Automation Anywhere Reviews

Our primary use for this product is BOE (Bill of Entry affecting imports in India) analysis and processing.

Previously, we were checking the inventory with checklists and two kinds of Excel validations, and sending the mismatches to have them reassessed in a manual process. Before four of us were working on the data reliability, and really three people were completely dedicated to this task full-time. We were repeatedly taking the Excel inventory and the Excel invoices we are getting from the different vendors, and then we would check all the attributes of the data. This would mean we had to review invoice numbers, invoice dates, currency codes — so many little things needed to be validated. The detail also had to be examined like the number of items, the SKU (Stock Keeping Units) numbers and check those against the item names by validating with a checklist.

So after, we created a bot with Automation Anywhere for that issue to speed up processing. Now the automated checking time is reduced to 15 minutes. That's all.

The product has improved our organization cost-wise and bank savings in transactions. Everything has been changed for the better. It is easier to track various domains, various kind of devices, and control recording of all the process. The quality of the results are improved, we spend less time and resources, so the time we save can be spent on other things. This all reduces the time spent on menial activities and reduces the cost of processing. It is very important that we have increased accuracy and control over data errors.

The best part of this solution is that this product has more capabilities than our previous solution with Excel. The error handling and sending mail — all those additional features — give us more control when using Automation Anywhere with less time and effort.

In the future, I think we would like to see more capability for integration and more customization with some features. For example, email records should have their subject like email that's been downloaded. Because it is not doing this, we now need a separate solution for this based on the subject line. Integrations that we'd like to see are that the product is more friendly with languages like Python and JavaScript. These are the type of integration we are expecting. Also, it should be more friendly with Excel commands which it does not seem to agree with or have so that we can customize the output.

The product is not working sometimes with the methods we prefer. If it is going to be a flexible product it should include some more common things. There are so many small issues with the product it is not as good as it could be.

We really have had no stability issues ourselves, or actually there were some minor things. There has been nothing we could not resolve.

As far as scalability, it is one of the most important things for us. We were looking for that only when we went to upgrade our process. We want to automate any of the processes that we can by using Automation Anywhere. It is the whole point for us using the product.

We have never had to call into technical support.

We were not involved in this decision to adopt this product.

For the implementation, almost everything was a little complicated. We faced issues actually but everything was manageable and then we addressed the issues and the initial setup was fully completed.

Mostly the issues had to do with security. The product was new to us and we had to set everything up for the first time so we had to learn about some things, like how to deploy the security features correctly. That is the kind of issue we faced as a learning curve.

During our onboarding, we had some issues and during integrations, we were having various small issues. But the reason for all of that is this was a new technology for us and we had to learn something about it. We learned by working with the product and all the integration issues and security things have all been resolved.

We did not use an external integrator, reseller, or a consultant. We implemented the product ourselves.

Our return on investment is that it costs us less. One of the problems with some licensing is if you have six employees and later 27 people are working, your cost can go up even if nothing extra is used. Now we need one developer's license only. One license and it is covered. There are more problems if you have to purchase one license per user. For example, if five people never work with the product and two of us work daily we are charged for the minutes for the CPU. It is not wasted.

The pricing strategy is one license, one creator. It is more complicated than that depending on the options you choose.

On a scale of one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere as an eight.

When we update to the newer version, maybe it will have what we want and it will be better. It could be a ten if it were a perfect partner for us without any errors or had all the features we would like.

This is a very good product, but like managing other software and solutions, issues, bugs, and all various activities, you see the things that could be better. Obviously we think users will be satisfied by your outcome with using Automation Anywhere as we have had success. But right now it is an eight.

We are using it in all departments: management, sales, human resources, IT, and customer service.

These are some of the benefits that we have seen using RPA:

• We saw a 70 percent decrease in manual steps. If something took 10 steps to do, we are doing it in three steps today. 
• We see 100 percent accuracy in whatever we do, which wasn't something we could expect from a human worker. 
• We see a reduction in turnaround times. Something that used to take two hours to do, today takes 20 minutes to do. There is a 40 to 50 percent reduction in whatever is being automated in comparison with a human doing it. 
  

Three features that came up when we chose the product:

1. The user interface.
2. The Bot Store.
3. IQ Bot, which other RPA don't have.

We would like a better coding interface for developers. We would also like to have a user interface which reduces the time to learn the product so more people in the organization can use software, like Automation Anywhere, quickly automating processes.

As an organization, we feel the exception and error handling could be way better.

We would like the software not to change as often. Architectures were radically reinvented without informing the customer. This wasn't something we appreciated. 

Some of the stuff being used internally in the product, like Elasticsearch or open source, did not pass vulnerability ability assessment. This is another issue. 

We hope Automation Anywhere takes internal component security seriously as we are looking forward to the Automation Anyway A2019 launch. We hope it addresses some of these issues with error handling as well as component security.

Scalability works fine. 

One of the key features that we chose, the bot as a service or the BotFarm, when they launched version 11.3, they decided not to have the BotFarm anymore. This put us in a situation because we expected to have bots on demand, just like our cloud software. This would have been cost efficient for us to use. We hope to see this again being realized with A2019. I hope the scalability from an on demand basis improves.

A lot of the technical support is done by my teams. I do not have great visibility. As far as what my team has told me, it was a tedious process before. They have relaunched the entire support portal. It seems to be a lot more user-friendly to log tickets and reach out to people there.

Their customer success team are a great bunch of folks who try to support and get things done for you.

I have personally used RPA before. It is just the buzzword now. 

At the time, we were looking at or looking at replacing our complex, legacy platform which had a lot of steps. Our multiple, previous software tools that had a lot of Python, Perl-based scripting, and Perl website scrapping plugins.

The initial setup was extremely complex. Version 11.3 came with multi-forest Active Directory support and version 11.10 did not have that support. We had multi-forest Active Directory and it took us one month to resolve when we started implementing it. Again, this information wasn't communicated to us.

I hope going forward I see Automation Anywhere being faster, more transparent, and communicating more in advance than right now.

We had a terrible experience with a local integrator. I don't think that they were ready for the integration/deployment process. We spoke to Automation Anywhere who has implemented more stringent partner qualification schemes to take care of this issues.

We have not seen ROI at the present moment.

Our costs are approximately between $5,000 to $10,000 per license.

They have a ridiculously expensive bot licensing structure, especially for the Asian region.

Currently, we use Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and UiPath in my organization.

Start small. Conduct proof of concepts, then choose a process with a quick return on investment.

There are product issues. They have a reckless product roadmap. 

We have a lot of business use cases that we are using this tool to automate processes for. These include different business verticals, like credit, fraud, enterprise operations, and marketing. Each team has a separate dedicated RPA (Robotic Process Automation) team of its own.

We primarily automate processes for the banking and financial sectors. This means all credit related stuff, such as loan applications and operations.

I'm working on enterprise operations. We have different business processes that our business folks handle manually and our job is to automate them using RPA and the Automation Anywhere tool.

We are using the tool on-premise.

Automation Anywhere helps improve our organization by allowing us to automate processes that should not be manual. An example which we are working on currently is that we have a business process wherein we get emails from our business customer support providing monthly statements. Currently, we have a dedicated team who are taking the requests, going to our web, downloading the statements, and sending an email.

Because this does not have to be a manual process, we are currently working on automating the entire thing. So we'll be freeing up resources through automation which will save us close to 750k in a year.

The most valuable feature for me in the current tool is the ability to develop the code quickly. This is a feature which is out-of-the-box. It has about 90% of the things that we want, just included — a plug-and-play kind of solution. That helps us in quickly developing bots. It's robustness to access Excel documents is a useful feature because we use Excel a lot. So that kind of gels pretty well with what we need from the tool. So these two features are something which I can consider most valuable.

It is easy to use. You can get up and running using the training. It's pretty easy to get started with the tool. Only our technical team is involved in the development Automation Anywhere and bots, which is the direction our organization has chosen. We don't encourage non-technical team people to deal with it. That's our strategy.

We just did the PoC for IQ Bot, and it went fine. We have quite enough workload to be productive for this quarter, so probably early next year is when we are planning to start using IQ Bot.

One thing that they have to fix is scalability. We are scaling at a fast pace, and they promised us that they would implement multitrigger. If they don't get that enhancement out it is very inconvenient. When we asked when they could deliver the stable version of that feature, they said it would be sometime in August or September. But when I discussed this enhancement with one of the product owners, it doesn't look like they have had that on their development roadmap for even a September or October time frame.

But that's something which we are desperately looking for because we are scaling at a massive level, and without that feature, we are doing a lot of workarounds. It is a wasted effort. It would also be a good addition to the product. I am sure in a lot of organizations, are also facing that need or they'll come eventually to it. We have interacted with our customers and our partners and they agree. Some are already also in the same boat.

We would definitely like to see the Workload Manager (WLM). We thought that we would not need it. We thought that with the WLM feature, they were making a mistake and going nowhere. But right now, first and foremost, it is the most important feature I would like to have. The rest all are secondary for me. There are other organizations desperately waiting for that product. I don't see that the release will be happening soon.

I have using this solution for a year and a half.

The product overall is pretty stable. We do not see any big issues on the stability risk, so it is pretty decent in that way.

As with any other solution, it is evolving. We had our own challenges with the tool, but it is getting more stable as we progress. There is a learning curve.

We are using it on a pretty large scale. We currently have close to 60 bots running in production, but in the coming couple of months, we will scale up close to 120 bots. We have plans to scale up much larger, then eventually move to the cloud. That is in our roadmap.

A big problem that we are facing with the tool is that it is not scalable. For example, we have processes that are going to run for 36, 40 hours. It is running as a single trigger. Currently, Automation Anywhere doesn't support multitrigger. For multitrigger, you develop a solution once and install in multiple machines and run parallel. AA doesn't support this so we had to do workarounds to make that achievable.

We also got a tool from Automation Anywhere that was supposed to fix or patch a problem, but it didn't work. It was a horrible, pathetic product that they brought out when it wasn't ready. We had such a very bad experience using the extra feature. We worked with Automation Anywhere to get it to function. They also said that they don't know that the tool will work if you set it up because someone developed it and he left the organization. That feature is still not there in Automation Anywhere. Even in higher management, they instructed us not to use that feature, even for basic functionality. That's how bad the product was. I just discussed it with one of the product owners about the same, and they also kind of agreed that the solution was brought out prematurely. In all, they wasted our time on something that did not work.

We have tried to use tech support for this product and it was a pain. When we interact with them, we get all the lower level customer tech support. They have no idea how to solve feature problems. We might explain to them that a feature doesn't work right and only after four or five interactions, we asked to be escalated to a person who has good technical knowledge.

A person came on-premises and tried to explain a few things we had trouble with. We were much ahead of where they were because we did all the testing already. We could tell them more about what was working and what is not working than they knew. Again that person agreed that someone did the design and he left the organization. The person who came, who is representing the company didn't have complete knowledge of the product he was sent to fix. He just said to not use that product. Period. It is not the resolution we were hoping for.

We had already decided long before which product we were going to choose to use so we did not actually consider other products and used this first.

We scaled up pretty fast. Initially, it took a couple of months for our pilot, then we were up and running pretty fast.

We follow the same standard methodology which Automation Anywhere recommends for creating bots. When going through the process, we try to optimize it before we start doing development, then making sure the process is suitable for automation. It's a standard process that we follow across the board.

We have a consultant. and a vendor partner who worked on the installation. We are struggling with our vendor partner also. They are not up to the grade when it comes to knowing the product. So we are having a lot of challenges with our vendor partner setup.

Knowing about return on investment is not in the normal scope of what I do. But we have a lot of bots running which are saving time and effort while being more accurate, so I'm sure the company has an ROI.

Automation Anywhere University is pretty good. They make it available free for everyone. You can download and learn from it. The courses are tailor-made. It's pretty decent. One can just go through the courses and start developing bots straightaway.

We have evaluated other products: UiPath and Blue Prism. However, we chose Automation Anywhere for security purposes and the Control Room, so that it can be centrally managed.

Because I have experience with multiple RPA tools at an insurance-based company or a telco, I saw and worked with other tools, like Blue Prism, which are more efficient than Automation Anywhere. But as in financial institutions, like the banking sector, Automation Anywhere and some other products are predominant.

identifying the processes which need automation. If you're just trying to start up with your automation journey, the recommendation would be to identify low complexity fruits first, so everyone can get a taste of what automation can bring to the table. Then try to go for complex things, because if it fails, this will be a big obstacle in your journey. So, take smaller steps, then once everyone gets a taste of what automation can bring, there is no stopping necessary. Start slow, but scale and learn fast.

On a scale from one to ten, one being the worst and ten being the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere around six or seven. The reason it is not a higher rating is for one critical thing: as your code gets longer, it is difficult to analyze. It's just lines of code going from top to bottom. It is pretty good at developing the code and does make things faster. But analysis is not effective. If I had to choose between six or seven, I would have to choose the six. 

The important thing for those considering the solution is to analyze what business processes are in place and select a tool appropriate for what needs to be accomplished.

We are not yet integrated with other applications. We are trying to integrate Automation Anywhere with Splunk, which is a dashboard that shows all the information in a dashboard. However, that's in the pipeline for early next year.

We do not use the Bot Store because we don't know the authenticity of the code that is running underneath. As a leading financial institute, we want everything to be transparent. We can't take code built by someone else not knowing where the data will go.

We do not use Citrix automation.

We do not use attended automation.

My advice is to really evaluate your business process before you choose a product.

The primary use case for this solution ranges from the web scraping to working on more complicated applications, which are built in-house. For example, in the case where we would have to get into an application that is not automation-friendly, we would use the OCRs to recognize the fields, insert information into the application then extract some of the information. We also do a little on the database front.

We are a solution provider for a back-end team who works on a different manual task.

We tried the same type of flow automation using a Python and VB application, but we don't have the leverage of OCR which is available from Automation Anywhere. 

Most of the automation that we currently handle is that which has already failed when using the previous versions with the VBAs and Python.

We are using this product on-premise, so we still haven't upgrade to the cloud.

In our organization, we track the number of hours we saved, not work for the customers, but work for ourselves. 

Those numbers were tracked in a tracker called Smartsheet. We saved approximately 10,000 hours of work for ourselves. The numbers are staggering, considering we have only been using Automation Anywhere for a short period of time.

I have not worked with all of the commands offered in this solution, but some of the helpful features are OCR and web scraping. 

The OCR application is excellent and has helped resolve many issues that I had been facing. Also, to some extent, the web scraping is more effective, and the delays are really good.

I am also a programmer with VBA, but I found that I am more comfortable with Automation Anywhere, because it is faster and you get more results within a short period of time. we use the Excel VBA.

Most of the times you find the solution that you are looking for in the Bot Store. You might have to customize here and there. It is a good place to get into because somebody might have the same type of scenario. However, I have not used it extensively.

This solution should be more user-friendly so that our clients can take a bot that we have developed for them, and then run it by themselves. As it is now, we write the VBA code and give it to the user, our client, and then they run the code. However, they do not like this. Having this is the next release would be helpful.

Automation Anywhere is intuitive. Initially, you may struggle a little, but once you get used to it, then it's intuitive and you don't really have to know all the commands beforehand. There is scope for improvement here.

The feature often asked about by the users, the product owners, is that they want to learn more about the bots themselves.

We have not used anything attended. As far as we are aware that feature not available, but it is to be released soon.

Version A2019 is something that could be beneficial to new users. At the same time, I cannot rule out completely that you need to have a very good programming skills. It will be easier if you have some knowledge on the programming front because you might be using a command which is already built-in. Therefore, you should know how the loops works and how the conditions work in order to implement them. If you want to do a bit of deep-diving into automation but you will need a little technical knowledge at this point of time.

We haven't had any issues with stability. The ecosystem provided is great, because we have bot stores that can be downloaded, so we don't have to start from scratch.

Before creating a bot, I can go directly to the bot store to see if the bot is already available. That way, I don't have to waste any time.

Most of the time we built the bots for ourselves. When we purchased the licenses from Automation Anywhere we had them provide us with training. It was approximately a week for the training.

Also, there was another training session for photo documentation purposes.

Automation Anywhere is an excellent example of a solution that scales up. 

When we develop a task we modularise it and upload it into the repository. If another team member is working on another project and they require a section of my bot then it then gets downloaded and modified. Somebody else plugs in the variables, etc. In this way, the scalability is great.

At the moment, there is no setup in place.

We don't have a Citrix environment. It's mostly web-based. We also have in-house built applications that we use for our day in and out operations.

The technical support team has been with me from the beginning of my journey with Automation Anywhere. I was not a good developer initially, so I give them all of the credit.

They have a very good support team. I would advise my colleagues to use the IT help desk as much as they can.

As developers, we have evolved. Initially, at the start of using automation Anywhere we had many struggles. We contacted support for some help and suggestions, and with the help they provided, we are now more comfortable with Automation Anywhere.

There were instances where they couldn't help me, but it was because of the task not being suitable for automation. I understand that there are hindrances in the evolution of a solution, but they helped wherever they could. I would say that in 80% of the cases, they were able to help me.

They need a better community support with online resources. Though, there are good resources in regards to other programming languages, such as Python, VBA, and .NET.

Previously, we had been using VBAs and Python, albeit our use in Python was not extensive.

We chose Automation Anywhere because we heard that you don't need to have expertise in a particular area, and anyone can develop a simple bot in a short time.

We still do not have a setup in place. We do have licenses, but we are trying to have more bot programmer licenses in place. As such, the deployment is still in progress, but from what I understand it is simple and straightforward. I expect that it will be completed within the next week or two.

Most of the team who were working on Automation Anywhere had a little programming background, such as VBA or Java. Initially, we struggled a bit to use the rich commands but Automation Anywhere provided initial training when we got our licenses. Somebody came and gave us training for three to four days. Then, it took about three to four months to transition from the PoC to using the bots.

We handled the implementation ourselves, and have not sought out help from anyone.

When we initially bought the licenses, we had the Automation Anywhere team come down to train us. This lasted for approximately a week. They also visited on another occasion for documentation, but otherwise, we work on our own.

We do a cost-benefit analysis along with a feasibility study. We do this initially when there is a project that is lined up. We look at how many hours the project will take. We also delivery time and its urgency. Even if the project may not save a huge number of hours, we still might pick it up because of the urgency. Sometimes, we also look at it from an error reduction standpoint. There could be a lot of errors coming out because it was manually processed and this may cause the company issues. With Automation Anywhere, we reduce these errors.

I was not involved in the cost or purchasing, but as far as I know, the return is great. There are a couple of projects that we have worked on where we could have saved approximately 4000 hours on just one project that we built in two to three weeks. This is the type of impact this solution has.

We have purchased licenses, but are trying to obtain more bot programmer licenses. That should be happening in the next week.

UiPath was the closest competitor that we were considering. We provided pros and cons for both UiPath and Automation Anywhere. There may have been a cost-benefit analysis done from management, but I was not involved in that area.

We just did a PoC with UiPath. We did not work extensively with it. The product was based more on a workflow model. Automation Anywhere will also have a workflow model with its A2019 version.

We were not compromising on quality for dollar value. If you are looking at it from all aspects then Automation Anywhere is the clear winner.

We can automate anything with Automation Anywhere. Initially, we were skeptical about whether this small project would be automated or not because we were not well acquainted with the Automation Anywhere capabilities. After using the product for a while, we understood its potential, such as the OCR capabilities.

My experience with Automation Anywhere to date has been great, however, there are areas that I have not explored which could be features that should be added or improved upon, such as APIs. I have yet to explore this area of the solution and there may or may not be room for improvement.

We used to use Excel VBAs. However, if you want to manipulate stuff in Excel files, you have to write the back-end code in VBA. This is more effective than writing your code in Automation Anywhere. There are no hiccups in integrating with VBA.

We have completed the 11.2 expert certification in Automation Anywhere University and are in the process of completing 11.3. The University has a lot of stuff in their repository. As a programmer, you might not use all those commands extensively in your development. It's a good place to learn, but I didn't see everything being learned in the University being implemented.

For anybody who is considering this solution, I would start by suggesting that they look at their business requirements. We looked at it from a business standpoint because in our day to day operations, we needed automation. This is how we realized we needed a solution. If you are doing web scraping or another type of mundane task every day then you need Automation Anywhere.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use Automation Anywhere for product SLAs on the finance team. We are also using it for a difficult automation project. 

We have automated a lot of processes, e.g., claim processing and payments.

It is currently deployed on-premise.

We are helping to automate some of the manual tasks and help to achieve the SLA.

We have some products, like Clubcard, which is a shopper's card that we're using in the Star Market. We are using Automation Anywhere for that validation, raising requests, tracking the Clubcard, and when users get new Clubcards. All these things are done through Automation Anywhere. We use the API to get the status of card numbers. 

IQ Bot is great. We recently implemented two IQ Bots in our finance sector. Manually, we had one person doing a task that took five minutes minimum. With IQ Bot, we are able to do that one particular task in one and a half minutes. That is a huge time savings.

We have done some Citrix automation with MetaBots for claim processing. We use it for validation. It is working well.

We have a credential manager. We have the ability to store in an encrypted way. Whenever we create any bots, we also have bot IDs. Without the bot ID, we are not going to deploy in production. We have the option for the support team only to get access and share their screen with users. If there is a critical password, the user will only put down the password. If we have the bot ID and password, then our support team can directly get that from the application IT team. That support center of excellence team will put in the ID password and credential and see the bot ID and password.

The API feature is the most valuable feature for some process, especially for the Clubcard. It helps us with validation of databases.

We are able to do a lot of things with MetaBots.

The management works well.

One of the great things about Automation Anywhere is that it is a developer friendly. If someone doesn't know the technology, but is logically strong, they can easily learn the tool. This is very good for us. We can train anyone in a short amount of time. 

If someone is not technical, they can also easily learn the tool. You do not have to write in syntax.

We have a situation where the system is not capturing data properly. It is clicking on the UI but it is not able to expand.

We have trouble with large volumes of data in Excel and are not getting good results. I want all the functionalities that they have in the Excel added to our existing version or an upcoming version of the product, e.g., Macros and VLOOKUP.

We have had connectivity issues, such as the reporting of a bad gateway.

We have integrated Automation Anywhere with our SQL database. I heard in version A2019 that we can easily integrate Python too, which is great news. Up until now, I have not been able to implement Python in our Automation Anywhere task bots. Though, we can integrate with other applications, like artificial intelligence, and this is better.

We have not implemented this tool with our AI. We have AI and IBM Watson. We would like to get information (or services) from the Automation Anywhere team on how to connect and implement the AI, as this is a great thing in the market. I'm looking for what to do.

Sometimes, we are facing issue in unattended. If unattended mode is not working, sometimes it will work in attended mode. However, I don't want anything in attended mode. The process is rule-based and logic-based. We just have to schedule, then if the user wants to run from the Control Room, they can. To run attended mode, we have to login into the VM to start it and human activity is required.

The version we started with is not as stable as the current version. We are trying to move to version 11. We are also in touch with our CSM regarding the A2019 version, which Automation Anywhere should release in the next year

We have 50 bots live in our organization.

We have three environments: staging, pilot, and production. In staging, the developer creates and tests their bot for internal testing. After that, we deploy into the pilot environment. That is hypercare which is for User Acceptance Testing (UAT). It is there that we run the bot in unattended mode for one and a half weeks at least with huge volumes. If we have no issues nor errors, then we create a ticket to deploy into production, our center of excellence. This is what our support team does. They will deploy into the production environments. We keep an eye out for at least 10 to 12 days as hypercare. At 12 days in hypercare mode, if we are not getting errors, then we run it in unattended mode as much as we can.

We are using Automation Anywhere in our business units. We have plans to increase the level of the tool's use.

We are planning to move onto the cloud, but first, we have to see if it will work with our business SLAs. If it is good, we will move over. We need to do a test first to determine whether the bots work well or not, which will take about three to six months. Then, we will make a decision on whether to move over to the cloud, the A2019 version. My team is excited for this version.

We would move over to Microsoft Azure because our company is already using it.

The technical support team is supporting us well.

We needed a support guide from Automation Anywhere for the initial setup because we had standalone and a lot of clusters. We needed help from a support guy during our setup to determine whether to go with a standalone or cluster setup.

For the bot creation process, we first check the requirement. Then, we check with each application, whether it is applicable through the Automation Anywhere tool or not. Some applications, like Oracle, do not work correctly. We make a feasibility report and advise the developer to use certain commands only. We provide a process map, e.g., how to create the bot according to Automation Anywhere guidance and what are the coding standards provided. We deliver everything. Then, the developer will start building our bot.

In our organization, we are focusing on continuous improvement through this tool. We are improving day by day, but not focusing on the elimination of any employees. We are just focusing in our improvements and accuracy in our SLAs. Therefore, there are three things that we are focusing on:

1. Implementing our SLAs on time. 
2. Focusing on accuracy.
3. Focusing on our continuous improvement.

Automation Anywhere is profitable for us. As volumes increase and we have a lot of data, this takes time to complete manually. Bots can complete the work without impacting the business. 

We are saving time. Some processes that have taken 24 hours for our guys to do, now take seven to eight hours for our bots. That's our achievement. It also brings accuracy.

We save money indirectly. We are also improving the accuracy of our SLAs. 

I am using that Automation Anywhere Master Certification for version 11. Recently, this has been updated in Automation Anywhere University. Until this month, it's free to use. There are no charges. That's why I would like to complete it this month.

We are waiting for them to release version A2019 version of Automation Anywhere University.

Use the standard guideline that Automation Anywhere provided. Build a dry model for each bot. This will be useful for debugging. I give these diagrams to my developers.

When automating Citrix, we can install on the client. It can easily access objects, we can click anywhere and it can take data from anywhere.

We have a scenario where one process is working, but in another case, it is not able to capture everything.

This is a good product. This platform is great, but there are a lot of issues to resolve, including the Excel features.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to follow the instructions and the standards that are specified.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I work with clients who are in banking, the financial sector, and the accounting sector. It mostly involves work with Excel, SAP, and BI. A typical use case starts with downloading data from SAP, manipulating it in Excel, sending relevant emails, and then receiving the responses.

This solution has helped us bring in more clients. We are able to satisfy our clients in ways that we did not think was possible. When we started interacting with our clients, the expectations were pretty low. We were hoping to automate ten processes. Now, with the capability provided by Automation Anywhere and our coding knowledge, we have put everything together and have automated approximately one hundred processes. So, the clients who expected ten and ultimately were given one hundred were pretty happy. The company image has been boosted, as well as the trust and confidence in this solution.

One of the strongest aspects of Automation Anywhere is the ability to have custom MetaBots through images, or through the use of DLLs or APIs. This functionality was introduced in version ten.

This solution is easy to use and easy to learn compared to Blue Prism, UiPath, and others. You don't need to know C# or any other programming language. It is helpful because you can build DLLs, but if you don't then you can still manage. You can use Automation Anywhere from a non-coding background. If somebody is not familiar with RPA then they can still swoop in and get experience by doing automation projects.

They have a good community online with a lot of documentation and videos available. 

I would like to see this solution made to be a little more robust. As a coder, I have written more than one hundred functions and I can do high-level testing, but I can't do the low-level testing of complicated use cases. I think that AA has to look at it from that perspective. Hire a few developers, give them some complex work or use cases, let them work on it, and then check for stability when there are two or three tasks. For example, one task runs, the output goes into another task, one window opens, then another window opens, and you interact with multiple interfaces. This type of testing may be how they'll get to know what is wrong with the application.

I would like to see more Excel functions built-in. Currently, they have forty-five or forty-eight functions supported, but I have written a DLL that includes one-hundred functions. They can do many more than forty-eight, and because we are dealing with accounting and finance, Excel is used a lot. We need Excel and we don't want to always have to depend on a custom-built DLL. When using a DLL, ninety percent of the time it won't be uniform for all of the processes. This means that I have to modify it, rebuild the DLL, and deploy it again. Native support would be much better.

Web automation capability needs to be improved.

I would like to see more features in the next release of this solution, including data tables, spying, and cloning.

IQ Bot is bad and needs a lot of tweaking. It needs to have thrust because right now you use it and it doesn't get off the ground. It just stays there. They made us believe that there is potential, so they have to fulfill it. For example, they speak about this ML component in IQ Bot, but I know that it doesn't exist. There is no ML component there, and I would like to see one kick in when IQ Bot fails to extract data. It should start automatically, and maybe ask us for some guidance at the beginning on how to do the work. With the ML component working, IQ Bot would be very good.

I would rate the stability of this solution somewhere around an eight out of ten. Although it seems to be very stable, perhaps ninety-nine percent of the time, when you need it the most, it stops working. Object cloning, for example, even when you go through DOMXPath, and even if you map the exact path by going through the Object ID, the DOM, you collect the DOM and then you map the exact object, it hangs sometimes.

Scalability is very good, except in the case of IQ Bot.

IQ Bot has problems with respect to scalability. As an example, consider that you want to upload one thousand POs per day. You have two machines, and you want to split the work, but there is a problem. IQ Bot is going to put the output into the same output path, but how do you know which machine has generated this output? How do you map it? This is an inherent flaw that hinders scalability in the long run. IQ Bot doesn't even let you know whether an output has been generated. They have a database, and I built a custom bot to look at their database to find out if the output has been generated, or not. However, people have told me not to touch this database because it is proprietary.

The other point with regards to scalability is that it doesn't just happen out of the box. You do not just add a hundred more machines and have it work in the same manner. You need to use it in tandem with an SQL database, or another application like Tableau. If you do then it will be very strong and very robust. It will be loosely coupled but highly scalable.

I have corresponded with them and I would rate technical support a nine out of ten. I do not want to be too hard on them but what I've noticed is that they will support people, but may not fully understand the technical aspects of the components that they're using in Automation Anywhere. So, if you were to ask them, "How do I get to the Moon?", they would answer, "Just build a rocket". They won't tell me how to build the rocket. If they would connect developers to their own backend engineers then that would be really helpful.

The initial setup of this solution is a little bit complex, but if from the start you know where to go, what to click, and exactly what each button does then it will be very useful. If you have somebody to guide you then it will be much easier.

We implemented this solution ourselves. We developed the Bots like we always do. We uploaded it to a repository and moved it to a production environment that we set up. We then synchronized all of the files that are required to be present in the production environment. Finally, we provided support for a week after the deployment.

We have saved a lot of time and replaced a few FPEs with this solution. It is a one-time investment for a year. You may replace people or alternatively put them elsewhere to work on better activities. This solution saves money for our clients, which is a good thing.

I have seen my colleagues use UiPath and web automation is excellent. I have been involved in hackathons where I have used Automation Anywhere for web automation, and I have struggled. In web automation, if UiPath completes it in ten seconds, then Automation Anywhere will take seventy to eighty seconds for the same task.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are primarily using this solution for banking, healthcare, and Agile processes. We implement automation solutions for our clients.

I have been using this solution for the past three or four versions, and the look and feel have improved a lot. A lot of functionality has been added, including control room features and deployment features. It takes some time to analyze and overcome the technical aspects before deployment, but now, we know that we have an easy time in development and deployment.

Our solutions are easily understood by the client and they do not have any difficulties.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the ease of using it. Even as we were getting into RPA for the first time, I found it easy to understand this tool.

The terminal emulator and the automatic scanning of PDFs are good features that you can do really easily.

We would like to be able to directly implement automation for Word documents and XML. Currently, we have to write a script or some code in Python, and there is no direct solution. Basically, I'm expecting some things that are more innovative.

It would be great if technical support were a little faster.

I would like to see more documentation for automation.

This solution is very stable, even though it is growing in an aggressive way.

We are implementing complex solutions in health planning care, HR, and banking, so there are a lot of things that you have to consider when it concerns data and the information. Sometimes we get an error where the port will hang, or the solution will change over a period of time, but generally, the solution is scalable. I would rate scalability an eight out of ten.

Technical support for this solution is good, but sometimes to takes a long time for them to get back to us. Sometimes we face technical issues while we are downloading, and there has been a delay in getting support. If this could be minimized then it would be great.

I have worked with other solutions and information providers before, and this solution is easier to use. 

The initial setup of this solution is pretty simple.

It takes approximately a week and a half to set up automation. We have already had some examples and demos, so setting up is very easy. Learning will take some time after that.

We perform the integration for this solution with our in-house team.

We have seen ROI since implementing this solution. We started with the HR processes and we are using healthcare information. It has given a decent ROI. We used to have fifteen employees, but now there are two or three who manage and support the bots.

Choosing this solution for our clients concerns multiple aspects. I have to think about the complexity of the solution and how much time it takes compared to other solutions. These things considered, Automation Anywhere is a decent competitor and gives a better solution. Even through the development and debugging phases, it give very good performance without scalability issues.

We have worked with both Blue Prism and UiPath

For anybody who is learning and wants to use RPA, I would suggest starting with Automation Anywhere. There are many things to consider including the technical capabilities, the length of time for development, the number of pieces that there are, what the support is, and how easily the bots are deployed.

This is a good solution, but some pieces are missing and there are issues with support.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for application automation in both web-based and Windows applications.

Our automation is specific to the insurance and hospitality industries and has to do with automating email, PDFs, and updating them inside our ERP application.

This solution allows us to more fully automate our clients' specific tools.

The automation of data entry is the most valuable feature for us.

Built-in HTML features are lagging in this solution, whereas in UiPath, they are very good.

We would like to see more improvements in the ability to retrieve region data because, currently, this is the reason that some of our automations fail.

The stability of this solution is good, but it still needs to improve. We are not confident with its capability to automate in every case.

This is a scalable solution. For us, we will be scaling more into the future.

We have not used technical support for this solution.

We have used UiPath, and some of the features in that solution are superior.

My backend team handles the implementation of this solution.

There is a return on investment. The automation and scalability provide benefits in terms of reinvesting or reusing what we have developed.

This is a good tool to work with.

Our automation is running well, but there is a lag in features when compared to other Windows tools that are coming out.

My advice for anybody who is considering this solution is to consider the type of automation that needs to be done. If it is not overly complex then this is a solution I recommend.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are running the Control Room and the Bot Runners.

Currently, we have two processes in production, and another three are currently under development. Those in the development stage are running efficiently, but there are bugs here and there. Even for the processes that are in production, we have constant involvement, where we bring them back for more development and then return them to the production environment.

Our primary use case has to do with automating payment tasks. We process about thirty-five hundred invoices per month, which is a substantial amount. At the moment, we process about fifteen hundred, and our goal with automation is to reach thirty-five hundred.

At the moment, about twenty-five percent of the volume is covered by the RPS side of things. The rest of the work is done by hand, and our goal is to reach seventy-five percent by the end of this year.

This solution has allowed us to reduce our idle time by about thirty percent.

In terms of FTEs, we have cut approximately three, and hour goal is to cut fifteen by the end of this year.

The IQ Bot is very impressive to us. We have tried several tools in the industry, and we have not been able to automate to the same level as provided by this solution.

The stability of this solution depends on the processes, but I think that there is room for improvement in this regard. We are using Microsoft Dynamics, and it would help if they had a set of standard development specifications for each of these solutions. 

We are having some challenges when it comes to stability. Things have kept stable for three to four months at the moment, but we are still working on stabilizing the bots. We are hoping to have everything stabilized within the next few months.

The scalability of this solution is very good. We have operations on the other side of the world, such as South East Asia, so we tend to have different languages. The IQ Bot is able to read these languages, which will help us to expand into other regions, as well.

I have dealt with technical support for this solution and they are one of the best, I would say. Their response time is very fast and the knowledge that the tech team has is impeccable. All of the issues that we have raised were solved within a day and this has been very helpful for us.

The initial setup of this solution was sort of complex for us. We are at the initial state of it, and it is quite challenging because we didn't know what the technology was all about. Each and every day we learn new things, where it is not the same thing that we had learned before and already implemented.

We partnered with a consultant from a company in Sri Lanka and they are assisting us with the implementation. This includes development and scaling. We give them the strategic plan according to what we want, then they evaluate the process and let us know the architecture. We may also get involved with the architecture in cases where they might not have the in-depth knowledge of our systems.

Our long term plan is to have a COE where we will have our in-house developers. This will help in development, as well as post-production.

We have not yet seen ROI, but our estimation is that it will occur within three years. We have made a huge investment in this solution.

The bugs that we have had are generally not because of the product. We have had one product bug, and it has already been taken care of, although it is not released yet. It will be included with the next release of the solution.

The bug is related to popups, where those commands are issued but we cannot give them in the development stage. It is a major drawback in our process. Because of this, certain processes have a two to three-minute delay, and that's a major impact on one of our processes. It does have something to do with a third-party application for which nobody has applied an automation tool. I wouldn't say that it is a major bug, but it should be rectified in the future.

We are now looking at the AI side of this solution, and have started using the IQ Bot.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to invest small and see, rather than going for a bigger investment all to once. See the ROI and then evaluate again. We had issues with the business users because they were not confident enough to use the Bots. At that time, they were much more comfortable using the hands-on, manual approach. Try one use case and then expand.

I have not evaluated all of the features so my rating might be higher when I do.

Compared to other products, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it for our product setup and rating products on our website.

We take raw data and manipulate it, then we feed the information to the bot. The rest of the process is automated using the bot.

We have seen increased productivity. What use to take about two days to finish with laymen doing computer work, a bot can finish it within a seven to eight hour time frame. That means we are removing a lot of man-hours.

Automation is less time consuming and very quick.

The features are pretty easy to use, like the drag and drop feature. It is easy and understand, even a layman knows how the application works. All the basic stuff can be done by anybody.

I want the tool to be more stabilized. After three or four hours, the navigation keeps changing. We will be running error handling for 8,000 process and the system will fail. We need it to be more stable.

I would like a detailed description of all the features in a PDF explaining their significance and what they do.

Stability-wise, we have found that it works pretty well. At this stage, it can work around 24 hours. However, the system does malfunction. We need to have a bot ready to back up another bot and spin up the data in case of a failure.

We need the solution to run without errors before we can scale more.

The initial setup was straightforward. Our processes are not largely complex, so we understood the background of how it was being set up.

We used a consultant. They came in and helped us with the setup of the products.

Automation Anywhere is user-friendly.