We use Automation Anywhere in a DevOps environment. 

Automation Anywhere helps us resolve some friction between IT needs and business requirements. In an agile environment, the first questions are always: How much money do you have? What is your budget? Automation Anywhere or any other RPA solution can help you achieve your goals within budget constraints by lowering operational costs. It increases productivity and reduces errors.

I like Automation Anywhere's cloud-based nature. You don't need any on-prem infrastructure to host it. If you have suitable infrastructure, you can easily integrate it with Automation Anywhere. The learning curve is reasonable. Automation Anywhere has a user-friendly environment, but digesting all the platform's features takes significant time. 

It's challenging to train users on Automation Anywhere. There should be more organized training sessions. I prefer interactive classes to one-on-one training. You can create super users and organize conferences or workshops where users can learn from experts. Maybe you only have a few of these super users in your organization, so that's why you need to have workshops on a weekly basis. 

I have used Automation Anywhere for three to five years. 

I rate Automation Anywhere seven out of ten for stability. 

I rate Automation Anywhere support seven out of ten.

Neutral

I previously used UiPath at a past job but switched when I started work at my current company. 

I rate Automation Anywhere seven out of ten. 

My company uses Automation Anywhere to automate tedious processes involving large amounts of data. My job is to monitor the processes for errors and see what caused them. I address those errors and run the automation again. We only started using the solution a few months ago, so we're still exploring some potential candidates for automation. We are discussing and trying to build and define those automations based on our business requirements and existing processes. So far, we have integrated it with our ERP and other SAP solutions. 

We have about 500 users at the company, but most of them are not building automations in the solution. They are indirectly benefiting from activities that are automated. Only about two or three employees are supporting the processes, but the rest are benefitting from the results. Automation Anywhere covers about three work streams. 

Automation Anywhere is cost-effective and significantly reduces the risk of errors that can cost the company lots of money. The solution improves our time and cost efficiency. Automation can cut the time spent on these tasks in half or more in some cases. Sometimes, it might take a day to do something that automation can complete in a few minutes. 

Before we implemented Automation Anywhere, we performed these tasks manually. It took a long time, and there were many errors. Now, everything is efficient, and there are fewer errors. If there's an issue, it tells you exactly where to find the problem and goes straight to it, so you don't need to investigate the whole process. 

There are several use cases where we can leverage AI. One example is purchase orders that are there for maybe 100 or 120 days, but there is nothing happening with the order, so we need to close them. When we go into the system, there are thousands of purchase orders that are still open after years. Normally, we would need to close them all manually. We can use Automation Anywhere to close all the purchase orders that have been open past a certain date. 

Automation Anywhere's error handling is its most valuable feature. It sends you an email when there's an error and helps you find the cause quickly. It walks you through exactly how you should handle it.

If you don't have a technical background, it's somewhat complex, but you don't need to have coding or software development experience, so it is easy in that sense.  I am not technically inclined, and it involves many steps for a process to function properly. It requires a lot of work initially to design and develop a process. I find it somewhat challenging.  If you take time to understand it, it's not too difficult, but it seems complicated at the beginning if you're not a technical person.  

The time needed to learn the solution varies. Some of the processes are complex, involving four or five activities from start to finish. It's a lot of steps and can get quite technical. It might take a month or two to learn. 

I have used Automation Anywhere for six months.

Automation Anywhere is highly stable. 

I'm impressed with Automation Anywhere's scalability. 

I found the setup process to be somewhat complex because I don't come from a technical background. 

I rate Automation Anywhere eight out of ten. We recommend adopting Automation Anywhere. Using digital platforms to automate is efficient and cost-effective. Many tasks that might normally take a day or two can be done in a few hours. You also reduce the risk of human error. It's highly efficient and accurate. 

I have primarily worked in the presales as well as in the sales cycle. I do not have hands-on experience with the tool. I have a team of people who are the continuous improvement folks who work in a particular area. We have developers or continuous improvement people who leverage the tool and go ahead and help to get them deployed. For example, if it is UiPath's process mining capabilities, they basically plug the data and do other things. They do the work, and we ensure that we drive the transformation and build the business connects for the customer. So, my role is very different. I am a management consultant. My core hands-on experience is not with digital tools in itself, but I leverage digital tools to drive transformation for a customer. As part of my role, I understand the features and the value add that it brings to the table. I do quality assurance of the outputs that are generated. I also ensure that teams are able to work in a client environment because they need to be able to access the client environment. I also need to drive transformation because there is a lot of stakeholder management. There is a lot of project management that is needed. I work in that area and that sphere. I am not a technical person as such, but when a tool is deployed, I understand how to execute the implementation, how to drive the discussions, and with automation, how to drive value for my customers. That is my area of expertise.

People primarily use it to fast-track and automate transactional, repeatable tasks. By using Automation Anywhere, people want the execution of transactional activities. It could be the back office. It could be the middle office. I have not seen front office use cases, but I am sure there are use cases for that. I have only seen a lot of middle office and back office activities. For example, in the Procurement area, a typical transactional activity would be PR to PO, where information is readily available. That is the use case where it can be easily applicable. Likewise, in the Accounts Payable area, you can use Automation Anywhere to execute automation for payment processing activities. The finance area has got a lot of use cases. They could be reconciliation-related activities, data-gathering activities from different documents, etc. In some areas of Audit to Cash, it could be even looking up invoices and answering customer queries that are pretty straightforward. These are the high-level use cases that I have seen.

Typically, when you are able to execute any repeatable task in an organizational environment, you enhance organizational AI capability. The reason is that your increased accuracy will improve the predictability of the AI algorithm for getting the job transactional activities completed. For example, if somebody is going to create a purchase requisition and the average turnaround time is five days, with a bot, I can get the purchase requisition created in one day. The organization can check and see what is the rate of improvement or what is the predictability of getting the orders received for producing the finished goods. When you look at the end-to-end view, you get predictability to say when will my goods reach the customer. You get to know that by improving one area with automation and ensuring that the work is done in a repeatable manner, you can improve your predictability by a certain percentage, so any automation of a particular process will improve an organization's AI capability. 

The biggest integration is how it integrates with the system of record. When you automate a process per se, you are extracting information or reading information out of a system of record. It could be SAP. It could be Oracle. It could be Microsoft Dynamics, but Microsoft has its tool called Power Automate. That is one level of system integration. The other level of system integration is where you have a front-facing bot. For example, anything to do with query management or queries that keep coming via mail or shared service portals. These integrations are a little different from the ones that you have with a system of record. Automation Anywhere integrates pretty seamlessly for both types of automation. The system of record integration can be a little bit of a challenge as compared to the regular mail servers or shared service portals because of the permissions and the security checks that are needed. Getting VDI access becomes a little bit challenging because customers sometimes are not comfortable giving full-fledged access during the UAT. It becomes a little bit challenging, but it also depends upon the maturity of the customer and the nature of the business. They are not comfortable giving full-fledged access because it will create problems for them, but after that, when it gets into the live environment, things are a lot easier and streamlined. It has nothing to do with Automation Anywhere. It is just about the maturity and the protocols that a customer has in place. These aspects make it easier to integrate with Automation Anywhere or any other service provider. Based on what my peers have mentioned to me, it is not challenging to integrate with APIs, etc. It is pretty seamless. There are not too many issues. There might have been a challenge in a specific situation, but by and large, in general, the capability it offers is pretty standard for a typical automation tool.

There have been a lot of use cases where we have used Automation Anywhere to save time and costs. Typically, any automation gives you 20% to 30% efficiency. That is what I have seen. That is an average. In some cases, it could be high, and in some cases, it could be low depending on the task and the domain, but 20% to 30% efficiency is typically possible.

Since implementing the solution, the tasks are taking place in a seamless manner. As long as the process is not changed, there is the ease of replicability. Repeatable tasks constantly get done without any challenges. 

There is also an increase in the efficiency of the people. There is reduced turnaround time for responses or getting the activities done.

We work with lots of digital tools, and I have been engaged with teams for the last seven years or so.

They are one of the top service providers for automation. They are definitely stable.

Automations are also pretty stable. Automation works on the fact that you are not changing your process. As long as things are repeatable, every automation software does the same thing. Challenges come when you do upgrades to your ERP, or for that matter, you make one simple change in the process. That is when you have any stability-related challenges.

I believe they can do automation at scale.

It has been a long time since I reached out to them for support. As a service provider, they are always there to provide support. The challenges happen in terms of how the deal was constructed, what was agreed, and where were the gaps in understanding. That is where the issues happen. There are usually many unknowns. I would rate them an eight out of ten based on my experience a while ago.

We work with lots of digital tools. We have leveraged UiPath in the past. We are platinum partners with some of the service providers.

 I know that Automation Anywhere, UiPath, or any other solution has its own specific nuances, but the gap between them is closing up technically. In terms of value, I do see that Automation Anywhere offers value.

The tool selection depends on the partnership deal. It depends on who an organization is considering and the approach for partnership deals. In my organization, we have different partners with whom we work. How you partner with an organization and approach that organization is one of the big differentiators. I know there are not too many players out there in the market. You only have big fours. The key thing is how you are partnering with them and how you are going into the market and taking their support. The second thing is how you are promoting the key capability that you are bringing to the table and how you are comparing it with other people. For example, I know that UiPath has process mining capability, but Automation Anywhere is offering AI capabilities. If I go to a customer and immediately start talking about AI via automation, it is a little drawn-out process for me, whereas with process mining, I can immediately plug and play the data and tell them what are the challenges and for those long run activities, what are my automation possibilities. The positioning is important, but I am not undermining the AI capabilities that Automation Anywhere brings. 

I was not involved in the deployment of Automation Anywhere. I work with the RPA team.

The deployment environment varies. It is dependent on the client's environment. It depends on where your data is and where you are doing the automation. If you are doing automation on the data fabric for reporting purposes and you are deploying a bot to gather the data from specific tables, you might put it onto a data fabric or a data lake. If you are working on PR to PO, that information is going to be on a system of record. It might be on the server itself. It is truly use-case-dependent in my view.

In terms of maintenance, customers typically buy the licenses, but these days, I see that customers prefer to use one main partner for all their licenses because it is easy to manage that one main partner. It could be the largest partner they have in their set of vendors who are supporting them for all IT-related activities. If they buy it from them, they do not need to do maintenance, but if they buy the licenses themselves, they may need maintenance. It depends on whom they are engaging with and what is the purchasing model of licenses.

They all are very competitive today. At the end of the day, it boils down to the negotiations that happen and what type of partner you are. Are you a premium partner or are you a preferred partner or a gold partner? Prices are very standardized. There could be a little bit of deviation, but they are comparable. It is a pretty saturated market because everybody has been doing our RPA for the last decade, so they are pretty competitive in pricing.

Every customer is at a different maturity level. Customers at a high level of maturity of process standardization definitely are looking at the next wave of evolution with generative AI. To do some things in generative AI, there have to be some elements of automation. Companies that are not so mature or the small and medium are not yet there. They are trying to digitize the ways of working. They want to ensure that they have the right framework structure within the organization. They are experimenting with automation, but it is more like a basic level of automation. Mature companies with billions of dollars in revenue have already been doing it for the past many years. They are taking up more of the generative AI opportunity to enhance and go deep into those areas.

I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.