Fortra's Automate Reviews

We're a value-added distributor for HelpSystems Automate. We distribute Automate along with other solutions to various customers. Each customer has a different use case. Usually, we develop a proof of concept solution for them or the whole project for them. 

We've done multiple projects. We've done projects for hospitals for insurance eligibility checking. We've done HR automation. We've done price comparisons for various vendors where they want to know how their competitors are pricing the same products.

For the insurance eligibility checking that we have done for a hospital chain in the region, the requirement was that they have thousands of patients coming in every day, and they need to know the insurance these patients have and what's covered under the insurance for them. So, the front desk employee takes a person's ID and enters the identification number from the ID. After that, the bot that we've developed picks up that ID from the backend, goes into the insurance portal, searches for that particular ID, and then finds out if they're eligible or not. If they're eligible, it finds out what's their copay, what's their coverage, what's their network, etc. This is the process that we developed for a hospital chain in the region.

For no-code automation specifically, it's very good. It's all just drag and drop, so as a developer, you don't see any underlying code that's there. It's very friendly in that regard. You don't need to have someone who is extremely technical or proficient to start developing solutions with Automate, which is huge. However, you do have to work on integration. For example, if you want to integrate a PowerShell script into your workflow, there are actions for that. If you are a proficient developer who wants to use more traditional coding languages, you can still integrate that with your regular workflow. It's very useful for clients who don't want to dedicate too many technical resources to develop and automate. Some of our clients have regular IT staff. Even though they're in IT, they're not doing much coding per se. They're able to automate pretty well and pretty quickly with Automate. They can easily start developing and working with it, which is a big selling point. We also have clients who are more used to having traditional scripting languages and are less willing to try out Automate. So, it varies on a case-by-case basis, but in the vast majority of cases, having no code is a huge factor.

It's pretty good at reducing human errors. Whatever you set up, it does that logically. If any errors come through, it's almost always because of some gaps in the implementation logic, which can be tricky to catch. That's where the bulk of the errors come from. There might be some edge cases that you didn't consider while developing, which might cause some errors. That's quite possible, but if you set it up right, it works pretty well. The other area of errors would be if you're incorporating OCR or something like that. There's inherently some ambiguity in that. It can read some letters differently. There's a possibility for errors to come in there as well. However, based on what I've seen, at least for the insurance eligibility process, there is about 90% to 95% accuracy. In the vast majority of cases, it's pretty accurate.

It's very easy to use. That's a big selling point for it. It has got a drag-and-drop interface, so you can quickly deploy bots.

The implementation time is pretty quick, which is another big selling point. The web browser of Automate is pretty good as well. If you want to do any web scraping or log into a website and pick up information, it's pretty easy to set that up. These are some good features of it.

Error messages should be better. For error status, there should be better documentation because a lot of times, error messages that you get are quite vague. For example, you get a message saying that the workflow has run into an unknown status, which is vague. It just tells you that it failed, but you don't know how or why it failed. It makes debugging difficult. From a developer's perspective, it gets a little difficult to debug at times due to these error messages. It's not with all the errors, but for quite a few errors, the documentation is vague.

Event logging and failure notifications could be improved because you can set up logging for each individual step, but you have to go and manually add it to each step or task. The same issue is there with the failure notification. You can set up an action so that when a task fails, you can take a screenshot and send an email notification, but you have to go into the task and build a condition for that. It would be better if event logging and error failure notifications can be done at a global level without having to go inside the code and add it for every single task.

Its stability could be improved a little bit, and it could also have a few more third-party integrations. Currently, you can integrate with almost any third-party service. You can integrate either through the API or through the GUI, but it would be nice if there were native actions built into Automate. It already has a lot of integrations. For example, we have Microsoft Dynamics, SharePoint, etc. We do have a fair bit of third-party integrations, but it would be nice to have a few more software integrations.

There is a community portal, but it's not particularly active. It's not a very big community. If you run into an error, you can't just look it up on Stack Overflow or something like that. However, the tech support from the vendor side has been excellent, so it isn't a big issue.

I've been using it for a year and two months.

Its stability can be better. It's not a very big concern, but once in a while, you lose connection to the main central server for Automate from the developer console. If your developer console loses connection to the main console, which is not a very frequent occurrence, you don't realize it until later. So, you're saving your task thinking it's working fine, but it's not being saved on the server. You lose a little bit of data once in a while, but these are not very frequent occurrences. It happens once in a while, but it's something to be careful about. There are also occasional crashes. Sometimes it slows down, and it crashes. I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of stability.

It's a very scalable solution. We have an unlimited bot version as well, so we can deploy multiple agents. We can have load balancing across these agents. We can set up agent groups as well. We can have an agent group running a certain task, and we can have a load balancer to distribute that task across agents. We have failover support and high availability support. So, it's a very scalable solution.

It's usually deployed in one location. I don't have much experience with clients deploying in multiple locations. I've only seen them use multiple servers, but they're all local servers. It's only supported for Windows, so there's no Mac or Linux support.

We've done implementations for enterprise-level customers to small and medium-sized customers. Its biggest selling point is that small and medium customers usually find solutions like UiPath and Blue Prism far too expensive. They find Automate's pricing much more competitive. 

Their support is excellent. You can raise a support ticket, and within four hours, you'll have a response. Because we're a distributor, we also have direct email access to a few of their technical support team members based out of Europe. They're also pretty responsive. Usually, they help us out with almost any issues that we run into. So, their support is excellent. I'd rate them a nine out of ten.

It's agnostic. It can work on the cloud or on-prem. Some customers want it on-prem, and some customers want it on the cloud. It doesn't make much of a difference from Automate's perspective. It's the same software, and where you deploy it doesn't make much of a difference. We have integration with AWS and Azure. 

I work in development, so I am involved in deployment for clients. It's pretty straightforward. You just install it and set it up. There are some prerequisites where you have to open a few ports and do things like that. Overall, it's straightforward. You can do it in maybe an hour.

After you have it up and running, you can just start working on it. You have a developer console, and as soon as it's set up, you can start developing and deploying from there. A simple, basic task such as reading an email, taking a file, and moving it to a folder can be developed in two hours. 

In terms of the ease of setting up and deploying the attended or unattended bots, we don't do much differentiation between attended and unattended bots. They're the same thing for the most part. It's just about how you'd set up the workflow. If you are setting up an attended workflow, for example, you'd have some actions in the workflow saying that wait for a user's input or something like that. For unattended, it's going to be completely end-to-end. We don't make much differentiation in that case. The pricing is the same, and it's pretty easy to deploy them after you've developed them. 

For deployment, it's just me for the most part. It's pretty straightforward.

In terms of maintenance, we offer two pricing models. We offer subscription models where you just pay an annual cost every year, and there's also a perpetual model where you pay some amount initially, and then every year, you pay the annual maintenance cost.

We see that there's usually a very quick ROI on it after implementation. It's pretty easy to develop, which means you can get solutions out pretty quickly. At times, you have to maintain certain parts of it, but that's expected. What I've seen is that after implementing it, organizations usually see a quick return on the initial investment they have made. There is going to be a maintenance cost for it to ensure that it keeps running, but that's fair.

From a distributor's side, one of the biggest selling points is its price point. Without going into any numbers, compared to UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism, we're significantly cheaper. The main difference is that other competitors usually charge you per process. However, in Automate's case, it's priced per bot. So, a bot can run multiple processes at the same time, but you are only priced for a single bot. That's a big selling point. It isn't like most of the competitors where if you're running three processes on a single bot, they would be charging you for three processes. We're also the only vendor to offer an unlimited option where you can have unlimited bots, and each bot can do an unlimited number of tasks. Price-wise, we're very competitive.

I'd definitely recommend it. It's a very good product. It's a very affordable product, especially if you're a small or medium-sized organization. My biggest suggestion is to invest internally in your organization so that your employees can build and develop their own bots for their use cases. That's the biggest thing that customers who are looking to buy Automate can do. It's very easy to use and very easy to pick up. It's unlike most of the competitors where you need to have a highly certified individual to develop. So, invest in your people or employees who are doing the day-to-day work because they know what they can automate and what they cannot automate. Embrace automation fully and not just as a small part of your organization. 

It's pretty easy to automate any manual tasks that are currently repetitive. So, you can see a very quick return on investment with Automate. I also advise companies that are planning on doing automation to also invest in maintaining and scaling it. Don't just be satisfied with automating a single process, but take it further and set up an automation center of excellence and also look at other departments, such as HR and finance, that can use automation. It doesn't have to be just in IT. You can do this for almost any business flow that you have. You need to embrace it and invest in it more than just having a consultant come in and do one project and leave. You don't need to have too many technical or certified people to start working. It's very easy to use compared to other competitors' solutions.

In terms of training required to use Automate, HelpSystems offers Automate Academy on its website. It's free of cost, and anyone can access it. It has got multiple modules and hours of videos going over from the very basic concepts to more advanced concepts of Automate, including workflows and other more technical features. You can go through that, and you can also get certified through it. Those resources are freely available. Any of our customers can use them. That's one place where you can get support for training. There's also something called Bot Store, which is provided by HelpSystems. You can just go there and download prebuilt bots, and you can freely modify them, edit them, and use them for your use case. They are also mostly free. When you combine both of these, there is a fair bit of support for the developers for training. In terms of the amount of training required, it varies on a case-by-case basis. Some people learn it faster, and some people learn it slower. It also depends on your technical background. For example, they still have the concepts of loops and if statements. Even though it's drag-and-drop, you still need to know those concepts to develop with Automate. You need to have that kind of algorithm thinking. If you come from a development background, it's very easy to pick up and use. With a couple of hours of training and just playing around with it, you should be good to go, and of course, there are all the resources from the vendor side to fill in many gaps.

There is the Recorder feature in Automate, but I don't personally use it that much because anything that you can do with the Recorder feature can be done with the regular drag-and-drop actions. Recorder doesn't make it a lot easier to use than it already is.

Overall, I'd rate Automate a nine out of ten.

We use Fortra's Automate to run job schedules for data processing to and from our ERP systems. We extract important data to send to customers and upload it to our ERP system.

The solution is deployed on-premises in just one location.

Fortra's Automate does the work we wanted to do in the expected steps, and it's really a throughput process that enables our system to have a steady flow of transactions.

Our company's goal is to use Fortra's Automate to build and create automation. Of course, we have to instruct the solution as to what to do, but this would be a great enhancement for our organization.

The ability to automate using drag and drop is very important to our organization.

We did not need any training before using the solution.

I was not with my organization when they did not have Fortra's Automate. Therefore, it is difficult for me to measure what they did before. Manual work would have likely caused errors, and the solution is helping to improve that.

I work with EDI, which is the business process that we use. We need to get EDI data into an ERP system, and Fortra's Automate is the tool that can help us do that.

The solution has saved us time, as it is an automated process that runs independently and transfers data.

The solution is quite sound and it is a reliable workhorse. Fortra's Automate performs the job effectively and has the capability to alert us of any issues.

Sometimes when we communicate with the ERP system and there is an issue, we are not always aware of the specifics of Automate and the source of the problem. Automate simply states "failure" and nothing else. This is an area that could be improved by having wizards available to assist.

I have been using the solution for three years.

The solution is stable.

The solution appears to be scalable, however, our lack of time to analyze and experiment is a major setback.

The technical support is excellent. I enjoy chatting with technical support, as it allows me to get a quick response to any solutions or problems. This has saved us a lot of time, and we are able to get an immediate response. The support person will join us online in a Zoom session to resolve our issue. Not many solutions offer this, which is very advantageous for us. We can also email, but they give us the option to chat, which is very quick, easy, thorough, and effective.

Positive

We have seen a return on investment due to the reduction of manual effort required for certain tasks.

The cost is a bit high for a small business like ours, but we manage with Fortra's Automate.

There are no additional fees.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten because we never received any training or exposure to Fortra's Automate. We had to learn it through hands-on experience with a mentor when we started. We weren't given any resources to help us learn, so we had to figure it out on our own.

We have two people that directly use the solution.

The biggest issue we face is failure when attempting to use the ERP system at times, so we have nothing to maintain.

Potential users without experience should view demonstrations of how Fortra's Automate works to gain an understanding of its capabilities.

My company, where I work, is a value-added distributor for Fortra's Automate. We distribute Automate and other solutions to various customers, each with a different use case. We develop a proof of concept solutions and full projects for them. We have done projects for hospitals for insurance eligibility checking, HR automation, and price comparisons for vendors. A specific use case is the insurance eligibility checking we have done for a hospital chain in the region. Whenever a front desk employee takes a person's ID, they enter the identifying number and our bot picks up the ID from the back end, searches the insurance portal for the ID, and finds out if they are eligible, what their copay is, what their coverage is, and what network they are in.

The solution can be deployed on-prem or on the cloud depending on the organization's requirements and preferences.

For no-code automation specifically, Automate is very good. It is all just drag and drop, so developers do not need to see any of the underlying code that is going on behind the scenes. This makes it very user-friendly, so no one needs to be highly technically proficient to start developing solutions with Automate, which is a great benefit. However, if someone is a more proficient developer who wants to use a more traditional coding language, they can still integrate it into their workflow, as Automate has actions for that.

No-code drag-and-drop and form-based development are very useful for clients who don't want to dedicate a lot of technical resources to developing and automating. We have seen this in our clients, where they have their regular IT staff who are not doing a lot of coding but are still able to get Automate up and running quickly and start working with it. This is a big selling point, but there are some clients who are more used to traditional scripting languages and are less willing to try out Automate. It varies on a case-by-case basis, but in the majority of cases, having no-code automation is a major advantage.

Fortra offers a free Automate Academy on its website, which includes multiple modules and hours of videos covering the basic and advanced concepts of Automate, such as working with workflows and more technical aspects. Customers can also get certified through the Academy. Additionally, the Bot Store provides pre-built bots that can be freely modified, edited, and used for specific use cases. Most of the bots in the Bot Store are free. Combining both of these resources provides a good amount of support for training. However, the amount of time it takes to learn Automate depends on the individual and their technical background. Those with a developer background may find it easier to pick up and use Automate, as they will already have the concepts of loops and if statements. With a few hours of training and practice, they should be able to use Automate effectively. Fortra also provides additional resources to fill in any gaps.

Automate is pretty good at reducing human errors. Whatever we set up, it is done and it's functioning logically. If there are any errors that come through, it is almost always due to gaps in the logic of the implementation that we have done, which can be hard to detect. That is where most of the errors come from. There could also be some edge cases that we don't consider while developing, which might be causing some errors. But if we set it up correctly, it's usually quite effective. The other source of errors could be if we're using OCR or something similar, as there is inherently some ambiguity which can lead to incorrect readings. That is also a potential source of errors.

Automate reduced errors by 90 to 95 percent, which is an estimate based on my observation of the insurance equity process. In most cases, this estimate is accurate.

The biggest advantage of Automate which saves us time and money is that it is easy to automate any repetitive manual tasks. This means a quick return on investment can be achieved. However, my advice to companies planning to use Automate is to not just automate a single process but to also invest in maintaining and scaling Automate. They should set up an automation center of excellence and consider automating processes in other departments such as HR and finance. Automate is also easy to use compared to other solutions, so it does not require a lot of technical expertise to get started. This is the biggest selling point of Automate.

The best feature of Automate is its ease of use, which is a major selling point. It has a drag-and-drop interface, so bots can be quickly deployed. This means implementation time is relatively short, making it an even more attractive option. Additionally, the web browser of Automate is also quite good, making it easy to set up web scraping and log into websites to pick up information. All of these features make Automate a great choice.

The documentation for errors needs improvement as many of the error messages we receive are very vague. For example, an error message might simply say, "The workflow has run into an unknown status," which does not provide any insight into how or why the failure occurred. As a developer, it can be difficult to debug these errors due to the lack of information. 

The logging and failure notifications could be improved because we can set up logging for each step, but we have to manually add it to each task. Similarly, we can set up an action so that when the task fails, a screenshot is taken and an email notification is sent, but we have to go into the task and build a condition for that. It would be better if the logging and error failure notification could be done at a global level, rather than having to go inside the code and adjust each task.

The stability could be improved slightly. This is not a major issue, but we do occasionally lose connectivity. For example, the main central server for Automate is the developer console we are working on. If the developer console loses connection to the main console, this can happen occasionally without us realizing it until later. We may think our task is being saved, but it is not actually being saved on the server and we can lose some data. These occurrences are not frequent, but they do happen. Additionally, there are occasional crashes, although these are not too frequent. 

I would like to have more third-party integrations, as Automate already has a lot, such as Microsoft Dynamics and SharePoint. However, it would be nice to have native actions built into Automate for further third-party integrations.

The community portal is not very active, so it is not a large community. Therefore, if we encounter an issue, we cannot simply search for a solution on Stack Overflow or a similar platform.

I have been using the solution for 14 months.

I give the stability an eight out of ten.

Automate is a highly scalable solution. As I mentioned previously, we also have an unlimited bot version, so we can deploy multiple agents. We can use load balancing across these agents. We can also set up agent groups, where we have an agent group running a certain task and a load balancer to distribute that task among these agents. We have failover and high availability support.

The tech support from the vendor side has been excellent. We can submit a support ticket and we will receive a response within four hours. As a distributor, we also have direct email access to some of their technical support personnel based in Europe. They are usually very responsive and can usually help us with any issues we encounter.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. We need to install the solution and open a few ports. The deployment can be completed in one hour on my own.

Automate doesn't make much of a distinction between attended and unattended bots. They are essentially the same thing, just with different workflows. For example, if we are setting up an attended workflow, there will be some actions that require user input. An unattended workflow, on the other hand, is completely automated. The pricing for both is the same and it is relatively easy to deploy. Once we have developed the bot, we can set up a skill, trigger, or file and it will run on time.

Once we have Automate up and running, we can begin working on it if we have a developer console. Setting Automate up is part of the process. So, once it is set up, we can start developing from there. A simple task, such as reading an email and moving the file to a folder, can be developed in two hours. However, this is a very basic task.

The implementation is completed in-house.

We can usually see a quick return on investment with Automate after implementation. It is relatively easy to develop, so solutions can be deployed quickly. However, there may be times when maintenance is required. From what I have seen in organizations, there is usually a quick return on the initial investment, although there is ongoing maintenance needed to keep it running.

From a distributor's perspective, one of the biggest selling points of Automate is its price point. Compared to UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism, Automate is significantly cheaper, as it is priced per bot rather than per process. This allows a single bot to run multiple processes, but still, be priced as a single bot. Additionally, Automate is the only vendor to offer an unlimited option, where customers can have unlimited bots and each bot can do an unlimited number of tasks. Overall, Automate is very competitive in terms of price.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Automate has a recorder feature, but I don't use it much as most actions we can do with the recorder can be done with regular drag-and-drop actions. I don't think the recorder makes it significantly easier to use.

Our clients usually deploy in one location only. I don't have much experience with clients deploying in multiple locations, but the only thing I can say is that it is only supported for Windows, so there is no Mac or Linux support. However, I have only seen them deployed in a single location. I have seen them use multiple servers, but they are all local servers.

We served customers of all sizes, from enterprise-level to small and medium. The biggest selling point for small and medium customers is that they find solutions such as UiPath and Blue Prism to be too expensive for their smaller scale. In these cases, they find Automate's pricing to be more competitive. As I mentioned, we have provided services to customers of all sizes, from enterprise-level to small and medium.

We offer two pricing models: a subscription model, where an annual cost is paid each year, and a perpetual model, where an initial deposit is paid followed by an annual maintenance cost.

I highly recommend Automate as it is a great product at an affordable price, especially for small and medium-sized customers. My biggest suggestion is to invest internally in the organization so that employees can create their own bots for their own use cases. The great thing about Automate is that it is easy to use and learn, unlike many of our competitors where highly certified individuals are needed to develop. Therefore, investing in our people so they can develop is key. Our employees who do the day-to-day work know what they can and cannot automate, so investing in automation and embracing it fully, not just as a small part of the organization, is essential.

Before we started using Fortra's Automate, we developed a business case in collaboration with the enterprise to determine how to implement the solution in our business. 

We explored ways to monetize our automation efforts and considered whether to create a specialized automation department or have multiple employees across various departments working on automation. We decided to appoint one dedicated person to focus on teaching and troubleshooting issues related to the Fortra Automate solution, while employees from different departments would engage in building and refining the RPA processes.

We automated processes across security, IT, and credit cards, addressing numerous time-consuming manual tasks such as modifying credit card parameters and managing user passwords within the IT department. With Fortra's Automate, we've significantly streamlined these processes, enabling a much faster and more transparent workflow for both the IT team and the employees involved in these processes.

I find it very user-friendly. Our IT department and other departments can seamlessly collaborate without requiring extensive training. As a business department, we particularly value this aspect, as our team doesn't consist of many IT users. However, we couldn't solely rely on a drag-and-drop approach to implement and utilize the solution within our departments.      

I believe we need to test various OCR tools that assist in evaluating six different customer resyncs. We analyze their spending patterns and documentation, but current OCR support has limitations, requiring highly standardized documents, which isn't always the case. With a more advanced OCR system, we could improve processes related to credit risk management and legal matters.

We're exploring how to integrate Fortra's Automate with our CRM platform, taking cues from instances where Salesforce seamlessly merged with Automate. However, we use a different CRM, Insight for New Enterprise, and we're seeking ways to connect the automation process within our CRM. We aim for the automation to continue smoothly, even in instances where traditional automation methods might face hurdles.

I have been using Fortra’s Automate for more than a year.

It's a distinct challenge. We lack a direct path to the internet; instead, our server connections pass through Argentina, and our Microsoft server is situated in Brazil or the United States. This setup sometimes causes connectivity issues, leading to timeouts. We're actively addressing these concerns within our cloud environment, but overall stability relies heavily on our internet infrastructure, which currently impacts the functioning of our entire setup.

Based on our records, I'd rate it around nine to ten, which is excellent. However, our on-premise servers need improvement, consistently posing challenges, prompting our decision to transition away from this setup. I'd rate on-premise performance at around five at most.

They are good.

Positive

This is our very first solution in this category.

The initial setup was challenging as we, being the first bank in the country, had limited knowledge about transitioning to the cloud. Obtaining authorization from the central bank was a critical step. With significant assistance from the enterprise and Microsoft, leveraging Azure, setting up on the cloud posed its difficulties. Although Fortra's Automate is on-premise, our CRMs are cloud-based. We're in the process of using APIs to bridge our CRM with the on-premise database, creating a hybrid solution, although the CRMs are entirely cloud-based.

Regarding the return on investment, I may not have the exact figures at the moment, but our primary focus is on enhancing efficiency. We are actively measuring and analyzing the efficiency gains we've achieved, and the results have been quite promising.

We are currently engaged in several automation projects, and we are closely tracking the benefits and returns generated by our automation efforts.

I believe the price falls within a reasonable range, which significantly influenced our decision regarding the product. This aspect is crucial for any technological solution, especially in our country where enterprises might be hesitant to invest heavily in something untested or uncertain about its practicality and potential returns.

We conducted research on various solutions, but we were already familiar with Fortra as we had previous positive experiences using it in different organizations.

Firstly, it's crucial for individuals to understand the essence of automation and why it's necessary for their tasks. Many express the need for automation without a clear vision of their existing processes or the roadmap towards automation. It's essential to have a clear understanding of current workflows and the desired destination before considering solutions to facilitate that transition.

Overall, I would rate it 8 out of 10.

We use it for running reports.

It gives us a central place to schedule tasks and run them distributed. 

It's fairly important to us that it's based on a drag-and-drop, form-based development. It required very little training.

It has helped to reduce human errors. I can't provide the metrics, but humans are prone to creating errors when doing things manually.

It hasn't recently helped reduce our organization's need to hire more people to process repetitive tasks. That's because it's a mature instance that we're supporting.

Some of the monitoring features and the dashboard are valuable.

The workflow for variables could be better. The input and output of task-level variables could be made a little clearer in terms of passing those around from one task to another upon success, etc. Things like that could be a little easier potentially.

I've been using this solution for about four months.

It's fairly stable. We're seeing some issues. I'd rate it a seven out of ten in terms of stability.

It seems scalable to an extent. We've 15 users using this solution.

I've contacted them. They were very helpful. I'd rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

I've used other solutions, but there wasn't another one I know of doing this work at this company.

I wasn't a part of the deployment process. It was done several years ago, and I joined the team just this year.

In terms of the setup and the environment, it's virtualized on-premises. We have three EXE servers, one service box, and one server that we run the client on.

In terms of maintenance, I'm not aware of any maintenance requirements.

To those evaluating this solution, I'd advise having your migration plan in place.

I played around with a few of the things, and it seems like a viable option for building and creating automation using no-code automation, but it also depends on the use case.

I'd rate Fortra's Automate an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution either for uploading and downloading files on vendor SFTP sites, reading data and files and looking at files to alert and take action, and internally moving files such as data extract and reports from one destination to another, including moving into a network folder or server.

We also use it for data transformation and manipulation, such as converting files from text to Excel or CSV, unzipping files, leading rows and columns, reformatting rows and columns, and combining files.

And then we also use the solution to connect them to databases to execute SQL statements to produce reports.

We've automated all the vendor processes so that we don't have to manually load any files. Basically, it just automates the entire process for over 70 vendors, which is great.

The file interaction features are the most valuable aspect for us. We use them a lot and data interaction is our main use case.

Technical support is responsive.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The stability is very good.

We have found the pricing to be very reasonable.

The OCR needs improvement. 

The solution needs image recognition to integrate front-end and back-end workflows. They need to offer better organization of image capturing for image recognition.

The documentation is not that great. There have been times where I've had to reach out to HelpSystems to just try to accomplish what we're looking for. I've used other solutions that have much better documentation available.

I've been using the solution for five years. It's been a while. 

The solution is stable. It's reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

We haven't really tested the scalability. We haven't tried too many integrations, for example.

We have six full-time users on the solution right now.

I've used tech su[pirt in the past and I have found them to be helpful and responsive. I'm satisfied with the level of service they provide. 

The initial setup is probably pretty straightforward, or, at least, that's my understanding. We had people System Engineers that we're able to set up pretty easily.

The biggest part about deployment is setting up the dedicated servers, which we're actually installing on the services, and therefore it is pretty painless.

We have seen ROI in terms of saving and cutting down on resources related to specific workflows. You don't have to have IT staff to manipulate files or pick them up or automate some things for end-users. Since they don't have to perform those actions, we get ROI savings there.

We pay the licensing fees on a yearly basis. The pricing is good.

We're just a partner and an end-user.

We don't really use the reporting or the dashboards within the product, although they are available. 

There are other solutions that companies can use to integrate with AutoMate. I would recommend that organizations also look to pair it with other solutions like the AutoMate Intelligent Capture Solution as that can integrate very well with the RPA product.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've been very happy with its capabilities.

We primarily use this solution in order to automate manual processes in our operations. 

This tool has machine learning and voice recognition and computer vision, which are both quite useful aspects. These aren't available in other tools. It's a good addition to this tool and it gives the solution an edge on the market.  

The initial setup is easy. The deployment doesn't take too long.

Technical support is helpful. We use them a lot and they are quite responsive. 

The stability of the studio client could be improved upon. Currently, sometimes it slows down and occasionally it will force the program to close completely - which is unexpected. 

The interface could be more user-friendly and easier to navigate.

It would be helpful if the solution was available in the cloud as well as opposed to just being available on-premises. On-premises infrastructure offers limited scalability.

We started using the solution about two years ago now, and therefore that is the amount of experience I have with it. 

We aren't completely satisfied with the stability The system can slow down and the program occasionally crashes and closes. 

As the solution is on-premises, the scalability is limited. 

Just last month, we bought a new license, and therefore we do have plans to continue to use the product.

We have about 30 people currently using the product.

We use technical support a lot and we find them to be quite helpful and responsive. We are very satisfied with their level of service. 

We found the initial setup to be easy. It's not overly complex or difficult. It's straightforward for the most part.

The deployment is pretty fast. It takes about two hours to deploy the solution.

We are just a customer and an end-users.

I would recommend the solution. It's one of those solutions that are helpful in terms of reaching our goals and we've mostly been quite satisfied with its capabilities. 

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

I primarily use the solution for giving the sessions to the clients and trying to get them to set up AutoMate in their organization and also help them to design and create a workflow.

For example, one of our clients, for a healthcare chain, was having a lot of COVID patients coming in in 2020. Their SAP systems are on 15(16) Field information had to go on to the Department of Health site, as all the blood samples are tested in the government hospitals. There were lab technicians keeping the SAP application open and they were copying all these 15(16) Fields of 2000 patients end of the day into the DOH website. That was taking them a lot of time. Two other people were hired to help. 

What we did for them was automate the process. We went into the SAP system and every three hours would download that information, then, we would go to the DOH site, upload these 15 Fields for all of the patients.

After two days, we could go to the DOH website, and download their PDF document, which was a report on whether they had detected COVID or not. For the data we download we would enter the date into that Excel file for the hospital and attach that PDF document onto the top record of the patient. This way, there's complete information about the patient. With this solution, the cycle was complete.

I can say it's a very good product. It has very good results and it is well suited for my requirements. Everything more or less I've been able to create, in line with what the client requires. If the clients have been stuck within everything I've been able to give them a solution on how to automate what is required. 

The solution is really pushing into cybersecurity and working to improve this aspect of the product.

They always check quarterly with the customer to find out what the customer wants to be enhanced in AutoMate. They make sure they try to put that into their roadmap. They are not complacent like some of the other RPA products which already are in the market. They're working on building out more automation so there are fewer bottlenecks in the future.

Technical support is very, very good.

We often get a sneak peek into what they will be releasing. We get to know about it first.

The solution scales extremely easily.

The stability of the solution is very good.

The implementation process is quick and easy.

The solution is continuously adding more integrations to help with workflows and bot and task creation.

So far, for two years, I have not found anything amiss.

That said, nothing is 100%. Each RPA product is not mature enough. There are always have to find innovative ways of automating. There are always challenges for automation. It is a continuously growing process. The majority of the clients want more automation in AutoMate and they want that in the roadmap. 

Some companies have asked for voice integration. This is likely part of the roadmap. 

I've been using the solution for the last two years or so. It's been a while.

The stability of the solution is excellent. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's very reliable.

The scalability is excellent. It's a very good selling feature for the product. If a company needs to scale, it can do so with ease.

The companies we work with are rather large enterprises.

Technical support is very good and very prompt. They have a chatbot for partners and clients. Anybody who goes to the website can interact with the chatbot. All queries get a response within 24 hours. Their SLA is a 24 hour response time if the chatbot can't immediately connect you to someone. 

We have our own discussion portal on which we can post things and immediately there's a solution. Or if there's no solution they let us know about it and will work on a proper response. 

The initial setup is very, very simple. In fact, one of the banks that is a client of ours for some other products plans to move from UiPath to AutoMate mostly due to the complex implementation process involved with UiPath. They have asked us to wait actually until the business comes up and then they will move to AutoMate.

It does not take a long time to set up. We have only one server, and any number of workflows can be created with one license depending on the size of the file and aspects like that. You just need a one-server setup. You don't need different kinds of products when your number of workflows increases. That is a real added advantage ofthe implementation. Our USP is, easy to implement, fast return on investment, and scalability.

While I'm not sure of the exact pricing, it's my understanding that the solution is one the cheapest compared to UiPath, Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, or the other tier-one options.

I'm aware of UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism and have done some pricing comparisons. HelpSystems is much cheaper than these options.

We are a distributor - a value-added distributor that has the knowledge and expertise. We will combine products of HelpSystems and give to clients the tools as they require them. Many clients have more than one HelpSystems product, for example.

Overall, I would rate the solution nine out of ten.