Automation Anywhere Reviews

We use it more in finance and HR processes, such as payment processing or validation of data. It is used to validated data from two different systems or putting that data into an application. There are multiple use cases.

It has changed our mindset. People have started to think about automating things and come up with new perspectives, alternatives, or improvements by which automation can be implemented.

• Service
• User experience
• Feature coming out soon in the RPA.

It is user-friendly and quick to complete automation.

There are security certifications on the tool, but there are still places where our organization has highlighted that there needs to be an improvement on data-related encryption. That is something which needs to be changed or improved.

My main worry is about the security. My organization is very concerned about the data. Data in transit is mostly covered through encryption or TLS 1.2, but there are few things which have been identified which need to be improved.

We need a better way of getting upgrades or defect fixes. It is creating problems for us, as we have to go for a completely new version. Maintaining and managing existing bots, then coming up with new ones takes a lot of time. We would rather have a batch fix than an installation to an installation.

It is a stable platform with a few exceptions. Overall, it's a dependable platform which we can use for RPA.

We have faced issues with the upgrade. As an organization, we can't afford to have periodic migrations. Automation Anywhere is often coming out with new releases. If it's a bug fix or a patch update, that is a good thing. However, if it is a complete switchover or an installation, that needs proper planning. Obviously, time is consumed for this.

It has a scope for increasing which is what we are targeting. We are having sessions in our organization where people are coming up with more use cases.

We have been happy with technical support. Whatever the problem, we get a response with the status. Even if the issue is not resolved, we have transparency.

It was complex to begin with because we are all so new to it. Getting the business come up with use cases was initially difficult because everybody was new to it. Over a period of time, we got to know what has to be done.

We initially use EY for the deployment. Our experience was overall good because we were new to this RPA, it was a good learning experience having a COE playbook in place. Our basic baby steps, we did those with them, which helped us grow.

We have seen ROI.

Have your CEO set up a business user to do the automation day in and day out. If a business user is building or developing RPA, he will know the ins and outs of the process better than a coder or third-party.

There is not one specific use case in the sense of what we use the product for. In the broader scope, it would be automation. But right now we have several applications. We started our journey with the tool in 2017, and we have automated several processes in finance, IT, and engineering. 

In finance, for example, we have automated cash application, billing processes, reporting, payment processing, and we are using IQ Bots to automate our invoice processing. We completed the pilot, which provided us with phenomenal results. So we tested with a small entity with 30000 invoices and around 300 suppliers with a high level of success.

The character extraction capability of IQ Bot is much, much better than the other OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engines that you have in the market today. So we are completely pleased with that, and we are planning to upscale our invoice automation processing.

Today while we look at the opportunities in front of us, our customers are expecting us to be more productive and execute with greater speed to be relevant and competitive in the market. The expectation as far as the accuracy is really very high, and we need to be compliant. We have experienced that the more manual and hands-on that we are that there is a higher risk of being non-compliant.

There are skilled companies who are spending more time on transactional activities. For example in the engineering field, there are engineers who are spending time on transactional activities and there are finance guys who are spending time on transactional activities that could be automated. 

We can use intelligent automation with great value in helping these people upskill themselves into newer areas of analytics, new roles in reporting, and project accounting in finance. We're trying to eliminate these transactional activities, be faster over time. We started by looking at specific activities and we looked at the processes. Now, we are looking at a complete value chain. When you look at the complete value chain, that's when you actually begin driving positive change in business results. That is our projected approach for the next couple of years. We'll be looking at the complete value chain and see how bots can help us make our process more efficient.

The most valuable feature is the IQ Bot's ability to extract information accurately. It can do things like process table-level information, line-item level information, etcetera, and the accuracy is really very high. All of our users are accountants rather than programmers or anybody with an IT background. The accounting people can easily learn Automation Anywhere. We tried a few other tools but our folks were more comfortable using Automation Anywhere. They felt that it is easy to learn, and it was easy to train them as to how to use it.

In the next release, I think it has to be more compatible when deployed with the Citrix environment. That's one bottleneck that we have seen. Technically when we used the IQ Bots, we couldn't work directly through the Citrix environment. With our ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) setup, we needed to access it through the Citrix environment. Because we were not able to do that, we had to have a workaround. We are currently working with Automation Anywhere to have that fixed. They have given us confidence that it can be done.

When looking at stability, we have to remain ready for any surprise even if we have not experienced any stability issues. We don't know what that kind of surprise will be, but we have backup plans in place.

In case the tool fails, we may not be as fast as the bots, but we have a BCP (Business Continuity Plan) but we know we can't be specific on what challenges will come, because we don't know.

In two years, I think once in one process where a bank changed its user interface on the bank website, a bot failed. We had to go and correct it. It was a fairly quick fix because to create it doesn't take much time. Changes like this are not predictable.

If you look at our shared services, we are growing and we need to keep our costs flat. This means I cannot hire more people. This need for greater efficiency is made up by what I have been able to gain out of the automation. We are actually using automation to move more processes into our shared services. Ours is a private business and we create big cement plants. One project could last for five years. When we land a big deal our volume spikes. It's a very cyclical business. It has been very easy for us to deploy scalable solutions now.

The company is very service friendly and willing to work with us when we need it. I would give them high marks for attention to customer service.

Our decision to go with an RPA solution was one that I made. One of the reasons I was hired into this organization was to drive automation. There was a specific goal for that which I was tasked with.

When looking at other options in the market Automation Anywhere seemed to be the company for us for a couple of reasons. One is that when we had our first engagement with Automation Anywhere we felt that they were very customer-focused. We did not see that with the other service providers. They really came prepared when they first met with us. They had all their books, IT, operations, delivery plans and such, so they were able to answer all our questions. They were very flexible in meeting our requirements and needs.

They were willing to go out of their way to support us and to ensure that we would succeed in the journey. Some of the service providers even refused to create POC's for us. But Automation Anywhere said they would and they went ahead and created them.

I thought the initial setup was straightforward and easy.

We did not use any consultants for our deployment. We worked directly with Automation Anywhere. Our belief is that we know our business better than anybody so we opted for maximum direct involvement.

Before deciding to go with Automation Anywhere we looked at other products for comparison like UiPath. We looked at the desktop automation tool, I currently don't even remember their name. The choice seemed obvious from the first impressions.

If I have any advice to give to people who are considering this product as a solution to their automation needs, I would say don't waste time thinking too much about adopting it and just go ahead and start.

On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere as an eight.

If you look at the first year we had the product, we had a 6% efficiency gain. This year we are looking at 10% in finance and 12% in IT. The more we discover ways to use it, the more efficient we will become.

Our primary use case for this solution is in finance. We have a lot of things that we are trying to automate, including performing operations in Excel.

We are using IQ Bot for one of our use cases.

I am currently trying to prioritize use cases to fit different scenarios and make the best use of this solution.

The most valuable feature in this solution is the IQ Bot. We are also able to perform many types of operations.

We would like to see the scalability improve from a local perspective.

This is a stable solution. We do see downtime, but it has more to do with the operating system and the servers. From an application perspective, the downtime is close to nil.

This solution has scalability. We have more than forty bots running.

From a technical perspective, their support is pretty good. We get a ticket after submitting a request for help.

We have a high-availability setup, so it was not a straightforward one. 

We performed the implementation, although we had to contact Automation Anywhere for assistance during the installation.

The initial numbers look good, so I think that we will see ROI over time.

For anybody who is considering an RPA solution, I would suggest exploring the limits. Compare products and decide, but try this one out.

We are excited to try a cloud version of this solution.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We primarily use this for customer data management.

We use this tool to help perform transformations on our data.

This solution has helped our customers to work with large data. They want to perform data transformations to assist them in making decisions. Our customers are very happy with this tool.

The most valuable feature is the ability to transform data into clusters.

In the next release of this solution, I would like to see a plug-and-play tool for NLP programming.

This solution needs to have more support for big data, including decision-making abilities.

The stability of this solution has improved. We have less than one percent downtime in a day, so it is stable.

This solution scales based on licenses and the number of processes. The bots, themselves, are very mature and can scale. The bots are plug-and-play.

We don't have very many issues so we have rarely used technical support. I would say that my experience with them has been satisfactory. 

We had a lot of manual processes that we wanted to automate. We also had a lot of industry-specific automation tools, but we were not doing bot development. 

I was not involved in the initial setup of this solution, but I have been responsible for some of the updates. The update process is not complex. 

We used a local company to assist us with the implementation of this solution. 

I have seen customers save resources by using this tool. One of them replaced two hundred users with automation.

The licensing fees are approximately $10,000 USD for between five and ten users.

We were already familiar with this solution because we had recommended it for customers in past project proposals. We had also helped them with implementation.

We are having a very good experience with this product. It has capabilities for artificial intelligence, analytical programming, and machine learning. Once you understand your data, you can understand your customer.

In the long run, we see that Automation Anywhere will have a very good place in the market. Data is very important, and we feel that this tool will be a market leader.

This solution is very mature compared to some of the others in the market.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use this solution primarily for financial use cases.

We have a bot that monitors quotes and budgets for products that are in their lifecycle or have expired. All of the concerns for finance are automated.

In the finance department, this solution has saved us a lot of money. Employees that were working on manual tasks are now doing things that are more productive.

This solution is easy to use and understand, even for a non-technical person.

Better support for Excel is needed because there are a lot of limitations and we are having issues with it. We do a lot of Excel work, and if we could use it as a database then it would help a lot.

We have had some issues in terms of stability. It is related to certain commands and VMware, and depending on the machine that we are logging into, the bot fails. 

This is a scalable solution. We initially implemented small projects and then expanded them to a bigger level.

The support for this solution is quite good.

The initial setup of this solution was straightforward.

This solution has some drawbacks, but it is easy to implement and easy to use.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Being a bank, we have a lot of processes which we have automated. I am a Project Manager for HR functions. The majority of my processes are in terms of income and skills processing. Those are all automated.

We were one of the few to start up this journey with Automation Anywhere. Interestingly, the majority of our processes were determined to be boring. People did not find them to be very interesting. Those processes have been automated. Being a bank, we have some sensitive processes which we cannot automate. Those processes have been given to human intellectuals. Otherwise, the majority of our processes are automated.

It has boosted our processing time by seven times. Typically, something that has taken eight to 10 minutes now can be done in two to three minutes. So, we have seen some value-add there. 

Resources are being processed earlier and involved in a different type of a governing kind of role. This sort of builds a layer for them to move and scale up. The solution is fast and easy to deploy. Our use cases lasts for two to three sprints and we can churn out solutions very fast.

We do not have a server type of an environment. We use a desktop version of Automation Anywhere which is easily customizable and quickly built-in. We do not have to go through major security iOS applications, etc. These are all enterprise applications that we have onboarded. Each of our functions take their responsibility of building their bot and deploying it. 

It is fast and reliable. 

Older versions of Automation Anywhere required specific skill sets to use it. It is no longer like that.

The version A2019 GUI allows you to drop and drop.

As far as version 10.1 is concerned, we have been using it for the last two years. It is okay. As an organization, we look forward to next version. However, being a bank, we have certain processes that we have to follow. We are happy with the version that we are using and haven't experience downtime.

We have been looking at processes which can easily transition into a large scale environment, where you can have cloud or hybrid model. However, being a bank, some of our processes are critical and we would like to hold those on-premise. This limits us with our usage of Automation Anywhere.

The support that we receive from Automation Anywhere is really good.

We have specific customer success managers as a platinum partner. We have support extended to us when we have any type of concerns and issues. 

The initial setup was very straightforward. It didn't really affect our processes at any levels, which really helped. The process was fast and easy.

The support team kept our team calm.

We have an in-house Automation Anywhere team who supports us.

It saves us man-hours, headcount, and processing time.

We have automated the equivalent headcount of 500 FTEs since we started. Those people haven't been laid off. They are just doing different types of work activities.

We did not evaluate other vendors beside Automation Anywhere. 

Automation Anywhere was a pioneer in the market at the time that we were evaluating vendors. It was a good match.

Explore the new version A2019 that is coming out. It is user-friendly and can be onboarded quickly.

I would love to use the next version A2019 that is coming out.

The primary use case is for generating letters. Most of the use cases are HR-based.

The company we work for is the Mahindra Group. When an employee requests letters, they go through the HR department instead of requesting the letter from the bot, Genie, that is already in place. Going through the HR Department creates a manual process across the group.

We have completed a POC directly from Genie. We implemented the RPA so that once the request is received from the employee, the letter is generated and sent to the person through email.

This reduces the tedious manual work required.

With the completed POC, we have an RPA that we have showcased. When you request a letter directly from Genie, within a minute or two you will receive an email with an attachment of your requested letter.

This solution allows for the letter generation to take place within seconds, improving the experience for the employees. When they request something, they've got it.

Generating the letters through Genie is an extremely valuable feature.

This solution reduced the manual work that is required by the HR department.

This solution is easy to use and generates a quick response.

Looking at the POC's requirements and use cases, our customers are asking us for the OCRing of handwritten documents. This is a feature we would like to see included in the next release.

We would like a web-based product for implementation in the cloud.

The licensing needs to be made simpler or shortened. You need to be able to bundle the licenses for clients. Instead of asking for three licenses, which sometimes causes the customer to panic, I would like to have one bundle with three licenses contained within it. It is essentially the same thing but would make more sense to the customer. It is just a different mindset.

I am not able to comment much in terms of stability because we have only completed a POC.

This solution will tremendously reduce the cost in terms of manual work that HR is doing.

The licensing needs to be made simpler or shortened.

My advice to anybody who is researching this solution is to explore it. Try out the solution and its capabilities. Until you do so, you won't know exactly what it is capable of. To now, I have not even explored it one-hundred percent.

We are looking for a web-based product because most of the things we do, and most of the products that we work with, are on the cloud. Once we get a web-based system, we will have more interest and we will be more confident about it. We understand that the web-based system will be released soon.

The product is good, no doubt about it, but we need the OCR for handwritten documents, the web-based solution, and the licensing has to be improved.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Primary use case is automating data entry functions for accounting and general entry. That has been our primary use case. Since we've started, we have create about five bots (of which three work).

We're too new. We haven't really begun to invest in the option of having automation. I'm hoping at least in the accounting area, people are inquiring about the tool now that they are seeing results.

Of the bots which work, they have automated three of the most time consuming tasks and completely freed up one person to do real work.

Anything that can be done to simplify the solution. I would love to see it where anybody who can run Excel will be able to create bots. Right now, I am watching everyone around me struggle with the tool. I do think the tool is getting there.

From an IT perspective, we had too many issues and headaches.

From an IT perspective, the migration is still very complicated, getting everything set up and running. Security was an issue for us, as well. Developers had to come through our firewalls to develop bots, internally. However, they were coming through a Citrix platform, so there were breakpoints in things they were trying to automate, file servers they were trying to get to, and FTPs that they couldn't get through. 

I understand the next version will have support for Citrix, which might solve some of our problems.

So far, the stability has not been great. We had a lot of migration issues before we got up and running. We will wait and see if this continues with the next version that is being installed. However, once something is up and running, the issues do not persist.

We are only running three bots, so we haven't had to worry about scalability yet. We built the tool to handle about 30 bots. So far, we haven't had any problems with scalability.

It took about six months to scale from the pilot to the number of bots that we are currently using, but the majority of those months were wasted on our upgrade issue.

We went through an Automation Anywhere partner, who handled all the technical support. So, we didn't go the Automation Anywhere technical support directly, except on occasion. We got through all our issues, eventually.

We were not previously automated in any way.

The initial setup was complex.

The IT team wasn't involved directly at the start, so the business sort of started it on their own. Then, the product over came to IT, and we were blindsided by the requests. That was when it became complicated.

We used consultants to build our bots. We are still in the learning process.

We used KPMG for the deployment. They obviously knew the product very well and were also surprised about the migration issues, but they got us through the deployment.

We are measuring our ROI in terms of power saved.

Start simple. There is no reason to jump in with complicated bots. Find simple, small processes that need automating.

The software is there, and it does what it needs to do. The tool can grow and become huge, if it is not already. I hope that we got on early enough that we can keep building on our success.

We have gotten around to looking at the Bot Store yet.

The primary use case would be to do automated processing using Excel with an application, even SAP. We use it for extracting data tables, clicking on data, recording records, and extracting the records table. We use it for all the Excel operations. 

We updated Automation Anywhere already to version A2019 with all the Excel operations.

It has reduced the number of full-time employees. 

The Excel operations are very good. Even in the MetaBot, they have included all the commands. Because of security, we automate our processes in MetaBot. 

IQ Bot is good compared to the other tools available in the market.

The dashboard and Control Room are very good compared to the market.

They are launching cloud into the market, which is very good.

They need to improve the OCR engine which is not up to the market.

We still cannot use IQ Bot with our documents.  

They have to work on the OCR and object cloning features.

However, I have not used version A2019 and cannot comment on the latest Automation Anywhere updates.

I would rate the stability as an eight out of 10.  There is an issue with the object cloning in Excel. OCR is also not that stable. Image recognition works fine, but not all the time.

Scalability is very good.

It is easy to set up.

The licensing costs are a bit high, but the profits are very good. 

I have worked on Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and UiPath. The user interface of Automation is good and helpful. 

I have gone through the online training.

We have multiple uses for this solution. We are from a biopharmaceutical background. We are the global technology center for AstraZeneca Biopharma and AstraZeneca Oncology. 

We have many use cases, but one of the primary uses is for all of the business processes. We do the automation, we apply the tool and simplify the work. We currently have more than sixty or seventy bots in place, including in HR and in finance.

As an example, one of the cases we were working on is industry best practices and industry innovators. We reduce the time that scientists spend on manual tasks and put them on more value-added work.

Another example is with adverse effects, where people who take medication can have an adverse reaction. If the customer reports their reactions, it gets automated.

We have several teams and we are not centralized, we have democratized it. We have different sequences; they have their development team, and we manage the Centre of Excellence.

The areas that need improvement are the license management, user access permission, user role access management, and technical support.

We have had many challenges in managing the roles through user automation, but we have heard that 2019 has something new, so we will wait and see.

The stability of this solution is good. 

We have had some challenges since 2017. We have had some progress and improvised the platform. Now it is stable.

We are now hosted in the cloud and all of our data is available. It's reliable and secure.

All of our data is retained in-house only to ensure that we are compliant.

Every year we are improving, and the scalability is there to match. Our platform equally matches our skills.

The technical support needs to be improved to provide exclusive support for each customer.

The deployment was easy and straightforward, and the POC was easy to perform.

We had some input from other people during the implementation.

Using this solution has brought a lot of return on investment in terms of saving hours or FTEs. We are utilizing them in more constructive areas.

We spoke with several vendors. We chose Automation Anywhere because it is user-friendly. The interface is easier to use and the partnership is better.

We allow the developer to train themselves right from the university, and they like several things about the Centre of Excellence person.

For anybody who is researching this solution, I suggest that they try it. It is a good platform to start with. If they were to fix the areas that I have mentioned then it would be a perfect solution.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.