Automation Anywhere Reviews

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.

We are working on implementing automation for a financial use case. Every time somebody travels they have a lot of receipts and they come in different formats. We would like to automate the processing of these receipts. We have a team in the US who have implemented this, and we would like to do the same thing here in India.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the automation of manual tasks, which save us time.

I really like the Automation Anywhere University website because it has a lot of good documents that you can read to learn about the solution.

I would like this solution to be supported on a Mac. Right now, we are using a VM with Automation Anywhere installed inside it, but it would be nice if the solution could be used on macOS.

I would like to see instructional videos on how to use this solution.

We still only have a small group working with this solution, but until now, everything is working fine.

This solution is scalable.

We have not used technical support for this solution.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

Our US company does a lot of traveling and they are always dealing with receipts. It is a small finance group, yet they were doing a lot of manual work. They have to check for things like a matching date and the correct amount. From there, we understood that we need to do something automated. One of our colleagues from the US attended an Automation Anywhere conference and then they implemented this solution after that.

The initial setup of this solution is very easy.

We have an in-house team who took care of the implementation.

We have a developer license for this solution.

We have tried UiPath but this solution was selected.

This solution did not take us long to learn how to use. We found the guidelines at automationanywhereuniversity.com and started using it.

At this time we use the MetaBot but not the IQ Bot.

This is a solution that I recommended to a friend of mine at another company. They are using Blue Prism, but after telling them about the Automation Anywhere University they started viewing the documents. They are now doing a POC with this solution.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I belong to the learning and development department, and this solution is part of our capability. We do not have only a single use case. We work on POCs for SMEs, handling the automation of modules such as Vendor Master and journal entries.

In the projects that we are getting, we have been using Automation Anywhere for things like automating Excel. This is a solution that was recommended to us, and we have a roadmap for our resources to scale up and work on that. I see our work with SMEs as a collaboration with Automation Anywhere.

The cognitive automation gives us an edge towards intelligence using IQ Bot, and this allows us to integrate and give a combined solution to a customer.

It is really helpful that this solution is deployed in the cloud.

The integration of IQ Bot, Bot Insight, and other products should be flawless, and the execution should be seamless, so this needs to be improved.

The vendor should make recommendations based on our customer's requirements so that they can make the right choice.

Automation Anywhere will sometimes announce releases or updates in their roadmap, and we wait for them, but they do not happen on time or at all. This happened, for example, when we had an issue with IQ Bot. We ended up waiting for two more months.

The stability of this solution is good. I don't see any issues with the product itself, although when we were integrating, there were a few issues that have since been phased out.

It is on a case-by-case basis, where we found that some things were not working smoothly. As soon as you start integrating other products, using them hand-in-hand, there are issues. Automation Anywhere was there with us to understand and resolve the issues. I had to go myself to identify and understand them, and it was a long process, but it was sorted out.

This is a scalable solution that is robust and will help to take us forward.

Technical support is very good, and we are getting what we require. Initially, it wasn't that great at the start of the year. We had a discussion with them and came up with a communication plan. Since then, it has helped us out and we are happy with that.

The initial setup of this solution is simple. We had the required support and the materials were all delivered, so we were able to do it easily. 

The deployment was performed by our in-house team, and we have control rooms to monitor the bots.

We have seen ROI with this solution in terms of automating manual processes, resulting in FTE benefits.

We purchased the commercial version with the license.

Compared to UiPath, this is a robust tool.

We considered both UiPath and Blue Prism, and I feel that Automation Anywhere is still leading. It is more stable and more structured. They also have the support staff.

This is a stable solution and a product that you can go for.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are using this solution to reduce the time and management required for the completion of manual tasks. We are also teaching our students how to create bots for automation.

For example, if you have a simple copy and paste operation to complete in an Excel sheet then it might take one or two minutes. It's small but if you have a large amount of data and the task has to be repeated many times, then it is very helpful to have the bots. Using automation technology in any company is very useful for both customers and the company.  

I use the Control Room and we also write the code.

We have a student database that contains over a thousand students and their results. When a student wants to check their individual mark, they visit the university website and they enter their registration number to check the data.

When we want to get a list of the student marks, all we need is a list of the registration numbers in Excel and our bot will automate the task. With the press of a button, the bot will collect all of the student results and display them. This will take at most one minute, instead of an hour. Within one minute we can view more than one thousand students and their results.

The most valuable features of this solution are its user-friendliness and the flexibility in terms of programming language. We can use any programming language, and I have just started to learn Python. I want to next look at real-time scenarios and see how Python can be used to help write bots. Having no restriction for any single programming language is very useful.

This solution uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to help automate tasks. Our analytics people and data scientists are looking forward to seeing how this will help.

It is very difficult to create and automate timetables because they are modal and it would be helpful if the bot could assist us with this.

This is a stable solution and a very strong tool.

This is a scalable solution. 

We do resolve some problems ourselves, but if it is difficult then we approach the technical support for Automation Anywhere. Their response is very good and they are very helpful.

I heard about this particular technology only last year, and then I completed my certification. I'm impressed with automation and bots. When I first heard the term, I thought that the bots were actual robots. Later, I saw that we were writing the programs and creating the bots for these manual and repetitive tasks.

We handle the deployment of this solution ourselves. If there are special requirements then we will ask.

A bot is doing in one hour what it takes ten hours for a person to do. This savings in time is very important for the IT industry. Most of the time being wasted is on simple things, so if the bot is doing then work then it gives more time of other things, such as coding.

We only looked at this solution.

Initially, when I was first trained, I had some difficulty using this solution. However, when I went through all of the training and learned how to write the code, I found it was very easy.

We are training our students in the use of bots for automation. We are teaching students how to create bots, and how to use them so that companies will be prepared. We are trying to create more use cases, or examples, for learning how to code.

Some people are saying that they will lose their jobs because of this solution. A single bot is capable of doing the work of ten people. This is a very strong tool, but the problem relates to any technology. We have to adapt, and we have to understand the technology.

Time is very important. For any work that you are doing, if you finish the work within the time set by the customer then they will be really impressed. When the customer is happy with the company then they will give them more work. 

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We are improving our monitoring service by enabling it with AA. Our monitoring team provides configuration and some accessories to our clients. One of these resources is monitoring our hosted application, check it's working state, e.g., the input and output processes health checks and resolutions. We are trying to use Automation Anywhere to monitor these aspects auto. One of our bots monitors logs and files to create an Excel report at the end of the day and mail it to clients so that they make their decisions better for their next level faster.

We are using it on-premise.

This tool really benefits our clients. If we can do something fast, then we can do it more frequently. E.g., we can send them frequent reports. While we aren't bombarding them with reports, we would want to send frequent information on failures and successes so that they can make better decisions faster.

We monitor all applications frequently. Some reports are created and sent to clients. Some of these reports are manual and would about an hour to get all the vouchers, check all the schedules, and check all the results. We created a bot which does this automatically every  four to six hours. I test for failure, then a consolidated email is sent to the client directly.

We created a bot based on the calculations received on a regular basis to be created/scheduled for every 6 hours. Every 12 hours, it reads it and sends an email to be read. It sends out some calculations, then sends out an email to retake orders.

Speed is the most valuable feature. E.g., for a human, it could take around 60 minutes to create a report with a few errors. Occasionally, a person will miss something. With this bot, we can get the work done in around five minutes with no misses. So, it takes only five minutes for a report to scan and be created with fewer errors.

As a developer, the scripting language is easy and powerful to use along with integrating all the tasks. 

I am looking forward to IQ Bot, but I expected more out of the current version. We do not deal with much scanned documents. I want to see if IQ Bot can scan client emails for us because our clients send emails with some incidents and issues. We want to see how IQ Bot can automatically do the processing and create structured data and trigger other bots to get  related tasks done.

The Control Room is demanding on resources, even when the traffic or processes are low.

We are planning to integrate with Outlook. We are plan to create a small plugin which will trigger in Outlook once an email comes in. It will monitor the mailbox and remotely trigger a bot. Very soon, we'll see how we can trigger from Excel. I am looking forward to integrating with MS Office very soon. The only challenge is we are moving from the local Office to the online Office, which will be a small challenge for me. 

There are many bots available on the Bot Store. However, my developer told me that he was unhappy with the quality of the bots available.

I would really like natural language processing and IQ Bot in version 11.

It's very stable. We are very impressed. In the past two months of runs, we have not experienced the Control Panel or a bot failing.

I personally started working with version 11.

Right now, we have one Control Room and two bots. In the next coming weeks, we'll be putting four more bots and our second Control Room into production. We plan to use the second Control Room in a development role. After the four bots are complete, we will start creating bots for the IT and finance departments.

We used the technical support once. The dashboards were not working. However, it was more due to resources on our side rather than something with Automation Anywhere. We fixed that and the dashboards came up. It took a reinstall, which was fine, since we were just starting out.

The technical support was responsive.

My lead developer has taken courses and certification on Automation Anywhere University. His experience with it was good. We are also trying to set up a couple of guys in our company. I have gone through a small training as a developer with direct experience. I am planning on taking two more certification courses.

When I saw Automation Anywhere for the first time, I have yet done any training but I could use all the tools within minutes. That's the beauty of what I'm using. I created a password without any training.

No. We went for AA to empower our current workforce.

The setup was straightforward. However, the reinstall was not straightforward, but it wasn't complicated either. There was an issue with configuring the database once.

The bot for monitoring applications did not take too long to create, about two weeks went into it. After that, there was some back and forth for changes. Then, we created another bot for scanning clients' mailbox. It creates a front office ticket, depending upon what's in the mail. 

We used a partner for the setup.

We have a core lead developer who does most of the development. Initially, we checked on what processes we could automate. We picked a couple and deprioritized a few others, which we are taking on right now. We are trying to create a light governance process to see which candidates are right for RPA, then take them forward.

We look forward to ROI in next three to six months. There is no direct cash savings.

With the scheduled mails that we send out to our clients every six to eight hours, it use to take one hour for a single person to create that report, then send that out to clients. This was done twice a day. Now, after every six hours, we send out a mail to clients so they can know the success or failure of their application or process. This is automatically done within three to five minutes. The report that we are doing is now more frequent and much faster with fewer errors. 

In terms of time, we are saving four to six hours daily. We have increased productivity to do more things and can monitor other applications much better now. Clients can get emails faster, which makes them happy. We are meeting SLAs.

We did measure couple of AA competitors. We evaluated Blue Prism and UiPath. 

I was not keen on the UiPath analysis. UiPath needs a more technical person to do the coding and bot creation.

I did not see a UI or web console for Blue Prism, where AA has a web console where we can connect to the dashboard through the Control Room.

While we are not big users of IQ Bot now, we are looking forward to using it on our mail down the line. Overall, the power and capabilities of Automation Anywhere were the best that we saw.

Automation Anywhere has the features that we wanted: Non-Technical user engagement, Easy scripting, IQ Bot, Screen Recorder, and Web Scraping. We have started to use almost all of these features already.

Evaluate your processes and determine where RPA can be done. By automating your tasks, you can speed up your work, get extra savings, and focus your attention on things that are better suited for your employees.

I am very happy with the bots that I have seen here.

We are planning to test IQ Bot. We have some planned agreements that we would like to have digitize. We also have all our scanned documents, so we will see if we can scan them and try to store the digitize version with special desk tools into some data storage.

We are creating a bot more from a business user prospect, not product development. We have help from our developer who is approaching this from a business user. He is creating a light bot for the technical area, but we don't have any direct business users, as of now. For some of the finance and IT departmental people, we will tell them how to create light bots so they can try to do Excel automation on their own.

Our clients have Citrix environments. We are looking forward to automating their environments.

We are empowering our users to do processes faster. With Automation Anywhere, our clients can get their work done fast and in an automated manner.

We need to automate business unit solutions in our office. As of now, there are a lot of requirements RPA within our organization with many verticals who require their redundant tasks to get automated. 

It saves manpower, time, and money. E.g., one particular task may require five FTEs to work on it daily doing repetitive work. Using Automation Anywhere, we automate the task and those five FTEs can be saved from doing it.

By automating the process, we are reducing human error.

The IQ Bot is unique. It is not available in another RPA tool that I am aware of, like UiPath or Blue Prism. IQ Bot converts unstructured data to structured data.

You can assign a time to a bot when it should run through the Schedule Manager. This feature is much easier to use in Automation Anywhere. Both UiPath and Blue Prism have their versions of a scheduler which are not as user-friendly. UiPath Orchestrator is a bit complex.

It is easy to use with a drag and drop. All the options are right in front of you. Anybody without an IT or development background can start off with Automation Anywhere.

Security needs improvement. 

I need to understand the migration from desktop to cloud. There are questions around this that I need clarified, like: "How is it going to happen?" Migration is not easy. It will take time. Will the process be smooth? I have a few doubts.

The stability is really good. We have not had any downtime.

Scaling is easy. We can have one Control Room with 10 bots working simultaneously, which is very good.

The technical support has been brilliant. We haven't needed to wait a lot. Anybody from my team, whenever we tried to contact the customer care or technical support, has gotten a reply back probably within one to two hours. So, support has been outstanding from the Automation Anywhere team.

I learned about Automation Anywhere from online searches. I trained myself on it. My organization learned about Automation Anywhere from me.

The setup wasn't easy nor was it difficult. After one or two times, the setup became easier.

I set Automation Anywhere up with the help of Acronotics, who came in to train us and help set up our environment.

We have saved one to two FTEs per year. A bot processes their projects now.

I tried out all the RPA tools and found Automation Anywhere to be the most user-friendly.

Blue Prism is more secure than Automation Anywhere. E.g., Blue Prism has a system that is difficult to penetrate. You can't simply go into their system and make any changes.

Any company looking at starting RPA should look at a user-friendly software. Compared to other RPA tools, I prefer Automation Anywhere.

Whenever I have used Automation Anywhere, it has been brilliant.

There are still so many features that I need to explore in Automation Anywhere.