Does anyone use PPC bid management anymore

I looked into bid management a couple of years ago and i found it a highly complicated process particularly if you where doing it over multiple search engines, the systems never seemed to work that effectively, I always couldn’t help thinking that if google or yahoo or msn, changed there API setup overnight that the system would also come crashing down without giving you any prior notice, has anyone used this more recently with success, I would be very interested to learn?