2018-10-25T07:01:00Z

What advice do you have for others considering Automation Anywhere (AA)?

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
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PeerSpot user
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339 Answers

TM
Real User
Top 20
2024-01-30T12:51:00Z
Jan 30, 2024

I would rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten. The technology is improving every day. With the right tools, it is easy to upgrade Automation Anywhere. Maintenance is required for Automation Anywhere to ensure proper functionality daily. Two people for 20 minutes each day is enough to oversee the maintenance. I recommend completing some courses and shadowing experienced Automation Anywhere users to gain hands-on experience with the automation process.

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NP
Reseller
Top 20
2023-12-04T09:47:00Z
Dec 4, 2023

In our organization, I see great opportunities to operationalize AI, particularly in the realm of monitoring. Whether it is through comprehensive monitoring tools or leveraging Python for data analysis, there is potential to enhance our operations. Assessing the learning curve for Automation Anywhere, it takes around a month for non-technical employees to become proficient. While an expert developer might grasp it quicker, providing training is essential for non-technical users to effectively learn and use Automation Anywhere. Our organization is focused on expanding automation and AI use cases, continually adding more features. Additionally, there is an interest in exploring generative AI to enhance our capabilities further. We have integrated Automation Anywhere with various solutions, including ITSM, a centralized portal, and several third-party applications. Integrating Automation Anywhere into our workflows, APIs, and business applications is effective, but it is crucial to ensure a secure network. Automation Anywhere has been a time and cost-saver for us. Achieving a 90% cost reduction in tasks is a significant boost to resource efficiency and overall cost-effectiveness. We use Automation Anywhere across multiple departments, but it operates within the same environment and infrastructure, given its public nature. My advice for those using Automation Anywhere is to start with a less complex use case. It is a good platform overall, but beginning with simpler tasks will help ease into the automation process. Overall, I would rate the solution as a seven out of ten.

Mahmoud Bani-Hani - PeerSpot reviewer
Reseller
Top 10
2023-11-27T15:50:00Z
Nov 27, 2023

I would rate Automation Anywhere nine out of ten. Our customers are all enterprise-level. Automation Anywhere does not require ongoing maintenance and offers 24/7 support if any issue arises.

Matt Ham - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 20
2023-11-12T08:20:00Z
Nov 12, 2023

I rate Automation Anywhere nine out of 10. They're passionate about the product and want to see us succeed as customers. They will go to bat and contact the engineers to help us achieve what we want. We have on-site visits with them and business reviews where they will talk about our roadmap and potential use cases. We've had many sit-down conversations with the Automation Anywhere team when we were testing out the document automation. We gave them feedback about potential enhancements, so when we launched our most recent document automation use case, the capabilities were already there. We didn't need to come up with a workaround or put the project on hold because the things we needed were unavailable. That commitment to customer success stands out because they know that without us, the product won't succeed.

Christian Pinheiro - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 10
2023-11-12T07:19:00Z
Nov 12, 2023

I rate Automation Anywhere nine out of 10.

Sura M. - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 10
2023-11-07T10:29:00Z
Nov 7, 2023

I would rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten. Automation Anywhere is a versatile and powerful platform, but it exceeded our organization's budget. Maintenance requires three or four team members because the target systems tend to change.

Learn what your peers think about Automation Anywhere (AA). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
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Amarjeet Kamble - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
2023-10-04T11:19:00Z
Oct 4, 2023

We are an Automation Anywhere customer. I would recommend the solution to others, so long as they have some previous knowledge before setting out. I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Krishnakumar Maurya - PeerSpot reviewer
Reseller
Top 10
2023-09-08T08:32:00Z
Sep 8, 2023

I would rate Automation Anywhere ten out of ten. API integration is a good thing. However, it takes longer to implement than RPA. Once implemented, API integration can execute tasks faster. The cost of API automation is higher than RPA because it requires specific programming by experts. Automation Anywhere itself does not require maintenance. Only the processes need to be maintained, as they may need to be updated to reflect changes in compliance requirements, government regulations, or the underlying systems. Additionally, patches to the Automation Anywhere software may sometimes cause changes to the processes, which may require maintenance. We currently have 150 processes, and two experts are able to maintain all of them.

ND
MSP
Top 20
2023-09-04T12:04:00Z
Sep 4, 2023

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.

Sunilkumar Venugopal - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
2023-08-16T11:15:00Z
Aug 16, 2023

I'm an Automation Anywhere customer. We have not yet started using Co-Pilot. I would rate the solution eight out of ten. It's good for automating processes.

EC
Real User
Top 20
2023-07-24T20:10:00Z
Jul 24, 2023

I know my Automation Anywhere, UiPath, Blue Prism and, now, Microsoft Power Automate. If you want to automate a simple process, these solutions are very good. But if you need to integrate different platforms or systems using an API, or if you want to widen the scope of automation to create an automated process, end to end, that is going to be difficult for any user. You need to be a developer with very good programming skills. If you are going to automate, for example, downloading emails, Automation Anywhere is okay for non-technical users. But the license is very expensive, so you have to weigh the benefit that you are going to receive. For me and my team of around 150 developers who are engineers, the learning curve was very easy. For them, it took two or three months because they were already familiar with the logic. Automation Anywhere has good information on the web where the guys can access material and forums to learn about creating different types of automation. The benefits, for us, from Automation Anywhere are more related to the business case than the tool. You need to have a very good approach from the business analyst's perspective to understand the added value that an automated process can bring to the company. The most important thing is to train the business analysts in your company to identify what the best processes are to automate, to get the most benefit from the tool. Overall, this is a very good tool if you have all the permissions and accesses, and you can work without any virtual environment, like VDI or Citrix.

ZS
Real User
Top 20
2023-07-21T06:58:00Z
Jul 21, 2023

I would recommend Automation Anywhere as a serious option. You will find it easy to use, overall, making it a very good choice. When it comes to deciding between an API integration and RPA, integration is the best option, not automation. If API integration is available and ready to use, it's better to go with that option. However, sometimes, based on my experience, there are cases where you don't have control of those things and you have to think of other solutions. For us, the alternative was automation using RPA. But when an API integration is possible, I prefer to go with that option, rather than going with the RPA. When that is not possible or easy to do, we go with RPA.

AK
Real User
Top 20
2023-07-19T14:03:00Z
Jul 19, 2023

I give Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten. Power Automate has better cloud flows. For those who prefer API integration over robotic process automation, I would use an API if it's more logical to do so. It all depends on the situation. If I need to fill some Excel documents, I will use bots; and if I need to display that data on a web page, I will use APIs if available.

ChristianTorres - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant
Top 20
2023-07-18T20:40:00Z
Jul 18, 2023

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.

Kumar Animesh - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 5
2023-07-14T09:26:00Z
Jul 14, 2023

I would recommend Automation Anywhere, but it also depends on the cost. If you get a good discount on the license, go for it. Automation Anywhere is easy to learn if you have experience with automation tools. If you are starting from the beginning, you will have to invest more time compared to the other RPA tools. It could be a bit difficult for non-technical users. You at least need to know what data variables do and what strings do. All these things are technical. You would also need to write VB or C# code, so non-technical people cannot work on these things. Any integration completely depends on the application support. We have integrated ServiceNow API with Automation Anywhere. If the API is already provided by the organization or the development team, it is quite easy, but if we have to design the API or it is not available, it is a little bit difficult to integrate the application with the automation tool. To someone who wants to use API integration instead of an RPA solution, I would say that based on my understanding, API integration is completely different from RPA. RPA is an end-to-end solution. It can automate your desktop applications. It can automate your browser-based application. API and web services are also included in RPA, so RPA is a complete ecosystem. API is just one part of it. Only through API, you cannot do automation. Through API, you can get values, and you can put values. You can modify values. You can generate a request or an incident, but creating a report via that data and replacing that data is not possible through API. You have to do it manually, or you have to open it in Tableau or Power BI and create a dashboard. By using an RPA tool, you can download data. You can change the request. You can get the request. You can modify those values and manipulate them according to your requirement. You can then create a dashboard. Overall, I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten because of the stability and the terminology used in the product. The terminology they use is not for the layman. If I have to showcase it to my leadership, they would not be able to understand what MetaBot and IQ Bot are and why we use them. I have to make them understand in layman's language.

LD
Real User
Top 5
2023-07-07T15:53:00Z
Jul 7, 2023

Whether to use an API integration or an RPA solution depends on the use case. If there is a possibility of using an API integration, it could be better because the integration can be more secure. But if you have a legacy system where API integration is not possible you can use Automation Anywhere. It also depends on the expectations of the customer. Sometimes, the implementation via Automation Anywhere can be faster. If the customer doesn't have a lot of time and you need to deliver the solution, RPA could be the best solution. And Automation Anywhere doesn't require any maintenance. Automation Anywhere is one of the best tools on the market. It's a little expensive but if you implement it in your company, you should see return on investment.

SabrinaTrabelsi - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 20
2023-06-02T14:46:00Z
Jun 2, 2023

I give Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten. Automation Anywhere requires users to have some technical skills to use it. For someone who wants to use an API integration instead of a robust process automation solution, I would say that it depends on the API process. Performance is not the only factor to consider. We have two people responsible for the maintenance of the solution. We maintain our bots daily because our processes are complex and ever-changing. We spend around two hours each day maintaining bots. Automation Anywhere has a steep learning curve and should not be learned on the job.

Yugen Nair - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant
Top 10
2023-04-14T06:00:00Z
Apr 14, 2023

I give the solution an eight out of ten. I recommend Automation Anywhere to others.

KK
Real User
Top 20
2022-12-20T19:22:00Z
Dec 20, 2022

The biggest lesson is to understand the functionalities you need before you buy the solution. Determine if the solution passes the litmus test. Be cautious about overselling it and instead set the right expectations. Ask upfront if some additional features can be bundled because that will really help with your automation journey. I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Madan-Divvela - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 20
2022-03-29T18:28:43Z
Mar 29, 2022

We are resale local partners. I would rate Automation Anywhere (AA) an eight out of ten.

US
Real User
2022-02-18T22:11:09Z
Feb 18, 2022

I would recommend this solution to any organization or individual. I rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

DK
Real User
2022-02-17T15:45:00Z
Feb 17, 2022

We are AA partners. I would recommend the solution based on its scalability and stability. Generally, people who adopt these tools do a tool assessment between multiple vendors. Usually, we have seen that it's either UiPath or Automation Anywhere that is shortlisted. These two seem to be the most preferred options. I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

AK
Real User
2022-02-16T10:02:06Z
Feb 16, 2022

I can recommend Automation Anywhere. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would say, given the existing process, Automation Anywhere is a seven. As I suggested, if they improve the stabilizing, the screen scraping, the document understanding and some other activities, then definitely they can go ahead with that tool.

Rahul Uppal - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2022-02-15T22:25:46Z
Feb 15, 2022

It is a great product. Automation is the key, and Automation Anywhere is a good tool to use. It is great to have it. I would rate it an eight out of 10.

Minal Kathe - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2022-01-20T10:23:18Z
Jan 20, 2022

I would recommend this solution to others, it is one of the leaders in the market at this time when it comes to RP platforms. I rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

GB
Real User
2021-12-21T21:33:00Z
Dec 21, 2021

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.

KD
Real User
2021-12-06T08:32:38Z
Dec 6, 2021

I rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten, and would recommend it to others.

AS
Real User
2021-10-19T04:26:36Z
Oct 19, 2021

It is important for those wanting to implement any solution to explore their use case. This will help determine whether Automation Anywhere will be an appropriate fit. For example, if you are looking at large-scale operations. There are many things to consider before you choose any tools. I rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten.

SB
Real User
2021-09-29T08:50:00Z
Sep 29, 2021

I would rate Automation Anywhere seven out of 10. It is a simple tool to learn, and with A360, they have gone way beyond. They also have an intelligent bot. However, I would suggest going with Microsoft Power Automate ranter than Automation Anywhere because Power Automate's cloud flow is easier to use. In addition, you can use Power Automate with very minimal coding. With Automation Anywhere, you need extensive knowledge of SQL and .NET. You have to learn so many things before implementing Automation Anywhere. I have worked on Automation Anywhere for four years and also UiPath. Between these two, I have found Automation Anywhere easier to work on. Also, it's stable because I have delivered around 20 plus automations on Automation Anywhere to date. Based on my experience, I have found Automation Anywhere to be more stable and accessible. I prefer Automation Anywhere. In my previous organization, I had worked on UiPath, but I haven't worked on UiPath much for the last two-plus years. So I only have six to eight months of experience on UiPath. I find the Orchestrator feature quite complex and difficult to understand. When I was working on UiPath, they had just introduced their advanced features in Orchestrator, so I found UiPath much more valuable from the .NET perspective. But if we're talking about how easy it is to program, Automation Anywhere is more straightforward. For the past one or two months, I have started getting my hands on Power Automate. In terms of cloud flows, I find Power Automate more useful. Every tool has its pros and cons. After working on Automation Anywhere for around four years, I do find it easy and scalable. But now, now that I've been introduced to Power Automate, I find that I like it because of built-in connectors and templates.

RR
MSP
2020-12-14T10:28:55Z
Dec 14, 2020

From a business angle, understand what is it that you need. Where do you see inefficiencies? If you're going to fix inefficiencies that are going to be fixed as part of a larger company-wide transformation program, then use the transformation program and fix those inefficiencies as part of the existing solution. If you think that that larger transformation program is not going to touch some places or if that larger transformation program will touch some of these inefficient areas but not in the near future, and you want some immediate wins, then going in for an RPA tool is a good decision. At the end of the day, the business needs to be aligned with why you're making the decision, and where and what is your priority? What is your sense of urgency with respect to the places where you're implementing it. For example, in my office, we are working on customer service. There is a massive transformation program going on right now, but that transformation program is touching sales, marketing, finance, and all those areas. It is not touching customer service at all, but customer service has its own inefficiencies. So, we introduced automation in customer service because it's not being touched by the transformation program, and we don't want to keep waiting to gain the ROI of whatever we can get or the reduced cost we'll get from customer service. For example, if I'm going to implement a massive cloud ERP like Oracle or SAP, then I will fix the process as part of that cloud ERP implementation and not wait for a bot to be developed. From a technical perspective or an integration perspective, use an API to directly communicate between the apps, if you can. You don't need a bot or an RPA to do what an API can do. I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

SS
Real User
2020-12-07T05:32:00Z
Dec 7, 2020

Automation Anywhere is a tool that I love! I am quite happy using this tool and there are no features or commands that I have found to be missing that should be added. Its advantages are performance, simplicity, and excellent support! Please go for Automation Anywhere. I am sure that you won't regret it!

VN
Real User
2020-11-11T22:56:55Z
Nov 11, 2020

Automation Anywhere has two different versions, or, rather, two different products. One is the Automation Anywhere Enterprise Edition which is only on-premise. Automation Anywhere also has another service that is called A2019, which can be deployed on-premise. One of the main differences between the Enterprise Edition of Automation Anywhere is the dollar policy shop. In there, they can't create or customize our own comment. With A2019, you have an option to create our own comments. A2019 is more flexible. I'd advise new users to go for that version, as opposed to the enterprise version. Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

reviewer1460994 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-11-02T09:07:00Z
Nov 2, 2020

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

SG
Real User
2020-11-02T07:40:00Z
Nov 2, 2020

Many new options have been implemented in the cloud version. NLP and G suite automation are also available, among a lot of other options in the A2019. At this point, we just need to explore the options.

NS
Real User
2020-10-31T18:09:00Z
Oct 31, 2020

Automation Anywhere is a very Interactive and easy to use RPA tool.

reviewer1446147 - PeerSpot reviewer
MSP
2020-10-31T18:01:00Z
Oct 31, 2020

Just reduce AA licensing prices and provide real scenario-based training modules in learning sections.

PB
Real User
2020-10-31T12:28:00Z
Oct 31, 2020

I believe that A2019 is going to be the next big thing in the RPA field.

reviewer1460631 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-31T09:07:00Z
Oct 31, 2020

There is only one option Automation Anywhere for cost-effective RPA.

SD
Real User
2020-10-31T08:16:00Z
Oct 31, 2020

Automation anywhere going great with its improvements.

reviewer1457208 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-31T05:10:00Z
Oct 31, 2020

I like the way Automation Anywhere has migrated from v11 to a2019 my concern is about bots in a2019, once you delete them it's impossible to get them back.

reviewer1468431 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-31T01:48:00Z
Oct 31, 2020

The learning curve is less steeper compared to other automation products in the market.

reviewer1458450 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-31T00:56:00Z
Oct 31, 2020

It has now been two years and I have migrated to AA 2019. I now consider myself an expert in Automation Anywhere. Thanks, AA, for providing such a big and powerful platform to us. I always recommend this product, and that clients implement AA first.

Mudhukrishna Lalapet - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-30T18:37:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

I would like to suggest the vendor have a well-maintained community forum, where the notice board should be available to notify of upcoming releases. I would also like to see more webinars conducted to help make the tool more popular It is good to see more improvements in the tool and the effort of the team to implement all of the latest features is highly appreciated.

reviewer1468443 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-30T17:03:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

Too frequent updates and major changes in each update is frustrating.

reviewer1467657 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-30T15:41:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

Automation Anywhere is your best choice if you want to implement RPA.

reviewer1466970 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-30T12:59:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

Basically, to be frank, most of the features are awesome. Of course, we were able to understand it easily because it was neatly explained. We have excellent business benefits and it also supports SAP, Oracle, Java Applications, Mainframe/Terminals, Unix, Email Applications, Window Applications, Legacy Applications, Google, etc. The best thing is that the platform can be used to automate any applications.

reviewer1462716 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-30T12:53:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

I have been using the IQ bot and the latest A2019 version and still exploring new features. I personally liked replacing the various recorder and object cloning command with a single recorder command. The solution sometimes poses problems in the production phase.

reviewer1466877 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-30T12:08:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

Automation Anywhere has been a significant step in our digital transformation. AA2019 addresses a lot of gaps that we previously had. This makes Automation Anywhere stands out in the market making it an obvious choice.

reviewer1460073 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-30T11:30:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

Keep up the good work & keep improving as you grow.

reviewer1469130 - PeerSpot reviewer
MSP
2020-10-30T11:11:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

I am pretty impressed with the A 2019 version.

EC
Real User
2020-10-30T10:36:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

It is a tool that allows you to have excellent performance but some features are not intuitive to use.

reviewer1463940 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-30T10:32:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

My advice is not to think too much. Just compare the features then you will get to know why AA is the best solution of all.

reviewer1457211 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-30T10:10:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

The only con is the frequent updates in the bot agent every now and then. This annoys the user at times and (s)he may land up in some trouble due to this, as the bot would be able to run without installing the updated bot agent.

reviewer1466988 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-30T10:03:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

As of now, I am using the 11.3v of AA, and whatever improvement is required I believe it is already taken care of in the A2019 version. We have started doing migration of bot in A2019 and have seen that many new features have been added in the latest version of AA. Nonetheless, I can say that AA can expand its features and functionalities in the Artificial Intelligence area. Apart from licensing costs, I don't have any concerns. I would suggest everyone go with this product and avail all the features wisely.

VS
Real User
2020-10-30T09:44:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

We need some support of documentation methodologies so that the knowledge is easily transferrable through the documents.

reviewer1460628 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-30T09:34:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

A2019 is a very good product, there are still some upgrades to be completed, like the functionality of the GIT repository, G-suite package in the enterprise edition. One more advice would be to ensure seamless upgrades so that our current development is not hampered.

AS
Real User
2020-10-30T09:32:00Z
Oct 30, 2020

This tool is a good platform for automation.

reviewer1464534 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-29T14:51:00Z
Oct 29, 2020

It's an awesome solution for automation.

reviewer1454259 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-29T12:41:00Z
Oct 29, 2020

Nothing as such, as Automation Anywhere keeps on upgrading which in turn makes it easier and efficient to develop bots from the prior version.

reviewer1457235 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-29T11:50:00Z
Oct 29, 2020

Overall its good solution.

reviewer1454436 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-28T19:26:00Z
Oct 28, 2020

I have done my best to outline my thoughts about the Automation Anywhere platform here, and do not have anything else specific to share.

reviewer1460607 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-28T11:40:00Z
Oct 28, 2020

A2019 has many rough edges from a developer point of view and post upgrades, these needs to be smoothened out.

Meindert Van Der Galiën - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 10Leaderboard
2020-10-28T06:44:00Z
Oct 28, 2020

Documentation online is severely lacking, have commented on this before in support cases. The online documentation is far too generic, with no linking to relevant or in-depth forums on similar topics.

ND
Real User
2020-10-27T10:41:00Z
Oct 27, 2020

My recommendation is that more businesses should use it. AA doesn't require any prior IT or developer experience, and it has lots of tutorial videos of how-tos.

reviewer1454247 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-27T06:44:00Z
Oct 27, 2020

Choose Automation Anywhere over other RPA Tools for better service & accuracy.

reviewer1454253 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-27T03:31:00Z
Oct 27, 2020

I have automated and released at least a thousand bots by now. I have also used Automation Anywhere's Intelligent document extraction solution called IQ Bot, both the 11.3 version and the 2019 version.

TT
Real User
2020-10-26T06:36:00Z
Oct 26, 2020

My request would be to keep a little lower pricing for services like on call support, cloud, and other key services. Otherwise, the rest all seems to be very much feasible in AA.

SM
Real User
2020-10-25T12:27:00Z
Oct 25, 2020

When considering all the facts, this is one of the most user-friendly RPA tools that I have worked with.

reviewer1442211 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-23T18:46:00Z
Oct 23, 2020

In summary, I feel that Automation Anywhere is heading in the right direction.

DD
Real User
2020-10-23T11:07:00Z
Oct 23, 2020

AA is a global market leader and the best RPA software to go with, in all aspects. If the AA support improves then this definitely deserves a rating of nine and a half out of ten.

VE
Real User
2020-10-23T10:04:00Z
Oct 23, 2020

This solution is worth considering for medium to large-scale companies looking to automate various processes.

reviewer1442205 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-23T08:55:00Z
Oct 23, 2020

The tool comes in with a lot of capabilities, however, you are the best judge to use only what is needed.

reviewer1443672 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-22T23:33:00Z
Oct 22, 2020

Automation Anywhere is most easy platform to learn about Robotic Process Automation and show potential of Automation.

reviewer1469046 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-22T09:15:00Z
Oct 22, 2020

One word for Automation Anywhere keeps shining and helps your customers/partners to automate & gain more.

reviewer1455426 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-22T03:13:00Z
Oct 22, 2020

I would love Automation Anywhere to expand the market in Indonesia but I need more support. This is not only from a technical perspective, but business development assistance is needed to grow the market in this region.

BP
MSP
2020-10-21T10:26:00Z
Oct 21, 2020

My advice for anybody who is implementing Automation Anywhere is that It's not always necessary to tie up or utilize unattended bots or achieve 100 % automation. A lot of opportunities are there with the ratio of 80:20 (80% automation and 20% manual intervention) or 70:30.

reviewer1463793 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-21T08:46:00Z
Oct 21, 2020

Overall, the product is very good where the repetitive tasks are more in manufacturing industries and the finance department. It is the best solution for any type of industry to automate their repetitive process, leading to increased ROI and reduced time consumption.

reviewer1458447 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-21T02:49:00Z
Oct 21, 2020

The current version has a fresher UI and more Excel processing features. That's what I admire.

reviewer1469010 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-21T02:33:00Z
Oct 21, 2020

So far, all the features and services match today's technology, and we expect it will remain current for at least the next two to three years. I hope that they keep this great work on RPA.

SS
Real User
2020-10-20T17:13:00Z
Oct 20, 2020

With the recent version of A2019, Automation Anywhere has stepped into a new era of RPA development. We can see a lot of functions coming up with Automation Anywhere as a bundle like AARI, Bot Analytics, and Discovery Bot. Excellent growth in product improvisation over the period. Keep Going!

reviewer1439841 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-20T13:49:00Z
Oct 20, 2020

The product is promising and is successful. You should start your Automation journey with simpler processes and step-by-step, move towards bigger and more complex problems. They have a great support team and the product's community is active as well. This will help to make your automation journey seamless.

reviewer1464705 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-20T13:28:00Z
Oct 20, 2020

I'd say, fully go headfirst into learning the A2019 platform and all it can do for a business. There is something for everyone in that platform. Large or small scale automations, migration processes from v11 is already in place and tested, and there is no more need for Metabots because they are now "packages" that can be made or modified by a seasoned developer, and a plethora of other benefits are evident. Just jump in!!

RP
Real User
2020-10-20T12:36:00Z
Oct 20, 2020

Overall, this product seems pretty good as of now.

reviewer1463937 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-20T12:23:00Z
Oct 20, 2020

Overall, this is a great tool because it's easy to maintain and it can reduce hiring costs, leading to reduced overall costs in the future.

reviewer1468983 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-20T11:19:00Z
Oct 20, 2020

My recommendation would be to start with some simpler processes. This will build your capability and understanding far more quickly. Automating processes that utilize a lot of different web applications can be tricky without additional input/error checking. Be sure that your code is resilient enough to ensure inputs get transcribed accurately and pages/content are loaded before executing more lines of code.

reviewer1464582 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-20T11:01:00Z
Oct 20, 2020

I would suggest that if you offer RPA services then you should advertise it well because it will take you further.

MK
Real User
2020-10-20T10:52:00Z
Oct 20, 2020

Within just a few years Automation Anywhere has different versions and closing their support to the older version soon. Migration of each bot to a new one becomes a bit difficult for clients. Automation Anywhere should have a single and stable version which can be easily accessible and easily migrate the processes.

AS
Real User
2020-10-20T10:44:00Z
Oct 20, 2020

Version A2019 is available and will be adopting it in the coming months. We are looking forward to working on this new version.

AK
Real User
2020-10-20T10:15:00Z
Oct 20, 2020

I think AA is a great tool and I love working with it.

reviewer1455396 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-20T09:40:00Z
Oct 20, 2020

This is a perfect solution for us and Automation Anywhere helps us to close many deals. I thank them for that.

reviewer1454262 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-20T09:38:00Z
Oct 20, 2020

I am expecting that in the next versions of A2019, more actions will be added.

reviewer1464540 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-10-20T09:27:00Z
Oct 20, 2020

I believe Automation Anywhere bundles everything for generic needs and in my case, everything was covered in these generic bundles.

AG
Real User
2020-07-20T08:17:00Z
Jul 20, 2020

Nothing specific Automation Anywhere can do better in Cognitive it needs to stabilize its products. Also Cloud product is the game-changer for them A2019

reviewer1390506 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-07-18T16:36:00Z
Jul 18, 2020

Looking at overall feasibility from features to costing perspective, I strongly feel Automation Anywhere offers a lot of features and scalability and is a very good tool overall and people who have not tried should give a try and put some hands-on.

reviewer1390509 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2020-07-18T08:14:00Z
Jul 18, 2020

Initial version of products bugs should be reduced.

reviewer1249008 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2019-12-12T06:27:00Z
Dec 12, 2019

Automation Anywhere is the leading RPA tool in the present market.

it_user1205001 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2019-10-10T05:43:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

My experience based on version 11.3, I would rate the product as a six (out of 10). It will go up with A2019.

AS
Real User
2019-10-10T05:43:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I'll say that it is perfect; 10 out of 10. Because we had some drawbacks in Automation Anywhere, which they fixed and developed, taking into consideration the feedback from a huge community of developers. To consider every piece of feedback and work on that, it's a really tedious task. They worked on that and proved that they can do it again.

it_user1110189 - PeerSpot reviewer
MSP
2019-10-10T05:43:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I can give a 10 (out of 10). It's a perfect product. It's made my life very easy and a lot of people's lives very easy. It removed a lot of people's hectic, repetitive, boring work. You give a lot of free time to people, so they can do some other work which they really want to do. It's a very good product.

MA
MSP
2019-10-10T05:43:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

For the current version, I will give them an eight out of 10. The future version will get more one plus one.

MM
MSP
2019-10-10T05:43:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

One to 10, I can give it a nine. We still have to use it and it's not being urgently used. After using it, we can tell how it is being used and how we can make use of it. They have pretty good commands which we have used. We will be getting everything in one web server, where can use MetaBot and also IQ Bot. They are providing an all in one application. So, it is quite good.

it_user1205016 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2019-10-10T05:43:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I would rate it an eight (out of 10).

SK
Real User
2019-10-10T05:43:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I would like to give a nine (out of 10) to Automation Anywhere. They are doing a great job. I don't think there is an area where they need to improve because they are doing a great job and improving themselves.

SK
Consultant
2019-10-10T05:43:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I can give it an eight (out of 10). More implementations should to be added to the tool. This is a suggestion from my end to make it more powerful from the previous versions.

RM
Real User
2019-10-10T05:43:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

There is still a lot of scope issues. There is always a gap between the customer and what they sell us. So, the customer is never satisfied. I want to give an eight, nine, or 10, but I still have a lot of expectations from Automation Anywhere, so I'll go for a seven (out of ten).

MP
Real User
2019-10-10T05:43:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

Our general approach to RPA implementation is to go with a PoC first; do a discovery followed by a pilot if needed, and then do full-scale development. That way we can make sure that our customer fully understands the potential and the relevance of the tool. The reason I'm giving Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten is that no product is perfect.

SV
Real User
2019-10-10T05:43:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I would rate it between a seven and eight (out of ten), which is good. I want it to improve on the support. They really need to improve on the support model. Also, the cognitive bit needs to be enhanced. I know that there are other products on the market who do much better than the product that we have. A lot of work can still go into it. One thing, it still cannot do is cursive writing. IQ Bots still cannot read cursive writing. That's where a lot of development effort can go into it and make it a great product.

DD
Real User
2019-10-10T05:43:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I would surely rate it as a 10 (out of 10). There are other RPA providers as well in this good range, but I think AA is in the top three. I would rate it ten along with another competitor as well who's doing well for us. If you are new to automation, do try Automation Anywhere or a similar partner. Once you do that, then there's a lot more in the market to explore, e.g., you have the big players, like IBM Watson, Azzure, AWS etc. and one place stop will be a company like Wipro which can help you chose a mix. If you're not started anywhere, then I would recommend to start with Automation Anywhere for RPA.

SP
Real User
2019-10-10T05:43:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

As it has been a good experience until now. The product is good and helps in solving business problems. Because of the ease of use, I would definitely give it around an eight point five (out of 10). So, eight point five (out of 10) would be my number.

VM
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I would rate them an eight (out of 10). Why not a 10? Because I want them to concentrate on the PDF automation and work items. I see these two things as something which have a lot of scope in RPA in the future. If AA comes up with these couple of features, I'm sure it will be a 10 (out of 10) in version 12.

RO
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I'll rate it near an eight (out of 10) for Automation Anywhere. I'm giving this rating because the first thing which can be improved is integrating multiple technologies like Python, which can enable the developer and the process to run in a much better, faster way. The second thing is the automation that is available in Automation Anywhere can be improved. This will help other use cases to run.

SM
Consultant
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I'd rate it an eight point five to nine because there's still always room for improvement.

TM
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

This RPA tool is a leader in the market. I have had a very good experience working with Automation Anywhere.

PY
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I would rate it a nine (out of 10). I will keep one out for my feature to get voice converted into the command.

KS
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I have in fact told all my friends and colleagues who are in the RPA domain to work with Automation Anywhere because it's easier to run as well as to implement. Overall, the deployment is easier. I mostly prefer Automation Anywhere over the other RPA tools. I would rate the product a nine to nine point five (out of ten).

HA
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I have seen a huge difference in how it is improving products. I use them mostly. I would recommend it to all my friends and team. I encourage team member to use it, even those who are not from a technical background. They can also move to Automation Anywhere, use, and can learn from it. If they go to use Automation Anywhere University and other training tools, the training materials are available for them. So, it's very easy to learn as well. Different platforms and technology members have also moved to use the RPA platform, and are now using the Automation Anywhere tool. I'd give it a nine point two out of 10. There is still a way to go for Automation Anywhere where we can see improvement. Mostly, we want to see more artificial intelligence and machine learning. Now, I can see only this mostly in the IQ Bot where we construct the data from PDFs. I also want to see more features where we can use the artificial intelligence in automating tasks as well.

RM
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I feel giving them an eight to nine (out of 10). There should be always improvement for any product which comes out the market because there is also a competitor inline with them.

SS
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I'll give Automation Anywhere an eight (out of 10). They lost two points for the Excel commands. We have so many things to do in Excel, but we have very limited commands for it. We need to use Macros. We also have to know extra coding languages, like VBScripts.

AS
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I would give it an eight (out of 10) because there is still scope of improvement which I see in the upcoming tools they have already implemented. I'm still waiting for it. Maybe after that, it could be a 10 (out of 10), but for now it's an eight (out of 10).

DY
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I will rate version 10.5 as a nine (out of 10) and version 11 as an eight (out of 10). Let us wait and see about the upcoming version.

TK
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I would rate the product a proud seven (out of 10). It could be improved more. With the newest version, we need to check the product. I am giving it a seven (out of 10) as a developer and because I'm using it daily.

HS
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

Automation Anywhere works very well. When you have a large number of accounts, have to automate, and the task that is repetitive, you can use Automation Anywhere. The features work very well. I will rate it an eight (out of 10). We had that experience where we struggled to have the structured format of scanned documents and PDF formats. There, we struggled a lot. That is the reason for the rating. The rest, I think is perfect. The services are fine. Automation Anywhere services are good. It is easy to implement. The best thing: It's simple and easy to implement.

SP
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I would rate it a six and a half (out of 10).

VN
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

So far, it's a 10 (out of 10). If there's anything which will change, I will let you know. But so far, the experience with Automation Anywhere in the last two and a half years has been wonderful. My best wishes to the team.

RA
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I can give it an eight out of 10. We need it to add something. It is a little too early, and they are working on that. If they can add more on these things, this will be one of the future leader of the market. While it is already a future leader, it will goes into the next level of the market.

AC
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

I don't want to fan girl it too much, or even fan boy it. But, I'm a massive fan of AA. I've been in technical delivery for about 15 years. There are probably one of the best vendors I've worked with. I'm not giving them a 10 (out of 10) because then they have nowhere to go for improvement, but I certainly would put them as a seven and a half or eight (out of 10). I think the new evolution of the platform with things that I've already talked about will start to nudge it towards that nine (out of 10). They will still not get to a 10 because you know they need opportunities to improve. But, for me, they are a very good partner and a very good vendor to work with.

DB
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

To begin with, since my experience has been excellent with Automation Anywhere so far, I would not shy away from giving them a rating of eight (out of 10).

MW
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

It's a solid eight out of 10. We've delivered tremendous value in a really short amount of time. We've gotten a lot of support from our organization. Of course, there are always improvements which could make it even more powerful. But I know the company is well and truly across those. I'm sure it's going to go from strength to strength. From the business side, we're not an organization that has tremendous volumes, like a big global bank, perhaps that sort of comes into play a bit. But again, it comes back to coding standards. We have a lot of confidence in those standards. We just really ensure that new members of the team are strictly following those for sustainable bots.

AB
Real User
2019-10-10T05:42:00Z
Oct 10, 2019

Last year, I would have rate them an eight (out of 10). This year, I would rate them a nine (out of 10) because I'm seeing a lot of improvements coming. As an observer in the industry, a consultant, and a partner, this is what look upon to any giant like Automation Anywhere to bring a lot of exciting new features every year. This is required by everybody in the organization and globally. That's why I would say nine out of 10. I would have said 10 out of 10, but I want them to bring more such features, and maybe next year I'll be saying 10 out of 10.

reviewer1185765 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2019-09-10T12:05:00Z
Sep 10, 2019

Be careful with the installation of this solution. It is better to do it with support from the vendor at first.

reviewer1184964 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2019-09-09T11:00:00Z
Sep 9, 2019

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Real User
2019-09-05T17:24:00Z
Sep 5, 2019

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

DS
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I would rate the solution at seven out of ten. One main drawback is that migration issue. Another thing I would like to see is support for all the other scripting languages, like Python, JavaScript and all. Go through the Automation Anywhere courses properly to be aware of all the system variables and all the features it has. Then proceed with the development phase. Until you're clear on the basic things you cannot do anything in the tool. You need to know those things. I have done the Masters course on Automation Anywhere University. I have a Masters Certification from them. Their courses are pretty interesting. At the end of the Masters course, we had an interview on the course itself. There were a lot of informative things and it was a great experience. Next year, we should be moving into cognitive document processing.

MK
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Start small. Conduct proof of concepts, then choose a process with a quick return on investment. There are product issues. They have a reckless product roadmap.

AN
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I have gone through the online training.

VN
MSP
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Automate several smaller processes within departments. Show the benefit there before implementing an end-to-end solution. This will get people excited about the solution and kick start the process. We got our workloads for issues and our bugs fixed, which is why I rated the product a 10 out of 10.

SR
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

On a scale of one to ten, one being the worst and ten being the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere as a seven. Because we did not explore any other RPA tool as of now, and we are exploring UI parts without knowing more, it is hard to compare. The only thing that keeps me from rating it higher independently is the stability. Maybe it's stable in some other companies, but somehow we don't seem to share that stability in our environment. Because we have virtual machines that have to be up and running all the time and they are mostly Windows-based, Windows may also one of the reasons why stability is not so good. I don't blame the automation tool directly, but it could be more robust. As far as giving advice to people considering the product, I say to give it time and learn to use it because it is the best. If the process is clean, we can automate to any extent.

RohitShetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Learn from our mistakes. Choose the right RPA product and partner. The initial mistake that we did was that we wanted to do it on our own. If you are not an IT company, don't get into that. Learn from partners and use them. Use the right partner and learn from Automation Anywhere too, as they have done their own mistakes. Learn from them. Instead of assuming that you know everything and getting into the RPA world. That's the wrong choice. Automation Anywhere is doing well compared to the market.

MG
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Have your CEO set up a business user to do the automation day in and day out. If a business user is building or developing RPA, he will know the ins and outs of the process better than a coder or third-party.

SK
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

If I have any advice to give to people who are considering this product as a solution to their automation needs, I would say don't waste time thinking too much about adopting it and just go ahead and start. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere as an eight. If you look at the first year we had the product, we had a 6% efficiency gain. This year we are looking at 10% in finance and 12% in IT. The more we discover ways to use it, the more efficient we will become.

PV
Consultant
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

For the beginners, it is an easy tool compared to other tools in market. Users can understand the line by line code and code it easily. There is no syntax or anything else. They can easily drag and drop, executing the bot directly.

SS
MSP
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

It's a good product. Compared to the competition, you can do multiple processes with one license. So there are a lot of savings in terms of license costs. It's easy to use and has good, UI-based interaction. It's easy to deploy as well. Clients can also train their own staff to do easy implementations, so they can save costs there as well. I would rate Automation Anywhere at eight out of ten. There is always scope for improvement. There are a few ready-made things that they need to incorporate.

PN
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I will be focusing more on the artificial intelligence and analytics part of this tool that they are bringing in. For anybody considering this type of solution, I would first suggest that they look at what kinds of processes they are trying to automate, and then look at the right tool. It depends a lot on what the process is. For standard ones, this is a mature tool so they can use it. However, for a very mixed set of processes then you look at the specific tools for those types of automation. This solution is good, but there are still more features to add. There are some use cases that I cannot handle, otherwise, the solution would be perfect. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

JS
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Go through the Automation Anywhere training modules to understand the tool. Developers should go through the developer training module while business analysts should go through the business training module. This will give you an idea of what Automation Anywhere can do and what it can't do.

SP
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

When we saw the tool capabilities, we were so excited. We tried to start using them but we needed to have the right structure and mechanisms in place from the beginning to identify the use case for prioritizing. This plays a major role. If you are a big organization with a center of excellence, you need to bring all the people together. The establishment will play a bigger role than just developing and delivering bots. Developing and delivering bots is a very small portion, which is doable by any individual who has a basic technical background. To be successful in your journey, having the right structure upfront will help. We experimented a little bit with IQ Bots, but we didn't see much use cases in this line currently. A lot of people interact with RPA and the industry is really excited about it. However, you need to pick the right candidate to be successful in your journey, along with the right framework for the development. This will give you a good output. This is what the business needs to test. Pick a solution based on the organization's needs as well as the right approach. Have an assessment with an approach framework will help.

PB
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I would definitely recommend Automation Anywhere. From a technical perspective, developers can easily create bots and get things done with this tool. Day-to-day, the Automation Anywhere improvements have been good.

Sunilkumar Venugopal - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

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.

BC
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I would encourage a developer to learn RPA and enhance their knowledge. If they start with Automation Anywhere, it will be easy to continue learning on the tool. It is harder to transition for another RPA tool to Automation Anywhere.

VB
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

This is a stable solution and a product that you can go for. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

AD
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Think of what is the best fit for your organization in terms of a technology platform. Also, have goals in mind, like improving the customer experience, not reducing the FTEs in your organization. Going forward, there will be new releases on the cloud.

GR
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

All the available versions of competing automation tools are available, UiPath or Automation Anywhere. Download them and think about it, then decide for yourself. Cost cutting is the primary reason to look at getting an RPA solution. Humans are not intended to do just manual work. If I give that manual work of 14 minutes, 30 minutes. or one hour to some bot, and it can do the work without any problems. That time is now yours, and you can do something else. You can build relationships, you can have a friendship with somebody, or you can do something nice. This is what we humans were intended to do. I'm certified in a UiPath, and now I'm going to gain my certification in Automation Anywhere.

DB
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

This is definitely a solution that I recommend, but there are a few things that you need to look into. We actually started with a process and ended up thinking that it would not work. You have to ensure that the proper groundwork is done in order to understand whether the process can actually work. It will be possible to find solutions in any case, but it may take a very long time. The longer it takes to automate, the longer ROI will take. I have been using this solution for a while now, and I think that it is a very good platform. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

RC
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

This is the right platform and choice. Today, every business needs to be at this pace and cannot ignore automation. You have to be in the race if you really want your company to get to the next level and be at par with competitors. Bring your business to the table by getting it automated by using the right tools, like Automation Anywhere, and the right partner. The solution delivers value. Going forward, we are looking to add more value, then plan for a better foundation using the automation platform by making a COE team and installing the newest version of Automation Anywhere.

MR
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

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.

AS
Consultant
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

* See how your use case fits with the solution. A few uses cases may be good for you. * Take a look at the cost model. Do you want to go for a big bang approach or large-scale implementation? * Customer support: Organizations fail to understand when you have deployed bots in the production systems, and they are up and running, that you need a very robust, strong support system. This way if any issues come up regarding the application/solution, teams are there to support you.

PR
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

My advice for anybody researching this solution is to first identify all of the use cases around your project. If you don't do your due diligence then I don't recommend this solution. You need to have the use cases identified. We wanted to use IQ Bot to assist with unstructured data, but we were not able to do it. Our next step is to create a workload to handle our information processing. This solution saves us time but there are some things that make it clumsy for the end-users. When we have to tell them that there is no macOS version then we put our heads down and tell them that we have to wait for that. Also, if you want to use Chrome then there are three or four additional steps that need to be done. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

SK
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

This solution did not take us long to learn how to use. We found the guidelines at automationanywhereuniversity.com and started using it. At this time we use the MetaBot but not the IQ Bot. This is a solution that I recommended to a friend of mine at another company. They are using Blue Prism, but after telling them about the Automation Anywhere University they started viewing the documents. They are now doing a POC with this solution. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

DS
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Go to conferences to analyze what suits your business. Automation is very important if you want to grow your business to the next level because of the transparency, speed, and scalability for any organization. While there isn't any ready-made solution in the market, consider checking out the closest solutions and modifying them to suit your needs. Then, start using it.

SM
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

We allow the developer to train themselves right from the university, and they like several things about the Centre of Excellence person. For anybody who is researching this solution, I suggest that they try it. It is a good platform to start with. If they were to fix the areas that I have mentioned then it would be a perfect solution. I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

DM
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Know your process, design, and how you want to re-engineer everything. A lot of issues that we were facing in the previous version have been solved in the latest version. We are happy with the scalability and reliability now. We have more trust in the tool and are happy to grow and build more tasks going forward.

it_user1180314 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

We recently upgraded versions from 10.5 to 11.3.2, and the newer version is better. The major issue we used to face is an auto-login failure. It caused a lot of havoc with the customers because some process that had to run in the morning before we came into the office had not run. However, with this new version, that problem has been solved. There were also a few applications that were not previously compatible, and we were told that they would be with this new version. So far, the ones we have checked are now compatible. One example of these is Phoebus. There are some legacy banking applications that we are moving to Phoebus, so this has to be compatible because our future automation depends on that. I am looking forward to using the AI in this new version. I want to see how user-friendly it is, without much knowledge of Python or another coding language. I saw a video and it seems to have become very user-friendly, with a step-by-step guide. I want to see how easy it is to leverage that power without needing to know how to code. For anybody who is researching RPA solutions, I would definitely tell them to go with the top players in the market. These are UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere. Then, you do your cost analysis and figure out who is giving you the best price. Then you analyze the service to figure out who is providing the best service. Finally, you can compare. I recommend Automation Anywhere considering my experience with their service. Once you buy the product, the product may be good. But, if the service is not good then you may suffer. If you have a problem and you do not have service for three days, then how much business have you lost in that time? So, service matters a lot after you purchase the product. That is how you choose the solution, rather than by cost alone. In our experience, Automation Anywhere is great, but I am expecting more in the AI and with the IQ Bot. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

VC
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Streamline your processes and simplify them, then bring in RPA as a solution.

AS
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I would recommend using this product. It is very useful. We can automate anything through it. There is much flexibility. It provides a robust mechanism, which is good. We look at process which are feasible for automation on a case-by-case basis.

HT
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I have been very impressed with the A2019 version. This version is phenomenal.

SS
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

My advice to anybody who is researching this solution is to explore it. Try out the solution and its capabilities. Until you do so, you won't know exactly what it is capable of. To now, I have not even explored it one-hundred percent. We are looking for a web-based product because most of the things we do, and most of the products that we work with, are on the cloud. Once we get a web-based system, we will have more interest and we will be more confident about it. We understand that the web-based system will be released soon. The product is good, no doubt about it, but we need the OCR for handwritten documents, the web-based solution, and the licensing has to be improved. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

GB
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I would recommend Automation Anywhere. I am excited about the Microsoft partnership that was announced today. Excel is a daily core tool for us. With an automation plugin, this works like a miracle for the finance team. The potential is unlimited, e.g., Office 365 and Internet Explorer will have plugins.

MP
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

For people looking for my recommendation for an automation product, I definitely would recommend Automation Anywhere instead of going for a more orthodox or older technology. With older tools, you are just doing the same things and not improving processes. With RPA a digital transformation is actually required for an organization to adopt a better way so they scale up and create an enormous amount of new opportunities for their organization to grow. It is a step to go in the direction where AI is going in. You cannot see the destination yet, but somewhere you have to start up using an RPA that is right for you. That is what I would recommend to my colleagues. If you start talking about innovation as streamlining day-to-day processes, that is where to start from. It is where we started. We give clients various approaches, but we recommend that RPA is one thing which has stability and which is a good, long-term return on investment. Once you invest you don't get the returns immediately. You have to wait some time while you work at creating the solutions by scaling the number of Bots you have and the processes you simplify and improve. After a time, your efforts will improve results. That is what we communicate with our customers. When we have them interested, then we come to a conclusion as to how we will go about implementing it. On a scale from one to ten where ten is the best. I would rate this product as a ten-out-of-ten because the company and product have done everything to meet my expectations. We used to expect new things in the A 2019 version and the company delivered on that. So, once I use this release of the product for some time again, I will probably have some new expectations. By 2020, I think we will send them feedback again.

MN
Real User
2019-09-03T07:39:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

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

SB
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Initially, when I was first trained, I had some difficulty using this solution. However, when I went through all of the training and learned how to write the code, I found it was very easy. We are training our students in the use of bots for automation. We are teaching students how to create bots, and how to use them so that companies will be prepared. We are trying to create more use cases, or examples, for learning how to code. Some people are saying that they will lose their jobs because of this solution. A single bot is capable of doing the work of ten people. This is a very strong tool, but the problem relates to any technology. We have to adapt, and we have to understand the technology. Time is very important. For any work that you are doing, if you finish the work within the time set by the customer then they will be really impressed. When the customer is happy with the company then they will give them more work. I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

BS
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

We are having a very good experience with this product. It has capabilities for artificial intelligence, analytical programming, and machine learning. Once you understand your data, you can understand your customer. In the long run, we see that Automation Anywhere will have a very good place in the market. Data is very important, and we feel that this tool will be a market leader. This solution is very mature compared to some of the others in the market. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

MK
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

For anybody who is considering an RPA solution, I would suggest exploring the limits. Compare products and decide, but try this one out. We are excited to try a cloud version of this solution. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

LJ
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

If I were to rate this product on a scale of one to ten where ten is the best, I would definitely rate them nine. It is not a ten because of what may be my ignorance of the entire Automation Anywhere platform. Probably I'm not aware or don't know the complete suite of assets. I'm not in a position to rate it a ten. To rate Automation Anywhere a ten means I should have complete knowledge of the product and I am sure there are things I have not yet explored. As far as advice, the normal tendency — and the mistake often made by organizations — would be to commit at the time of vendor selection by volume of features. They pay too much attention and focus on the product landscape. They think about one solution that has got 200 different functionalities rather than one which has got 210 different functionalities as being inferior just based on a number. But in reality, the users may probably not even be using even 10% of what is available in the tool or the platform. So they tend to give more weight to the product landscape. In our case, we made an effort to look at more than just features, but the qualities of the companies and vendors as well. For example, we learned about the leadership journey for each vendor, how long ago they started in this business, how much focus they put into coming up with the product development — the R&D. It is also important who the venture partners are and who the people are who are associated with the company and product. We have done a lot of automation with our ERP systems. We also have some in-house applications which are on .NET that we have integrated with RPA. This should be the minimum expectation when you're signing for an RPA contract with any vendor. You would expect the RPA solution or tool to work seamlessly with any system. Automation Anywhere works well with no problems except for the Citrix environment. This is where we have had a bit of a challenge. Beyond that, we have never had issues with Automation Anywhere. These details are relevant and important when you go to make a decision or when you take on a partner as an RPA solution provider. You are not just investing in a partnership for the next six months or a year. Probably some of the bots you are developing today you'll want to be using even after ten years. It's a long-term association what you're trying to make with an entity, the product, and with a company. So it's important that you go through all these checkpoints rigorously. I've not used anything from the Bot Store. Every technology has pros and cons with some limitations. There is no point in just harping on the limitations alone. You need to look at how you can make that technology work and solve your problems. This is where the human intelligence comes into the picture. This technology is an enabler. It will solve most of my problems. It is up to individuals on how to make it work. That is where the trick of the trade lies. If you know how to work with RPA, you will not complain. I've seen many people complaining saying, "RPA doesn't work. It doesn't give you ROI." It's not the technology's problem. It's the people's problem. It's your mindset which is stopping you from getting automated and start using the technology. Biggest lesson learnt: You'll understand existing processes in a different dimension. You'll understand your people problems with the process in a better manner. It should not be just be looked at as an opportunity to automate it. If you look at the overall process to revamp and re-engineer it, then you can make your process efficient by making it lean, simple, and straightforward. On top of that, when you try to automate it, the overall process efficiency should increase tremendously. if you just look at RPA as a tool to automate everything, that is not a good approach. There are some things which can be automated efficiently using simple VBA Macros. Sometimes you might require a simple .NET solution to automate your end process, which is more efficient. You can make automation in the existing ERP, and that might work better. You have to look at different ways of automating things based on the process and complexity. You have to look at what is the ideal solution, then you have to pick and choose what you want to automate. Don't look at RPA to solve all your problems. You need to use the right technology to automate, simplify, and minimize your problems.

JN
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

We are looking forward to having the capability of building the IQ Bots the way we want, using Python scripts. With our scripting, we can fill in the gaps and improve accuracy. My advice to anybody who is researching RPA solutions is to consider several things. I can see that the path that Automation Anywhere has right now is going to take it to the highest levels. My suggestion is that if you have a lot of coding or scripting experience then I would recommend UiPath. It has its own plusses and minuses, as with every tool. Instead, if you're looking for someone that can you you build a bot within a short time, who doesn't know any coding or have a background in programming, then I recommend Automation Anywhere. You cut out the cost of developers, but you add to your cost in terms of licenses. Also, for manageability, Automation Anywhere is the best choice. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

GB
Vendor
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

The primary advice which I would give to someone considering automation tools, in general, is don't just go for any RPA tool (Robotic Process Automation). You want to be sure that the tool you choose will solve some issues and resolve your problems. I've seen people just take any RPA tool just to say that they are using some RPA. It is not a status symbol, it is a tool for business. You need to define the problem and that RPA is the way to go to resolve the issue and improve business function. If there is a process which cannot be completely automated using any scripts, and human intervention is very much required, consider going for this solution. I will give an example. There was one use case where we had to read information from an Excel table and generate a report out of that. People might decide they need to start using Automation Anywhere or some RPA tool for this solution. But reading an Excel file is not really a commonly necessary use case for any of the RPA tools. Basically it can be taken care of in programming scripts or some small database script application. An easy solution would have given the proper output with less effort and they would still get what they were expecting as users. The point is to evaluate the problem and how complex it is before going to purchase any RPA tool which may be unnecessary. If it can be done through something else, it may be a more efficient process. Business users are not using the tool. They are just using the direct outcome. We have not used IQ Bots, but might in the future. We have not used the Bot Store. I would like to explore that in the future. On a scale of one to ten where ten is the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight. It is an eight because I'm seeing some results in the use case even early on whatever we are trying to automate. It has really helped our process so far and we will expand on that.

FK
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

We want to do more Automation Anywhere certifications and learn more about them. We did not get that information from our account team, which could be improved.

JL
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Automation Anywhere is user-friendly.

BR
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

For anybody who is implementing this solution, I recommend they get help from Automation Anywhere to help understand the best way to do their automation. This will help with the development of the bots. This is what we did, and we now have a framework for building the rest of our processes. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

KD
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

My advice to those considering Automation Anywhere would be to be bold and try it out. There is no point in remaining in the dinosaur age and not taking advantage of the possibilities of automation. Ensure your processes are standardized and exceptions are kept to a minimum. The more standardized processes are, the easier it is to implement bots, then your ROI will go up. You can extend automation to a much larger scale, but the more exceptions in the process, the more changes and tweaks in the process that brings. That makes it more complicated to invest in the bot and you will have to keep checking the deliver of the results being produced. On a scale of one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere as a seven or eight. In our case, it is closer to an eight. We use attended automation. There is some amount of human involvement in running the bots, but it's minimal just to ensure that exceptions are correctly captured, etc. The process works well. The biggest lesson is to ensure that your processes are standardized, so you can increase the usage of bots. The more your processes aren't standardized, the more complicated it becomes to implement bots.

it_user1180188 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

You can easily build and deploy the bots with it. Train more people on a team to understand the tool to build teamwork. Share the development tasks. Automation Anywhere has plugins for Excel, but we haven't integrated it with Oracle. I have taken Automation Anywhere University courses. I am certified in Automation Anywhere. I have the Advanced certification and am now doing the Masters certification. The courses were good and helpful for anyone wants to learn about Automation Anywhere. Everything is on the website, e.g., information about installation, configuration, bot development, and bot assessment. Automation Anywhere and RPA are not that difficult to learn. It can be learnt and be adopted easily, but you need at minimum practical knowledge. You need to take courses and scenarios. E.g., even if I know about object cloning, I still have to go and work with object cloning to understand the possibilities of object cloning. We are not using IQ Bot. Task schedules and runs are good candidates for bot automation.

BV
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I would rate the solution as a six out of 10 due to the resolution issue. It is a major issue that we are facing with the tool. Get the approvals done before investing. We wasted the license for six months. The licenses were unused because we didn't have the approvals for the application. We procured it and kept it for six months. Therefore, before investing, get the approvals internally, then go for it. We have integrated Automation Anywhere with SAP (ERP system) and BlackLine (reconciliation tool). For integrating, we are using web scaping tools and object cloning. I am certified Automation Anywhere RPA professional with Automation Anywhere University. I am looking for courses on solution architecture and would like to have something for this in the University. We don't use Citrix automation.

Gurvinder Singh Dhaliwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Evaluate your processes and determine where RPA can be done. By automating your tasks, you can speed up your work, get extra savings, and focus your attention on things that are better suited for your employees. I am very happy with the bots that I have seen here. We are planning to test IQ Bot. We have some planned agreements that we would like to have digitize. We also have all our scanned documents, so we will see if we can scan them and try to store the digitize version with special desk tools into some data storage. We are creating a bot more from a business user prospect, not product development. We have help from our developer who is approaching this from a business user. He is creating a light bot for the technical area, but we don't have any direct business users, as of now. For some of the finance and IT departmental people, we will tell them how to create light bots so they can try to do Excel automation on their own. Our clients have Citrix environments. We are looking forward to automating their environments. We are empowering our users to do processes faster. With Automation Anywhere, our clients can get their work done fast and in an automated manner.

JP
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I recommend Automation Anywhere. This product makes my life easier. It has been a very robust product to use in all our segments.

KM
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Explore the new version A2019 that is coming out. It is user-friendly and can be onboarded quickly. I would love to use the next version A2019 that is coming out.

SN
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Go with Automation Anywhere. It is a very good tool. It has an easy to develop process. You need to set up the proper architecture or you will fail in setting up your process.

AA
Real User
2019-09-03T07:38:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I have worked with Automation Anywhere on nine versions, including the 10.3 and 10.7 versions. It has been improving all along as they make further releases. Considering that experience, on a scale of one to ten, with one being the worst and ten being the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere somewhere around 8.5. It is one of the market leaders in their market segment. They have obviously proven their success and adaptability to the market enough to be very good at what they do. But I am scoring in terms of flexibility and in being more open-ended towards developer plans and preferences. In order to score nine or ten, they still need to provide more flexibility and integration with other tools and options. My advice to people who are considering Automation Anywhere as a solution, is that you have to approach a decision from the point of view of what you want to accomplish. You can just go out and pick up a tool, but you have to actually dig into it and work on it. Automation Anywhere is a very good tool because it helps you along the process. The kind of support that you get from the community, as well as the partner enablement team, is encouraging. You can take it step-by-step. There will be some handholding from Automation Anywhere team. Our status as members of the customer success team is in the future. That kind of support and community helps new partners, existing partner, or those who are looking forward to becoming a partner.

SS
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

It is a good tool and one of the market leaders. The ease of implementation is very good in Automation Anywhere compared to other tools. If somebody is just starting out, Automation Anywhere is the best tool to look at to rapidly start because it delivers quickly robotic process automation. The market is very dynamic. The product needs to be constantly evolving. They have improved the product a lot since I started working with it.

SG
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

We haven't faced any major issues with the tools that we are using.

AC
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Use all the features. The enhancements that they have developed on the tooling side, and the other new features that they have provided, are good. This is a great tool that I recommend, and cross-platform is the only problem. The solution should recognize the platform and deploy the tools properly. I have taken one course with Automation Anywhere University. That course needs to be updated. We can sometimes integrate it with other applications. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

AP
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

There are a lot of different features that are built-in, and this is a great product. There are some bugs in the version that I am using, and it can be improved. I would rate this version an eight out of ten.

NR
Consultant
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I have seen my colleagues use UiPath and web automation is excellent. I have been involved in hackathons where I have used Automation Anywhere for web automation, and I have struggled. In web automation, if UiPath completes it in ten seconds, then Automation Anywhere will take seventy to eighty seconds for the same task. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

SG
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I did the Advanced Certification on Automation Anywhere University. I have also done IQ Bot learning. I am currently doing a Masters Certification. The courses are very clear. Any user can understand the content. If you are a beginner, go with Automation Anywhere. If you have some basic programming knowledge, that is enough. You can easily learn Automation Anywhere. It is not a big deal, and you can learn with the certification. If a person doesn't have a programming background or skills, they can use Automation Anywhere and build bots. It's not a big deal. It's easy for business users to use. You just need some basic programming skills, like Ethernet and loops. I heard from Automation Anywhere that version A2019 will be released in either November or December. It is completely cloud-based and contains two IDs. One ID is a flowchart diagram and another ID has some commands. Therefore, any business user who has some basic knowledge can develop bots as well. Version A2019 will be adding a lot of new features. I haven't had a chance to work on Citrix automation.

AS
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

We can automate anything with Automation Anywhere. Initially, we were skeptical about whether this small project would be automated or not because we were not well acquainted with the Automation Anywhere capabilities. After using the product for a while, we understood its potential, such as the OCR capabilities. My experience with Automation Anywhere to date has been great, however, there are areas that I have not explored which could be features that should be added or improved upon, such as APIs. I have yet to explore this area of the solution and there may or may not be room for improvement. We used to use Excel VBAs. However, if you want to manipulate stuff in Excel files, you have to write the back-end code in VBA. This is more effective than writing your code in Automation Anywhere. There are no hiccups in integrating with VBA. We have completed the 11.2 expert certification in Automation Anywhere University and are in the process of completing 11.3. The University has a lot of stuff in their repository. As a programmer, you might not use all those commands extensively in your development. It's a good place to learn, but I didn't see everything being learned in the University being implemented. For anybody who is considering this solution, I would start by suggesting that they look at their business requirements. We looked at it from a business standpoint because in our day to day operations, we needed automation. This is how we realized we needed a solution. If you are doing web scraping or another type of mundane task every day then you need Automation Anywhere. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

SK
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Before automating, understand the process: * How big is the process? * Is it of use to the organization? * How repetitive or complex is the process? This is important because automating tasks requires resources. On a scale of one to ten with one being the worst and ten being the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven. So far it has been good, but obviously there are opportunities to be so much better. We expect more from Automation Anywhere based on the new technologies that we know exist concerning AI and also unstructured learning. There's a lot of room for improvement, so that's why I would not rate it higher. Other than that, for data structure, it has been good — apart from a few stability issues. Ease of integration is good. We have automated a process in the current version. Automation Anywhere will tell us if it won't support this version anymore at this particular time, so we'll have to migrate that code to the currently released new version. At that time, we may face some challenges after moving the code. We may have to do some tweaks to the code. We can't directly run it as is, so we'll have to do some minor tweaks so that it is stabilized more, then it'll be better. As far as recommending the software, that depends on what use case and what work requirements an organization has. For structured data and for simpler processes, it is fine. For unstructured data — which should be addressed by IQ Bot and additional features — I may not recommend it yet. But for dealing with automation of straightforward processes, Automation Anywhere is good. RPA solutions are continuously improvement due to competition. Sometimes, it is worth waiting for the next version which is more stabilized to be released.

GM
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

On a scale of one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would give this product a seven. Everything has room for improvement but also I think the product could be a little easier to deploy.

SC
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

On a scale of one to ten, one being the worst and ten being the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere as an eight. Now they have a nice tool that is mostly stable with most of the features I could want being covered in the functionality of the product. More features are coming soon with this release so that's why I rated it an eight. The product right now will probably be better with the release. I think it would be very difficult to consider the product a nine or a ten. To reach that level and to connect with innovations in the technology that are coming is very hard to anticipate and solve. There is always a limitation to what they can develop at once, so they will delay some work. If I'm talking to a user who is not comfortable with automation tools, I recommend that they try the Automation Anywhere tool only. It's very easy to learn and easy to implement. It is not something you are making a sacrifice to use. It is a good tool.

SG
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Automation Anywhere is unlike any other software. Automation Anywhere provides me with my bread and butter. I just love the tool. Understand what projects or automation projects that you have on hand. Every clients setup demands a different set of tools which can be used for automation. Automation Anywhere does try to cover all environments, though. However, there are a few other tools in the market specifically built for specific infrastructures. First, study your requirements. Then, based on those, go ahead and decide on what tool you want to use.

SN
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

This is a user-friendly solution that is all drag-and-drop, and very good. When a new version of this solution is released, it would be very helpful if the vendor would give an explanation as to everything that is new. Simply releasing it is not a good idea. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

DM
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

On a scale of one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere as an eight. When we update to the newer version, maybe it will have what we want and it will be better. It could be a ten if it were a perfect partner for us without any errors or had all the features we would like. This is a very good product, but like managing other software and solutions, issues, bugs, and all various activities, you see the things that could be better. Obviously we think users will be satisfied by your outcome with using Automation Anywhere as we have had success. But right now it is an eight.

VN
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

identifying the processes which need automation. If you're just trying to start up with your automation journey, the recommendation would be to identify low complexity fruits first, so everyone can get a taste of what automation can bring to the table. Then try to go for complex things, because if it fails, this will be a big obstacle in your journey. So, take smaller steps, then once everyone gets a taste of what automation can bring, there is no stopping necessary. Start slow, but scale and learn fast. On a scale from one to ten, one being the worst and ten being the best, I would rate Automation Anywhere around six or seven. The reason it is not a higher rating is for one critical thing: as your code gets longer, it is difficult to analyze. It's just lines of code going from top to bottom. It is pretty good at developing the code and does make things faster. But analysis is not effective. If I had to choose between six or seven, I would have to choose the six. The important thing for those considering the solution is to analyze what business processes are in place and select a tool appropriate for what needs to be accomplished. We are not yet integrated with other applications. We are trying to integrate Automation Anywhere with Splunk, which is a dashboard that shows all the information in a dashboard. However, that's in the pipeline for early next year. We do not use the Bot Store because we don't know the authenticity of the code that is running underneath. As a leading financial institute, we want everything to be transparent. We can't take code built by someone else not knowing where the data will go. We do not use Citrix automation. We do not use attended automation. My advice is to really evaluate your business process before you choose a product.

IK
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

For those who are considering Automation Anywhere as a solution, I would ask how good their team was already. To take on a new product and take a chance that people will try to enhance their skills by learning it may not be the best course of action. Many will have to learn something new and do better than they did with previous solutions by learning and using AA. If the response is that they have hardcore developers, web designers, C# developers, etcetera. They may be looking for quick resolutions, hardcore development and coding bit. They will want any other product or UI that appears to give you far more than AA. AA does all of that — it is not that it isn't able to do it — but it's easy and it is different. With other solutions, you will need someone with that knowledge and ability to code in a particular language. But AA is a platform that can be used as an opportunity for people to up-skill themselves. That's something that is different compared to any other code. AA commands are not the same as other languages. It has its own dictionary, its own library, its own way of working. I see that this is the same thing mentioned by others as to what they think about the product. It is possible to learn it by just using the Q&A.

BG
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Automation Anywhere is a great, user-friendly automation tool, but it still has room for improvement, like the MetaBot and object cloning part.

SS
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Have a very robust feasibility check of what you want to do. It is very important that you understand your requirements: * Why do you require RPA? * What will be the return of the investment? * What will be the time consumption? * Do you need to outsource the entire RPA or develop in-house expertise? Understand the tool better, then the deployment becomes easier. The tool is good. I feel that there is a lot of scope for improvement. We have found there is already an R&D effort to build up Automation Anywhere. There are new tools which will soon be integrated into the present setup. It becomes better at every stage.

it_user1180137 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I'm seeing some results in the use case for whatever we are trying to automate. So, it has been really helpful. Don't use an RPA tool for any problem statement. I've seen people use any RPA tool available for their problem statement just to say that they are using some type of RPA. E.g., We had a use case where we had to read information from an Excel table and generate a report, so people started using Automation Anywhere. However, it would have been better in this scenario to use Power BI by creating scripts.

GS
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Any company looking at starting RPA should look at a user-friendly software. Compared to other RPA tools, I prefer Automation Anywhere. Whenever I have used Automation Anywhere, it has been brilliant. There are still so many features that I need to explore in Automation Anywhere.

SH
Real User
2019-09-03T07:33:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Most people are aware of Automation Anywhere and what it does.

VM
Real User
2019-09-03T07:32:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

This is a solution that I recommend. We are looking forward to trying the IQ Bot to help with reading, scanning, and querying of files. This solution has a wonderful concept, but the stability needs to be improved. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

NP
Real User
2019-09-03T07:32:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

I would definitely recommend Automation Anywhere.

AG
Real User
2019-09-03T07:32:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

We are using MetaBots as well as TaskBots. There are lots of features that are still not there in version 11. I know that version 12 is coming, but I do not know much about it. This is a solution that I recommend. We began with the free license, but if you are going to use Automation Anywhere then you have to purchase the license. It's an investment. With UiPath, the development license is free, so it depends on the situation. In general, if the client is ready for automation then I suggest this solution. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

NS
Real User
2019-09-03T07:32:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

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

Vatsal Shah - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2019-09-03T07:32:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

The 2019 version of this solution looks quite exciting. It will include many features for web integration. It will also include support for Python, which is something that we are looking forward to. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

YP
Real User
2019-09-03T07:32:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Create automation with automation with Automation Anywhere.

AK
Real User
2019-09-03T07:32:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

Use the standard guideline that Automation Anywhere provided. Build a dry model for each bot. This will be useful for debugging. I give these diagrams to my developers. When automating Citrix, we can install on the client. It can easily access objects, we can click anywhere and it can take data from anywhere. We have a scenario where one process is working, but in another case, it is not able to capture everything. This is a good product. This platform is great, but there are a lot of issues to resolve, including the Excel features. My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to follow the instructions and the standards that are specified. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

IN
Real User
2019-09-03T07:32:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

The bugs that we have had are generally not because of the product. We have had one product bug, and it has already been taken care of, although it is not released yet. It will be included with the next release of the solution. The bug is related to popups, where those commands are issued but we cannot give them in the development stage. It is a major drawback in our process. Because of this, certain processes have a two to three-minute delay, and that's a major impact on one of our processes. It does have something to do with a third-party application for which nobody has applied an automation tool. I wouldn't say that it is a major bug, but it should be rectified in the future. We are now looking at the AI side of this solution, and have started using the IQ Bot. My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to invest small and see, rather than going for a bigger investment all to once. See the ROI and then evaluate again. We had issues with the business users because they were not confident enough to use the Bots. At that time, they were much more comfortable using the hands-on, manual approach. Try one use case and then expand. I have not evaluated all of the features so my rating might be higher when I do. Compared to other products, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

RM
Real User
2019-09-03T07:32:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

In the A2019 community edition, while running its taking time to run RPA bots and having few bugs related to IQ Bot server connectivity and other things. But they will solve it soon as expected. Also in A2019 they should make one separate page or redirected into separate page where we can easily develop RPA bots because in CR webpage my bot section we are not getting enough space to develop resulting its taking time to create bot. Because many developers working on system with screen resolution 1366*768. It will be better if they can add one separate windows/page for RPA bot development in the CR webpage.

VB
Real User
2019-09-03T07:32:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

This is a good tool to work with. Our automation is running well, but there is a lag in features when compared to other Windows tools that are coming out. My advice for anybody who is considering this solution is to consider the type of automation that needs to be done. If it is not overly complex then this is a solution I recommend. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

MP
Real User
2019-09-03T07:32:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

The process is simple. Go for Automation Anywhere.

SK
Real User
2019-09-03T07:32:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

For anybody who is learning and wants to use RPA, I would suggest starting with Automation Anywhere. There are many things to consider including the technical capabilities, the length of time for development, the number of pieces that there are, what the support is, and how easily the bots are deployed. This is a good solution, but some pieces are missing and there are issues with support. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

MV
Real User
2019-09-03T07:32:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

We are still in the procurement process for IQ Bot, but I am looking forward to seeing how it is going to help me. My advice for anybody who is considering RPA is to use Automation Anywhere because it is easier. You can learn it, but if you go for other solutions then it will be more difficult. Not all of the people in our company are from a technical background. Many are BCOM graduates and analysts, but they are being trained in using this solution. This is a good solution, but it still needs improvement and there is a long way to go. Artificial Intelligence still needs to be added. If they allow the direct import of data from Excel, improve the OCR, and allow variables to be used in the MetaBot start screen, then this solution would be perfect. I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

NP
Real User
2019-09-03T07:32:00Z
Sep 3, 2019

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.

JP
Real User
2019-08-26T06:42:00Z
Aug 26, 2019

The biggest lesson I've learned from using this solution is that nothing is as easy as it seems it should be. One of the things a number of people are looking for out of an automation solution is a reduction in FTEs. I know Automation Anywhere would prefer we not describe its usefulness in those terms, but I know that's something that a lot of people are into. While it certainly can achieve that, the estimates going in tend to be very high and the reality is that you're not really hitting those numbers. So be very conservative when you evaluate it. It has absolutely been worth it for us and has provided us with good value. But the optimism going in - and I've heard this from other people we've met at the Imagine events, etc. - is over-optimistic and the actual numbers are less than what is estimated. Being realistic about that is very important. Also, if you're using any kind of custom, in-house software, seeing how it interacts with that is important. It can be a little persnickety about interacting correctly, especially if it's an older, legacy system. It runs very smoothly across many different types of software and modern interfaces. But it can be a little challenging working with something that's a little older or more specialized and customized. Currently, we have five to ten users, ranging from very much involved to just being onboard or peripherally involved. We have a number of developers directly using the technology, as well as project managers. Those are the people who are directly involved. The number is much larger if you include the business users who are impacted by the solution, impacted by the bots that we've created and their results. I would estimate, roughly, 50 users are benefiting from it right now. In terms of deployment and maintenance, we're getting back to that five to ten people. We have four or five developers who are developing new bots. We have three IT people who are involved very directly in maintaining our servers and the virtual machines that we're running these on, as well as providing technical support for the overall infrastructure and setup. Those are the people who are directly involved at the nuts-and-bolts level. It's been very helpful. In many ways it's doing what it says it can do. It's automating processes, it's got some good settings for controlling, running, monitoring, and maintaining that. On the other hand, our experience in actually developing with it and making the bots has been rockier than we would like. Also, the setup - getting the infrastructure and the installs set up properly - and updating, when updates roll out, are a bit complex.

MS
Real User
2019-08-26T06:42:00Z
Aug 26, 2019

At the start, I advise picking a portfolio of use cases to start with. Some will over-perform and others will not. Think of it in terms of a portfolio approach to sell the concept to your organization. My second area of advice would be: Do not automate systems that you do not own or control, unless you are willing to accept the degree of maintenance associated with that automation. The biggest lesson I've learned so far from using it is that it's not as easy as the salespeople say. The biggest challenge is that not all automations are created equal. To give you some context, there are automations that I still don't have in production which have taken me over half-a-year to build. You talk to a sales guy and he says, "Hey, you can build an automation and be up in two weeks." Yes, but will that automation add a drop of value to the business? Probably not. The challenges are around stabilizing our complex automations. Anything Google-related is challenging. I didn't really receive any help from our systems integrator or from AA when it came to the Google platform. We paid, extensively, to learn the hard way. As part of our CoE, we rely on a third-party for development and maintenance of our automations. That means we have no users of the solution in our organization. The third-party has access to Bot Creators, they have access to our development environment and Control Room. They promote code to production and maintain the automations. We have plans to increase our usage of the solution in the future. It is our intention to build an internal capability, over time. The processes we are looking to automate are more within order-cash and back-office. We have some administrative, travel, maintenance. Our IT ticketing system spawns maintenance; there's also account-creation and maintenance. That's an area of focus for us. And we're exploring reporting capabilities which are on the simple side. That's the area where we're targeting internal development and building an internal competency. It's what we characterize as simple automation use cases. Overall, Automation anywhere is pretty good. It's not perfect but it's up there. I don't have a point of reference, other examples, but I think it's pretty good at what it does.

CD
Real User
2019-08-05T06:24:00Z
Aug 5, 2019

Companies need to do feasibility testing to avoid trying to automate processes which are not right for automation. Then, they should examine which vendor is the right one for the automation process, e.g., Automation Anywhere or UiPath. They need to establish the proper infrastructure for the RPA product, like licenses and an RPA team. The RPA can be a mixture of trained professionals and people who are learning as they go from the training provided by the tool. Version 11.3 updated a lot of features that were previously not there, like workload automation and analytics dashboards. I am always learning new things with this tool.

AS
Real User
Top 20
2019-07-29T10:12:00Z
Jul 29, 2019

The solution is good for people who want to do their job quickly without any delay or problems. The future of IT will require every organization to need automation. The Control Room is good in version 11, as compared to the previous versions of the Control Room.

SM
Real User
Top 20
2019-07-16T05:40:00Z
Jul 16, 2019

It is a very handy product. As of now, Automation Anywhere has a very good place in the market.

Priya Batish - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 10
2019-07-16T05:40:00Z
Jul 16, 2019

It is easy to use, but I realize that the effectiveness of the platform depends on the coder and how he is doing the coding. This is my experience, because I have seen that the quality of the automation is as good as the person who is using it. In Automation Anywhere, the skill set of the coder really determines how good the automation is, which is why I am making it a eight (out of 10), not 10 (out of 10). Because while the platform is feature-rich and easy to use, it is the skill of the coder that determines how well the platform is leveraged. I' am now mainly driving AI at my company. RPA has become a bit secondary in the sense that it is a part of my solution, but most of the time, it is AI-driven. RPA sort of helps in the execution of some of the components of that overall solution. From the organization's standpoint, automation is already a part of all our solutions. E.g., our organization is moving toward automation where almost 30 percent of any deal will be allocated to automation. It will be a ratio of 70:30, where out of $100, a total of $30 dollars will be allocated toward automation and AI. I did my certification on version 10.4.

reviewer1126875 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant
2019-06-19T13:47:00Z
Jun 19, 2019

Don’t employ all non-technical employees to create bots. Use software engineers. In our environment, we use REST, API, and SOAP, which may be daunting to non-technical folks.

MW
Real User
2019-06-04T07:43:00Z
Jun 4, 2019

Any company in today's environment would be foolish not to implement RPA. There are definitely different types of use cases where you could spread it out amongst the organizations and let them do their own thing. We have chosen to keep it centralized and have been pretty successful in doing it. But everybody should be using an RPA in some capacity. I would absolutely recommend specifically Automation Anywhere. Our experience with the solution has been a ten out of ten. I can't speak to the other tools because we haven't used them, but we're very satisfied with what we have.

SR
Real User
2019-05-27T09:37:00Z
May 27, 2019

I would rate Automation Anywhere as seven and a half or eight out of ten. It's not because the product doesn't serve the purpose, but every product has a lot of room for improvement. Hopefully, we'll get it to a nine out of ten by next year.

SN
Real User
2019-05-27T08:38:00Z
May 27, 2019

Number one thing when you're trying to automate, you need to start thinking beyond productivity gains and think about other value drivers such as improved business outcomes and superior customer experiences. The creation of a bot is only one half of the journey. The other half of the journey is understanding what to automate, what technologies to use and having a digital workforce and a governance platform around it is the other half of the journey. That's the one big learning for all of us from the many implementations we have done. I would rate it around eight to nine. We have personally seen the platform really mature from several implementations, from scalability to availability, to API programmability. The vision and the journey Automation Anywhere is on is phenomenal.

RR
Real User
2019-05-27T08:38:00Z
May 27, 2019

I would like to use IQ Bot a little bit more and understand more about what is offered, as to what features are there. One of the key challenges that we have had, in implementation, is for complex processes, especially where the input is not standardized. So, IQ Bot seems to be a good tool to use there. Hopefully, it will address everything, but mostly on that. I would rate the product around eight to eight and a half. Mainly, because there is always room for improvement, and we're happy with the tool. There are areas which we need to understand more, as well, like IQ Bot for instance. We did one engagement with IQ Bot, but we need to mature ourselves into how we can utilize it. As the product matures, I'm sure it will be easier for us. My advice will be to get a partner who is wiling to work with you and is willing to collaborate. This will make your life easier in the automation journey. There will be initial hiccups when you are getting into this journey, and that's just part of any journey. You need to look internally as to how you can improve, and work with a strong team, to deploy the solution.

SF
Real User
2019-05-27T08:38:00Z
May 27, 2019

Prior to working with RPA at BP3, we worked with a lot of process and decisioning technologies and also integration technologies. So, we have sort of a unique perspective on how RPA fits in and plays well with others. In particular, we're partnered with IBM and Automation Anywhere, and we saw them on stage together, presenting. I think Automation Anywhere, from a cultural perspective does a really good job partnering, but they also provide a product that works well with other products, so it's easy to integrate too. It's easy to include it in a solution and easy to use it to drive a solution which leverages other technology. In today's market, you have to think about, how was RPA today and how would I rank it versus what it can be in the future? I think we're in the early innings of what RPA can be and what Automation Anywhere can be. We saw some indication of that in the keynote speeches. You can just get a sense for the scope of the vision and where they want to take RPA at Automation Anywhere. I won't try to rate against the future, but I think we're in early innings, two or three versus a ten. But, when you compare it to the state of the art today, I'm really impressed with RPA, and I think it's an eight or maybe nine (out of ten). I would recommend if you're starting out to look at RPA and how to get started with Automation Anywhere. That is the first thing that I would do is. Find a couple of problems that you think are easy, then take a moment to really think about problems which are important to your business, because you have a limited amount of focus for your business. You business only has a few limited resources: time, money and focus. If you're going to spend that focus, spend it on something that matters. It's fine to do a research project or a pilot project, something that doesn't have a lot of risk. You have to do something that matters for your business, and if you're having trouble finding that and making it make sense in an RPA context, then I'd say work with someone who can help you reframe the problem so you can find those opportunities.

JK
Real User
2019-05-27T08:38:00Z
May 27, 2019

I have nothing specific regarding the Automation Anywhere University. But, we have taken some of the online courses available and done a few sessions, which has been a wonderful deal. I am putting it somewhere between a seven and eight (out of ten). That is what I'll rate it, because as I said, the stability and governance are on that path. As we get there, I'm sure it'll make it to a ten. So far. the journey is on the right track. For somebody searching for a solution, it primarily concerns the use case. But if this is what they are looking for, I will definitely advise.

SM
Real User
2019-05-27T08:38:00Z
May 27, 2019

I would highly recommend it. If RPA is something that they're doing for the first time, Automation Anywhere is definitely one of the best in the industry that they should stick to. I would definitely give it a ten (out of ten).

JH
Real User
2019-05-27T08:37:00Z
May 27, 2019

We don't use it as attended as much. We have had a few cases where we were going to use attended, then just decided that for the rarity of those types of uses that we didn't want to have a Bot Runner just sitting and waiting for someone to chime in five times a day. Instead, we've created more scheduled. Right now, all of our bots are running unattended. It's really easy to use. Again, going back to something that I mentioned earlier, we have a number of people at our firm who are now certified RPA developers that had no development background. They did that just by the online training in some cases. In some cases, it was the online training, as well as a three day class that we brought in-house and had taught. However, the only part where you want to get experience and learning are around error handling. I've been in software for a long time. I've never seen a perfect piece of software, yet. I've seen some that are very good. With everything this is trying to do and the complexities of the environment, I'm going to give it an eight (out of ten) because it's very good. I think me giving something an eight is pretty high in this space.

BW
Real User
2019-05-27T08:37:00Z
May 27, 2019

Ease of use is something that you need to get trained on. Once you have gone through the proper training, it is relatively straightforward to use. There is quite a bit of online training on their website, as well as in the Community Edition. After 30 to 40 hours with it, you should be pretty good with it. One of the promises that we made to Automation Anywhere when we started was that everyone in our company would be trained and certified. Even as a Board Member, I am certified. Bot creation is relatively straightforward. Probably within 20 hours, you should be pretty good at it. There are some nuances around it though that I think separate first time developers versus seasoned developers. What you will see in the marketplace is how easy it is to develop one compared to how easy it is to develop one that runs in production 99.9 percent of the time. Across the board, I would give it a nine out of ten. There are some areas that they can move up into, but they are working on it right now. I am assuming that everybody is working on it, so we will stay in that nine range. Go do your homework. Call some of the larger clients because they seem to face the largest problems. Automation Anywhere has five to ten gigantic accounts that you can just talk to. Ultimately, I would just be careful in the way that you implement it. It is like any tool, if you know what you are doing, "Great," and if not, then you can make a mess. Therefore, be careful and know what you are doing.

BD
Real User
2019-05-27T08:37:00Z
May 27, 2019

I would say that they are a nine out of ten. Because if they are a ten, then they sit back and relax. To get a ten, there are some small tweaks to be done. I think the company is going in the right direction. It just needs more focused attention in certain small gaps, then they will get there. The ease of use is its key novel feature. It is much better than earlier versions. I have actually trained people in finance who have not written a piece of code in their lives. They are able to pick it up. There is a learning curve, some it takes them some time, but it is definitely easy for them to use. I have a couple of folks who have not done automation before, and now they are able to go back to their jobs where we used to build automation for functions. They can now understand what we built for them and actually contribute to a certain extent for it. Get started with the tool. Think of the structure because using the technology is not the problem, it is more on the governance and how to use it. How can you maximize your benefits that you are receiving? It is about getting your hands dirty and trying it on small PoCs. That is how we started; we started on small PoCs. That's the key.

KB
Real User
2019-05-27T08:37:00Z
May 27, 2019

The ease of use is one of great assets for Automation Anywhere. I would want it to be continued in this fashion. Of course, there is still always room for improvement for any product, but we do that as well. On the tools' side of it, when I look at it, a lot of commands have ease of use with every task, whether it is Excel or PDF, each are commonly used tasks and automatically available to you. Again, there are some that we may to develop. I went through most of the Automation Anywhere courses: Architecture courses and even RPA for the business user courses. The courses are very good. It also gave me a very good perspective. The only thing that I would recommend on top of it: Getting the community to grade how much better each course is. At the end of the day, when we publish courses, what's the impact of that to the customer? It's not there. If that comes up, that would be good, so some the more popular courses get more time than other courses, which are really important, but do not get that much visibility. The bot creation process: They said we should not look at it as a technology as the first thing. I would say technology the least problem that we have. I would first look at common sense: * What is the bot actually doing? * What is the task or workflow which you are trying to automate and is it actually doing it? * What is the value that is actually getting to the customer? Or the impact that it is having on the customer? That's very important to identify. That is what it gets you the ROI, etc. You have to look at those aspects of it. The second aspect of it, how can you make it ease the pain? For example, if some customers are using the process, and I know to whom to talk about process, then I can determine when it is a bot, system, or mission. We have to make sure the bots and humans are working together and smarter. The second aspect that you look at is the design of it, which is very critical. The third aspect of it is adoption. That is what I always come back to, whether the customer has adopted it, and whether those in the chain management are communicating to the underlying teams and are right or not. We need to help all of those things. Then, developing the bot with Automation Anywhere is actually a cakewalk. I would call it very straightforward.

JS
Real User
2019-05-27T08:37:00Z
May 27, 2019

I think understanding the product is very important. People have to understand what the bot can do before they implement one in their environment. That is very important. We have Automation Anywhere version 11. We put all the bots on the virtual machine. We run continuously every week. When it comes to attended automation, we try to introduce more use cases and let more people understand what the bot can do, and expand the capacity of the bot, so it can serve our organization.

SK
Real User
2019-05-27T08:37:00Z
May 27, 2019

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.

DS
Real User
2019-05-27T08:37:00Z
May 27, 2019

The bot store has a large amount of pre-designed bots. I made some tests related to language, browser scene, and image recognition. It was very nice. I would rate Automation Anywhere as seven out of ten. There are a lot of things that need to be improved, especially related to the Control Room, but you can develop and scale with this tool very, very fast.

DP
Real User
2019-05-27T08:37:00Z
May 27, 2019

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.

JL
MSP
2019-05-27T08:37:00Z
May 27, 2019

I'd give it a 10 out of 10. You can automate the wrong process and you won't get any value. Make sure it's the right process and make sure it's a good process. Re-engineer, if you need to first.

DG
MSP
2019-05-27T08:37:00Z
May 27, 2019

To be honest, I would rate it about an eight (out of ten). I would not give two points because there is still room for improvement for some of those real use cases that we are working with. I'm very optimistic about future releases of the product.

PH
Real User
2019-05-27T08:37:00Z
May 27, 2019

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.

HP
Vendor
2019-05-27T08:37:00Z
May 27, 2019

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven.

RT
Real User
2019-05-09T13:13:00Z
May 9, 2019

Definitely do a very thorough infrastructure assessment first and make sure you're all set up there. Do some testing of the solution on any proprietary software that only exists inside of your company. Have a good understanding of what you're looking to automate. Don't just take a manager's word for it, but really look at it yourself to make sure that the process doesn't have any decisions that have to be made by a person or that there aren't some small things there that might stop you from automating. I would rate Automation Anywhere at eight out of ten. It would have been good if they had helped us be a little bit more realistic about feasibility. If they had asked us for some examples of processes that we're looking at automating and had pre-tested some of those, it would have been helpful. The expectations of what we thought was possible, versus what appears to be possible, were a little bit off. They should investigate, early on, exactly what you're trying to do to make sure it's a good fit and set expectations.

PC
Real User
2019-05-07T23:23:00Z
May 7, 2019

Make sure that you not only look at what the business needs are, but how the business will use the product when it becomes operational. It's relatively easy to get a bot developed to do what the business wants, as long as they have a good process laid out. But what is more difficult is that when you go into production you have to understand how you can schedule it if it's attended. Our three bots are unattended. You have to understand the scheduling aspect, you have to understand what happens if it's not happy path and there's an issue. Who does it go to? How is it going to get monitored? And you have to understand how your infrastructure is supported. Our infrastructure is kind of complex which is, I think, why we're running into some of the issues we are. The users of Automation Anywhere in our company are all business users who support our clients in the back-office, whether that's trying to do fee calculations or account calculations. We only have three bots and the number of business users is probably less than 20, in total, who will be using it once we go live. It may be more as we get further along but right now it's less than 20, probably closer to 15. We're trying to get it out to different departments, so ultimately there could be 50 users, maybe even 100, but that's more long-term. We might get up to 20, but I think that's as far as we'll get this year, unless we start having a lot better success. Part of our problem is that for maintenance we require at least two people. Deployment is actually pretty straightforward, but we need about two people for that as well. The people involved would be CM, configuration management, our technology architect, our operations infrastructure, and our database team.

AZ
Real User
2019-05-02T07:06:00Z
May 2, 2019

Definitely take an inventory of all the systems that you have plans to carry out the automations in and ensure that the software is compatible with them. You definitely want to have use of that automation. As I mentioned, a few our use cases have to leverage image recognition, and that isn't really all that flexible. It just increases our automation time. Every customer will receive a demo of how easy it is to create an automation through a web browser, but it's really all those other applications that a company may have that bring the most value. You want to make sure that you take that inventory and that Automation Anywhere gives you a thumbs up that they can automate fairly easily. We're trying to leverage the analytics module. Right now, when we carry out a process, we'll have records of all the orders that were processed but they're all in separate spreadsheets. It's a painstaking task to consolidate all that information to get an idea of how much work we actually did. I know there's an analytics module which we haven't been able to leverage yet, and that's one of the reasons we want to upgrade to version 13. Any increase in usage will depend on ROI and justifying it. We've had some initial requirements but we haven't ironed out many concrete details. I would definitely rate the software a nine out of ten. If it covered all use cases and all software, if it was that easy to automate, I'd give it a ten. But since there are some applications that are not as compatible as others, there's some room for improvement there.

AD
Real User
2019-04-29T16:02:00Z
Apr 29, 2019

With the current version that we have, I cannot rate the solution more than a six out of a ten.

AB
Real User
2019-04-22T09:21:00Z
Apr 22, 2019

For what I have used Automation Anywhere for so far, the two projects I have done, it has been completely good for me. This is the best tool I have seen. The first project took about eight months and the other about six to seven months. There were four people working on each project, all together. They were all RPA developers. In total there are eight to ten of us working on Automation Anywhere. Automation is happening a lot in the financial and banking service areas. There are many applications which a bank cannot manage by itself and we use automation to help manage customers' accounts. But these days, automation is happening everywhere. It is used in every company. Automation is an important process and people will see it more and more going into the future as well. There is scope in the future for increased usage of Automation Anywhere in the banking sector. In the future, as technology increases day-by-day, Automation Anywhere will definitely add new technology. There are already benefits but they will increase as the technology develops and people will benefit more and more.

JH
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

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.

BB
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

As you understand more and apply the tool to the processes, you will start to leverage the tool more quickly. I have looked at other tools, like UiPath. While I have not completely tested them, Automation Anywhere definitely has ease of use and a strong community available. I have taken the developer courses and done certification in the Automation Anywhere University. It's really good and helpful and I was able to grasp things quickly by using it. I installed the Community Edition on my laptop and started using it straight away. It's very good. I would rate the product at nine out of ten because of the number of uses. We have automated 30 to 40 processes. Those kinds of things have been very easy to automate using Automation Anywhere. We didn't need any other platforms. We were able to straight-out build all the bots. As I said, there could be more on the SAP integration side. Also, knowledge of the actual process of automating is not readily available outside. If they could build up their Knowledge Base more that would be helpful. That's where the real investment for the company is, not in automating the IT team's requirements. For example, if I automate an application for my IT team, that's one thing, but if I automate a business process and I'm able to provide them analysis and provide a report on something that the business really needs, that will help to deliver on the business side. There's a difference.

PP
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Without thinking twice, I would recommend going for Automation Anywhere. We have taken courses at the Automation Anywhere University and that was good. It is a good learning platform. We touched almost all the courses. It also has the certification course. It was very good learning there. We even have our business associates logging in to the Automation Anywhere University and learning for themselves, learning about the platform and playing around. The process to get to our first bot took about one year. For our bot creation process, we first have a business meeting to understand what the business processes are doing and we look at the process metrics. We have a spreadsheet to capture the processes for which it's feasible to do automation. Then we look at the suitability of automating a given process and what would be the return on investment if we did the implementation. Once everything has been finalized, we contemplate the development time, do the development, the testing, and then put it into production. I would rate the solution at nine out of ten. Its usability is very good. The problem is that the IQ Bots' capabilities are coming out slowly.

SN
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

I would definitely recommend Automation Anywhere because it's pretty simple, non-invasive, and easy to handle. In terms of integrating this solution with other applications, the majority of the ERP vendors are now coming up with built-in robotics. That's something which Automation Anywhere has to look into because currently, with Automation Anywhere, integration is an add-on product. Many other technologies are actually integrating RPA into their products. I haven't taken courses at the Automation Anywhere University, but my team has. It's pretty simple. It's pretty easy. I would rate the solution at seven out of ten because of the stability issue. Hopefully they can enhance the product. I heard that in the next release they will have natural language processing, not only for English but for other languages.

AA
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Instead of trying to build a bot immediately, first build the infrastructure for how you want to build the bots. That way, when you scale in the future, it's a lot easier than trying to figure that out after you've already made multiple bots. I have taken courses at the Automation Anywhere University, but for the most part the courses have been very basic. I had prior training, but when taking it again in the University, a lot of it was just going over the basics of Automation Anywhere.

SR
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

My advice is to go for Automation Anywhere. In terms of the bot creation process, it depends on what you're trying to do. The simple bots are easy, the complex bots have their challenges. The biggest challenge is when the settings change between environments. That's when we have faced a lot of challenges with things as simple as screen resolution. I've taken courses at the Automation Anywhere University and they have been pretty good. It's been really impressive. I would rate Automation Anywhere at about seven out of ten.

JP
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

It is a very good product.

OM
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

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.

SR
MSP
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

I've taken all the courses at Automation Anywhere University. I have been certified in Automation Anywhere, using their course system.

JF
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

The biggest advice I could give is to just be patient. There's a lot to learn and you really don't know, at first, exactly how you go about it, how does this happen? I started approximately two years ago, and having seen improvements to the software, I'm so excited right now about finding out where they're going. I've seen a great deal of the investment in the product as they develop it. so I'm fairly excited to be using it. Sadly, I have not gotten into much of the solution’s cognitive document processing (IQ Bot) yet. It's a matter of learning more about it and then taking the next step. It's a matter of finding out what else we can do and we can start developing that. I took a few courses at Automation Anywhere University when we first started. The more people that we've had on Automation Anywhere, we've found it's been working extremely well. It seems as though we're able to get them up to speed relatively quickly. Right now, I would rate Automation Anywhere at about eight out of ten because it's obvious there have been huge improvements and it's nice for us to work with. There extra two points would come from the improvements that we're looking for: simple things like the programming interface, they could clean that up. And the compare windows are small, it would be nice if those were bigger. There are always refinements they can make. And we've seen some already. It has become faster, cleaner to use.

GB
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Do your homework on your use cases. Knowing which use cases are really good for RPA is crucial in getting the program started. If you don't have your use cases identified, or have your functional processes identified, that want to automate, then it makes the scaling aspects more challenging. I am RPA professionally certified through Automation Anywhere and have taken multiple classes through the Automation Anywhere University. The courses are good. They are just like any other online training courses, which I have taken through other vendors, like Microsoft or SAP. It is on par with those vendors who have been doing this for a long time. As long as a person has a semi-technical mindset, the product is very simple to use. Even for the traditional business user, with just a little training, we are able to bring them up to speed on how to use the tool fairly easily. The tool is very good, as far as ease of use. As long as you have a technical mindset or are able to think in a certain manner, the creation of a bot is very intuitive, especially since the tool is drag and drop. For example, I am able to take any of the commands that I need and put them in the right sequence of orders. This makes it very intuitive to create a bot from start to finish. We are evaluating the cognitive document processing as something to use in the future, but are not currently using it.

MG
MSP
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

When we started around two to two and a half years back, ease of use was a problem at the time. Right now, with the scripts and exposure that we have, I don't see a big challenge going forward. My team has been trained through the Automation Anywhere University, so we do have a lot of people who have been trained on this tool. The training materials are good. The feedback that I have received on the University has been good, as I have not been personally trained through the University.

VS
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

There is still room for improvement, which is why I am giving it an eight out of ten.

JA
Vendor
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Pay attention to what you're doing, and the following: * Capabilities that you have in-house. * Support down the line. * Handing over your solutions to someone else to pick up. You want to have this type of mindset. With any tools, you have to ensure you have the right capabilities in-house to be able to help build out and manage any solutions in the future, along with managing your army of bots in deployment. It is a good, powerful application. It can fit pretty much any use case, but that is one component to it. The other component is do you have the right in-house skills to help you manage the Automation Anywhere bots? I took the RPA Advanced course for developers (entry-level) in Automation Anywhere University. I took it a while ago, and I don't know if it's changed now, but it was very informative, detailed, and intuitive. I came from automation tools, so it was a bit easier for me to pick up on the information because of my background. The course was pretty informational. I felt comfortable building an application, building a bot, and putting it into production after the course. Building a bot can be pretty quick. If you understand what the problem is that the bot is trying to solve, then you can get it done pretty quickly since the process is easy and straightforward. However, if you are coming from other tools or are not an experienced developer, you might face a bit of a challenge in the beginning. Everything will eventually come pretty quickly, as you can build a bot in an hour, or even less than that. I'm learning how to use the IQ Bot, which is a pretty good component of the application. I can see how it would be a really powerful feature for some of my clients. I haven't used the Citrix feature yet.

SH
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Start slow. Ensure you have enough processes in the pipeline to keep moving forward. There will be a hurdle to get over, and once you get over that hurdle (learning curve), it will be a lot easier going down that slope. Attended automation is great. Unattended automation is a bit of a struggle.

WH
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Ensure that IT is invested. Don't expect your business to carry the load. We like the idea behind the Bot Store, but we haven't really adopted the Bot Store yet.

HP
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Start small. Pilot it for a couple of processes.

VJ
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

I would recommend this solution. Look at the solution's capabilities and compare it to what your automation needs are. It is leading the market from the automation standpoint.

HS
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

It is a good product. it's not as complex as running a new computer language, but it is also not as simple as connecting EPL dots. Therefore, it is a medium level of complexity on the learning curve. My team has taken course on the Automation Anywhere University. Their feedback was good. I have not taken any courses on it.

LR
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Automation Anywhere is one of the products which allows you to leverage the power of RPA digital workforce technology is a timely and scaled approach. Compared to other RPA solutions on the market I have worked with, AA surpasses its competitors by far. The growth of Automation Anywhere product's stability, functionality, and technical advancements demonstrates the company is dedicated to its product, clients, and partners. It is evident that the product will only get better. The ease of use for developers utilizing this solution is excellent. I’ve abandoned the use of WorkFusion from our practice due to its limitations. Automation Anywhere, in particular, allows us to extend the functionality of the platform by writing our own DLLs, so we are able to easily integrate it into any RPA process that we may be developing. At the same time, the ability for us to use other users' bots downloaded from the Bot Store has added a huge amount of value to the product and our ability to get to market quickly. I don't use Citrix.

TE
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

We have used Automation Anywhere for both attended and unattended automation.

VK
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

We have integrated Automation Anywhere with a few other application, but there is still more work to be done. We have done some work with documentation, but not a whole lot. We are still exploring other features.

AH
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

I recently took a look at the Bot Store, and it's a good initiative. I haven't started using it. I downloaded a couple of the bots, and hopefully soon, I will try to use some of them in a production environment. The real beauty of robotic automation is when it is running from the back-end (unattended).

MR
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

I would recommend trying it. Once you see it in action, you will understand its capabilities and how easy it is to use. The bot creation process is pretty standard. We take an idea for a business process and try to standardize it. We put in development and test it a hundred times before putting in production. Courses on Automation Anywhere University are very easy to learn. It provides a huge amount of training and learning exercises for you to learn how to use the tool. I haven't used Citrix yet.

SK
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Compared to the other competitors' tools that I have been experienced with for bot creation, Automation Anywhere is user-friendly. I have taken Automation Anywhere University courses. They are simple and detailed. The courses include videos and quiz questions. We want to learn more about IQ Bots going forward.

AS
Reseller
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Make a list of all your processes before starting, then decide on two or three processes that you want to automate. I have taken Automation Anywhere University courses. The new learning course model is more inviting and easier to use. As a solution, RPA integrates well with other solutions. It is very easy for us to work with the Citrix applications.

AJ
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Whatever you automate, it is important to identify what you want to do after your journey. Attended automation is okay.

BG
Reseller
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

This product is really useful for me. I recommend Automation Anywhere as a solution. The bot creation process is good, though it depends on the use case. I don't use Citrix.

JD
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Know what you are getting into and do your research. Attended automation is okay. We had some challenges around testing.

RS
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Give the tool a try. Get the business onboard. Build some quick, easy bots at first. Then, you will be able to see the capabilities of the tool quickly. Our bot creation process is fairly robust. We have a centralized model with a good process from beginning to end, which involves engaging our business partners, documenting the as-is, looking at the future state, then coding the automation. We leverage Automation Anywhere, as a tool in our tool belt, and one that we've enjoyed adding because it increases our capability to change processes going forward. Automation Anywhere integrates pretty well with the other applications that we use. We like to go the API route through Automation Anywhere, but we are always looking at customer web portals or the portals of our suppliers, as we have pretty good integration capabilities. We are looking forward to using the bot monitoring capabilities in version 11. We haven't used the cognitive document processing capabilities of Automation Anywhere. I have not taken any Automation Anywhere University courses.

JL
Vendor
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Consider all relevant factors before making a decision on a provider. Don't just randomly decide to choose one provider over another. At the end of the day, it comes down to what you are trying to achieve by implementing an RPA solution, what you're looking for in an RPA service provider, and who is willing to best address that and meet the needs of what it is you're hoping to achieve. You should consider RPA as a solution, and there are a whole host of other automation software solutions across the spectrum, as well, which are relevant for different things, but RPA has its place in any organization. Just know exactly what it is you are hoping to achieve. Based on that, you'll be able to find the best provider for you. For developers, it's relatively easy to use. I know some developers are hesitant to use it because they come from traditional technical backgrounds. The product is counter-intuitive to everything that they have studied. If they studied computer science, they're really reticent towards something that can just automate what they learned. For someone with a nontechnical background, it's relatively easy to use and easy to build tests out. It takes a bit of effort to master and build sustainable solutions, but it is easy to use from a development perspective. I have not been able to take courses in Automation Anywhere University for the new platform. I started using Automation Anywhere back in 2017, and the Automation Anywhere University wasn't available. There was another platform, at that time. We did the online training center for it, and it had eight different sections. Back then, it was a little clunky. You had to go through one section and complete it before moving on another. From what I've heard about Automation Anywhere University, it's much better and more functional. I haven't had the opportunity to use it yet, since I haven't really needed to use it. However, I do plan on exploring it in the future. I don't use Citrix automation.

CM
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Take a good long look at the processes that you are trying to automate. Look at the talent pool that you have to develop the bots. Do you want to become a development shop? Or, do you want some of the capability to be put in the hands of business users? In our case, we wanted that mix of technical and business users having capabilities around this application. Some of the other products didn't offer that. This was one of the things that we drew us to Automation Anywhere. We have some of our developers taking courses around Automation Anywhere University.

JP
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

The more you preplan, defining processes and governance upfront, the more successful you will be down the road. The solution integrates well with others. When it doesn't, it is usually the fault of the other solution. The courses on Automation University were generally good. We have not done anything with Citrix automation yet.

SD
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

The IQ Bot seems interesting in the terms of populating semi-structured data and gathering intelligence of its own. Though, I haven't implemented in my project yet. I didn't know Automation Anywhere seven to eight months back. All my learning came from the Automation Anywhere University. Though, I have experience in other RPA tools, the courses are really helpful, as they helped me to gather the knowledge needed to implement and master the product. Right now, I'm applying the information to my domain and company. I haven't used it in a Citrix environment. I very excited to see the next version of this product.

TS
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

The IQ Bot is a very nice concept, and it will be very successful.

AK
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Have your business plan well-developed. The solution is reasonably wide open, so it integrates quite well with other solutions. The IQ Bots are of limited use to us right now. We don't use AISense, and the version of the application that we use isn't capable with Citrix.

KW
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Go for it. The product is easy to use. For our bot creation process, we get somebody from the business unit to walk us through their process. We usually record that session, then we determine how to create the bot from there. The Automation Anywhere University courses are very good.

it_user1008225 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

All organizations have a certain strategy or checklist. In this case, management will think first about licensing cost, about the total cost of investment. After that, they will think about the product's features and functionality. They will also look at support. They will consider the use cases, the current processes they have identified already, and based on all that they will decide whether to go with Automation Anywhere or another product. In terms of our bot creation process, people come to me and say, "I have a process. How do we automate it?" We need to understand if it's a cognitive use case or a straightforward use case. If it's straightforward, we tell them we'll use this product and build it for them with four to six weeks of development. Then it can go to production. If it's cognitive, then we really need to understand it better. We need to use a third-party product, like Kofax or maybe an IQ Bot if it is fit for the scenario. Based on that, it takes some time and then we'll move it to production. We have a process architecture review committee where we review all the processes. We cannot blindly go forward with all the processes that have scope for automation because it's all licensing cost. We need to think about whether we can automate a given process with any other IT automation solution, like scripting or macros. If that is not possible then we have a fit for RPA. Then we have to go through our checklist, walk through the use cases, and look at the percentage of the automation scope: Is it a 100 percent automation scope or 80 percent or 20 percent? We need to to know if there is any manual validation or manual intervention required and how that is handled. Initially, we failed with the Citrix automation where we have a lot of use cases. We ran into a lot of limitations with Automation Anywhere in version 10.5. But with version 11, they have AI Sense which we can use for Citrix applications. We are currently exploring this option. I have taken courses at the Automation Anywhere University and I have advanced professional certification from Automation Anywhere, which I completed for version 10.5. I'm also doing it for version 11. I also have an official certificate for IQ Bots. At the moment, for us, everything is on-premise. We're not ready to go with cloud. So we have to build our own platform. We have to build our own bots. I would rate this solution at seven out of ten. They have to improve on the product's maturity level. When they are introducing new versions, they have to conserve the existing commands and features, so that they work when we move to the new version. And they also have to come up with more flexibility, so their solution can integrate with our scripting and our own algorithms. That will make it easy to convince our business areas to increase the adoption of RPA.

TT
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Give it a try. It lives up to what it says it can do, for the most part. It really does help free up stuff. Just make sure you pick the right processes. A lot of the issues that people have with it are with not selecting the right processes for what the tool can do. We have had some success integrating this solution with other applications. We have also had some failures. We had some issues integrating it with SAP, but we started using MetaBots to do that, which seems to work really well. It does seem to work pretty well with most applications that we have integrated it with. The bot creation process is good. It is pretty simple to understand. If anything, the Control Room is the most confusing part, but it is still pretty simple. I have not taken courses on the Automation Anywhere University, but I have been using this solution for a long time. So, I would be the right clientele for the University. We haven't really done anything with the cognitive document processing nor Citrix.

DB
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

No tool will ever fix your company. It is always about the stability of processes, understanding your scope, and what your problems are. This tool is a great tool to help with that once processes are stable. It will always be dependent upon people. Make sure you program the bot to help people, not what you think it needs to be. There will be a lot of meetings, scope developments, and data review, which will need to happen first. Then, if you get good with that, then the tool's going to be excellent. So far, everything has been good with the solution. It is a great tool. The integration works very well. We have integrated it with four other software tools. From a developer perspective, the solution is very simple. Our end users don't really see it. They just see the end result.

BR
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

I recommend trying the tool. We have a few attended automation bots, which are working well. They work better than the unattended automation. It is an evolutionary process. We are doing the Automation Anywhere University now for our business, which helps with the ease of use. Our business users don't have development skills, and we are hoping that this resolves that. We have taken two courses, so far. We are now examining the collective results of the participants. We have not used the Bot Store.

SS
MSP
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

I would recommend evaluating all the vendors in this category and seeing what best suits your needs before making a selection. It was reasonably simple to integrate. This was our first time with it, so we had learned our way through. The Automation Anywhere University was useful and a good head start for my team. I haven't taken of its courses yet. We are not using IQ Bot. We are evaluating it, but we haven't made a decision yet. We don't use Citrix automation.

JD
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Look into the usefulness of RPA robotic process automation. As a solution, Automation Anywhere is complete for business users and developers. The bot creation is easy if you have one or two TaskBots. However, if the process is complex, you will need to split the process into modules. The solution integrates very well with other applications. Though, it only works with Internet Explorer right now, but you can run other applications with an open program. Object clone captures the objects very well from the software. It code APIs, run stuff from the back-end (like SQL queries), and executing procedures. Everything is in one package. While I am registered to take courses with Automation Anywhere University, I don't feel that I need to take them. I learn from hands-on training. I am new to learning about IQ Bot, but I think it is really useful for an insurance company because they scan documents all the time.

JB
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Every piece of software has its goods and bads. For your organization, you have to ensure that the goods outweigh the bads for your use case. This solution has been great for our company in almost every way possible. Obviously, we made a good choice. Therefore, I would recommend taking a good, hard look at Automation Anywhere as your bot platform. With the latest version, I know they have improved the UI. That will already be a big help, Return of investment has been pretty easy, so it has not been a problem with getting funding for this solution. Our executive team was immediately involved, where I know with most IT projects, they really don't care until they see the output. They had done their research, as well. So, they were really excited for us to take on this endeavor.

it_user1070898 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Do a very simple automation of an application entry, like registration. Then, you will see how fast the application is and will start using it right away. Every time a new employee starts with us, we start them on the Automation Anywhere University, "Hello Bot: Introduction to RPA" course. While the cognitive document processing is very impressive, we sadly don't have it right now. We are working on acquiring it. We don't use Citrix. We use Azure for every deployment. Azure has worked very well and is scalable.

SK
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Take a look at RPA in general.

DJ
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Automation Anywhere is a great tool. I have been in IT for 30 years, and am amazed at how far we have come with technology and tools to help us do our jobs. The ease of use and the power which the product offers you in a matter of minutes, if not just an hour, and what you can create with it. It integrations really well with other applications, as long as you have access from the same computer which you're running the software on to your other systems. Then, it can interact with those other systems just as if you were any user who is on that same computer. From this aspect, it is more powerful than other tools which I am familiar with. We are just starting to look into the solution's cognitive document processing by doing a proof of concept. Early on, I did try a few of the Automation Anywhere University courses, mainly to get familiar with what was available, so I could guide others to the website for training. At this point, there hadn't been much there that I needed for myself. However, we have looked at the courses, and we are encouraging a lot of our business users to take advantage of the tools. The important thing about any RPA tool is it has to be a collaborative effort between IT and the business. It needs to be driven by the business, or it won't be successful. An important overall goal or strategy to have as you start your journey: Have good buy-in and ownership from the business. They have to want to do this and take advantage of this new tool.

SN
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Set good expectations with your senior management regarding going after the right processes. Look at innovative areas to implement a prepared robotic process automation workflow, so you can reap the benefits at a later time. Automation Anywhere University is nice. The courses are very intuitive.

SK
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Search all industry-designed RPA tools and choose the best one for your process. I completed my advanced certification through Automation Anywhere University. While the courses are good, what you learn in the courses and what is in the real world are two different things. The documentation in the University does not have the proper documentation and cannot provide help, when necessary.

TC
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Take into account your processes. As part of the automation journey, don't look at just the technology part. This is where a lot of people make a mistake. They focus so much on the technology that they forget about "process" of RPA. They need to take a longer look at this and break down the process at its task level to see if it is worth going the RPA route. Once you do this, look at the vendors to see which one provides more in the way of bot creation and scalability, especially if you are in a cloud environment. Then, with the continuous integration, you will need to have a lot of this as you are putting things into production from development. For ease of use, version 11.3 was an improvement compared to version 10.5. I am looking forward to seeing what 2019 provides for developers. I would rate version 10.5 as a six out of ten and version 11.3 as an eight out of ten. I would rate version 11.3 higher because there have been changes made to how the bot creation is now done, the interfaces, the ability to utilize the VDI environment, and multitenancy.

KP
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Give the product a try, you will definitely love it. While it is easy to use, it is all about how you design the bots. We still haven't used most of the product's capabilities.

LC
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Learn from their website what other people have already developed. We are headed towards integrating the solution with other software. The cognitive document processing is new for our company. I started, but didn't finish Automation University University. I have taken more classes with Automation Anywhere vendors.

ZM
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

It is a great solution. We have had a lot of business users come in and use it, being successful with it. We have used some of the IQ Bots, but we haven't used them too extensively. We save about three hours a week using this solution.

it_user388044 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Before implementing it, figure out how the RPA product will make an impact in your company. Using the Automation Anywhere University, you can go and train yourself to be an expert in the tool.

NR
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Adding Automation Anywhere is a tremendous value-add in the long-term.

FF
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Don't choose the platform first. Identify what you are trying to solve. Look out for the type of support that you will have in your region (local support). Assess the local support. The developers have to love it, or they are not going to use it. For some legacy systems, integration with other solutions is not as easy as it sounds. For standard integrations with other solutions, Automation Anywhere is alright. I haven't used the cognitive document processing features.

DS
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

The product has everything that I want. I don't have to look for another tool to integrate with it. I am working on getting certified through Automation Anywhere University. The courses are good for people who have no knowledge regarding the tool.

VP
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

The Automation Anywhere University courses are very good. The bot creation process depends on your use case, e.g., the simpler the use case, the simpler the creation process. I would rate the tool as a seven out of ten.

JG
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Start with a good integrator. That is what we did. It is a good tool for RPA focused development. We have been able to integrate the tool with other software. So far, we had no issues. I have taken one course through Automation Anywhere University. It was not a bad experience. I am planning to take more courses in the future. However, the courses are very long.

SK
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Automation Anywhere is currently a good product. The RPA market is growing. The integration with other applications is good. There are some complications. With some specific applications, it may not work. We are facing some specific issues, but we have found workarounds. I am certified in Automation Anywhere University. I have not personally used the IQ Bot nor have I used any trial version, but the features look really good. I do not use Citrix automation.

NW
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

A lot of companies are putting a lot of effort into increasing and improving their front office processes. It is a great resources right now. I am really looking forward to ramping up for my second year of going into automation.

RS
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

We have found the product useful. We are using it and have implement it. However, it is not perfect, and we have found that there are some frustrations. The developers who work for me find the solution fairly easy to use. Though, I do have developers who prefer typing stuff in rather than dragging and dropping. Generally, they picked up the solution quickly. For the bot creation process, we ask the end user, "Don't tell me how you do something, show me what you do." Then, as IT personnel, we build it. We have not taken any courses through Automation Anywhere University yet.

JC
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

We looked at the Bot Store initially and didn't find much. We looked a year ago, so maybe we will take a look again. I don't have much experience with attended automation.

JA
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

I like the Automation Anywhere University courses. We are looking at using IQ Bot to digitize documents.

AM
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

We don't currently use attended automation.

JP
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Look into what the requirements are from an IT standpoint and involve the IT team in ensuring that the installation and setup are handled smoothly. Make sure that the IT team is onboard and invested in a way that makes them a close partner in the automation process. The bot creation process is pretty user friendly for a lot of tasks, such as the object cloning. I know a number of our developers have felt that it is a bit cumbersome with its logic and variable manipulation. A lot of us want to be able to start typing in directly rather than having to click and drag things, but as far as the core automation functionality, we found that pretty easy to use. We have not used the IQ Bot. I have not taken any course on Automation Anywhere University.

KH
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

I would encourage anyone looking for an RPA solution to look around at other solutions in the market. The ability to integrate the solution with other applications is hit or miss. We have a lot of homegrown applications, and sometimes those don't work. Mostly, they work well with websites until they change the websites. We have done a proof of concept of the IQ Bot. We struggled with it because we have sales spreadsheet that go across more than one page, and IQ Bot cannot follow it across more than one page. Also, the dp1 requirements were too high for most of our use cases. We don't use Citrix automation.

ED
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Start simple. There is no reason to jump in with complicated bots. Find simple, small processes that need automating. The software is there, and it does what it needs to do. The tool can grow and become huge, if it is not already. I hope that we got on early enough that we can keep building on our success. We have gotten around to looking at the Bot Store yet.

SB
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

I would recommend Automation Anywhere. Though, it depends on how they plan to build the environment: on-premise or cloud. There are some issues that we're facing in the cloud. The current features are good, but we are not using all of the product's existing features at the moment.

PP
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Go directly to the Automation Anywhere University site. There is some hands-on usage for the tool, and you can also download a trial there. I have taken some classes from the Automation Anywhere University. I did three types of certifications, as well. The Automation Anywhere University site provides a lot of information, along with certifications. It gives an overview of what is the tool is and how the developers can code the product, which is a good thing.

RR
Real User
2019-04-21T07:45:00Z
Apr 21, 2019

Do your research thoroughly. We are still using people who can figure our bots as their profession. We have not release the product from the ground up. We don't use the Bot Store.

BW
Real User
2019-04-17T08:37:00Z
Apr 17, 2019

My advice would be "due diligence." Make sure you read, and make sure you engage the Automation Anywhere team and the support. We didn't, but we didn't have to. But do due diligence based on cost, and scale, and really what you're going to do. RPA is the hot word right now. Everybody wants to do RPA. But what we did is just put it into our arsenal of other tools. It's not the golden bullet. It's not the one that is the end-all. It's just one of the tools in the arsenal that IT has. That's why we chose not to spend $250,000 and, instead, to spend much less. Sometimes RPA is the answer. At other times it's system integration, and at other times it's just raw development. That's what I even tell our customers. That's our toolkit. Our arsenal is developer's RPA, and we use a third-party integration tool as well. Just the developers were using it in our organization. They tout it as it's user-friendly: Give it to a user and they can do it. But we didn't discover that at all. We couldn't just hand it to a user, so our developers were taking the processes and applying them with development code behind them. Automation Anywhere has "record-the-screen," but when our users were doing it, they would move an icon and it wasn't smart enough to find the icon that had moved. In terms of extent of use, it was used daily for some of our daily processes. The finance process I talked about earlier is one example. We automated that and that robot ran on a daily basis. As for increasing our usage of RPA in general, we scaled up pretty quickly. Internally, we have four or five robots running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Kumar Animesh - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
Top 5
2019-02-19T08:38:00Z
Feb 19, 2019

It's important that all processes are documented properly. In terms of maintenance, our policy is that we do two weeks of hyper-care. After two weeks it's over to the client and they maintain it from there on. But for those two weeks initially, if there are any errors we will change the code and deliver it. But the maintenance is good. We don't need to modify many things.

SM
Real User
2019-02-10T10:06:00Z
Feb 10, 2019

It's the best product that we have at this moment. Start small. Don't take big steps if you are automating.

BB
Real User
2019-02-05T07:17:00Z
Feb 5, 2019

As a total package, this is probably the easiest solution to start with. Even if you add something that you will not need, e.g., Bot Insight won't be required until you have more than 50 bots in production. Even then, see if you can develop this through in-house metrics.

KG
Real User
2019-02-04T08:44:00Z
Feb 4, 2019

I would rate this solution a six out of ten. I would advise two things to someone considering this solution. Go for it if you are positive it is very simple and you understand your processing end to end. It is a cheaper tool compared to others and the initial implementation is relatively easier. You will get results faster. Second, if your process has many variations, is complex, and you do not know a lot about your process, do not use Automation Anywhere, otherwise, you will run into trouble while going live and after support.

it_user973275 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2019-02-03T08:26:00Z
Feb 3, 2019

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.

PK
Real User
Top 20
2019-01-16T07:54:00Z
Jan 16, 2019

It is a good with a good support app, but I would like it to work 100 percent of the time. We are looking to increase our usage in the future. First, we need to locate the opportunities to automate within our organization to automate which are good contenders for RPA engines. We are also trying to standardize our processes to push more processes into the automation pipeline, leading to expansion. We are getting Automation Anywhere to assist with this as part of our Phase II project, and increase our bot usage by the end of the year. If you are implementing it, you should have a good business case. Know what you're using it for: Is it for your direct or indirect benefits and what is the business value that you're going to bring in on the tool. Providing the tools for your business are important before onboarding it. Once you have onboarded it, you will need a good, capable team in-house to be able to keep the infrastructure maintained. Start slow. Don't start with a huge approach, then you decide that you failed. Do some proof on concepts. Ensure there is work for your organization. Gain the trust of your stakeholders. Then, take baby steps to move forward.

EM
Real User
2019-01-13T11:37:00Z
Jan 13, 2019

My advice is to get started and get help. It's very useful to have consultants come in to help you get started. That will kick-start your implementation journey. Also, look at it as a journey. You won't get to an end-state where you will say, "Alright, now I'm done," because you will have to improve your implementation at all times, keep progressing, moving towards AI. In my opinion, the vendor you choose in the first year is kind of irrelevant. But when you come to a point where you're about to scale up, then it's important to be associated with the best vendors out there. For us, being a customer of Automation Anywhere puts us in a really good place to keep progressing and keep scaling up. It's important to remember that we are not doing a full integration here, we are doing RPA. It's okay to do 80 percent of a process - the high volumes - and then do all the exceptions manually. You won't necessarily get a good enough return on spending an extra month to do all the exceptions. You want to go live with the volume that represents the 70 or 80 or 90 percent, as soon as possible. Then see if it makes sense to handle all the exceptions, the last ten to 30 percent. It's important for us to be able to deliver fast, as well as securely and controlled, and with the MetaBot and the other tools that we have through Automation Anywhere we are able to do that. We have automated in excess of 60 processes running on 17 Bot Runners, which are like machines we can operate 24/7. We have 15 bot developers and we are closing in on capacity so we would have to expand the number of licenses soon. Our plans for ramping up are about pumping out new processes every other week. We're working Agile with the RPA so we try to do short sprints and deliver something every week. The usage increases every week actually. I'm not sure if we are planning to have even more developers because we don't want to be in a position where people don't have things to do. We would rather have some backlog rather than having to fire five developers. We are planning to continue on the same pace and ramp up the number of bots, rather than the number of developers. We did a proof of concept last year with Automation Anywhere's IQ Bot which was very successful. We did not, however, have time or resources available to implement that last year. Hopefully, this year we will have time and we will make the purchase of the IQ Bot license and start using their cognitive platform. We're thinking about implementing their analytics platform as well, because that's very useful for keeping track of our progress. I would rate Automation Anywhere at nine out of ten. There's always room for improvement and, of course, we would want cheaper licenses and would want them to add even more things that we haven't thought about to their product. Still, we're really happy with the software provider that we're using.

PK
Real User
2019-01-06T18:17:00Z
Jan 6, 2019

Go slow. Don't rush into things. Try to adopt this implementation around the business strategy your organization has. Don't follow other organizations blindly. Have a digital policy around adopting this technology. Have a Chief Digital Officer, who is able to understand this and then internally sell it. Don't go with a "big bang" approach, but rather, go with the right test use cases, and then try to actually solve a complex business challenge through this implementation. Don't implement it just for the sake of it. For example, when we implemented it our focus was not to implement robotics. Our focus was to use this technology to solve a complex business problem so that it makes a meaningful difference in the lives of people who are doing that process daily. For example, now a bot is able to do customer billing for us and we are able to collect fast. It directly impacts the revenue. On the other hand, if the cycle closing month-end is fast, my CFO has more time for his final quarter closing. He has more time to go through what didn't go well, rather than struggling to close the books and not having time to do an analysis and get insights into what actually works. So we are trying to solve complex business challenges. We're not here to implement robotics. We could use any technology but, up until now, this technology has helped us. We have ten-plus users of this solution in the roles of bot manager and bot runner. There are eight people responsible for implementation and deployment and they are solution architects.

W"
Real User
2018-12-30T11:29:00Z
Dec 30, 2018

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.

GF
Real User
2018-12-19T10:49:00Z
Dec 19, 2018

Put together a solid strategy to develop and maintain automations. Also, work closely with internal controls and internal auditing. In our organization, we have four developers using it. In terms of how extensively the solution is being used, we have automated 24 macro processes and many more are in the pipeline.

RF
Real User
2018-12-19T10:26:00Z
Dec 19, 2018

Automation Anywhere is a great platform. It is the tool that allowed us to bring back to life former plans to create our digital workforce. One suggestion is to go with the most recent release, both for the app and Control Room. Versions after 10.7 are the ones with enhanced functionalities. We purchased ten developer licenses, all of which are in use now. The developers are responsible for deployment and maintenance along with two administrators. We have a target to be met and it requires extensive use of the product. This target will certainly be increased in 2019.

NK
Real User
2018-10-25T18:37:00Z
Oct 25, 2018

I would rate this product as a five out of ten. It is partly because our process has not progressed much, and also what I said about the support. We get the support from the company we have a contract with, but I would like to see more worth in the new Automation Anywhere Japan. It’s good as an RPA company. For an organization who is looking to do some business renovation, the solution can work well depending on its purpose and usage. You can also expect good scalability. However, I wouldn’t recommend it to those who just want to increase their number of bots. 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? 我々の会社自体が、グループのシェアードサービス部門を担当しています。 人事、総務、経理、ITとあり、それぞれの部門から代表者を選んで、それぞれの部門の業務を実際、AAで開発をしているという段階です。ただ、まだ実装はしていないです。 業務自体の開発はAAでしてるんですけど、実装には至ってないですね。 POCが終わって、開発を貯めてるということですね。 からの感想でもいいんですが、当ソリューションのどんな機能に最も価値があると思われましたか? 製品を選ぶ時にもともと3社ほど対象にしていました。将来の開発、実装を見据えた中でやっぱりコントロールルームというか統制機能ですよね、そこが重要になってくると考え、選択しました。。 どのようなメリットがあるとお感じですか?特に御社の業務処理がどう改善できるとお考えですか? 自動化によって業務短縮ができること、時間的には拘束が減るっていうのと、あとは正確性のところです。業務を人がやるとどうしてもミスが出てしまうところは、その辺はなくなってくるかなと思います。 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? 安定的だとは思います。たまには、止まったりっていうところがあったりするので、その辺で一部不安定なところがあるかなと思っています。 当ソリューションの拡張性に関してはまだ印象はおありでないですね? 今はまだです。開発機で4台とか、実機で4台なので、もう少し自分たちの業務がきっちり開発出来てからグループ内で展開しようと思っています。今の段階では見えてないですね、そこまで。 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? テクニカルサポートという…そうですね、コンサルティングは受けてます。テクニカルなところでもAutomation Anywhereジャパンから”ボッタソン”を提供頂いたりしています。 そういうサポートを受けてますが、日々の細かいテクニカルなことは、パートナー企業に訊いていますね。 初期セットアップには御社も関わってされましたか?セットアップは簡単、それとも複雑でしたか?どういった意味で簡単、あるいは複雑でしたか? セットアップは一応マニュアルを貰って、弊社のITがセットアップをしたというところで、そうですね、比較的簡単な方だったと思います。 たまに止まるという安全性では改善が必要かと思いますが、将来他にも改善して欲しい点や欲しい機能などはありますか? そうですね、Automation Anywhereからのサポートという所で、契約しているパートナー企業がありますが、-今AAジャパンが出来たので、そこでも”ボッタソン”以外の質問とかFAQとかそういうのは受けてもらえるとより、スムーズに運用できると思っています。直取引ではありませんが、我々は将来、AAの台数拡大したいという思い、目的はAAジャパンとも一緒だと思いますので。 ここまでで投資対効果っていうのはどうでしょう? 投資対効果はほぼないですね。残念ながら。 ベンダーをお選びになる際、最も重要だと思われる条件は何ですか? 今はやっぱり運用と育成の所ですかね。運用体制を我々できっちりやらないといけないのですけど、そこに関わって来るガイドラインとかも紐づいて来ると思いますし、あとは育成のところもどんどん数を増やしていかないといけないかなと思いますので。 他のベンダーは検討されましたか?最終的に当ソリューションを選択した理由は何ですか? やっぱりコントロール機能というか、統制機能というか、そこが将来的に重要になってくるかなと思ったので、そこでAAが一番しっかりしていたと考えたからです。 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? 5自分達がなかなか進めてないというのがあるんですけど、サポートの所ですかね。今は契約先とはあるんですけど、Automation Anywhereジャパンができたことによるメリットを強調したい。 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の企業としては非常にいいと思ってるんですけど、あとその目的というか、使い道とで業務改革を伴うような企業であれば、非常に有効性もあるだろうし、将来的な拡張性も期待できると思います。ただ単に、ボットを一杯作りたいという所に対しては勧められないかなと。

NT
Real User
2018-10-25T18:25:00Z
Oct 25, 2018

It is not so much about the tool. It’s probably not even about the company, Automation Anywhere. It’s more of the internal issues that a colleague would encounter. There is only so little that can be solved by RPA. The real solution is in the BPR and other transformations that they need to go through. If they are expecting this to be a silver bullet for something, it’s not. They need to go through the due diligence of automating the right processes right.

JS
Real User
2018-10-25T18:16:00Z
Oct 25, 2018

In regards to advice, if looking to reform your business process and automate in the same way as we did, they would need something appropriate. We chose Automation Anywhere. If you have a lot of simple tasks, you may want to process with speed and obtain something else. There are different tools for different purposes. Get the right tool and think about the way to do it for whatever you are aiming for. 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? 主に会計系、SCM領域のバックオフィス業務を主にRPA化しています。 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? 人の3-4倍くらいの速さでミスがなく業務が自動化される点と考えています。 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? 単なるRPA化だけではなくビジネスプロセスの見直しもセットで取り組んでいます。 プロセス改善も同時にできています。 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? 安定性で言うと原因不明のエラーというのは多少発生しています。この点については 改善の余地があると考えています。 当ソリューションのスケーラビリティに関して、どのような印象をお持ちですか? 拡張性は非常にあると思います。クライアントサーバー型なので、増加したい部分を 必要に応じて迅速に拡張できると考えています。 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? 今は弊社がライセンスを購入しているベンダー経由でサポートを受けています。確実 に回答は頂けていますが、時間を要する部分もあり改善する余地があると考えていま 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?どういった意味で簡単、あるいは複雑でしたか? マニュアルを頂き自分たちで実施しました。セットアップは難しくなかったです。支 援も頂きましたが特に問題はありませんでした。 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?また、それはなぜですか? 例えばロボットがタスクを動かす際にトリガーがいくつかある。メール、ファイル、 時間を指定など。トリガーの優先度が一緒の場合、これらトリガーの中でどれが優先 されるのかがやってみないとわからないところがあって、そういった所がクリアにな っていると良いです。また、トリガーをControlRoomで設定できるようにしてほしい。 こういった点を含め、管理ツールの機能がもう少し強化されると良いです。 どのようなROIが見いだせていますか?データを提供してくださいますか? 初期段階から大きな効果を出そうという取り組みではないと考えており、現在は社内 にRPAを浸透させている段階です。これから狙った効果が出るフェーズに入ると思って います。Automation Anywhereさんのサポートもより強化して頂く必要があると感じ ています。 他にどのようなベンダーを検討していましたか?最終的に当ソリューションを選択し た理由は何ですか? 他に2つ、3つ検討しました。弊社では、ITプログラマーやスペシャリストというより も、業務部門の人にロボットを作成する前提です。Automation Anywhereはユーザー に対して非常にシンプルで分かりやすく、業務部門の人でも作ることができるという ことが一つ大きかったと思います。もう一つは、ロボットがやる仕事、タスクをコン トロールするガバナンスの観点がありました。これら2点から、Automation Anywhere のストラクチャーは弊社のニーズに合っていたため、選定しました。 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 海外でも利用を開始しており、APACの現地スタッフが開発しています。質問がある場 合、現地の言葉で問い合わせをしたいのですが今はそれができない言語もあります。 こういったところで今後改善もあると思いますので、期待も込めて残りの2点。 他の会社でソリューションまたは同様の他のソリューションについてリサーチしてい る同僚の方がいたら、どのようなアドバイスをすると思いますか? 色々なやりかたがあって私共みたいに業務プロセスを改革するのとセットで進めると いうことであれば、…我々はAutomation Anywhere を選択しました。 本当に単純な業務が沢山あって、スピードを持ちたい、出したいというのであれば、 違うツールかもしれません。狙う業務形態にあったツールは変わります。 何を狙おうとしているのかによってツールは選ぶべきですし、やり方も考えるべきだ というようなことは申し上げるかなと思います。

it_user949512 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real User
2018-10-25T17:46:00Z
Oct 25, 2018

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。

KH
Real User
2018-10-25T07:01:00Z
Oct 25, 2018

I would to give the solution a ten, but considering the stability issue and its readiness, I would say that it is between an eight to a nine. 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? まず我々が取り組んだところは、第一生命は保険会社ですので、保険にはもの凄く加入の時の 契約の手続きであったりだとか、加入されてからの色々な住所変更だったりだとか、色んな証 明書の発行だったりとかですね、で最終的には保険金をお支払いする、そういった事務がかな りの量であります。で、まずはそういう事務のオペレーション、バックオフィスですね、そう いった所を自動化していこうという所で、そこからまず始めて行きました。で、ある程度そこ で、Automation Anywhere の製品が機能するんではないかと言うことが確認できましたので、 それをもっと広げていこうっていうことで、今は営業部門の色んな資料作りであったりだと か、業績の管理の資料作りだったりだとか、あとはそれ以外の運用部門、資産運用部門の 色々、バックオフィスの事務であったりとかですね。あとは例えばコンプライアンス関係です ね、いわゆる反社会的勢力のチェックであったりだとかですね、そういったまさに第一生命の 中にある色んな事務をロボット、RPA を導入してオートメーション化していこう、そういった 取り組みを進めています。 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? そうですね、やっぱり機能と言いますか、なかなかシステム投資をすると膨大なコストがかか ってしまうとかですね、そういったいわゆる手作業で残っているところをこのソリューション を使うとやはり自動化できるということですね。我々は保険会社ですので、契約の機関と言う のがもの凄く長いんです。50 年であったりだとか終身保険であったりだとか、そうすると、古 い契約っていうのがもの凄く一杯あってですね、これはシステム投資をすると莫大なコストが かかってしまうと。これをシステムで自動化すると無駄な費用が掛かる。そういった所で諦め ていて、これはもう第一生命は未来を手で処理をしていくしかないなと思っていたところに、 こういったソリューションがあるということで導入して、少し諦めていたようなところも RPA を導入することによって解決することができたということかなと思います。 やっぱりあれですね、ロボットは色んなシステムを触ることが出来る、人のようにね。そうい った所が画期的なところです。 色んなシステムを動かすことができるということです。 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? やっぱり直接的な効果というのはこれまで人がやっていた事務の作業をロボットがやってくれ ることになったので、その分、業務の量が削減できるということです。で、それは単に効率化 っていうだけではなくて人がやるべき仕事をもっと拡大することができる、ということかなと 思います。もう一つがやってみてやはりユーザーの実際にこれを導入している人と話をする と、もの凄くストレスが無くなる、と。我々は保険会社、金融機関ですので事務のミスとかっ ていうのはもの凄くナーバスで、何重にもチェックしないといけないとか、そういった所がこ のロボットでなくなる、とかですね。後は前処理みたいなことはロボットがやってくれてお知 らせしてくれるので、やらないといけないことを忘れない、とかですね。そういったストレス がなくなるということがそういった効果もあるのかなと思っています。 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? 安定性っていう意味では、やはり色々課題があって、それは通常、普通に事務作業で我々パソ コンを触っていると、たまに原因が分からないけどフリーズしたりとか、ネットワークがたま たま繋がらないとか、そういった、この RPA が原因のものとかですね、RPA が原因じゃなく てロボットが止まるということはよくあります。だから、それは色々改善していくところもあ るんですけど、ある一定程度、そういうロボットが停止するっていうこととかは織り込んでお かないといけないことなのかなと思っています。そのためにも、やはりロボットを監視できる ツールであったり、そういったものは Automation Anywhere さんの製品にはすべて入っていま すが、そう監視できるようにしておく。止まったらすぐ分かるようにしていく。どこで作業が 終わったら、止まってしまったのがすぐ分かるようにする。そういった機能も完備されている ので、それを速やかにリカバリーする態勢を取っていく。そういうことが重要なのかなと思っ ています。 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? まず、拡張性についてはですね、極めて高いんではないかなと思っています。我々もこれを導 入する当初から、あまりにもセットアップしていくのに時間がかかるっていうものだとなかな か拡大できないと思っていましたが、それを部品化することによって、要は、一度作ったもの をどんどん新しい別の業務にも適用することができるというところで、その拡張性って言うの は高い。しかもあまりエンジニア、システムエンジニアがなしでできるというところですね。 開発ではなく、そのあるルールに基づいてセットアップして行けばいい、という形になってい ますので、そういったところでは拡張性と拡張するためのコストがシステム開発するよりかな り安い、ローコストでできるんじゃないかと思っています。 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? 我々、Automation Anywhere さんの製品を導入しているんですけど、テクニカルサポート関係 は保守っていう面ではライセンスを Deloitte さんから経由で買ってますので、Deloitte さんに一 時的なサポートをしてもらっています。あそこにはもの凄く迅速に対応していただいています し、また Deloitte さんでは解決できないところは Automation Anywhere さんが日々、解決に当 たってくれているということです。ただ、あまりテクニカルな問題で問題になるようなことは そこまで多くないというのが印象ですね。大体、自分たちが作ったマニュアルだとかそういっ たことを読み込むと、大体解決できるということで、そこまでテクニカルな問題が発生して、 日々問い合わせをしないといけないとかですね、そういったことはあまりないです。なので、 あまり、そういった意味ではあまり活用しなくても大丈夫というようなですね。そこが IT と は、完全なシステムとは違うっていうところなのかなと思います。 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?どう いった意味で簡単、あるいは複雑でしたか? RPA のソリューションを導入するにあたっては、目標としては自分たちでできるようになるっ て言うのが最初から目標にしていました。ただ、もちろん我々もこのソリューションには何の 知識もない状態でしたので、最初は Deloitte さんに来て頂いて、我々の第一生命に合うマニュ アル作りというのを一緒に取り組んできた。例えば、会社によっては色んな使っているシステ ムも違いますので、そういったものが第一生命で合うようにしていく、と。具体的には通常用 意されている製品のマニュアルっていうのは、このコマンドは何をするコマンドというような 書き方になっているのですけど、逆に第一生命のこのシステムを起動させるためにはこのコマ ンドを使う、とかですね。そういったマニュアルで標準化をしていくということを Deloitte さ んと一緒にやってきました。で、その作り方も Deloitte さんに教えてもらいながら、スキルト ランスファーを図っていくということです。もちろん最初は少し苦労した面もありましたが、 ただある意味 EUC でエクセルのマクロを作ったことがあるとかですね、アクセスを触ったこ とがあるとかですね、そういったことにある程度知識がある人だと、すんなりとというか、ス ムーズに入っていける。まったく EUC もやったことない人だと、やっぱり一から覚えて行か ないといけないので、少し時間がかかるかなと思います。ただ、一般的にはですね、プログラ ミングをするとかよりはずっと容易にできるのかなと思います。 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? また、それはなぜですか? ソリューション自体ではないんですけど、どうしてもわれわれの事務の仕事っていうのは、朝 やりたい仕事が多くてですね。なので、これは Automation Anywhere さんともお話ししている んですけど、午前中だけ使えるライセンスとかですね。そういうのがあると、コスト的にもも っとメリットが出てくるのでは。今、24 時間動かすと、なかなか夜中にやらせる仕事があんま り少なくてですね、朝一でやりたい仕事が多くてですね。それをもっと沢山稼働できるように なれば。ボットファームなんかもあるんですけど、そういった所をもっと充実して頂ければい いかな、と思います。ここもやはり製品というよりも、安定化していく業務数が多くなってく ると何か、サーバーとかクライアントとかに、例えば停電が起こったりした時にクライアント で管理していると、全部止まってしまうとかですね、そういったリスクもありますのでロボッ トについてはバーチャルで、サーバーで管理できるようなですね、そういったことを今取り組 みを進めています。Deloitte さんに手伝っていただいたりしながらですね、クライアントを持 たずにロボットを動かすような仕掛けづくりを今、検討を進めていると言うところです。それ によって安定性もありますし、何かトラブルがあった時の堅牢性が確保できるという風に思っ ています。 パートの人を雇ってシフト勤務とかですね、そういったことが出来るといいなと思っていま す。 新しいソリューションに投資をする必要があると思ったのはどうしてですか? まずソリューションが必要だと思ったところはやはり、我々は...さっきの話と繰り返し になりますが、契約の管理と言うのはもの凄く長期間に渡っていかないといけない、 と。そうすると、古い商品の管理って言うのも沢山あります。それを全部システム化し ていくっていうのはコスト面、その時間の面でも不可能な話なので、そういったところ をこのロボットが解決できる。逆にこの RPA でないと解決しようがないというところ ですね。そういったところが取り組めるというところがもの凄く大きい。これであれば そういったことも解決できるんではないかと思ったところです。それが、導入のきっか けです。人と同じように作業ができるというソフトウェアと言うのは、見た時はかなり 衝撃的なもので、これであればもっと生産性を高めることができるんではないかと言う 風に考えたものです。 最終的に当ソリューションを選択した理由は何ですか? Automation Anywhere さんの製品は色々なソリューションがあると思いますが、やはり 大規模で展開している上で、さきほど質問があった拡張性ですね、サーバー撃沈を監視 できる、運用を監視できる、それか大規模に展開することに適したものかなと思ってい ます。あとは既存のシステムとの認識度合いも極めて高いということですね。今まで、 一部の例外を除いて第一生命が使っているシステムをすべて認識して触ることができる という風になっています。 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? 10、と言いたいところですが、さっきの安定性の所とかでまだまだ工夫していかないといけな い所があるので、でもそれは製品だけじゃなくて我々の態勢を含めてですね、そういった意味 では 8 点。8 点から 9 点くらいです。

RM
Real User
2018-10-25T07:01:00Z
Oct 25, 2018

For my company and me, we come from a good technology company. Every company is a technology company. Without technology, you cannot live. When you are building up your back-end processes, especially in the shared services, what next? In the Asian markets, they have come to a point of maturity where labor is the normal average. Looking at China, the Philippines, Malaysia, or even India, these markets are becoming more exponentially expensive. Therefore, what is our next wave of forward industrial evolution? To me, these digital automation RPAs going into artificial intelligence and machine learning are the areas of industry that we’ll need to move into very quickly. We need to take a very conscious call in preparing ourselves for the future. Did we try some other solutions, to that extent, of automating the right business processes? I don’t know. Was the solution good or bad? I don’t know. But the perceived value of it, either in terms of real value or dollar value, or in terms of releasing the sources to do better thinking work, those are the areas where personally I was not convinced. So, let’s try something which has a more futuristic outlook. I call it glocalization, globally present and locally present. That was the whole idea behind our inception into reality. The moment you say you are a vendor and looking at your contract, your relationship is over. You want business partners who can help the industry. We know how to make beverages, and for example, we make the best. I hope so, and I’m confident. We need some partners who know their stuff as well, and who understand the pain points of the industry and can help with them. Those are a couple of criteria which can make you successful partnerships and business relationships, not a vendor. I would rate this product an eight. If I fast forward two to three years. At that point in time, how would it look like? Maybe we have the same amount of enthusiasm, or if it we become very big, then we may become less agile. If you are small, you are more agile. The moment you become big, it goes into its own dimensions. I’d would advise, first of all, if you are an end user like me, don’t think of yourself as a customer. You have to see your customer as your “gemba”, as the people in operations. Your product partners, implementation partners, and you are responsible for servicing the customer. Thus, it will always be a win-win game for everyone. Don’t try to put a blame on the product or the partner. You are all equally responsible, and need to put your skin in the game. Just go ahead for it. Foreign Language: (Japanese) この製品を主にどのように使用していますか? 我が社の場合の主なユースケースはまず、自動バックエンド業務全般です。これは通常APつまり未払金と売掛金、それにサプライチェーンの多くがあります。後はフロントエンドコミッションです。 Automation Anywhereのどんなところに満足していますか? 顧客関与が非常に深く、彼らは現場でよく働くと思います。 業務部と密接に協働してくれます。それに製品ロードマップが良いと思います。 では、彼らと築いた関係に満足しているということですね。 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? はい、後で話しますが、大きな点の1つはハードメリットだけでなく、ソフトメリットでもあります。つまり、実際にすべき仕事に人的資本を使うことです。それは少なくとも人間の精神を大量の反復作業から解放することにつながります。彼らがやるべき仕事をする。ボットは私達のために仕事をしますが、人間の頭には及ばないと確信しています。 には考える力を発揮させる。 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? それはまだです。まだ価値実証の段階で。実証実験を多く行っています。でもどんなビジネス、どんな生産ライン、どんなボットでも同じように対処して構築しなければならない支障はあります。 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? それはまだです。まだ価値実証の段階で。実証実験を多く行っています。でもどんなビジネス、どんな生産ライン、どんなボットでも同じように対処して構築しなければならない支障はあります。 Automation Anywhereのテクニカルサポートを利用しなければいけなかった経験はありますか?ある場合は、サポートをどのように評価しますか? はい。 10が最高の評価とすれば、彼らは7から8ですね。 10に達するには、何が必要ですか?さらなるサポートですか? 私の見解では、この市場は-私はこれまで様々な市場で働いてきましたが-この市場にはさらなるスキルセットが必要です。より多くのバイリンガルの人々、そしてビジネスプロセスを理解して顧客の成長を助けるプロセス指向の人々が必要ですね。 具体的な例を挙げると? ビジネスプロセスやスキルセットについて? どんな業界にも独自のビジネスプロセスがありますが、この市場は明らかに労働力が足りません。労働力が足りない上、スキル、それにプロセスの自動化の価値を明確に表現できる人がいません。ですから、Automation Anywhere側からの価値観で言うと、彼らは良いチームを確立させる必要があると言います。もっともっと。 もちろんです、はい。でも 拡大の余地はあります。急激に進めるための余地、そして急激に進めるなら、パートナーも同時に成長する必要があります。生態系全体が成長する必要があるので、ビジネスが成長するだけでなく、生態系が成長しなければサポートも難しくなります。 Automation Anywhereからのサポートを直接受けていますか? そうです。直接…名前は言いませんが、製品部で指導を受けたパートナーがいました。というのは、製品を最大限に活用するためには、全機能を探索する必要がありますので。 初期セットアップはどうでしたか?簡単、それとも複雑でしたか? とても簡単でシンプルだったと思います。 自分達で、それともパートナーを使って? パートナーを連れてきましたが、そのままでもとても簡単だし、ビジネスプロセスで移動したことのある人になら誰にでもできます。全く難しくはありません。 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? すでに言いましたが、人間の思考の将来は限られています。私達はGPではなく、自動化の進歩で考える。だからこの質問への答えはありません。 現在のバージョンで改善されると思いますか? まだ完全に見れていないので、改善に関して答えるのは難しいです。 スケールアップをすると、価値実証でのように、現場で働く専任スタッフを1人増員することはできますが、その場合、規模を拡大して2万人の組織内でボットを含む150人がいるとします。その一人一人が親身なケアを受ける必要があります。そうすると、もっともっと沢山のサポートが必要となります。というのもこれは新しいものであり、失敗すれば、これは生産パートナーのせいではなく、現場の人間がそれに適応しないからなのです。 ROIは出ていますか? もちろんです、はい。言うまでもなく。この市場では特に人的資本が少ないです。高齢化社会で熟練した人がいない。なら誰がその仕事をするのでしょうか? そこで人の中立性を取り除いて、ボットを使って構築するのです。それが最善の方法でしょう。 新しいソリューションに投資をする必要があると思ったのはどうしてですか? 私自身そして我が社は素晴らしいテクノロジー会社を経て来ています。先ほど申し上げたように、このテクノロジーについては後でお話しますが、会社はすべてテクノロジー会社です。テクノロジーなしでは生存はできないし、特に共有サービスにおいてバックエンドプロセスを構築するなら、必要なものは何でしょうか?アジアにおけるこれらの市場では、労働が通常平均という成熟の地点に実際に達しています。中国、フィリピン、マレーシア、もしくはインドを見てください。これらの市場は急速に高価になってきています。では今後の産業革命の波は何か?私の思うには、これらのデジタルオートメーションRPは、人工知能、機械学習へと移行します。これらは非常に迅速な移行が必要となる分野です。 そこで私たちは未来に向けて意識的に自分達自身を準備する行動を取ったのです。 以前に別のソリューションを使っていましたか?その場合はどうして変更しましたか? これまでにいくつかのソリューションを試しましたが、適切なビジネスプロセスを自動化したかどうかは分かりません。そのソリューションが良かったか悪かったかも分かりません。でも、本当の価値、あるいはドル価値のどちらかの観点で認識した価値、またはより良い働き方をするために情報源をリリースするという観点から言えば、私個人的にはあまり納得していませんでした。なので、より未来的な見通しのあるものを試そうと思ったのです。私はそれをグローバリゼーションと呼んでいます。グローバルに存在し、ローカルに存在することなので、これが発端から現実までの背景の全体像です。 他のベンダーも検討しましたか、それともAutomation Anywhereだけでしたか? 12のパートナーから選出されたプロセスから始めました。 ベンダーを選ぶ際、決め手となる、その他の条件は何ですか?5つのうちトップの2つはどれですか? 違う答えをしたいと思います。まず彼らはベンダーではなく、ビジネスパートナーです。なのでその定義は違うと思います。彼らが、自分達はベンダーだと言い、契約を見始める瞬間、私達の関係は終わりだと思います。欲しいのは業界に役立つことのできるビジネスパートナーなんです。例えば、私達は飲み物を作る方法を知ってるとします。最高の製品を作っている。私はそう思うし、確信もしています。ここで必要なのは自分達の製品に精通していて、業界の支払いポイントを理解し、助けてくれるパートナーです。こういったことがベンダーではなく、成功するパートナーシップやビジネス関係を作るための2つの条件でしょう。 Automation Anywhereを選んだわけは何ですか? 条件を決めていました。5つの大きな条件が。もちろん、コスト。まず、特徴と機能。 グローバルおよびローカルサポート。3つ目はもちろんカスタマーサービスです。そしてもちろん、テクニカルサポート。私たちのオフィスは完全なチームがあり、完全なプロセスがありました。 調達、技術、ビジネス、そして私が「現場」と呼び続けている運営からの10〜15人近くが非常に科学的な方法で評価を行っています。 非常に密接だと感じていたパートナーがいましたが、決め手は明らかにカスタマーサービスとサポートです。それが最重要です。 Automation Anywhereについて、その他に付け足すことはありますか? いいえ、何もありません。皆さんのご清栄をお祈りすると同時に、Imagineを東京デビューさせてくれた彼らに感謝します。彼らはロンドンへ行き、ニューヨークに行き、今ではインドにも進出したことを知っているので、うまくいけば私たちの市場はこれから持つべく相互作用から恩恵を受けることでしょう。 製品、サポート、環境の全体に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? 8 特定したものではないです。2、3年時間を早送りしたとしたら、どうなっているでしょうか?同じだけの情熱を持っているか、もしかしたらとても大きくなっているかもしれない。だとしたらアジャイル性を失います。小さければもっとアジャイル性があります。大きくなった瞬間に自分だけの次元に入ってしまうんですね。 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? まず、私のようなエンドユーザーであれば、自分を顧客とは考えないことです。自分の顧客を現場の人として、運営の人として見る必要があります。 製品パートナー、実装パートナー、そしてあなたは内部にいる顧客にサービスを提供する責任があります。だから、これは皆が勝つことのできるゲームです。製品やパートナーに責任を被せてはいけません。皆で同時に責任を負い、ゲームを進めるべきです。

Automation Anywhere is the leader in intelligent automation solutions that put AI to work across every aspect of an organization. The company’s Automation Success Platform is powered with specialized AI, generative AI and offers process discovery, RPA, end-to-end process orchestration, document processing, and analytics, with a security and governance-first approach. Automation Anywhere empowers organizations worldwide to unleash productivity gains, drive innovation, improve customer service...
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