Agentic Process Automation (APA) Platform

I am a Senior Enterprise Architect still working for a company, using Automation Anywhere myself. Mainly SAP is integrated with Automation Anywhere, where I have used SAP mostly, and Salesforce as well, but not completely. Most of the tools I have integrated and interacted with is the SAP application mainly and web apps. Desktop apps are not too many, but web apps is another area where we have used heavily along with SAP. This is my experience from working with customers.

Automation Co-pilot has improved my productivity a lot. I think it has increased by 60% in terms of the tasks that I put forth when I log in and log out, and all the tasks will be done quickly. Even the next week activities I would be completing. My productivity has increased and it is growing steadily and gradually. As of now, I see my productivity has been enhanced by 60% using the Copilot features. Automation Co-pilot has helped free up staff to work on other projects and has helped me considerably.

I love Document Understanding in Automation Anywhere, especially IQ Bot; those are very good features to work with because of the needs and there is a potential opportunity for all companies to do these sorts of document processing, document extraction, and document learning. These are very good features in automation that I love to work with. The API is another way of working. In Automation Anywhere, IQ Bot is very good, which is comparable to Documentum. Automation Anywhere also has agentic AI solutions, which are very good in terms of minimal development and no overhead on deployment. I can easily plug and play in the organization's client ecosystem and spin up these solutions quickly. I love to work with these features repeatedly.

I assess Automation Co-pilot's ability to integrate with the organization's day-to-day applications as very good. This is very much applied in our job day-to-day at work. We see how the prompts can be enhanced and how to get low-code solutions and quickly spin up the POCs. Our complete knowledge base and ontology is very good in terms of using them in Automation Co-pilot. We are planning to drive a delivery strategy for one of our customers through this Copilot, which will orchestrate the workflows, orchestrate the agents, and orchestrate the bots so that we will have a complete end-to-end autonomous automation from an operations perspective. I love to do that. This is very good, delivering things driven by automation and Copilot features.

I assess the integration of automation into my workflows, APIs, business applications, and documents as very good. There are no words, but very good in terms of integration—fantastic and one of the standards and best practices. You can easily integrate with it. The ease of use is where I have seen improvement from the developers' perspective, because I interact with the developers and they keep telling me these are all integration points that Automation Anywhere offers in its capabilities and I think they are very easy to use. The integration of automation with other products, technologies, and tools across the world industry is one of the best.

I don't think Automation Anywhere is easy to use for business users who do not have technical skills. Though they have the feature, compared to other products, I don't see a lot of capability that Automation Anywhere has from a citizen developer's point of view or for non-technical folks. If you are very smart and you know how to use Automation Anywhere, it is all easy. But for basic folks and even non-technical users, 95% of them will be business users, and I don't see Automation Anywhere having the same capability comparatively. Power Platform, especially Power Apps, Power Automate, and Copilot Studio products and agents, are pretty good. I have seen this through my own experience and I regularly interact with business users teams for several engagements and have seen their feedback. They liked Power Platform very much compared to any other product, possibly Automation Anywhere. I have seen most of the users clinging to Power Platform in terms of ease of use, usability, and ease of doing any sort of development from their perspective.

Automation Anywhere can be improved by adding more built-in models, especially for standards across countries such as the United Kingdom, India, and Japan, regarding the way of passports, the way of invoicing, and supporting double-byte languages. More built-in models should be there instead of relying on custom models. Today, they are very good, but somehow they are not going to help or support our client engagements completely. We have to build a custom model. If we had specific models, country-specific, supporting every standard one, such as US passport or India passport, and supporting double-byte languages, more product capabilities would be exposed to the outside world and more users of Automation Anywhere bots across the world would benefit. I see this as an area where UiPath has advanced because they have good built-in models that you can train and retrain. I have seen one or two customers switching from Automation Anywhere to UiPath just because of the many built-in models available. If Automation Anywhere has this, I think the product will be very complete. I am sure the product team will be considering these facts based on customer feedback from organizations and partners.

I don't think any customer has asked for something which Automation Anywhere has not supported. I am just thinking about what could be the best improvement. Everything is there. Readymade solutions are available in the marketplace. Document understanding is there. Models are there, and you can develop and customize. Automation Anywhere also has IDP, though I think IDP needs some improvement.

I have been dealing with Automation Anywhere for almost three and a half years, almost three and a half years.

I would rate their technical support as nine out of ten. They are very quick and they go deep into troubleshooting. They come up with resolutions. I have not had to contact support more than five times in my time with Automation Anywhere, but whatever I have done or interacted with the team, I think they are very good. They consult deeply, get the logs, troubleshoot the diagnosis, use the diagnosis report, and then they are able to resolve it quickly. The support has always been good.

The deployment of Automation Anywhere is not at all complex; it is very good. We deploy bots gracefully and we do not have to take down anything. Everything is done through our DevOps. We do it without disrupting the business. It is mostly a graceful method that we have adopted and we are continuing to do this because nothing has impacted us. There are some things one or two here and there, but overall, it is very good in terms of deployment and not disturbing the business.

Automation Anywhere has helped me save time and costs. I think there is great value, especially from a developers' perspective when they are working on very strong, complex automation projects. We see how Automation Anywhere helps us in terms of spinning up the bots. The workload management is very perfect. I know this is a feature that has been around for a while, but it is helping me to manage the work because we have the multi-bot architecture concepts here where multiple bots work together. The whole thing is very helpful and quite helpful. I am very excited to use that technology everywhere in every organization wherever I am working with the client ecosystem.

I find the pricing of Automation Anywhere reasonable because of the value it brings to the table, the features, the capabilities, and how it supports the business processes, workflows, and the needs of the business and the client. I think it is worth the pricing. The features, the product capabilities, and how it benefits the customer is more important than the cost, considering the ROI. It is worth it based on its value and business value.

I would rate Automation Anywhere overall as nine out of ten. Automation Anywhere is undoubtedly the pioneer in the market. All three that I have experienced are the contenders, and in fact, the Microsoft platform also, I would rate it as nine out of ten. All of them I rate nine out of ten—not just Automation Anywhere, but all of them—because I have seen them through my own experience and I have interacted and used them in my career with several organizations and client organizations. Some people are interested in Blue Prism, some in Microsoft Power Platform, some in Automation Anywhere, and some in UiPath. It is all based on how they want to proceed and based on the business case they have done for their organization. I would rate all four of them as nine out of ten because they are supported for every need.