Automation Anywhere Reviews

We use it for multiple internal processes across multiple functions.

We work with good people who have very defined goals and very defined approaches of how to execute and achieve their goals.

Automation Anywhere takes a lot of mundane, competitive work out of the hands of people, increasing the quality, because it is consistent. It also enables us to have patience with these manual processes.

It has the ability to tag different components within the automation. We built it to track the ROI and stability of the product.

I find attended automation useful.

The product is not the best that it could be. There is always room to improve it a bit more. They are heading in the right direction with their innovations. 

It is very stable. The stability of the solution also has to do with how good the developers are from Automation Anywhere and on the user side. So, we've seen an increase in stability, not from the tool, but from the level of the people which are working on it. As our people work with Automation Anywhere, they learn from past mistakes. They have been able to configure the bots better, which then fail less, making them more stable.

It is definitely scalable. What we found worked for us to make it scalable was it has to be programmed by an architect, as opposed to letting it just be in the hands of the masses trying to solve it. This has been our approach. 

It took us eight months to a year to scale from zero bots to 100.

We mostly use our own technical support. 

When we do escalate issues to Automation Anywhere, we have a good relationship with them.

We did not switch from what we previously had.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We did the deployment.

We measure our ROI through money and time saved. That's how we measure the product's value. We look at the hours performed by humans, and those hours have a cost associated with them. We multiply our transactions by the number of hours it used to take by humans.

Time-wise: We have saved hundreds of thousands of hours.

We chose Automation Anywhere because they are best in class.

Do your research thoroughly.

We are still using people who can figure our bots as their profession. We have not release the product from the ground up.

We don't use the Bot Store.

The primary use case is to save hours for all the manual stuff which is going on.

Things are not overly complicated now. We can streamline processes.

Its ease of use is the most valuable feature. It is easy to train developers and find the right people, then use them to build the tool.

I liked the Automation Anywhere University. It was easy and simple. I hoped that it wouldn't take too much of my time, and it didn't, which was good.

I like the bot creation process, because it is very simple. If the process is not complicated, then the bot is really easy to create.

We had initial hiccups, like any new process. It took us six to eight months to sort the product out. It has been two years, and we know what we are doing and which use case work better for us.

We would like to use the mobile feature and give access to our users, but we don't know how.

The technical support is pretty good.

Everything was previously manual. We determined by going with an RPA solution that we would save time.

The initial setup was complex.

Automation Anywhere helped us with the deployment.

We measure ROI as in the number of hours saved not performing manual activities.

We evaluated a few vendors.

We have integrated Automation Anywhere with a few other application, but there is still more work to be done.

We have done some work with documentation, but not a whole lot. We are still exploring other features.

We deploy Automation Anywhere in both on-premise and on the cloud. In past, most customers have preferred the on-premise deployment, but the latest version, which is 2019, is becoming popular because it's on the cloud. 

The customers who are using the earlier version, they're on-premise and new customers are using the cloud version. The trend is moving onto the cloud rather than on-premise.

A few of our use cases for Automation Anywhere are for the HR departments, onboarding process, finance domain, month-end reports, ledger update, and AP automation.

The integrations with the OCR engines in Automation Anywhere are quite powerful. It has helped us in many projects.

The solution could improve the integration with some web applications. It was difficult to manage them.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for approximately three years.

Automation Anywhere is stable. We have customers that have been using it for years and they have not had any issues.

I have found Automation Anywhere to be highly scalable.

I have not personally contacted the support, but I heard from colleagues that the support is good.

The initial installation is simple.

I would recommend this solution to others, it is one of the leaders in the market at this time when it comes to RP platforms.

I rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

We primarily use Automation Anywhere to automate Windows applications and Web applications. Both of these are easily automatable with the advanced Automation Anywhere commands, which are user-friendly and easy to use in the Financial & Banking services industry.

It can be used to automate the PDF processes, Microsoft Word, as well as Excel. Without manual intervention, the bot can make its own decisions based on the business rules, and its timely actions make the bot to run smoothly. This saves the users' time and compared to manual processes, the bot reduces the effort and time, with it safely run from the control room.

Automation Anywhere has brought fantastic changes in the process workflows, by automating the maximum number of processes with end-to-end solutions, some of them with 80% of the complete process.

We're able to automate most of the tasks with ease and in less time. We can test seamlessly, before delivering the end product, and once the bots are live it is very easy to maintain.

AA commands are tremendous in obtaining the object properties dynamically once it is captured, and we can select the required properties from the automatically generated ones.

The Object Cloning command is the most useful feature. Through the use of this command, between 30% and 40% of the process automation is complete.

The Excel commands are useful for fetching the cell values and then running specific commands. With this feature, we can invoke the existing macros wherever it is required and once it generates the outputs, the results can also be used for further decision making. This helps the process to run uninterrupted and avoids manual intervention.

We have observed that AA gets locked sometimes. After being used for hours with the same bot, while still using the Run Window command and having it in an open state, the users received a prompt to log back into the control room. This is not correct, leading the bot to fail at certain times.

In the next release, once the bot is triggered, the system should always recognize the active state and not prompt the user to log in again before the bot finishes all of its tasks.

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

It has high scalability and can fit into any organizational environment.

Always, we receive prompt and very good service from the AA Technical support team.

Prior to using AA, we used Macros to automate certain processes, but we were only able to automate 50% of the entire end to end solution. This is because of its lack of consistency to when interacting with the web-based and Windows applications.

Automation Anywhere has excellent features that resolve all of the above problems.

The initial setup is very user-friendly, making it easy to install and ready to use software.

We implemented in-house by following business guidelines.

We've delivered approximately 150+ bots and saved about 200 FTEs worth of time per annum. 

Regarding the price, licensing, and maintenance, Automation Anywhere provides its customers with its best and affordable value.

We did not evaluate other RPA solutions.

I would suggest that if you offer RPA services then you should advertise it well because it will take you further.

We use AA for automating ServiceNow tickets in Caterpillar.

We get tickets for the configuration requests. Using AA, we auto-download the excel attached to it and do all the necessary cleanup and conversions. 

The entire process in steps as mentioned below:

1. A ServiceNow ticket is created by the client that needs a configuration request related to Caterpillar machines.

These machines are called lane 2 and lane 3 because they are manual configurations

2. Once we get the configuration we then try to match the configuration with all the parts and whether the configuration would be possible or not.

For that, we use SOAP where all our latest data is loaded.

This data is compared with the Excel sheet that client sends us.

The cleanup is done in Automation Anywhere, compared to end to end, and then output is thrown out. This output is then given back to the clients in the form of a ticket attachment to let them know if the configuration of the machine that they have requested is possible or not.

Automation Anywhere has saved us a lot of time, money & efforts by automating our ServiceNow tickets.

We expect to save more time by expanding to other verticals very soon. The other verticals include sending automated replies to the executives using the Power BI dashboards through alerts. We have not yet explored this aspect completely but sooner or later we have a lot of BI needs that will be catered by Automation Anywhere.

In the past, we have also done PoCs for the client that helped the executives run automated scripts every Monday using pre-built SQL commands in the data warehouse.

• Create automation tasks like recording keyboard strokes and mouse clicks.
• Distribute tasks to multiple computers.

Also, the document management processes that IQ Bot gives has very good functionality of how you can actually take unstructured data and make sense out of it, connecting inferences, then making the data available to the user. So, IQ Bot is one of the best tools that I can think of in that aspect. This solves the problem of various document structures, document formats, etc.

Hoping to see AA get more robust with time.

Handwritten documents are still a drawback to read.

Regarding the UI, once you're on some of the screens there are fixed dialogues, they are a set size, so there's a lot of horizontal scrolls and vertical scrolls. If I want to do something that is purely business-related and is somewhat complex to write or is nuanced, I sometimes have trouble implementing that inside of the Automation Anywhere script. I feel limited at times with some of the looping and some of the branching and some of the ways to make procedure calls when I have a complex business issue.

Also, there's a loss of overhead of the computing resources in Automation Anywhere. If you have an encrypted bot, the Automation Anywhere software has to read it first, decrypt it, and run it. So there is a potential that, if the logic of the bot isn't good enough, a lot of CPU and memory overload will happen. This is something that Automation Anywhere should look at because it takes a lot of computing resources. I have seen CPUs running at 100%.

I have been using AA for three years. 

Very good.

Very good.

Very good.

We have only used AA as AA has a partnership with Deloitte and Deloitte promotes using AA. 

We have liked AA very much.

The setup was straighforward.

In-house.

We have seen at least 30 % savings in time and 12% saving in costs.

We are not into advisory. We only use the tool.

We are waiting to see AA progress further with more robust solutions.

We mainly use it for Financial Documents processing to conduct payments to registered Vendors. Invoice reception via a central mailbox on the server; Extraction of said PDF invoices via the IQ Bot cognitive platform using the ABBY OCR, as it is by far the most effective for our processing requirement; Consolidation of each individually extracted file into a central Batch processing file; Upload of central batch processing file into a stand-alone approval system, developed on IBM Xpages; Approval of uploaded files, from a central batch file, for payment; Upload of each invoice record in a third-party processing system such as Sage Evolution / SAP. Payment is done via a batch file generated by a third-party payment application.

AA has enabled faster processing of a series of manual operations and/or procedures. Cognitive capabilities are severely reduced or highly inaccurate, the Cognitive platform requires major attention regarding how data is captured, retained for future extractions as well as how these extractions are validated. There is a somewhat problematic functionality for various commands within AA, these commands do not have a consistent functionality one execution within some external third-party software such as Sage Evolution, XBRL for CaseWare, and CaseClient.

The MetaBots are by far the most effective system within AA. Due to the fact that no scripting is required and only the passing of variables or values to get a definite result. IQ Bot with the ABBY OCR is a powerful component to do multiple extractions in the shortest possible timeframe in comparison to human execution of similarly identified tasks or operations. 

The Recorder functionality is extremely useful and relatively straightforward enough to use, albeit a bit restrictive in its functionality.

IQ Bot requires a significant improvement for its data detection and data retention, mainly from the previously trained documents: regarding the document's format, layout, data contained within the document, the type of data that needs to be extracted. Object cloning commands require a significant improvement in its functionality. It is far too inconsistent with execution within the same application. Plugins for web browsers should be a single plugin that allows for the connectivity and functionality of both the v11/v12 and A2019 software, or at best, allows for both the A2019 and v11/v12 plugins to run on the same client browser simultaneously.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for roughly two years.

The current solution is not very stable due to multiple developers working on the initial development, it would be far more efficient if a small group of developers had worked on this specific project.
The solution should be more stable with a limited number of developers working on the current project. The current project would become more accurate and efficient if the functionality of the current commands could be updated to function more effectively and not stop working on a bi-weekly basis. Soe days the commands work without any problems and some days these same commands stop working and breaks the current processing cycle.

Scalability in our current solution is low but has massive room for growth.

The technical is relatively fast to respond and guidance offered is oftentimes sufficient. Time-zone difference is a major issue as this delays the response from an available technician. No guaranteed solution for cases raised, oftentimes workarounds are the only suggested action with multiple of those resulting in no success on the issue raised.

No previous solution used, as a manual process previously.

The initial setup was extremely complex as no assistance or guidance could be found online for my system.

The setup was done through an in-house team consisting of the current developer and a single IT technician.

Know ahead of time what capabilities you are going to require and plan accordingly to determine the total number of user licenses and development licenses required.

Other options were considered such as Blue Prism and Ui Path, but the capabilities of AA far surpass those platforms based on cost.

Documentation online is severely lacking, have commented on this before in support cases. The online documentation is far too generic, with no linking to relevant or in-depth forums on similar topics.

I am a developer and I have developed bots mainly for insurance companies. Most insurance companies in my country usually have big problems trying to transfer data from one application to another, this hence has made it very difficult for them to be up to date with their entry. Usually, they are faced with a one month lag since they employ humans to do the work for them. 

In addition to this, the data transfer usually contains a series of errors, and in that area accuracy is very key. A slight mistake can end up ruining things big time .

Our company's reputation has made it easy to improve recently after beginning to offer RPA services to clients.

Before AA, the insurance companies used to do data manually from one app to another, but after introducing them to automation the speed and accuracy have been outstanding. They had a lot of workload hanging around. 

After automating the process, my company has been able to acquire new clients who are interested in automating their processes using automation anywhere. This hence means more work for us which is always a good thing.

1. I would say business analytics, it provides real-time data that's something other competing companies lack. It uses statistics and graphs to show the performance of the bots which processes are lagging behind and if you need to give priority to certain tasks. 

2. The control room and the bot creator - the control which is the brain is a powerful feature that allows administrators to be able to control how the bots work, create users, and be able to give roles to a user. 

The bot creator allows developers to be able to customize bots according to the client's needs 

Most clients use systems which use old Java versions, trying to automate on these systems is really difficult since most features/commands are not supported. Java earlier than 1.7 cannot work something and most firms I have interacted with their systems are old. Another thing according to Automation Anywhere, it's main aim is not to change the client's system but to be used on top of the existing one hence Automation Anywhere should consider those clients since in my country most of them use systems which date back to 2000, and they are not willing to spend another fortune to change them just so they can use Automation Anywhere.

Additional features: Automation Anywhere should add a couple of commands which will help most developers not to always use a script, a good example is in String operations.

I have been using AA for two years. 

This solution is stable, as of now, I can't complain about anything but more attempts to make it more stable would be okay maybe I haven't encountered one yet but I'm sure it's flawless when it comes to stability.

Definitely would like it, scalability means more new features.

Most customers we've interacted with at first are usually not certain about automation but immediately we do a proof of concept, they are eager to implement. 

I have only used Automation Anywhere and I love it.

It was straightforward.

It was an in-house one.

Anything above 50%. Most clients cannot go for anything less.

I usually advise them not to worry about the overall cost since the outcome will be profitable.

Yes, I had considered UiPath.

I like the way Automation Anywhere has migrated from v11 to a2019 my concern is about bots in a2019, once you delete them it's impossible to get them back.

We primarily use the solution for universal scanning. As an example, the solution can take various service provider bills and will allow us to view all of them in Excel format. That's a very basic use case.

In SAP, there are many similar regular tasks that are done regularly. In human resources, we created several core SAP systems so that the basic users, in human resources can reduce redundancies by 10 times with very little cost. We actually didn't expect that outcome. It was a nice surprise.

It depends on the use case, however, I'd say the most valuable aspect of the solution is the IQ Bot. 

Normally, you just scan the invoice. However, what makes Automation Anywhere different from other services is machine learning, which includes AI. It's easier and more convenient. 

We can include Python programming language too for getting better results.

The solution provides a Community Edition to all the users. It's a great jumping-off point to learn about automation. There are some features that are reduced, however, it's still quite good.

The insights provided by the dashboard are excellent.

If I build a bot today and don't use it, however, in several months, someone tries to use it, there's a 30-40% change the bot will fail in one or two areas. I'm still trying to figure out why. It's on a ticket right now. It may be due to updates or changes to the environment. I'm not sure.

The solution lacks in the approval process area. They need to provide more solutions.

I've been using the solution for about two years.

The stability is pretty good. The only place it lags is if a bot is made and then not used for many months. Then there can be errors. Other than that, it's got excellent stability.

The solution is quite scalable, however, it all depends, from customer to customer and what their actual requirements are.

We have about ten to 15 people who use the solution regularly. We also have an administrator who oversees everything.

We plan to expand across both the enterprise and A2019 versions. Currently, we're just exploring its capabilities more and more.

The technical support is excellent. I'd rate it ten out of ten. At first, we did run into a lot of issues, and the support team was very kind. They were also very helpful and responsive. We're quite satisfied with their level of service.

I work with RPA technology and have knowledge of multiple companies including Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, Webpack, and multiple other vendors. However, in this company, we've only ever used Automation Anywhere.

I've worked with the free version of Blue Prism for tasks like sending email. It was fine and worked without issue.

The initial setup is not complex. It's also not straightforward.

If someone is an automation novice, for him to set everything up, he must be very clear and aware of the ports. It's advisable to meet the system requirements. If the system requirements fail, there may be challenges on the system and some features may not work or could potentially work if some adjustments also get made. There needs to be a mastery of the technical network like ports and servers.

If I implement it now, if I just install the automation in my server, then it's a one one-time installation

The deployment time isn't too long. It may just take two or three hours if someone is completely aware of what we are doing.

In order to deploy the solution, one person is enough. You don't need a whole big team.

I don't have any information about the pricing or licensing on offer. It's my understanding that there's different pricing, depending on how many licenses a client needs. It's very flexible. If a client just needs a certain aspect, they can just get a license for that.

Automation Anywhere has two different versions, or, rather, two different products. One is the Automation Anywhere Enterprise Edition which is only on-premise. Automation Anywhere also has another service that is called A2019, which can be deployed on-premise. 

One of the main differences between the Enterprise Edition of Automation Anywhere is the dollar policy shop. In there, they can't create or customize our own comment. With A2019, you have an option to create our own comments. A2019 is more flexible. I'd advise new users to go for that version, as opposed to the enterprise version.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.