Automation Anywhere vs. IBM Business Automation Workflow

Automation Anywhere is well suited for automating repetitive or complex tasks that can be performed on a timeline such as data processing, data extraction, and file transfers. Automation Anywhere also has capabilities for integration with legacy applications and APIs to automate more complex data flows. Automation Anywhere is also ideal for automating document processing, form filling and other web activities since it has both image recognition and image-based automation capabilities.

On the other hand, Automation Anywhere is less appropriate for tasks requiring high levels of system intelligence such as machine learning or natural language processing as these require different types of technology. Additionally, if a task requires manual elements such as validations or reviews then Automation Anywhere may not be the most suitable solution either. It can be possible to set up automated validations but that might not always result in an ideal solution due to its limitations.

Have your process first on paper Its important to first document the process before venturing into BPMS. It will save a lot of pain and heartaches. A BPM tool is no magic bullet, it merely automates your process. Its upto you to put visibility and tracking on top of it. Provide monitoring so that you get a chance to improve your process continously. BPM is not an application If you are trying to build an application with BPM, chances are that your are alraedy failing. BPM must be a strategic initiative for an organization. Yes, you build Dashboards, Reports and other software in BPMS, however you do it at a process level not at an application level. http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2011/05/bpm-initiative.html Know the difference between process data and business data http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2011/05/lombardi-best-practices.html http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2012/02/bpm-system-architecture.html

• Now I easily generate the invoices and quotation generation is an easy task now. Previously it was very time consuming as we have to drag the data from the excel sheets.
• I will praise its integration with other software that has facilitated us to make amendments in the data across those platforms.
• Its interface is very easy and user friendly.

Incentivized

• System does a great job normalizing business process and automating order processing tasks. Before TeamWorks, the process was much more manual and more expensive staff ($65k to $70K) were required to manage the process. Since implementing TeamWorks, we need much lower-skilled workers to manage order processing.
• System ensures that we have consistent data across all systems.
• Rules engine is really the “company playbook” – it is the heart and soul of how the company works. It handles thousands of orders per day

• Automation Anywhere doesn't come with easy installation, We need to install Java, IDEs and Databases in an orderly fashion which we are not able to do.
• Automation Anywhere has no workflow design which is not making us to understand the process.
• Automation Anywhere has no fit to size object cloning.

Incentivized

• The system gets crashed when many instances go into the queue stage. The system even crashes and sometimes restarts automatically when the load on the server increases. We had to develop a separate software for this and maintain the same.
• We cannot manipulate the data during run time. It is difficult to develop user-interfaces with complex functionality.
• In order to consume external services that follow HTTP protocol, we need to use IDE for that, and consuming services from IDE takes a lot of time to give a response.

Incentivized

To continue enjoying the benefits of our productivity improvements and efficiency focus.

This particular decision will be made by other people. Overall IBM BPM is the best BPM engine that I have worked with. It is implemented at our company and IT and business are already somewhat familiar with it. Therefore if asked I will recommend renewal as long as the price is reasonable.

On more complex use cases, Automation Anywhere requires technical background like knowledge on network protocols and database language on task creation, and even people with technical background might have some trouble in the beginning because of the product particularities on how variable manipulation works, or how to get the object cloning (a more resilient screen manipulation command) to work as intended. The scheduling of tasks on the Control Room and the autologin feature isn't intuitive as they should, so much of this works requires documentation analysis to get it done on the first time.

Incentivized

• The system is easy enough to use but, by definition, is a complex tool. However, they have done a good job generally balancing tool complexity / capability with usability. When comparing to MS Biz Talk, for example, Biz Talk has less functionality but is actually harder to use.
• Software is very flexible. For somebody with the right technical background, it’s quite easy to write some Java code to overcome any hurdles or make the product do what is needed

Automation Anywhere is a great tool for a low cost, fairly easily scalable, and quickly learned. The company is growing by leaps and bounds and continually pushing the automation boundaries. The problem with fast expansion is that sometimes you can grow more quickly than you can appropriately support your products. While Automation Anywhere has an excellent support structure in place, every company and situation is different, and they often struggle with why problems arise in the system and how to fix them.

Incentivized

Issues can be raised through tickets and it works based on the priority of the issue. The Support Team response is also good and the solution is provided in a short span of time. In a case where the issue is serious, they try to find out the root cause and provide an alternative for it.

Incentivized

• Attended on premise sysadmin training for 4 days, 8 hours per day. Although further follow-up training was available, I never felt the need to go back. Training was very hands-on with real modeling (rather than just following a manual). Very effective.

Perfect training from the online academy the software offers it for free

Nothing in particular

• Very satisfied – not too difficult at all.
• We had a consultant available as part of our contract, but we didn’t really need to use (except for some advice on ActiveDirectory and single sign-on)

Automation anywhere scores well with respect to other solutions when we look at bot implementation, bot management, and basic automation. From a security perspective as well, AA fares well as compared to other solutions. UIpath is better suited when we operate using VPN systems and integrating with homegrown solutions.

Pega Pega is a comprehensive suite which offers a unique theme of BPM development in the market. A no-coding approach based on rules with inheritance makes Pega a very powerful product. However Pega, falls short on integration centric capabilities and very rigid to customize. On the other hand IBM comes with array of products which suits needs of varying degree. Advanced integration is solved by BPEL Process Server which has support for state based patterns and mediation. Dynamic rules and event management can be solved with WODM, Cloud to on-premise connectivity with Cast Iron, Enterprise gateway and security usecases with DataPower, Social BPM with IBM BPM , WODM, mobify with Worklight. Pega has a little bit of eveything here and there. It solves the dynamic rule management, brings out the flavor of Social BPM and mobility with Antenna ( I guess) and predictive analytics as well in one single suite. There are certain usecases which needs to have a little bit of everything, however this little bits and pieces of functionality when its blows, Pega would have problems to scale. With IBM its a bit nightmare to maintain a variety of technologies, however you can wish to go for one without the other and go for something only when you truly need it. Pega vs IBM Its difficult to pick a winner. In nutshell when you want a full scale BPM with rich integration capabilities go for IBM BPM. On the other hand if you hava mature integration capability already, Pega can yield quick results for you as well. Pega's strength is its methodology. IBM BPM's strength is integration. Actually you can't go wrong with both in terms of implementation. My strong recommendation is to invest time to process analysis and pick a good vendor to support consulting and implementation.

Highly reliable once you start experiencing the results. It helps you to have a clear cut results with better productivity numbers and financial savings

It scales from small team interactions to business processes serving thousands of employees, as well as straight-through-processing needs that go well beyond. Of course, scale is always in the eye of the beholder, but IBM BPM does a good job of giving you all of the hooks, APIs, and data that you need to take on whatever scaling approaches you need to meet the load

• Customer satisfaction has increased. They are pleased with faster development and execution.
• Cost internally for our company is heavy and the client doesn't bear the full cost for it.
• We didn't need to train our staff a lot for this. Just a week of overview was enough to get started.

Incentivized

• It has added value to the upper management to give visibility into what is happening at any time in the enterprise.
• Boosted employee morale because it gives them all the information to work the case/task in a single location.
• Identifies bottlenecks and improves the turnover.

Incentivized