Senior Consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers
Real User
Good error handling and troubleshooting in the tool. However, technical support needs faster response times.
Pros and Cons
  • "The error handling and troubleshooting are very good. It is easy for a developer to know what happened in any particular line of code."
  • "I would like the support to be faster. Their response time is one to two days. Their customer care could be faster."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is working with different applications, like Excel and SAP. We get the data and reports, then produce results with Automation Anywhere. For IQ Bots, we're still working on it for data extraction.

I think version 11.3 is good, but I am looking forward to working with version A2019.

What is most valuable?

The drag and drop is valuable because you can easily read the commands and know what a particular line of code is doing. 

The error handling and troubleshooting are very good. It is easy for a developer to know what happened in any particular line of code.

What needs improvement?

I would like Automation Anywhere to integrate with Google activities, like Google Sheets. While this should be available in A2019, I would like it to be scaled more.

Version A2019 will have better error handling. They are also adding Python script.

I would like them to add dictionaries to it.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

From variable to variable, it is giving me blank code. We have seen this in the IQ Bot, but not in the main code.

Sometimes, I have to restart the automation services to make them work properly.

Buyer's Guide
Automation Anywhere (AA)
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Automation Anywhere (AA). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good. We have five bots that we are currently scaling. 

We are looking to invest more in Automation Anywhere.

How are customer service and support?

We contact Automation Anywhere's technical support via email. I would like the support to be faster. Their response time is one to two days. Their customer care could be faster.

What about the implementation team?

Our IT did the initial deployment.

What was our ROI?

We measure our success with our customers' happiness.

We have seen some return from the product.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend Automation Anywhere. You can test the tool before purchasing it.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Neethushree S - PeerSpot reviewer
QA in RPA at Merck Group
Real User
Top 20
Offers a drag and drop option anybody can understand
Pros and Cons
  • "It is very user-friendly. Nobody has to sit down and work on coding. We have a drag and drop option where anybody can understand it."
  • "Giving access to our internal websites was not simple during the initial setup."

What is our primary use case?

We have processes in our company that are manual and redundant. We need to reduce the time and improve the efficiency simultaneously. These will be the best use cases for automation.

How has it helped my organization?

We picking processes that are more manual and consume more time. We pick a case where it consumes more time when an individual does it. When an automation platform with a bot does it, less time is needed and it is more efficient. This way we have reduced manpower on these manual tasks. Individual workers can then pick up other work instead.

What is most valuable?

It is very user-friendly. Nobody has to sit down and work on coding. We have a drag and drop option where anybody can understand it. That is the advantage of Automation Anywhere.

For how long have I used the solution?

We are in the implementation stage. We have worked with it for only a couple of months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We don't foresee any issues with the stability. The support team has given us their guarantee.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The processes that we have chosen in the initial phase are limited to certain regions. We have categorized them to phase one, two, and so on. Once phase one is good to go and we get good results out of it, we have plans to scale up to phase two, then so on. We have categorized the processes into regions, like Asia, US, EU, etc. Going forward, we will be implementing globally.

How are customer service and technical support?

We are getting good support from the Automation Anywhere team. We have not found any cases or issues until now. They have been implementing and supporting us is in a very good way. 

As of now, we have developers who are supporting us from Automation Anywhere. They are very knowledgeable enough to understand our process requirements and build a solution for us. They interact with our SMEs on a regular basis. Once we implement the process into production, we will need continuous support from the technical team. We look forward to working with the same support going forward.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward.

Giving access to our internal websites was not simple during the initial setup, but we could track the issue. After sometime, everything was streamlined. We now know for our next automation project with Automation Anywhere what has to be done because we have better clarity.

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI in terms of cost and time with a couple of our projects.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have a couple of projects with UiPath and Blue Prism. We also took Automation Anywhere as an option. When we compare other projects on other platforms versus Automation Anywhere, the technical support we are receiving in terms of efficiency, and even that they are giving us good price. This is what we are looking for. Therefore, we have plans to move our other projects, which are on UiPath and Blue Prism, onto Automation Anywhere.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Automation Anywhere (AA)
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Automation Anywhere (AA). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Sunilkumar Venugopal - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of RPA Team at Olam International
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Good for rapid deployment with a stable automation framework
Pros and Cons
  • "Automation Anywhere is very good for rapid development. It has all the capabilities in terms of giving a stable automation framework. It has very cool technical capabilities, like MetaBots, dev controls, and object cloning."
  • "We encountered issues during the upgrade of the framework. We were using the older framework of version 10.3.5. When we were upgrading, we were having a few issues in terms of getting the proper hardware and software prerequisites. For some things, like getting the controls of some of the application's tools, we were getting Automation Anywhere's help."

What is our primary use case?

Primary use case of Automation Anywhere is financial accounting reporting use cases.

We use unattended bots for all the financial reporting. We have also done some use cases in master data management (MDM). These are the things that we did early last year.

For the next year, we will be primarily focused on cognitive automation. We've already started with IQ Bot exploration. We will be looking into the new version of IQ Bot.

How has it helped my organization?

We released ERP, improving our workload balancing. For example, for each of our employees, we have release almost 400 hours of critical repeated efforts.

What is most valuable?

Automation Anywhere is very good for rapid development. It has all the capabilities in terms of giving a stable automation framework. It has very cool technical capabilities, like MetaBots, dev controls, and object cloning. 

What needs improvement?

We encountered issues during the upgrade of the framework. We were using the older framework of version 10.3.5. When we were upgrading, we were having a few issues in terms of getting the proper hardware and software prerequisites. For some things, like getting the controls of some of the application's tools, we were getting Automation Anywhere's help.

The operation happened both in hardware and software. There was some amount of friction in terms of technical and hardware operations. In terms handling capturing the controls, that's where we used the help of tech support.

We are looking forward to the release of cloud/web automation, which has yet to be released.

We having most of the use cases rely on Automation Anywhere. However, we face some challenges in terms of RPA implementation with Citrix.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Whatever use case we have deployed in production, we have found nil in terms of stability issues. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

For scalability, we are still working on the bot utilization framework and have created additional frameworks apart from the existing automation framework.

How are customer service and technical support?

Tech support is one of its primary features, far better than the other RPA tools. We have been able to fix some big technical issues that we came across.

How was the initial setup?

Initially, we were having a few challenges in terms of getting the approval from InfoSec since we wanted some Veracode reportt from our CSM. That took some time. Initially, we were having open issues with the older version, in terms of the Veracode code report. These were high-end critical. Eventually, we were able to get the final report after the approval from Infosec. Then, we were able to install all of the software to our Olam framework.

What about the implementation team?

We started with an integrator, then went directly with Automation Anywhere. Our experience was good. They started by helping us work with the software and understand Automation Anywhere's capabilities.

What was our ROI?

We have released at least $400 to $500 a month during our peak period, so we have really seen ROI with the product.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I think it's $5,500 per license.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We had some RPA tool implementation strategies. We looked at all the tools and their features. We did a brainstorm session with all the tools and found out the nuances between them. We identified Automation Anywhere as the tool that we should implement in Olam.

We compared Automation Anywhere with UiPath, Blue Prism, OpenSpan, and WorkFushion.

Automation Anywhere is one of the easiest tools that developers can use for development. It takes them only a small amount of time. It has good stability in terms of implementing the automation use cases. We also found Automation Anywhere as a pioneer in terms of RPA implementation.

What other advice do I have?

Automation Anywhere is a pioneer in RPA tools. I would recommend Automation Anywhere. Automation use cases will be rapidly implemented through it. It has a good amount of stability and cool features that can be robustly developed with the help of developers as well as business people.

We are looking forward to using IQ Bot as well as attended automation in the coming year. These are features that are available, but have not used yet. We are trying to do a PoC to start and implement them into our daily use cases.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Partner at Ernst & Young
Video Review
Real User
Emulates human behavior and transactions and the platform is easy to use
Pros and Cons
  • "There is a very accelerated learning curve on the platform."
  • "The human training area is still something that needs to be improved. It's not so much the actual technology learning, but rather how you bring this to life with all the peripheral competencies that are needed for it."

What is our primary use case?

We are usually asked by clients to introduce the topic of RPA and bring it to life for them. We explore what the value proposition of adopting a new technology is for them. We typically enter the discussion with an agnostic view of tools, help them understand what the differences are between tools and capabilities, and then synthesize a business case for adoption of those tools.

How has it helped my organization?

The perfect example that I have is where we're able to address an audit finding for a client. They had a situation where they had to show a tangible and very scalable solution to an internal audit as part of a finding that they had in the payroll area. In that situation, we created a database for them that worked alongside Automation Anywhere to conduct the validation and checks that were required to appease and provide comfort to the internal audit, while accomplishing savings in the form of error omissions.

We automated processes within: finance, accounts payable, accounts receivable, invoicing, validation, HR, payroll, onboarding, candidate screening, and IT from a provisioning perspective.

What is most valuable?

The value of RPA in general is the ability to actually emulate human behavior and transactions. The value of Automation Anywhere, specifically, lies in the ease of use that it has as a platform and the ability of individuals to learn relatively fast. There is a very accelerated learning curve on the platform.

What needs improvement?

The IQ Bot is a tremendous product. The more we can make the IQ Bot intuitive, as an application, and start connecting it to real-life examples, the more value it's going to bring to clients.

The human training area is still something that needs to be improved. It's not so much the actual technology learning, but rather how you bring this to life with all the peripheral competencies that are needed for it. Incorporating some of the Lean Six Sigma type of principles into the process optimization, as well as the change management, would make it a much more comprehensive solution than what it is today.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I think the tool has come a long way. We've had situations where it wasn't working well with Java in the past, then Citrix environments, etc. Every new release is better than the last one. They are listening to the customers and they definitely integrate the solutions to their product very fast.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I think it's a very scalable application as well, but I think the scalability is not just tied to the technology itself, it's also the organizational appetite to go fast and go the right way forward. The huge component of that is talent, and I think Automation Anywhere, with the internal consultants that they make available to clients on occasion, does accelerate the adoption.

From a pilot to scale, I would say the couple of clients that I've actually worked with took about six months to one year to get to what we would consider a repurchase point, but I wouldn't necessarily call that scale. The model that we bring forward to clients, at least in the past, was one where we actually teach them how to fish versus fishing for them, so we're not necessarily there to see them all the way through scale. We're there to see them through stability.

How are customer service and technical support?

I think the technical support team is very responsive. This is probably one of the differentiators that Automation Anywhere has in comparison to some of their peers.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I had other platforms that we did the proof of concepts for, but they didn't go anywhere. I think part of the reason why they didn't go anywhere is because they were not scalable.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup, at times, has been a little undefined, in terms of requirements, just because people don't know the process, nor what they're going to need, as a result of putting something into production. On the other hand, I think those were growing pains that we experienced probably two or three years ago less than we experience today.

What was our ROI?

ROI is often associated with FTE, or full-time employees, but we are now increasingly finding that we could acheive ROI in different ways, not just as cost elimination. It could be cost avoidance or revenue acceleration. The ROI actually differs by use case, but in most situations, we're able to accomplish sufficient ROI to justify scaling the solution.

On average, the return that I've seen is about three dollars for every dollar spent on RPA.

Time-wise, I would say you're still bound to the pace of the systems that you are applying RPA to, so you're not getting an acceleration to the systems themselves, but you do get the ability to process transactions in those systems faster, because a bot tends to transact things a little faster than we do.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I've seen the price vary by opportunity cost, in essence, for Automation Anywhere. If they think that the client is going to scale and adopt a tool, the price could change. There is variability based on how quickly and how substantially you want to invest in it.

What other advice do I have?

I think the Bot Store is actually growing. It's still in development. It's an idea in development in my mind. I think there is definitely repurpose-ability of bots that are being made available in the store, but it's not by any means, in my mind at least, something that you would actually take and put into production without making it specific to your organization and use case.

Regarding front office automation, I haven't actually been part of those discussions, but I know, as an organization, we definitely assist with front office automation. I would say the principles that dictate what you do in front office govern the ideas and how we bring this to life in the middle as well as the back office for us.

I would rate Automation Anywhere as nine out of ten.

My advice is not to lead with the tool selection. Lead with the process optimization and then understand fully what the tools actually have as an offering, and make sure that the way that the tool is deploying its learning is aligned to your organizational capabilities.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
BPM Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Provides time savings, monetary savings, and risk reduction
Pros and Cons
  • "It integrates with different types of applications, so we can automate our business partners' redundant, repetitive tasks."
  • "I noticed that from version 10.5 to 11.3 the number of clicks to start a bot through the Control Room and Schedule Manager have increased. In certain cases, I would like to see that become simpler, faster, and easier."

What is our primary use case?

We use it enterprise-wide for HR, IT, and in the front-end of our transfer agency. The bot helps organizes certain HR classes, letting the organization know when classes have not been completed. We have uploaded certain fund model data to third-party portals. We can set up new accounts in less than a week, where it use to take months.

How has it helped my organization?

At a very high level, because of how we've implemented it and how we work with our business partners, they are now looking for ways to help do the automation. Additionally, we've adopted a bit of a federated model, where once we start working with business partners, we start training them on how to use the tool. Therefore, the tool has more of a widespread use around the organization, helping people rethink their jobs.

What is most valuable?

It integrates with different types of applications, so we can automate our business partners' redundant, repetitive tasks.

It is very simple to use. We have people that we trained who had absolutely no development background at all and are now using RPA. They are using it and developing their own solutions. 

We've had people who already had a development background. They self-trained and got certified in about three days, so it's pretty easy to use.

What needs improvement?

While the Automation Anywhere University is good, the estimates of the time that it takes to complete it are a little low, especially when you start watching all the videos thoroughly. One of the courses that they said would take six or eight hours was closer to 16 to 20 hours.

I noticed that from version 10.5 to 11.3 the number of clicks to start a bot through the Control Room and Schedule Manager have increased. In certain cases, I would like to see that become simpler, faster, and easier.

I would love to be able to schedule things based on business case. Right now, the Schedule Manager is either once a day or pick days of the week with times. However, in the financial industry, I sometimes need to run something on the third business day of every month. At the moment, I don't really have a way to set that up in the Schedule Manager. 

I would like to see some improvement in error handling. That would be great. Sometimes, the errors that you get back are awfully generic. It is like you have to do a lot of research to figure out what the issue is.

I would love to see a little smoother integration with some different types of platforms, technologies, and user interfaces. 

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is getting better. We had some issues, especially because when we went onto version 11.2, there were some scheduling issues. So, very recently, we upgraded to version 11.3.1.2, and it seems to be a lot better.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good. It is very easy to scale. It doesn't take us hardly any time at all if we need to spin up a new Control Room or Bot Runner. The slowest part is probably on our end, getting the hardware.

It took us two years to scale from pilot to the number of bots that we are currently using. I wasn't involved in the early days of the PoC. I came into the group a little later after that, but now, we use a federated model. We were sort of the center of excellence for it, working with our business partners. In a number of cases, our business partners are now developing their own bots. We have developed some, where the business partners didn't have much of an interest to doing the development. They wanted to be involved in the creation, so they understood it, but they didn't want to do any of the coding in the background, so we do it for them. We do all the production support.

I like to go by actual executions, not number of bots, because we have some bots that need to be executed multiple times during the day. Last time I looked, we were well over a 100 different executions in a week.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is great. I have worked with a couple of different people who have been absolutely phenomenal, helpful, and have solved so many of our problems.

When I have a serious production support issue, if I need to escalate it, I usually receive a lot of good help from some great people to get our problem resolved. Sometimes, it takes a while, but I get it. Everyone's environment is different, and it's hard to know everything about how everyone has their architecture setup.

They've started up a user community recently. I haven't investigated that much. I really want to do that, but I always thought that a user community where the users of the product always get together, talk, sort of brainstorm, and come up with other suggestions for the tool would be great. However, I believe that has just been started. I just haven't had a chance to go look at it yet.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We weren't using a different solution before this. Automation Anywhere was our first RPA tool. 

We wanted to remove a lot of the drudgery out of people's lives. Someone copying files from one platform to another or taking data and manually entering it from one system to another was not a good value savings. A human should be doing stuff that is more creative and requires human thought process. We wanted to enable our organization to improve overall. So, we figured an RPA solution was a good way to start on that journey.

How was the initial setup?

When we went to version 11.2, which we set up brand new, if I had to do that myself, it would have been a bit complicated. I worked with an installation specialist from Automation who was awesome. He made it very simple. We had some of our own server and DBA personnel on the line, and he documented everything for us. At the end of the day, I had all of the information that I never had on our original 10.5 environment, which has made it a lot better.

What about the implementation team?

Originally, we used HCL Technologies. At a high level, the original implementation went pretty well. Our problems were other things. We started having more issues around coding and our expectations on thought leadership from the vendor, because they were the ones originally doing the coding. We were the business partners to them. As we began to get certified and do some of the coding, we started to realize that there were things that we just didn't know and had a hard time getting some answers. Then, we ended up starting to work with a different vendor. As far as the systems administration work for Automation Anywhere goes, we took that over, and that's what I do.

What was our ROI?

For time savings, we do time and motion studies with our business partners, so we truly know how long it takes them to do a process and calculate that in. 

Depending on the area and department, we use different rates of pay to calculate dollar savings. We also break that down, whether it's actual realized dollar savings or just a dollar savings that's not realized to the department. 

There's also risk reduction, which is a lot harder to quantify, so we've taken that to more of a high, medium, and low type of deal, because there's a number of cases where we're eliminating manual keystroke entry. That has created huge risk reduction from our standpoint.

If we count the integrations that we have done with Appian, which is where a lot of our savings is from, we are well over a million dollars in savings. This is from only doing development for about a year and a half.

We have seen a return on investment in a lot of ways. We seen dollar and time savings. There was a department that was going to have to hire somebody to just copy files from one platform to another every day. Because of this automation solution, they didn't have to hire anyone to do that. That was a good cost avoidance there. 

One of the biggest things for us is getting the whole enterprise to start learning about RPA and about different ways to think about how they do processes, whether you can improve a process first manually, then make it automated, or if it's even ready for an automated solution. This type of thinking and mindset throughout our business partners has started to make a lot of improvements throughout the corporation, not just in RPA, but in processes.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We're just starting to renew our license, and we were quoted $115,000 without the IQ Bot. 

The IQ Bot is another $30,000. This is with very limited pages, as we go through our first projects. The majority of the cost was for ten days of onsite training.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The shortlist would have probably been Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, at the time. We went with Automation Anywhere because Blue Prism is really good on the back-end, but that's all that they specialize in. We knew that we had to do a lot of front-end type of RPA work with some third-party vendors, which we weren't going to get API calls to. We had to be able to operate with their graphical user interface. Once we made those realizations, Automation Anywhere became our choice.

What other advice do I have?

Make sure you understand what your needs are:

  • Whether it's front-end or back-end?
  • What interfaces do you want to use?
  • Do you need an IQ Bot or some type of cognitive machine learning tool?

Understand what the different tools from the different vendor do, because they are becoming more similar, but they are still designed for specific areas of a technology, whether it's the back-end, front end, or somewhere in the middle. You need to understand your own needs. Once you understand that, research the various tools thoroughly and make the best choice.

The product functions well. 

The integration with other application works really well. We have used it with Appian more than once, and that integration has been very easy to do.

The cognitive document processing is good. We have done a proof of concept. We just purchased IQ Bot, got it installed, and will be starting our first project soon. One of the things that we did learn is reading the imaging was tough because of the DPI needed for the IQ Bot. It's 300. Most imaging systems don't save them that high. They are at 200 or 250, so we ran into issues there. However, as long as we can get electronic documents, it's been awesome.

I have taken some Automation Anywhere University courses. I took the online classes and got certified in 2018, but there are some other courses that I wanted to take that I saw in there. The content is really good.

The bot creation process is easy. It does require more thought if you truly want to incorporate some good error handling in the process. With some of our bots, this is absolutely critical. We have some bots which have very strict SLAs because we are in the financial industry. It is a bit trickier and requires more thought. You can do it and do it well. It's just that it requires more forethought than a typical user would know.

We don't use Citrix.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sr. RPA Developer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Integration with source control is very refreshing and the dashboard is great
Pros and Cons
  • "Its integration with source control is very refreshing. There could be a little bit more maturity around how to do some of the features, but not having to go outside the app, not having a separate set of procedures, allows you to check in and check out right from within the app. You can make edits and uploads and undo your checkouts."
  • "It really does have a great dashboard. It has Bot Insight, it has MetaBots, and IQ Bots. It has so many features where it can read a file and loop."
  • "Regarding the UI, once you're in 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 more 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."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case is within anti-money-laundering: To take alerted cases and gather artifacts on multiple websites or applications, and then to consolidate those into a single file, in this case in OneNote, and provide that to the investigation team.

Primarily, this was all being outsourced because it's a lot of very tedious researching and collecting of the artifacts and consolidating them. Once that consolidation is done, those artifacts can be handed off in a structured format to another team which actually looks at the alerted information, at the details, to see whether it justifies the alert. They can make a decision based on the artifacts at that point.

In addition, with the solution going out there and being visible, we've had interest from the insurance side that wants to jump in. They've got several use cases that they would like to do. The capital markets group has use cases they would like to get involved, and the bank itself has use cases that it is just beginning now. It has ramped up a team already and they're going to start wanting to jump in too. Even groups like DevOps and some other groups that are more cost centers are wanting to jump in. Anything they can do to lower their costs helps out the bottom-line dollar for the whole company.

Looking at a company like ours, with so many different departments and processes and policies, and so many manual tasks, the use cases that we can have for both attended and unattended bots are pretty much countless.

How has it helped my organization?

There was a large number of individuals who were doing the data collection and artifacts collection, and they were actually a third-party. The solution improves our situation in terms of time, money, and resources. Plus, when you're dealing with a bank's information, there are additional complications of privacy concerns. If we can keep that in-house and have a bot or automated code take care of it, then there are fewer human eyes on the private information as well. It's a resource saver, it's a money saver, and it helps us with security, keeping more human eyes away from private or touchy information.

What is most valuable?

Its integration with source control is very refreshing. There could be a little bit more maturity around how to do some of the features, but not having to go outside the app, not having a separate set of procedures, allows you to check in and check out right from within the app. You can make edits and uploads and undo your checkouts. That integration is very nice.

It really does have a great dashboard. It has Bot Insight, it has MetaBots, and IQ Bots. It has so many features where it can read a file and loop.

What needs improvement?

Regarding the integration with source control, when there's a large number of operations the bulk operations need a little bit more maturity.

Also, regarding the UI, once you're in some of the screens there are fixed dialogues. They are a set size, so there's a lot of horizontal scrolls and vertical scrolls. Those are things that can be addressed in the future. The integration and having it inside the applications are far more important than these pesky complaints. But I get to a lot of scrollbars when I'm reading code. Sometimes I have to keep scrolling and moving up and down and it's a bit of a nuisance because I'm focusing more on navigating than on the actual logic that I'm trying to read through. A little bit more friendliness in the UI would help.

I came from OpenSpan and Pega and it's a different approach as far as the coding goes. One thing I feel limited in, in Automation Anywhere, is that sometimes they give these wonderful screens where you can do conditional loops or branching with the "If" statements and they'll have these built-in features for if a window exists or if a folder exists or if a process is running. But if I want to do something that is more 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. 

Where it's really great, where it's very simple, is for me to see if a window exists, to see if a process is running or if I'm waiting for a window to close. On the flip side, let's say we're in capital markets and they have a complex business rule for some of the analysis. I don't know how well the product would handle that case. I can't say that it can, I can't say that it can't, I just have concerns of how that would be done, at this point.

Coming from a couple of years of using a competitor, I do know exactly how I would do that in the other code and I do know it can handle it. One thing I can say is, even with that concern, I do know we can add scripts for JavaScript and Visual Basic scripts, so if we need to extend the product, we do have that option. I would like to see some other languages like Java or C# added to that as well, but I have questions about that. I may be able to do that through a MetaBot so that's a question I would have to ask support about, but I'm not there yet. Whatever limitations are there, I think we can still extend outside of the product.

For how long have I used the solution?

Less than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

If we're talking about the Control Room, those services stay up. We have them on a Windows Server, and I haven't seen it have an issue standing up, other than when we have some code that has gone rogue. When doing development and there has been a mistake in the code, we've had to redo the server a couple of times. Given that, I would say the stability is an eight out of ten.

We've had to change our configuration a couple of times. I'm only saying eight because I know there are scenarios that we haven't come up against and when we write code there are going to be times where Windows or the server has to be rebooted.

We did have one issue where it kept disconnecting in development but that appeared to be a VPN issue and we got help from Automation Anywhere on that.

Overall, it's very solid. I don't know that I could give a perfect score to any software out there.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is limited more by our money and our hardware than anything. The scalability really depends on how much RAM and how much network bandwidth we can do, how many servers we can apply. I know we can just keep adding to the cluster and I know clients could keep popping up. Since we're at the forefront of this, it has not been an issue. 

However, I do know that, within a year, when we start having multiple clients running and we have multiple developers in there, I may have a different response. But, again, I think we would just have to add more Control Room servers and more resources to the servers. We haven't hit a scalability limit issue yet.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support has been very prompt. They've been very willing to help out and, in almost all cases, they've been able to provide an answer or solution relatively quickly. If anything, we have been the bottleneck because they have been more responsive and quicker than we were able to implement. They may want us to make a change or tweak, give us an answer within an hour, and we have to get permission or approvals to make that change in the environment it's in.

I think that's another huge plus for Automation Anywhere: their customer service and their customer relationship.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Our company didn't have any RPA enterprise-capable tools. I don't know what motivated them to learn about it. It may have come down from the executive level saying, "We want RPA, go figure out what it is." That's when they went and looked it up and started researching. They did like their competitive analysis of all the RPA software tools and platforms that were out there. They narrowed that down to ten, then to 5, and then there were three that they ended up with and did a matrix comparison. The matrix included risk, ROI, and cost and they came up with a weighted system. Automation Anywhere came out on top.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is a complex process that they make very straightforward. Their installation is very quick. It was relatively painless. Any pain that we experienced was on our side because we had to make sure we had the right permissions or direct privileges, or that we had a firewall that was configured properly. We had a relatively complex site where we had clustered Control Rooms and we're using load-balancing. Within a day or so, we definitely have it standing up and, typically, within the same day, we have it configured. That's assuming we don't come into any complications on our side where we have to go ask for permission to get access to something or for a new certification. Overall, their installation is fantastic.

It took about two days to stand it up, to configure it, and then to smoke-test it, and make it productive.

The setup was prior to my coming aboard, by a couple of months. Our company had talked with IBM and Automation Anywhere, so the strategy was definitely to go through the documentation and to have an Automation Anywhere expert help with the development environment. After having meetings and reading the documentation, they had a hand-holding approach in development. Then they documented the steps. They went into the next environment, ran through their documentation, updating it because there were some changes in the clustering as well and the load balancing. They got that standing up and documented that. By that time, they felt comfortable in production. They were able to go through and repeat the steps without having to go back to Automation Anywhere or IBM for support.

We had to repeat the process here about two months ago and set up a new model and set up a new production environment and some more servers. That's where I get the couple-of-days timeline from. I was following their documentation with our internal guy who did it. Obviously, we had some guys that do database, some guys that do the Windows Servers, and then, myself; I was doing the actual client side. We're all on the phone at the same time taking care of it and it's less than a day.

In terms of the very initial setup, starting from the planning stage, I wasn't here at that time. I would say that it was about four to six weeks, but that's mainly because they had other stuff that was going on, so they were just having the weekly meetings until they got ready to try it. I do know they started talking in May and by the end of July, they had it done, but there were gaps where they weren't working on it in there.

The actual length of time may be about a week because we have to do a change request. We have to go through a procedure where we get approval from the business managers and the lines of business saying, "Okay, we're ready to go live. We're going to go ahead and push this into production," and we need to do backups and have a contingency plan. We then have a meeting and make sure everybody is okay with the current test results. Once all that's done, we can deploy in one night, have it smoke-tested, and have it running the next day.

For the actual deployment steps, you really only need one person but, typically, we will have the developer, a business person to do a smoke test, a Windows person and a database person; four people, only because we have separate roles here. Technically, it only takes one person, but developers don't have any permissions. But we need a developer in case something goes awry to help out the build person who's pushing it. If there's something they can't do, then they need the Windows person to handle any kind of Windows services. And if there's a database issue, you need a database person to run a script. Four would be max, but that's actually very typical in a lot of corporate deployments.

What was our ROI?

We're just getting into production right now and we're handling the first wave of production issues for getting it into production. Unfortunately, we got our code from a vendor that was helping out initially. Even though I've been here six months, I just got my hands on that code a couple of months ago, so we're having to do some cleanup.

We're really hoping by the end of next month or the month after to get a good idea of metrics on what our performance is, how fast we can work, the ROI, and the offset. We're almost there, but it's a little premature to determine ROI.

Regarding areas for ROI with this solution, the first one is that we will be able to terminate a contract for doing all this work that is going to be replaced with the bots. That immediately means lower legal costs, less overhead, less money that needs to be paid out. It's two or three bots that will be replacing multiple people. That's the initial type of ROI we can see.

It's a scale game, as well. The same code that we're doing is very applicable to a couple of other groups within compliance, within audits, which will be collecting very similar type of information from a couple of different apps. The ROI there is going to only increase because we'll have this reusable code that we can extend to other groups very quickly. I think that's why they chose this particular path. So hopefully, we'll be able to scale this ROI tremendously in the next 12 months.

Policies and procedures always change. The question is, can we be nimble enough? Can we build a platform that is solid enough, and have a pool that is talented enough to be able to produce bots in a cheap enough fashion to realize that ROI? So far, I don't see anything that would restrict that or cause that not to happen.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Automation Anywhere's pricing is competitive. That's obviously something that attracted our company to it. They're very well priced. I can't speak to let's say UiPath or Blue Prism. I do know Pega vs Automation Anywhere is somewhat comparable, but Pega also requires a lot more infrastructure and a lot more experience to get up and running. There's a bigger upfront cost to get Pega and they also want to push their case management, so even if you go RPA, they're going to want to get you to do the case management side of things as well.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The shortlist was Pega's RPA and UiPath. Blue Prism was in the top-ten but they were not in the shortlist because they never responded to calls. It was felt that if they couldn't respond to the sales calls how could they go forward?

What other advice do I have?

Do your homework, talk with the team, get your questions, read through the documentation, and then decide on your platforms and make sure you really focus in on whether you need clustering and the load-balancing because those are going to make a big difference in your costs, your platform, and scalability. Get that worked out first.

Then pick a use case that is very quick and simple where you don't care about the ROI but what you want to do is make sure that you're testing your environment, that all your environments work, that you can do source control, that you can promote, that you can unit-test, that you can do regular tests, that you can do deployments. You can solve all those problems without the headaches of trying to figure out how to keep the business happy, how to keep the cost down, and just focus on making your environment solid.

Hopefully, that use case is something small enough that you can do within a month or two. Once it's deployed you can see how to support it, how you test it. Then you have time to focus on your standards. What are your programming standards? What are your deployment standards? What are your guidelines for coming up with change requests? Those things, ultimately, regardless of the code, are always going to be your success and failure points.

Bottom line, when you get down to it: The coding is not going to be the bottleneck anymore, it's going to be your procedures and policies around it, your project management. Focus on that.

Automation Anywhere has made it very easy for you to install, they've got the tools to make it very simple for you to create a quick, small application and to get out there. Again, forget the ROI the first time. Get it working, get everything panned out, and then, once you feel comfortable, pick a medium case or even an easy case but one that has a high ROI. Pick something that is very repeatable but that, if you can get a bot to do it, it saves you a lot of money. That would be your next use case. And that could even be your first one if you can't find something small and simple. Once you get the experience, you get it under your belt, move on to your more mature use cases.

The tool is flexible. The tool is very easy to pick up. I am concerned with some later cases though. When we get into some complex business logic or processes, I'm not sure how it's going to handle heavier business rules, so we'll have to wait till we get to that point and we'll have to hope that our customer relationship with Automation Anywhere will help us with more complex or tricky resources.

In our organization there are 16 of us using Automation Anywhere, and we'll be at 20 by the end of January. We'll see where that number goes. And that's only been the last six months. That's a big number to put on there, where we have a bunch of stuff going on and are trying to keep it in control and figure out our center of excellence and our standards and our practices. I know the other companies may go in and throw big numbers at it but we're at 20 and that number is only expected to keep growing. That's going to be limited by how many projects can be done, how much money there is for those projects, and how many people as resources we can find. Right now, our users are developers, testers, administrators, and we have a couple of project managers who have a limited administration view into it.

Maintenance depends on the bot itself. Initially, whenever we start with a bot, we always have one person dedicated to it. Depending on the what was found, one person for maintenance is usually fine and that usually dwindles. You'll typically end up with one person who has multiple bots or automations that they are maintaining, as time goes on. If anything, it's less than one person needed for maintenance.

Overall, I would rate it at eight out of ten. It's a very simple interface. It's a very straightforward approach. You can very quickly get in and get some proofs of concept going. It has logging and some reporting. Some of the things against it are when I compare it to where I came from before and some of the features that OpenSpan had. For a developer doing coding and debugging - developing the code for reusability and debugging the code - OpenSpan had some advantages that you can't easily overcome in Automation Anywhere. That would be the two points off in my rating of Automation Anywhere, not that I would give OpenSpan a ten either. I would probably give that an eight as well, for different reasons.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Director at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
MSP
Top 20
Automation at scale is a strength, but certain types of CRM integration are challenging
Pros and Cons
  • "One thing I really like is the the recorder where you can connect with multiple systems. The OCR is also good."
  • "We only faced some problems when integrating it with SAP, and Oracle integration was a bit challenging, especially with Oracle Fusion. We had some issues when we were trying to connect some of the applications on the API level. But, in general, integration using Automation Anywhere is fine."

What is our primary use case?

Our clients use it for different things. One uses it for invoice processing and another for the aggregation of documents based on certain characters. Another uses it to automate processes for the admin department. That company has seasonal workers, and they have to create passes for those seasonal workers. Most of the document uploading and validation is done by Automation Anywhere. Most of those documents are issued by the federal government, and they have a standard format.

What is most valuable?

One thing I really like is the recorder where you can connect with multiple systems. The OCR is also good. In one case, we used a different OCR than Automation Anywhere, but in document processing, using the OCR engine is good.

And providing automation at scale is something I feel is a strength of Automation Anywhere compared to most tools. It depends on the segment we are dealing with. There are small organizations that might not need robust applications, but for mid-sized and large customers, we usually propose automation anywhere. It's quite robust, and the performance is good. When we are proposing a solution, the automation at scale makes it much easier for us, post-sales and post-implementation.

Also, the integration of the solution's bots with APIs and business applications is good. There are certain prebuilt integration APIs in Automation Anywhere. That's especially true when you're connecting with SAP. There are issues with SAP, but in general, they have connectors with most of the popular CRM tools. The API connectivity is much easier.

What needs improvement?

We only faced some problems when integrating it with SAP, and Oracle integration was a bit challenging, especially with Oracle Fusion. We had some issues when we were trying to connect some of the applications on the API level. But, in general, integration using Automation Anywhere is fine.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Automation Anywhere since 2019, or about four years.

How was the initial setup?

In the last year, the cloud has become bigger, but before that, it was implemented more on-prem only. 

From our side, the number of staff needed for an implementation depends on the number of processes we need to deploy. For the initial configuration, we may not need many people. But, for one of our customers, there are 70 processes that need to be developed over the next 18 months. Obviously, the number of people involved will be much greater than in a project where we're looking at 10 or 15 processes to be implemented. But on average, each process takes at least two to three resources, depending on the complexity.

Once you have deployed an application, you need to maintain it. Compared to other products, it takes slightly fewer people. Maintenance on the admin side requires one to two people. We always assign one FTE for this, at a minimum. Depending on other factors, we might go for two.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Automation Anywhere is more stable compared to some of the other tools on the market. And, post-implementation, we have very few issues with it compared to others. For me, it's all about post-implementation and why customers are happier with Automation Anywhere.

For small and medium-sized customers, we may not suggest Automation Anywhere because of the cost difference.

UiPath has gotten much better in the last two years. They have really grown in terms of overall performance and bot capabilities. There has been a huge improvement there.

What other advice do I have?

As for non-technical users, it's not a low-code type of solution where you draw and drag and drop. Still, it's okay, to some extent, if they at least have some understanding of technology. Generally, it's easy to learn. If you have access to Automation Anywhere University, you can really learn it. But because I am from a technology background, it was much easier for me. We give our customers 13 or 14 sessions to bring them up to speed, and that might span over the period of a month to two months.

In the discussion about RPA versus API integration, one definite advantage of automation is that scheduling, bot management, and those kinds of things are automated. It's more about the customer and their perspective. With automation, you already have something cooked up, and you don't have to worry about much at a later stage. That makes automation much easier for them than using an API integration. You have to maintain an API integration, and there is the cost of maintaining it. With all those factors, automation becomes much easier for the customer.

We have been proposing Automation Anywhere to multiple customers. It's good. It's robust. But it's a bit expensive compared to other RPA tools on the market. Sometimes, it's too heavy for customers, especially if it's on-prem. Also, maintenance is slightly higher.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Implementer
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ChristianTorres - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Consultant at Evertec
Consultant
Top 20
Helps to automate a lot of processes, but should work consistently with web applications
Pros and Cons
  • "Workbench, which is a development tool, is very friendly. It is complete. Compared to Power Automate, Automation Anywhere is much more comprehensive and easy to understand."
  • "Automation Anywhere is a technical application. It is not so easy for a regular user. It requires technical knowledge."

What is our primary use case?

We have automated some data entry scenarios. We also have automation for system monitoring. It is being used for data entry, system monitoring, and data exchange with other systems.

How has it helped my organization?

We found a lot of processes to automate. We currently have about 80 processes that we have automated. 

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization increase its automation consumption, but we are a little short of RPA developers. We are acquiring new talent and new resources for that group, and we are on the right path. We have a lot of work. 

What is most valuable?

Workbench, which is a development tool, is very friendly. It is complete. Compared to Power Automate, Automation Anywhere is much more comprehensive and easy to understand.

We use APIs for some bots. It is not too common, but we use APIs in some processes. The integration at the moment is easy.

What needs improvement?

We work with version 11, and we have some problems with some applications. Automation Anywhere's software does not recognize them properly. The recognition of web applications is not good. The software does not consistently recognize all the controls and objects. We are in the process of migrating to a new version. We are migrating to Automation Anywhere 360, and I hope that in the latest version, the recognition model can be better. On the Internet and various forums, many people say that Automation Anywhere 360 appears to be much better, but we have not implemented it yet. I hope it is better and consistent. The main problem is consistency. If I make a bot today and tomorrow if the application changes, the bot stops working.

Similarly, in terms of the ability to provide automation at scale, the new version is more focused on that. The version that we have is not that capable. The development is not too easy. We need to put in too much effort, but Automation 360 appears to be easier. Development takes less time.

Automation Anywhere is a technical application. It is not so easy for a regular user. It requires technical knowledge. The new version is more user-friendly from an ease-of-use perspective. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for three to four years.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate their technical support a nine out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We are still using Power Automate, but we are not using their RPA model. We only use Power Automate for other automations. When we chose our RPA tool, Microsoft had not released the RPA tool for Power Automate. Microsoft released it a year or two years later.

What was our ROI?

We have some processes to analyze the ROI, but right now, we are not focusing on knowing that information. Our main need is automation. ROI is important, but it is not critical at the moment. We are still automating projects in the company.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is expensive. I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten in terms of pricing. 

They bill for every IQ bot that you have. We do not use IQ Bot, but we have a license, and they bill for every thousand pages. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated one or two other options, but I was not a part of the evaluation.

We did a little bit of research, and we found that Automation Anywhere was recommended at that time. It had better reviews on the Gartner website, so we decided to go with it.

What other advice do I have?

It takes about three to four months to learn it. Some of the things are easy, but because we are trying to do automations, we need to make sure that we understand the application properly. We need to know how it works internally in the structure of the code because sometimes, we make a programming change that works today but stops working tomorrow. That is because the application can change, so we need to understand how the controls work between the changes and have the logic that allows a bot to run smoothly irrespective of the application changes. It is challenging to analyze the changes in the application and find a way to program the bot to recognize the changes.

To someone who wants to use API integration instead of an RPA solution, I would say that API integration is more recommended, but sometimes there are issues with this type of integration, so we have to finish the project in Automation Anywhere. The first option that we always try is to create our own integration between the systems with APIs. The RPA tool is the last option for integration.

In terms of maintenance, we need to install the updates or patches. Our infrastructure team is in charge of that. We have technicians to install patches. We have people with different roles. They are technical leaders or system administrators. We also have an information security team, and we have a network team, as well as an operating system team. Every department makes a little contribution to the whole environment.

For managing the bots, we have only three people. Maintenance of bots is different because we have bots scheduled all day, so we still need to monitor them on a daily basis, but the update process is monthly. We verify what is pending. Overall, the maintenance takes about eight hours a month.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Buyer's Guide
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Updated: March 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Automation Anywhere (AA) Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.