We have had a number of different use cases for Automation Anywhere. As a higher education institution, many of the use cases have been for back office operations.

Some use cases include automating expense reimbursement processes. This involves the submission of data after collection, validation of data, and several different steps in that process.

We are exploring invoice reconciliation and invoice processing as a new use case. Many of the other use cases have been system-to-system data transfer where they don't have APIs, which has been accomplished through UI automation and RPA.

We chose Automation Anywhere to investigate the feasibility of using RPA in place of dedicating other team's time for developing custom APIs between systems. We wanted to tackle problems that we couldn't dedicate resources to solving with custom in-house development and bridge the gap between third-party external software.

The governance guardrails built into the Automation Anywhere platform have allowed us to develop solutions at a pace while adhering to our internal organizational policies.

The scalability of Automation Anywhere, the framework, and user interface are particularly impressive. When evaluating Automation Anywhere versus alternatives such as UiPath for RPA specifically, their tool works exceptionally well. Their customer support model has been fantastic at resolving issues. Security and infrastructure are other significant components why we continue to use them.

The actual tools on the RPA side have been very nice to work with. When onboarding members of our team, being a lower-code platform with much of it being no code, it has been good to bring people up to speed. It's easy to bring both people from developer and non-developer backgrounds up to scale. Our developers have applied standard SDLC principles towards working within that platform.

With agentic process automation, there are several challenges we were looking to solve. GenAI infused document automation has been of great interest to us, especially in invoice processing for our financial side. With APA in particular, some use cases involve taking complex processes that could have large decision trees, and instead of dedicating time and resources towards fleshing out all those if/then statements or pushing exceptions to human middle processing, we aim to lower that scope and allow for quicker delivery time.

The Composer orchestration tools have been great in developing new solutions. Automation Anywhere started as a pilot at our CMU, where we are at the forefront of numerous computer science areas. It's part of our CTO's mission to embrace automation tools, artificial intelligence, and robotic process automation, bringing internal processes into the 21st century and beyond.

Automation Anywhere helps us overcome challenges in the age of GenAI. The platform has solved our initial challenges as we transition from being a pilot to a long-term customer. With GenAI, challenges revolve around use case identification and implementing AI in processes while ensuring governance and protecting sensitive information, government information, and student information.

AI governance and data protection are extremely important for our company. We are currently reviewing the Autopilot capability and evaluating document automation with AI capabilities for new solutions.

As we expand our components of the Automation Anywhere platform that we utilize, we need better connections between them. Currently, our shell framework, metrics, logging, and guardrails are done at an RPA or Bot level. As we take advantage of other features such as work queues, process Composer, and AI agents, we would prefer to see features around offering frameworks around those models or domains specifically that can encompass all of the subset features that Automation Anywhere offers.

Bot Insight is an available feature, and we can create our own custom metrics and logging in RPA Bots, but we don't want to have to send results to a logging subset bot after using an AI agent or higher components such as document automation. We need a native way in Automation Anywhere's framework to tie all that information together, including AI dashboard, governance dashboards, and document automation results.

We have been using Automation Anywhere for about two and a half to three and a half years.

Their customer support model has been fantastic at resolving issues.

In the RPA space specifically, we have not used any other solution that addresses similar needs before using Automation Anywhere.

For internal technologies prior to implementing RPA, we had various solutions. For table-based and database-based operations, users were using spreadsheets.

We are now able to convert certain things to databases, even without native APIs for certain software platforms, because we can leverage Automation Anywhere to bridge the gap between disconnected systems. In the specific landscape that Automation Anywhere competes in, we haven't used direct competitors.

We have been replacing software developer adjacent technologies, custom script solutions, and low code/no code platforms with different features from Automation Anywhere.

Standing up the service itself had no significant challenges. There were a few small challenges, however, nothing significant that were nonstarters for us. Our teams were able to work around any issues. The biggest thing we had was was enabling SAML authentication to work with our identity management services.

Other than that, standing up the service, connecting the host controller to our local VMs, etc., that was easy. There was a little bit of network stuff, and some of DevOps stuff. Thankfully, we have a great DevOps team. Working with Automation Anywhere is largely straightforward and seamless.

We have been happy with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Automation Anywhere so far. There is sticker shock with many new features, however, we definitely think that the end results can more than justify the cost. We are evaluating the use case and the resources needed to stand up solutions using some of these features.

The cost versus return for the traditional out-of-the-box features has been very reasonable.

Since the evaluation phase, we have not considered other solutions that do the same as Automation Anywhere. We have been extremely happy with Automation Anywhere. The tools provided for the cost, scalability, robustness, and infrastructure have been very satisfactory, and we have not had a significant need to evaluate alternative platforms.

This may not stay that way forever as this is an ever-changing landscape, but for the foreseeable future, we don't see ourselves evaluating alternative platforms.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Automation Anywhere a ten.

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.

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.