Agentic Process Automation System (Now Certified for WorkSpaces)

I primarily use it to automate repetitive data workflows.

The impact of Automation Anywhere on our organization has been significant. It has helped us save a considerable amount of time, approximately 30% to 40%, in repetitive processes and has improved automation accuracy. The finance team, in particular, has benefited, as their tasks are now automated from the data engineering side. I was able to integrate file transfers, validations, and data loading into pipelines, making the process more efficient.

Regarding the financial impact, my senior mentioned that it saves our organization around 40% to 50% in costs since it automates roughly half of the tasks, including data integration and file transfer.

Having completed the AI/ML engineering certification, I particularly appreciate Task Bots. They are extremely useful for handling repetitive tasks without errors. I also find IQ Bots valuable, as they can process unstructured documents—something that can be quite complicated—and automatically extract data. Additionally, the Control Room stands out for me, as it allows for centralized monitoring and management of all bots, which is crucial when multiple automations are running. These features are among the most beneficial I have encountered.

The platform is functioning quite well. Initially, I faced some challenges in learning the platform; it felt a bit complicated at first. However, as I became more familiar with it, I found it manageable. Debugging can be particularly tricky; identifying the exact reasons for bot failures can be time-consuming. Integration with modern data engineering stacks also posed some difficulties, but I have since learned to navigate these challenges.

I have been using Automation Anywhere as a data engineer intern for a year now.

As for stability, I would rate it a seven out of ten. Generally, the system is stable once the bots are tested and scheduled; they run consistently. We faced some challenges at the beginning, but they were manageable. Occasionally, updates or changes in the system environment can cause some disruptions, but these are not severe.

Scalability is one of its strengths because it can handle large volumes of data efficiently. As processes grow, it is easy to add more bots without incurring significant extra costs or effort. The cloud infrastructure for deployment works well in tandem with this capability.

I am working in a small organization with around 18 employees, all of whom are AI and machine learning engineers, including myself.

I would rate their support an eight out of ten. They are very helpful, but there is some room for improvement regarding quicker resolution times. They can take time to solve issues, but overall, the customer service is solid.

I have only used Automation Anywhere as automation software so far, so I cannot compare it to others at this time. However, if I get the chance to use another software in the future, I will definitely make a comparison.

The deployment process was quite straightforward and smooth since it is cloud-based. We deployed it on Microsoft Azure, starting small and gradually scaling up. 

The Control Room feature made it easy to manage multiple bots in one place, allowing for effective monitoring. In the beginning, it took about two to three weeks to implement because we encountered several issues and system failures. However, our team did a great job, and we managed to overcome these challenges.

I strongly recommend this software to others as it efficiently manages manual processes. All we need to do is monitor it and handle issues related to fault tolerance. Overall, it is quite effective for automation processes.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten. It handles our credential data securely and is user-friendly, though there is room for improvement in debugging and integration features.

Automation Anywhere  Co-pilot functions similarly to BPM  because one user forms and triggers the bot, which works in the background, then shows a message to other departments for approval. It is very predictable and used in many companies. However, in Pakistan, many departments use BPM  instead of Automation Anywhere  Co-pilot, so they are not utilizing Automation Anywhere Co-pilot.

I am an expert in Automation Anywhere because I develop automation scripts and use IQ Bot  for design workflow and process design. Automation Anywhere is very comfortable for any developer to use RPA  tools.

Automation Anywhere has citizen developer capabilities. When we develop a bot, the RPA is low-code, no-code development, making it very easy for business developers to use.

AARI is a bot tool that is easy to develop. As an Automation Anywhere Co-pilot developer, I can say that it basically integrates many bots in one platform. It is used by business developers to connect different departments, making it very accessible to automate processes.

Automation Anywhere is not difficult to upgrade because we have bot scripts. When we upgrade, the bot scripts remain unchanged, so there is no difficulty.

Automation Anywhere is very scalable when used on-premises rather than in the cloud. It is used in banking environments, and many large banks across different countries use Automation Anywhere, which demonstrates its scalability.

Automation Anywhere's scale level involves a discovery bot. We use their bots, allowing us to easily scale our bots and maintain proper logging.

Before Automation Anywhere, I worked on Power Automate , but since it is a cloud platform, it was not suitable for banking systems in Pakistan as they do not use cloud computing.

As an RPA consultant who has purchased many licenses and evaluated numerous tools, I recommend Automation Anywhere because it integrates easily with AI and Power BI tools for reporting and discovery bot capabilities, allowing proper log control.

Automation Anywhere uses rule-based access where only admins and developers can access the code. Citizen developers or business users cannot see the code due to rule-based access.

They offer unique features such as hybrid bot capability, which supports both attended and unattended bots on one platform, setting it apart from other tools.

For rule-based tools, I recommend RPA. For unstructured data and predictions, AI is more suitable. For chatbots and different models, Gen  AI is appropriate. As an RPA developer, I work with three modes: OCR for AI integration, and chatbot integration, such as Watson in IBM RPA  for Gen  AI applications.

We use Automation Anywhere  most of the time to automate Excel and the SAP system. I used to work for Bajaj Electricals. We are the vendor of Bajaj Electrical India Private Limited. There, most of the data are being pushed into SAP. We are getting data from SAP and manipulating it, and we are preparing reports every day.

The most valued feature of Automation Anywhere  is its Excel functionality. Earlier in my career, I used Process Studio as my RPA  tool. There was no flexibility of retrieving single cells. We used to fetch the total Excel and we used to apply the filters to get those cells. Automation Anywhere has the flexibility to extract data from Excel.

For non-technical users, some technical knowledge is needed in Automation Anywhere, so they cannot use it as flexibly as developers can. In my earlier career, when using a data table in Automation Anywhere and wanting to merge columns, there was a plugin called Group By. In Automation Anywhere, we have to create variables and append the data to a single variable one by one to get that flexibility. Having an activity for grouping columns would be great. For reading data from Excel, providing a single button to fetch all data columns would make it more flexible for developers. For filtering purposes in Automation Anywhere, we have to apply if conditions and additional conditions to get the appropriate data. Introducing filter activities would change the perspective of developing.

I have been using Automation Anywhere in my career for two months.

In terms of crashing, I have seen some crashes, but they were from other software such as SAP, WinSCP, and Outlook. There were no issues from Automation Anywhere.

The bots in Automation Anywhere are totally scalable. If the developer builds robust robots in parts, then we can use those parts for other processes by integrating them. I have built bots in many parts, such as SAP login. After performing applications, we close all applications. We have built those bots, and we call them once our process is done, so it will close all applications and erase the caches.

I would rate technical support for Automation Anywhere a six.

I have used Process Studio as an alternative to Automation Anywhere. I prefer Process Studio more than Automation Anywhere. Process Studio was launched around 2017 and managed to get into the IDFC First Bank headquarters. According to IDFC use cases, Process Studio was trained and built with more flexibility for business use cases. Automation Anywhere is not as flexible as Process Studio. In Automation Anywhere, performing activities such as downloading, fetching, and data manipulation requires 20 to 30 lines of code. Process Studio gives multiple windows in a single activity, making data manipulation easier. For reading Excel, XLSV, XLSB, XLS files, there was a single plugin. Process Studio's plugins are more flexible than Automation Anywhere.

Having used Process Studio, the initial deployment for Automation Anywhere was not difficult for me. I referred to YouTube videos for guidance. The only challenge was figuring out how to input my device name, which took one to two days until colleagues helped. If some data could populate automatically after installation, it would be beneficial.

For a beginner, Automation Anywhere is a great tool. I have learned UiPath also, which comes with complexities but has frameworks for smooth business flow. Automation Anywhere comes with a beginner-friendly interface. The tool can be learned within five to ten days of training. We haven't used the Automation Co-pilot yet. Once a developer knows all the activities in Automation Anywhere, upgrades become less necessary. Integration with WhatsApp business use cases to send messages would be beneficial. Integration with additional systems beyond SAP, WinSCP, and PDF would make it more flexible in business scenarios. Automation Anywhere can contact me in the future regarding questions about this review. I rate this solution 9 out of 10.

The use cases for Automation Anywhere  are industry-agnostic and sector-agnostic, allowing for automation of processes that involve human interaction, mundane tasks, and large volumes. With the help of AI, we can now automate a lot of unstructured data, which wasn't possible before, so it's not limited to any specific sector or process. Whether it's HR, marketing, sales, operations, or engineering design, any of those can be considered for automation.

The main benefits of Automation Anywhere include improved operational efficiency, enhanced productivity savings, increased cost savings, new revenue streams, and a reduction in regulatory human errors. These are some of the major benefits it provides. For example, if a human takes one hour to perform a transaction that involves navigating through multiple systems and inputting data, Automation Anywhere can reduce that time significantly. The bot can complete the task in about 20 minutes, saving roughly 40 minutes per transaction, which translates to a 60%-66% time saving, enhancing overall productivity and cost efficiency.

They have introduced numerous AI-related enhancements in their product, making them the first among their competitors to develop a reasoning engine. Their PRE reasoning engine is particularly noteworthy, and they have quickly integrated Generative AI into their document automation product. Additionally, they offer a variety of other AI features and have designed the platform to be cloud-native. The AI features they have implemented stand out; they are indeed leading the pack. This strategy is impressive and effectively empowers their product with a wide range of AI capabilities, which are increasingly important in today’s tech landscape, especially with the rise of AI, Generative AI, and Agentic AI.

Automation Anywhere also provides Agentic AI-related APIs and is currently testing Agentic process automation in its early stages. In terms of product capabilities and AI integration, I would definitely rate them a ten out of ten. They are the fastest to reach this level of advancement compared to others, who seem to be lagging behind. For example, Blue Prism is progressing quite slowly, and while Power Automate has some AI features, they do not match the scale that Automation Anywhere has achieved.

Its pricing definitely needs to be more competitive. When licensing costs are high, we cannot use this tool for automation. Instead, we might opt for a lower-cost tool like Power Automate which is 50% less expensive.

Power Automate offers very seamless integration with the Microsoft ecosystem, including Azure  cloud services and other Microsoft products. In contrast, Automation Anywhere has to rely on external LLMs for integrations. If Automation Anywhere can improve the ease of these integrations and provide them natively within the platform, it would greatly enhance its appeal.

I have been working with Automation Anywhere for over the last eight years, although not extensively in my current role. In previous journeys, I have used it for around three to four years. Currently, we use Automation Anywhere, but not extensively.

At this moment, I'm not sure about the stability of Automation Anywhere, but in previous experiences, I faced challenges with stability, which required ticket submissions for support. We encountered several challenges related to platform and technical issues. For instance, sessions would occasionally get disconnected unexpectedly. In those cases, we would raise a ticket with the vendor to get support. However, since we haven't been using the system extensively, we haven't faced many issues.

All these automation platforms, including Automation Anywhere, are highly scalable; depending on volume, you can adjust the number of bots, scaling instantaneously in the cloud. For on-prem solutions, one must ensure they have the necessary infrastructure ready for scaling.

While it is easy to scale with Automation Anywhere, I have not experienced extensive scaling in my previous encounters. The maximum number of bots we had was around 20.

I haven't raised many tickets recently to evaluate their technical support, but I know they have a dedicated partner manager. It has been good in my previous experience.

Positive

We are also using UiPath, Blue Prism , Power Automate , and the Microsoft stack. Mainly, the license costs of UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism are high, so we use Power Automate and Power Platform heavily.

It is generally easy to deploy. We use Automation Anywhere with both AWS  and Azure .

Maintenance is indeed required for Automation Anywhere; you have to follow the vendor's product patches and version upgrades to keep it maintained.

Upgrading Automation Anywhere follows a standard process that they provide detailed instructions for, and we adhere to those guidelines. The upgrade process feels similar to any other software platform; I don't find anything particularly complex or different about it.

There is a separate team for bot maintenance, and if the bots are stable, maintenance needs tend to be low. However, if issues arise, maintenance efforts can significantly increase.

The return on investment from Automation Anywhere varies based on the business case and the benefits versus costs involved; for simpler RPA  use cases, ROI can typically be achieved within a year.

Pricing needs to be more competitive, both in terms of licenses and overall expenses. This is crucial because many use cases cannot be automated if it isn't cost-effective.

We have not extensively tried Automation Anywhere with business users because they have added a lot of AI features that are difficult for them to understand. We also do not want to encourage business users to create automations that do not comply with regulations, compliance, and best practices, which presents a risk. Therefore, we've only utilized it within the CoE team for now. 

For existing developers, the learning curve for Automation Anywhere is easy to pick up. However, for business users, it might take some time, especially if they lack a programming background.

I have heard about the Automation Co-Pilot, and it sounds very powerful and useful. The Co-Pilot can generate code based on a natural language prompt, which is a substantial feature as it can reduce development time by 30%-40%, allowing faster shipment of code to production. 

In terms of integration, Automation Anywhere acts as a tool used to develop automation that connects to various systems, such as SAP, Excel, Outlook, and web applications. It doesn't integrate with other solutions directly but helps in automating processes that involve multiple systems. The platform provides capabilities for building various integrations, and that is part of what they sell. Automation Anywhere is fundamentally an automation platform that enables performance across workflows, APIs, business applications, and documents. API integration is possible with Automation Anywhere, but if specific APIs do not already exist, there is no way to create a new API directly within the platform. For that, one needs to create a new API using languages such as Java, Python, or C# before integrating it with Automation Anywhere.

Our organization places high priority on automation and AI. We are using the Microsoft ecosystem for many of our use cases.

For organizations considering Automation Anywhere, I advise that if you are focusing on AI features such as Generative AI or agentic process automation, it's a great choice as they are front runners in incorporating these functionalities early on. However, if licensing costs are a concern, the Microsoft stack would be more beneficial.

I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.