Automation Anywhere (AA) Reviews

We use it for the mail merge process, specifically for renewals. Each month, it could be a tedious process to check all the documents and PDFs for each iteration. The creation of a bot for these task leads to better than expected results.

We can use the current manuals to make sure the bots are working at 100 percent before the next release.

It is user-friendly. Everything is under a single dashboard. 

We can access it anywhere. E.g., I can access dashboard from my Control Room on my mobile app using Automation Anywhere. 

From a QA and development perspective, we would like to communicate with the tech support through email and have that put in the dashboard. This would let us better track the ticket and make it easier for us to communicate with Automation Anywhere.

They recently integrate Oracle and SQL. I would like to have more integration and feature going forward.

The stability is good. 

The scalability is good.

Automation Anywhere team is ready to support us if we encounter any issues.

We recently encountered some issues in the navigation controls that our dashboards were unable to change. So, we contacted the Automation Anywhere team and they helped us to get it rectified.

It is easy to set up. You can do it from anywhere using the Control Room. It is not a tedious process. 

I am used to these types of setups as an SQL engineer.

We save time with the solution, so we have more time to reuse and spend on our clients. 

Talk to your manager and try to procure an automation license for training. This will allow you to train people, so you can move to automation.

If we try to use another product, there are additional product costs. Automation Anywhere uses a single dashboard that you can access anywhere. It also provides more insights versus other products, which is an advantage of using Automation Anywhere.

I have recently gone through the Automation Anywhere training to receive some certifications.

We use this solution for building RPA to automate business & finance processes.

By automating processes we give back valuable hours to business stakeholders, which can be spent on value-adding activities instead of repetitive tasks.

The total package is valuable for us as an organization.

I would like to see them expand the service catalog with RCA add-ons to the current RPA package.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

We evaluated both UiPath and Blue Prism before choosing this solution.

My advice for anybody implementing this solution is to set up from the start with large scale in mind.

The primary use case is for ticket creation. They send in an email, then based on the priority, it creates a different ticket in Jira as well as the ticketing tool. In the end, they must consolidate all the tickets, whatever it has created, and sends that information in an Excel sheet to the stakeholders.

This was for an internal PoC.

It was a value-add for the organization. For each ticket, they would have to create a ticket for each of the three portals. However, after the PoC was done, then they would send a mail to a board, which will now send out the ticket number.

By using SNMP configurations and Excel, I was able to read the mail. I used this functionality to categorize the fabric, then I used this information to correlate the value to Jira along with Excel.

They must create the same ticket in three portals. Instead of that, they are now sending the mail to support. Support needs to take that mail and each bot needs to check the inbox. It will take that mail and categorize the subject, then prioritize it. We will take that description, paste it, and create a new ticket on these reporting tools.

The UI is very user-friendly, even for someone who doesn't have much coding knowledge. They can easily pick it up. Or, get training for two weeks, then pick it up. Someone from a coding background can pick it up easily too.

The MetaBots and IQ Bots are advanced tools for the market.

The functionalities and UI could be improved.

We have HTML mode and Windows mode, but Automation Anywhere is limited in this. It would be better if they were able to provide different specification modes.

I used Automation Anywhere for three months at work about a year ago.

The version that I used (10.3) was not that stable. It easily crashed in-between processes. 

In later versions, they have come out with better updates with things like MetaBot. I feel that version 11 is a robust solution.

The scalability is really good. 

The technical support team was very good to work with, as they were knowledgeable and provided good explanations. They were quite responsive.

The initial channel setup for was quite easy. However, we had to configure the control room. With that, we had to be very careful.

It took me half a day to deploy. I installed the SQL Server, the control room, etc.

The control room access gives the ability to create different roles, which helps when purchasing additional licensing.

Their overall pricing falls in the middle of the market. Cost-wise, Automation Anywhere is quite expensive because of their analytics, IQ Bots, and MetaBots. For a standalone machine, the pricing is okay. When adding in the licensing for IQ Bots (or MetaBots), it can become quite costly.

They recently launched a Community Edition, which is okay, but they should have done this a long time ago.

It is a very handy product.

As of now, Automation Anywhere has a very good place in the market.

RPAs are often used in administrative processes, but we have applied it to our master data management for manufacturing. At manufacturing plants, there are not a lot of administrative processes. However, there are many tasks dealing with what we call our master data, so that’s where we have implemented RPA, to collect, search, as well as register the data.

In our efforts to efficiently manage the master data at our factories, the biggest benefit is the fact that we have been able to rein in what was an increasing number of engineers who were needed. We have been able to do so on the order of some 100 people, so that’s a major result.

The most valuable feature is the ability to define the RPA tasks automatically. There is a major benefit in the fact that it can be done without human effort. As long as the instructions are error-free, the bots will make sure it gets done. That’s where we see a big advantage.

I have submitted requests to Automation Anywhere regarding feature expansion. There are two major issues. The first is that I would like to see functionality that will improve development efficiency.  The second is to be able to schedule the management of bots. I asked for functionality that would reinforce the scheduling.

One of the characteristics of RPA - and it really can’t be helped - is that it is easily influenced by the application that works along with it. This is something we need to be aware of. For example, we had an occurrence where it stopped due to an error because the application it works with had been changed and there was a lack of communication with the IT department.

The capabilities for developing similar tasks are there and it's relatively easy to do. However, to accomplish that we’d need a group of IT engineers. That’s where we are not up to par.

We do utilize Automation Anywhere’s technical support via our partner. Since Automation Anywhere's Japan office was only recently opened, it seems the support has not been as good as support for other package applications. I feel that we haven’t been able to fully take advantage of the support yet.

It’s important not to just implement bots just for the sake of implementing them but to think about how bots can be used to make processes more efficient.

The reason we chose Automation Anywhere is that it’s easy to develop with it. It also covers the widest range of functionality and it is enterprise oriented. Furthermore, a group in Toshiba started using it too, which made it possible for us to share information with one another. That’s why we decided on Automation Anywhere.

The setup itself did not take that much time and effort. In general, members of our IT staff do the actual setup, so we had no issues with it.

We do see ROI in the sense of staff reductions. However, if we are to apply it to the general administrative area, I think it’s not as easy to get a real ROI.

In our line of work, we don't have that many simple administrative processes. I’m sure companies like banks have enormous numbers of such processes, but in our company, our staff would spend less than an hour per day on delivery slips. If we got RPA and a bot, that would end up being more expensive. 

Foreign Language: (Japanese)

この製品を主にどのように使用していますか？また、パフォーマンスはどうですか？

一般的にRPAと言われると事務処理に使われるところなんですけど、我々は製造のマスター管理と言われているところに適用しました。製造業で実際の工場の運営ではですね、事務処理的な要素は非常に少ないんですね。ただ、マスターと呼ばれているデータを扱う業務は非常に多くあって、そこでのデータの収集検索だとか登録という業務のところにRPAを適用しました。

当ソリューションはどんな点において最も役に立ちますか？

RPAのタスクと呼ばれている部分ですけれど、その定義が自動でできる、人の手をかけずに自動でできるという所に大きな効果を感じています。で、さらに指示する情報さえ間違えなければ、ロボットが確実にこなすという所でも、大きな効果を得ています。

当ソリューションを使用するとどのようなメリットがありますか？御社が機能する上でどのような改善をもたらしましたか？

工場の先ほどのマスターデータの運用の効率化という意味では、エンジニアの増員抑制ですね。百人規模の増員抑制が可能となったと言うことが一番大きいと思います。

当ソリューションの安定性に関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか？

安定性ですか？RPAの特徴と言うか、構造上やむを得ないんですけど、相手のアプリケーションの影響を受けやすいというところではその注意が必要だなと感じています。

そういったアプリケーション側の影響で安定性の問題が発生したことがあるということですか？

IT部門で連携が不十分で相手アプリケーションの変更があったのが情報がなかったりすると、エラーをして止まるということがありました。

当ソリューションの拡張性に関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか？

考え方だとか、類似作業への展開は比較的容易だと思います。ただ、それを実現する上でITのエンジニアの部隊を育成していくと、そこがちょっと今の所、なかなかうまくできていないところかなと思っています。

このソリューションにテクニカルサポートを利用したことはありますか？ある場合は、サポートをどのように評価しますか？

パートナーさんを経由してAutomation Anywhereのテクニカルサポートを受けているんですけれども、日本法人がまだ立ち上がったばかりということもあって、若干他のパッケージアプリケーションに比べると、まだ弱いのかなというのは感じています。

感じているというか、まだ十分、我々も利用できていないんじゃないかなとは感じています。

初期セットアップには関与されましたか？セットアップは簡単、それとも複雑でしたか？

セットアップ自身はそんなに手間がかかったとは思ってないです。基本、我々のITのメンバーがセットアップを実施していますので、さほど問題はなく、セットアップはできました。

テクニカルサポートと安定性の改善点以外に、当ソリューションの次のリリースに含まれていたらいいなと思うのはどのような機能ですか？

先ほどの発表でもちょっと最後に付け加えましたが、Automation Anywhereに対するさらなる機能の拡張をお願いしたいです。そこは大きく2つほどあって、開発効率を上げるための工夫が欲しいと、いうようなことと、あとボットのスケジュール管理ですね。スケージューラじゃなくて、スケジューリングをしたいというところを機能として強化して欲しいということをお願いしました。

RPAをお使いになって投資対効果は見られていますか？

先ほどの省人化という意味では非常に効果があったという風にみています。ただ、一般の事務職的なところに、投資してやろうとすると、なかなか投資対効果で良い結果を得られるのは難しい状況もあります。

事務関係では難しいのはどうしてですか？

我々の会社の社員がやっている業務は単純な事務処理っていうのが少ないんですよね。証券会社や銀行だったりすると、膨大な事務処理があると思うんですけど、例えばスタッフの調達部門であっても、調達の伝票の処理をするのは、本当に一日のうち、一時間もないくらいなんですよね。その作業をRPAに1台、ボットに1台にしたら、ボットの方が高くついちゃうとかですね。

Automation Anywhereの前に別のソリューションをお使いでしたか？

RPAを導入する上では、代表的な5つのパッケージの検討を合わせて行いました。

Automation Anywhereを選ばれた理由は何ですか？

Automation Anywhereを選んだ理由はですね、開発する上での容易性が結構高かったということと、あとエンタープライズ志向と言われることで、機能的に網羅している範囲が広かったなというところ、でさらに、東芝、会社のグループの中で導入を始めたところがあったので、情報を共有しながら進められるかな、という点でAutomation Anywhereに決めました。

ベンダーを選ぶ上で最も重要な条件は何ですか？

機能とサポート体制、この2つが大きな…

実際に導入をしてやっていくと、サポート体制はまだまだ。これはRPA全体ですけど。

このソリューションに1から10の評価（10＝最高）を付けるとしたら、どのように評価しますか？そしてその理由は何ですか？

8ぐらいですかね。

サポート体制の強化というところと、もう少し機能が欲しい、先ほど言ったような。

このソリューションあるいは同様なソリューションを探している、同社あるいは他社の同僚の方に、どんなアドバイスをなさいますか？

RPAを、ロボットを導入するということでなくて、業務の効率化にロボットをどう使うかということを考えて進めることが大事だなと思います。

• Automate and Digitization
• Process understanding
• Finding gaps in process
• Process re-engineering
• Process mining

All customers were happy after automating using AA because:

• Better accuracy
• Easy to develop and manage
• Easy to manage orchestrator
• It's an automated simple process within the organization.

Metabots and IQ bots.

PDF extraction and cognitive automation need improvement.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for one year. 

The stability is awesome.

Scalability is good.

Their technical support is very good.

We used Ui Path. We switched because of the cost.

In-house.

We have seen good ROI.

We use this solution primarily for financial use cases.

We have a bot that monitors quotes and budgets for products that are in their lifecycle or have expired. All of the concerns for finance are automated.

In the finance department, this solution has saved us a lot of money. Employees that were working on manual tasks are now doing things that are more productive.

This solution is easy to use and understand, even for a non-technical person.

Better support for Excel is needed because there are a lot of limitations and we are having issues with it. We do a lot of Excel work, and if we could use it as a database then it would help a lot.

We have had some issues in terms of stability. It is related to certain commands and VMware, and depending on the machine that we are logging into, the bot fails. 

This is a scalable solution. We initially implemented small projects and then expanded them to a bigger level.

The support for this solution is quite good.

The initial setup of this solution was straightforward.

This solution has some drawbacks, but it is easy to implement and easy to use.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use the product for our automation use cases. We provide it to our customers to automate invoices with IQ Bot and other things.

Helps our clients focus on their work instead of repetitive tasks.

The best part of Automation Anywhere is IQ Bot for its OCR techniques. 

Bot Insights is also a very good product feature.

I would like OCR for video and text using the IQ Bot. It should also be available in an email tag format.

I am waiting for them to add Java code.

The stability of the production part is good.

Scalability is good. There is no question about its scalability.

I have found some problems, but the support is very fast. However, sometimes I feel like I need more guidance. E.g., when providing the answer regarding the login for SAP automation, give an answer that I can explain to my customers.

The implementation process is complex, as there is integration with other applications. We need to understand the other applications' requirements. It requires us to convert their business logic into automation. That is where the complexity is.

We are the implementation partner. 

My clients have seen ROI. What would take them two to three days in work is now taking them two to three hours.

We are restricted to use one license on one PC. However, if my license is not working, I want to be able to use it somewhere else. This would be a nice improvement to the licensing, as other competitors in the market have better licensing terms.

Create automation with automation with Automation Anywhere. 

Our primary use for this solution is the building of a digital workforce by implementing Robotic Process Automation to improve our operational efficiency. It is also intended to create capacity for our staff to focus on client-servicing matters, which are areas that require decision-making processes.

We have implemented two processes to date, for our Hong Kong office and Japanese office. The process automated for Hong Kong is for Company Secretarial business. The process automated for Japan is for Payroll business. Repetitive mundane tasks are now being executed by the robotic processes.

I mostly use the Control Room to monitor and manage bot runs. Since we can register multiple bot runners in one control room, and we can easily monitor and re-run bots when necessary, it is convenient for me. I would like to find out more about the dashboards and what they actually mean.

I have noticed that after the bots have been delivered to run in a production environment, there are issues in terms of quality and performance. For example, if the government website takes too long to respond, or there is an apostrophe in names, then these exceptions are not handled in the bot. I would like to see a higher quality in the final bots that are delivered to production.