Automation Anywhere Reviews

I am working as a solution architect at Boston Scientific, and I help other teams automate their manual processes using Automation Anywhere as the primary RPA tool. 

The business cases come from multiple teams, such as the HR team, service management team, or supply chain management team. We identify the manual processes that are the best fit for automation opportunities. 

Initially, we review the entire process to understand how the teams are completing their tasks manually. Then, we assess how much we can automate using Automation Anywhere, the features it provides, and how suitable it is for the process. We then convert that particular manual process into automation opportunities.

We are on the path of implementing GenAI for digital transformation. We are doing demos of the AI agents to implement GenAI across all the verticals at Boston Scientific. We are figuring out the right opportunities and use cases.

With chatbot integrations and AI agents, we are able to create responses by extracting the data from the database, massaging those replies, and replying back to the customers. 

We just need to know the end goal to automate a particular process. In Automation Anywhere, we have multiple commands to automate from Excel or record the UI. A person needs to just drag and drop the commands and fill in the data.

Automation Anywhere supports various types of integrations. We have integrated SAP, Excel, Python script, and JavaScript. We can easily integrate them with Automation Anywhere.

We have many opportunities from multiple teams. There are requirements to automate Excel, the UI, or their scripts. We have various integrations with technologies like Python, Java, or macros. Automation Anywhere is perfect for integrating those technologies.

Automation Anywhere has undergone drastic changes over the past five years, transitioning from version 10 to A360, including desktop-based and cloud-based options. The tool is now more stable, with more opportunities and new commands, like recording for the UI or advanced Excel features. 

For beginners learning Automation Anywhere, there should be predefined templates to start creating a task bot. Instead of dragging and dropping action commands and doing error handling, there should be predefined templates that they can directly use. It will help maintain code uniformity across the organization. Besides templates, most features are already available in Automation Anywhere to help automate a manual process into an RPA opportunity.

I have been using Automation Anywhere since 2016, so it has been nine years.

It is stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.

We have multiple teams in India, the USA, and Costa Rica. We are working from multiple locations. We are a team of 35 users.

The technical support is excellent. I would rate it a ten out of ten. We just have to raise a ticket, after which we receive a call, email, or ping from the Automation Anywhere team. We then provide our queries or show where we are getting stuck, and they provide us with the solution.

Previously, I worked with UiPath and Power Automate. However, I find Automation Anywhere to offer a better experience.

The setup is easy because all updates and upgrades are synchronized with the newer versions.

We have a dedicated support team that helps deploy the bots. We raise the change requests, which are approved by a technical person and the release manager. After all the approvals and validations are in place, the automation bot gets deployed to the new environment.

The time required for the maintenance of bots depends on the requirement or process. We can see the status of all bots in the control room. It is simple.

We have a completely dedicated team to track bots. We have more than 100 bots running in the control room.

In terms of ROI, we have a good amount, which amounts to millions of dollars per year.

I am not responsible for the pricing part, but I know the pricing is competitive compared to other tools.

It is relatively simple. It is a platform where you get all the commands for integration and other functions to automate your end-to-end process. It is easy to learn and cloud-based. The control room is easy to understand. All these features will be helpful for automating or starting your RPA journey. 

I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten.

I am trying to solve data challenges with Automation Anywhere. Not all data is good quality. This presents a challenge for automation, which is important.

Automation Anywhere has impacted our efficiency and productivity in a very positive way since we are shutting down a very manual process. 

Automation Anywhere has helped my company with APIs. We are currently in a project to create APIs for our core banking service and other transactional systems, migrating from another integration technology to API. We have measured the time saved by using document automation with Automation Anywhere, and it amounts to about five hours.

We have used the APA. It's helped us achieve some automation. We're working on a project now, which requires us to make APIs, and we're using this for that work.

We use the document automation capabilities. We can optimize about three or four people who previously performed the tasks manually. This is just the beginning of the impact we see, however, it's a significant impact for us. We've saved about 500 hours so far.

I am unsure how Automation Anywhere can be improved.

Integration with other platforms may prove to be very interesting for us and others.

I started using Automation Anywhere last year. We are currently in the setup phase for our solution and need to move to production. It's very recent, as we discovered it at the end of last year.

Before Automation Anywhere, we were testing other solutions including Microsoft and Oracle, and currently we are testing Data Stimulus.

The deployment is ongoing. It's not difficult. You have all of the information you need to implement successfully. 

The pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Automation Anywhere are good. It's more of a challenge for us to get all the value that the platform can provide. It's not very costly; it's a fair price.

The main differences between Automation Anywhere and other tools are in their focus. For example, we need many partners to make good things happen with other tools, but with Automation Anywhere, it works very well.

In the age of agentic AI, the biggest challenges for me and my company come from people not being open to this technology. In financial services and traditional banks, people are very cautious. They need extensive testing and need to see the technology working to understand its advantages. AI governance is very important to me and my company as many areas are inquiring about AI. Without governance, we would be in chaos.

The AI in the studio and the integration from all the AI and other platforms is very interesting, and it's a very good opportunity for us now. 

We do not use the COE just yet.

On a scale of one to ten, I'd rate the solution a nine. I don't know all of the solutions. I only really know Automation Anywhere, and so it's hard to compare it against all others. 

We have had a number of different use cases for Automation Anywhere. As a higher education institution, many of the use cases have been for back office operations. 

Some use cases include automating expense reimbursement processes. This involves the submission of data after collection, validation of data, and several different steps in that process. 

We are exploring invoice reconciliation and invoice processing as a new use case. Many of the other use cases have been system-to-system data transfer where they don't have APIs, which has been accomplished through UI automation and RPA.

We chose Automation Anywhere to investigate the feasibility of using RPA in place of dedicating other team's time for developing custom APIs between systems. We wanted to tackle problems that we couldn't dedicate resources to solving with custom in-house development and bridge the gap between third-party external software.

The governance guardrails built into the Automation Anywhere platform have allowed us to develop solutions at a pace while adhering to our internal organizational policies.

The scalability of Automation Anywhere, the framework, and user interface are particularly impressive. When evaluating Automation Anywhere versus alternatives such as UiPath for RPA specifically, their tool works exceptionally well. Their customer support model has been fantastic at resolving issues. Security and infrastructure are other significant components why we continue to use them. 

The actual tools on the RPA side have been very nice to work with. When onboarding members of our team, being a lower-code platform with much of it being no code, it has been good to bring people up to speed. It's easy to bring both people from developer and non-developer backgrounds up to scale. Our developers have applied standard SDLC principles towards working within that platform.

With agentic process automation, there are several challenges we were looking to solve. GenAI infused document automation has been of great interest to us, especially in invoice processing for our financial side. With APA in particular, some use cases involve taking complex processes that could have large decision trees, and instead of dedicating time and resources towards fleshing out all those if/then statements or pushing exceptions to human middle processing, we aim to lower that scope and allow for quicker delivery time.

The Composer orchestration tools have been great in developing new solutions. Automation Anywhere started as a pilot at our CMU, where we are at the forefront of numerous computer science areas. It's part of our CTO's mission to embrace automation tools, artificial intelligence, and robotic process automation, bringing internal processes into the 21st century and beyond.

Automation Anywhere helps us overcome challenges in the age of GenAI. The platform has solved our initial challenges as we transition from being a pilot to a long-term customer. With GenAI, challenges revolve around use case identification and implementing AI in processes while ensuring governance and protecting sensitive information, government information, and student information.

AI governance and data protection are extremely important for our company. We are currently reviewing the Autopilot capability and evaluating document automation with AI capabilities for new solutions.

As we expand our components of the Automation Anywhere platform that we utilize, we need better connections between them. Currently, our shell framework, metrics, logging, and guardrails are done at an RPA or Bot level. As we take advantage of other features such as work queues, process Composer, and AI agents, we would prefer to see features around offering frameworks around those models or domains specifically that can encompass all of the subset features that Automation Anywhere offers.

Bot Insight is an available feature, and we can create our own custom metrics and logging in RPA Bots, but we don't want to have to send results to a logging subset bot after using an AI agent or higher components such as document automation. We need a native way in Automation Anywhere's framework to tie all that information together, including AI dashboard, governance dashboards, and document automation results.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for about two and a half to three and a half years.

Their customer support model has been fantastic at resolving issues.

Positive

In the RPA space specifically, we have not used any other solution that addresses similar needs before using Automation Anywhere. 

For internal technologies prior to implementing RPA, we had various solutions. For table-based and database-based operations, users were using spreadsheets. 

We are now able to convert certain things to databases, even without native APIs for certain software platforms, because we can leverage Automation Anywhere to bridge the gap between disconnected systems. In the specific landscape that Automation Anywhere competes in, we haven't used direct competitors. 

We have been replacing software developer adjacent technologies, custom script solutions, and low code/no code platforms with different features from Automation Anywhere.

Standing up the service itself had no significant challenges. There were a few small challenges, however, nothing significant that were nonstarters for us. Our teams were able to work around any issues. The biggest thing we had was was enabling SAML authentication to work with our identity management services. 

Other than that, standing up the service, connecting the host controller to our local VMs, etc., that was easy. There was a little bit of network stuff, and some of DevOps stuff. Thankfully, we have a great DevOps team. Working with Automation Anywhere is largely straightforward and seamless.

We have been happy with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Automation Anywhere so far. There is sticker shock with many new features, however, we definitely think that the end results can more than justify the cost. We are evaluating the use case and the resources needed to stand up solutions using some of these features. 

The cost versus return for the traditional out-of-the-box features has been very reasonable.

Since the evaluation phase, we have not considered other solutions that do the same as Automation Anywhere. We have been extremely happy with Automation Anywhere. The tools provided for the cost, scalability, robustness, and infrastructure have been very satisfactory, and we have not had a significant need to evaluate alternative platforms. 

This may not stay that way forever as this is an ever-changing landscape, but for the foreseeable future, we don't see ourselves evaluating alternative platforms.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Automation Anywhere a ten.

We are still in the relative infancy with Automation Anywhere. We still use mostly RPA bots and haven't quite gotten to the Agentic Process yet. We are hoping to upgrade our platform to the Enterprise platform this year, so we are still at the beginning of the learning curve in the RPA bot-building stages. We have a couple of Co-Pilot projects going on currently, but we are still trying to get the process owners to buy in.

The main challenge we are looking to solve with Agentic Process automation involves processes that work specifically with call center operations. This includes agents taking calls, managing cases, working with ServiceNow, ticket handling, and similar tasks. Agentic Process automation shines when people create cases and tickets flow in and out of the system, but a human isn't needed to process most of that because it is all being captured by the computer during intake. Saving time working on the phone, gathering information, and handling ticket information makes APA a huge game-changer.

In the age of Agentic AI, the biggest challenges for me and my company involve adoption. We are still in the infancy of process automation, so currently, it is just getting the stakeholders to buy in. Automation Anywhere has helped me with that. Our company has looked at different software vendors, and Automation Anywhere is worlds apart from any other offering. The platform itself is intuitive and easy to use. I have even mentioned to people who aren't developers or very computer savvy that they could pick up Automation Anywhere and just get started.

I have really loved all of the new Agentic Process automation pieces from Automation Anywhere that are being introduced. They are announcing new features at AA Imagine, and it has been fantastic to see all of the amazing innovations. I am really hoping we can get to that Enterprise platform this year so we can take advantage of the APA capabilities, as there is groundbreaking, industry-changing technology happening.

It is difficult for me to suggest improvements for Automation Anywhere because it is such a fantastic product. We have looked at competitors, and there is nobody that holds a candle to Automation Anywhere.

It is challenging to specify needed improvements because there is so much functionality we are not taking advantage of yet. We haven't been able to utilize the full product offerings, which makes it difficult to suggest specific improvements.

One of the things that has gone very well is the control room itself. The control room itself is easy to use. One area that could potentially be improved is adding additional widget capability within the main dashboard in the control room itself.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for about eight years.

It's been great. It's been flawless. We've had great integrations into Genesys and ServiceNow. Deployment has been wonderful.

It is fantastic. It has been great. It is perfectly priced for the quality received. When paying for quality, that is exactly what you get.

We considered UiPath and Blue Prism before choosing Automation Anywhere. ServiceNow has an RPA platform, but it was not suitable for our needs. The main competitors we looked at were UiPath and Blue Prism, but Automation Anywhere was exactly what we were looking for.

I believe Automation Anywhere could help achieve our automation goals, but we haven't reached the APA stage yet, as we are still in the RPA stage. There are numerous use cases we could implement.

AI governance is important for my company in general. Having governance in place ensures things work out properly and stay aligned. However, that part is managed by our product manager. 

We have several copilot projects in development, but we are not using Automation 360 AI yet. We don't use Automation Anywhere COE yet, which is another offering we hope to invest in this year. I am not utilizing document automation in current processes, which is another capability we hope to get buy-in for this year.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a ten out of ten.

Get manual tasks done by automations wherever possible. For now, we only use task bots. We use them across whole EMEA at RICOH for different departments like: Business Services, SCM, Annuity & Services, Data governance, Finance and Sales. When I joined Ricoh, there were 30 processes in production and now we scaled up over 50 processes in production and counting.

By implementing Automation Anywhere, we wanted to get rid of the mundane tasks. They are better to be carried out by bots so that the employees can focus on tasks that need human decisions, not repetitive tasks. We also wanted better customer satisfaction.

We also have an email automation where people can write emails to us 24/7, and we create service requests inside Siebel. It is an Oracle app. 

With all process in production so far, we reduced the manual effort which led to more satisfaction by employees to get rid of the mundane tasks and focus more on tasks which need human decisions. Especially for our Annuity & Services department we have a quicker response time, and this led to more customer satisfaction.

Automation Anywhere constantly bringing new features in their product. Which will open more possibilities for automation out of the box.

The integration of coding languages like Python, JavaScript an VB Script will allow to extend the capabilities.

The bot store is also a good point to explore pre-built automation to integrate in your tasks.

To keep yourself up to date they provide Skill Booster learning trails for the new features and product updates.

The website has a lot to provide, but with this whole variety of information it is hard for me to keep track and navigate through.

AI agents need constant improvement, but this is by the nature of AI.

We had a use case for handwritten documents, which we were not able to extract safely, so some improvements on document automation would be great.

I am using Automation Anywhere as a developer since September 2021, so for almost 4 years now.

It is stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability because we can use the workload management feature.

We have approximately 20 people using this solution.

I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

Positive

Prior to Automation Anywhere, we were doing almost everything manually. We started with Automation Anywhere version 11 and later migrated to A360.

We have a separate team that handles the integration and setup. We are still on the on-premises version of Automation Anywhere. We are not using the cloud version. We have virtual machines running for us developers. We have a development environment where we use our own dedicated VMs. We develop automation on these VMs, and then we push it through the UAT and the last life cycle for production.

As far as I have heard from our team, they said it was easy to implement.

We started with version 11 of Automation Anywhere back in 2019. When I joined the team in 2022, we were migrating from version 11 to A360. I directly started in the migration phase where I could help with my fresh knowledge, because I was one of the first ones certified in A360.

Our central RPA team, which handles resources, currently consists of five people. I am not sure how many people from the service provider are involved, as they handle on-prem resources. On our side, we have five people pushing these things to production. As a developer, not much maintenance is required.

I am not involved in the pricing, but based on what I hear from our central RPA team, it is not very expensive; it is also not cheap. Its price is in the midrange.

We are not using the AI tools from Automation Anywhere, but we have created some of our own modules, which we are triggering in combination with Automation Anywhere in Python scripting language. We are using this combination for text analysis and problem descriptions from our customers. We are getting the sentiment score to categorize these service requests so that our agents can handle them better. We will, for sure, investigate if we can use Automation Anywhere's AI capabilities in the future.

I am responsible for showing and teaching new joiners how to work with Automation Anywhere. We also have some new citizen developers. We have asked different departments if they have some people on their team who are interested in this. They are not professional developers like me, but I teach them the basics. I also recommend they join the citizen developer training provided by the Automation Anywhere University. They take that training first, and then we do in-depth training tailored to the RICOH processes. It takes them three to six months, but it also depends on how much time they can spend on the training because they also have their regular work.

If you start using Automation Anywhere I highly recommend the Automation Anywhere University platform to start with the learning trails.

These are focused on three roles: Automation Lead, Automation Developer and Citizen Developer.

Also, great content on the Skill Boosters which will give you in depth training on a particular topic.

To scale your automation journey, good practice is building central tasks like “switching a responsibility” in Oracle with proper error handling that not every developer needs to implement these by his own. With these generic central tasks, it will also save time in terms of maintenance.

For any questions you might have, you can ask them in the Pathfinder Community where you get answers from Automation Anywhere’s global community of Pathfinders.

For companies starting new process automation implementation, I would advise not to tackle the largest processes at the beginning. Start with small ones to track benefits and demonstrate to the board what process automation has achieved in a short time. In the past, we tackled larger problems first and spent one or two years getting them to work end to end as expected. This was not the best strategy.

I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

First, I tried to automate the process for surface automation, and it was mainly in a Citrix environment. At that time, I think no proper solution or feature was available with Automation Anywhere. Then, I tried it for some web applications and Windows applications, and there it worked perfectly. 

It saves time. It has saved 4,000 to 5,000 hours for one large complex process. If we break it down, it has saved 1,000 hours per process. The time savings vary based on the complexity of the process.

It is simple to learn. It is straightforward. You can learn about Automation Anywhere from their university or YouTube. Lots of YouTube channels are there. They provide you with all the information you need. Non-technical employees would need one month to three months to learn it. It also depends on their grasping and learning skills.

With Oracle and ServiceNow, there seem to be challenges. With SAP, it worked very well. We first tried Automation Anywhere with Oracle but had to go for Blue Prism. With Oracle, Blue Prism was easier and a little bit more stable than Automation Anywhere. Even with ServiceNow, the automation was very unreliable. It did not work as expected.

Business users face difficulties with Automation Anywhere setup. As an administrator, even if I provide any license or features, they would not be able to use it on their local individual machines. The client sometimes does not work perfectly. There are difficulties when we install the Automation Anywhere client. It can be hard to know what is causing issues. They might have a different Java version or other software installed on their machines. Automation Anywhere clients sometimes need clean machines or virtual machines where we deploy the bots. Such difficulties are there, but it does not happen with just Automation Anywhere. I have also observed this problem with other solutions.

Automation Anywhere does not provide API integration. You have to design everything on your side. It does not have an inbuilt API tool like Postman. They do not provide a virtual interface to execute GET, PUT queries. It is very difficult in Automation Anywhere, but in other solutions, this feature is very good.

It is not stable with the Microsoft Edge browser. They have to develop or integrate lots of things. It used to work very well with Internet Explorer around five years ago, but Internet Explorer is gone now. People have moved to Microsoft Edge. If you are using Google Chrome, it is easy. With Microsoft Edge, sometimes processes fail, and you do not always know the reason. You have to debug it entirely.

I have been using it for a total of five years, but in between, I used other tools as well. Overall, it has been around two years with Automation Anywhere. I have used versions 10.2, 11.3, and 360, and a little bit of 2019 as well.

The product is overall stable. With lots of normal applications, you can use it without any issues. 

Automation Anywhere is 50% to 70% good in terms of scaling. For business users who want everything on their machines and do not want to use different virtual machines, it is not scalable. Management also worries about deployment costs.

I contacted their technical support. Their L1 support is just normal, and you can get that information on Google or YouTube. They do not have a solution a lot of times. Their L2 support is quite expert. They know how to address things that are happening, and they will try to understand and find the root cause.

Neutral

I am also using other RPA tools such as Blue Prism and UiPath, and I prefer them over Automation Anywhere. 

In API integrations, Automation Anywhere is way behind other tools because its interface is not simple to use for business users. If someone is using Automation Anywhere as the first RPA tool, they will understand it, but if they have used any other RPA tool in the market, they will feel the need to improve Automation Anywhere's UI and API integrations. Additionally, in the API integration part, companies are nowadays using scripting with SAP and others. Automation Anywhere can also improve in that area. 

UiPath's design structure is quite powerful and straightforward. It is easier to work with when you have a complex process with multiple load items. API integration is quite powerful. We can easily use that.

If you are deploying the client on a virtual machine, it is very simple and straightforward. If you are going to do it on a common machine for normal development purposes, it can be a bit complex if you are using other software on the same machine. 

Upgrading is easy. I have migrated some processes from versions 10 to 11, but the newer version requires some time and cost because sometimes the processes designed in the older versions cannot be migrated to the newer version. Instead of migrating, you can redesign the same process in the newer version. That would be better.

Usually, all developers are involved in the bot maintenance at a later stage. If only considering support and maintenance, you will require two people there. If your team has around ten to fifteen people, you will require two people for support.

Cost-wise, it is fine. A lot of medium businesses prefer Automation Anywhere. The development cost is also lower.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten.

I started with Automation Anywhere version 11, which was the desktop-based version. It was the most initial cloud version. There is also a 2019 cloud version of Automation Anywhere. With some modifications and improvements, 2019 led to A360, which was again a cloud version but an improved form of the 2019 version. A360 is the current and running version of Automation Anywhere.

Most of the problems we've worked to solve have been related to business process automation. We were able to automate email - including replying to email, and capturing data.

We've also used it for website automation. We can do object cloning in PRA terms.

We were able to automate several data systems. We've automated Excel, for example, and various backbones of process systems.

It releases humans from monotonous tasks. Automating helps a lot and gives us the ability to free people for more high-end activities.

Most of the problems we have solved are related to business process automation. Ideally, in RPA, around 80% of the problems are related to business process automation. 

Processes and tasks automated compared to a manual approach offers a lot of benefits. Any RPA tool will offer good time savings. When we have to do things manually, if there is a 20 or 30-step process, as a human, we may get confused and redraw information. We make mistakes. All of these things take time. Things can be very data-intensive and this takes time for a human. They need to look it up and validate, et cetera. and there are high chances of error. A human can misread or misunderstand, this could lead to losses. With RPA, we gain time savings, and we can make everything 100% error-free.

To train a non-technical employee, it might take a bit. They need to learn the basic foundations. It might take a month or two if they give time to learning every day.

It helps increase productivity by 20% to 30%.

I can integrate tools with Automation Anywhere. We've done Excel and database automation, web applications, data tables, FTTP tables, et cetera. 

Copilot is an area with a lot of scope for improvement. It's the number one thing to improve. It just gives us a structure. It doesn't automate the workflow. This is a major area of improvement. Currently, it's still evolving. The integrations in Automation Anywhere are evolving, and going forward, they could be more beneficial for end-to-end processes. It should not be just an add-on, but it should be very well integrated.

I have been using it for close to four to four and a half years now.

The stability is okay. I would rate it 8.5 out of ten.

I would rate the solution 8.5 out of ten. It is quite scalable. 

Power Automate is quite good, and gaining ground. With Automation Anywhere, you can log into the control room and work on it.

The deployment is on the cloud. The process depends on how straightforward it is. It depends on the number of steps. The deployment time doesn't take too long, however, they could improve a bit on the scheduling. It could be a bit more user-friendly if there is a new person coming in and using the solution for the first time.

Deployments tend to take a few days once all the approvals are in place.

The solution does require maintenance. Once you have developed and deployed a bot, there could be many things that may break the bot. We need to maintain them to keep them running as expected.

The ROI may be high. It depends on the process and the number of people involved.

It's not cheap. It's expensive. Power Automate is much cheaper.

I have experience using Automation Anywhere to automate various processes, primarily in the banking domain. I've worked on credit card reconciliation for Citibank in Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, as well as loan services and contract renewals for CIMB Malaysia. Additionally, I've utilized IQ Bot to analyze Twitter sentiment, identifying positive and negative comments to create service tickets. My experience includes working with ServiceNow, SAP, and mainframe environments, specifically IBM SQL Server.

Automation Anywhere has significantly transformed its platform. Previously, tasks were created and managed locally through the control room panel. However, with the introduction of cloud technology, users can now build and deploy tasks directly in the cloud. By installing a bot agent runner on their systems, tasks can be executed automatically. Furthermore, the platform now integrates with Git and Azure repositories, enabling version control and collaborative development. This means multiple users can work on a single project simultaneously, enhancing efficiency and promoting agile methodologies. Additionally, the platform offers automated code review capabilities, allowing users to track changes and identify contributors. The control room manager also receives email notifications for any modifications made. This transition to the cloud has been a gradual process, spanning two to three years, and has significantly improved the platform's accessibility and functionality.

Automation Anywhere has a two to three-month learning curve.

Integrating Copilot into our system is straightforward. From a chatbot perspective, we can use it for tasks like sending emails or completing daily assignments. By utilizing Automation Anywhere, we can build an agent that functions as a Copilot, automating tasks for us. Copilot is also integrated with machine learning models, providing prompts and responses that can be modified as needed. Its user-friendly interface and ability to integrate with existing applications make it a valuable tool for streamlining daily tasks and improving efficiency.

Copilot has helped to improve our productivity by up to 30 percent.

With the use of Automation Anywhere, the organization has seen improved efficiency, particularly with the introduction of IQ Bot and Metabot for tasks such as extracting data from invoices and purchase orders. The combination of RPA with AI and cloud solutions has considerably transformed our processes, allowing for intelligent document processing and seamless system integration, thus streamlining operations.

I use a variety of AI technologies for our research and development, including generative AI, custom bit models, GPT-4, and LaMDA. We've also built our own product for GPT-4 called Thor, which utilizes intelligent document processing to extract data from contracts, purchase orders, invoices, and receipts. This data is then integrated with our machine-learning models and downstream systems. Our focus is on transforming our processes using RPA, AI, and cloud technologies, migrating existing systems to the cloud and enhancing them with AI and ML capabilities.

I have integrated Automation Anywhere with numerous applications, including Salesforce, ServiceNow, ITSM, SAP including S4/HANA and Fusion, Oracle including Oracle Fusion, Java Technologies, .NET Platform, Maple's Web Platform, various databases including QLS with dual database configurations, and Power Platform. I am also familiar with backend systems like Data Lake.

I enjoy using applications and API integration tools to efficiently connect systems. Our organization favours API automation, so we developed an ML-based automation product. We prioritize API integration for all applications, leveraging our back-end team and custom APIs for seamless connectivity. While UI automation can be time-consuming, API integration, especially with back-end services, is significantly faster. Our strategy involves collaborating with IT business partners to prioritize API development.

Automation Anywhere helps us save at least 85 percent of our costs.

I find the terminal emulator feature very valuable, particularly in how it interacts with IBM mainframe automation. The Control Room and credential vault are also noteworthy features. Control Room ensures security and access management by keeping credentials within a secure vault. The variable panel, with its comprehensive variety list, array, Boolean, and string types, is quite efficient. Additionally, Metabot stands out as an efficient tool for applications that change frequently.

Automation Anywhere's Metabot and IQ Bot have become increasingly efficient tools for automating tasks. IQ Bot, in particular, has evolved significantly since its launch. Initially, it struggled to effectively extract data from various document types like invoices and purchase orders. However, with the integration of built-in machine learning models, IQ Bot now excels at data extraction and processing. Furthermore, users can build custom models to suit their specific needs, leveraging Automation Anywhere's pre-trained models and readily available tools. This continuous development has made IQ Bot far more user-friendly and efficient than its earlier versions.

There are improvements needed in error handling processes, as currently, they rely on start and end error commands. A more strategic approach could enhance efficiency. While the implementation of a structured development approach has been introduced, further enhancements could be made to accommodate non-technical users better, perhaps by making the platform more accessible and user-friendly through a flowchart or diagram-based setup.

Automation Anywhere can be moderately challenging for business users without technical skills. While the platform offers some drag-and-drop functionality, building automation requires a strong understanding of logical operations and scripting. To become proficient, users may need to invest time in learning basic coding concepts or pursuing relevant certifications. This learning curve can mean that users typically require a few months of training before they can effectively build and implement automation.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for approximately eight years.

I would rate the stability of Automation Anywhere as eight out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of Automation Anywhere as eight out of ten. Automation Anywhere is capable of scaling to automate multiple processes and tasks.

Support for Automation Anywhere includes L1, L2, and L3 tiers, which respectively handle various levels of issues from preliminary checks to development challenges.

Neutral

I have used various other automation solutions including UiPath, Blue Prism, and NICE. Each of them offers different strengths, but Automation Anywhere stands out for its terminal emulator and credential vault.

The initial deployment of Automation Anywhere is straightforward, conducted through the Control Room, where understanding task scheduling is vital for effectiveness. While verifying production readiness takes one day, the actual transition to production is a simple switch.

The implementation of Automation Anywhere has yielded substantial financial and time savings, effectively reducing the workforce by approximately 16 full-time equivalents within six months.

Automation Anywhere's pricing falls within the mid-range, but the long-term benefits outweigh the initial investment. After a year, significant cost savings and efficiency gains become apparent, justifying the expense.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten. The process of building a script is difficult due to the lack of clarity in identifying the problematic stages. While the code highlights issues, the studio's interface is not user-friendly, especially for those unfamiliar with scripting languages. This lack of intuitive design can make it challenging to utilize the solution effectively.

I started using Automation Anywhere during its beta version and continue to use the latest version for both cloud and desktop deployments. One challenge I faced was the extensive number of default commands, 545 in scripting, 2,565 in web and the need for scripting knowledge, particularly when interacting with other services or adjusting system settings. While Automation Anywhere promotes itself as scriptless, understanding coding concepts is beneficial, especially for tasks like connection manipulation. Although the platform offers a vast array of pre-built commands and drag-and-drop functionality, creating custom activities requires building DLLs, which can be complex. Overall, despite some tricky aspects, Automation Anywhere remains a robust tool for both scripting and scriptless automation development.

Upgrading Automation Anywhere can be complex because its products rely on the .NET framework. When namespaces, components, or libraries within the framework are updated, the entire system isn't always fully adjusted to these changes. This necessitates careful analysis of the specific modifications and their impact on the overall system, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of the upgrade's effects.

Our organization has over 45 users of Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere requires monthly maintenance. While patching the virtual machines only requires a reboot with minimal impact on the production environment, any changes to the environment itself, such as modifications to personal systems or processes, will significantly impact production.

The time spent on bot maintenance varies based on the complexity of the tasks. Simple cloud server or production changes require minimal time, approximately two to three hours. Application changes are more involved, with L3 or L2 tickets potentially taking three to four days depending on the service level agreement and impact. Minor L1 tickets, such as troubleshooting malfunctioning ML or server downtime, can involve either small or large changes. Migrating environments, like transitioning from on-premise to cloud, constitutes a major change that can take a month or even a couple of months.

Automation Anywhere offers a robust infrastructure with advanced features like Metabot, IQ Bot, and seamless integration capabilities with AI technologies, making it a commendable choice for automation needs. However, users should have some technical knowledge before using the platform.

My basic use case for Automation Anywhere is to ensure that the automation is taking place, and we are also using it for UI development. Additionally, we are using it for bot deployments, which is the main use case.

After implementing Automation Anywhere, we have felt a significant improvement in our processes, especially regarding scaling in the cloud environment we are working in. The cloud feature works effectively after implementing it, along with data manipulation automation for bots and intuitive designing.

We can use AI with Automation Anywhere whenever we are deploying a bot or performing a function. We can integrate multiple AI channels such as ChatGPT, GPT-4, and cloud services, which is the main benefit I love the most. It is a competitor to UiPath, which is a big company. Compared to UiPath, Automation Anywhere is working effectively with its AI compatibility.

For non-technical users, which includes business users, Automation Anywhere is easy to use because it does not require heavy coding knowledge or prior experience. The learning curve is easy, and someone with basic technical skills can easily learn and use it without needing to manually deploy codes or engage in complex tasks.

Our organization uses Co-Pilot with AI integration. Co-Pilot helps us give commands to the automation channel, resulting in outputs that make the job easier. It is a very good game changer in this category, and I would definitely give a good rating to Co-Pilot.

We could see the benefits of Automation Anywhere within 2 weeks of deployment.

We have integrated several tools with Automation Anywhere, including Zoom, Google Drive, third-party channels, and data management tools, ensuring we can easily connect everything needed within our cloud-based network.

There are several things I would highlight about Automation Anywhere, including the AI integration which is exceptional. It has several Generative AI agents that enhance automation capabilities and process orchestration. Since it is based on the cloud, it is a highly scalable product. It is easy to deploy, has a very good UI, and the bots can be easily deployed with no issues. 

Additionally, the cost is really good. If we compare it to UiPath, Automation Anywhere stands out significantly.

The learning curve for Automation Anywhere is quite good, as it does not require heavy learning or extensive training for technical and non-technical users.

If I were to mention one area for improvement, it would be on advanced AI commands, such as advanced coding. While this is not critically needed since Automation Anywhere is doing great, improving in that area could be beneficial.

Other than that, Automation Anywhere is working effectively for me. I currently do not have any complaints and wish them all the luck, as they are excelling in the automation sector.

My organization has been using Automation Anywhere for 2.5 years.

We have not faced any kind of instability, lagging, or downtime with Automation Anywhere after implementation; it runs smoothly and is based off the cloud with a good UI, so there is no issue to report.

I feel that Automation Anywhere is definitely a scalable product, and it has the potential to be even better in the future, especially given its good pricing compared to UiPath and similar products.

While I have not needed to reach out for support much. I did interact with their technical support during the implementation. They resolved our issue within 2 to 3 hours, which was not a major problem. I would rate their support positively.

Positive

I have used UiPath as an alternative to Automation Anywhere; however, we made a switch because it was not cost-effective for our organization. During our growth phase, we transitioned and found that Automation Anywhere is better and more cost-effective.

The initial deployment of Automation Anywhere was easy. Our team, which included eight to nine people, assisted with the implementation and deployment process. It took about 1.5 weeks to complete everything.

Automation Anywhere does not require any maintenance on my end.

For the deployment of Automation Anywhere, my team consisted of eight to nine people, including myself.

The current pricing of Automation Anywhere is fairly priced and has provided us with a good ROI on investment. UiPath and other similar options would typically cost 2X the price, which is why we have chosen Automation Anywhere.

Its cost is good.

Overall, I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten. It is a good product.

I use it mainly as automation software. Any kind of processes that are manual, like data entry, for example, I definitely use it for those. Many legacy applications like Mainframe that don't have APIs or can't access the data to write out to that system are addressed mainly for those purposes.

The most valuable feature is the ease of use. It's very user-friendly. Someone with even basic technical prowess can jump in and learn it very quickly. The difference is night and day. With processes involving three or four people, having it full-time manually to address that, and once we implement the automation software on these processes, it effectively reduces eighty to ninety percent of the manual effort.

The automated regression testing could be better. I need to build my own testing suite, and I know other tools have built-in testing suites. That is an area that's very weak in this platform.

I have been using it for about six years.

The stability is pretty good. They are responsive. Just like with any software organization, they usually deal with tier one support, and nine times out of ten, I know more than they do. I get some good support when I advance beyond tier one support. When it gets escalated to the next level is when I receive some good responses and better support.

I think it's a little difficult to scale just because they don't have an automated regression testing suite. We currently have a bottleneck at quality control because of that. If I had to give it a number, I would say six.

Their customer service is pretty good. They are responsive. Just like with any software organization, they usually deal with tier one support, and nine times out of ten, I know more than they do. I get some good support when I advance beyond tier one support. When it gets escalated to the next level is when I receive some good responses and better support.

Positive

I have used UiPath, Blue Prism, OpenRPA, and NintexRPA. I've dabbled in a couple of others, and I can't even remember what they are because there are so many, but those are the main ones that I've used throughout my career.

It was already in place when I got to my company.

I think the setup cost is comparable to the other solutions. I don't think it's anything out of the ordinary. I've been on platforms that are a lot more expensive, and this one is comparable.

I would give them an eight out of ten. I definitely would make sure that you at least have some basic understanding of development, just basic principles, and then start training in Automation Software Anywhere Academy. Many like to think businesses can come in and build stuff, which they can, but sometimes they don't know basic software design principles. Once the volume increases or if they don't build it correctly, there are constant issues, and then we have to bring in the core team to help out. It's nice to say something, but in action, it's something that's not the same. Let's put it that way. You can build anything, as I said, you can build all kinds of things, but is it built correctly?