Automation Anywhere Reviews

In our banking center, we are using Automation Anywhere for loan settlements, credit card transactions, and reconciliation forms. It has been easy to use.

I like working with most of the commands in Automation Anywhere, such as object cloning commands.  I like MetaBot for automating Citrix.

They need to improve the speed. It runs too slowly.

There are some setup limitations:

• There is no direct passing mechanism to manipulate adjacent data and send it back to the server. 
• There is not one task that lets you debug everything.

Version 11.3 already has a lot of things that we want: quickness, ease, bigger, and more functions.

It is 90 percent stable. 

10 percent is due to network issues, slow performance of the application, or failed bots. These happen infrequently though. We implemented some fallback mechanisms around the network issues.

Scalability is fantastic. We can build anything out of the application. Though in some places, there are limitations. Fixing those would be good.

We are deployed in five different regions.

We are using the technical support. They are fantastic, but sometimes we aren't getting the expected outcome that we want from the tech support team. We would like to see this improve.

The initial setup is not that complex. We just download the software. Anyone can go and download it. It can be downloaded with two-way server. Then, the next step is to get a license for development and other things. Once development is done and it has been move to product, the client can use it.

I would recommend using this product. It is very useful. We can automate anything through it. There is much flexibility. It provides a robust mechanism, which is good.

We look at process which are feasible for automation on a case-by-case basis.

Our use case is spread across multiple areas: 

1. We are using it in finance: automating the month-end process. 
2. There are a lot of review processes that happen every week. We are in the middle of that.
3. We have a product lifecycle management process that when we close the books on a product, information needs to go into multiple systems. We have another bot in system for this.

These are the three things that we have in production right now.

A project that we automated: A person used to spend about eight to twelve hours every week to finish the process. The bot finishes it in half an hour. Now, the person just reviews it, then passes along the information. This has helped our organization because originally EMEA and APAC would not receive the files the same day that they were processed. But because the bot only takes a half an hour, everyone can now receive the files on the same day.

We know the process. It doesn't deviate.

Speed: A process that would take two days for a person every month to do is now completed within two hours.

Right now, the audit trail sits in file systems. I would prefer it to be in a database where it is queryable and searchable. 

Another major downside is an upgrade. If I have to switch over from single sign-on to non-single sign-on, etc., then it's a complete reinstall. When I do a complete reinstall, I lose a lot of information because it's a new instance. I'm not able to bring information from the old instance and my metrics are all gone. I basically have to reset the whole infrastructure. I would like to see an option to switch over to single sign-on post-installation. It should not have to be a reinstall. It should be part of the installation or configuration.

I wanted to see a cloud version and mobile app but those will be available in the A2019 version.

I would like the bots to be more automatic without having to check emails, which is how we have our tool setup. Going forward, the bots should be more interactive.

So far, the stability has been pretty good.

We did have some issues when our database server sort of crashed. A lot of processes went uncommitted, so we had to engage the Automation Anywhere support team. They came in to clean up the database and bring the server back up. Otherwise, we have seen pretty good stability.

So far, the technical support has been really helpful. We were even able to engage the customer success team when we needed them. They have helped us solve our problems, which is very good.

We had a major issue when it came to single sign-on. We couldn't get it working. There was a bug in Automation Anywhere that eventually got solved just a few weeks back. However, we have not implemented it. We have had hiccups with the single sign-on, but otherwise it was a smooth setup. We are not using single sign-on because of this bug.

We used our implementation partner for the deployment and implementing the bots. Our experience with them was good. Most of them are good developers. They have been able to solve a lot of issues and build a lot of processes.

We have seen ROI on two out of our three bot processes. We see ROI from hours returned back to us.

It is a lot easier to debug Automation Anywhere than UiPath because of the code. Our clients like Automation Anywhere which is another reason that we picked it.

Automate several smaller processes within departments. Show the benefit there before implementing an end-to-end solution. This will get people excited about the solution and kick start the process.

We got our workloads for issues and our bugs fixed, which is why I rated the product a 10 out of 10.

We primarily deal with a SAP business model. We use Automation Anywhere for logging into websites, entering data, moving information around, and sending emails to end users.

We are currently using a cloud deployment model.

The product has saved us a lot of time by reducing manually tasks, like entering data into Excel.

The object cloning strategy feature is the most valuable feature.

I would like the product to have more capabilities going forward.

We are not getting consistent behavior from the tool We would like to see this improved and the product more stable.

I would rate the technical support as an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It did not take more than a few minutes.

I would definitely recommend Automation Anywhere.

We use it for the mail merge process, specifically for renewals. Each month, it could be a tedious process to check all the documents and PDFs for each iteration. The creation of a bot for these task leads to better than expected results.

We can use the current manuals to make sure the bots are working at 100 percent before the next release.

It is user-friendly. Everything is under a single dashboard. 

We can access it anywhere. E.g., I can access dashboard from my Control Room on my mobile app using Automation Anywhere. 

From a QA and development perspective, we would like to communicate with the tech support through email and have that put in the dashboard. This would let us better track the ticket and make it easier for us to communicate with Automation Anywhere.

They recently integrate Oracle and SQL. I would like to have more integration and feature going forward.

The stability is good. 

The scalability is good.

Automation Anywhere team is ready to support us if we encounter any issues.

We recently encountered some issues in the navigation controls that our dashboards were unable to change. So, we contacted the Automation Anywhere team and they helped us to get it rectified.

It is easy to set up. You can do it from anywhere using the Control Room. It is not a tedious process. 

I am used to these types of setups as an SQL engineer.

We save time with the solution, so we have more time to reuse and spend on our clients. 

Talk to your manager and try to procure an automation license for training. This will allow you to train people, so you can move to automation.

If we try to use another product, there are additional product costs. Automation Anywhere uses a single dashboard that you can access anywhere. It also provides more insights versus other products, which is an advantage of using Automation Anywhere.

I have recently gone through the Automation Anywhere training to receive some certifications.

We started with finance use cases. Some of our biggest success stories have been with collection correspondence strategy around AR and the cash application. We also focus a lot on the financial close process to the month-end processes. These are the biggest areas of focus. We are starting to look at AP in finance. Beyond finance, we're also trying to look at the sales processes. 

Finance was sort of a pilot. We are now looking at sales processes starting from the customer order handling to services, and how we can enrich the experience. Our goal is to enhance the customer experience.

We have a suite of technology products. Most of the time, there is communication between various products. We get a number of emails from our customers that we send out. E.g., our system is based on some criteria that sends emails out to customers. Therefore, there is a lot of user interface level interaction. However, we always look at the problem statement and work through that.

We are a B2B company. We have a lot of communication with our customers in terms of collection correspondence, such as payment reminders. We started with the problem: Should we be a company focused on heavily calling as all companies traditionally are? Or, change that using Automation Anywhere, but how do we communicate with customer using the tool as it is more interactive and individual-driven. We created personalized emails using a digital correspondence strategy. This is an areas where we have delivered results. 

It is easy to code. While you have developers, somebody with a development or workflow mindset can logically build a bot in Automation Anywhere by understanding how to put a process in a workflow. If you have that, then you can logically build a bot in Automation Anywhere. Even a non-IT or business user can just look at the bot language and understand what the bot is doing, and that's the easy part. This is an interesting part of the product that we are trying to capitalize on.

They consistently endeavor to improve the customer experience. Customer success is their motto. The organization clearly knows who they are and what they stand for. 

We are one of the smaller startups in the area so we experience a lot of issues. Most of the issues have been: 

• How do you build up your platforms? 
• Automation Anywhere is more geared toward how humans work, and a bot works differently.

These are the specific challenges that we have seen.

Some small issues:

• A bot will be working and the the screen will lock out.
• The app has a password change policy every few days.
• One day, there will be a message box saying that the application is down or not available on a weekend. The instructions will say read the information and click, "Okay." But a bot doesn't understand the instructions because it is not the IQ system.
  

There are a lot of initiatives going on. E.g., there is one for the Excel part where they are building a plugin in Excel. Those type of plugins would help if they were built in various applications for integration across applications. I would like more plugins overall. It would be nice to have a plugin for all applications, like PowerPoint or any PDF to text converter, to make the tool easier to work with.

On the user side, we have seen issues with user training.

The product still requires programming knowledge. We would like it to become easy enough to use where anyone in the organization can utilize the tool and use the bots. The usability should be at the same level as a Microsoft Suite product. This is on Automation Anywhere's roadmap to evolve toward this.

It is an evolving platform, but it's fairly stable.

They have frequent upgrades. 

Scalability is dependent on the organization and customer size, but it's a stable platform.

We have not faced issues as we have scaled up.

They have a good 24/7 support system. Even if there is an issue, we are able to solve it.

The ticketing system: You create a ticket and can get support 24/7. That's already a big thing for us. We have had good reviews on it.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. Automation Anywhere did a lot of hand-holding through it

We used Automation Anywhere as our initial service provider.

Our return on investment has more been based on improving things which we could not do earlier. There were some aspects of processes which we had to outsource because we were not able to do these in-house. Our return on investment is based on bringing these outsourced services and processes back in-house. In addition, ROI is based on doing things to improve the customer experience.

We have also seen ROI based on employee experience. Quantification is not easy. We cannot quantify it, but we have millennials coming into the workforce who don't want to do "boring" activities. If you tell them that the organizations has a digital workforce concept, this is a driver for them to think that the organization is the way that it should be. This is bigger than dollars when quantifying value.

Automation Anywhere presented a pitch for the IT solutions that we have. 

We considered the top three vendors. We chose Automation Anywhere because of the customer engagement drives and their integrated services team. The other vendors didn't have this. Automation Anywhere's service team stands out.

If you're starting out and a smaller organization, their arrangement of products helps. Product-wise, there are some pluses and minus in everything

Think of what is the best fit for your organization in terms of a technology platform. Also, have goals in mind, like improving the customer experience, not reducing the FTEs in your organization.

Going forward, there will be new releases on the cloud. 

We use this solution for building RPA to automate business & finance processes.

By automating processes we give back valuable hours to business stakeholders, which can be spent on value-adding activities instead of repetitive tasks.

The total package is valuable for us as an organization.

I would like to see them expand the service catalog with RCA add-ons to the current RPA package.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

We evaluated both UiPath and Blue Prism before choosing this solution.

My advice for anybody implementing this solution is to set up from the start with large scale in mind.

We use the product for our automation use cases. We provide it to our customers to automate invoices with IQ Bot and other things.

Helps our clients focus on their work instead of repetitive tasks.

The best part of Automation Anywhere is IQ Bot for its OCR techniques. 

Bot Insights is also a very good product feature.

I would like OCR for video and text using the IQ Bot. It should also be available in an email tag format.

I am waiting for them to add Java code.

The stability of the production part is good.

Scalability is good. There is no question about its scalability.

I have found some problems, but the support is very fast. However, sometimes I feel like I need more guidance. E.g., when providing the answer regarding the login for SAP automation, give an answer that I can explain to my customers.

The implementation process is complex, as there is integration with other applications. We need to understand the other applications' requirements. It requires us to convert their business logic into automation. That is where the complexity is.

We are the implementation partner. 

My clients have seen ROI. What would take them two to three days in work is now taking them two to three hours.

We are restricted to use one license on one PC. However, if my license is not working, I want to be able to use it somewhere else. This would be a nice improvement to the licensing, as other competitors in the market have better licensing terms.

Create automation with automation with Automation Anywhere. 

We are a research-based company using cognitive automation. 

Our use cases are:

1. Security.
2. Card protection and banking. 
3. Traffic management. 

All these applications require cognitive automation. 

We are here to explore how Automation Anywhere supports cognitive automation.

One of our security applications requires a lot of newer features in terms of recognizing a lot of objects that affect security, whether we are talking about the security of a building or of an enterprise. Integration automation is now building on growth, e.g., I can upload Microsoft and Azure integrations. This will help us in order to scale up the machine learning aspect, which is required in the applications which we are developing.

The tool is developing well and has become more web-based. We require a web-based tool approach because of our clients whom we expect will utilize web-based applications. We see Automation Anywhere is moving into a web-based tool application development. This will help us reach out to our clients.

While I am happy with the stability, it could use improvement.

We have found that the passwords are not very stable in terms of their accuracy. We could only get 70 percent accuracy in these cases. Our clients require more accurate results. We are working toward this.

We are looking into other applications and how they can be integrated, e.g., Google Analytics and Azure AI. Instead of developing from scratch within Automation Anywhere, we want to bring out these advanced capabilities from other platforms and integrate them into our platform requirements.

Integration with a lot of existing platforms is going to be a game changer. We already see Automation Anywhere tied up with SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, and Microsoft. We expect that it will be tied up Google Cloud going forward. These type of improvements will increase the adoption rate of the tool and we can have a lot more use cases because a lot of companies they have already invested in ERP.

There are good tools which are in the development stage. Recently, there was an issue of stability. We see that there has been a lot of effort from Automation Anywhere experts and R&D, where they have been trying to stabilize every version they are bringing out. There is room for improvement as Automation Anywhere works to stabilize the solution.

The clients whom we are approaching and want to get onboard have a huge application requirement. So, we are requiring that these applications are well suited for the Automation Anywhere product. We feel that there is a lack of trained professionals in the market. Therefore, we have a branch where we can train people, so they can scale up into our application's deployment.

They help support our large number of clients. So far, they have been okay. Going forward, we will require a lot more support from Automation Anywhere.

Our onboarding process was pretty good. We got access to all software that we needed to learn and utilize. The Automation Anywhere University is really good. In our business, the person who was onboarding us helped us to understand how to create a center of excellence and what verticals we needed to improve. So, the support was there. We are gradually becoming a center of excellence ourselves.

We have in-house experts who are learning the solution then deploying it. We are looking for partners to deploy the tool for new projects as we learn how to better deploy it.

Our clients are seeing an economic downturn. In any economic downturn, margins are a great challenge. As a company, we can bring out profitability by automating a lot of processes on our clients' side. We always recommend to our clients is they can save as much as 25 percent of their CAPEX in the first year, then by second year, they should be able to save up to 50 percent of their OPEX. This can bring them huge profitability.

UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere were our three focus areas. We started first with Automation Anywhere. We will definitely explore the other vendors as well, but It is very tough to become an expert of all three platforms.

I happened to go through the available documents on Automation Anywhere's website. I found there is a lot of effort from the company to create an ecosystem of experts. They want a lot of experts to get trained. There is a lot of support on the certification side. So, we thought that it was a good company to start with.

Have a very robust feasibility check of what you want to do. It is very important that you understand your requirements: 

• Why do you require RPA? 
• What will be the return of the investment? 
• What will be the time consumption? 
• Do you need to outsource the entire RPA or develop in-house expertise?

Understand the tool better, then the deployment becomes easier.

The tool is good. I feel that there is a lot of scope for improvement. We have found there is already an R&D effort to build up Automation Anywhere. There are new tools which will soon be integrated into the present setup. It becomes better at every stage.