Automation Anywhere (AA) Reviews

My primary use cases are where I'm dealing with a lot of raw data extraction and transformation so that the data can be used by other systems.

An example would be getting the data out of PDF files, transforming it from semi-structured to structured and putting it into an extra-stable system like Excel or a CSV so that it can be used by other systems.

A lot of clients I work with have legacy systems and a lot of API access is not available. Some of the systems might be running off a server located somewhere else, while some would be running on a mainframe and I'm actually restricted to working with the screen. So these clients have a very good use case. If I'm working with the screens, Automation Anywhere really does help me because it gives me the control over the screens. If you are not looking at integrating legacy software, Automation Anywhere gets the job done. But if you need integration then you start looking for other RPA tools.

It definitely saves time and effort. Improving the workflow, that's not something Automation Anywhere provides. That's a different challenge altogether - to do a business process improvement so that automation gives you even more value. That type of process works in combination with Automation Anywhere, but it's not a part of Automation Anywhere. So the process improvement is separate. We optimize the process and then we run it through Automation Anywhere.

You can probably use any similar tools. But Automation Anywhere is one tool that actually gives me automation capability right at the start, without worrying about process improvement in the first place. I can just act like how another person would. Whereas if I do a little bit of process optimization, I can use another tool also. If I get access to APIs, I might use Blue Prism. If I get access to web elements, I go the way of UiPath. If it is a human-mimicking behavior, that's where I use Automation Anywhere.

What I like about Automation Anywhere is the object cloning and the way you can move the mouse and either go to a particular point or go to an element. That's very easy and intuitive in Automation Anywhere.

It gets the job done in terms of getting the data out of the pages. Although I have other tools, I still have this habit of going through the clicks. If you're going through the clicks, Automation Anywhere is the best.

Let's say you are on a website. You move the mouse around. You click on certain places. Automation Anywhere is better at that because you can adjust the screen directly or you can adjust the element. Whereas in, let's say, UiPath, it's a little bit complicated on the inside because there isn't a direct command for that. I have to go to a web scraper. In Automation Anywhere, I have the direct command to move my mouse. If I need to mimic a human behavior, I will use Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere is troublesome for some people because of the way it is organized. It's organized as an encrypted script, which gets run via a domain-specific language which the user sees. 

There's a loss of overhead on the computing resources in Automation Anywhere. If you have an encrypted bot, the Automation Anywhere software has to read it first, decrypt it, and run it. So there is a potential that, if the logic of the bot isn't good enough, a lot of CPU and memory overload will happen. This is something that Automation Anywhere should look at because it takes a lot of computing resources. I have seen CPUs running at 100 percent.

In terms of additional features, if I am dealing with a dynamic workflow where the workflow might change based on the input parameters, then Automation Anywhere doesn't help me because the code is pretty much fixed. When I need those types of workflows I go to UiPath.

It's highly stable. I'm pretty happy with Automation Anywhere. I'm pretty happy with the security of the bot. Once you make a bot, if you don't have access to Automation Anywhere, you really can't mess with the bot. I'm pretty happy with the stability. 

The only problem I have is that it takes a lot of memory and CPU usage for Automation Anywhere to do its internal encrypting and decrypting.

I'm not yet happy with the scalability of Automation Anywhere. Scalability is good up to about 100 bots. Beyond that, I need to spread it into multiple sites, which means there is additional licensing cost.

I would give Automation Anywhere's technical support about three-and-a-half out of five. They do have a lot of information published, but the response times aren't great within India, where we are located. I can't say anything about support in other markets.

One thing they need to improve on is the way they have been putting out so many terminologies in the market: IQ Bots, MetaBots. They need to define them properly, in simple terms. If I go to my client and say "IQ Bot" or "MetaBot," they don't understand anything. It falls back on us to figure out whether these types of things will be useful for our process or not.

Regarding their support, when they bring in these features, like IQ Bot and MetaBot, there isn't a lot of documentation that comes with them, which can cause confusion in the client's mind as well as the developer's mind. Even Automation Anywhere's guys aren't really clear on IQ Bots, MetaBots, and things within Automation Anywhere because, when we ask, they just give us the definition. That's not very helpful.

It's pretty straightforward in terms of setting it up. It's not a lot of work, as compared to what you would do in Blue Prism, or even in or WorkFusion. I would say UiPath is the easiest to install and configure, while Automation Anywhere would be number two. Blue Prism would be way down because it's difficult installing and configuring it.

It doesn't take much time to deploy Automation Anywhere. We have built a script. We just run the script and within three or four minutes we are done. We don't really install Automation Anywhere by running it and then monitoring it, rather the script automatically installs it. That script lightens our load; we automate our own jobs as well.

In terms of implementation strategy, we have a set of requirements for the client's environment and hardware. For the environment, we need to look at the .NET framework, which version, the directory structure, folder structure, paths. And there are multiple items to be checked out regarding the hardware: We need to look at the RAM, the hard disk space, the connectivity. There's a lot of checking which must be done, but we do that through the script itself.

We have all the environments set up in one local place and once the script runs it goes and installs all the required software components. The .NET framework will be installed, the run-time engine will be installed, Automation Anywhere will be installed, and the policies will be set automatically for at least the end user, so that we can go and create more users.

Once we have the hardware, and once we are ready to install the environment, it takes us about 15 to 20 minutes.

For deployment of Automation Anywhere, we don't need a lot of staff. But when we are deploying the bots, we generally have an experienced guy who will look at the deployment of the bots within the Control Room. That's a different scenario altogether.

We don't require a lot of people for maintenance. What we do is, we transfer some of the load to the client's staff, in terms of monitoring and scheduling. Of course, we have one person keeping an eye on the entire thing. We have one person on a chargeable basis per client location. And this person also doesn't have a lot of work, so sometimes this person moves among the sites if there is no problem at all with the installation.

Companies now are not willing to put a large investment up front into these tools, unless the service provider that is developing the bots can assure that the bot will be successful and there will be certain savings. Clients are actually talking to the service providers first, rather than the RPA Software Vendors. It used to be that Automation Anywhere would go to the customer, convince them and sell them five licenses, and then the client would go out and start hunting for Automation Anywhere service providers or resources. The whole model has now changed 180 degrees. Now the clients are more interested in talking to consultants and trying to figure out which tool would be good, how many licenses they would need, what the scalability roadmap is, what will they be doing again in six months, 12 months, two years, etc.

It's hard to get a clear picture of the financial value that it can bring. For example, when we go in, we look at a process and we look at the value that automating the process can bring in, but there are other aspects which we look at, which are a kind of "chain effect." If I automate this, what else will break in the whole chain of processes? When there are processes A, B, and C, if I automate B, either A or C or both will feel the heat from this automation effort. If A and C are not conducive to screen-based automation, then I am in a fix because I can automate B using Automation Anywhere, but for A and C, I might need to use something else.

That type of analysis is now coming into the picture. Earlier, it was: Pick a process, automate it, feel the benefit, and then go for another. That is one reason why now we can also recommend hybrid models where multiple tools could be used via a single interface. We have to build the interface to Automation Anywhere and UiPath, or Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism to get the job done. That becomes an additional cost to the client.

If you look at the capital expenditure, Automation Anywhere is number two to UiPath. But if you take a long-term view, on a scalable model of a large number of bots coming out, it slowly goes on to become the costliest tool. There is something they can do about that.

I did a cost comparison on short-term basis, long-term basis, CapEx versus OpEx, and Automation Anywhere is the costliest. Surprisingly, Blue Prism becomes the cheapest, if you look at the long-term view.

That's because of the licensing terms, the pricing policy, and the engagement models. Blue Prism doesn't want you to buy just one license. They want you to sign up for the long-term, for at least a minimum block of ten licenses. Automation Anywhere can give you a single license, so the capital expenditure is low. But as you go on, the OpEx, the regular increase in the number of licenses and the price per, starts to add up.

The capital expenditure goes out right at the point of buying the tool. For Automation Anywhere, I would need to spend $20,000. UiPath can give me something for $6,000, while Blue Prism will come in at $300,000. If I'm just experimenting, or I don't have a need for a large number of bots, or I can optimize my design to run bots sequentially on the same machine, Automation Anywhere vs UiPath is quite comparable.

Every tool has its own drawbacks. Blue Prism would probably be an eight out of ten, but the nearest comparable tool to Automation Anywhere would be Softomotive WinAutomation. They both work on the same principles, although the internal storage is different. WinAutomation also works on a domain-specific language system, and I would rate it a little notch higher than Automation Anywhere and give it a seven-and-a-half out of ten, but they are all in the same category. I don't really see any of them getting a ten, on my scale, right now.

UiPath can do wonders, but the technology is old. If I want to do machine-learning, I can't do it with UiPath. I would have to create another "open UiPath" for myself to be able to use machine-learning and artificial intelligence libraries which are there in the market, because I can't use them with UiPath. That's where UiPath also loses a couple of points.

It's a very dynamic market and everyday new tricks are being discovered. My advice would be: Look at your process. If your process is screen-based, doesn't have a lot of things to do with APIs, go for Automation Anywhere. If somebody's looking specifically to implement Automation Anywhere, irrespective of what process they're automating, I would probably call it a bad move.

Role-wise, we follow our own system. We have a solution designer and we have an architect. These two guys work hand-in-hand, from solution design to a technical architecture of the Automation Anywhere bot. Then we have developers who develop the system. And we have the leads, of course, who are managers. They are senior staff who understand how the bot code is to be published and released into the Control Room. Most of the time, it's the solution designer and the architects who are critical for us, rather than the developers. The development part is easier than the design part. Designing automation takes a lot out of us.

In our organization we have 42 people, and most of these are multi-skilled on multiple tools. We do only specialized stuff, so some 20 of them would have been working on Automation Anywhere at some point. We use multiple tools. We are tool agnostic. We figure out which tool to use and go with that tool.

We don't have plans to push future usage of Automation Anywhere, most importantly because of extensibility of the tool: I can't extend it. So we created a workflow tool for ourselves similar to UiPath, but it's open to extensions. I don't see a lot of projects happening on Automation Anywhere for us unless the customer asks for it. In the Asia-Pacific market, it's either UiPath or Automation Anywhere. If they don't have a tool then, of course, we'll have to look at the type of project and recommend a tool.

I would rate Automation Anywhere at seven out of ten. The architecture is great. It's only the way they have tried to protect their own bots that is causing them to cannibalize themselves. Otherwise, it is great software. It works on a domain-specific language. You really don't need to understand .NET or Visual Basic or C# to work with it. The domain-specific language is more like English. They have done a great job making something, but there is a big scope for improvement if they want to really unsettle the other guys.

In my opinion, instead of sitting in their offices and not conversing with people out there, there are a lot of things Automation Anywhere can do if it listens to the people who are actually evaluating it, using it, and are happy or unhappy with it. I don't really see a mechanism where Automation Anywhere can be seen listening to this feedback. Secondly, they should be more open about their roadmap and where they are going with Automation Anywhere. What I want them to do is to make some more noise about their plans, rather than their current situation, because customers are not looking to buy Automation Anywhere for the next three years. They're looking to buy it so that if their processes change or if Automation Anywhere changes, it can still be usable for their organizations.

I can't keep on changing tools. Let's say I use Automation Anywhere where it's obvious and then it becomes unsuitable, so I have to change to another tool. That rarely happens because the users are familiar with it and change is the biggest barrier. People don't want to change. And the cost of training is actually more than the cost of the Automation Anywhere tool itself. You need to train different people with different skills, not only in Automation Anywhere but for every tool. You need different skills and different people to actually make the whole thing work.

We use Automation Anywhere in a DevOps environment. 

Automation Anywhere helps us resolve some friction between IT needs and business requirements. In an agile environment, the first questions are always: How much money do you have? What is your budget? Automation Anywhere or any other RPA solution can help you achieve your goals within budget constraints by lowering operational costs. It increases productivity and reduces errors.

I like Automation Anywhere's cloud-based nature. You don't need any on-prem infrastructure to host it. If you have suitable infrastructure, you can easily integrate it with Automation Anywhere. The learning curve is reasonable. Automation Anywhere has a user-friendly environment, but digesting all the platform's features takes significant time. 

It's challenging to train users on Automation Anywhere. There should be more organized training sessions. I prefer interactive classes to one-on-one training. You can create super users and organize conferences or workshops where users can learn from experts. Maybe you only have a few of these super users in your organization, so that's why you need to have workshops on a weekly basis. 

I have used Automation Anywhere for three to five years. 

I rate Automation Anywhere seven out of ten for stability. 

I rate Automation Anywhere support seven out of ten.

Neutral

I previously used UiPath at a past job but switched when I started work at my current company. 

I rate Automation Anywhere seven out of ten. 

We started out with accounts payable, and now, we're starting to do more vertical revenue cycle management in healthcare. We're starting to use it for other things.

We're on version 11, but we're moving to 2019 or 360. We're in the process of migrating right now.

We were able to replace a lot of the manual and data entry workload that our accounts payable clerks were doing. We had 18 accounts payable clerks, most of them are still there with us, and the work that was done before by this original group can now be done by four people.

The ease of use in getting started is probably the big thing. They had a lot of references that we were able to check. It is a well-known player, and being able to get up and running quickly was the big thing.

Migration is probably our biggest challenge. When we were trying to do the migration to the new version, it was a little bit painful. We didn't have that many bots, and I can't imagine the level of effort that some of the bigger customers have to put in for that. The product is stable, but moving from one release to the other was the issue.

We also had difficulty with some of the documents that we were trying to automate. IQ Bot or intelligent document processing doesn't have all the features and functions that we were originally told it had. They need to improve that. It had some limitations, and we've had to add other products to the mix just because they weren't able to deliver some of the things that we were told that they could deliver upfront. 

They've been talking about task mining for a while. They don't have a good tool out there to evaluate the current processes and come up with a plan. It is a trial and error process where you have to sit down and go through what different people are doing, for how much time they're doing it, etc. There isn't a good systematic way of capturing that information. There are other products such as Kryon, and there is a new product called Soroco that we're looking at, that would let us evaluate the task that could be automated. So, it is not really process automation; it is task automation. You don't really see end to end when you're doing these projects. You don't just decide to automate the whole process. You select the tasks that you are going to automate, but you don't really know the effect that particular automation is going to have on another task. You don't have the big picture. It would be very helpful if both UiPath and Automation Anywhere provide a center of excellence that you could run on your systems so that the people who are running things come back and say that:

• Here is the task that we should be automating.
• Here is the time that we are taking to do it now.
• Here is what the benefit is going to be. 

All these are manual today. You're looking at what other companies are doing and hoping that you're going to get an ROI, but you don't really know until you start the project, and by then, it is too late. You've already spent the money on the software, the bot, the integration, the services, etc. At the end of the day, you're thinking if you would get the ROI. You have to measure it to see if you're going to get it after you've already spent the money. It would be really nice to have something that you could run upfront to know about the automation tasks that are costing you money today and where you should focus your efforts on automating.

I have been using this solution for about two years.

It is pretty stable, but moving to the new release has been a major pain. 

Its scalability is great. It is for sure built for enterprises.

We have six to eight people who are doing validation now and are actually using the product for validation. They are accounts payable clerks and healthcare revenue cycle management folks. 

It is being used extensively in the finance back office, and the idea is to bring it more to the front office for customer onboarding and things of that nature. We haven't done a lot of that, but that's in the plans. We are trying to figure out the next processes to automate.

It is good. 

We didn't use any solution previously. We did add UiPath to another area of the business, so we did bring on another vendor just to see what the differences were and how easy it was to use compared to the other one. We haven't really said we were going down one path as a company. We didn't want to put all eggs in one basket, so we decided to do one project with Automation Anywhere and one project with UiPath and compare the two.

UiPath has a little bit better document management. They have some process mining that we've started to use. Pricing is roughly about the same. There is not too much of a difference. I haven't seen too much significant difference between the two products.

It was pretty straightforward. We originally thought we could do it with internal resources, but we had to bring a third party in to do it. So, it is straightforward if you have experience and training. Our tech team can do it now. 

We started out with a simple invoicing, and the bulk of it took about three weeks or so. Testing everything probably took closer to six weeks. We finally got it going in two months.

When we first started, we thought we could have more of our team doing it, but we had to bring a third party in to do the bot building and all that. It was a reseller, and they had technical people. Our experience with them was good. They were a little expensive, but it was good.

For its deployment and maintenance, we have about three people. We have created a small center of excellence team with three, or sometimes four, people. We have a business analyst. We have two developers, and we have somebody from finance on that team who is putting a lot of hours into that piece. We're truly trying to figure out the next processes to automate.

For accounts payable, we saw a return in about five months from the time we started. There was a significant reduction in the number of hours that invoicing was taking. We went from 18 people to 4 people. We didn't let all those people go, but we did let a few people go, or we moved them into different job functions. 

We're paying a monthly subscription fee for the bot and for services. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee.

I would advise looking at other companies to know what they're doing. I would also advise putting a complete plan in place so that all bot management needs are considered upfront. It is helpful to put a roadmap in place and have a center of excellence or something like that to make sure that the processes that you're going to implement have an ROI. You can validate the effort upfront by using process mining or other tools and evaluate what the effort is now and what the savings are going to be upfront. 

We did a couple of projects that we thought were going to have significant ROI, but they didn't. It was more of an internal process that we had to fix. It wasn't so much about automation; it was about the way we were doing business. We weren't following processes, procedures, and things like that, and that was what was causing the issue. We had automated a bad process, so it didn't have the return that we thought it was going to have. We had to do some procedures. We had to change some things internally.

I would rate it a seven out of 10. It's a good product. It does what it's supposed to do.

We use AA for automating ServiceNow tickets in Caterpillar.

We get tickets for the configuration requests. Using AA, we auto-download the excel attached to it and do all the necessary cleanup and conversions. 

The entire process in steps as mentioned below:

1. A ServiceNow ticket is created by the client that needs a configuration request related to Caterpillar machines.

These machines are called lane 2 and lane 3 because they are manual configurations

2. Once we get the configuration we then try to match the configuration with all the parts and whether the configuration would be possible or not.

For that, we use SOAP where all our latest data is loaded.

This data is compared with the Excel sheet that client sends us.

The cleanup is done in Automation Anywhere, compared to end to end, and then output is thrown out. This output is then given back to the clients in the form of a ticket attachment to let them know if the configuration of the machine that they have requested is possible or not.

Automation Anywhere has saved us a lot of time, money & efforts by automating our ServiceNow tickets.

We expect to save more time by expanding to other verticals very soon. The other verticals include sending automated replies to the executives using the Power BI dashboards through alerts. We have not yet explored this aspect completely but sooner or later we have a lot of BI needs that will be catered by Automation Anywhere.

In the past, we have also done PoCs for the client that helped the executives run automated scripts every Monday using pre-built SQL commands in the data warehouse.

• Create automation tasks like recording keyboard strokes and mouse clicks.
• Distribute tasks to multiple computers.

Also, the document management processes that IQ Bot gives has very good functionality of how you can actually take unstructured data and make sense out of it, connecting inferences, then making the data available to the user. So, IQ Bot is one of the best tools that I can think of in that aspect. This solves the problem of various document structures, document formats, etc.

Hoping to see AA get more robust with time.

Handwritten documents are still a drawback to read.

Regarding the UI, once you're on some of the screens there are fixed dialogues, they are a set size, so there's a lot of horizontal scrolls and vertical scrolls. If I want to do something that is purely business-related and is somewhat complex to write or is nuanced, I sometimes have trouble implementing that inside of the Automation Anywhere script. I feel limited at times with some of the looping and some of the branching and some of the ways to make procedure calls when I have a complex business issue.

Also, there's a loss of overhead of the computing resources in Automation Anywhere. If you have an encrypted bot, the Automation Anywhere software has to read it first, decrypt it, and run it. So there is a potential that, if the logic of the bot isn't good enough, a lot of CPU and memory overload will happen. This is something that Automation Anywhere should look at because it takes a lot of computing resources. I have seen CPUs running at 100%.

I have been using AA for three years. 

Very good.

Very good.

Very good.

We have only used AA as AA has a partnership with Deloitte and Deloitte promotes using AA. 

We have liked AA very much.

The setup was straighforward.

In-house.

We have seen at least 30 % savings in time and 12% saving in costs.

We are not into advisory. We only use the tool.

We are waiting to see AA progress further with more robust solutions.

We have many use cases for this solution. These include use cases from our life science, procurement, and HR departments. More generally, it is used for our regulatory and life science tasks, and some finance as well.

We have a huge roadmap that includes a lot of processes that need to be automated.

For example, some of our processes are related to clinical trials and the drug development process. They include verifying documents and entering a lot of data that has to be processed. The automation reduces the effort and time it takes to complete these processes.

We have a mix of technology in our environment, including legacy systems and new technology.

This solution saves time when completing our pharmaceutical processes, which allows things to progress faster to the FDA.

The IQ Bot is a very good feature.

For our legacy systems, we are finding it very difficult to use the automation. Sometimes, forty percent of our work cannot be processed in an automated fashion. We need to acquire additional automation tools in order to reach one hundred percent automation.

Automation Anywhere says that you can use this tool for any type of application, but there are some for which it is not compatible. In cases where automation is not supported, there should be alternative tools that are inbuilt where they can be used to support or guide the automation forward, giving us one hundred percent automation.

The licensing model has to be changed to perpetual because even when we are not using a license, we are charged for it.

For simple processes, everything works. However, for a complex process with a lot of rules and mappings then we are finding it really difficult.

We are in touch with Automation Anywhere and the partners who can develop the system and increase the speed, or deal with other limitations that we have.

We have more than two hundred and fifty licenses, although they are not all currently in use by the bots.

We have a direct point of contact for technical support, although there are limitations.

In some instances, the technical support is on time, but in other cases it takes longer. When we commit to the customers we cannot give the time, for example, as a two or three-day turnaround.

When the Automation Anywhere team works with our technical team, they don't understand what kind of tools we have within the system in our company, and how that data is going to be interlinked with the other machines. This converting of data on the functionality side is where some of the limitations are.

The initial setup of this solution is easy, although sometimes you have service problems.

For example, we have a server set up as a load balancer, and sometimes these two systems have a problem where the nodes are not synching. I think that it is an issue with Automation Anywhere having a bug in the system. This is a problem when you are selling it to the customer because you have to make sure that it is reliable, and will stay that way for some time. You cannot expect companies to change their products every now and then, or continually upgrade versions. We need things to be stable for at least one or two years at a time.

Automation Anywhere helped us to set up our Center of Excellence (COA), and their partners assisted us with other aspects of the setup.

We have seen ROI but we are not up to the mark.

From the setup, we have spent somewhere between one and two million dollars over the past two years. I would say that our ROI is less than one million dollars. I don't want to say that it is a failure, but I would like to see a better ROI.

Had things gone the way we expected then we would have seen ROI by this time.

The licensing cost is approximately $4,000 USD, which is a seed license. You can have as many licenses as you want but the moment you start using them, they charge for them. For example, if you have purchased two hundred and fifty licenses to use over one thousand machines then at any point, only two hundred and fifty users can log in. 

In 2017 when we decided that we needed RPA, we evaluated several products. We tried Blue Prism, UiPath, and Automation Anywhere, in addition to other automation tools that were on the market. At that time, we found that Automation Anywhere was doing better, and had more features, than all of the others, which is why we chose the product.

An example of the additional features was the support for PDF conversion, Excel data transfer, and the IQ Bot.

We have purchased more licenses than we are currently using, which is why we need to enhance automation.

These days, I think that UiPath is picking up faster and with more relevant features. If they are able to overcome the limitations we have, for example in legacy systems, then it may be a better choice of a system that you can sustain for a long time.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The primary use case is to automate any type of process, mostly for payments, wealth management, and loans.

The bots replicate human behavior in front of a computer.

We are automating all our mundane processes, making people more creative.

• The most valuable feature is its Control Room.
• It is a user-friendly tool for developers and easy to learn.
• The product is easy to integrate.
• As a tool, IQ Bot is easy to use, powerful, and very competitive compared to others.

I would like a better code migration solution, because this is something that we do a lot.

It is a complex solution to make stable.

It is a powerful tool for scaling that sometimes makes the process seamless.

It took one year to scale to the amount of bots that we are currently using.

The technical support is very helpful. We have almost 24/7 support. We also have a representative who works closely with us to make sure everything get resolved as quickly as possible.

We did not use another solution previously.

The initial setup was complex.

The first time, we used an integrator for deployment. They were good, but we don't work with them anymore. Now, we work with Automation Anywhere.

We measure our ROI by the money that we save.

Our annual licensing costs are about $500,000.

We did not consider another vendor.

It is a great company with a great product and support. You should consider this tool if you want something powerful and user-oriented.

While I haven't taken any courses through Automation Anywhere University yet, my team has.

We try to automate processes within the operations department of our company.

For Automation Anywhere, there are a few commands that are my favorites. The object cloning command is the strongest command that I've worked with, as well as all the Excel commands.

You do not need to have IT skills. I come from a finance background, so I can attest to the fact that you do not need IT skills to use Automation Anywhere to leverage it on your teams.

More interactions with PDFs would be great for Automation Anywhere. 

The ability to use more legacy technology for object cloning, flash plugins, etc.

A lot of their Excel commands could use some improvement. I noticed sometimes the functions don't work properly or the ability to use over a macro isn't as efficient. So, definitely the Excel commands and the ability to use formulas for Excel could use improvement.

Automation Anywhere has had a increased positive impact in terms of stability. Leveraging the use of this technology with other emerging technologies has had a positive impact on our company.

With scalability, it is all about the frequency. I can have the bot run 24/7 or I could have the bot run on weekends. In terms of scalability, it definitely works faster and more than a human does.

When it came to a lot of people in our company just doing mundane, repeatable tasks, we realized that they are not interested in their workflow. So, if we can automate the tasks that are mundane and repeatable, our employees will be able to engage in more higher value tasks, then be happier at work.

It was a straightforward setup. There are definitely some hurdles that we had to go through. 

Just trying to get IT and Automation Anywhere to work together to build a resilient solution was a bit of a challenge, but it was more straightforward.

I would give it a 10 out of 10. The ease of use of the application is very smooth for us. Coming from a finance and business background, I did not have any challenges using the application. It is extremely versatile. I can use it with internal applications, external applications, websites, Excel sheets, and so many other documents. So, it's definitely one of the best of RPA applications that I've used yet.

Our use case is mainly finance related. We've used Automation Anywhere to automate a couple of applications with respect to statement analysis and daily manual processes. 

We check if the process is automate-able, meaning there is no human interaction needed, no judgments to be made, etc. If the process is a candidate, we then move forward and start automating. We also look into the systems involved, because some systems have restrictions with respect to automation.

Overall, we've saved a lot of time. There's a recent process that we automated, which saves around 200 to 300 hours each month, depending on the number of accounts that come in.

Automate Anywhere can just mimic what a human does. That is the overall feature I can talk about. With respect to specific features, my main focus is with IQ bots, because they can learn by themselves, which is very helpful in a finance background where we're looking at statements and the like. There's a little bit of coding that you need to do and then you can just start teaching it.

This solution is very easy to use since it's a pseudo-code based language rather than workflows. It's very easy to analyze, especially when it comes to getting back to your code, making changes, or resolving an issue. It's not only the development that you need to look into. You also need to look into the maintenance point of view. You need a little bit of a technological background, but that's really just an add on. Even if you don't have it, you can really mimic a manual process that you're doing for simple use cases, so it really helps.

One aspect of the solution that needs improvement is with respect to its stability. There are a lot of issues in the tool. There are a lot of breakdowns. We report these issues to Automation Anywhere and they come back with a fix, but it takes some time. At least the fact that we know those errors up front really helps us to design the code. However, with respect to some features, we've finished designing and then we realize that it's not going to work, so all our effort goes wasted.

Stability has yet to get there. There are issues with the tool such as breaking down. When we have the bots run on our local system together, we might need to restart on the second or third day. There are a few limitations, which I'm sure they'll overcome with time, but until then, we have to modify our code to withstand that drawback.

If you have coding background, it's very simple. There will be no effort at all. For a non technical background person, it might seem a little complicated at the start, but with all the drop-downs and pulls for loops and ifs, it gets really easy.

The course is wonderful. The module is really amazing. I tell my peers to take the course. Certification I wouldn't emphasize as much, because the questions asked in the certification versus the module do not sync with each other very well. However, if you finish the module, when you get a use case up front, you will know what feature is best to use. After doing the course, I know all the easiest ways to do stuff. So this course will really help a person.