There are many use cases for Automation Anywhere. One of these involved reconciling numerous financial reports in the company I work for, which deals in consumer products and goods. Specifically, we handle credit notes and debit notes from various customers. These notes serve as certifications of transactions, indicating whether we owe something to the customers or they owe something to us. The challenge is that these notes come in different formats, all in PDFs. Consequently, someone has to manually go through each of them, input the data into Excel, and compare it with an existing Excel report. After verifying the information and ensuring it matches, we input the data into the SAP system. This process is a part of our monthly activities and involves a considerable volume of documents, given that we are a multinational company focusing on AMEA markets.

To streamline this process, we utilized Automation Anywhere, making use of OCR technology to extract data from the PDFs. Another use case for the automation tool involved generating aging reports. As a company, we deal with numerous customers who haven't made payments yet, and we need to monitor the time they have left to pay or identify if they have exceeded the due dates. This information is available on our SAP system and needs to be created daily and distributed to all our sales teams.

If someone without technical skills wants to learn to use Automation Anywhere, it's not very difficult. However, if we simply want to use the solution without any prior experience, it may not be possible, but with proper training, someone can learn it in a month.

The learning curve is relatively easy, and it just takes time. Getting comfortable with the tool is, in my opinion, quite feasible; it can be done. The other aspect of the problem is understanding the use case and how to design it. How will we design our system? How will we design our process? Because it's never just one process that someone wants to automate; it's usually a bundle of processes. When we obtain a bot from automation anywhere, we cannot get just a fraction of a bot. We have to get a full bot. And if we have a process that does not consume all of that, then our cost-benefit ratio doesn't work. So we need to have a bunch of processes and then figure out how to schedule each bot, and how to process it. There are multiple ways of designing the flow of a bot. We should look for the optimum way considering the context, it depends on our context. The templates keep changing, and the sales keep changing, so we would have to define it in a different way where we have templates that can be replaceable. But if we are dealing with something related to compliance, then we would prioritize reliability and robustness, and we may have to compromise on flexibility while designing a solution with robustness in mind.

All of that comes with expertise, and all of that comes with experience. However, just understanding the product and the tool to a good, fairly okay level where a business user can create a small automation and do something with it even if they don't fully maximize its value can be achieved in a couple of months. But becoming a true expert and being able to call ourselves an RPA expert will take a lot of time and further exposure to various use cases.

By using Automation Anywhere, we observed a reduction in paperwork costs and the implementation of a reliable bot. When we require manual report generation, workflow execution, and other tasks. Its efficiency is contingent upon the availability of the person overseeing the process. With Automation Anywhere, the reporting, workflow executions, and other tasks are automated and thereby enhancing overall reliability. Additionally, a notable advantage is the development of a digital mindset within the company. Exposure to automation fosters a digital way of thinking among employees, leading them to identify opportunities that can be automated. These benefits are just a few among several others, including financial gains and improved compliance.

The benefits are seen typically after three to four months per process, depending on its complexity. For processes of low to medium complexity, it usually takes about three to four months for the board to start functioning correctly. The payback ratio varies depending on the number of products or processes we have and their complexity. If we have many low-complexity processes that can be completed within six months, we will see returns on our investment within that time frame. However, it's important to note that the payback period ultimately depends on the complexity of the process. I have observed instances where processes have not yielded returns even after several months, as changes were required at three or six-month intervals, leading to additional expenses. So, the success of the process is contingent on its specific characteristics.

Automation Anywhere is able to provide automation at scale.

Integration is truly beneficial; it serves as a significant advantage of Automation Anywhere. The level of integration is highly commendable.

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization increase its automation consumption by around 50 percent.

The way templates can be configured is quite simple - it's a matter of drag and drop. Within the console, which is easy to navigate if we've seen it before, we can understand how things work. This allows business folks to join calls if needed, and I comprehend what happens within the console.

The Board Control room is a centralized place where we can monitor all our bots and see how they are running when they are scheduled to run, and how our CPU and CB usage are looking - basically, the entire orchestration.

I noticed that they opened up to other service providers like Accenture and Avaya, which is not a platform feature, but it was very helpful for us. Automation Anywhere, being a product company, might not excel in service, so partnering with companies like Avaya or Accenture provided us with a reliable service operation.

The capability of understanding and extracting documents is not very good. Therefore, automating unstructured documents or any structured documents that we want to automate on Automation Anywhere is not a good idea.

The UI is not intuitive and doesn't come across as smooth.

I would like the licenses to be transferable. Currently, we are unable to transfer a user license.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for three and a half years.

I give the stability of Automation Anywhere a six out of ten.

I give the scalability of Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten.

We saw a return on investment with 50 percent of our automation processes.

I give Automation Anywhere a six out of ten.

It depends on the specific capabilities you require. When we started out as a team at Mondelez we were setting up all the necessary components. At that time, we were primarily focused on basic capabilities such as having a good service partner, efficient bot operations, and a manageable console. Figuring out the licenses was crucial, as some companies were unwilling to share their licenses with others. So, if you had the license, you were the one responsible for using it, and it couldn't be transferred to someone else. Certain software had this complexity, and we were also not considering advanced features like OCR back then.

Our focus was on basic RPA without many complexities. About four years ago, we believed Automation Anywhere was a well-established player in the market, so we chose them. However, later on, we realized that automation had much more to offer than simply configuring and automating certain processes. We discovered the concept of hyper-automation, which includes low-code and no-code applications that business users can build themselves. Document-related automation became crucial, and we found that Automation Anywhere lacked proper support for structured documentation and didn't leverage artificial intelligence or natural language processing effectively. Consequently, we had to explore other software options. As time progressed, we recognized the need for more capabilities. Therefore, we adopted two approaches to address this. Firstly, we sought a solution that offered modular usability. Consequently, we included Power Platform and are currently exploring the UI part. Additionally, we ventured into using newer technologies like Blue Prism, experimenting with various possibilities. Ultimately, our aim is to stay on top of advancements and adopt the best-suited tools for our needs.

The preference for API integration over a robust process automation solution depends on the capabilities of our in-house tech team. If we have an in-house tech team, then API solutions are significantly better than an automated bot. Additionally, our cost-benefit analysis, in terms of tech capabilities, also plays a crucial role in the decision-making process.

We did not perform any maintenance on Automation Anywhere.

We were looking to replace employees with a robot for repetitive and tedious tasks, to save time.

Automation Anywhere is saving hours and hours of employees' time. We can do the same tasks with fewer employees.

We have increased the automation of processes in our organization. It is really obvious how automation has improved the performance of our processes. We have two tracks of automation. We do traditional automation using application management and integration, and that is done by a big team. But we can compare our small RPA automation team to that big team. Both are increasing automation in our organization, each accounting for about 50 percent of our automation.

There is definitely another business benefit from using it: Processes have been re-engineered after being reviewed.

There are ready plugins and connectors to integrate with APIs for common systems like Oracle or Microsoft.

There could be improvement in the reporting and insights into the ROI. The ROI tool that shows the performance and the return on investment is not very accurate. I have developed my own tool to do that instead of using the native tool that comes with Automation Anywhere.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for four years.

It is a stable product.

The system can be expanded easily if you scale up the team or the process itself. It's the perfect product for that. It's definitely scalable.

We didn't have a previous solution.

There were some difficulties regarding the connection of the servers and performance issues, but we overcame them by reading about the product and seeing how things can be done. We also opened tickets with Automation Anywhere but it took them a long time to respond. There was a ticket that never closed during six months. But with an upgrade to the new release, it disappeared automatically.

Automation Anywhere has a learning curve, but it's not that hard and it's not very easy. Someone without tech skills can learn it by taking courses. When you try, you get into some problems, but in the end, it's nice and not hard. I haven't tried training non-tech people to use it, but in general, it may take people without a tech background about three months to learn it.

From time to time we need to do some maintenance of the infrastructure servers and make sure that the CPU and memory utilization is optimized. Occasionally, we need to increase the memory. There are two or three people involved in the maintenance from our organization's application support team.

The solution is quite expensive. Not every organization can consider this option. That's one reason they might go with real integration via API.

There are additional support costs. We didn't buy the support because we have a capable team that is doing the job.

We have seen options from the competitors, and we decide to go with this one. There were many aspects to our decision, but the main ones were the cost of the solution and the support available in our country.

I would recommend Automation Anywhere as a serious option. You will find it easy to use, overall, making it a very good choice.

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

I use Automation Anywhere to automate processes for other businesses.

Automation Anywhere is user-friendly for individuals with a technical background and can also be utilized by those without specific knowledge.

The learning curve for Automation Anywhere is easy. The steps are nicely designed and of high quality, making it easy for users to learn.

Automation Anywhere has helped our customers' organizations speed up their processes and reduce the workload for their staff.

It offers automation at scale, enabling our customers to accomplish their objectives.

Integrating RPA bots, APIs, business applications, and documents is easily achievable with Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere has helped to increase automation consumption.

The dashboard has room for improvement.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for one and a half years.

It is stable.

Automation Anywhere is scalable.

The technical support has been helpful, and we have not experienced any delays.

We used Power Automate before switching to Automation Anywhere as per the client's request.

The initial setup is straightforward and takes one or two days to deploy.

I believe our clients do see a return on investment because they continue to use the solution for their automation needs.

I think the pricing is reasonable, but clients often perceive it as expensive. This perception might change once we see the benefits, understand the full process, and realize what is required to achieve our goals.

I give Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten. Power Automate has better cloud flows.

For those who prefer API integration over robotic process automation, I would use an API if it's more logical to do so. It all depends on the situation. If I need to fill some Excel documents, I will use bots; and if I need to display that data on a web page, I will use APIs if available.

We have automated some data entry scenarios. We also have automation for system monitoring. It is being used for data entry, system monitoring, and data exchange with other systems.

We found a lot of processes to automate. We currently have about 80 processes that we have automated.

Automation Anywhere has helped our organization increase its automation consumption, but we are a little short of RPA developers. We are acquiring new talent and new resources for that group, and we are on the right path. We have a lot of work.

Workbench, which is a development tool, is very friendly. It is complete. Compared to Power Automate, Automation Anywhere is much more comprehensive and easy to understand.

We use APIs for some bots. It is not too common, but we use APIs in some processes. The integration at the moment is easy.

We work with version 11, and we have some problems with some applications. Automation Anywhere's software does not recognize them properly. The recognition of web applications is not good. The software does not consistently recognize all the controls and objects. We are in the process of migrating to a new version. We are migrating to Automation Anywhere 360, and I hope that in the latest version, the recognition model can be better. On the Internet and various forums, many people say that Automation Anywhere 360 appears to be much better, but we have not implemented it yet. I hope it is better and consistent. The main problem is consistency. If I make a bot today and tomorrow if the application changes, the bot stops working.

Similarly, in terms of the ability to provide automation at scale, the new version is more focused on that. The version that we have is not that capable. The development is not too easy. We need to put in too much effort, but Automation 360 appears to be easier. Development takes less time.

Automation Anywhere is a technical application. It is not so easy for a regular user. It requires technical knowledge. The new version is more user-friendly from an ease-of-use perspective.

I have been using this solution for three to four years.

I would rate their technical support a nine out of ten.

We are still using Power Automate, but we are not using their RPA model. We only use Power Automate for other automations. When we chose our RPA tool, Microsoft had not released the RPA tool for Power Automate. Microsoft released it a year or two years later.

We have some processes to analyze the ROI, but right now, we are not focusing on knowing that information. Our main need is automation. ROI is important, but it is not critical at the moment. We are still automating projects in the company.

It is expensive. I would rate Automation Anywhere an eight out of ten in terms of pricing.

They bill for every IQ bot that you have. We do not use IQ Bot, but we have a license, and they bill for every thousand pages.

We evaluated one or two other options, but I was not a part of the evaluation.

We did a little bit of research, and we found that Automation Anywhere was recommended at that time. It had better reviews on the Gartner website, so we decided to go with it.

It takes about three to four months to learn it. Some of the things are easy, but because we are trying to do automations, we need to make sure that we understand the application properly. We need to know how it works internally in the structure of the code because sometimes, we make a programming change that works today but stops working tomorrow. That is because the application can change, so we need to understand how the controls work between the changes and have the logic that allows a bot to run smoothly irrespective of the application changes. It is challenging to analyze the changes in the application and find a way to program the bot to recognize the changes.

To someone who wants to use API integration instead of an RPA solution, I would say that API integration is more recommended, but sometimes there are issues with this type of integration, so we have to finish the project in Automation Anywhere. The first option that we always try is to create our own integration between the systems with APIs. The RPA tool is the last option for integration.

In terms of maintenance, we need to install the updates or patches. Our infrastructure team is in charge of that. We have technicians to install patches. We have people with different roles. They are technical leaders or system administrators. We also have an information security team, and we have a network team, as well as an operating system team. Every department makes a little contribution to the whole environment.

For managing the bots, we have only three people. Maintenance of bots is different because we have bots scheduled all day, so we still need to monitor them on a daily basis, but the update process is monthly. We verify what is pending. Overall, the maintenance takes about eight hours a month.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten.