, and we don't need to engage AA.

This is our first go in the RPA world. We had an internal resource, somebody within the company who had seen Automation Anywhere used in other companies. That person introduced us to the concept and, from there, we did some research and saw that that's where the market was going.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. I did it myself and I'm not an IT guy, so it wasn't super-difficult. It took me a couple of hours, including configuration. Our IT team set up the actual virtual machines themselves, but the installation was done completely by me.

Our implementation strategy was that we started super-small. At that time, we started with five bots and the Control Room. It wasn't overly difficult. I just followed the documentation provided to install the service and configure everything.

Our initial project had to have an ROI, and that's why we started small. We have never not had a yearly ROI. We've always greatly exceeded the cost of, or the investment in, the tool. In terms of how much it's saving us, I don't want to be quoted on the exact amount, but it's more than millions of dollars a year.

We purchased AA through ISG and have done both annual renewals and a multi-year renewal, the latter recently. It has been very easy to add bots on an as-needed basis.

There are no additional costs from Automation Anywhere, but there is obviously the infrastructure costs for the VMs.

We definitely evaluated lots of different options at the time. Of course, it came down to Blue Prism or to AA. We went with AA because of the feature set, the way that the development was laid out. And support was also a factor. We were much more interested in States-side support.

Any company in today's environment would be foolish not to implement RPA. There are definitely different types of use cases where you could spread it out amongst the organizations and let them do their own thing. We have chosen to keep it centralized and have been pretty successful in doing it. But everybody should be using an RPA in some capacity.

I would absolutely recommend specifically Automation Anywhere.

Our experience with the solution has been a ten out of ten. I can't speak to the other tools because we haven't used them, but we're very satisfied with what we have.

Our primary use case is banking/financial. Processes we have automated include loans, ledgers, mortgage loans, and even some of the record management systems.

In some of our use cases, people were spending more than three hours per day just generating reports. And then we created an automation for this and it reduced the time to 30 minutes. It improves employee productivity so they can use their time in other areas.

I like the way it works with structured data in the back office and the way it does repetitive work.

In terms of ease of use for developers, we're able to create reusable components. We don't want people to have to rebuild things from scratch. In this way, developers can take the reusable components and complete their development processes more quickly.

The bot creation process is pretty straightforward. Anyone can go in and learn it easily, and then they can build a bot. I like it.

When it comes to integrating the solution with other applications, there are some challenges. For some third-party solutions, there are no direct interconnections. For example, there were no direct connections with SAP systems. So, we had to create connectivity between Automation Anywhere and some third-party solutions. They have now improved that situation a lot and we can connect SAP and other systems as well.

If they want to sustain their position in the market, they have to be flexible, working on how we can integrate with third-parties, working on a machine-learning product. People are expecting that and it would be really helpful.

From the IQ Bot perspective, frankly speaking, they still have to improve a lot. I got IQ Bot training in San Jose. My expectation from a straight, technical, architectural point of view was that I would be able to create my own algorithm and integrate it. But with IQ Bot, I am not able to integrate anything. It is already well-defined, so I have to use that particular option only. I know I can not go with any other machine-learning platform. I hope they will be coming out with version 12 where we can integrate it with Python algorithms and other stuff. It might only be in the future, it might only be on the roadmap. But as of now, it is lacking a lot in that area. We are expecting, for most of the documentation, things like tags, that there would be a checkbox option. That's lacking in IQ Bot.

The stability has increased a lot. When we started with version 10.2, there was a lot of instability. There was no way we could keep the bots active, there were scenarios where it became disconnected. There is also the code deployment perspective and a lot of other angles. People are always only thinking from the business perspective, but as a technical architect, I think about operational effectiveness and how they can improve the product's maturity.

The stability has improved a lot.

However, when upgrading, they changed their internal architecture. They moved it to a JT Java platform. When moving, some of the existing features did not work in the new version. It might be that they have to improve their regression testing to improve clients' satisfaction. It can happen that what is running in production currently, if I move to a new version, suddenly is not working tomorrow. People are not happy with that and say, "I want to roll back to the older version." They are not able to use the new features.

When moving to a new version, they have to think about what features people are using and what kind of impact there will be. Small business users will be fine, those who have ten bots or 15 bots. But there are organizations like mine that have around 700 to 1,000 bots, and that makes changes very difficult to handle. It could be that 10,000 tasks are using something and if that thing is changed it will be hard to update. I might have to spend a year on that. People will never accept that.

Scalability-wise, they have increased it a lot, based on the clustering method. As a technical architect, I'm going with always-on production and data centers. That means that if any data center goes down - there is a natural disaster or something else that happens - how do you make it such that you can bring up another data center? I'm coming up with a design for that based on the latest version, version 11.

The initial setup is very simple. It's Windows-based and it's a straightforward installation. We used to say they need to come up with a silent installation option, with the previous version. But now, with version 11, they have introduced, even at the server level, a silent installation. That means we can make it automated instead of manually installing it.

We measure the ROI of automated processes by how much of a benefit we're getting from it. We look at how much time it takes and how many robots we're using and we include the licensing and operations costs. Finally, we take into account how much faster the performance of the bot is, compared to how long it took to do the process before automation.

We have saved time and money, but when people think of going with RPA they cannot expect that they will immediately see ROI. They have to sustain and increase the RPA options. They will have to spend a minimum of one or two years increasing their use cases for automation. Then they will see a good ROI. They should not expect, within three months, to say, "Hey, I have automated, where is the ROI?"

All organizations have a certain strategy or checklist. In this case, management will think first about licensing cost, about the total cost of investment. After that, they will think about the product's features and functionality. They will also look at support. They will consider the use cases, the current processes they have identified already, and based on all that they will decide whether to go with Automation Anywhere or another product.

In terms of our bot creation process, people come to me and say, "I have a process. How do we automate it?" We need to understand if it's a cognitive use case or a straightforward use case. If it's straightforward, we tell them we'll use this product and build it for them with four to six weeks of development. Then it can go to production. If it's cognitive, then we really need to understand it better. We need to use a third-party product, like Kofax or maybe an IQ Bot if it is fit for the scenario. Based on that, it takes some time and then we'll move it to production.

We have a process architecture review committee where we review all the processes. We cannot blindly go forward with all the processes that have scope for automation because it's all licensing cost. We need to think about whether we can automate a given process with any other IT automation solution, like scripting or macros. If that is not possible then we have a fit for RPA. Then we have to go through our checklist, walk through the use cases, and look at the percentage of the automation scope: Is it a 100 percent automation scope or 80 percent or 20 percent? We need to to know if there is any manual validation or manual intervention required and how that is handled.

Initially, we failed with the Citrix automation where we have a lot of use cases. We ran into a lot of limitations with Automation Anywhere in version 10.5. But with version 11, they have AI Sense which we can use for Citrix applications. We are currently exploring this option.

I have taken courses at the Automation Anywhere University and I have advanced professional certification from Automation Anywhere, which I completed for version 10.5. I'm also doing it for version 11. I also have an official certificate for IQ Bots.

At the moment, for us, everything is on-premise. We're not ready to go with cloud. So we have to build our own platform. We have to build our own bots.

I would rate this solution at seven out of ten. They have to improve on the product's maturity level. When they are introducing new versions, they have to conserve the existing commands and features, so that they work when we move to the new version. And they also have to come up with more flexibility, so their solution can integrate with our scripting and our own algorithms. That will make it easy to convince our business areas to increase the adoption of RPA.

I have implemented it for multiple use cases. 

One of the use cases that it was implemented for is filling out timesheets from the managers. There are certain managers who have to allocate hours to multiple employees, around 40 to 45 employees. Each month, they decided how much time that they will allocate to each of resource. Using a robot, they can automatically fill in the timesheet on Zoho, which is the timesheet system that the company uses.

Another use case was that we used to have certain lists of vendors who billed every month. They had a specific format to their invoices. Using bots to read through those invoices, we were able to pick up relevant data and enter it into the finance systems.

It has improved the efficiency and reliability of the data in the systems. A user is always going to make errors. By adopting robots, we are able to have more accurate processes, plus time is saved.

It saves time for the people who operate it. This particular bot is an attended automation bot, and before running the bot, the manager tweaks some of the values which are important. Overall, this will save the managers time during their processes and create value.

It is not always required to have a technical background. It is not necessary to know programming languages. This makes it easier for a business user to create his own bots.

It is pretty stable on a day-by-day basis. It is much better than when I started working on RPA solutions three years ago.

Manually, I have worked on adding/scaling bots, but I need to work on cloud availability, possibly discussing scaling with cloud providers, like AWS.

For different processes, the scaling time period is different. For some processes, we could develop bots in two weeks, then go to production with one or two bots. For other processes, it could take three months or more. It varies based on the process.

We did not use another solution previously.

The setup process is not easy compared to the competition, and this can be a barrier to entry.

We implemented it ourselves.

The time savings depends on the process. By using a bot, we have saved 40 to 70 percent. If the process uses unattended automation, it saves a lot of time.

Currently, I don't think that we have saved money with this solution.

When I started working on it, it was difficult to obtain a trial version (barrier to entry). Now, they have a Community Edition, which may make it easy to get started.

We looked into UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere. Our client was interested in Automation Anywhere.

UiPath has an easier setup process.

I recently took a look at the Bot Store, and it's a good initiative. I haven't started using it. I downloaded a couple of the bots, and hopefully soon, I will try to use some of them in a production environment.

The real beauty of robotic automation is when it is running from the back-end (unattended).

We use it enterprise-wide for HR, IT, and in the front-end of our transfer agency. The bot helps organizes certain HR classes, letting the organization know when classes have not been completed. We have uploaded certain fund model data to third-party portals. We can set up new accounts in less than a week, where it use to take months.

At a very high level, because of how we've implemented it and how we work with our business partners, they are now looking for ways to help do the automation. Additionally, we've adopted a bit of a federated model, where once we start working with business partners, we start training them on how to use the tool. Therefore, the tool has more of a widespread use around the organization, helping people rethink their jobs.

It integrates with different types of applications, so we can automate our business partners' redundant, repetitive tasks.

It is very simple to use. We have people that we trained who had absolutely no development background at all and are now using RPA. They are using it and developing their own solutions. 

We've had people who already had a development background. They self-trained and got certified in about three days, so it's pretty easy to use.

While the Automation Anywhere University is good, the estimates of the time that it takes to complete it are a little low, especially when you start watching all the videos thoroughly. One of the courses that they said would take six or eight hours was closer to 16 to 20 hours.

I noticed that from version 10.5 to 11.3 the number of clicks to start a bot through the Control Room and Schedule Manager have increased. In certain cases, I would like to see that become simpler, faster, and easier.

I would love to be able to schedule things based on business case. Right now, the Schedule Manager is either once a day or pick days of the week with times. However, in the financial industry, I sometimes need to run something on the third business day of every month. At the moment, I don't really have a way to set that up in the Schedule Manager. 

I would like to see some improvement in error handling. That would be great. Sometimes, the errors that you get back are awfully generic. It is like you have to do a lot of research to figure out what the issue is.

I would love to see a little smoother integration with some different types of platforms, technologies, and user interfaces. 

The stability is getting better. We had some issues, especially because when we went onto version 11.2, there were some scheduling issues. So, very recently, we upgraded to version 11.3.1.2, and it seems to be a lot better.

The scalability is good. It is very easy to scale. It doesn't take us hardly any time at all if we need to spin up a new Control Room or Bot Runner. The slowest part is probably on our end, getting the hardware.

It took us two years to scale from pilot to the number of bots that we are currently using. I wasn't involved in the early days of the PoC. I came into the group a little later after that, but now, we use a federated model. We were sort of the center of excellence for it, working with our business partners. In a number of cases, our business partners are now developing their own bots. We have developed some, where the business partners didn't have much of an interest to doing the development. They wanted to be involved in the creation, so they understood it, but they didn't want to do any of the coding in the background, so we do it for them. We do all the production support.

I like to go by actual executions, not number of bots, because we have some bots that need to be executed multiple times during the day. Last time I looked, we were well over a 100 different executions in a week.

The technical support is great. I have worked with a couple of different people who have been absolutely phenomenal, helpful, and have solved so many of our problems.

When I have a serious production support issue, if I need to escalate it, I usually receive a lot of good help from some great people to get our problem resolved. Sometimes, it takes a while, but I get it. Everyone's environment is different, and it's hard to know everything about how everyone has their architecture setup.

They've started up a user community recently. I haven't investigated that much. I really want to do that, but I always thought that a user community where the users of the product always get together, talk, sort of brainstorm, and come up with other suggestions for the tool would be great. However, I believe that has just been started. I just haven't had a chance to go look at it yet.

We weren't using a different solution before this. Automation Anywhere was our first RPA tool. 

We wanted to remove a lot of the drudgery out of people's lives. Someone copying files from one platform to another or taking data and manually entering it from one system to another was not a good value savings. A human should be doing stuff that is more creative and requires human thought process. We wanted to enable our organization to improve overall. So, we figured an RPA solution was a good way to start on that journey.

When we went to version 11.2, which we set up brand new, if I had to do that myself, it would have been a bit complicated. I worked with an installation specialist from Automation who was awesome. He made it very simple. We had some of our own server and DBA personnel on the line, and he documented everything for us. At the end of the day, I had all of the information that I never had on our original 10.5 environment, which has made it a lot better.

Originally, we used HCL Technologies. At a high level, the original implementation went pretty well. Our problems were other things. We started having more issues around coding and our expectations on thought leadership from the vendor, because they were the ones originally doing the coding. We were the business partners to them. As we began to get certified and do some of the coding, we started to realize that there were things that we just didn't know and had a hard time getting some answers. Then, we ended up starting to work with a different vendor. As far as the systems administration work for Automation Anywhere goes, we took that over, and that's what I do.

For time savings, we do time and motion studies with our business partners, so we truly know how long it takes them to do a process and calculate that in. 

Depending on the area and department, we use different rates of pay to calculate dollar savings. We also break that down, whether it's actual realized dollar savings or just a dollar savings that's not realized to the department. 

There's also risk reduction, which is a lot harder to quantify, so we've taken that to more of a high, medium, and low type of deal, because there's a number of cases where we're eliminating manual keystroke entry. That has created huge risk reduction from our standpoint.

If we count the integrations that we have done with Appian, which is where a lot of our savings is from, we are well over a million dollars in savings. This is from only doing development for about a year and a half.

We have seen a return on investment in a lot of ways. We seen dollar and time savings. There was a department that was going to have to hire somebody to just copy files from one platform to another every day. Because of this automation solution, they didn't have to hire anyone to do that. That was a good cost avoidance there. 

One of the biggest things for us is getting the whole enterprise to start learning about RPA and about different ways to think about how they do processes, whether you can improve a process first manually, then make it automated, or if it's even ready for an automated solution. This type of thinking and mindset throughout our business partners has started to make a lot of improvements throughout the corporation, not just in RPA, but in processes.

We're just starting to renew our license, and we were quoted $115,000 without the IQ Bot. 

The IQ Bot is another $30,000. This is with very limited pages, as we go through our first projects. The majority of the cost was for ten days of onsite training.

The shortlist would have probably been Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, at the time. We went with Automation Anywhere because Blue Prism is really good on the back-end, but that's all that they specialize in. We knew that we had to do a lot of front-end type of RPA work with some third-party vendors, which we weren't going to get API calls to. We had to be able to operate with their graphical user interface. Once we made those realizations, Automation Anywhere became our choice.

Make sure you understand what your needs are:

• Whether it's front-end or back-end?
• What interfaces do you want to use?
• Do you need an IQ Bot or some type of cognitive machine learning tool?

Understand what the different tools from the different vendor do, because they are becoming more similar, but they are still designed for specific areas of a technology, whether it's the back-end, front end, or somewhere in the middle. You need to understand your own needs. Once you understand that, research the various tools thoroughly and make the best choice.

The product functions well. 

The integration with other application works really well. We have used it with Appian more than once, and that integration has been very easy to do.

The cognitive document processing is good. We have done a proof of concept. We just purchased IQ Bot, got it installed, and will be starting our first project soon. One of the things that we did learn is reading the imaging was tough because of the DPI needed for the IQ Bot. It's 300. Most imaging systems don't save them that high. They are at 200 or 250, so we ran into issues there. However, as long as we can get electronic documents, it's been awesome.

I have taken some Automation Anywhere University courses. I took the online classes and got certified in 2018, but there are some other courses that I wanted to take that I saw in there. The content is really good.

The bot creation process is easy. It does require more thought if you truly want to incorporate some good error handling in the process. With some of our bots, this is absolutely critical. We have some bots which have very strict SLAs because we are in the financial industry. It is a bit trickier and requires more thought. You can do it and do it well. It's just that it requires more forethought than a typical user would know.

We don't use Citrix.

I have worked for two companies in the past who have used Automation Anywhere. Both primary use cases have fallen under finance and accounting, with a lot of finance and accounting based functions primarily for data processing: 

• Extracting data from different systems.
• Aggregating data.
• Doing analysis on data.
• Porting data into other systems.
• Doing accounting based functions, such as reconciliations and transaction uploads.

• At the most granular level, automating people's daily tasks has been helpful by freeing them up to do higher value-add activities, which is definitely beneficial. 
• On a larger scale, the tool is improving processes overall by making systems and processes more stable. It returns hours, time, and money back to the business.

• From a developer perspective, the user interface is user-friendly and easy to use. 
• From the admin side, the Control Room is simple to use. There is a lot of functionality with a lot of analytics and oversight that you can draw from just simple web pages. It is definitely the most useful.

Integrating this solution with other application has been good for the most part. A lot of the issues that I have are related to the actual applications than with Automation Anywhere. Any additional functionality which comes out in regards to integrating it better with more widely used applications, like Salesforce, Oracle, or Workday, is definitely beneficial and helpful at the end of the day.

I have been hearing great stuff in terms of upping the product's cognitive game. Anything that can be done to work with unstructured data sets would be helpful, like increasing the subjectivity of bots, and moving away from solely rules based processes to anything which actually requires subjective judgment. If Automation Anywhere could code that into the bot design and framework, having it sort of act like a human, that would be helpful. 

Anything that can be done to increase the stability from a system standpoint in regards to large-scale systems, which are being used by a number of applications, e.g., Salesforce or Workday. This would help us, as well.

Automation Anywhere should work to continue maintaining its ease of use.

One to three years.

My current and previous companies have had stability issues. 

I started on version 11 of Automation Anywhere, then when I joined a new company, they used version 10. Therefore, I have seen both versions. With version 11, some of the development stuff was a bit clunky in terms of the tasks that we were performing. They didn't perform as expected, or perform properly, when we were developing the bot. Then, once we deployed it into production, the bot would run for a specific process and work properly about 10 times, but on the eleventh time, it would break. It was always random. Nothing had changed at all, in regards to our system, architecture, or infrastructure.

On version 10, things had been a bit more stable. We made sure that we build code which effectively captures all use cases and exceptions, but stability is key. When you're building automated solutions using bots, people are already skeptical and hesitant to adopt them. Anything you can do to improve the stability is definitely helpful. Ultimately, it depends on what your goal with RPA is. If you're using RPA as a stop-gap to build large-scale system integrations, then it's very helpful. If you're using it as a be all, end all, then stability is your number one concern. 

The product is definitely scalable. A lot of it will depend solely on the architecture of the organization who is implementing it. If you are using on-premise servers, it is much harder to scale up versus if you are using cloud-based architecture. Automation Anywhere provides the tools and expertise to make it scalable.

At the previous company that I was with, we had a pilot in September 2017 with approximately 20 bots. Then, in production, it took nine to ten months. With the organization that I'm currently with their process took a little longer, but they were standing up their COE initially. So, they went from pilot to about 30 bots in production. This took roughly a year and a half to two years. 

With regards to process, there is a lot involved. If you want to have a successful RPA and Automation Anywhere implementation at the ground level, you need to lay the foundation and the framework. Therefore, you need to build your center of excellence, and make sure you have dedicated people who will focus on whatever their role is: People related to support, governance, development, architecture, oversight (who will work with your security teams to get your reviews done), and IT personnel (who will provision servers and licenses and do Control Room administration). There is a lot involved to take it from inception to a successful program. 

The technical support has been helpful from what I've used. Initially, when we were exploring solutions and using Automation Anywhere, as a vendor, their technical support seemed to be lacking a bit. It seems like in the last few months or year, they have been stepping up their game, in this regard. They are very prompt to follow up with issues and want to make sure issues are thoroughly resolved before they close tickets and move on, which has been helpful.

At both companies, we never used a different solution before Automation Anywhere. 

We had individuals working at the companies who spent years going to school, but could not necessarily download reports nor input data into spreadsheets, and this was something that could be easily automated. We wanted to free up users and people to perform higher value-add activities, exercising analytical and critical thinking, as opposed to being cogs in the machine.

Certain aspects of the initial setup were complex, but that's a given when you're talking about technical architecture and getting the infrastructure you need in place for a successful rollout. Though, some aspects of the initial setup were simpler. 

The simpler aspects are designating roles for people based on what it is they want to provide to the center of excellence for RPA and how they see their fit in the organization. The more complex piece of it is working with all the stakeholders, internally and externally, to get all the infrastructure in place that you need in order to develop, deploy, test, and run bots in production. 

For deployment, at the first company that I worked for, that was all in-house, as we were deploying our own bots. The architecture, development, and deployment were all in-house. 

At the company that I currently work for, we have a managed services company who does development for us, and we still handle deployments. It is more like a segregation of duties, where we handle the full deployment on the end once code is ready for production.

We have seen ROI, otherwise we would have stopped using the product.

At a base level, for ROI, we equate a dollar value out to the process owner, or the business user, and multiply that out by the number of hours being saved. However, that is really base level. There are other factors involved that will help:

• If you reduce the number of errors.
• If it's related to month-end or quarter-end close for a business cycle. 
• When automating a base level process, that saves time, but it doesn't always account for the additional time given back to the user to perform another higher value-added task, as well.

On the shortlist were some of the largest players in the industry: Blue Prism, UiPath, and Automation Anywhere. This was in 2017, when I was involved with the PoC. We chose Automation Anywhere because of ease of use and overall functionality. I think the cost was also a big factor, but I don't have much insight into it.

People seem to be a bit skeptical about the cognitive document processing. I don't know if they see the power that IQ Bot provides relative to other world leading software products, such as ABBYY, which is another big OCR technology that I have used. If Automation Anywhere is stepping up its game in the cognitive aspect, this will help guide adoption in the future.

Consider all relevant factors before making a decision on a provider. Don't just randomly decide to choose one provider over another. At the end of the day, it comes down to what you are trying to achieve by implementing an RPA solution, what you're looking for in an RPA service provider, and who is willing to best address that and meet the needs of what it is you're hoping to achieve. You should consider RPA as a solution, and there are a whole host of other automation software solutions across the spectrum, as well, which are relevant for different things, but RPA has its place in any organization. Just know exactly what it is you are hoping to achieve. Based on that, you'll be able to find the best provider for you.

For developers, it's relatively easy to use. I know some developers are hesitant to use it because they come from traditional technical backgrounds. The product is counter-intuitive to everything that they have studied. If they studied computer science, they're really reticent towards something that can just automate what they learned. For someone with a nontechnical background, it's relatively easy to use and easy to build tests out. It takes a bit of effort to master and build sustainable solutions, but it is easy to use from a development perspective.

I have not been able to take courses in Automation Anywhere University for the new platform. I started using Automation Anywhere back in 2017, and the Automation Anywhere University wasn't available. There was another platform, at that time. We did the online training center for it, and it had eight different sections. Back then, it was a little clunky. You had to go through one section and complete it before moving on another. From what I've heard about Automation Anywhere University, it's much better and more functional. I haven't had the opportunity to use it yet, since I haven't really needed to use it. However, I do plan on exploring it in the future.

I don't use Citrix automation.

We use it to augment our staff and remove some of the manual processes in our business.

Our team, consists of two college kids who are doing almost all the work, along with a couple of business people to help teach them what is going on. The ease of use has been pretty simple, or they would not have been able to catch onto it so quickly.

With the new regulation on China tariffs, we were hit with a regulation that we weren't prepared to take on. By using a few bots, we were able to satisfy the requirements for that regulation without going into programs and making changes.

We have automated our China tariffs, some invoicing stuff, a lot of processes for finance, and some mundane closing tasks.

We have had a lot of great success with attended automation. The business has taken a hold and embraced it. So, we're very excited about it.

I would like more with OCR and data capture. We are partnering with IBM to help bridge this gap, but Automation Anywhere should continue to expand on their product line and provide these capabilities, as well.

The installation and setup for the bot runners and bot creators need improvement. The installation and setup for the control room is also a difficult task. Therefore, improving the ease of implementation would help out a lot.

We've not had any problems with the platform going down. Right now, it's been very stable.

We're still pretty small, so we haven't had a need to scale out too much. 

We have seen the roadmap for scaling out, and it doesn't look to be too difficult. So, we should& have a problem with it.

We have only had the tool for about eight months. From start to finish, we have put over a dozen bots in place, some of which are highly complex and took a lot of weeks to properly deploy.

The tech support for Automation Anywhere has been really good, so far. We haven't had to call them very much, but when we have, we have received a good response.

This was our first bot solution. We did do our research and looked to our partners to see what they were using, then created a shortlist. This product was on everyone's shortlist. Also, they partner well with IBM, and we have partnered with IBM for years. This made it very attractive and was the key selling point.

The initial setup was pretty complex. Everyone who offers this platform is still trying to find the right tools which go with it. Without an integrator, we would have had a lot of difficulty getting it set up ourselves. 

As this product matures, it will continue to get easier to set up.

We used an integrator (BP3) for the deployment. They've been tremendous to work with, satisfying all of our needs.

We measure our ROI mostly by time saved, from a real person doing a task versus a bot. In some cases, we have been able to recoup revenue because processes weren't being followed correctly. Because the bot was doing the task the same way every time, we have recouped some revenue that we had lost in the past.

We save 34,000 hours of time per year and have recouped up to $6000 in lost revenue.

We have a three-year contract with Automation Anywhere.

UiPath was also on our shortlist.

Every piece of software has its goods and bads. For your organization, you have to ensure that the goods outweigh the bads for your use case. This solution has been great for our company in almost every way possible. Obviously, we made a good choice. Therefore, I would recommend taking a good, hard look at Automation Anywhere as your bot platform.

With the latest version, I know they have improved the UI. That will already be a big help,

Return of investment has been pretty easy, so it has not been a problem with getting funding for this solution. Our executive team was immediately involved, where I know with most IT projects, they really don't care until they see the output. They had done their research, as well. So, they were really excited for us to take on this endeavor.

Our primary use case is to automate all the back-end processes, which are accounts receivables, accounts payable, automatic settlement, and a lot of processes in the supply chains. Afterwards, we move onto the front-end transactions.

It provides, not only hard benefits, but also soft benefits. This means to leave the human capital (which they are required to do); leave the human mind free of all voluminous repetitive tasks. Let the workers do the work that they are intended to do, which is thinking. The bot can work for you. There is no comparison to the human mind. 

The customer engagement is really deep, and they work with the “gemba”. They work with operations very closely. I also believe they have a good product roadmap. 

I’ve already mentioned the future of our human mind and thinking are limited. We only think in arithmetical progression, not GP.  So, I have no answer for this.

When you scale up, like on Proof of Value (PoV), it’s okay. You can have one full, dedicated person working on the site. However, when you scale up, and imagine there are 150 people including bots in an organization of 20,000 people, then they need to be loved and cared for (every single one of them). They will need much more support, because it is a new thing and it’ll never fail because of productive partners. It will fail if people on the “gemba” don’t adopt it.

We are in the Proof of Value stage, not proof of concept. Like any business, production lines, or bots, there will be outtakes that you’ll have to deal with and build up.

If you ask me, my personal belief is you can’t even begin to imagine what you can do.  You can imagine, but you are limited by your own imagination and thinking, so you can go exponentially. 

On a scale of one to ten, Automation Anywhere would be a seven to eight.  

From my point of view working in the market and examining at it, this market needs more skill sets. This market needs more bilingual people and some more process-oriented people who can understand the business processes and help the customers grow.

Every industry has its own unique business processes, but this market is short on labor, even in skills, and also in terms of people who can articulate the value of process automation. That is a value piece from Automation Anywhere’s side. These guys need to build a good team.  

There were five big criteria:

1. Cost. 
2. Features and functions. 
3. Global and local support. 
4. Customer service. 
5. Technical support. 

In our office, there was a full team with a full process and close to 10 to 15 people from procurement, technology, business, and also “gemba”, as I keep calling operations. They went into the evaluation and had a very scientific way of doing so. 

There was another partner who we felt was very close, but the edge was the customer service and the support. That was the edge.

It was very easy and simple.

We brought in a partner. However, it was very easy the way things, and if someone has moved in the industry and business processes, they can do it. It was not that difficult at all.

Of course, yes, we have seen ROI. Especially in this market, human capital is valued in an ageing society. If you don’t find skilled people, who’s going to do the job? If you remove the neutrality of people and build it through the bots, that is the best way to do.

For my company and me, we come from a good technology company. Every company is a technology company. Without technology, you cannot live. When you are building up your back-end processes, especially in the shared services, what next?

In the Asian markets, they have come to a point of maturity where labor is the normal average. Looking at China, the Philippines, Malaysia, or even India, these markets are becoming more exponentially expensive. Therefore, what is our next wave of forward industrial evolution? To me, these digital automation RPAs going into artificial intelligence and machine learning are the areas of industry that we’ll need to move into very quickly. We need to take a very conscious call in preparing ourselves for the future.

Did we try some other solutions, to that extent, of automating the right business processes? I don’t know. 

Was the solution good or bad? I don’t know. 

But the perceived value of it, either in terms of real value or dollar value, or in terms of releasing the sources to do better thinking work, those are the areas where personally I was not convinced. So, let’s try something which has a more futuristic outlook. I call it glocalization, globally present and locally present. That was the whole idea behind our inception into reality.

The moment you say you are a vendor and looking at your contract, your relationship is over. You want business partners who can help the industry. We know how to make beverages, and for example, we make the best. I hope so, and I’m confident. We need some partners who know their stuff as well, and who understand the pain points of the industry and can help with them. Those are a couple of criteria which can make you successful partnerships and business relationships, not a vendor.

I would rate this product an eight.  

If I fast forward two to three years. At that point in time, how would it look like? Maybe we have the same amount of enthusiasm, or if it we become very big, then we may become less agile. If you are small, you are more agile. The moment you become big, it goes into its own dimensions.

I’d would advise, first of all, if you are an end user like me, don’t think of yourself as a customer. You have to see your customer as your “gemba”, as the people in operations. Your product partners, implementation partners, and you are responsible for servicing the customer. Thus, it will always be a win-win game for everyone. Don’t try to put a blame on the product or the partner. You are all equally responsible, and need to put your skin in the game. Just go ahead for it. 

Foreign Language: (Japanese)

この製品を主にどのように使用していますか？

我が社の場合の主なユースケースはまず、自動バックエンド業務全般です。これは通常APつまり未払金と売掛金、それにサプライチェーンの多くがあります。後はフロントエンドコミッションです。

Automation Anywhereのどんなところに満足していますか？

顧客関与が非常に深く、彼らは現場でよく働くと思います。 業務部と密接に協働してくれます。それに製品ロードマップが良いと思います。

では、彼らと築いた関係に満足しているということですね。

当ソリューションを使用するとどのようなメリットがありますか？御社が機能する上でどのような改善をもたらしましたか？

はい、後で話しますが、大きな点の1つはハードメリットだけでなく、ソフトメリットでもあります。つまり、実際にすべき仕事に人的資本を使うことです。それは少なくとも人間の精神を大量の反復作業から解放することにつながります。彼らがやるべき仕事をする。ボットは私達のために仕事をしますが、人間の頭には及ばないと確信しています。

 には考える力を発揮させる。

当ソリューションの安定性に関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか？

それはまだです。まだ価値実証の段階で。実証実験を多く行っています。でもどんなビジネス、どんな生産ライン、どんなボットでも同じように対処して構築しなければならない支障はあります。

当ソリューションの拡張性に関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか？

それはまだです。まだ価値実証の段階で。実証実験を多く行っています。でもどんなビジネス、どんな生産ライン、どんなボットでも同じように対処して構築しなければならない支障はあります。

Automation Anywhereのテクニカルサポートを利用しなければいけなかった経験はありますか？ある場合は、サポートをどのように評価しますか？

はい。 10が最高の評価とすれば、彼らは7から8ですね。

10に達するには、何が必要ですか？さらなるサポートですか？

私の見解では、この市場は－私はこれまで様々な市場で働いてきましたが－この市場にはさらなるスキルセットが必要です。より多くのバイリンガルの人々、そしてビジネスプロセスを理解して顧客の成長を助けるプロセス指向の人々が必要ですね。

具体的な例を挙げると？ ビジネスプロセスやスキルセットについて？

どんな業界にも独自のビジネスプロセスがありますが、この市場は明らかに労働力が足りません。労働力が足りない上、スキル、それにプロセスの自動化の価値を明確に表現できる人がいません。ですから、Automation Anywhere側からの価値観で言うと、彼らは良いチームを確立させる必要があると言います。もっともっと。

もちろんです、はい。でも 拡大の余地はあります。急激に進めるための余地、そして急激に進めるなら、パートナーも同時に成長する必要があります。生態系全体が成長する必要があるので、ビジネスが成長するだけでなく、生態系が成長しなければサポートも難しくなります。

Automation Anywhereからのサポートを直接受けていますか？

そうです。直接…名前は言いませんが、製品部で指導を受けたパートナーがいました。というのは、製品を最大限に活用するためには、全機能を探索する必要がありますので。

初期セットアップはどうでしたか？簡単、それとも複雑でしたか？

とても簡単でシンプルだったと思います。

自分達で、それともパートナーを使って？

パートナーを連れてきましたが、そのままでもとても簡単だし、ビジネスプロセスで移動したことのある人になら誰にでもできます。全く難しくはありません。

当ソリューションの次のリリースに含まれていたらいいなと思うのはどのような機能ですか？

すでに言いましたが、人間の思考の将来は限られています。私達はGPではなく、自動化の進歩で考える。だからこの質問への答えはありません。

現在のバージョンで改善されると思いますか？

まだ完全に見れていないので、改善に関して答えるのは難しいです。

スケールアップをすると、価値実証でのように、現場で働く専任スタッフを1人増員することはできますが、その場合、規模を拡大して2万人の組織内でボットを含む150人がいるとします。その一人一人が親身なケアを受ける必要があります。そうすると、もっともっと沢山のサポートが必要となります。というのもこれは新しいものであり、失敗すれば、これは生産パートナーのせいではなく、現場の人間がそれに適応しないからなのです。

ROIは出ていますか？

もちろんです、はい。言うまでもなく。この市場では特に人的資本が少ないです。高齢化社会で熟練した人がいない。なら誰がその仕事をするのでしょうか？ そこで人の中立性を取り除いて、ボットを使って構築するのです。それが最善の方法でしょう。

新しいソリューションに投資をする必要があると思ったのはどうしてですか？

私自身そして我が社は素晴らしいテクノロジー会社を経て来ています。先ほど申し上げたように、このテクノロジーについては後でお話しますが、会社はすべてテクノロジー会社です。テクノロジーなしでは生存はできないし、特に共有サービスにおいてバックエンドプロセスを構築するなら、必要なものは何でしょうか？アジアにおけるこれらの市場では、労働が通常平均という成熟の地点に実際に達しています。中国、フィリピン、マレーシア、もしくはインドを見てください。これらの市場は急速に高価になってきています。では今後の産業革命の波は何か？私の思うには、これらのデジタルオートメーションRPは、人工知能、機械学習へと移行します。これらは非常に迅速な移行が必要となる分野です。 そこで私たちは未来に向けて意識的に自分達自身を準備する行動を取ったのです。

以前に別のソリューションを使っていましたか？その場合はどうして変更しましたか？

これまでにいくつかのソリューションを試しましたが、適切なビジネスプロセスを自動化したかどうかは分かりません。そのソリューションが良かったか悪かったかも分かりません。でも、本当の価値、あるいはドル価値のどちらかの観点で認識した価値、またはより良い働き方をするために情報源をリリースするという観点から言えば、私個人的にはあまり納得していませんでした。なので、より未来的な見通しのあるものを試そうと思ったのです。私はそれをグローバリゼーションと呼んでいます。グローバルに存在し、ローカルに存在することなので、これが発端から現実までの背景の全体像です。

他のベンダーも検討しましたか、それともAutomation Anywhereだけでしたか？

12のパートナーから選出されたプロセスから始めました。

ベンダーを選ぶ際、決め手となる、その他の条件は何ですか？5つのうちトップの2つはどれですか？

違う答えをしたいと思います。まず彼らはベンダーではなく、ビジネスパートナーです。なのでその定義は違うと思います。彼らが、自分達はベンダーだと言い、契約を見始める瞬間、私達の関係は終わりだと思います。欲しいのは業界に役立つことのできるビジネスパートナーなんです。例えば、私達は飲み物を作る方法を知ってるとします。最高の製品を作っている。私はそう思うし、確信もしています。ここで必要なのは自分達の製品に精通していて、業界の支払いポイントを理解し、助けてくれるパートナーです。こういったことがベンダーではなく、成功するパートナーシップやビジネス関係を作るための2つの条件でしょう。

Automation Anywhereを選んだわけは何ですか？

条件を決めていました。5つの大きな条件が。もちろん、コスト。まず、特徴と機能。 グローバルおよびローカルサポート。3つ目はもちろんカスタマーサービスです。そしてもちろん、テクニカルサポート。私たちのオフィスは完全なチームがあり、完全なプロセスがありました。 調達、技術、ビジネス、そして私が「現場」と呼び続けている運営からの10〜15人近くが非常に科学的な方法で評価を行っています。 非常に密接だと感じていたパートナーがいましたが、決め手は明らかにカスタマーサービスとサポートです。それが最重要です。

Automation Anywhereについて、その他に付け足すことはありますか？

いいえ、何もありません。皆さんのご清栄をお祈りすると同時に、Imagineを東京デビューさせてくれた彼らに感謝します。彼らはロンドンへ行き、ニューヨークに行き、今ではインドにも進出したことを知っているので、うまくいけば私たちの市場はこれから持つべく相互作用から恩恵を受けることでしょう。

製品、サポート、環境の全体に1から10の評価（10＝最高）を付けるとしたら、どのように評価しますか？

8

特定したものではないです。2、3年時間を早送りしたとしたら、どうなっているでしょうか？同じだけの情熱を持っているか、もしかしたらとても大きくなっているかもしれない。だとしたらアジャイル性を失います。小さければもっとアジャイル性があります。大きくなった瞬間に自分だけの次元に入ってしまうんですね。

このソリューションあるいは同様なソリューションを探している、同社あるいは他社の同僚の方に、どんなアドバイスをなさいますか？

まず、私のようなエンドユーザーであれば、自分を顧客とは考えないことです。自分の顧客を現場の人として、運営の人として見る必要があります。 製品パートナー、実装パートナー、そしてあなたは内部にいる顧客にサービスを提供する責任があります。だから、これは皆が勝つことのできるゲームです。製品やパートナーに責任を被せてはいけません。皆で同時に責任を負い、ゲームを進めるべきです。