BotFarm Reviews

There are numerous use cases for the solution for various departments, including weight inspection, or trade ops, or compliance. It's often used for document processing. For example, we receive annual reports from lots of companies that are listed on the stock exchange. To check those reports, there has to be some specific tables and keywords that should be in the annual report of a company. For manually processing thousands of documents, it is not feasible. This solution makes it possible and it happens fast. 

We have implemented solutions where we can extract the text using OCR tools and match all the relevant data that we need to find to prepare a report and forward it to that company. This makes the process a lot faster, and it can be deployed on multiple machines. That way, rather than having a lot of people who work on the same tool, I can just divide the operation on multiple machines and it will be done in less time. Therefore, it offers efficient processing.

The Excel processing is very useful to us. The tool that I'm using has all be Excel functions, however, in the current version that is Automation 360, there are a lot of options. They have Excel basic packages where you can open and just do crude operations, like create, update, delete, or, in a higher package, there are lots of functions that offer filters, macros, clips, whatever you want to run. The version that I'm using, 11.3, has a limited Excel functionality. It still works, however, the new version that they have deployed, A2019, and the latest one, Automation 360, have a lot of functions.

They have proper logging mechanism and also we can check whatever we are doing and they enable and disable list debugging feature. 

It is very easy, simple. You're working on a notepad, and you don't need to know programming to work on this.

The dashboards are quite good, especially on the latest versions.

The solution can scale.

Technical support is quite helpful.

For the most part, the initial setup is straightforward.

We've found the solution to be stable.

The version that I'm using, the Excel command, is a bit limited. 

The OCR tool, the optical character recognition tool, could be more efficient. It should be monitored thoroughly due to the fact that the OCR tool we have we have to manually check even if there are only a few characters missing, the processing might go wrong. In general we wish that the OCR of that product would be more efficient.

You do have to make sure your system will be compatible with the product.

I've been using this solution since September 2019. I've used it for more than a year at this point.

The solution is reliable. It has been working pretty well for us for the past few years. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

We have attempted to scale and we've found it is possible. Some of the operations require a certain level of scalability, and it has been pretty reliable for that.

While we are a company of around 10,000 employees, I'd say roughly a thousand people have been using this product. Our users are scattered through multiple departments, and every department needs processes to be automated. Therefore, there are lots of users.

We do plan to increase usage.

With every financial year, there are lots of processes coming in. Every department says that we have less manpower and the processes are quite repetitive. Likely there are lots of processes every year, around 23 processes scattered through departments. As the word spreads that some users are able to automate a lot of the processes effectively, others come to us and say they need their own efficiencies. Therefore, we're constantly expanding.

Technical support has been good so far. They have a separate portal for assistance. We have raised a few tickets, and based on the priority, they respond to us. They also ask us the expected time, by what time we need them to call, and they have follow-ups every now and then. It is pretty good. We are satisfied with their level of support.

The initial setup's relative ease of setup depends on various versions. In the version that I used, 11.3, the setup was pretty easy. You have to download and install two machines. One is the client developer. However, the new version that they have, is for a cloud-based deployment. You don't need to install a developer. You just need to log into the control room on any webpage and you have to work from there. For deployment, they have a specific installation, and it's my understanding that there are lots of user rights issues. They have made it easy for installation, however, it can grow in complexity depending on your needs.

Licensing is something that management handles. I don't have any visibility on the costs or the licensing arrangements.

We have evaluated UiPath and it was really good. However, the approach was very different from Automation Anywhere. In Automation Anywhere, you just had a command-line view where each line you add new commands. In UiPath there was a flow-chart view. That was more creative, however, that was two years ago. Now, Automation Anywhere has those features, and it is also a web-based platform, so you don't have the burden to install the developer on your system and you don't need an office PC to do that. You just need to have the right access and credentials and you can work from anywhere.

We're partners.

I started off with version 11, and currently, I'm working on 11.3.3. There's a new solution, RPA A2019. That's the new version. I have that certification, however, I have no projects for now on that.

I'd recommend the solution. Automation Anywhere is a very good solution if you're looking to expand all your work areas. There are lots of businesses out there that say that they don't require this, however, once the solution is implemented using RPA, businesses themselves have a lot of time and resources to expand their research areas. The growth increases exponentially.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

• We use the solution for automating a noise cancellation process.
  
  
• In our business, we have a certain requirement to gather information from multiple applications in our customer services team, before we can troubleshoot an issue the support engineer has to handle 14 different applications to get the required information. This means the engineer spends approximately 25 minutes getting the required information even before they can start troubleshooting the issue. In the customer support space, we use this solution for automating the gathering of information from 15 disparate applications.
  
  
• In the customer service space, we have three bots and in the finance space, we have one bot.
  
  
• We have a few use cases where we use the bots to essentially increasing efficiency and reducing manual work in different areas.

The most valuable features I have found to be the screen scraping and the integration with third-party solutions.

The user experience could be made a little better with this solution. I find it difficult to find qualified people to be able to use the solution. 

In the future, I would like to see machine learning built in to support marketing use cases.

I have been using the solution within the last 12 months.

Based on my experience, the solution is stable.

I have approximately 47 users using the solution in my organization. Currently, have this solution deployed in one country and in two departments. Next year we plan to increase have the solution operation in three countries and across 14 departments.

I have previously used Blue Prism and UiPath.

The installation is straightforward.

The license of this solution is on an annual basis. The price is fair. However, what we did initially was a POC, but now we are looking at moving from a POC to expanding it out further. I would appreciate some kind of discount.

I have evaluated Blue Prism and UiPath recently.

Those wanting to implement this solution make sure you have a team that can support you. Getting individuals with the qualified skillsets required has proven to be difficult.

I rate BotFarm a seven out of ten.

We use the Bot Farm solution for two use cases. One is for procurement and the other is for finance. Both use cases required the liquid license availability of the task bot. Therefore, at month-end or the middle of the month, the processing needs to be on a faster pace as we had SLA activity involved with the processing of the invoices and the financial auditing purpose. 

Basically, we use floating licenses which are automatically applied when there was a high peak on the load, and the floating licenses resulted in the shorter processing cycle of the activity.

The scalability is the solution's most valuable aspect. The reason Bot Farm is used is to have only one license availability whenever you have a spike in the transactions. That is a core feature. That is something which we are using to the maximum. It's working well due to the fact that the solution use case is quite structured. The only ask was to have additional bot licenses be present to incorporate it. That way, we don't have to get stuck with the license cost as it's generally on a yearly basis. Right now, it's just on the basis of the usage that we are paying.

The solution has been very user-friendly.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The interface is seamless.

The solution is very stable and quite reliable.

For the intelligent bots, it is still not quite structured, as far as I can see. I checked for IQ Bot. These licenses are having certain issues. We stopped around the pricing part. It's not just the price, however. It was also not fitting the capability. Based on the on-prem model, if they can include an intelligent bot there, it will be helpful with all the security and the pricing parts involved.

The dashboard needs improvement. For Bot Farm, the visualization is not that good compared to the main Automation Anywhere dashboard.

We've been using the solution at least over the last 12 or so months. We are continuing to use it.

The solution is quite stable. It's very reliable. When you're adding the additional licenses the basic structure is there. It's just the licensing that gets involved. It's more on the configuration side. Otherwise, it is quite seamless with the interface. The preliminary interface is Automation Anywhere, so there are no issues there.

The solution can scale very well.

We have two teams using the solution currently.

We are using this solution specifically in the India region, with the two departments of finance and procurement. We don't have that much load as everything gets outsourced here in India. We are still looking for opportunities where a load of taking Bot Farm license mechanisms can be used. Therefore, I can't speak to if we will increase usage or not.

Technical support has been very good. Many a time, there was an issue with the configuration part, or the licenses were not automatically deployed for the execution of the tasks. We had to connect with them, and we always found them to be helpful and responsive. I would say we are satisfied so far.

We have three RPA solutions that we are using. We also use UiPath and Blue Prism.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult. We were pretty comfortable with it already. We are already using Automation Anywhere for the past four years and therefore, it was not a challenge for us.

With approvals, customization, et cetera, the deployment took us about 15 or so days.

We have a team of five that is able to handle the deployment and maintenance. We have a two-year maintenance contract lined up.

We pay based on usage, which is quite good for us. We like this licensing model. From the maintenance perspective, we have a contract signed for two years and it has reduced our pay per basis cost.

Real cost savings come with long-term relationships with the company. For four years we have been there. Therefore, the pricing is substantially lower for us.

We are just a customer.

Bot Farm is a cloud solution. We already have A2019, and Bot Farm is one of the products of Automation Anywhere. It's a cloud version we are using and due to it being on the cloud, it is always continuously updated to the latest version.

Bot Farm is for firms that have reached a certain level of maturity. You don't require Bot Farm if you are having applications that are not consuming your licenses. It becomes very useful when you have a use case that has spiked the variation in the load. Regardless, you need to do the math correctly to get the ROI associated with the licensing costs, the value, and the use case intended. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We are using it mostly for financial applications, payroll processing, attendance processing, and expense processing.

The payroll processing used to take about a week's time earlier. Now, that has got reduced to one day. We are seeing this kind of reduction everywhere. There is at least a five or ten times reduction in the amount of time, and more people are free to do something else. 

It has also helped a lot in the current situation where people are working from home. We are able to launch the bot from anywhere and get the work done.

It is easy to use. The learning curve was quite smooth. 

It is also a very stable and rugged product. It doesn't break in the event of increased load. Even in case of load bursts, the AA platform was able to deliver seamless service. 

Its UI could be made better. It should also be more flexible. Currently, it is more rigid, and a little more flexibility is required.

Their technical support should also be better. We are not very happy with their technical support. Its price is also quite high as of now. They should improve its price.

Its setup should also be made easier. It is quite complex to set it up. Even though we were able to set it up a little fast because we had done something similar earlier, but it has a very complex setup.

It is extremely resource-hungry. If they can make it a little light on resources, that would also be useful.

It is very stable.

We haven't tested it for scalability because our operations are pretty small. It is a small deployment, and for our current workload, it is working quite fine. We have five or six bots, and the number will increase over a period of time. We would like to bring in more processes and use IQ Bots for some intelligent stuff, such as for reading handwritten documents. We would like to use IQ Bots, especially for invoice processing.

In terms of users, our finance and HR teams are using it. We have about 10 to 12 users.

We are not very happy with their technical support. Their support should be improved.

The initial setup was quite complex, but since it has been set up, it is fine. It took a little more than a week. Its setup should be made easier.

Its price is quite high as compared to other solutions, but it has a lot of features and good stability. They should reduce its price.

If you have a good use case, you should go ahead and use it. Ultimately, it depends on whether you have a good use case.

I would rate BotFarm a seven out of ten.

The primary use case is to use the bot peer-to-peer (P2P) billing. 

We deal with a few customers where we automate billed services for accounts received with invoice, debit and credit notes.

An additional feature that is missing from BotFarm is the ability for complete, AI-driven automation.

Automation can be divided into two types, namely, full automation (does not require human intervention) and semi-automation (requires human intervention). However, most companies are not able to give all their data from their ERP system to perform full automation. There is a missing feature in the software which allows for this solution to be solved.

Additionally, by using AI, I would like the bot to pull reports automatically from the ERP system, but at the moment I have to log into the system to retrieve reports.

Another area that needs improvement is with regards to machine-bound licenses. When installing the solution on a clients laptop or desktop and creating a license, that license is bound to that computer. I cannot use the users ID or password on any other machine.

I have been using the solution for about 8 months and we have developed around six process automations.

The system is stable and very little maintenance is required, assuming the bots process is perfectly designed.

For example, if the interface of the ERP system changes, maintenance would be required to adjust the bot settings to point to moved buttons/features.

I have called customer service three times and the experience has not been good. They do not offer 24/7 support, which forces us to wait till the next working day to solve a problem.

The initial setup is simple. However, creating a bot requires development experience.

The deployment does not take much time, assuming you already have a complete process that has been defined and approved.

The solution was implemented in-house.

It is too expensive and not worth the price.

We primarily have different use cases within finance and HR as well as in IT operations.

The solution's dashboards are very helpful to us.

We find the analytics aspect of the solution to be excellent.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

We've had a few issues with the APIs.

We have connectivity and integration with pretty much every single tech stack across the table that we have in the world, and there are a few areas that they don't do that well yet. I'd be looking for some improvement there, in terms of their integration with certain products.

I've only been using the solution for six to eight months. It's been less than a year. It hasn't been too long.

The solution is quite stable and very reliable. We haven't had any negative experiences in relation to stability. If doesn't crash or freeze. There aren't bugs or glitches.

We haven't tried to scale the solution just yet. Therefore, I can't speak to how easy or difficult scaling the product may be.

From the perspective of business processes, the product is being used in at least eight to nine different business process areas so far.

We don't have plans to increase usage. I would say from what we had originally anticipated, we are about 20% to 30% usage. It's got a lot of scope for improvement still.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

We didn't find the implementation to be too complex. For us, the setup was simple and straightforward. We really didn't face any issues in that regard.

The deployment itself was also very quick, which was nice.

I maintain the solution myself. You don't need a lot of staff to maintain it.

We actually had Automation Anywhere handle the setup for us. They were quite helpful and very knowledgeable.

I don't have any details in relation to the licensing of the cost of the solution. It's not an aspect of the product I take care of.

I personally did not evaluate other solutions, however, an internal team did. They looked at UiPath, however, they decided on this product instead.

We're just customers. We're using the latest version of the solution right now.

I would recommend the solution to other companies if they are looking at an extensive integration across the tech stack within their organization. I would advise that if a company seriously considers the product, that they speak really clearly with Automation Anywhere. They need to ensure that their company will have the support they need, and if they do, they should consider proceeding. 

Overall, we've been happy with the solution. I would rate it at a nine out of ten.

Our main customers are in the financial, banking, and insurance sectors. They use the co-location on the credit processes and insurance claims.

The solution has a lot of great features inside of it that clients can take advantage of.

The concentration of bots is great.

The solution is pretty out-of-the-box and is a great component of the greater Automation Anywhere platform.

The licensing schemes could be more competitive. They need to be much more flexible in their pricing.

It would be ideal if they increased their capabilities in process mining.

I've been working on the solution for six months. It hasn't been too long.

The solution seems to offer high stability. We haven't seen any bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

As a cloud platform, the solution is able to scale well. That's the benefit of the cloud.

Our clients tend to be large-scale businesses. They are not small enterprises.

In the future, we do have plans to increase usage. That is why we are hoping that the company can be more flexible with their licensing offerings.

The technical support is very good. They have a high rating on Gartner, for example. We're quite satisfied with their level of service.

We're still in the exploratory phase of trying out the solution. We haven't fully implemented it yet.

It's my understanding that the initial setup isn't complex, and is instead rather straightforward.

Currently, we are integrating different services for clients around the RPA console.

The pricing could be more flexible, especially if a company wants to scale.

We have looked at different RPA products. We are evaluating a few options and comparing features and pricing.

We are a consulting services provider. We are working on automation.

Often deal with public cloud and hybrid deployment models.

Overall, I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

I have used BotFarm to automate web applications and Microsoft products. I have also automated mainframe applications for a healthcare product. I automated around five to six processes for them. All together I have automated more than fifteen processes with this solution that we have deployed in-house.

The task bots are good features. I also like enabling the IQ bots to read PDF documents and automate PDF projects and invoices. Because we employ so many people, it is very useful to automate any processes compatible with Automation Anywhere.

We are not permitted to use web applications, so we find ourselves using Object Cloning and web control commands instead. Sometimes I feel like it doesn't work properly and we are not able to provide the dexterity needed. Also, on multiple occasions, the service bot deactivates without reason and Automation Anywhere will not function properly until it is reactivated.

In general, everything is fine but they should remove the unattended or attended bot feature. This can be confusing to customers because an unattended bot license costs around $5,000, whereas an attended bot license costs roughly $1,500, which can cause customers to think: “why should I purchase an expensive unattended bot license when I can purchase an attend bot license for much cheaper?” Also, if I want to install my runner license on another machine, for example: if you install your license on a specific machine and a second vendor (like we did), you’re now installed on machine B but you can’t log in on machine B with your credentials from machine A. This is meant to be a security feature, but it makes things very difficult for customers and clients.

I've been working with BotFarm for the last four years. I started with version 10.10 and currently, I am exploring A2019 which was just launched by Automation Anywhere.

Scheduling bots has been an issue. For example, if you want to schedule automation and it’s set for 5:00 pm, it means that you would need to execute it on the client’s machine every day at 5:00 pm. The issue though, is that it fails a lot because I could have it scheduled but sometimes the bots don’t get involved. That’s an issue that has been a struggle.

The scalability is good. We have a team that uses Automation Anywhere on a daily basis, automating processes.

In terms of customer support, they are very good. I am an Automation Anywhere vendor and if I have a problem, I can create a ticket on their portal, they will call or set up a Zoom or WebEx meeting within half an hour, and they always provide a solution. 

They give very active support and will definitely help you and provide the solution to the issue you are experiencing. They are very, very good.

I used to use UiPath, Kofax and Blue Prism. Automation Anywhere is great for people who are not very "techie". For example, the code can easily be read and understood, line by line, by anyone with or without a technical background.

Automation Anywhere provides and facilitates cloud service, which means you can access your license from anywhere, easily executing and developing your bots from anywhere in the world.  

Any RPA tool provides the commands to automate any process, but what is the difference between them? How can you understand a new product? Automation Anywhere provides a very flexible UI. It allows you to easily read and build code.

Depending on the system that you are installing, the setup can be complex. Installation time is not predictable and you may have to pay customer support for help with the installation procedure.

If I am installing on five machines but one is taking too long, then they all will take a long time, but if all five machines are installing at the same time, then the procedure can be done within five minutes. These ongoing issues make it very complicated to predict how long the installation will take. Someone has to create a ticket with Automation Anywhere customer support and pay for service personnel to help. Installing Automation Anywhere is complex.

In regards to deployment, it's quite simple. Anyone can deploy a bot on a client's machine after one or two days of training.

Also, Automation Anywhere now provides the facility for cloud service, because of this, you can access your license from anywhere. For example, if you are in London and you are heading to another country, you can easily access your license and execute and develop your bots from anywhere. In 2011, this was a desktop application and the client’s version was based on a desktop, but right now it’s not based on a desktop, which is a good thing. The main reason to choose Automation Anywhere is because no one else is providing cloud service.

I purchased a package from Automation Anywhere that included one control room, two developer licenses, and two bot-runner licenses. I think payment can vary but it's a re-occurring fee that needs to be paid every year. 

In RPA, we have so many products available to choose from which we can use to automate any applications. I have used Blue Prism, UiPath and other third-party applications. I have used all of these tools to automate various processes under RPA technology.

It’s hard to give any advice without seeing the project you are working with. If you want to purchase any RPA tool, then I’d have to check the project or your process so that I can identify the requirement and I can see which product will completely fulfill your requirement. Make sure to choose your solution based completely on the project you wish to automate. In other words, I can’t give you any direct answer. If you’re automating a web application, then I would use UiPath. If you’re also automating their applications but you have to automate PDFs as well, then I would definitely choose Automation Anywhere, but the selection of the tool is completely based on the project you wish to automate.

I am rating Automation Anywhere 7.5 out of 10 in terms of their activity. Sometimes, when I am in the middle of something, I experience issues or my work gets stuck. This rating is based on my three years of experience with Automation Anywhere. Although they give very good support, I still wasted a lot of time because of the above mentioned issues. So, for this reason, I am giving Automation Anywhere a rating of 7.5 out of 10.