Our journey started with the migration initiative. We had to migrate some processes from our legacy RPA solutions. Next, we started expanding to finance and HR, including integration with other platforms like ServiceNow and Salesforce. There are multiple teams within Paramount, like CBS News, CBS Studios, and Paramount Plus, so we've worked with them to find opportunities to build automation. We've explored multiple use cases that deliver a solid ROI, with a focus on low-code and now-code solutions.

We have hundreds of application systems at Paramount, including legacy platforms. The merger required us to consolidate many of these systems, so there were many opportunities to use automation. One challenge we faced was that this process required someone to integrate the systems manually. It involved a lot of repetitive, mundane tasks to bridge those gaps. Automation Anywhere helped us accomplish those tasks.

The framework that previously existed was an on-prem solution. The transition to the cloud was a huge change. The second change was redesigning and refining existing processes. While we were undergoing migration, we talked to various customer groups and decided to revisit the processes and maybe remove some things that were unnecessary. We optimized processes and took the opportunity to revise what was on the existing legacy platforms.

There's a lot of buzz around generative AI, so we are considering that on an organizational level. At the same time, we are focusing on orchestrating end-to-end processes, not just the AI. We are having conversations with tech and business groups about solving enterprise-wide problems, and we can add AI into the mix when necessary.

I think there are many opportunities to add AI to existing use cases like legal, corporate, finance, and AI. Hopefully, we will start bringing more AI use cases to production, but we are still in the review and proof of concept stage. Still, the leadership is interested, and they've done a lot of research on AI, and we have a separate InfoSec team that must review everything. The VMware team also must review the technology. All of these AI technologies must undergo a stringent vetting process. I'm not part of that, but we share ideas and try to understand what's happening. Data analysis is a critical part. We must ensure that our data doesn't go outside the model, but we're open to any opportunity to improve our solutions and test out what makes sense. We'll try that and see how the end users respond.

Before switching to the cloud version of Automation Anywhere, I worked with v10 and v10, so I appreciate the core functionality and the fact that it's a low-code solution. That is one of the key elements that differentiates Automation Anywhere from other platforms and one of the reasons we have been able to achieve success.

It's accessible to business users with few technical skills. We've been able to add on to our current framework and build on our existing library of reusable components, allowing developers to build their automations quicker.

The time needed to learn Automation Anywhere has varied, depending on the user. We've taken on a large number of Cylance and Cisco developers. Some can pick it up quicker, but others take a little longer because of their prior project commitments. It's all over the place. It depends on how much time they can devote to learning the solution.

Many requested improvements are already on Automation Anywhere's roadmap, like a better governance model for AI systems. We also want to see more releases for autopilot/co-pilot from a generative AI perspective. We're expecting Automation Anywhere to release those in future updates, and as long as they maintain consistent improvement in their core functionality, I believe that will lead to success.

We have established connectivity with so many applications, so we build reusable components. We identify an application that business users might want to build, so we have a framework ready by the time they're ready to get onboarded and start developing. Automation Anywhere provides a seamless experience for utilizing those packages. They need to keep adding features so the solution doesn't stagnate. One example is email automation. There need to be multiple options for authentication available.

Automation Anywhere could add more tools to track the processes and ROI, so we can get a better understanding of the cost savings and compliance. We heavily track those metrics and make them available to the leadership for review.

I have used the cloud version of Automation Anywhere since 2021, but I worked on the previous versions before that in past roles as a consultant.

Automation Anywhere is highly scalable. That's one of the most significant advantages. We usually build a process on a smaller scale and then extend the capabilities. The scaling is relatively seamless.

I rate Automation Anywhere support eight out of 10. We've had a great experience with tech support. They've helped us with significant challenges we've faced and worked with us on feature requests and bugs. We've had lots of collaborative discussions.

Automation Anywhere is easy to deploy. Some processes can be deployed in a week, while the more complex processes may take four to six weeks. We have release controls in place, so everything is streamlined. All the deployment testing is handled before the automations go live.

Upgrading is simple because we're on the cloud platform. We don't need to upgrade anything. Maintenance takes place on the partner's side because the bot engine is installed and maintained there. We only need to install the latest packages to test the new features when they are released. That takes a little time.

I rate Automation Anywhere eight out of 10. They have a lot of expertise with ERP solutions, and the core features are keeping pace with the market. Automation Anywhere is incorporating new components like generative AI and planning to release a new governance model, so there is constant innovation and the company is working to make things better for business users and developers. It's a competitive product that's easy to deploy and maintain.

When I started working with Automation Anywhere, I automated mutual fund statements. Later, I switched to a financial services company, so that involved a lot of monotonous rule-based work that we had to automate. Then, I started working for this oil and gas company. We focus on finance, procurement, IT, legal, and refining processes.

I've seen business users doing this kind of repetitive work for 20 years, and they feel that there is a better use of their labor, so I wanted to automate things for them. For example, in the oil and gas industry, we need to extract information from purchase orders that we must pay out on invoices to various contractors. It's possible to improve efficiency by as much as 20 to 30 percent by automating those processes. We can do even better by asking the right questions to the business stakeholders. There's potential to automate and improve on things they've done manually in the past.

We see opportunities to operationalize AI for HR use cases. For example, we need to gather documentation for work travel, including a visa if an employee plans to travel abroad. Instead of having an employee ask HR folks about the process, we can set up something with generative AI. AI would also be helpful in some finance use cases. We still need to do some PoCs for generative AI before moving forward. Our data science team is working with something similar, but I haven't used it yet, so we need to try some smaller PoCs before trying it at a larger scale.

Automation Anywhere saves money. At my previous employer, we achieved $1.3 million in cost avoidance over two years. I expect to realize that much savings in my current role, but we are still in the enabling phase of our CoE. Next year, we'll complete large-scale automation. That's our goal.

UI and document automation are two features I like. Document automation is helpful because it simplifies extracting and putting data into different ERP systems. I have three or four use cases for document automation. I also like the recorder objects feature, which was called object learning in the previous version, and screen scraping.

It's easier for business users to work with Automation Anywhere A360. My previous employer used Automation Anywhere version 11, which was sometimes a little difficult. A360 is much more interactive. We have several users in our organization who have a business background, so it takes some time with some of the use cases. A business user might take two months to build more challenging use cases, whereas a developer could do it in three or four weeks. Though it takes longer, we want them to learn and implement Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere is interactive, and my experience with my coworkers has been positive so far. I'm on the CoE team, and we've been working to enable various functions involving the HR, IT, finance, and refining teams. They are using it. On average, it takes a month or so to train them, build their use cases, and put them into production.

The solution is currently integrated with PeopleSoft, ServiceNow, and SAP. The document integration gives us about 70-80 percent accuracy. We're mostly working on purchase orders, but I want to implement it for financial use cases, too. I'm trying to determine what the most efficient one is.

When we need to upgrade the bot version for various applications like SAP, the compatibility issues could be easier to resolve. The financial team is using version 5 or 6, but the automation engineer recommends only version 6 because it is more compatible. I think Automation Anywhere could handle these compatibility issues better.

I have used Automation Anywhere for nearly seven years now.

Automation Anywhere is scalable, but it depends on what you do during the design phase. You must consider the opportunities for scaling up while you're planning. It's easy to scale if done correctly.

I rate Automation Anywhere support nine out of 10. It's excellent. We have premium support. Our account manager is very nice. If we raise an issue, it will be resolved the next day.

We also have Power Automate, but we do not use it at the enterprise level. We only use Power Automate for two use cases. A different team uses Power Automate, but they are not associated with the CoE. They are only using it for personal automation.

Deployment is easy, but the testing takes time. It also takes some effort to migrate the bots from version to version, like v11 to the cloud version of A360. We learned it the hard way, but once we moved to A360, that took care of many of the infrastructure issues we faced with the on-prem version. It was mostly some technical challenges, not infrastructure-related changes. The cloud version is much better than the on-prem.

Automation Anywhere requires maintenance, but how you develop the processes also matters. We try to implement best practices, like using wildcards instead of URL names. That's why we try to find ways to make API calls instead and get the data from there. We are currently doing a PoC that involves retrieving the data from third-party websites, and they told us that they could build an API that would make it easier to maintain. The APIs work better than redirects.

I tried UiPath, but I didn't like it as much for our current use case. Automation Anywhere is a better fit, but I have used UiPath at three organizations as a contractor, consultant, and full-time employee.

I rate Automation Anywhere 10 out of 10.