Automation Anywhere Reviews

The primary use case is automation of processes for people services, such as data management of the employees, and financial processes, like reporting, financial reporting, and month-end closing activities.

it helps to save time when doing processes. E.g., when you do a manual process for eight hours, that time is saved because the bot will do that task for you. The process owners will be able to do the analysis part. The repetitive/manual part will be done by the robot. 

Another advantage is that bot functions 24/5 and humans cannot do that for our processes because they need to go home.

• Easy to use
• Very user-friendly
• Easy to learn

When using MetaBot, we cannot viably search inside it. 

When we debugging the automation, we cannot see where the automation goes after doing a subtask.

The object cloning is inaccurate sometimes, but this can be improved with future versions.

For A2019, I am looking for a faster running bot because I am still experiencing delays when running the bot.

Automation Anywhere is stable right now. It is constantly improving its user experience and the tool. The stability depends on how process owners, the business, and developers use Automation Anywhere to improve the processes of the company.

80 percent of the bots do not need to be supervised. However, 20 percent need to supervised because sometimes errors occur during the run. Most of the errors that I have encountered have been because the object cloning did not capture the buttons properly.

Automation Anywhere is very scalable as to the costs and benefits to the company.

I have already created 15 to 20 bots already. I think they're running well today.

The tech support of Automation Anywhere is very supportive regarding the voice of the customer. E.g., they ask for our feedback about what should be improved on their automation tool. This is one of the things customers look for in a product or tool.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup. I just use the tool.

Our IT team set up the automation without the help of a third-party.

The main difference is between Automation Anywhere and its competitors (UiPath and Blue Prism) is that Automation Anywhere is user-friendly. You still need programming language to use UiPath and Blue Prism. For Automation Anywhere, even if you don't know a programming language, you can easily learn the tool and use it.

Automation Anywhere is a great, user-friendly automation tool, but it still has room for improvement, like the MetaBot and object cloning part.

From all the client data that we obtain, we have to provide reports and analysis along with field reporting. This is what we try to automate.

All the data that comes in has to be QC'd. Automation Anywhere helps us by automating the QC part.

Excel automation is the most relevant feature for us.

The version that we are using has been difficult for us to code. As changes are very frequent, we have to make sure the code can be updated automatically so we don't have to make a change every time a user makes a change. Then, the user doesn't have to update us and we don't have to push a change to production. We have found a workaround with the help of the Automation Anywhere support people for this. 

Automation Anywhere is launching a new UI where you can add your own liabilities. That is a very good feature that is coming up.

I would like some proper user manual guides where we can debug the problems on our own because the community feels stranded at the moment. You can't go and just find a solution. The solutions for the community are pretty small for now.

We need it to be intelligent on its own, and that is not possible with an RPA solution.

It is quite stable.

It is scalable. We try to build something on one system then repeat it on a client system.

The technical support is good. The only issues that I've come across are technology for our environment is very specific and their support doesn't know much about it. We have to take the time to explain it to them, so they can manage and handle the issue from there.

The initial setup is a little difficult in the beginning to develop an entire infrastructure that the IT will support, but as you grow, you find a way to develop the whole architecture.

We installed it ourselves.

The process is simple. Go for Automation Anywhere.

I have automated HR, hotel, and some IT processes. I have also automated processes in SAP.

Automation Anywhere drastically reduces manual work for employees. 

A process that I automated was taking data from one of website and matching/reconciling it with bank statements. I used Automation Anywhere to place the data from our website and compare that with the bank statement. Most of the bank statements were in PDF format. I extradited the data from the PDF format and copied that to an SCS Suite file. From there, I started comparing the values and reconciling them.

Object learning is a one of the best things that can be found in Automation Anywhere. 

Image recognition is pretty good for our Citrix environment.

The new thing is the IQ Bot, where it gets data from unstructured data.

Citrix should be more stable. 

MetaBot helps getting data from SAP, but we still have some cases where we cannot fetch data from SAP. They should improve this.

They could add more commands that we can find in other tools. In emails that we have to download, we cannot read the MS docs. There is another type of procedure that we have to follow to find these things and download them. We are doing most of these things in a MetaBot format. For SAP and Excel, we are also using MetaBots. These commands need to be improved, especially in Excel because they are only a limited number of commands for Excel. Other tools have very good Excel commands, but Automation Anywhere lags here. 

The stability is good.

It has very good scalability. We can implement across all domains.

We have deployed bots in very few cases internally, like five to six bots. We mostly deploy bots for clients and their purposes. In these cases, we have deployed more than 500 bots from our ASD to the client.

I would rate the technical support as a six out of ten. They are combining the tech support and forums into one portal. However, we have had delays in some of their response times. Their responses have been good, though.

The technical support helps us with a bunch of our clients. We get queries from our clients, then we try to solve them. If we are stuck on some issues, then we will contact the help desk. It is there that we will get help from the tech support. 

For version 11.3, I am good for the tech support, but they are ending the support for version 10.

The initial setup was good.

We deployed it in-house. We have good technical support team for installation, etc.

I am not sure about the costs, but two Bot Runners and four Bot Creators may cost approximately 1CR.

For the beginners, it is an easy tool compared to other tools in market. Users can understand the line by line code and code it easily. There is no syntax or anything else. They can easily drag and drop, executing the bot directly.

Our workforce has limited capacity. By adding this solution, we can increase the amount of work coming in without adding to our workforce.

For the finance team, they have custom themes for classification of engineering parts. This was one of our largest scaled automation projects. The process was that an engineer would do: 

• A wheel comes in, and they want to classify it. They need to do the research to classify it. 
• They pull up the data from different tools. E.g., they pull up a drawing with specifications of it. 

A bot will now do this research instead. We have realize around 20,000 hours savings on this project.

• Ease of use
• Scalable
• Intuitive
• Integrates easily with different systems.

It enables our employees to do more high valued work, increasing employee morale.

We would like to have more ease of use for the operations team.

There are still bugs in it. We are waiting to get to the newest version to resolve our bug issues. We just upgraded from version 10 to 11.3 this week. 

We would like to have quicker turnaround times.

Stability depends on how a company is connected to the system or program.

Automation Anywhere has new features coming out every year with their interface. 

If we find bugs or issues, we have conversations with our customer success manager about them. 

It is very scalable.

We have the solution implemented in North America and Asia. We are looking to expand the solution going forward by implementing it in South America.

The customer service is very good. We are in regular communications with our customer success managers who handle our technical support. They are knowledgeable technically.

The initial setup was a simple process. 

We deployed it in-house.

We have seen ROI.

My primary use case is collecting data from the latest sources, whether it be a spreadsheet or PDF. 

I have used Automation Anywhere in my current and previous organizations.

In my current company, we have been successful with pushing the solution through and getting management buy-in. 

In my previous organization, we started with version 7.0. We saw cost savings by automating some critical processes. In addition, the manpower was able to do high level work instead of mundane work. 

In my current organization, we are seeing great results, especially with the financial and civil processes.

It extracts what the IQ Bot does, converting it and ensuring the entire process right from the input to the output and is fully automated. It is digitizing a particular process, which is really great.

if Automation Anywhere could bring in object recognition, it would be a game changer. Today, we have a lot of video analytics. People talk about video analytics since I come from the consumer background. We are looking into the latest technologies of facial recognition from an audit proxy, e.g., counting the movement of the products from the counter versus the billing application. I have brought up this inquiry at my last three Imagine sessions but I am not getting an answer. Maybe the demand in the market is less. but people now are looking for this type of solution where Automation Anywhere can bring in some cognitive inbuilt. 

It would be great if video analytics could be brought in as a third-party product integration or on the Automation Anywhere platform. I would like the video analytics to be integrated within the next two years. Right now, most people are using third-party tools. Video can be translated into an image and information can be picked up from that, then translated into meaningful insights to make decisions.

Getting buy-in was a major challenge because of the various people not aware of the technologies moving and getting buy-in from top management is a challenge. 

A major issue is getting the in-house team trained. I would like to have a better way of managing the teams. The more your in-house team is trained, you're less dependent on your partners or solution providers, thereby scaling up the confidence of doing it in-house. I just visited a booth now on the training part to see what can be achieved so I can go back and tell my team what Automation Anywhere is providing in terms of training.

There are hiccups in the production tool. I would rate the accuracy level at 95 to 97 percent. 

Compared to the earlier versions, compliance, deliverables and other tools in the market, nobody can touch Automation Anywhere.

In terms of scalability, you have to leap frog forward. Overall, you need to work at achieving a digital workforce to scale the entire landscape of the organization by having them look to the future. It is not only the RPA part, but also you have to adopt AI and ML type technologies which can holistically cover the entire aspects and take the organization to the scalable level.

The response from the technical support is really good. 

I just met the account manager and he was thrilled to see me.

We had a technical evaluation team, which I was part of since I had earlier worked with Automation Anywhere and had a sense of it. We had been evaluating its competitors, but Automation Anywhere's stability and ease of use was great. My past experience with the solution allowed me in my current organization to make the right decision.

The initial setup is not complex. It is pretty simple. We started with small processes. then we moved onto complex types of environments. The implementation in terms of technicalities, it was not complex. In terms of getting into the nitty-gritties of what, where, when, and how it would come all together, that is the challenging part. It is the understanding the entire process of transforming the requirements into something technical. 

We used Ernest & Young for the deployment. They are one of the good partners in terms of understanding the internal processes. The consultation is great. They are with us day in and day out. They are helping us to try and transform the business.

In my current organization, we have yet to see results because we are going with a small launch with two Bot Runners and one Bot Creator. We need to asses the right approach, selection processes, choosing what to automate and what not to automate, and what would be the scale of automation. That is where a lot of hard work is required going ahead to see the results coming in the next financial year.

in my previous organization, I could see a lot of cost savings and returns from automating processes. 

More than 40 to 50 percent of the IT budget will be for the cost of automation projects in the coming years since these projects enhance operations add value.

We also considered Blue Prism, but they have nowhere near Automation Anywhere's success story in the span of just eight to nine years.

In the initial days of 2012, I visited an Automation Anywhere manager in a very small office in India. There were only about ten people operating from that region. Back then, they didn't have partners like EY. Today, they have all the Fortune companies working with Automation Anywhere, even Microsoft has joined hands with them. 

It has been a good experience working with Automation Anywhere, which started small. We were directly coordinating on simple tasks, like, "Hey this is not working. Fix it now." There were no partners in-between. 

This is the right platform and choice. Today, every business needs to be at this pace and cannot ignore automation. You have to be in the race if you really want your company to get to the next level and be at par with competitors. Bring your business to the table by getting it automated by using the right tools, like Automation Anywhere, and the right partner.

The solution delivers value.

Going forward, we are looking to add more value, then plan for a better foundation using the automation platform by making a COE team and installing the newest version of Automation Anywhere.

As a partner, we can use RPA in many sectors including financial services and banks, technology and software, in communications, government, hospitality, and human resources.

I have recently done two projects with Automation Anywhere, one for a large car manufacturer and the other for a bank.

For the car manufacturer, we used it to copy and paste data from Excel sheets, with user entries according to customer. This process helped secure the digital workplace with verification and to integrate legacy systems with new applications. There was also a daily report on this automation.

In the other project, we took data from a CSV file and validated it according to business rules and we then copied from the CSV and pasted it into another application. There, again, it was with specific customer data. We were able to implement data migration between banking applications and customer account management applications.

In simple language, we can automate any business process and it works for our customers the way they want it to.

Using Automation Anywhere, the work gets completed in half the time. Using particular types of software, there can be problems in creating solutions and it will take a lot of time to solve the problems. By using automation, the hard work is done by robots rather than by people. It won't take as much time.

If it takes a long time for a person to complete a project and, instead, the hard work is done by the computer, the robots, that is beneficial for companies.

• The ability to use previous integrations is valuable.
• With Automation Anywhere you can read and extract CSV data easily. You don't need multiple commands to read it.
• The user interface is good. Whatever I've done, the user interface has been very good.

Reliability and error handling should be improved.

One to three years.

The stability of Automation Anywhere is good. I haven't had any issues when it comes to stability, so far.

If a company is getting work done by robots, work that is otherwise hard to get done, then Automation Anywhere is definitely a good investment for them.

Compared to other tools like NICE and Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere is the only tool that gets your work completed in half the time. No other tools do that. In my opinion, this is what makes Automation Anywhere the best tool.

I haven't done projects on NICE yet, but I did the training for NICE as well as for Automation Anywhere. NICE has good things in it, but in my opinion, with NICE it will take more time to complete tasks compared to Automation Anywhere. There is a difference.

For what I have used Automation Anywhere for so far, the two projects I have done, it has been completely good for me. This is the best tool I have seen.

The first project took about eight months and the other about six to seven months. There were four people working on each project, all together. They were all RPA developers. In total there are eight to ten of us working on Automation Anywhere.

Automation is happening a lot in the financial and banking service areas. There are many applications which a bank cannot manage by itself and we use automation to help manage customers' accounts. But these days, automation is happening everywhere. It is used in every company. Automation is an important process and people will see it more and more going into the future as well.

There is scope in the future for increased usage of Automation Anywhere in the banking sector.

In the future, as technology increases day-by-day, Automation Anywhere will definitely add new technology. There are already benefits but they will increase as the technology develops and people will benefit more and more.

The primary use case is for ticket creation. They send in an email, then based on the priority, it creates a different ticket in Jira as well as the ticketing tool. In the end, they must consolidate all the tickets, whatever it has created, and sends that information in an Excel sheet to the stakeholders.

This was for an internal PoC.

It was a value-add for the organization. For each ticket, they would have to create a ticket for each of the three portals. However, after the PoC was done, then they would send a mail to a board, which will now send out the ticket number.

By using SNMP configurations and Excel, I was able to read the mail. I used this functionality to categorize the fabric, then I used this information to correlate the value to Jira along with Excel.

They must create the same ticket in three portals. Instead of that, they are now sending the mail to support. Support needs to take that mail and each bot needs to check the inbox. It will take that mail and categorize the subject, then prioritize it. We will take that description, paste it, and create a new ticket on these reporting tools.

The UI is very user-friendly, even for someone who doesn't have much coding knowledge. They can easily pick it up. Or, get training for two weeks, then pick it up. Someone from a coding background can pick it up easily too.

The MetaBots and IQ Bots are advanced tools for the market.

The functionalities and UI could be improved.

We have HTML mode and Windows mode, but Automation Anywhere is limited in this. It would be better if they were able to provide different specification modes.

I used Automation Anywhere for three months at work about a year ago.

The version that I used (10.3) was not that stable. It easily crashed in-between processes. 

In later versions, they have come out with better updates with things like MetaBot. I feel that version 11 is a robust solution.

The scalability is really good. 

The technical support team was very good to work with, as they were knowledgeable and provided good explanations. They were quite responsive.

The initial channel setup for was quite easy. However, we had to configure the control room. With that, we had to be very careful.

It took me half a day to deploy. I installed the SQL Server, the control room, etc.

The control room access gives the ability to create different roles, which helps when purchasing additional licensing.

Their overall pricing falls in the middle of the market. Cost-wise, Automation Anywhere is quite expensive because of their analytics, IQ Bots, and MetaBots. For a standalone machine, the pricing is okay. When adding in the licensing for IQ Bots (or MetaBots), it can become quite costly.

They recently launched a Community Edition, which is okay, but they should have done this a long time ago.

It is a very handy product.

As of now, Automation Anywhere has a very good place in the market.

We use this solution for automating business tasks in certain areas of the organization (so far). This involves creating bots to handle mundane tasks, so employees can be freed to work on other tasks that require higher thinking skills. We installed the product locally with the vendor's help.

The Automation Anywhere software has improved our organization by moving us into the RPA climate and allowing us to save on our overhead. By using bots, we have virtual workers that work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, all without taking a salary.

So far, we have found Customization and Ease of Use to be the most valuable features. We are also working on scalability now (within our bots), so other business areas can use the same bots that were already created. At the same time, we will be continuing to build other bots.

I would like to see a built-in read-only role for the control room so that the bot creators can log in and monitor the production environment without any auditing concerns. Currently, our development team cannot log into the production control room, due to audit concerns, and it would be beneficial to see the bots running, confirm the schedules, etc.

So far, it has been stable for the past nine months, which also included an upgrade to the client and control room.

We are currently scaling our bots and as a platform, it is very scalable.

All of the times that I contacted technical support were pleasant. Tickets were assigned quickly and resolved. We even have a customer liason weekly tagup call with the vendor to help with anything that may arise.

Previously, we didn’t use this type of product. We needed to lower our overhead costs.

This initial setup was straightforward. The documentation that was provided was thorough.

Our in-house team was used, along with the vendor's documentation and installation guides. Overall, it worked well.

Being one of the Bot Creators, I wasn't included in the breakdown, makeup, or negotiation of pricing or licensing. I only know the total cost.

We only installed the evaluation version of Automation Anywhere, and our Proof of Concept was successful.

Don’t employ all non-technical employees to create bots. Use software engineers. In our environment, we use REST, API, and SOAP, which may be daunting to non-technical folks.