Intuitive, easy to use, and perfectly priced for the quality received
What is our primary use case?
We are still in the relative infancy with Automation Anywhere. We still use mostly RPA bots and haven't quite gotten to the Agentic Process yet. We are hoping to upgrade our platform to the Enterprise platform this year, so we are still at the beginning of the learning curve in the RPA bot-building stages. We have a couple of Co-Pilot projects going on currently, but we are still trying to get the process owners to buy in.
The main challenge we are looking to solve with Agentic Process automation involves processes that work specifically with call center operations. This includes agents taking calls, managing cases, working with ServiceNow, ticket handling, and similar tasks. Agentic Process automation shines when people create cases and tickets flow in and out of the system, but a human isn't needed to process most of that because it is all being captured by the computer during intake. Saving time working on the phone, gathering information, and handling ticket information makes APA a huge game-changer.
How has it helped my organization?
In the age of Agentic AI, the biggest challenges for me and my company involve adoption. We are still in the infancy of process automation, so currently, it is just getting the stakeholders to buy in. Automation Anywhere has helped me with that. Our company has looked at different software vendors, and Automation Anywhere is worlds apart from any other offering. The platform itself is intuitive and easy to use. I have even mentioned to people who aren't developers or very computer savvy that they could pick up Automation Anywhere and just get started.
What is most valuable?
I have really loved all of the new Agentic Process automation pieces from Automation Anywhere that are being introduced. They are announcing new features at AA Imagine, and it has been fantastic to see all of the amazing innovations. I am really hoping we can get to that Enterprise platform this year so we can take advantage of the APA capabilities, as there is groundbreaking, industry-changing technology happening.
What needs improvement?
It is difficult for me to suggest improvements for Automation Anywhere because it is such a fantastic product. We have looked at competitors, and there is nobody that holds a candle to Automation Anywhere.
It is challenging to specify needed improvements because there is so much functionality we are not taking advantage of yet. We haven't been able to utilize the full product offerings, which makes it difficult to suggest specific improvements.
One of the things that has gone very well is the control room itself. The control room itself is easy to use. One area that could potentially be improved is adding additional widget capability within the main dashboard in the control room itself.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Automation Anywhere for about eight years.
How was the initial setup?
It's been great. It's been flawless. We've had great integrations into Genesys and ServiceNow. Deployment has been wonderful.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is fantastic. It has been great. It is perfectly priced for the quality received. When paying for quality, that is exactly what you get.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We considered UiPath and Blue Prism before choosing Automation Anywhere. ServiceNow has an RPA platform, but it was not suitable for our needs. The main competitors we looked at were UiPath and Blue Prism, but Automation Anywhere was exactly what we were looking for.
What other advice do I have?
I believe Automation Anywhere could help achieve our automation goals, but we haven't reached the APA stage yet, as we are still in the RPA stage. There are numerous use cases we could implement.
AI governance is important for my company in general. Having governance in place ensures things work out properly and stay aligned. However, that part is managed by our product manager.
We have several copilot projects in development, but we are not using Automation 360 AI yet. We don't use Automation Anywhere COE yet, which is another offering we hope to invest in this year. I am not utilizing document automation in current processes, which is another capability we hope to get buy-in for this year.
I would rate Automation Anywhere a ten out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Automation streamlines invoice processing and significantly reduces manual workload
What is our primary use case?
Right now, my use case for Automation Anywhere is that we're in the middle of an AP invoice automation project, automating invoice entry into our Oracle EBS system.
What is most valuable?
What I appreciate the most about using Automation Anywhere is that I find it very easy to use; the connectors are great, the layout's great, the functionality is great, and it just works, so it's pretty good. Using Automation Anywhere has improved our company significantly, as we are doing over eight to 10,000 invoices a month, which people had to do before, while now the automated process is doing that without too much human intervention, saving probably about at least two to possibly three FTEs per week.
What needs improvement?
Regarding the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Automation Anywhere, I think it could always be cheaper, but it seems fair and it's a good product. I think they should figure out a way to allow development environments that don't require licensing for unattended so I can test without taking away production licenses.
Automation Anywhere is already pretty robust and we have not run into a problem connecting everything; we connect everything from Office 365 to Oracle databases, to Oracle EBS systems, to Workday, to other systems, and I have not found a use case that Automation Anywhere hasn't been able to accommodate, so we are really happy with everything we've seen.
My biggest suggestion would be to allow us to set up test and development licenses or environments that don't use unattended licenses needed for production. Currently we have six licenses and can use only four in production due to the need for test licenses that don't get used often, sometimes just once a month, while we either have to switch them back and forth or deal with not having all the licenses we need. I understand they don't want abuse, but it seems having a better way to handle this could be beneficial.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Automation Anywhere for approximately nine months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not really seen an impact yet from Automation Anywhere's visibility in the automation lifecycle, as we are in the very beginning of it, but it does look having a good framework.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Automation Anywhere has helped me overcome these challenges as it, along with another tool called Hyperscience, has completely changed how we process invoices, automating what humans used to do from beginning to end. Automation Anywhere has helped me achieve my automation goals, as we are in the middle of it and it's helping month after month, allowing us to continue to add suppliers and invoices while it just does what it needs to do.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I was not using another solution before Automation Anywhere. We started this journey with Automation Anywhere and have actually added Power Automate into the mix, especially around end users, as we're a big Microsoft shop and everybody has some form of a Power Automate license. We decided on Automation Anywhere over UiPath and Blue Prism based on what the product could do for us.
What was our ROI?
Document automation has impacted efficiency and productivity massively, as we are processing approximately 8 to 10,000 invoices every month, with probably another 8 to 10,000 more to go, different suppliers and a different accounting structure, and it handles everything we throw at it. I have measured the time saved by using document automation in document processing, approximately noticing we are at roughly three minutes per invoice, saving about 60 man-hours per week.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I don't know the biggest differences between Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism and UiPath, as I wasn't part of that conversation and I have not looked at Blue Prism or UiPath. My understanding of UiPath is that they claim to have a lot of features, though not much of it is as relevant as their marketing material might suggest. Regarding Power Automate, I have delved deep there too and noticed they struggle with having both cloud-based and desktop-based functionalities, making it difficult.
What other advice do I have?
The main challenge I was trying to solve by intelligent process automation around AP invoices was that the current AP team had a backlog of a couple months of invoices, taking them quite a long time, and it didn't become feasible to keep adding more people to a team that already had many, so they needed a solution and the automated process was that solution, allowing us to grow and add more invoices and suppliers without needing more people and reducing the backlog to under a week.
I am not utilizing the AI Agent Studio in my automation process yet, as we don't have a license for that, but we're exploring it. Both I and another person on the team are in training that Automation Anywhere had a few weeks back for agent AI, which is really interesting and we're excited about, though we don't have a license for it just yet.
My impression of the AI governance features in maintaining compliance and data integrity within my company is that we are just starting to explore that, and it looks very helpful. We are setting up a Center of Automation to solidify those rules and needs for governance, and the tool itself seems to do a good job at facilitating that.
I am starting to utilize Automation Anywhere CoE, as once we started getting most of the invoices in, we are having meetings about starting this project this week and next month. I perceive the cloud-based nature of Automation Anywhere CoE Manager as effective for managing our automation pipeline. We use the SaaS product exclusively at this point without anything installed internally, except for some internal machines that have Automation Anywhere installed from a client perspective.
On a scale of 1-10, I rate Automation Anywhere a 10.
Best platform for automation purpose.
What do you like best about the product?
It has the AI integrated abilities that helped with digital transformation into our account.
This platform comes with great features and we are exploring it as well.
Glad to using Automation Anywhere with respect to it's capablities.
What do you dislike about the product?
I think the cost for this platform is bit high for our account so it took more time to convince client about it, anyways the platform is great so no major concern for it.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Into our account one of the use case is - the document data is much more important and to tally it perfectly with proper data analysis as well as data insights - it's much more important with platform is going to help with this and how. So this solution we implemented using this for document processing as an BFSI(banking domain).
The first batch employee in Automation Anywhere China team and been dedicated on introducing AA
What do you like best about the product?
AA knows the enterprise and industry well and practice the professional way, to lead the RPA and now in APA world, AA make the turn quickly even it took a lot of loss and sacrifise, but it keep in right trace
What do you dislike about the product?
The cost to adopt RPA of AA and now APA looks still high, but understand that should come from entire ecosystem work effort
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I helped most client in greater china to transform their business, RPA helped them on many ways, it is very typical on but not just limited in such area:
- Old legacy system is out-of-date and with no maintenance, to get the data , feed the data,
- Numerous document with picture and pdf format to use AA DA and IQBot before to convert,
Excellent and flexible RPA platform
What do you like best about the product?
The tools (packages) available for building RPA automations is extensive. The UI is easy to use and has two different ways of viewing the code, both of which are extremely visual. Having many different types of variables to choose from like string, number, Boolean, table etc. allows you to structure inputs and outputs well and handle most situations. The platform makes capturing parts of any web page or desktop application easy. Being able to break the steps of an automation down into smaller sub-tasks and re-usable components accelerates development and makes the code more manageable. The platform also allows you to trigger automations with file drops or even e-mail, as well as scheduling the automation at specific times of day, days of the week and more. Lastly, being able to call APIs allows for easy integration with other platforms, services, and automations. Implementing an automation is also extremely easy .
What do you dislike about the product?
Having multiple developers work on the same project is difficult as once one person has code checked out they are the only one who can edit. There is no 'merge code' functionality as there is on other development platforms. Documentation for each package (feature) could be improved with more examples, screenshots, tips, and use cases.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are using RPA to ease workflow in many areas of the company from Finance to Operations to HR functions. Many repetitive tasks and in some cases, an entire process is being automated, saving hundreds of manual hours of work. In some cases we are using RPA to reduce defects and risk as well.
Automation Anywhere RPA
What do you like best about the product?
I like the customer service, when I face a problem in rpa, I raise a ticket, and get quick help from Automation Anywhere team.
I also like the building code in AA platform, it is easy to use.
What do you dislike about the product?
It can take time to use few packages like sharepoint,outlook packages since it needs some informations to be filled.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We create bots for works that need to work so often. So AA helps people to use their time more efficiently.
Powerful, Scalable, and Intuitive
What do you like best about the product?
Having developed both in traditional languages and in all RPA platforms, I appreciate how Automation Anywhere offers an intuitive, user-friendly interface. For both seasoned and citizen developers, this makes barrier to entry and the time needed to get up to speed building automations much less than I have seen on other platforms. Additionally, the sheer volume of features, from AI to Document Automation to integration with dozens of top-tier systems, makes Automation Anywhere an indispensable tool to have.
What do you dislike about the product?
There are times when getting technical support is difficult, but this is not uncommon in the industry when dealing with complex issues. I struggle sometimes with the need to walk through the same basic steps with Tier 1 Support multiple times before I can get an issue escalated and dig further into matters.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The ability to quickly create automation processes for our business units allows them to focus on more value-add tasks rather than the mundane. Also the ability to help business units find those tasks and processes that are ripe for automation, to cure the "we don't know what we don't know" dilemma, has provided ongoing value to the teams.
RPA - A true breakthrough in programming business processes that seemed impossible.
What do you like best about the product?
Automation Anywhere makes it easy to create automations for both the beginner and the seasoned Automator. Its versatility is tremendous with both built in modules and functions plus the ability to add custom Python or Scripting to accomplish the task at hand.
Furthermore, the recorder feature makes integration with 3rd party applications its most powerful feature. The ability to duplicate user mouse actions, copy and paste data, and also efficiently loop thru html screens is a winner.
I especially like the ability to capture multiple points on the screen in addition to recording or re-recording a single action this truly makes implementation quick and easy.
What do you dislike about the product?
although the Automation Anywhere customer support is top notch and very responsive. the need to improve the time to repair for bugs and new features is very evident. My expectation is that if a get function is provided it should always be paired with a set function.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are using RPA in as many situations as possible. We have automations that produce 100s of automated ours / month and others that are much smaller running daily and saving 1 hour or less to produce a report. The biggest intangible benefit is data accuracy. Our users now trust the Bot results with great confidence.
Automation increases productivity and reduces manpower requirements
What is our primary use case?
We are supposed to produce 40,000 components of shells for bayonet caps. Forty thousand caps are required in each shift, which means it comes to about 120 caps per minute. For that purpose, we make use of the vibrating feeder and inserts for all the shoots. We also had composite tools to perform various operations. The additional components, which are supposed to come on the rotary table, were also finished and brought to the table. The shell gets placed from the vibratory feeder on top of it. There are two operations: hot white glass falls into it, and as soon as it falls, it goes to the next position, where it gets molded. The molding shape takes place.
What is most valuable?
Actually, we are supposed to produce 40,000 components of shells for bayonet caps. Forty thousand caps are required in each shift. That means it comes to about 120 caps per minute. Automation is going to become a new area we will certainly encourage a lot of people to pursue because of the lasting dividends it provides, including saving time and manpower.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have not come across them. Automation Anywhere is a company that keeps sending their literature very often. I possess it, and I am getting good information through them.
How are customer service and support?
Normally, I go through a lot of journals that provide a lot of information on automation. Practically, I have done a lot of work, which gives me the confidence that I can handle any type of automation.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
You only give instructions to them regarding what is required. You explain to them.
What other advice do I have?
AI is also supporting now. Most people are into AI because of the benefits we get, and it enables changes required through AI easily. It offers a lot of cost benefits and enables faster productivity. Normally, there are specific people we use to contact, who actually do the automation. No, I cannot decide a rating right now.
AI collaboration and data extraction capabilities improve efficiency
What is our primary use case?
I am from the Mechanical Department at a college of engineering. We utilize Automation Anywhere with our students in the mechanical block. I am using it for educational purposes, and we are providing hands-on experiences.
How has it helped my organization?
Automation Anywhere is very useful. With Automation Anywhere, we can do any task in the easiest way. If there is any repeated task, then we can replace it with Automation Anywhere to the same work in a short period of time. It helps minimize the work.
Automation Anywhere is very helpful and interesting to learn for students. It is very user-friendly, so they can easily learn it.
Automation Anywhere is very easy to learn for people who do not have any technical skills. It is very user-friendly. There is no learning difficulty. We can easily drag and drop the required components and make the model we want. We can automate and deploy a function. After one or two attempts, it becomes very clear. It does not take a long time to understand it. We can understand a simple process within thirty minutes, whereas a complex process can take two to four hours.
Automation Co-Pilot is an advanced feature that helps with finding out the next step. It also provides information about more efficient usage. Both Automation Anywhere and Co-Pilot improve productivity.
Automation Anywhere saves time. The attendance automation that we have saves about two hours each day. We are also able to easily scrape data from structured and unstructured files and write it in the CSV format. IQ Bot does this very well.
What is most valuable?
The AI collaboration is the most impressive feature of Automation Anywhere. We can use IQ Bot to extract data from structured and unstructured sources into a CSV file. It is very useful, and my university uses it for the attendance system. With AI integration, we can easily take attendance.
Other features include easy deployment and automation of repetitive tasks. If we want to automate any repetitive task, we can record it, which is very useful.
It is secure and user-friendly. Automation Anywhere minimizes human effort and time, facilitates learning, and supports automated tasks efficiently.
What needs improvement?
There are areas of improvement needed, such as complex decision-making skills. When updates are made, the IQ Bot's actions can be affected, leading to decision-making failures. If it had the ability to make decisions in complex situations, the bot would perform more smoothly. More advanced decision-making skills are needed for improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Automation Anywhere for more than two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Automation Anywhere is very stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Its scalability is very good. I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability.
In the mechanical department, we have more than 130 students. On average, there are 700 users.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is easy to access with various communication channels, including emails and personal calls. However, the community forum is sometimes unresponsive. Despite this, personal calls and quick fixes are very useful, providing good technical support.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have experience with Blue Prism from four years ago. Initially, I used both Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere, but Blue Prism required coding, making it challenging. Automation Anywhere's no-code environment made it easier, and I preferred it. My students also favor it for its user-friendliness and affordability compared to Blue Prism. Automation Anywhere allows for easy drag-and-drop actions and is cost-effective for medium and large-scale enterprises.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The cost is high for small-scale businesses but it is fine for medium and large enterprises. Its high licensing cost may affect small-scale businesses. Reducing licensing costs would benefit many users.
What other advice do I have?
Learning Automation Anywhere prepares our students for a better future because the future belongs to RPA Automation. It helps build their automation skills, and we also provide certification to them after learning Automation Anywhere.
It involves understanding the structure, and once two or three models are deployed, it becomes easier. Using Automation Anywhere is more straightforward than other RPA tools. Bot deployment typically takes three to four hours depending on the process. A simple process can take about thirty minutes and complex ones take two to four hours. There is no time wasted during deployment.
Bots require updates only if there are any changes. Generally, five to ten minutes are enough to maintain the bots. It does not take a lot of time.
I would recommend Automation Anywhere to others. I actively create awareness about it in our classes and recommend it to other institutions for future RPA developers.
I would rate Automation Anywhere a ten out of ten.
