What is our primary use case?
There are multiple use cases. For example, we have automated shipping process for the operations department, including shipping repairs, production line assembly, and line automation using attended robots.
Using unattended bots, we have done Engineering, finance, accounts receivable, invoicing, invoice validations, and reconciliations. For sales, we have automated order management and order inquiries. We also have proactive monitoring bots for IT. So daily IT jobs are monitored, and the robot automatically takes action by triggering tickets in ServiceNow.
How has it helped my organization?
Every human-dependent task has been automated and is now entirely done by a robot. Still, the people who formerly did the job are part of the process. They check if the robot is doing it right or wrong. And then, we keep on retraining the robot for any new exceptions that come up, so we are fully equipped to handle new scenarios. So this has fostered a culture change within the organization where people are coming up with ways to automate what they were spending several hours a day doing. Once these tasks are automated, they can focus more on the company's strategic initiatives. And that's a win-win for the company as well as the employees.
With UiPath in place, we are moving away from training people on the core applications, which are pretty complex. We've built a headless frontend (Touchless ERP), so it's really easy for anybody to join our company and be productive. A robot handles shipping, repair, and the assembly line instead of a human. Plus, these processes are executed with high accuraccy, removing human error from the equation. That's how we are mitigating a lot of our human-related problems.
Furthermore, the culture that we've built has helped in terms of the principle of retire, recruit or resign. So when someone quits, retires, or we need to recruit, we first determine if we can automate their job functions. The RPA governance team tries to digitize the person's tasks as well as their knowledge and experience in the organization.
What is most valuable?
The attended bots have helped a lot, and we have a leveraged concept of touch-less ERP. We can build a UI or a headless frontend, like a popup, that interacts with a human, and then the robot carries out its function. So the person doesn't need to be trained on any core applications like Oracle ERP or customer applications, which would entail additional screening responsibilities and the normal human tendency to make mistakes.
So we have built a headless frontend that is technology agnostic. And it interacts with the end-user in a user-friendly, straightforward fashion. So it's only four or five steps, whereas it was formerly 30 or 40 steps. And that's how this way of implementing RPA has helped the customer heavily.
What needs improvement?
Process mining is something that we are doing, but I think it needs to be more mature. UiPath is still new to process mining. They are decent in SAP ERP when it comes to process mining. But compared to Oracle's E-Business Suite and all, they are still pretty new. And they need to come up with some model templates for how to adopt process mining within your organization. For example, they could use some accelerators to help onboard customers. Right now, it's not that easy. So process mining is something that they need to improve on for Oracle ERP.
UiPath has an excellent strategic roadmap when it comes to features. So if it's not already in the works, one thing they could add is AI fabric, and if UiPath could bundle it into the primary licensing with Orchestrator, that would be great. Concerning artificial intelligence and NLP machine learning, we are getting rid of the requirement where a chatbot can integrate and synchronously interact with the robot in real-time.
The ability to listen to and reply things in real-time would be good to have. They are already doing it, but the ease of implementation and options to integrates needs to be flexible, and the license should be bundled into their current offering so that it's more cost-effective.
Another thing is UiPath's OCR we hope it has the same quality as FlexiCapture, a separate solution by ABBYY. That would be awesome if the UiPath had native OCR functions that were the same level of maturity as FlexiCapture.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using UiPath for three years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
UiPath Cloud Orchestrator and on premise bots has 100% stability in last 3 years we have faced zero Product related issues. the Platform is rock solid stable robust also upgrades have been very easy to do with zero impact on existing running processes.
We have around 34 RPA Processes built using UiPath have a very good execution success rate of 94-96% , rest 4-6% failures/exceptions are only due to data or network issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is great with UiPath. We have a distributed load for robots, so the long-running ones run on a different unattended bot while the fast-running and business-critical bots run on a dedicated VM. So that's how we have distributed the scalability. But if you want to add a new bot, it should take less than 30 minutes to host or create a new machine. And then, the deployment or deployment of the package or the code takes less than 30 seconds. So It's hardly 30 minutes.
So about 20 attended bots are deployed. Some of them are in two or three shifts. In total, around 40 people are using attended bots, and there are only two unattended bots. So UiPath is running more than 30 processes for 30 different people. We also have around eight business analysts spread out across various departments who use this too. So you're talking about 50 plus people at least connected right now. And these are purely business analysts or staff on the shop floor, like operators and repair technicians. But the processes that we have developed are helping around 60-plus business users that we use to do something.
So technically, with the deployment that we have done — around 24 robots—the utilization for the unattended robots is approximately 52 percent. So technically, what we have is sufficient for the next year, at least. We can develop more processes with the existing licenses that we hold. So definitely expansion-wise, we'll expand more on the process side.
How are customer service and support?
UiPath technical support is excellent. They have a good knowledge base, and the support team resolves issues fast. Once you create a ticket on cloud technical support, it's pretty easy. You get an email, start communicating, and then it is solved in a day or so.
The UiPath licensing and product teams have been beneficial. They gave us an option of a free trial where you can download it free and use it for 60 or 90 days. And that trial is extendable. So we got six months of free usage for UiPath Enterprise Edition. And that's how we were able to do things confidently. We could implement things to show to businesses and get funding. UiPath has been flexible when it comes to licensing costs, including free trials. Their e-Team comes in, helps you deploy, implement stuff, and solve technical challenges you have on the ground.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We hadn't used any automation solutions before. It was always a human.
How was the initial setup?
Out of all the automation solutions we tried, UiPath was the easiest to install and configure. Within less than 20 minutes, you can set up a machine with the robot and make it functional. For the initial setup, if the Windows machine is ready, you only need to install and set up the robot.
UiPath also has the simplest deployment versus all the other vendors. Deployment takes less than 30 seconds. It's just a click of the button from Orchestrator, where the packages are available to download for the robot. In addition, there is an auto-download feature that automatically installs the packages remotely on several machines.
So the implementation strategy includes unattended bots in data centers, which run on their own. They are in a secure facility and are very hardened machines. They only communicate certain out-call to Orchestrator in the cloud. There are also attended bots sitting all over the warehouses and people using them on their own laptops. So implementation strategy for the attended bots isn't complex because they are overseen by daily users on their laptops and desktops. So it's deployed on those machines. Additional security and hardening will be required on the unattended bots installed on the data center level.
For implementation, we used some outside consultants to set up the governance framework for RPAs and the discovery mechanism. They also helped us identify hotspots, determine ROI, establish the recovery cost in months, and do value realization.
So after going live, they helped us look at things like cost and time savings as well as the actual recovery costs incurred in the process. They also helped evaluate the solution in terms of automatability index, productivity, efficiency, and quality. So, we analyzed all of these factors, which helped to prioritize the processes selected. We did all of this first and then converted everything into a factory model. What we call the digital factory team is responsible for development. And then, the governance and architecture teams orchestrate the development by going out there and doing task mining and process mining. For maintenance, we have five or six people for 32 processes.
What about the implementation team?
Level of expertise with SI which is LTI is excellent
What was our ROI?
We have an Novigo automation framework that helps us to calculate ROI from UiPath. It calculates ROI based on the time a human would take to perform the task manually versus the time needed for a bot to do it. Then the hours are converted into dollars. Finally, we can get the cost per transaction per hour per dollar spent per record. That helps you calculate an accurate ROI when identifying RPA case, and we can see the value realized every month. We calculate the amount of records and hours saved through automation and convert that into a dollar amount per process. That's how we have been able to do a very accurate value realization based on the number of transactions processed by the robot.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The license is around $40,000 yearly. Technically, that's the lease price. But UiPath told us to go through our distributor, and by doing so, we've saved at least 50 percent of the costs. So it's now around $24,000. That is pretty cheap compared to Blue Prism or any other vendor out there that offers a combination of the same features.
You do need to purchase an additional license to get Insight licenses. We were the beta testers of UiPath's Insight application, which is purely on the analytics side. A lighter version of insights should be embedded into Orchestrator itself inside the standard offering of the UI without the extra license costs. So that way, we could track the number of processes, exceptions, success rate, and calculations in a single platform without buying any additional licenses.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, WinAutomation, and UiPath were four we considered. We used Novigo Automation Framework Reports to test and evaluate each solution to see which one best suits our requirements. That's how we chose UiPath over the rest. It included deep-dive reports from Gartner, Forrester, Nelson Hall, and many other third-party analysts. These reports featured a highly detailed heat map as well as information about the cost-effectiveness of the deployment model, the development roadmap, and the maturity of the product. So that helped us to easily compare UiPath to the others.
What other advice do I have?
I rate UiPath nine out of 10 because it's easy to develop, manage, and maintain. That's what sets it apart from Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, or Power Automate. It's a simple drag-and-drop interface, which allows for low code automation development. And that makes it pretty much different from other options that we have. For example, developing basic automation can take few hours in UiPath versus a few days in Automation Anywhere. Implementation-wise, this is a pretty easy model when it comes to having a cloud orchestrator versus on-premise. Going on the cloud has reduced the burden of needing dedicated administrators to manage and maintain the platform. Minimal administration is required to manage and maintain Orchestrator in the cloud.
So that's the fastest way to onboard UiPath. But there is a lot of groundwork on the governance piece. So before even investing in UiPath or any other RPA platform, you need a solid governance framework and a foundation that will help you do the correct automation at the right time. Versus just doing anything using the tool. The tool is designed to do all types of automation but they need to be beneficial for the organization with good ROI and value realization.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
*Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.