IBM Robotic Process Automation with Automation Anywhere

IBM Robotic Process Automation with Automation Anywhere is a relatively new offering from IBM Digital Business Automation (DBA).

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) uses software robots (or bots) to automate activities that are performed by people, so that they can focus on higher value activities within your business. Typically, RPA is used to perform highly repetitive tasks that do not require any human judgement. RPA integrates with existing systems by using their Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) and mimicking the keyboard and mouse actions of a human operator. This can radically improve time to value, reduce human error, increase throughput, and decrease development costs.

RPA is one of the IBM digital business automation capabilities which does Task automation within the IBM Automation Platform for Digital Business.

Workflow combines the automation of end-to-end business processes (BPM) and case management capabilities. A workflow ensures that people and systems receive tasks to perform at the right time with the right information that is required to complete the task. Workflow provides the Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) for business users so that they can manage and execute their tasks. System activities are used to integrate with one or more back-end systems using traditional system APIs.

Decisions automates rule based decisions that are defined by the business to implement its policies. Business rules can be maintained and scheduled in real-time. ODM decisions can be used by other systems within the enterprise to provide the business with the agility to react to changing business requirements in real-time.

Data Capture enables the enhanced automation of information extraction from forms, documents like invoices, claims using OCR, cognitive and other techniques. The extracted information can then be passed and used by the RPA, workflow or decisions capabilities.

These products each fulfil a specific role for digital business automation within an organization and used together they provide a powerful automation platform that delivers business value that is greater than the sum of its parts. RPA is a very useful capability to have in your business, but most businesses will need a broader “Digital Labor” capability in combination with the other automation capabilities to best meet all requirements.

Use IBM RPA with Automation Anywhere with workflow, decisions and data capture to deliver a complete digital business automation capability within your organization. IBM has developed samples that you can use to implement the following integration scenarios:

IBM RPA with Automation Anywhere can be used for either attended or unattended RPA scenarios. Attended (or desktop process automation) may be useful in specific situations, but we recommend using unattended RPA for most cases. The following integration scenario demonstrates how desktop process automation can be used in combination with workflow where you consider it to be applicable:

Learn more:

16 responses to “IBM Robotic Process Automation with Automation Anywhere”

  2. This seems very interesting.
    Can this do automation on continuous testing activity ?
    Can this automate the application/processes running on different platforms such as Mainframe, Java/J2EE, .net ?

    Reply

    • IBM RPA with Automation Anywhere includes three screen readers and various plugins to integrate with systems using their graphical user interfaces and via system APIs. As long as a system has a user interface that is accessible from a Windows operating system then IBM RPA with Automation Anywhere can be used to integrate with it and mimic the actions of a human operator. We intend to add a terminal emulator capability for Mainframes in a future release, but existing screen readers can also be used to integrate with mainframes. IBM RPA with Automation Anywhere can integrate with Java and J2EE apps via REST APIs and their UIs.

      Reply

  4. Hi
    I want to learn RPA.Could you suggest me a good book regarding RPA to do a fresh startup.
    Thanks & Regards,
    Suvankar Choudhury

    Reply

    • Is your question related to IBM RPA with Automation Anywhere or IBM Business Process Manager?

      An RPA bot is typically used to automate a single activity within an over-all business process. IBM BPM is used to automate the orchestration of activities within an end-to-end business process. Some activities within a BPM process flow will be performed by people and other tasks can be automated using bots or traditional system integrations. The term headless typically refers to BPM solutions that do not use an alternative UI technology to those provided out of the box. For more information on BPM UI I suggest reading the http://ibm.biz/BPMUIRedbook.

      Reply

  8. Hi,
    As i have seen work flows , Queues and IQ Bots ..etc in Automation anywhere but in IBM RPA Automation anywhere i didnt see those things, is there any specific reason to disable those features?

    Thanks in Advance,

    Reply

    • From the Q1 release at the end of March 2018 IBM RPA with Automation Anywhere V10 will have equivalent capabilities as Automation Anywhere Enterprise V10 plus entitlement for IBM BPM Express for bot orchestration and hand off to human operators to handle bot exceptions. The Workflow feature was removed for legal reasons and is included in the Q1 release. Queues are a future RPA capability, which is only currently available from Automation Anywhere as beta for non-production. IQ bots is an add-on that can be purchased from Automation Anywhere and used with the IBM RPA offering.

      Reply

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