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.

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. 

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.

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.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for more than two years.

Automation Anywhere is very stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.

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. 

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.

Neutral

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.

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.

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.

First, I tried to automate the process for surface automation, and it was mainly in a Citrix environment. At that time, I think no proper solution or feature was available with Automation Anywhere. Then, I tried it for some web applications and Windows applications, and there it worked perfectly. 

It saves time. It has saved 4,000 to 5,000 hours for one large complex process. If we break it down, it has saved 1,000 hours per process. The time savings vary based on the complexity of the process.

It is simple to learn. It is straightforward. You can learn about Automation Anywhere from their university or YouTube. Lots of YouTube channels are there. They provide you with all the information you need. Non-technical employees would need one month to three months to learn it. It also depends on their grasping and learning skills.

With Oracle and ServiceNow, there seem to be challenges. With SAP, it worked very well. We first tried Automation Anywhere with Oracle but had to go for Blue Prism. With Oracle, Blue Prism was easier and a little bit more stable than Automation Anywhere. Even with ServiceNow, the automation was very unreliable. It did not work as expected.

Business users face difficulties with Automation Anywhere setup. As an administrator, even if I provide any license or features, they would not be able to use it on their local individual machines. The client sometimes does not work perfectly. There are difficulties when we install the Automation Anywhere client. It can be hard to know what is causing issues. They might have a different Java version or other software installed on their machines. Automation Anywhere clients sometimes need clean machines or virtual machines where we deploy the bots. Such difficulties are there, but it does not happen with just Automation Anywhere. I have also observed this problem with other solutions.

Automation Anywhere does not provide API integration. You have to design everything on your side. It does not have an inbuilt API tool like Postman. They do not provide a virtual interface to execute GET, PUT queries. It is very difficult in Automation Anywhere, but in other solutions, this feature is very good.

It is not stable with the Microsoft Edge browser. They have to develop or integrate lots of things. It used to work very well with Internet Explorer around five years ago, but Internet Explorer is gone now. People have moved to Microsoft Edge. If you are using Google Chrome, it is easy. With Microsoft Edge, sometimes processes fail, and you do not always know the reason. You have to debug it entirely.

I have been using it for a total of five years, but in between, I used other tools as well. Overall, it has been around two years with Automation Anywhere. I have used versions 10.2, 11.3, and 360, and a little bit of 2019 as well.

The product is overall stable. With lots of normal applications, you can use it without any issues. 

Automation Anywhere is 50% to 70% good in terms of scaling. For business users who want everything on their machines and do not want to use different virtual machines, it is not scalable. Management also worries about deployment costs.

I contacted their technical support. Their L1 support is just normal, and you can get that information on Google or YouTube. They do not have a solution a lot of times. Their L2 support is quite expert. They know how to address things that are happening, and they will try to understand and find the root cause.

Neutral

I am also using other RPA tools such as Blue Prism and UiPath, and I prefer them over Automation Anywhere. 

In API integrations, Automation Anywhere is way behind other tools because its interface is not simple to use for business users. If someone is using Automation Anywhere as the first RPA tool, they will understand it, but if they have used any other RPA tool in the market, they will feel the need to improve Automation Anywhere's UI and API integrations. Additionally, in the API integration part, companies are nowadays using scripting with SAP and others. Automation Anywhere can also improve in that area. 

UiPath's design structure is quite powerful and straightforward. It is easier to work with when you have a complex process with multiple load items. API integration is quite powerful. We can easily use that.

If you are deploying the client on a virtual machine, it is very simple and straightforward. If you are going to do it on a common machine for normal development purposes, it can be a bit complex if you are using other software on the same machine. 

Upgrading is easy. I have migrated some processes from versions 10 to 11, but the newer version requires some time and cost because sometimes the processes designed in the older versions cannot be migrated to the newer version. Instead of migrating, you can redesign the same process in the newer version. That would be better.

Usually, all developers are involved in the bot maintenance at a later stage. If only considering support and maintenance, you will require two people there. If your team has around ten to fifteen people, you will require two people for support.

Cost-wise, it is fine. A lot of medium businesses prefer Automation Anywhere. The development cost is also lower.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a seven out of ten.

There are two main use cases. We are working to complement their RPA capabilities. They have quite a strong position in the RPA market. Instead of trying to face them on the RPA market, we complete what they do. They are especially not good in the attended space. They are good in unattended but not in the attended space, so we kind of complement them.

The second thing we are working on with them is FortressIQ. Automation Anywhere has a task mining solution. We have a process mining solution, so it is a good completion. We have a product that is doing all the process mining stuff. When we need to investigate further into one precise process, dive a little bit into the details, and understand the number of clicks, the number of screens, and basically all the details of the process, we need a task-mining solution. That is where we have integrated with FortressIQ from Automation Anywhere.

The benefits include a reduction in tedious tasks and manual handling of tasks and time savings. This transition moves processes from several hours to a few minutes or even seconds, ensuring that money is saved. Furthermore, it secures the process, facilitates better execution, eliminates errors, and establishes a standard process, which is much more than just saving money.

The ease of use depends on what you want to do. What we do is quite simple because we are mainly using it from an unattended perspective, so we do not have any human interaction. With humans, you need to do a lot of error management. Automation is precise and simple. If the use case is A, B, and C, and you know how to treat A, B, and C, it will always be that, which is simple. If it is not A, B, or C, then you park it aside and do error handling. In the end, 98% of what you have done is good, and the remaining 2% will be manually handled. You still save about 98% of the time. It is quite easy to use as long as we stay in the unattended space. 

We mainly integrated it with non-SAP applications. It is not difficult to integrate Automation Anywhere in the workflow.

It is quite strong in the unattended space. 

I never use Automation Anywhere in the attended space because they are bad at that, at least compared to other players like us or UiPath.

I have been working with them for about four years.

I have not contacted them, so I cannot judge them.

Neutral

We are working with UiPath, Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, and Power Automate. These are the four ones we are working with.

Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism are very close in terms of market perception, and they are very unattended-oriented. They are quite strong in the unattended space and are more IT-oriented than others, especially UiPath. They are strong in terms of integration.

In terms of ease of use, it is probably one of the best because they are doing a lot of screen scraping. It is more based on the screens and less on APIs, which makes sense from an unattended perspective. However, when you want to have human interaction, it could become a bit more difficult. It is a more techie product than others but also deeper in terms of what you can do with it in terms of integration, etc.

I do not think a perfect RPA tool exists. Overall, I would rate Automation Anywhere as a six out of ten. I would rate UiPath higher.

We are using this in our college laboratory where I am a professor. We are using it for educational purposes. 

In our college, we are also taking attendance using automation software that we have built. It automatically takes student attendance based on face recognition. We have automated this process.

Automation Anywhere is very useful for automating repetitive tasks. It saves time. Our attendance automation helps take attendance of every person easily. It enables focus on strategic work, boosting productivity.

Automation Anywhere is very easy. It helps in many ways to do more work. It is user-friendly and provides good productivity. It has improved our productivity by at least 10%. 

The best feature is its ability to combine Automation Anywhere with AI to build intelligent bots. It saves time and offers better career opportunities for our students. IQ Bot automation helps to extract data from PDFs and invoices and store it in the database. It is beneficial for students and allows employees to focus on strategic work. 

It is very easy to learn. If you want to do a particular work, you can do it fairly easily. There are drag-and-drop opportunities available, and everything is easily integrated. We can quickly learn and find solutions to our problems. A simple task takes two or three days to learn. A complex task may take about five days.

There is limited scope for complex decision-making. For instance, a bot can extract invoice details, but it cannot determine if an invoice is fraudulent without AI integration. The enterprise version is expensive for small businesses and individual users, which can pose a challenge.

I have been using Automation Anywhere for more than a year.

It is stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

The stability of the bot depends on the factors like design and application changes.

It is highly scalable and flexible. Cloud-based Automation Anywhere offers maximum scalability. I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.

In our university, there are more than 500 students using Automation Anywhere.

It has good technical support, but the response quality and availability depend on your subscription plan. They offer standard technical support as well as premium and enterprise support.

Multiple support channels are offered, including documentation, community forums, chat, email, and phone support. Self-service support is also available for all users and is free for everyone. Community forums are helpful but not always reliable for critical issues.

Positive

It is better than UiPath Community Edition, open-source RPA tools like RoboCorp, and Blue Prism. 

Automation Anywhere is very easy to use. It does not require any coding which makes it more user-friendly than Blue Prism. Automation Anywhere is also cloud-based which is not the case with Blue Prism. Automation Anywhere's price is better than Blue Prism.

Its deployment is easy. The deployment time for Automation Anywhere cloud depends on factors such as infrastructure complexity. For a standard cloud deployment, if using a basic setup, the time required is between thirty minutes to two hours.

Ongoing maintenance is required, especially if bots interact with a dynamic application, cloud service, or AI model. We are using cloud services, so regular updates are required. If the UI of an application changes, we may need to update it.

The enterprise version is expensive for small businesses and individual users.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten. It is a great solution for automating business processes and repetitive processes. It works great for data entry, invoice processing, and customer service automation.

I currently work with both UiPath and Automation Anywhere. I mostly employ these tools for RPA automation use cases. For example, I can handle any kind of manual invoice processing, document automation, or any manual processes involving multiple business logic and applications.

I think the automation creation is very straightforward. It is drag and drop, with no need to write any code. It is very self-explanatory, making it easy for non-technical users to develop. Also, the overall platform is easy to navigate and learn, making it simple to adapt and use. As I automate manual processes, it helps reduce efforts, leading to financial savings because the speed at which I process has improved. Additionally, I have been able to redirect some headcounts to other work areas, such as research. This has yielded financial benefits by reducing the headcount on these processes. Normally, it takes three to six months post-development and moving to production to realize the benefits of each automation. Since implementing Appia, I have seen significant benefits within a couple of years.

The platform has good capabilities, but it could improve by providing more development options. Currently, it is really restricted to whatever its own ecosystem provides. Aligning the product more closely with a framework, such as the .NET framework or the standard coding practices in other languages, would simplify adaptation for regular developers. It would be beneficial if the platform provided options for power developers to integrate seamlessly with languages like Java or C#, allowing them to write their own scripts and code.

I have been using the solution for about five or six years.

So far, the solution is good and stable, without much downtime experienced.

Organizations can onboard this platform and scale their automation journey because it is very easy to adapt and set up. They can seamlessly integrate with most business automation processes and use the platform to automate their processes on those applications.

I believe the support is on par with industry standards. The SLAs are based on the criticality and compare well with other companies in the market. I would rate them around nine.

Positive

I was previously using UiPath. The switch was mostly due to cost factors, specifically regarding licensing. Otherwise, in terms of capabilities and the platform, WebKit is also a great platform.

The initial setup is somewhere in the middle, neither very complex nor very straightforward.

I had a team for deployment, coordinated by our infrastructure team. The whole team, including five engineers, was involved.

In terms of percentages, costs depend on the complexity and size of the processes. On average, I have managed to reduce spends by up to fifty or sixty percent relative to our budget.

I evaluated Blue Prism and other tools like WorkFusion, among others. However, I found the Automation Network to be more capable and easier to migrate from UiPath.

My advice is to evaluate and compare with other products available in the market. If someone is looking for an automation platform that's easy to adapt, easy to set up, and competitively priced in terms of licensing, they can definitely choose this product. With courses available in Automation Anywhere University, it should not take more than a month to learn properly and try it out. I have Automation Copilot, similar to MS Copilot, to help developers build code based on prompts. I haven't fully utilized it yet. I would give the overall product a rating of nine out of ten.

We attempted to implement this solution into the back-office business processes of various entities.

The program itself is phenomenal in terms of its design. It solves a lot of different issues. It cuts down on the need for large accounting personnel groups within organizations because it automates back-end office processes, such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, and just all those types of things. I am a CPA, so I see the potential benefit of Automation Anywhere being implemented within a business structure.

What Automation Anywhere is offering is amazing from a back-end office accounting standpoint. If implemented correctly, it is amazing.

I have not integrated it with any other solution. I have only been focused on backend office automation, but I know it has that capability because I have trained in it. I have built the bots. It is amazing if it works properly. I consider myself a fairly intelligent person who has been in the accounting field since the eighties, and it is truly revolutionary.

I like the holistic approach of the company to automation. Many automation software solutions focus on only one area. I am particularly talking about back-office processes such as accounting, AR, AP, treasury management, financial statement forecasting, presentation, budgeting, and similar areas. That's where my expertise lies. I appreciate that it automates all these processes. 

The learning curve is an issue in terms of implementation and writing scripts, which is a challenge. Although it is advertised as easy to implement, it is not. It is not easy to learn or implement. However, if you have the IT staff and are willing to invest the time to learn it, then it is worth it. You need the planning and the capability to hire the appropriate people to implement Automation Anywhere. It is not as easy to implement as advertised. It is difficult across the board. It is difficult for technical and non-technical users.

I am still in the learning stages. I attempted to implement it with a client, but the client did not move forward with it because it was too costly and too difficult to implement without the significant assistance of Automation Anywhere. The issue with Automation Anywhere is that the majority of their help staff or technical staff seems to be offshore, not located in the United States. That is, in my opinion, an issue for companies. In addition to that, it is for companies that are very large. It is not for mid-level and below companies because it is too expensive. It is unfortunate. I could sell a bunch of it if it was affordable. So, the fact that the majority of their staff is offshore making it difficult to get technical support from them and the fact that it is unaffordable to anything other than the Nikes of the world is an issue in the United States.

I have been using Automation Anywhere since June 2024.

I've attempted to engage with customer service, but it is difficult and a drawback. For instance, my partner and I did extensive training on the university to get certifications so we could be approved as resellers. The process had many glitches, and verifying our passed certification exams took weeks, something that should be a simple button press. For an entity promoting automation, there was no automation involved in that process, which is a red flag.

Neutral

In terms of return on investment, the benefit is realized economically because you may not need as many employees, reducing personnel expenses. For example, if you have seven people in accounts payable, you might reduce that number to three if Automation Anywhere is implemented and monitored properly, so the savings can be realized right away.

The software also minimizes errors, unlike humans, who may lose focus during routine tasks. The speed at which the automation bot operates compared to a human delivers significant cost savings and return on investment.

I've also used Topalti, an accounts payable automated solution. Topalti has prewritten all the scripts and done everything needed, unlike Automation Anywhere, where I would have to do everything manually. However, Topalti only focuses on accounts payable for certain industries.

A major issue is that a large percentage of their help staff is offshore, which is problematic for U.S.-based companies. It is also more suitable for very large companies, not mid-level or smaller companies, as it is too expensive. 

I could sell more if it were affordable. 

The two main issues are the difficulty in obtaining technical support and the fact that it's unaffordable for anything other than very large companies. 

Overall, I rate the product ten out of ten, the sales channels four out of ten, and the support four out of ten.

I use it for a variety of shared service applications. It helps manage the volume of processing and handle many incoming ticket requests. I also utilize it for invoice processing, aiding AR collections, and some reporting. There is quite a variety of applications for Automation Anywhere.

I like the web-based development and the control room interface, which is robust and works well. Importantly, I experience fewer errors with finding screen elements to interact with when compared to other automation software. 

Automation Anywhere presents fewer maintenance issues. 

The built-in features, such as the connector builder and AI development tools, are easily accessible, keeping the software up-to-date. 

Before joining, I observed it to be a robust program with immediate visible benefits. I had fifty bots running, effectively demonstrating their workload. The hard parts, like recognizing ROI, building a backlog, and setting up internal infrastructure and governance, were already completed. Having done this elsewhere, I appreciate these accomplishments.

There are a lot of good built-in features like the connector builder. The AI aspects are very good. The software is keeping up with the times and I appreciate the new features they add.

It's easy for new users with no experience. You can learn quickly. You can also use pre-built packages that allow you to build a bot without much experience. There's Automation Anywhere University to assist as well. All of the tools are there to build a very robust robot. There is a learning curve within development. However, if you already have basic programming skills or a basic understanding of how computer science works, then it's fairly easy to build the bots that you need and can incorporate advanced logic, looping, variables, and things like that. If you understand those concepts, then it's not hard at all.

We have integrated other tools or applications with Automation Anywhere. That's one of the things that RPA is really good at. I couldn't say I've integrated other applications with Automation Anywhere so much as Automation Anywhere with other applications. We're using a lot of external vendors and automating processes for those external vendors that were problematic since they didn't integrate well with others.

The main request I have for Automation Anywhere is to focus more on technical demonstrations. They do extensive marketing and explanations of new technologies, which are great - however, often less technically focused. Common use cases are frequently repeated, such as loan processing and order fulfillment. I would like to see better and more technical use cases for the AI features, showing how to build them instead of repeated general examples.

I have used the solution for one year.

It is rock solid. Stability is great. I have never had any concerns about downtime or other issues.

The software is very capable. I am small compared to others, however, as a higher education institution, I'm probably one of the largest as a whole. The software can scale as far as I need, with no limit other than the investment of money, development time, and effort.

Initially, it took me some time to reach the right team for help, however, the support was knowledgeable and resolved the problem fairly quickly. Although it took a little over a week due to the tricky nature of the issue, I am generally satisfied with the support and have no significant concerns.

Neutral

I have used UiPath previously. I like Automation Anywhere better.

The initial setup was easy. It took me about a week or two to understand how to use it, and that's being generous. The concepts are straightforward and it's very similar to UiPath, beyond a few differences.

We haven't needed to update to a new version. The major update from on-prem to cloud was done before I came. 

The more minor upgrades were painful, yet not at all due to Automation Anywhere. ERP updates and things like that required us to test every bot. None of that was a fault or a problem with our Automation Anywhere. The rest was relatively smooth and straightforward, and the control room updates were relatively smooth and straightforward. This last update, we had a little bit of a hiccup. However, working through support, we got a workaround until the fix can get into place.

There is some maintenance needed on the bots. That's not the software's fault. The maintenance effort is quite low compared to what I was used to. 

Pricing is fine. Renegotiating our contract was challenging, however, I have a new salesperson, and I am excited about working with him.

I'm an Automation Anywhere customer. 

I have spent the last year getting a handle on Automation Anywhere, bringing five years of experience with its main competitor, UiPath. The opportunities for AI are boundless, and I am working heavily with the hospital to identify use cases. I am incorporating AI in invoice processing to extract data correctly and for image preprocessing. 

Benefits form transactions, like enrollment forms for healthcare and dependent change forms, are the next focus. 

I have yet to use Copilot, although I do have a use case that I'm hoping to build out.

In terms of seeing the benefits to Automation Anywhere, this particular job had already been using it for five years before I came. So the benefit had already been realized, and it was already a fairly robust program. I could see the benefit the first day I started. We already had 50 bots running, and it was very easy to see all of the work that they were doing. The hard part had already been completed in terms of recognizing ROI and building out a backlog of work, and having the infrastructure and the governance internally set up was already huge. I've done all those things before in other employers, and that takes significant time, a couple of years, to do it properly. Since that was already done, I could just hit the ground running, and we could just build more bots and make the bots that we had more robust.

I rate the product eight out of ten.

I use it mainly as automation software. Any kind of processes that are manual, like data entry, for example, I definitely use it for those. Many legacy applications like Mainframe that don't have APIs or can't access the data to write out to that system are addressed mainly for those purposes.

The most valuable feature is the ease of use. It's very user-friendly. Someone with even basic technical prowess can jump in and learn it very quickly. The difference is night and day. With processes involving three or four people, having it full-time manually to address that, and once we implement the automation software on these processes, it effectively reduces eighty to ninety percent of the manual effort.

The automated regression testing could be better. I need to build my own testing suite, and I know other tools have built-in testing suites. That is an area that's very weak in this platform.

I have been using it for about six years.

The stability is pretty good. They are responsive. Just like with any software organization, they usually deal with tier one support, and nine times out of ten, I know more than they do. I get some good support when I advance beyond tier one support. When it gets escalated to the next level is when I receive some good responses and better support.

I think it's a little difficult to scale just because they don't have an automated regression testing suite. We currently have a bottleneck at quality control because of that. If I had to give it a number, I would say six.

Their customer service is pretty good. They are responsive. Just like with any software organization, they usually deal with tier one support, and nine times out of ten, I know more than they do. I get some good support when I advance beyond tier one support. When it gets escalated to the next level is when I receive some good responses and better support.

Positive

I have used UiPath, Blue Prism, OpenRPA, and NintexRPA. I've dabbled in a couple of others, and I can't even remember what they are because there are so many, but those are the main ones that I've used throughout my career.

It was already in place when I got to my company.

I think the setup cost is comparable to the other solutions. I don't think it's anything out of the ordinary. I've been on platforms that are a lot more expensive, and this one is comparable.

I would give them an eight out of ten. I definitely would make sure that you at least have some basic understanding of development, just basic principles, and then start training in Automation Software Anywhere Academy. Many like to think businesses can come in and build stuff, which they can, but sometimes they don't know basic software design principles. Once the volume increases or if they don't build it correctly, there are constant issues, and then we have to bring in the core team to help out. It's nice to say something, but in action, it's something that's not the same. Let's put it that way. You can build anything, as I said, you can build all kinds of things, but is it built correctly?

I work in an automation Center of Excellence in health care, and I utilize it for everything and anything that is appropriate in health care. We have approximately 41,000 hours worth of automation that operates and handles tasks ranging from assisting with HR operations, such as leave of absence, to medication monitoring and much more. Our portfolio is quite expanded.

We are also jumping into the Co-Pilot world because we want to start embedding it into Teams, SailPoint, and some of the other tools. 

We are also looking at a unique use case. We have discharges, and there are certain types of prescriptions that are just extremely specialized as part of discharge. We have medication contracts. One of the things that we have going on in our organization is a buddy system and then an official request. The buddy system is essentially prescription denial appeals. We would like to use AI to search our contracts to figure out what is the standard for these medications and what are the denials and appeals that we can have prewritten and ready to go.

It was a response to COVID that prompted us to dive into scalable tools. We needed scalability and the ability to perform 10,000 or 1,000 or 200 tasks at any moment. No other software that we have had could provide such scalability and is built in a modular way.

It is unique and almost invisible. You do not realize its impact until you discuss it with users who provide positive feedback. We build automation, support it, and deploy it. When we meet with our users later, they have such good feedback about how impactful these things are to their path. For a nurse, not having to repeat a task 10,000 times has made a significant difference. Especially during COVID, it was truly helpful on the front line. Now, I also employ it with other powerful medication tools.

I was personally able to see its benefits as soon as I jumped into software. It was one of the most impactful and amazing tools for my day-to-day life because, at any point in time, I could design something, modularly build it, and deploy it. It can handle such amazing tasks, including things like templates and design and all other materials that we have for communications or activities, and produce them for me automatically. For me, personally, it made a huge impact right from the get-go, but as an organization, we definitely had to learn how to make choices on our use cases.

It has absolutely saved us time and costs. The whole point of the software is to develop something that at least on a use case basis provides value. We have many years of learning how to do our program. Over time, we have also been using it for other things, such as compliance. We have definitely evolved from just saving time or money to using this solution for everything we can use it for.

I have just built my first Co-Pilot, and it is significant in how that part functions. I am also exploring the API task tools, which appear to be quite significant, but for the most part, the forms and the capability to integrate data from other software represent the specialty.

One thing I learned with Co-Pilot is that it is very static. For instance, when dealing with tables and their headers, I must program them in a form. If my build changes, I have to return to my form and update the table titles. Features like looping are missing from Co-Pilot. If I want to perform a task five times in a row, I have to rerun Co-Pilot five times just to achieve that. This is an aspect I considered as I explored possible changes and improvements. Other than that, it is among the best software tools and organizations I have worked with. I find it challenging to suggest much beyond continuing the good work and expanding on it.

I first heard about it back in 2021. This will be my fourth year using it.

I had an issue lasting for the better part of three years, and it was quite severe. I never lodged a ticket because whenever we attempted to resolve it internally, the problem temporarily ceased. Each time I ran my Digital Colleagues, I encountered a strange error on my screen, which persisted for a couple of years. However, an update corrected it, and it is no longer an issue. 

The only current challenge involves a discrepancy in table columns. In my support session, we could not figure out why my table was off by one column. I had to have a blank column zero for my table to align correctly. These minor issues aside, the tool now functions more stably. 

Previously, inconsistent search behavior occurred in the ServiceNow search bar. It was puzzling because it worked differently every single time that we searched in that search bar, but that issue has been resolved.

Scalability is the most remarkable feature of this tool for me. For example, we have a recognition system for automation. I designed a template for various achievements by citizen developers, such as completing a class or build. At first, it was not a big deal to just do it yourself because you are only doing a handful of templates, but the last round had 34. Initially, creating a few templates was manageable. With time, however, it escalated from 5 templates to 34. We are now using this tool multiple times weekly for template generation. Eventually, I aim to release it to the entire automation team so that leaders can readily recognize achievements based on team activities. 

Scalability is impressive; whether handling five or a hundred million templates, it remains easy to design and build. The tool's intuitive nature contrasts with other tools, which are less intuitive for building and scaling, explaining my infrequent use of them.

I have contacted their support for technical issues with the software as well as personal build support.

The response is very quick. Within a couple of days, they are communicating and establishing connections to set up solutions. In my case, I meet with my customer relations every Friday. We get prompt responses to any issues I raise. The support is fantastic, even when dealing with complex situations due to the complexity of some of my builds. While not all problems are solved immediately, this is typical for complex tasks.

I very recently had one of the best support help sessions that anyone could have ever asked for. We were doing something really complex in Co-Pilot, and it was something that was completely unique to even our internal development team. They helped me solve that, and they did it in such a great way. It was a ten out of ten for connecting to someone, taking the time, and doing all of the work. However, we have also had some support tickets in the past that have been just okay. It has been a mixed bag on that front. I would rate them an eight out of ten because they do try hard to connect and support us even though we are doing some complex work.

Positive

This predates my time, so I am not fully sure. I do know Microsoft automations were used before transitioning to Automation Anywhere. Selecting a vendor was a part of the process when we started the program, and Automation Anywhere was chosen.

The decision for the software had already been made. I was only involved in meetings to discuss how we were going to deploy programs, design things, and create standards. 

I believe it took six months from deciding to go live with the software to deploying automations. It did not exceed six months to get everything up and running, though there might have been a year of planning. Once I was set for launch with everything in place, the transition from purchased to used tenants happened swiftly, possibly in less than six months.

Initially, I used strategic resourcing for implementation. At the time, I had an engineer, a technical lead, a technical developer, and an architect—four individuals in total—who implemented all my environments. Four environments were set up, following designs, standards, and rules. This setup involved comprehensive program design, focusing on transitioning and using different control rooms and establishing standards.

We support the entire tool, and we support the automations which require lots of maintenance and support. That is only due to user design or systems changes or some of the elements that are out there. We have a whole support program that goes along with our automations. As for the tool itself, it is just like any other software tool. It is certainly more stable than something like Microsoft where you constantly have to go back and correct issues or incidents. Our incidents are with bots, not with the software.

My job involves citizen development. I work in the field of helping people connect to this technology and use it. In terms of ease of use, the software is not hard to use, but things are presented to users in a new way than what they are used to. I had to make people start with basic programs and learn how to do a simple process. It is a little bit of an advanced tool. It is easy to understand for me and I love it, but it is definitely a step above entry. Before I instituted an entry course, the learning curve was a little bit steeper. We would have individuals coming to our four-day course and then come through and do lots of support. When we taught them the basics of how the automation software works and then brought them into this advanced tool, it was very quick for them. Our results were much better, and we have those individuals building regularly.

In terms of integration, what was interesting to learn was that everything requires a configuration. For an organization like ours, it involved figuring out how we should branch, how we should grow, and how we should engage other teams to get those configurations implemented so that packages will work as intended. That was an interesting learning curve for us. We had to adjust how we train, talk about packages, and use the software to make sure that we had the right integrations and setups. A great example is ServiceNow. They have the packages for ServiceNow built in. If you have all the access to the information and all the things you need, you are in good shape to have some really awesome automation. If one of those pieces is not in place, you have to think a little bit about how you are going to access that.

Automation Anywhere is a ten out of ten. The company is impressive, especially with its new initiatives like Agentic AI. In five years, it is going to be amazing to witness their advancements, particularly as AI continues to play a significant role.

I have used it for multiple use cases across various domains. I started with automating use cases in the utility industry, such as customer billing and processing meter readings. Those were the initial use cases for which I used it. Currently, I am using it for a transport company in the U.S., where we process their invoice documents, perform three-way matching, manage their supply chain records, and handle daily billing bots. All these implementations have been successful.

For the transport company, we have identified a use case. Their ticketing team is manually processing all the incidents that occur during that day. We are now collecting all the documents and information about previously resolved tickets. We are creating a knowledge base out of it, and we will use that along with the AI agents that Automation Anywhere has. We will create an AI agent that will help take care of tickets by learning from the knowledge base. We are working on the PoC, and within the next quarter, we will be able to implement that.

We have implemented a Generative AI solution using Automation Anywhere and ChatGPT for email management. We implemented it for semantic analysis and sentiment analysis. One of our clients wanted us to create a bot that automatically fetches all the reviews from all of the social media platforms, including Twitter, and create a knowledge base within their own platform or database, whether the review is positive, negative, or neutral. For that, we leveraged the ChatGPT plugin along with Automation Anywhere. We created a bot that reads all their reviews, does semantic and sentiment analysis, and accurately describes them as positive, negative, or neutral.

We have not yet used Automation Co-Pilot, but we plan to implement several use cases. One use case involves integrating AI agents with Automation Co-Pilot for conversational AI. Users can input queries, and AI agents will run prompts to fetch required details directly in Automation Co-Pilot. This is particularly beneficial when the process SMEs need to verify post-bot run actions and address any data issues. Currently, the RPA support team is asked to rerun bots. We aim to enable SMEs to prompt bots for reruns, reducing response time from different time zones from five to six hours to immediate actions, significantly boosting productivity.

By implementing Automation Anywhere, we wanted to reduce the manual effort required for various processes for the clients. Previously, the client's accounting team had to collect all the bills, and based on the vendor, upload those to a particular portal. They daily receive bills for more than 250 vendors. We have now automated the process. There is no manual intervention. Earlier, this effort used to take more than 300 hours per month with more than ten people, whereas now, it does not take more than 50 hours per month, and they have only five people.

We have done integrations with Oracle NetSuite and Google APIs. We have done automation with ChatGPT and Claude AI. We are now leveraging Document Automation along with AI agents. We have also done integration with Anthropic. The integration is quite smooth and seamless. 

Document Automation is a game changer. Earlier, with IQ Bot, we achieved partial automation—around 80% of the process was automated. With GenAI and Google Vision OCR now integrated into Document Automation, end-to-end automation is achievable, even with unstructured documents.

The AI agent automation is noteworthy. Everyone is moving from RPA to agentic process automation. I had a chance to delve deeper into it at the Imagine event in Bangalore in 2024, where I engaged hands-on with AI agents. We are exploring use cases to create our own AI agents, which is exciting.

The generative recorder and BPMN converter features are also impressive. If we have recorded the complete process flowchart in the .BPMN file, uploading this file into Automation Anywhere results in a complete bot framework, reducing development efforts by 30%.

Additionally, the generative recorder's ability to handle changes in web portal elements ensures process continuity and notifies developers of updates, aiding in environmental change understanding. If any element changes on the existing web portal on which the bot is currently working, the generative recorder can record and capture the action. The bot will automatically understand at the run time that the particular object has changed, and it will automatically take actions to complete the process and ensure that it does not fail because of that one change.

AI agents need further improvements. AI agent technology in agentic process automation is still evolving. We have only scratched the surface, and there are many potential use cases yet to be explored. As technology advances, I believe it will enable us to implement more comprehensive automation solutions.

Document Automation has issues related to speed. When I compare Document Automation with IQ Bot, IQ Bot is faster than Document Automation. My understanding is that they are still evolving Document Automation, and this issue of slowness will be resolved in the upcoming .35 version, so we are good with that.

They are working on signature identification and validations for handwritten documents. Currently, we are able to extract data out of scanned but digital images, but there is still scope for improvement for handwritten documents.

I started using Automation Anywhere in 2015, so it has been over eight years.

It is stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for stability.

I would rate Automation Anywhere a ten out of ten for scalability.

Our clients are small to medium organizations. We have seven people working with Automation Anywhere.

I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

We have completed several migration projects, moving existing bots from platforms like Blue Prism, UiPath, and Power Automate to Automation Anywhere. This was due to limitations with these platforms, such as Power Automate's compatibility issues with legacy systems, which resulted in partial automation.

Customers seeking end-to-end automation have found Automation Anywhere to be the best tool. We analyzed all bots and processes to determine that Automation Anywhere met all requirements. We converted their process documents and redeveloped bots in Automation Anywhere, resulting in successful end-to-end automation. 

Licensing costs for Blue Prism and UiPath are higher compared to Automation Anywhere, making the latter's ROI more appealing. 

Automation Anywhere is currently leading with GenAI and AI solutions. UiPath is also good, but they are still defining its market position. They are a bit confused about whether they want to project themselves as market leaders in AI, RPA, or agentic process automation. Automation Anywhere has already released five to six features directly connected with AI, not just for the customers but for the developers. Blue Prism recently came out with the cloud version. They are still exploring how they can leverage more AI into their platform. Power Automate works great with Microsoft products, but it fails badly outside the Microsoft ecosystem.

Automation Anywhere has enhanced a lot since we first started using it. At the time, it had the client/server architecture. It was not on the cloud. We had to manually install Automation Anywhere on each and every desktop. In 2019, they shifted to the cloud, so we just have to install the bot agent on any computer we want to use as a device. It does not matter whether it is a bot creator or a bot runner. That has improved the installation setup and reduced the configuration time by 80%. Previously, we had to manually install the client and control room and configure them. That was a tedious task, whereas now, because of the cloud, its deployment is very simple and user-friendly, and it has reduced the earlier effort by 80%.

Almost all clients use cloud deployment, but a Korean client has an on-premises setup because they are very diligent about the data. Cloud deployment is easier than on-premise deployment.

Cloud deployments typically take a few hours, around four to five hours. On-premises deployments can take up to two or three business days due to customer environment restrictions and infrastructure limitations. If conditions are optimal, the setup can be completed in one day. For the cloud, deployment time is much shorter, taking only about four to five hours.

The updates happen automatically for cloud deployments, whereas for on-premises setups, we have to download the new release files from the portal and manually do the updates.

In terms of bot maintenance, currently, our team is working for three customers, and there are 105 bots. Our team of seven people is handling these 105 bots. We are doing 24/7 service and daily spend four to five hours on average for bot monitoring and support.

We have one person for the cloud deployment. For on-premises, we have two to three people.

It is not cheap, with costs ranging between 700 to 800 dollars per month. While Power Automate is cheaper at 15 dollars per month, Automation Anywhere offers superior features, user-friendliness, and smoothness. Many customers are transitioning from UiPath and Blue Prism to Automation Anywhere, acknowledging its value. 

The pricing is justified and on-point. There are bulk packages that include licenses, Automation Co-Pilot, and Document Automation. Both Automation Anywhere and partners like us offer discounts.

For non-technical users, I would recommend the citizen developer program on Automation Anywhere University. They have a training portal where people can register themselves and do the learning paths. There is a learning path for new developers or people who do not have much technical knowledge but want to start their automation journey. They can go ahead and do that citizen development training and complete that learning path to understand it in a better way.

It takes about six months to learn it and start using it. The best part about the training is that you can also do hands-on training along with it. You can simultaneously learn and implement it. Six months is a good enough time to get your basics cleared and start your automation journey.

I would highly recommend Automation Anywhere, but the recommendation depends on the customer's specific requirements. For example, for automating tasks strictly within the Microsoft ecosystem, Power Automate will suit. However, for incorporating third-party applications like Oracle NetSuite, I would recommend Automation Anywhere due to its broader capabilities beyond Microsoft applications. Automation Anywhere easily accommodates diverse market use cases to meet customer requirements and scale effectively.

Overall, I would rate Automation Anywhere a nine out of ten.