Currently, I'm working as a RPA developer in India. We are using Automation Anywhere to automate the repeated tasks. We have clients who provide a business problem. After the feasibility study, we design a solution architecture, and based on that, we develop the bot. For the development, we use Automation Anywhere along with many other tools such as Python, Excel scripting, and there are many more, all aimed at solving the business problem and making the end-to-end automation that our client needs.
External reviews
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Makes automation easy with the user-friendly interface and has a broad community support
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
Automation Anywhere is the best among all other automation tools available in the market such as Power Automate and UiPath. The best thing about Automation Anywhere is its simplicity and user-friendly interface, which makes it easy to create bots because they have only three sections: variables, actions, and triggers. We just set the actions and implement them in the bot.
Additionally, they provide learning courses and the 'bot game,' which is an engaging way to experience real-world and challenging problems that enhance our skills.
Furthermore, Automation Anywhere boasts a broader community compared to others, with many people discussing it online and helping solve problems. Lastly, Automation Anywhere is low-code, allowing us to feel we are doing programming while solving problems.
What needs improvement?
The license cost is quite expensive compared to other tools available in the market such as Power Automate, which offers better features at a lower license cost. The main disadvantage of Automation Anywhere is its high cost.
Another issue is that it is solely dependent on the Windows operating system, and since I am using Linux, I faced difficulties while learning Automation Anywhere because it only supports Windows environments. Comparatively, competitors such as UiPath provide cloud-based solutions that Linux users can access, making this another drawback.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Automation Anywhere for almost one year in my career.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Automation Anywhere has proven to be very stable. The instance currently running in the production environment operates almost 24 hours a day, demonstrating very good stability. I would rate its stability a nine out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
As far as scalability is concerned, I would give it five out of ten because there are multiple programming languages and tools available, and if you try to implement and integrate them in your bot, you may find limitations within Automation Anywhere. For instance, while running a Python script, I encountered difficulties passing multiple arguments in a single call, which reflects a lack of scalability features.
How are customer service and support?
I have contacted customer support for Automation Anywhere, and while their responsiveness is good, the reliability is lacking. We faced an issue where we couldn't run OCR and document automation in the same bot. The customer support team was quick to respond, but they were unable to resolve the problem we encountered during development, forcing us to seek alternative solutions. So, while customer support is responsive, it is not always effective in solving issues.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
The deployment of Automation Anywhere is very easy.
We have three environments: development, testing, and production. We build the bot in the development environment and after building, exporting the bot is simple—just a few clicks to download the zip file. You can import that file into any other environment, including production, by clicking on the import button, and your bot is deployed. You can also schedule and run the bot in both attended and unattended modes, which adds to its ease of deployment.
Automation Anywhere does require maintenance on my end. The platform provides updates and package management. For instance, for browser automation, if you are using browser package version 1.1, you must use the same version across all environments; otherwise, the bot won't run. While it's possible to download and deploy the bot without adhering to package updates for production setup, managing package versions can still require attention. Thus, maintenance can be neither too simple nor too difficult, but it is necessary when developing with Automation Anywhere.
What other advice do I have?
The Automation Anywhere interface is very simple to use as compared to others in the market. Non-technical users can understand Automation Anywhere easily because it is easy to grasp, but if a non-technical person tries to develop or read the code to understand the business problem, it might be hard. For example, we provide a process definition document (PDD) to non-technical persons such as business analysts who may have a less technical background. This document includes a high-level overview of the process, allowing them to understand the code better. Thus, it still requires some technical knowledge to fully grasp the business problems when using Automation Anywhere.
I have not used the Co-Pilot feature explicitly, but I am currently working on a project developing an end-to-end identity automation bot, where we utilize multiple documents totaling around five thousand. In this project, we have integrated Gemini and Azure OpenAI as LLM models through APIs or by downloading and fine-tuning the models according to our use cases, which we deploy using Automation Anywhere.
I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.
Enables diverse business units to automate with ease and integrate applications efficiently
What is our primary use case?
We are into the financial industry. We have 14 different business units using Automation Anywhere, including HR, digital finance, pensions, and similar areas, primarily within the financial sector.
What is most valuable?
It's easy to use, and with less experience, anyone with the business knowledge can automate easily. We can see that it's beneficial to integrate other applications and use the API to trigger any of the Automation Anywhere bots from the client-specific application.
What needs improvement?
The monitoring and reporting aspects are currently not very standardized, specifically regarding the on-premises setup. I’m not entirely sure if the cloud version has the necessary capabilities. If something goes wrong or is about to go wrong, it doesn’t help to only rely on dashboards or monitoring tools to assess the situation.
Additionally, businesses typically want detailed reporting. Right now, we lack the ability to monitor transaction-level statuses and tracking, which is a significant limitation.
Their support also needs improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for around eight years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Performance-wise, it is okay now. Stability-wise, if they add new features and AI-related stuff, there are hiccups in each release. They used to do monthly releases as well as quarterly releases. Clients aren't confident due to issues in each release.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate it an eight out of ten for scalability.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support also has a pricing model. With non-premium support, it is hard to get immediate responses. Premium support responds immediately.
I would rate their support a five out of ten as the resolution is delayed.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used UiPath and Power Automate. Automation Anywhere is user-friendly for business users, while UiPath is more suited for programmers due to complexity. Power Automate has powerful document automation. Pricing is a drawback for Automation Anywhere compared to Power Automate.
How was the initial setup?
The setup can be pretty easy unless there are multiple components integrated or organization-specific standards.
For a single server in a regular control room, it may take a couple of hours. When implementing a control room and IQ Bot, it may take approximately five hours.
What about the implementation team?
Usually, one person is required to maintain our infrastructure, making it easy to upgrade and resolve any issues. I do all infrastructure-related things in my organization.
For maintenance, we need downtime from the business, usually on weekends for prod, and a platform outage for non-prod environments.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
When comparing automation tools like UiPath, Power Automate, and Automation Anywhere, Power Automate often comes out as the most cost-effective option. Recently, I've noticed that Automation Anywhere has been charging separately for its various components, such as APIs, agentic processes, and business document automation. This pricing model has led many clients to reconsider their choices, especially those with limited budgets.
I've observed a significant trend where not only financial clients but also smaller businesses are migrating back to Power Automate due to its affordability. Power Automate offers a premium plan starting at just $25 per user, making it a more accessible choice for many organizations.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten because of their support.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Automation of customer service tasks drives business growth through productivity
What is our primary use case?
My use case for Automation Anywhere is for vendor, customer service automation for the organization to drive improved customer service that relates to business growth.
What is most valuable?
The best features in Automation Anywhere are that it is easy to use and easy to suggest, and it's a wonderful product because it is very handy and it makes life easy. It is definitely a tool to use in our development when it comes to our businesses, which is retail. The features that I appreciate in Automation Anywhere are that it automates and inputs AI, which we call artificial intelligence.
Automation Anywhere stands out because it has brought productivity to the organization, improved customer service, accelerated business growth, and allowed for faster innovation. When it comes to AI, it offers an AI process automation that empowers and drives productivity and faster innovation whenever it is incorporated with artificial intelligence.
Automation Anywhere has improved our organization in terms of customer service, and there is an improvement in customer service and faster innovation, especially when it comes to innovating the ways of doing business.
What needs improvement?
For people who don't have technical skills, Automation Anywhere may take time when it comes to browsing or loading time, and sometimes becomes very buggy with unwanted failures.
Automation Anywhere has room for improvement in cost because it's high, and it can be a drawback for small industries or organizations that are coming up. Also, adopting Robotic Process Automation looks high, so it can be improved; perhaps the cost could be adjusted to favor even the small industries that are coming up. The browsing loading time in Automation Anywhere should be addressed, which sometimes can bring unwanted failures.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for about two and a half years, three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability of Automation Anywhere is good, and I rate it eight or nine out of 10.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Automation Anywhere is scalable. I would rate the scalability of Automation Anywhere an eight.
How are customer service and support?
I do use the Automation Co-pilot. Co-pilot makes work easier, and the time required to do work is really reduced, resulting in accomplishing more in just a few moments.
Co-pilot helps to increase productivity because whenever you use it, there's time saving and the energy that was supposed to be used for other things can be redirected to other tasks within the organization. In half a day or a few hours, Automation Anywhere saves me time, so as an organization, we are at least somewhere better in terms of productivity.
Regarding technical support, they are doing good work and work closely with customers to design solutions that align with organizational goals as well as improve efficiency. I give the support from Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We haven't really tried other products because Automation Anywhere was required when we began this organization, and when we first tried it, we saw it working better for us; thus, the integrity of it is good.
How was the initial setup?
Currently, in my organization, we have about four departments using Automation Anywhere. Automation Anywhere doesn't require any maintenance. I purchased Automation Anywhere through a direct purchase.
What about the implementation team?
The deployment of Automation Anywhere involves a support team that assists in deploying the product in our systems and makes the process automation easier while also helping other staff understand the product.
What was our ROI?
Automation Anywhere has improved our organization in terms of customer service, and there is improvement in customer service and faster innovation, especially when it comes to innovating the ways of doing business.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Automation Anywhere has room for improvement in cost because it's high, and it can be a drawback for small industries or organizations that are coming up. Also, adopting Robotic Process Automation looks high, so it can be improved; perhaps the cost could be adjusted to favor even the small industries that are coming up.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We haven't really tried other products because Automation Anywhere was required when we began this organization, and when we first tried it, we saw it working better for us; thus, the integrity of it is good.
What other advice do I have?
The vendor can contact me if they have any questions about my review. I would be interested in being a reference for the vendor. I would recommend Automation Anywhere because it's easy to suggest and it's a good product. I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of 10 compared to other similar products.
The automation of workflows, APIs, applications, and documents in Automation Anywhere is good. I spend about half a day to a day on maintaining bots in Automation Anywhere. It is easy to upgrade Automation Anywhere, but when it comes to the costs incurred when upgrading the product, it can be a drawback; it sometimes takes time because we need the funds to upgrade the system. However, when it comes to upgrading, it is very easy.
Training a non-technical employee on Automation Anywhere will take a day or two days, depending on what you're trying to train them.
Support excels in resolving issues with quick updates while document automation significantly aids development
What is our primary use case?
I have been using Automation Anywhere since last year. I have used Automation Anywhere in several automations. For one of my precious clients, we had to trigger the bot when a mail arrived with PDFs, and there was a web portal where we needed to store the data from PDF. I use many Excel automations with Automation Anywhere and web automation majorly, and sometimes I use it with API integration as well.
What is most valuable?
Document automation is really helpful, even for a developer who is using the tool. I have used Automation Anywhere in several automations.
What needs improvement?
In Automation Anywhere, they could improve certain aspects. I also used Microsoft Power Automate where we have one initialization of variable that can be used anywhere in any subflow. If there are 10 subflows, we can use one variable everywhere without creating a new one. However, in Automation Anywhere, if you have created a flow, subflow, or subtask, you will create one variable STR name. Every time you have to use input-output scope for that variable to use in other subtasks as well. Automation Anywhere should implement this feature. They should also decrease their cost. Automation Anywhere is good, but Microsoft Power Automate offers unattended machines at a very competitive cost.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Automation Anywhere since last year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have never come across any lagging, crashing, downtime, or any sort of instability with Automation Anywhere.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Regarding scalability, I have used Automation Anywhere for many small clients as well as complex bots. It is scalable as we can work for small and complex bots, and we can run attended and unattended processes.
How are customer service and support?
Support for Automation Anywhere is wonderful. I had an issue related to Chrome not working with the latest update. Automation Anywhere released a patch or updated version. When Chrome was not working properly, I contacted support and they were really good. They helped me extensively and even came on call to support me.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
When comparing Automation Anywhere with Power Automate, it is sometimes a client need or developer choice which tool is used because both tools have their own pros and cons for a particular project. I appreciate both tools as they provide similar capabilities.
How was the initial setup?
For the initial deployment of Automation Anywhere, it was a new thing to learn. For about a month, I found it difficult because I did not know about the various actions available in Automation Anywhere or other RPA tools. Now most things are clear. Whether using Power Automate or Automation Anywhere, I know which actions to use for specific tasks.
What about the implementation team?
Automation Anywhere does not require any maintenance on my end.
What was our ROI?
I do not know the exact numbers regarding the pricing of Automation Anywhere, but through discussions with leads and higher management, I learned there is a vast difference in pricing.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Automation Anywhere is good, but Microsoft Power Automate offers unattended machines at a very competitive cost.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
When developing automation or software bots, it is sometimes a client need or developer choice which tool is used because both tools have their own pros and cons for a particular project. Both tools provide similar capabilities.
What other advice do I have?
I started my professional career in the RPA field using Automation Anywhere. When I entered this field, I was completely new and came across various RPA tools, with Automation Anywhere being one of them. When developing automation or software bots, the choice between tools often depends on client needs or developer preferences, as each tool has its own advantages for specific projects. I rate Automation Anywhere 9 out of 10.
Automation Anywhere: Efficient and Reliable RPA Solution
Flexibility in managing automation projects has improved operational efficiency
What is our primary use case?
The company called me to work on the goal of restructuring the team and putting everything in order. When I joined this team, I needed to assess the current state of the program, and I essentially had to reorganize the entire program. Fortunately, that's what I've been doing right now; I have experience managing Automation Anywhere, and it's a great tool for automation since it gives you a lot of flexibility to work with different applications.
What is most valuable?
From my perspective, the most valuable features in Automation Anywhere are the ability to connect to different systems of records. We are using it at a very basic level; we only use RPA and are not using Intelligent Automation or AI yet; it's not part of my contract. Document Automation is still growing and is not, from my perspective, 100% mature, yet the basic functionality of RPA is amazing. I really appreciate how you can connect and interact, regardless of the system of record, infrastructure, or platform, and that has given us a lot of power to help the organization interact and eventually automate their processes.
What needs improvement?
In terms of reducing manual work, I think Automation Anywhere could improve by incorporating better integration with DevOps. This is functionality; it's a methodology that cannot be integrated 100% with Automation Anywhere, and a lot of companies are requiring that right now. I think Automation Anywhere is in the right direction, however, a better task mining tool would be great. What we currently have with Fortress IQ needs to mature more, and I say this since people spend weeks creating PDDs documentation. If we had a user-friendly tool that could record sessions and generate PDDs in minutes, it would greatly assist our processes. I have seen tools similar to that, not with Automation Anywhere. It would be great to have it.
For how long have I used the solution?
I started using the RPA Automation Anywhere in 2017, starting with zero automations. After seven years, we've ended up having around 120-some automations.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
My assessment of the stability and reliability of Automation Anywhere or its bots depends on how you define your development strategies. If you have good best practices, reusable code, an effective framework, and a solid development methodology, bots can be very stable. We do have some bots that fail, however, they generally fail since we weren't good developers or due to a glitch in the system, not due to the fact that Automation Anywhere failed. We see issues. That said, those are often related to server maintenance and upgrades.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In terms of how Automation Anywhere scales with the growing needs of my organization, in the cloud, I don't see much problem; the cloud will scale based on our needs. The only concern I see is probably on the Bot Runner side; I need to support VMs, and my team is working to migrate those VMs to servers. This change will help me scale since I can have multiple Bot Runners on a single server rather than adding more VMs; increasing the power of the server allows for 20 to 30 Bot Runners to operate effectively.
How are customer service and support?
We migrated to gold support last year, which is excellent. What I appreciate is that you have a technology partner who gets to know your environment, and that's very important. When I began at my previous company without gold or platinum support, I had to explain my environment every time there was an issue, wasting hours. Now that we are in gold support, they already understand our setup, infrastructure, and pain points, allowing us to address issues more efficiently.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to adopting Automation Anywhere, my company used Excel macros, which are not an enterprise solution; they are more a personal automation tool. Some people were using Power Automate, still, that's not an enterprise solution; you cannot integrate it with the rest of the tools; it's just a Microsoft tool where you can only work with Microsoft products.
The primary drivers that led my company to choose an RPA tool and eventually Automation Anywhere are its capabilities to connect and integrate with other systems of records, not only with specific brands like Microsoft. When I started in 2017, we decided to use Automation Anywhere primarily for its ability to interact with various systems and it was regarded as an enterprise solution.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a lot of benefits using Automation Anywhere. We currently have around 50 automations running in production, and I am confident that we are saving several million dollars as a result. I cannot provide those numbers right now. Still, I can see many benefits emerging. We work very closely with the legal team, who have to do a lot of manual work; we basically help a lot. That's my main customer right now. The next important customer is technology and digital technology, and then finance. So from all those three teams, I'm covering probably 80% of the company. As a financial institution focusing mainly on financial advice, we will be opening a completely digital bank in the next few days.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I am aware of the existence of other tools, however, I have not evaluated them. When I started in my previous company, there was a prior agreement for me to use Automation Anywhere. When I joined this company, they were already using it; my understanding is they were at some point evaluating UiPath, however, the cost was a huge decision-maker.
What other advice do I have?
I work in the banking industry as the Intelligent Automation Manager for engineering. I joined this company almost a year ago, and I worked before that for one of the largest banks in the US.
My advice would be to ensure proper planning before adopting Automation Anywhere. First, you must define your environment, focusing on security and compliance. Governance is key, and once you are set up, ensure you are developing proper metrics since you need to show management the savings generated from automations. Once you've established that, implement best practices and standards, create a framework, and I wish anyone good luck; they likely will be successful.
I would rate Automation Anywhere as an eight out of ten. It's a great solution, however, there are limitations with tools COE Manager and Document Automation. I have seen some restrictions in the system, and making improvements to tools Fortress IQ would enhance our experience. I understand Automation Anywhere's operational goals, however, maturing these tools would make it an even better solution from my perspective.
Something I have observed repeatedly, as a technical person who engages with various attendees at Imagine events, is the need for clarity when new solutions arise. AI is excellent. That said, my question is about data storage; will data be kept within our control? This topic is crucial for compliance and legal approvals. I think it would be beneficial to have more technical sessions demonstrating how new tools are implemented. For example, during a discussion on Document Automation at a conference, I was concerned about how data moves from on-premises to the cloud, as it could take us out of compliance. More information on these aspects would help people understand the implications.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
I have foubd RBA to be an indispensable asset to my company
Streamlined tasks and optimized transaction handling with user-friendly features
What is our primary use case?
We have use cases for Automation Anywhere in underwriting claims, HR, IT support, and various other areas. It's mixed.
We completed our first document automation POC this year with Automation Anywhere. We don't really use it extensively yet. The use case we were trying to use it for did not work that effectively, however, that is probably more of a use case identification and selection issue.
We were trying to apply Automation Anywhere to a catch-all contract-reading program. There were no good requirements, and we simply wondered if it could read the contract. While it could read contracts, we didn't have good planning for what to do with the information once we created it. We didn't have the human loop elements set up for exception handling at that time, which made it challenging.
How has it helped my organization?
Automation Anywhere has benefited our company as we've been able to process thousands of transactions daily through various automations that distribute work, classify work, and handle claims, doing preliminary work for the finance team. When an adjuster first sees it, they don't have to access multiple systems to gather information because the automation has already completed that task. It has been really useful for traditional RPA, which remains our forte.
What is most valuable?
What I appreciate most about Automation Anywhere is how easy it is to use and test, particularly the debug feature. I've been doing considerable development this year. It has been easy to put together looping and if logic.
What needs improvement?
Automation Anywhere could be improved by staying more current with Microsoft products through packages. There have been challenges with their email package. For a long time, they didn't have an effective one, and with new Outlook releases changing how Microsoft handles emails, the package hasn't been updated to accommodate these changes. It still uses old, deprecated Microsoft components that have an end date.
There have also been struggles with other Microsoft suite applications, such as SharePoint. They moved from their old REST to a graph API, and the packages aren't configured to accommodate that out of the box, requiring the use of generic API commands instead of the out-of-box packages.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Automation Anywhere in the company for six years.
How are customer service and support?
Automation Anywhere helps overcome challenges with decent sales representatives who make calls on a cadence, and we can set up meetings easily. They provided technical architecture consulting for a few hours with some of our leaders.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I didn't use another solution before choosing Automation Anywhere. Currently, we are also using Microsoft Power Automate extensively.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment was fine. We had to get some servers set up to deploy some service accounts created to have the bot runner licenses and set up some users in the control room. It really wasn't that complicated.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
For what we have in the traditional RPA space with Automation Anywhere, the pricing is good. The licensing hasn't caused any concerns. I'm not familiar with the pricing of the agentic features as we don't have them yet. For the traditional functionality, it has been feasible.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We considered UiPath six years ago before choosing Automation Anywhere. I didn't personally evaluate UiPath as that was before my involvement. Automation Anywhere is more robust and functions more as a platform for integration, embedding, and orchestration. Power Automate is faster to set up and cheaper for our current uses. It doesn't necessarily work better with Microsoft products than Automation Anywhere does.
What other advice do I have?
The main challenge we were trying to solve when implementing Automation Anywhere was entering the emerging space six years ago. Currently, we're determining our path forward with agent process automation and AI. We have an AI council and are still determining where it fits into that picture.
In the age of agentic AI, our company's biggest challenges include getting buy-in and understanding across the organization. All decision-makers and stakeholders need to understand what's possible, what competitors are doing, and how the industry landscape is changing. There aren't necessarily challenges with the software itself. It requires funding and getting people who make decisions to see the vision.
We don't have the AI Agent Studio feature of Automation Anywhere. AI governance is extremely important in our company and has been somewhat of a blocker. We've been working to form a council and determine how our company will use AI, which remains an ongoing process.
We don't have AARI for autopilot capability and have never utilized Automation Anywhere COE, Center of Excellence. We are deploying Automation Anywhere to the cloud. We aren't using API with Automation Anywhere yet, mostly focusing on RPA, though we're considering API usage.
I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten overall.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Deployment and maintenance become smoother with integrated features and user-friendly experience
What is our primary use case?
As a financial institution, a lot of collections activity processing, invoices, and billing related to our collections activities is my primary use case for Automation Anywhere. That's really where I've been focused for these past few weeks. We're expanding into very ground-level things, consolidating reports from multiple systems, doing these basic use cases to start.
How has it helped my organization?
The features of Automation Anywhere improve my company by making deployment and maintenance of our automations a smoother process overall. We can make changes much quicker when we need to and it's definitely simpler for other affiliated people in the company to understand, including those who might not be working in the systems daily. It's put together efficiently enough that it's user-friendly for non-professional developers to handle.
What is most valuable?
The thing I appreciate most about Automation Anywhere is how integrated the aspects of it are. I also worked with another platform in a different company for two years and it wasn't nearly as integrated, and it required a lot of effort and time trying to get everything to communicate together, from version controlling and deployment. The simple act of engaging was more complex.
Regarding the development environment, I'm really pleased with Automation Anywhere and enjoy using it. One place I find regular struggles is with basic documentation, including details about different commands or applications that are natively in the system. I tend to have to do test development on my own to find answers that should probably be in the documentation. That does slow things down, but once I get the information I need, it's really great to use overall.
What needs improvement?
To make it a ten, I would suggest more access to basic information, maybe more distributed use of it on the web. I don't find a lot outside of the internal community forum. It doesn't get much attention or use on Stack Overflow or other public community platforms. The responsiveness and amount of community engagement needs improvement. When I post questions, I seldom get answers fast. When I do, I am usually just directed to the standard documentation, which I have already reviewed and found to be lacking the answers to my questions.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for two years at my current role, and a total of about four years altogether.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment has been pretty smooth. We haven't had an issue with anything. Mostly, it's getting all of our internal security and things like that locked in so that we can go through.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I don't have any specifics about the pricing. It's not in my area.
What other advice do I have?
We are not using Automation Anywhere AI feature set at the moment. We just took the training courses in the past few weeks and are learning about it, and I'm hoping to get hands-on sessions to get experience using the tools. Right now, we're looking forward to developing some use cases that we can start engaging.
The biggest challenges for me and my company in the age of AI stem from being a financial institution and credit union, which creates a particularly conservative environment. This takes more evangelism to get adopted, as financial institutions tend to have more regulatory compliance issues that we must be very conscientious of, so we have to proceed slower on that front.
AI governance is definitely getting attention and discussion in my company. Everyone has accepted that it's going to be a huge part of the landscape in the very near future, so it's important to ensure we have everything managed and planned within compliance for protecting private, personal information.
With our department structure, I personally don't utilize the Automation Anywhere COE, or Center of Excellence manager. I believe our managers and business analysts do, but that's not something as a developer I get involved with.
We haven't deployed any document automation in our current processes. We've done extensive exploration and have paid contracts for a certain number of documents, but we haven't had a beneficial, deployable use case yet. We know they're there, but we have easier tasks to tackle first.
Overall, I'd give Automation Anywhere probably an eight on a scale from one to ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Increased efficiency and productivity through centralized automation and document processing
What is our primary use case?
We have several use cases for Automation Anywhere. We have several processes developed for HR, finance, and our automotive business, so we found use cases for everyone. Finance would be the major focus right now. We have this GPS center where we are trying to build many automations because we are dealing with cash allocations and processing invoices.
The main challenge I was looking to solve with a GenAI process automation was finding the GenAI solutions that were presented, and it has a combination that allows integration with the GenAI process automation with test bots. I found it very useful to have a centralized place where everyone can go. Instead of opening multiple applications, we have someone just opening a single app, making the prompt, and all the work starts to be done there. We have many opportunities, especially in accounts payable.
Currently, we are using Document Automation with Automation Anywhere. We are still not using AARI, which is something we are working on. I just started using it, but we are already using Doc Automation. We have processes using GenAI to extract information from unstructured documents. We have been having huge results in a short amount of time, which is incredible. Document Automation has had a significant impact on efficiency and productivity for us. The project I was mentioning was completed in two weeks. Our DSO was being impacted because of the backlog. In a short amount of time, we were able to reduce it by 38%, which was incredible.
How has it helped my organization?
What I appreciate most about Automation Anywhere is the cloud version. It was a huge change and it's very friendly, very easy to use, even for citizen developers. We have a group of citizen developers and I find it very easy to teach and use. These features are actually now in the front of the line and releasing these features. Last year when AARI was announced for the first time, and now, what we are seeing, putting everything together, seeing everything together, it's a huge change.
Automation Anywhere has helped us deal with these challenges. In Doc Automation, we have this project where we had a huge backlog. As we were closing our fiscal year, we had this huge backlog that we needed to clean up. The business was preparing to hire 12 people to do that, and even though they were not sure they could handle it, we built the process to extract and do the entire process just in two weeks. We were able with a single person to clean the entire backlog, which gave us huge benefits.
What is most valuable?
In the age of GenAI, the biggest challenges for my company include changing the entire mindset. Users need to trust the solution and what is being asked of us is that we need to be able to show the value it is bringing. It's not just a matter of trusting the technology, we need to be able to show exactly what we are going to achieve by using this technology.
For that, we need to have a proper framework that tracks all the benefits we are extracting from automations and shows them that this will actually take us to the next level. We are working with Automation Anywhere's value engineering team, and they are helping us build this framework, so we can show our leadership that this is the right move for starting to adopt this technology.
What needs improvement?
Automation Anywhere can be improved by working on the next step with GenAI process automation and the agents. This all deals with information we are receiving and acting upon. The next step would be more predictive, having predictive analysis and being more proactive in the way we are taking our actions. Instead of having an agent trying to look at where the best price is when I receive a request to buy something, we could have an agent that could use historical information to predict the best time to buy that product. In that way, we could have some predictability and start anticipating the right time to take actions for profit and lower cost reduction.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution since 2019.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were using another solution before choosing Automation Anywhere. It was not actually an RPA per se; it was more a ticketing tool that allowed building some automations. The company had previously tried UiPath but found some issues in managing and supporting the tool. They chose Automation Anywhere, which was a perfect fit in the environment we were building internally. For citizen developers, the learning curve is much faster compared to other tools.
How was the initial setup?
We could have a better integration. We have our development environment, and then we need to export that and then import it to the client. So this is a manual process. We would like to have a more automated process, integrated process, where we could have a pipeline where we could, from the production environment, push the version that we want to deploy to production.
In terms of version control, there are some improvements that can be done there. It would be nice to have more actions and more tools that allow us to have a better release control and showing all the features that were launched on it.
Having AI right now, it would be nice if we could also automate part of the documentation process. That's something that is possible. Nowadays, we can send a quote to AI and just ask it to explain this or build me a document explaining this code. There is some work that can be done there that can improve the deployment that we are doing through production to ensure that we have everything documented, and have all the version control in place.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, we don't have the license for the enterprise that allows us to build the agents. This is something we need to work on. The first version would double our cost.
We need to work with our business, which is why I'm working with the value engineering team. To get that type of cost approved, we need to be able to show all the benefits we are seeing from our automation. Automation Anywhere could try to come up with a better solution for having this framework that's easy to implement and maybe integrate into their own products so we can easily extract all the values from the automations. We need to be able to show data at four different levels because every level of leadership wants to see the data differently as they have different goals.
What other advice do I have?
Regarding API, we are not using it currently with Automation Anywhere as we don't have a license yet, so it's still a work in progress. We found many opportunities and just need to work with the business, build a POC, and then work on having access to it.
AI governance is very important in our company. We need to take care about securing our own information as we are a private company, so there are many aspects we need to address. We have an AI council in our company that ensures we are using the proper tools and have contracts signed to ensure data privacy and security.
We received a presentation of the COE Manager. We found it was not filling all the gaps we were looking for, so we are not using it currently. We have another solution. We have been using the information we are extracting from our automations and bot metrics. We are extracting that into a simple database and crossing it with control room APIs to get information about our executions. We built this lake house with a model that automatically extracts this information and builds our Power BI reports.
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.