Automation Anywhere Reviews

We have developed apps for accounts payable (finance) to do three-way match.

We are making less mistakes and have more metrics available to understand what our problems are. Now, we can do root cause analysis and have less noise in the system during the process.

The solution has removed humans making errors while increasing our time savings. We now have a lot of more efficiencies in our process.

Our first bot took ten weeks to create. It took six months to create the number of bots that we are currently using.

I have take basic courses at Automation Anywhere University, because I an not actually a programmer. I just needed to know the high level of the product. The Automation Anywhere University was very good.

The setup was straightforward. Understanding what we wanted to do the tool, that was more complex.

We used Thirdware for the deployment.

Automation Anywhere was the only vendor because we were told by our private equity company that was who we were using. However, Automation Anywhere is the industry leader, so it was an easy choice. So, we didn't argue too much with the selection by them, and we did not actually go through a selection process ourselves.

We use a different solution for cognitive document processing, not Automation Anywhere, but we are rethinking this.

No tool will ever fix your company. It is always about the stability of processes, understanding your scope, and what your problems are. This tool is a great tool to help with that once processes are stable. It will always be dependent upon people. Make sure you program the bot to help people, not what you think it needs to be. There will be a lot of meetings, scope developments, and data review, which will need to happen first. Then, if you get good with that, then the tool's going to be excellent.

So far, everything has been good with the solution. It is a great tool.

The integration works very well. We have integrated it with four other software tools.

From a developer perspective, the solution is very simple. Our end users don't really see it. They just see the end result.

Our primary use case is the insurance of clients.

The solution has improved our organization through its integration with other products. We can integrate multiple platforms through the use of Automation Anywhere via the use of third-party APIs, so there is no human intervention at all. Everything happens on the back-end.

Automation Anywhere is excellent for integrating with other solutions. It provides the ability to leverage the APIs of third-party solutions. We use some of the already built-in MetaBots to then scrape the data and manipulate independent data that we need in order to integrate with other third-party solutions.

• IQ Bot
• Cognitive automation: The ability for the product to learn based on corrections made, such as exceptions and the way those exceptions are handled. Then, these are taken into consideration for future exceptions of similar type (autocorrecting).

I would like to have a bot as a service platform on AA Cloud. This would minimize the installation process, and we wouldn't need to have all the hardware to support the platform in-house.

We have worked on several different projects, so far. From prototypes to production, on average, scaling our bots takes somewhere from three to six weeks.

The technical support is great.

The Automation Anywhere University is very good. I liked the courses and the videos, which were included. I found it to be very intuitive and educational. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. The videos on the Automation Anywhere University are extremely helpful during this process.

We used a consultant for the deployment.

We are currently measuring ROI based on cost, labor and time to market metrics.

UiPath and WorkFusion were also on our shortlist. We selected Automation Anywhere based on the product's ease of use, functionality, development environment, and workbench. This product surpassed what these other competitors had to offer.

In addition, we have a market which allows us to get products developed in timely fashion. This is beneficial to partners and clients, alike.

Automation Anywhere is one of the products which allows you to leverage the power of RPA digital workforce technology is a timely and scaled approach. Compared to other RPA solutions on the market I have worked with, AA surpasses its competitors by far.

The growth of Automation Anywhere product's stability, functionality, and technical advancements demonstrates the company is dedicated to its product, clients, and partners. It is evident that the product will only get better.

The ease of use for developers utilizing this solution is excellent. I’ve abandoned the use of WorkFusion from our practice due to its limitations. Automation Anywhere, in particular, allows us to extend the functionality of the platform by writing our own DLLs, so we are able to easily integrate it into any RPA process that we may be developing. At the same time, the ability for us to use other users' bots downloaded from the Bot Store has added a huge amount of value to the product and our ability to get to market quickly.

I don't use Citrix.

Our primary use case for it was financial back-end operations. We dabble in Automation Anywhere. We don't use it.

We have an old ERP which required human interactions because of the lack of a system. For example, we were copying and pasting from an invoice to a spreadsheet, and then from the spreadsheet, we would run a macro that would plug it into our ERP. What we did is have the robotics read an invoice and plug it directly into our ERP, avoiding the extra steps, let alone a human doing it. We placed a robot and technology in place of a human. It saved about an hour-and-a-half a day. We measure in FTEs and we measured the savings as 20 percent of an FTE.

In Automation Anywhere we liked 

• the drag-and-drop 
• easily stitching the recording of mouse control and keyboard controls. 

They were not unique but they were user-friendly. 

For developers to pick up a new tool, you need something user-friendly where it's easy to create reusable snippets of code and use them in another process down the road. I would rate the ease of use at eight out of ten.

It was very stable. We didn't have any issues with it and, if there were, they wouldn't have been Automation Anywhere's problem. They most likely would have been our infrastructure.

We didn't have to scale too far, so we didn't experience its scalability.

We didn't use Automation Anywhere's technical support, even for deployment. We read and learned what we needed to know. We got on their support site, got their documentation, took the requirements, how to deploy, and what the right architecture was. We scaled based on what we thought we would use it for. My guys like to learn, they like to try, and I allow them to dig a hole and fall into it and then fix it later. They just didn't fall into a hole.

The documentation was good enough for us to read. Granted we're technical people, but it was good enough to read and take actions based on the content. It was really good.

Setting up Automation Anywhere was fairly straightforward. I personally did it. I had my team behind me. They set up the IIS side and the SQL side. But for installation of the product, I did it myself because I wanted to know. I'd still like to learn, even though I don't do the work.

To install here, on-prem, at the server level, only took two people a couple of hours; perhaps a total of eight man-hours.

Our implementation strategy was, "Let's try it." We had an objective to save FTEs as well as to introduce technology to get around our lack of a decent ERP. It was a matter of picking among the big three, and some third-world country type of RPA as well, and seeing which one hit the button. We figured out what the requirements were, and we have a pretty hefty on-prem hosting, so we spun up some servers and installed it.

After deploying, our developers then took control. We had a team of three developers. In terms of maintenance, we usually set up our environment where we install updates monthly. That should take a couple of hours per server. I don't recall Automation Anywhere standing out as a "problem child." So maintenance on the infrastructure side might be about two hours a month.

We couldn't put the math together. When we decided to actually procure and get the quotes, they gave us free trials for a while and extended them for months. But when it came down to it, we couldn't do ROI because our company outsources to India. Our employees are in India, and in India, $250,000 goes a very long way. We just couldn't make up the money fast enough.

Cost is the biggest area in need of improvement for Automation Anywhere. Annually it's $250,000. That's what deterred us right away. We stopped using it as a primary solution because of the costs.  We did not apply hardware to that, because we've already got the cost baked into our infrastructure. Otherwise, there would have been hardware costs on top of that. If we really took a full, all-in cost for Automation Anywhere, it would have been much higher. But we don't do it that way.

There are three big, heavy-hitters in RPA, with Automation Anywhere probably being the premier, followed by Blue Prism, and then UiPath. Of those three, Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere are very expensive, but the accomplishments are the same. UiPath is pretty affordable as a buy-in, with the accomplishments being the same.

Overall, each has its own uniqueness, strengths, and weaknesses, but when it comes to looking at it on the financial side, Automation Anywhere is probably one of the most expensive to have an all on-prem solution. We're all about on-prem. It was very expensive to stand that up.

We went with UiPath.

In terms of differences between Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and UiPath from a functional standpoint, there really weren't any. They all do the same thing. It's coding in .NET, coding in Java. They all have their strengths. Automation Anywhere stood out because of its high cost. 

When we put them side-by-side, everything we could accomplish in UiPath, we could accomplish in Automation Anywhere. Each one is making its own jumps. For example, when we were evaluating them, UiPath was making leaps in OCR and reading natural language, and Automation Anywhere was taking a back seat in that. But Automation Anywhere was advancing in its process improvements. Now, they're doing it the other way around, and Automation Anywhere is jumping forward ahead of UiPath. So they play this game, but either one is equally good.

My advice would be "due diligence." Make sure you read, and make sure you engage the Automation Anywhere team and the support. We didn't, but we didn't have to. But do due diligence based on cost, and scale, and really what you're going to do.

RPA is the hot word right now. Everybody wants to do RPA. But what we did is just put it into our arsenal of other tools. It's not the golden bullet. It's not the one that is the end-all. It's just one of the tools in the arsenal that IT has. That's why we chose not to spend $250,000 and, instead, to spend much less. Sometimes RPA is the answer. At other times it's system integration, and at other times it's just raw development. That's what I even tell our customers. That's our toolkit. Our arsenal is developer's RPA, and we use a third-party integration tool as well.

Just the developers were using it in our organization. They tout it as it's user-friendly: Give it to a user and they can do it. But we didn't discover that at all. We couldn't just hand it to a user, so our developers were taking the processes and applying them with development code behind them. Automation Anywhere has "record-the-screen," but when our users were doing it, they would move an icon and it wasn't smart enough to find the icon that had moved.

In terms of extent of use, it was used daily for some of our daily processes. The finance process I talked about earlier is one example. We automated that and that robot ran on a daily basis. As for increasing our usage of RPA in general, we scaled up pretty quickly. Internally, we have four or five robots running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Accounts payable is our primary focuses for automation, and we are looking forward to this report. Thanks.

We are in the early stages and need to see how it goes for future bot building especially Bot Store today.

• Very comprehensive with different platforms especially SAP and Oracle EBS. 
• The digital worker is interesting.

I am interested in discovery, and what this means for companies like mine. I think the pricing model should be more flexible.

This solution was originally introduced to help operations reduce manual tasks. After seeing positive results, we have now implemented this RPA solution in IT.

We have been able to reduce the amount of repetitive tasks completed by operations, allowing individuals to move onto tasks which cannot yet be automated.

Currently, under Automation Anywhere, we only use the Bot Runners and Bot Creators. This ensures we can automate processes without the need for manual interaction.

I would like to see more stability around scheduling a bot to run headless. I believe version 11 may be more stable and have less issues when trying to run headless.

It is more stable now than it was three years ago. So far, I have no major concerns and am looking forward to upgrading to version 11 in Q3.

As we have a small number of bits in production on version 10.5.4, we found it easy to scale. Version 11 will provide a load balancer, making it easier for us to run a pool of VMs to complete a task.

We mostly use it for operations right now. We are looking at possible IT RPA use cases.

The tech support has improved over the years. I believe the tech support to be sufficient right now.

I wasn't part of the original PoC team who completed the initial setup. 

After joining the team, we engaged in two upgrades to deal with stability issues. We found this a painful process as we were early adopters. This meant that the install wasn't stable. To resolve this, we decided on an approach where we would only upgrade to a major release six months after its release.

The deployment is quick. You could complete this in a weekend. Realistically, you need a week to prep and another week to triage unexpected issues.

Our implementation strategy has been to upgrade development, confirm everything functions as expected, and only then upgrade production.

We have a team of six, which consists of developers, a tech lead, and manager. We have set up a run support team to handle maintenance and bot stability issues. Their role is to get the bots back up and running in the event of an issue.

It is expensive. Automation Anywhere has reduced the price slightly, as we have grown. However, the price is still excessive enough that we are engaged in PoCs on other tools.

I wasn't part of the initial conversations, though I believe we proceeded with the number product in the market.

As a total package, this is probably the easiest solution to start with. Even if you add something that you will not need, e.g., Bot Insight won't be required until you have more than 50 bots in production. Even then, see if you can develop this through in-house metrics.

Generally, it is used in the banking and financial domains for Oracle and Java-based systems. We also use Automation Anywhere for integration where a third-party tool has to be triggered.

The are many features and we can do many things with it. They've now included the code so we can add some additional code. That's good.

I'd like to see the OCR feature be perfected. Today we get an accuracy ratio from OCR of around 40 percent to 50 percent only. Better OCR would be very useful in the industry because most of the documents in the banking sector are scanned and hand-written and they want to compare them with other documents.

I would also like to see them provide more support: profile documents and guidance. It would also help to have use-case demos available publicly, not on the Automation Anywhere website. Overall, better promotion of the solution would be good for Automation Anywhere.

Stability depends on the local system. It is good. But when we switch the system, when we go to Citrix or we jump to RDP, the modern stuff, it breaks sometimes.

Comparing Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere, I would go for Blue Prism's stability. It is very stable. Once the coding is done, meaning all the flowcharts are designed, it will work, it will not break. But sometimes, Automation Anywhere fails. It doesn't take the values from the input at times.

The scalability is good.

Automation Anywhere's technical support is good. They provide it via email. There are no issues with it. They have opened their offices for technical support in India. Usually, within 24 hours, we get a resolution via a reply to our email: "This is the issue, and this is the solution," or, "This is the way to do it." It usually doesn't take longer than that.

The setup is usually straightforward, not complex. If you're doing a basic installation, it takes around one hour. If you're installing MetaBots or any plugins, it will take some more time.

The team we work on develops on the weekend. We have Control Room access so we deploy from there. It doesn't require a team though, an individual person who is working on a given project can also install it.

We don't see ROI immediately. It takes from six or seven months to one year to get the ROI from what we develop. The client needs to trust the RPA solution. Once they trust it, the process, etc., they have more confidence and say, "Okay, you can do automate these other things as well." Build a client's confidence takes time.

But at the end of the day or, really, the end of the year, we can see that the ROI is there. There are benefits and they can see the benefits.

Licensing is not done by us but by the server team. They provide the infra and they manage the installation and licensing because licensing is very costly. It's a very confidential thing. They cannot share the license with everyone.

If I compare it with Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere is cheaper. Blue Prism is very costly. Automation Anywhere's pricing follows the market, not less and not more.

It's important that all processes are documented properly.

In terms of maintenance, our policy is that we do two weeks of hyper-care. After two weeks it's over to the client and they maintain it from there on. But for those two weeks initially, if there are any errors we will change the code and deliver it. But the maintenance is good. We don't need to modify many things.

Since we are an insurance company, there are many administrative tasks, such as, the enrollment agreement process, address change after enrollment, issuing of various certificates, making payments, etc. We wanted to automate these administrative or back office operations, so this is where we first started. After we verified that the products by Automation Anywhere can work with our organization, we decided to expand their use to the making of sales materials and business performance documents for our sales division, as well as administrative processes for our operations division. Other uses include compliance related matters and checking of anti-social forces. We are taking the initiative to automate all sorts of administrative tasks of the company with the help of robots and RPA. 

The solution has been implemented into 27 divisions.

The immediate impact is administrative tasks which were traditionally done manually are now being done by robots. This reduces the workload for people. This not only improves efficiency, but also expands the type of work which can be done by people. 

When I spoke to people who have used the solution, they mentioned that they have much less stress. As we are an insurance company, a finance company, where avoiding administrative errors is critical. We need to check things over constantly, but with the use of these robots, there is no need for it any longer. In addition, robots take care of pre-process tasks and notify us in advance, so we don’t forget what we need to do. In these ways, it reduces stress.

This solution is valuable because it can automate tasks which would otherwise be left for us to process manually without us incurring an enormous investment for the cost of the system.

Since we are a life insurance company, our contract terms are very long. They could last for 50 years, or even a lifetime, which means we have many old contracts. If we make an investment into a system, this is an enormous cost for us. If we automate with a system, there would be a wasted cost. So, we had almost given up on automation, thinking the future of our company would have to rely on manual processes. That is when we found out about this solution. By implementing it, we were able to solve the issue of automation, which we had almost gave up on.

The fact that its robots can touch on various systems, like humans, this is what is ground- breaking. It means it can handle various systems.

It’s not about the solution itself, but our administrative work is mostly done in the morning. This is something I have been speaking to Automation Anywhere about. If they could offer licenses only for use in the morning, we’d have a bigger savings cost-wise. Currently, the license is good for 24 hours, but there is not much to do at night and plenty to do in the morning. So, if we could use more in the morning, that would be a great, as we also have a bot farm. This is also when we increase the number of tasks to be stabilized. If they are managed within the client or server, there will be a risk of losing the service in case of emergencies, such as power outage. Therefore, we are working to manage them virtually on servers. With Deloitte’s help, we have been setting up a structure where we can get the robots to work without having the client. That would hopefully ensure stability and viability in case of emergencies.

If we could hire part-time workers on shift-based employment, that would be ideal.

As far as stability is concerned, there have been some challenges. Sometimes, we experience our computers freezing up for no apparent reason or the network being inaccessible. So, when the robots stop working, the cause may be the RPA or it could be some other culprit. 

While there is room for improvement, I do think that we need to take into consideration that the robots may stop working at any given moment. That’s why we need a tool that supervises the robots. The Automation Anywhere products already include such tools within them. We need to be able to monitor them. We need to be able to find out as soon as the robots stop and where the processing has ended. These functions are included, so we just need to quickly jump on the recovery process. That is what I think is important.

It is highly scalable. At the time of implementing this solution, we thought that the scaling might be challenging if the setup process took a lot of time. However, it turned out to be very scalable because, by segmenting, it can also be applied to other new business processes. In addition, it can be done without engineers or system engineers. It does not need to be developed, but we do need to set it up based on rules. 

The cost for scalability is much cheaper than developing a new system.

We are using Automation Anywhere products, but we are getting technical support from Deloitte, from whom we purchased a license. They get back to us swiftly. When they can’t handle an issue, they elevate it to Automation Anywhere, who tackle issues daily. My impression is that we don’t really have technical issues. In general, we follow the manuals that we created, and this solves the issues. There has not been a situation where we have had to contact the technical support everyday for some technical issue. We don’t need to use them that much. That differentiates this from our more comprehensive IT systems.

The reason why we thought that we needed a solution is the management of our contracts last for long periods of time, which includes the maintenance of old products as well. It’s almost impossible to systemize everything from the cost standpoint, as well as the time standpoint, but it can be done if we use a robot. However, it can’t be solved unless we use this RPA. The fact that we can tackle this is huge. We thought that we could improve the productivity if we use it. This is what triggered us to implement it. It was shocking for us when we first saw a software that can handle tasks like a human. 

When we decided to implement an RPA solution, it was our goal to be able to set it up ourselves from the beginning. As we had no knowledge on this product, we asked Deloitte to help us create a manual which suited our needs. The systems being used are different from company to company, so we needed to make it so it work for our company. Generally, product manuals are written in a way that says this command does something. While ours does say this, e.g., to activate this system, use this command. We worked closely with Deloitte to standardize our manual. Deloitte also taught us how to build it as we attempted the skill transfer. 

We had some challenges in the beginning. However, if you have experience with Excel macros with End User Computing (EUC) or have used Access, it’s an easy transition. If you have not done any EUC, you will have to learn from scratch. So, it may take some time. In general, it is much easier than programming.

Automation Anywhere has different types of solutions. When you have a large-scale operation, you need something that is scalable, which can monitor server sinking and operations, and is suitable for the large-scale business development. In addition, it is highly adaptable with the existing systems. So far, except for the few systems, it can recognize all the systems currently used by us.

I would to give the solution a ten, but considering the stability issue and its readiness, I would say that it is between an eight to a nine. 

Foreign Language: (Japanese)

この製品を主にどのように使用していますか?また、パフォーマンスはどうですか?

まず我々が取り組んだところは、第一生命は保険会社ですので、保険にはもの凄く加入の時の 契約の手続きであったりだとか、加入されてからの色々な住所変更だったりだとか、色んな証 明書の発行だったりとかですね、で最終的には保険金をお支払いする、そういった事務がかな りの量であります。で、まずはそういう事務のオペレーション、バックオフィスですね、そう いった所を自動化していこうという所で、そこからまず始めて行きました。で、ある程度そこ で、Automation Anywhere の製品が機能するんではないかと言うことが確認できましたので、 それをもっと広げていこうっていうことで、今は営業部門の色んな資料作りであったりだと か、業績の管理の資料作りだったりだとか、あとはそれ以外の運用部門、資産運用部門の 色々、バックオフィスの事務であったりとかですね。あとは例えばコンプライアンス関係です ね、いわゆる反社会的勢力のチェックであったりだとかですね、そういったまさに第一生命の 中にある色んな事務をロボット、RPA を導入してオートメーション化していこう、そういった 取り組みを進めています。 

当ソリューションはどんな点において最も役に立ちますか?

そうですね、やっぱり機能と言いますか、なかなかシステム投資をすると膨大なコストがかか ってしまうとかですね、そういったいわゆる手作業で残っているところをこのソリューション を使うとやはり自動化できるということですね。我々は保険会社ですので、契約の機関と言う のがもの凄く長いんです。50 年であったりだとか終身保険であったりだとか、そうすると、古 い契約っていうのがもの凄く一杯あってですね、これはシステム投資をすると莫大なコストが かかってしまうと。これをシステムで自動化すると無駄な費用が掛かる。そういった所で諦め

ていて、これはもう第一生命は未来を手で処理をしていくしかないなと思っていたところに、 こういったソリューションがあるということで導入して、少し諦めていたようなところも RPA を導入することによって解決することができたということかなと思います。

やっぱりあれですね、ロボットは色んなシステムを触ることが出来る、人のようにね。そうい った所が画期的なところです。

色んなシステムを動かすことができるということです。

当ソリューションを使用するとどのようなメリットがありますか?御社が機能する上でどのよ うな改善をもたらしましたか?

やっぱり直接的な効果というのはこれまで人がやっていた事務の作業をロボットがやってくれ ることになったので、その分、業務の量が削減できるということです。で、それは単に効率化 っていうだけではなくて人がやるべき仕事をもっと拡大することができる、ということかなと 思います。もう一つがやってみてやはりユーザーの実際にこれを導入している人と話をする と、もの凄くストレスが無くなる、と。我々は保険会社、金融機関ですので事務のミスとかっ ていうのはもの凄くナーバスで、何重にもチェックしないといけないとか、そういった所がこ のロボットでなくなる、とかですね。後は前処理みたいなことはロボットがやってくれてお知 らせしてくれるので、やらないといけないことを忘れない、とかですね。そういったストレス がなくなるということがそういった効果もあるのかなと思っています。

当ソリューションの安定性に関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか?

安定性っていう意味では、やはり色々課題があって、それは通常、普通に事務作業で我々パソ コンを触っていると、たまに原因が分からないけどフリーズしたりとか、ネットワークがたま たま繋がらないとか、そういった、この RPA が原因のものとかですね、RPA が原因じゃなく てロボットが止まるということはよくあります。だから、それは色々改善していくところもあ るんですけど、ある一定程度、そういうロボットが停止するっていうこととかは織り込んでお かないといけないことなのかなと思っています。そのためにも、やはりロボットを監視できる ツールであったり、そういったものは Automation Anywhere さんの製品にはすべて入っていま すが、そう監視できるようにしておく。止まったらすぐ分かるようにしていく。どこで作業が 終わったら、止まってしまったのがすぐ分かるようにする。そういった機能も完備されている ので、それを速やかにリカバリーする態勢を取っていく。そういうことが重要なのかなと思っ ています。

当ソリューションの拡張性に関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか?

まず、拡張性についてはですね、極めて高いんではないかなと思っています。我々もこれを導 入する当初から、あまりにもセットアップしていくのに時間がかかるっていうものだとなかな か拡大できないと思っていましたが、それを部品化することによって、要は、一度作ったもの をどんどん新しい別の業務にも適用することができるというところで、その拡張性って言うの は高い。しかもあまりエンジニア、システムエンジニアがなしでできるというところですね。 開発ではなく、そのあるルールに基づいてセットアップして行けばいい、という形になってい ますので、そういったところでは拡張性と拡張するためのコストがシステム開発するよりかな り安い、ローコストでできるんじゃないかと思っています。

このソリューションにテクニカルサポートを利用したことはありますか?ある場合は、サポー トをどのように評価しますか?

我々、Automation Anywhere さんの製品を導入しているんですけど、テクニカルサポート関係 は保守っていう面ではライセンスを Deloitte さんから経由で買ってますので、Deloitte さんに一 時的なサポートをしてもらっています。あそこにはもの凄く迅速に対応していただいています し、また Deloitte さんでは解決できないところは Automation Anywhere さんが日々、解決に当 たってくれているということです。ただ、あまりテクニカルな問題で問題になるようなことは そこまで多くないというのが印象ですね。大体、自分たちが作ったマニュアルだとかそういっ たことを読み込むと、大体解決できるということで、そこまでテクニカルな問題が発生して、 日々問い合わせをしないといけないとかですね、そういったことはあまりないです。なので、 あまり、そういった意味ではあまり活用しなくても大丈夫というようなですね。そこが IT と は、完全なシステムとは違うっていうところなのかなと思います。

初期セットアップには関与されましたか?セットアップは簡単、それとも複雑でしたか?どう いった意味で簡単、あるいは複雑でしたか?

RPA のソリューションを導入するにあたっては、目標としては自分たちでできるようになるっ て言うのが最初から目標にしていました。ただ、もちろん我々もこのソリューションには何の 知識もない状態でしたので、最初は Deloitte さんに来て頂いて、我々の第一生命に合うマニュ アル作りというのを一緒に取り組んできた。例えば、会社によっては色んな使っているシステ ムも違いますので、そういったものが第一生命で合うようにしていく、と。具体的には通常用 意されている製品のマニュアルっていうのは、このコマンドは何をするコマンドというような 書き方になっているのですけど、逆に第一生命のこのシステムを起動させるためにはこのコマ ンドを使う、とかですね。そういったマニュアルで標準化をしていくということを Deloitte さ んと一緒にやってきました。で、その作り方も Deloitte さんに教えてもらいながら、スキルト ランスファーを図っていくということです。もちろん最初は少し苦労した面もありましたが、

ただある意味 EUC でエクセルのマクロを作ったことがあるとかですね、アクセスを触ったこ とがあるとかですね、そういったことにある程度知識がある人だと、すんなりとというか、ス ムーズに入っていける。まったく EUC もやったことない人だと、やっぱり一から覚えて行か ないといけないので、少し時間がかかるかなと思います。ただ、一般的にはですね、プログラ ミングをするとかよりはずっと容易にできるのかなと思います。

当ソリューションの次のリリースに含まれていたらいいなと思うのはどのような機能ですか? また、それはなぜですか?

ソリューション自体ではないんですけど、どうしてもわれわれの事務の仕事っていうのは、朝 やりたい仕事が多くてですね。なので、これは Automation Anywhere さんともお話ししている んですけど、午前中だけ使えるライセンスとかですね。そういうのがあると、コスト的にもも っとメリットが出てくるのでは。今、24 時間動かすと、なかなか夜中にやらせる仕事があんま り少なくてですね、朝一でやりたい仕事が多くてですね。それをもっと沢山稼働できるように なれば。ボットファームなんかもあるんですけど、そういった所をもっと充実して頂ければい いかな、と思います。ここもやはり製品というよりも、安定化していく業務数が多くなってく ると何か、サーバーとかクライアントとかに、例えば停電が起こったりした時にクライアント で管理していると、全部止まってしまうとかですね、そういったリスクもありますのでロボッ トについてはバーチャルで、サーバーで管理できるようなですね、そういったことを今取り組 みを進めています。Deloitte さんに手伝っていただいたりしながらですね、クライアントを持 たずにロボットを動かすような仕掛けづくりを今、検討を進めていると言うところです。それ によって安定性もありますし、何かトラブルがあった時の堅牢性が確保できるという風に思っ ています。

パートの人を雇ってシフト勤務とかですね、そういったことが出来るといいなと思っていま す。

新しいソリューションに投資をする必要があると思ったのはどうしてですか?

まずソリューションが必要だと思ったところはやはり、我々は...さっきの話と繰り返し になりますが、契約の管理と言うのはもの凄く長期間に渡っていかないといけない、 と。そうすると、古い商品の管理って言うのも沢山あります。それを全部システム化し ていくっていうのはコスト面、その時間の面でも不可能な話なので、そういったところ をこのロボットが解決できる。逆にこの RPA でないと解決しようがないというところ ですね。そういったところが取り組めるというところがもの凄く大きい。これであれば そういったことも解決できるんではないかと思ったところです。それが、導入のきっか けです。人と同じように作業ができるというソフトウェアと言うのは、見た時はかなり 衝撃的なもので、これであればもっと生産性を高めることができるんではないかと言う 風に考えたものです。

最終的に当ソリューションを選択した理由は何ですか?

Automation Anywhere さんの製品は色々なソリューションがあると思いますが、やはり 大規模で展開している上で、さきほど質問があった拡張性ですね、サーバー撃沈を監視 できる、運用を監視できる、それか大規模に展開することに適したものかなと思ってい ます。あとは既存のシステムとの認識度合いも極めて高いということですね。今まで、

一部の例外を除いて第一生命が使っているシステムをすべて認識して触ることができる という風になっています。

このソリューションに 1 から 10 の評価(10=最高)を付けるとしたら、どのように評 価しますか?そしてその理由は何ですか?

10、と言いたいところですが、さっきの安定性の所とかでまだまだ工夫していかないといけな い所があるので、でもそれは製品だけじゃなくて我々の態勢を含めてですね、そういった意味 では 8 点。8 点から 9 点くらいです。

I deployed this solution mostly in the finance and accounting space. We had two primary use cases. One was automating the procured invoice to pay process and the other was automating the order to cash cycle, OTC process.

It increased productivity. It raised the productivity percentage of individuals 20 to 35%. We also saw cost reduction.

Automation Anywhere was easier to learn for the developers. It has a lot of out of box features when it comes to SAP, Excel, and others. However, on the other hand, I did not like one feature which is a built-in linear code that is a straight line and it does not have the modular functionality of UiPath so the code becomes one long code and if you need to make changes you need to look through the entire code and make changes. After the code is returned, even if there are some changes in the process, the support cycle is really difficult because, with UiPath, it's modular in structure. For example, one variable changes so it's declared as a variable and you can just change it and the code automatically reflects the change. It creates a nightmare to maintain. That was the one key drawback from Automation Anywhere. The good thing about Automation Anywhere was learning the best practices of it and using the development framework was easier so getting developers who knew AA was relatively easier than getting developers who knew UiPath or Blue Prism.

We faced a big challenge when moving from AA9 to 10. That was a nightmare. The whole process took six months to one year because we had to do it for 12 to 15 clients in my organization and I was leading the Automation Anywhere deployment for 25 clients.

The biggest issue was that the new license required upgraded hardware infrastructure so we were getting all new tech stuff procured which meant that we were getting updated RAMs and things like that. Getting the licenses was easier but building the infrastructure which was required to support the new version was difficult.

Automation Anywhere is one of the least stable RPA tools out of the top five RPA solutions. A lot of times you need to rely on certain features that are really unstable. Three years back 90% of our projects were on AA. Two years back it became 70% with 20% being on Blue Prism and 10% UiPath. This year onwards it's around 50% on UiPath and 50% on Automation Anywhere. The reason why we have 50% on AA is because we have a developer strain on AA. The code is not stable. You have to recode again and again. Then when you do recode, changing the code is really tough.

Scalability is good. It's one of the better ones.

We didn't face any issues from their technical support. They were responsive and helpful.

The initial setup is more straightforward compared to other solutions like UiPath. Initially, it is relatively difficult. If you have a very simple straight linear process then Automation Anywhere is easy to implement and to deploy but as soon as you get into complexities or where you have more rules like finance or accounting where I deployed specifically at times, there are a lot of variances in the process. That's where Automation Anywhere actually becomes a headache to manage.

If you implement it right way the ROI can start within one year. It delivers quick benefits in terms of ROI.

It's cheaper than other similar solutions.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten. 

I would advise two things to someone considering this solution. Go for it if you are positive it is very simple and you understand your processing end to end. It is a cheaper tool compared to others and the initial implementation is relatively easier. You will get results faster. Second, if your process has many variations, is complex, and you do not know a lot about your process, do not use Automation Anywhere, otherwise, you will run into trouble while going live and after support.