Automation Anywhere Reviews

I am working for a company that is engaged in process automation.

In our company, we have used AA in several projects like finance process automation, payroll, accounts payable, and account receivable processing.

Each of the projects that I have engaged in is different from each other. For example, the finance automation project mainly focused on reconciliations, Excel automation, etc. AP and AR processes mainly focused on front-end navigation through the Chrome browser to download invoices from customer portals and upload and process them in their accounting application, which is also a web-based one.

Automation Anywhere assisted me with all the functions that I require to automate the processes and tasks.

The AA tool has more than 500 functionalities, which is really useful in feasibility studies.

Since it has capabilities to integrate with third-party applications easily, it makes the life of an automation engineer very easy. 

Our organization works with a few other leading RPA tools also. When compared, every RPA tool, coding/scripting in AA is much easier for a developer. The code is also very readable, which increases the user-friendliness when it comes to code maintenance.

The effort to train a beginner to code in AA is low because all of the commands and functionalities are simple.

Excel automation, database integration, and object cloning are few functionalities that I find valuable in the tool because most of the business processes work around them.

With Excel automation, we can open, close, save, and navigate through the Excel workbook. Most importantly, macro integration within Excel is easy, and with that, it unleashes all of the capabilities that we can do with macros to be executed by integrating with AA.

Database integration allows us to integrate with SQL Server and Oracle databases.

Object Cloning means that frontend navigation is made easier. With AA the object cloning command, we can capture the UI objects and customize them as per the process.

• The API integration should be improved further since it is a bit difficult at the moment to connect with the API in the enterprise version.
  
• The object cloning command should be improved such to increase the capability and capture more objects in the UI.
• It would be more advantageous if the email automation allowed us to integrate with cloud-based email servers.
• Metabots should be improved further, allowing for the same functionality as the task bot.
• It would be great if AA could reduce the price of IQ Bot.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for more than two years.

Stability mainly will be based on the system architecture. The tool is stable from 11.3.2.4.

This is scalable across many processes and can integrate with many third-party applications.

Technical support is excellent and they work round the clock to sort out any issue we have.

In AA, the tool has more capabilities and functionalities when compared with our previous RPA product.

Setup is very straightforward and there is a complete guideline provided.

We implemented in-house.

Using AA has improved the lifestyle of the employee. Monetary ROI cannot be revealed as per company rules and policies.

Pricing is affordable and I would recommend beginning with the Starter Package.

To evaluate the products, the company went through the reviews.

When considering all the facts, this is one of the most user-friendly RPA tools that I have worked with.

We had been handling various daily reports that need manual Excel work. We have now automated those daily tasks using Automation Anywhere, saving an enormous amount of time on the manual effort. It is now human-error-free.

The Screen Recorder feature is the feature that I like the most, as it can automate anything on your desktop screen by recording your actions or the cursor movement. This makes it easy to learn and configure for any type of environment when it comes to automating regular tasks. 

We implemented Automation Anywhere as one of the primary tools for automating various tasks within our organization. We have implemented this tool for various customers as well.

By providing the companies with such a useful and productive tool, they save a lot of time and money on tasks that can be performed by small bots.

It an easy, simple, and user-friendly tool that can be accessed through the mobile application as well. You can control and monitor your bot through mobile apps, which creates flexibility in handling the software. 

The Automation Anywhere Screen Recorder feature allows us to do things very easily. It's easy to automate regular and routine tasks. It can automate anything on your desktop screen by recording your actions or the cursor movement, so it is easy to learn and configure for any type of environment.

There are three features by which you can automate things. You also do have the console window to monitor each action the tool is performing. You can correct the code if you feel it captured some wrong action. 

I would like to have a simple bot dashboard window for admins to manage things easily. This is important when an organization has a huge number of tasks to be automated because managing tasks can be complex.

It would be very helpful if the bot dashboard were simplified for admins.

The mobile application can be improved by adding more functions and capabilities abuse right now, only a few features are enabled for mobile users. 

We have been using Automation Anywhere for the past two years.

It is quite stable and we do receive a lot of updates that enhance and add more features. 

It is a highly scalable application.

So far, it's good and responsive customer support.

We do use other RPA solutions, although I don't want to mention the names. The simplicity of this application makes it a win. 

The initial setup is straightforward.

We implemented it through a vendor team.

I don't deal have cost specifics but I can say it is a tool that provides value for the money.

Before choosing Automation Anywhere, we also evaluated Blue Prism.

In summary, I feel that Automation Anywhere is heading in the right direction. 

The problem statement is to automate data reconciliation between three systems, namely SAP, Ariba, and manually-updated Excel. Supplier and Purchase data flows in from different systems and separately, which sometimes results in data inconsistency.

In the current scenario, two people spend two days per week to verify and reconcile this data and then save it. This is a big cost and investment for the client. The ask from Automation Anywhere is to automate this process, including a re-upload of the data back to the systems with results of reconciliation. This way, there is no manual effort spent. 

As mentioned above in the problem statement, the task is to automate the data reconciliation effort between SAP, Ariba, and Excel sheets from SharePoint. The developer team was able to create four bots as a PoC to automate these steps and additionally upload the data back to systems with reconciliation results. This brought consistency in data.

What we were also able to do for the client is to schedule these bots at a specific time every day, which helped remove any kind of dependency or human intervention. This also improved accuracy.

The solution was a mix of recorded runs and scripting. The developer team had a basic understanding of the tool, which made their job quite easy.

Features like reusing each and every piece of code for things such as login scripts, data extraction scripts, etc, helped us to speed up the implementation of PoC for the client.

Another valuable feature was the one-place control-all type mechanism, which helped to have a center point of control for bots running on multiple systems.

The scheduling feature allows for scheduling of the bots to a specific time every day, which helped remove the dependency on humans completely.

We were also able to get the results sent via email.

One area where I can see room for improvement is the training material that is available. I am aware that the Automation Anywhere university has a lot of training content, and even better, all of it is categorized with respect to the user's role in development. I took the training course related to architecture. This course and content were nice but the videos had a digital voice over, which made it non-engaging for me. After certain videos, you cannot concentrate much.

The other point that is relative to my experience is that for a completely new person to RPA, Automation Anywhere may come with a small learning curve.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for between ten months and a year.

The stability will mostly depend on the system under automation.

Qe started with four bots and now there are going to be only more. The target is for approximately 25 bots to be deployed.

I did not need to reach out to the service team myself, but the development team seemed to have no complaints.

This is my first encounter with an actual implementation for RPA. Automation Anywhere seemed to fit our requirements.

The initial setup is mostly straightforward, although there was some initial confusion with the right version of the tool to be used.

Deployment was done by our in-house development team.

On a very high level, I can say that we saved two days for two people per week with this automation.

My only suggestion in terms of pricing is very generic and that is to consider that as much as RPA saves cost and does automation, please get a realistic estimation done on whether you are really achieving any ROI over your investment with RPA. Once you are sure about it, go for it.

The other tool in consideration was Blue Prism; however, the internal development team advocated for Automation Anywhere as a better fit for the requirements, which is why we implemented it.

The tool comes in with a lot of capabilities, however, you are the best judge to use only what is needed.

Automation Anywhere is being used as a solution in creating robots, which imitates mundane tasks and simplifying business processes all across different divisions and departments that fit their process needs.

This solution greatly helps us reduce repetitive human effort and turn them into more productive resources for the company. Automation Anywhere also helped in turning complex processes into possible solutions, which greatly reduces production costs, also allowing employees to do more and enjoy more.

Automation Anywhere greatly improved our processing time since robots can execute process steps faster than human resources do. With this, we also reduced errors and mistakes in processing because robots don't get tired or worn out. It thus reduces the risk of misinformation and other human errors.

It also helped in making our resources more productive, given that repetitive tasks are now reduced. Simple processes such as tracking, logging, and data consolidation are now automated, which helps us focus more on doing tasks that are impactful and more important.

IQ Bot is one of the features I greatly value in Automation Anywhere, as it has helped me in creating bots that involve processes with unstructured data, thus making complex processes possible and attainable with this technology.

Their mobile application is a great feature for developers and project owners on the go, as they can monitor the status of the robot runs anywhere and anytime. This is an important feature because this world is running at a faster pace than before, and mobility is very important for everyone.

Automation Anywhere can be improved with respect to the user-friendliness of the interface because most of the competitors are now using a flowchart-like structure, thus making it easy for anyone to learn and study it. Essentially, it's as easy as connecting shapes for each action and process.

An area for improvement is their OCR reading for images since some competitors have an inbuilt OCR reader that recognizes various hand strokes much better, thus improving the time and resources needed for transcribing the documents.

I've been using Automation Anywhere for two years and six months.

This solution is very stable in terms of performance and after-sales support.

This solution is very scalable as they adapt to the different needs of their customers.

Customer Service is a breeze since they quickly respond to various issue request.

We've previously used Pega Robotics as an automation solution, but since we're improving our services and processes as well, we need to step-up our automation technology to keep up with the ever-changing business world.

The initial setup was pretty straight forward, and the installation is easy.

Implementation was done by an in-house expert who had knowledge of our systems and processes, thus reducing the time needed in acclimating our process with the product.

Based on our department's statistics, we've been able to recover our initial costing after two-plus years.

I advise users or prospective buyers of this product to know more about the features they offer before diving in with this solution, pricing-wise. It is one of the most affordable RPA solutions, and as for licensing, they offer a community edition that greatly helps anyone who aspires to learn about the product before buying the enterprise solution. It will give them an overview of the features and functionalities that they will encounter when using the robot.

We've evaluated different options such as UiPath and Blue Prism, but due to costing, we've selected Automation Anywhere as our provider.

This solution is worth considering for medium to large-scale companies looking to automate various processes.

The platform is amazing. One of the things that we were worried about when we initially started looking into RPA was having the right people to be able to cope. The advantage of Automation Anywhere is that you don't necessarily have to come from a programming background. It's very easy to pick up. Within the team, we were able to train people within a very short period of time and start our process in as little as two months.

For now, because we just started using Automation Anywhere recently, it's probably a little difficult for me to answer that (room for improvement). But from the feedback that I've received from the team, it is a great tool. We're definitely looking forward to using it more in the future.

Because we are very new to our process, so we're still sort of working through it. One of the features that I just learned about in this particular conference yesterday was about the Enterprise addition that they're just coming out with. I think in about six or seven days. So, that's very exciting because I don't particularly come from a programming background. I think it'll be really easy for us to continue to do more RPA-related processes, and not necessarily have to worry about having the right programmer on the team, or programmers, for that matter.

For the enterprise, we've been using Automation ( /categories/security-orchestration-automation-and-response-soar ) Anywhere for a few years. In my specific team, we've been using the platform for about eight months now.

It was very easy. The Automation Anywhere community is extremely helpful with answering any questions that we had throughout the process, or any sort of concerns that we had. So, it really wasn't difficult at all.

I would highly recommend it. If RPA is something that they're doing for the first time, Automation Anywhere is definitely one of the best in the industry that they should stick to.

I would definitely give it a ten (out of ten).

We have used RPA technology to build solutions which are across discipline and cater to end to end business process. At the start, we were performing use cases that primarily dealt with the Project Control group as most of the manual activities are based on the Excel operations which are either Macros based or involved tedious manual upload to the system in a periodic manner. Later we moved our strategy to cater to the more enhanced solutions which were primarily digital solutions involving - OCR, AI & ML. We were focusing on the Engineering Drawings which were more Unstructured & had the potential to create a Digital Workflow using the unstructured information.

Automation Anywhere has surely helped our organization to shape its Digital Journey - It was our first RPA tool which helped us to perform basic automation which created Point solutions but has added tremendous value at the early stage. We were able to scale-up fast using Automation Anywhere due to its user-friendly AI and later on IQ Bots provided the required edge to handle the unstructured data. We also tried to explore the Bot Insights which helped us to monitor the day to day Bot health and the hardware needs.

We have found both the basic Task Bot & IQ Bot very useful as the combination of both helped us to create some solutions which were End to End Business solutions. IQ bot performs the basic Data Sample set creation and Extraction of the details from the unstructured PDFs and later we have used the Business Rule engine using the IQ Bot to perform the data feed into the various Systems. Overall we were able to achieve the value using the combination. As part of our internal solution, we have also created custom Python scripting to handle the OCR failure issues surfaced due to IQ Bot product limitations

Automation Anywhere can be improved in certain areas specified in the cognitive zone where the information needs better OCR Engine + Machine Learning capabilities. Also, they can improve on the System Identified region function of the IQ Bot - Our team faced a tough time in handling that as we were not able to assign variable to System Identified Region as the IQ Bot tool wasn't allowing it. Also, we have had a certain issue while performing the WLM - Workload Management functionality, applying Queue mechanism becomes hard sometimes - Can be more intuitive for the end-users.

We have been using Automation Anywhere from the past 3.5 yrs and the product is catering to all our basic to mid-level complex requirements. We have developed multiple Bots catering to multiple disciplines. RPA Solutions are presently catering to Internal Stakeholders and we are planning to roll out for our External Clients as well.

We haven't used as such any RPA tool prior to this but yes we have used UiPath parallelly with the Automation Anywhere. Both tools are good but Automation Anywhere has an upper edge on Cognitive area as compared to UiPath.

Each RPA Tool has its own limitation & benefits - For an early started UiPath may be a better option because the license cost is less but once you Scale & Try to move to advance complex Use Cases involving Cognitive it may not help much

Yes, we have evaluated other Options but with the Tradeoff between License Cost & Functionality, we have found Automation Anywhere as the best fit for Oil & Gas Use Cases.

Nothing specific Automation Anywhere can do better in Cognitive it needs to stabilize its products. Also Cloud product is the game-changer for them A2019

I am a platform architect for the RPA so I deal with all 3 major RPA vendors. I build the Infra for all big setups. I have immense experience plan, design, and building the setup on cloud, on-prem and with different configurations.

I implemented AA in different environments, the AA installation is the smoothest compared to other RPA software installs.

Migration is a little challenging since it requires direct integration with DB, credential vault and all that. Since multiple credentials are involved, it is a challenge to get all the credentials, it should be easier if only the control room credential was required. Versioning migration is still a challenge.

My company uses AA extensively for internal BPO work as well as we refer and deploy it to the customer as a RPaaS model. It helps in increasing productivity, reducing the cost of the whole operation. It makes fewer errors and in the COVID situation proves to be a reliable workhorse.

We implemented a lot of new environments recently. v10 expiry and COVID situation accelerated the implementations. Compared to older days now all implementation of infra bot happened pretty quickly.

Bot with Citrix integration may require a lot of improvement but having any extra feature really helps in complex implementation.

The cloud templates for implementation helped greatly and it helps us in pushing the software fast.

• The OCR integration came a long way. They have intelligence inbuilt into it.
• Ease of deploying and the KB article really help people to just read and deploy different 3rd part components as well(svn, DB, LB, etc) .
• Nowadays, the screen scraping techniques evolved in RPA and it is good to see they are in play which was not the case couple of years ago.
• HBC is most suitable for COVID times. 
• The RPaas offering will help customer to use it for less number of bots.
• AD security group integration is a good feature
  
• AI sense is good too.
  

They need to concentrate lot on a nonpersistent RPA model. Integrate IQ bot with AA instead of making it as a separate component, since nowadays intelligent bots need to be integrated into RPA core. Instead of bot agents getting installed on the machines, concentrate on making it independent of the system and only as a plugin in the browser.

It doesn't have an independent small install for developers and always requires to be fully installed.

Bringing a DevOps model for bot implementation integrated through private bot store might be a good idea to improve the tool.

I being using it since couple of years, i am impressed by the transformation from v10 to v11 and v11 to A2019. 

The solution is pretty stable, we didn't face many issues. Once the instalation is done the control room core architecture wont face many issues.there are quick fixes like service restart if anything goes off. but most of the time we hear AA support suggesting us to reinstall with the new version of software for performance issues, but with my experiance i hardly see that making huge differnce in fixing the actual issue.

 Monitoring can be done through email alerts for the core infrastructure. Issues mainly in HA(High Availability) with cluster sync issues still not monitored at the dashboard level, which might be a concern if the cluster goes out of sync. At the bot implementation lot of things are dependent on the way we code so it's additional work for the developer to get the code keeping in mind all the events which might happen. I would have been impressed if the solution had framework at the control room level to keep track of the overal execution and transactions, hope they can bring that feature in future releases

We never faced any issues with scalability for AA. sometime it takes high CPU on CR, but that is expected. one of the frequent questions we encouter with HA setups is the single point failure of repository storages, i understand that this needs to be taken care by storage fault tolerance, however most organization might not use cloud for RPA and if we are doing on prem install they might not have a high resillenace storage. SQL availability group still needs a SQL expert to get that right and DR solution totally depends on the underlaying infra we work on (there may be lot of alternative solution and its a big discussion to be honest :-)   )

Hence HA and DR solution really require a expert like us who have extensive knowledge on RPA, cloud, infra, windows and SQL  

They offer excellent customer service. No complaints except that every time they ask for a software upgrade as soon as they hear about an issue, which is not actually a good solution. Otherwise, they have very good knowledge of most of the issues. 

We keep switching between RPA software for a number of reasons. We prefer AA for the following reasons:

• Low cost for run licenses compare to other RPA solutions
• A high number of certified developers help in bring efficient automation compared to others, they in turn promote the RPA software that they know of.
• Easy to program, no prior experience of programming required.
• Easy to use compared to other RPA.

The initial setup was straightforward, even a complex setup can be set up in 20 mins if you have all prerequisites.setup can be complex if there is a HA , DR implementation, as a architects we need to factor in lot of variables. some are target application access,  MFA for the application or windows authentication, credential management, data accessibility, network reachability , underlaying hardware, PaaS offering in cloud(depends on the cloud) , VDI or VM template to choose (Makes huge difference in performance and costing), citrix or native application . Overall simple install, but huge planning to figure out the overall feasibility and effectiveness of implementation

We implemented in-house. I implement it within Accenture and for customers as well. I rate my self pretty high for implementation. I have solid experiance (AA master) as well as cloud certification. I have 12 years experiance in infra, so expect a good solid backgroup on both AA and infra.

ROI is important for the business case. ROI is good if you are going for long run, year on year. i never stayed on a project till we start getting the actual values, i see nowadays ROI is shrinking due to RPA vendors raising thier license costs , additional cost added to get the complex RPA solutions to be implemented

The setup cost for AA is always fixed since the configuration won't change much for the different number of bots, the license cost is lower in AA,

We usually evaluate Blue Prism and UiPath along with AA for implementation. We decide based on the requirements.

• We have validated all the primary features of A2019. New features can be added just by updating the new Package (a group of commands).
• Pass Credentials in CR Directly to run a bot on any device.
• Instead of installing AA Client, we will just install Bot agent on the runner machine. 
• Excel commands are classified into two types Excel Basic, Excel Advanced By giving a lot of scope to use a wide range of Excel operations.
• Instead of using AA Client, A2019 provides users the ability to create bots directly in the control room.
• Flow, List, Dual Views enable the user-friendly environment.
  

We have done lot of implementation with Automation Anywhere. Recently, we have used IQ Bot's latest version and delivered a few projects. It is saving most FTE benefits using Automation Anywhere automation. One good thing in A2019 is that all products of Automation Anywhere, like IQBOT services, Meta Bot Designer, Discovery Bot, and Control room are all together in one product which is very effective for any business team. Package options and workload management with queues are the most efficient features.

• The universal recorder is a kind of hybrid recorder that enables the user to record the data across devices.
• Option to send email from Outlook or SMTP.
• A2019 also supports Python script(2.0/3.0) along with Javascript and VBScript. Also it as inline scripting and importing script file feature. 
• A2019 contains almost 11 diffs. datatypes. Ex: window,number,table.
• Browser support is Improved with Different Browsers support: IE, Mozilla, Chrome.
• A2019 is not dependent on single os. It supports Linux, Windows, etc.
• Running bot through Excel, Waiting for release from the vendor
• Instead of meta bots we can use run DLL commands

• Cloud API vision and OCR engine integration should be more effective. 
• Auto-update of the Bot agent in runtime machines from Automation Anywhere control room server. 
• The import and export of the previous version bots to the latest version of A2019 should be more flexible and friendly for the end business users. 
• AI Sense recorder should be upgraded with additional features for better results. 
• SMTP mail features should come with migration options. All kind of VB scripts and Java scripts which we built using exiting version should support in this version.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for three months. 

The stability of the solution is good with the latest version with final patches. Automation Anywhere team release patches in every release to enhance the features and performance of the added features

It is good for scalability.

Technical support is good. 

We have migrated few projects from other RPA tools to Automation Anywhere RPA automation.

The setup is easy but it is better to have AA support person during that activity.

AA Support team is good in the environment setup.

ROI is as expected.

I am managing the entire cost, price, and licensing model for our project.

We have entirely validated the products before using in our projects.

Initial version of products bugs should be reduced.

We have multiple use cases, we build & supported 200+ automations and one of the main businesses was related to the contract processing and due to high volume and complexity, it was very crucial. Also, we built and supported multiple operations related use cases.

We have built and implemented multiple SharePoint, OutLook, web-based, and automation related to ticketing tools.

Automations were from simple to medium and high complexity related however with the help of many easy to use and user-friendly features, we have implemented them with high accuracy.

Using Automation Anywhere we have built/supported 200+ automation around operations and automated different Sharepoint, Outlook, ServiceNow, and contract processing related use cases. It offers a lot of features, flexibility whether it is through Meta bot, IQBot, etc. 

It offers :

a. Zero-install, Web-ready platform: Deploy RPA across the entire organization and scale bots on-demand in a few clicks.                                                                                                  b. Use the pluggable API architecture to maximize extensibility and customize RPA to meet unique business automation requirements.
c. Integrated machine learning: Streamline your document-centric processes with drag-and-drop IQ Bot integration.
d. Self-learning automation engine: Create a smarter automation engine by infusing third-party AI technology.

Movement on cloud architecture according to me provided by AA2019, will be most beneficial as it will be easy to use and will provide flexibility.

However, we have almost sued all the features extensively and few of them are as below :

• Intelligent automation for business and IT tasks
• Uses SMART Automation Technology
• Rapidly Automates complex and complicated tasks
• Create automation tasks like recording keyboard strokes and mouse clicks
• Distribute tasks to multiple computers
• Automation Anywhere offers scriptless automation
• Auto-login runs scheduled tasks at any time, even when the computer is locked.

1. Accuracy to process handwritten documents.

2. Should add more Analytics and Intelligence related capabilities.

3. Scalability along with the volume and business should be more flexible.

4. Cognitive capabilities should be improved more.

5. Large scale robot deployment is limited.

6. Licensing costs should be reduced.

7. Error handling should be improved more.

As AA has recently moved to Cloud architecture, there will still be a lot of additions and improvements in terms of the features and offering and this will be evolved over the period of time only. About the exact performance on the cloud maybe we have to wait a bit more time and should evaluate once it will get settle down more.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for more than 3 yrs and implemented 200+ uses cases. Also, we have started using the new version AA2019 for a few months (4) and did a few POCs.

The stability is good.

Scalability is good, however, it can be improved.

Technical support is good.

We have evaluated other RPA tools as well however, looking at overall feasibility from features to costing perspective we have taken a call to go along with AA and we are happy that we have made a right call and it has benefited us to a great extent.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We have our in-house development and support team.

Looking at overall feasibility from features to costing perspective we have taken a call to go along with AA. Installation is easy however pricing etc. can be reduced a bit as it is still more for small business/automation.

Yes, we have evaluated other RPA tools like UiPath and BP as well.

Looking at overall feasibility from features to costing perspective, I strongly feel Automation Anywhere offers a lot of features and scalability and is a very good tool overall and people who have not tried should give a try and put some hands-on. 

I have worked across many different type of RPA use cases that we have done, starting with finance, manufacturing, and banking. The use cases are tremendous. There are many. 

Thankfully, being a technical person, I've also learnt a lot about business processes. Personally, in my career, I have not just developed my technical expertise, but also using RPA and the Automation Anywhere tool, I have engaged a lot of vision as to how the business and the finances process work across different direct industries so far.

I can talk about a use case that we have submitted. We have a Bot Genius entry that we have where the bot reviews your bot. So, it's a bot on top of a bot to check whether the bot that you have created is up to standards or not. So it is an interesting concept that we try to bring in where we identify pain areas, because a lot of time is been taken up by the reviewer team to identify what's wrong with the code and whether the code is per the coding standards or not. So, we thought of automating and trying removing one layer so a bot can check whether all the coding standards, proper guidelines, and naming conventions of variables are being sorted out. So, we brought along this bot as a finalist to see if it can take home a prize.

We have improved on IQ Bot collectively with the normal Taskbot that we use. How it got started was that we have a lot of scanned documents to input for our solution. So, I used to get a lot of scanned documents, and extracting or reading the data from those has always been a pain area. We always used to bring a manual person in to do it. Once a manual person did that activity, it was brought into Excel where I could run the bot. With the entry of IQ Bot, it now takes care of my scanned documents, which means IQ Bot does the OCR extraction and gives my data to the Automation Anywhere Taskbot. This means no manual intervention and end-to-end bot processing, along with a happy customer at the end of the day. We provide these services to multiple clients, so we have been doing this for all of our clients.

There are many valuable features of Automation Anywhere. It is very easy to work on this automation tool on a day-to-day basis. I've seen that people, even from a non-technical background, can code it swiftly and at ease. 

We have IQ Bot which is very interesting and unique. I really like IQ Bot and the concept of A2019 that we have just seen. I really hope to get to work on that. A2019 seems to be very interesting and easier than what we are doing here now. It is a service available on the cloud, which is even better.

I would like a couple more features where I can talk and the line comes up automatically. I can just put on a mic, like in "Ok Google". With "Ok Google", I can tell it to please open an Excel spreadsheet with the header read. If this is there, then I don't even need to sit on a computer, I can just dictate my commands and it will automatically come up.

Right now, it's more sequential, where it works in a sequential manner. If they have something dynamically, where it run parallels, I'm not sure if it's out there yet, but It would be a plus point if we could have that.

With A2019 will get both options (writing lines of code and dragging and dropping). So far, we are just doing sequential coding. I'm just writing line-by-line code. But, there is a pain area if I want to go back and have to understand where the issue started, it becomes a little cumbersome to identify. That's where A2019 comes into the picture, you can drag and drop start to make a flow. This will be a useful feature.

I've been working with RPA for the last six years, starting with Automation Anywhere.

Over the year, I have seen that Automation Anywhere as a solution that has improved a lot. Wherever we have identified bugs, timely resolution, and the interaction with other applications, we have seen a difference from our original solution where we started off. Now, it's completely dynamic and very stable.

I can introduce IQ Bot. I can introduce my Python script that I'm trying to work on. If I'm not able to make it with an Automation Anywhere, I can go out-of-the-box. I can try to build in my own programming language where I have expertise or I might not, but in this way, I am putting it across different scripting mechanism and running it the same bot. This is something which I think is very good and we can scale again to a different level with different use cases.

The technical support team has been always very helpful. I write to them and they reply back to me usually in an hour or two. That's a good response that I see as compared to other RPA vendors that we work with.

We have clients who have dedicated CSM managers at Automation Anywhere in case something is a very high priority, which is always the case. So, the customer support team is always there to help us out.

One of our primary jobs is to consult our clients. We look at the use case and base it on their use case. We do recommend which tool and special functionalities of the tool that they can go for. There have been many times when we have found the use cases to be very complex and the applications very different and a bit complex, but then we have suggested the Automation Anywhere solution and that has worked as well.

The criteria of deciding whether RPA should be used goes from the old story that your process should be rule-based, input/output should be structured, and it should be logically described. If it falls into these three simple buckets, then RPA is there.

We do have an infrastructure team who supports us with the installation. If you have the basic requirements for the infrastructure, hardware and software, the installation process is pretty smooth. We have user manuals that are pretty well prepared where I can read them, then install it. That's good for the setup or for the person who is installing it from their end. It's sort of easy. You would require a bit expertise from someone at work; a person to help you out.

I have worked on other RPA tools as well. Mentioning some of them: Automation Anywhere, UiPath, Blue Prism, and AutomationEdge. In day-to-day life, since the RPA has evolved so much, right from the beginning, we had many different tools. We keep fluctuating from one tool to another trying our hands out in other domains as well. However, Automation Anywhere is one of my favorites.

I would rate it a nine (out of 10). I will keep one out for my feature to get voice converted into the command.