Blue Prism Reviews

The solution’s use case for our company is HR hire automation. When an employee gets onboarded there are a lot of formalities that HR should do like collecting data for payroll.

Another use case is tender creation. We use the product for tender creation whenever a lead is converted into an opportunity.

I like the solution’s simplicity in process and objects. The solution has very clear guidelines and demarcation on processes and objects which is not present in other tools. The tool’s architecture is also very simple and clear. The product’s licensing model is also very simple. Other tools do not have such a simple licensing model.

The tool needs to work on its security aspect since there is a lot of regulatory compliance for enterprises like the GDPR. The product needs to improve the data login policy as well. They also need to come up with a mechanism where every change and upgrade happens within the element of the target application. Our partner struggles to keep up with the cybersecurity guidelines of my company.

The solution is quite stable except for a few security aspects. Our partners are highly skilled and ensure that everything meets client standards.

The product’s scalability is quite good but not as good as Power Automate. Our developers, testers, and support team uses the solution. There are around twenty developers, three to four testers, and a ten-member support team.

The product’s support is managed by our partners 24/7. In case we encounter any issues, the partner takes the necessary steps.

The setup of Blue Prism is quite simple. We have the three-tier architecture database applications from the client that comes in the form of a development or production machine.

The deployment took almost a year to roll out the pilot automation. We started in early 2019 and completed it only by the end of that year.

Our partners helped us with the solution’s deployment.

The tool’s licensing is on a monthly basis.

I would rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. I would recommend this solution to anyone where money is not a factor. Blue Prism is very stable and good in terms of data and regulatory compliance if you are dealing with applications based on RDP or Citrix-based applications. However, if there are budgetary constraints and no RDP or Citrix-based applications, then you need to go for Ui Path or Power Automate which is cheaper.

The use cases range from document ingestion, process enablement, and data management, including financial records cleanup.

So it's essentially the arms and legs for digital processes. So the clients have processes that have tech enablement, but there's stuff that needs to orchestrate the different tools and bring them all together into an end-to-end automated process.

There is room for improvement in the pricing. 

I have been working with this solution since 2017. So, we have a mix in our portfolio. So, some of them still have the older versions, but some of the newer clients are on the latest versions.

I would rate the stability a seven out of ten. Because a lot of times, there are specific versions of things that you have to use. So browsers, plugins, all that good stuff. 

For example, some of our clients had their clients on auto-update. And what happened was it was updated during the auto-update, and then the bots would fail because there were plugins or features that were specific to versions of Chrome that we included in the solution. But on the upgrade, they would then fail. On some of the older versions, some of the challenges were around the actual configuring of the virtual machines and their allocation of memory.

In essence, you had the physical memory on the machines, but virtual machines weren't configured properly, so they would run out of memory.

The scalability of the solution is a two-factor thing. 

The ability to scale up and scale out of the Blue Prism portfolio, meaning the agent server monitors all that good stuff, is pretty straightforward. I would rate the scalability for on-prem a seven out of ten and about eight out of ten for the cloud. 

But the second factor is a lot of the scalability has to do with the latency of what you're connecting to. And so if you're connecting to something that isn't particularly scalable, it doesn't matter how many robots you scale out. You're constrained by the latency and the size of the application or solution or service that the robot is using. 

Therefore, scaling is normally an organizational issue such as procurement.

We have around nine customers using this solution. 

The customer service and support depend on your customer level. So, if you're a platinum implementation partner or a platinum client, you obviously get better support than if you're just using the standard features. But we've been involved with Blue Prism from the beginning, so we have a bit of a privilege for this.

The difference is UiPath, you are part of the community, and getting support from within the user community is actually quite effective. But it's just because of a significantly larger install base.

Positive

The biggest challenge is at the infrastructure layer, especially if you're doing on-prem. Getting all the network and firewalls and all of that sorted out because many clients want you to use the robot on the production systems, but the production systems are in tightly controlled network environments. It normally means opening a firewall, subnetting, and all that kind of stuff. But getting the software up and running and getting the agents up and running, all that type of stuff, that's pretty straightforward. 

On the cloud side of things, it's providing access from the cloud platform to on-prem data. So it's more client-specific security and networking issues that are the challenge versus installing the software if you do on-prem or configuring it if you do it in the cloud.

We provide the maintenance for the solution for some of our customers. We are the solution provider. That's a full-stack contract, meaning that we run it, manage it, maintain it. 

And then, for some of our customers, we are an enablement partner that's really about providing design and build and training. And for some of them, we provide secondary or second-level support.

I've considered other options because of how Blue Prism's product and its acquisition by ACM have shaped its direction. Blue Prism seems to be moving into a more confined space and may not be as open as UiPath. 

In UiPath, the ecosystem just feels a lot broader, and there's a lot more innovation and commercial models. 

With Blue Prism, everyone wants to charge for everything, whereas in UiPath, you know, the community guard. There's a lot of really good stuff and useful stuff coming out of the community guard that are solving problems because they need to be solved, not necessarily because there's a business model or a commercial model sitting behind it. 

Blue Prism is definitely more about the seats and tires, whereas UiPath is for the sneakers and jeans guys.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. The only reason that I'd rate it as a seven is because of the commercial model. Blue Prism has some great features from a technology point of view, but they're more on the pricier side compared to UiPath. The difference in technology and the solution doesn't warrant the difference in pricing.

Blue Prism is a mature, stable product with lots of built-in features. 

Blue Prism develops its own tools and process automation, but the documentation is unclear and incomplete. 

I rate Blue Prism nine out of 10 for stability. 

I rate Blue Prism nine out of 10 for scalability. 

Blue Prism provides templates for most use cases, but we've had to contact their developers for a few OCR use cases. They helped clarify some confusion about the documentation.

The initial setup was straightforward like any other Windows application. You set up a basic SQL Server and install it. We installed it on our own on-prem server. 

I rate Blue Prism five out of 10 for affordability. Blue Prism costs much more than other RPA tools. It's expensive, and the maintenance costs are always high.

I rate Blue Prism eight out of 10. It's a good option if your automation team has that kind of budget. It is scalable and easy to implement. You can create lots of boards, but each will have separate licenses and require more resources or on-premise servers.

Our primary use cases are mostly for device processing, such as extracting data from PDFs and reporting it into ERP applications.

We have a customer who used to perform certain tasks manually. They no longer have to do that as the bot performs the tasks. They only need to review whether the bot is working as expected or not. It has significantly improved their process time, and Blue Prism has proven to be time-saving and resource-saving.

The most valuable feature is that it is more secure and reliable. It is also why big companies such as banks mainly use Blue Prism.

Blue Prism doesn't have a web orchestration or control room where businesses can directly check the trends or carry out the process directly from the URL without downloading additional software like Nextiva on their machine.

Some other features are also missing in Blue Prism. For example, the record and play feature makes development faster, but it is not there in Blue Prism. When you start the recording and do the activity, it automatically generates the steps. So that feature needs to be included.

I have about four years of experience with Blue Prism. We're working with the previous update.

Blue Prism is a stable product. But it's not very flexible when it comes to integrations. Blue Prism's forum is smaller, unlike some other RPA tools, where there is a large forum with a wide range of integrations readily available in the marketplace. If you want to integrate any solution from the Digital Exchange, you may not find as many options as compared to other tools. So, while Blue Prism is stable and secure, it may not be as flexible as other RPA tools.

When compared to other RPA tools, Blue Prism is highly scalable and reliable. I have deployed Blue Prism processes that required deployment for up to fifteen users per process. Due to other factors, deployment permission is needed if the workload exceeds the system's capacity. Typically, it runs smoothly without issues, but in cases where the workload surpasses our support team's capabilities, we can deploy up to fifteen percent of the portal's resources, and the system continues to function effectively even at that scale.

In the beginning, when we were working with Blue Prism version 5, there were some issues after installing the latest update. So we decided not to install the latest version and only update after some time. Eventually, it became stable without any issues. When we needed to contact support for updates, we had to reach out to group parameters.

Most of the time, they say it is a known issue and will fix it with the next update. When we faced challenges, like setting up a load-balancing server, the support was good, and we could set it up without any issues. They provide good support for known issues but may not be able to fix some problems.

The initial setup process is easy compared to other applications. Our customers use the on-prem version because they are old customers; at that time, the cloud version was unavailable.

To deploy the solution, it is advisable to deploy it in an environment that closely resembles the development environment. It includes having similar desktop resolution, applications, and access. In case of any changes in common objects, thorough end-to-end testing of use cases is necessary to ensure that the existing solutions are not affected. It can be a time-consuming process due to the increased amount of testing required.

For the deployment team, it would be best if we have a separate chain management process to ensure security and prevent developers from accessing the production environment. Having dedicated resources for chain management would be beneficial not only for Blue Prism but also for other sectors. We can recommend tools to ensure coding standards are being maintained and submit them to the chain management team.

For maintenance, we should have a separate support model in place. Like in any other support model, it would include a support team with levels 0, 1, 2, and 3. The support team would be responsible for automated processes that provide information on the version, system improvements, and high memory usage alerts. This way, the support team can act accordingly and increase the model size if needed.

Having these measures in place would make maintenance easier. Otherwise, if the process runs at its peak level, it may not run as smoothly as needed. Without automated alerts, maintenance becomes more difficult, and the process may not function properly. Implementing these setups could be useful and can be delivered through email.

The pricing or licensing costs of Blue Prism are around $15,000 per year, primarily based on the number of processors run in parallel.

My advice would be first to assess your requirements. If you prioritize reliable security, Blue Prism could be a good choice for you, but it may come with a higher development cost than other vendors. Additionally, if you choose Blue Prism, you should ensure that integration is streamlined by developing your own code.

When it comes to business, the process assessment should be critical in finding the right solution. Not all processes are suitable for automation, and there is a risk that ROI may not meet expectations if the process is not suitable. It's important to consider the required equipment and ensure the solution is designed to handle potential issues, such as offline support. The solution should also be designed with the expectation of needing support once deployed. During development, it's important to follow best practices to ensure the solution is efficient and has a high ROI. It's also important to ensure that the solution is reliable and does not break. Manual intervention may be necessary if there are any issues, so it's important to have a plan in place for business continuity.

Overall, I would rate Blue Prism a seven out of ten because it has stability issues.

We are a company that automates console services. We work with console tax, revenue, and benefits.

We manage approximately twenty consoles in the UK, and we have achieved considerable savings with Blue Prism. We were able to automate a large task using Blue Prism to verify extensions and console tax, and we have seen great benefits from using Blue Prism for these tasks.

Although the solution may look complicated it actually has a lot of features and user space to work out of.

Optical character recognition has room for improvement.

I would like to have more options to automate from mobile devices without having to pay for additional licenses.

I have been using the solution for five years.

I give the stability a nine out of ten.

I give the scalability an eight out of ten.

We have around 18 people using the solution in our organizations. We have around 30 licenses to easily scale if needed.

The initial setup is not straightforward but also not complex. We had to set up the database. We required two IT people for deployment. 

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have seen a return on investment with Blue Prism.

I give the price of the solution a seven out of ten.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

The more time spent using the solution the more proficient we become.

We are currently using the automation provided by Blue Prism RPA in the claims process.

For one, it's easy to set up, and once it gets running it can handle multiple processes in an efficient manner. It's a very robust system.

Another nice thing is that, due to Blue Prism being a market leader in its industry, we often get people who are already highly familiar with it compared to other products. This was one of the main reasons why we went for it in the first place. 

Our primary challenge at present is that we are finding it difficult to get additional business insights into existing processes so that we can identify where we need to improve. Beyond that, we would also like to have a continuous monitoring facility.

I have been using Blue Prism for the past three years.

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. We haven't had any major issues with the product.

The scalability is good and I haven't seen any limitations as yet. Right now there are about 20-30 people using it in my organization.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

Blue Prism's support is good at what they do, and they have lots of people available to help.

I would rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

There was certainly a learning curve during our initial experience of it, but it was fairly easy to set up.

I would rate the setup a six out of ten.

It's an expensive product. For what they are providing in terms of capabilities and features for the price, I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten.

I have also looked at Celonis and ABBYY Timeline, mainly to see if they offer the continuous monitoring feature that we are looking for.

Overall, I am satisfied with Blue Prism, knowing exactly what the product can and can't do. At this point, for us, it's just a matter of figuring out how we can implement it as a more complete, comprehensive solution in our business.

I would rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten.

Predominantly, this platform is used for Robotic Process Automation. It's a low-code tool that doesn't require much technical knowledge and is easy to introduce to your business users in order to make them citizen developers. 

Most of the manual operations and administrative work are low-hanging candidates for automation using this tool. 

It can be used for your infrastructure or application monitoring use case.  

The tool has an extended feature of integration with different databases which can be further extended for analytics/visualization tools. These include Tableau, PowerBI, QlikView, and Splunk.  

The product has impressively increased the productivity and digital transformation effort within the company. The product's USP which makes it different from its competitor is the robust enterprise implementation and the maturity of this product. Its core design works towards building an Object Library. The product has enormous potential which customers can take advantage of thanks to the overall product maturity. The product is available in both the cloud and on-premise.

The core strength of the product is the database schema, reflected in its UI behavior and strength. 

From a leadership point of view, integrating the DB into any of your analytics/visualization tools can give you every insight into your program's health in terms of license utilization, ROI, support landscape, current scope, and future backlog capacity. 

We have integrated the product with our centralized infra-monitoring tool, which gives us real-time insights into BOT health and also the health of the underlying resources.

Emerging technologies adoption is a challenge for every organization, especially the products which address productivity/automation. 

The unstructured data, decision-making through machine learning, building data mining repos, and building smart contracts using blockchain will bed needed in the future. 

Any product that can make itself sustainable with its clients has to make sure they are making the right effort to integrate or upgrade its toolsets to cope with future needs.

I have been using this product for the last six years.

The product stability allows me to work on value-adding work rather than doing maintenance.

The product is fully scalable based on your capacity and automation needs.

We are at the top support tier and have had a good experience so far.

Positive

I have worked on most RPA tools. The company had already selected this product.

It is not complex to set up if your IT team has basic 3-tier application set up knowledge in the case of enterprise-level set-ups. Anyone can do single-machine set-ups by just following the instructions.

We handled the implementation in-house.

The ROI is a combination of soft and hard benefits. This is our 5th year using the product and we are easily getting close to 65% ROI.

I am aware of the pricing. When compared to most of its competition, it's almost near the same in terms of cost.

I have worked on most of the RPA tools. 

The rush to implement RPA is normalizing now. I hope that more companies will invest more time in process evaluation, design, and re-engineering, rather than starting to develop BOTs just to be in the rat race.

We are using Blue Prism mainly for the finance and IT automation processes.

The most valuable feature of Blue Prism is the control and development of the processes from one location.

The solution can improve by having a free license for evaluation purposes.

I have been using Blue Prism for approximately one year.

Blue Prism is a stable solution.

The scalability of the solution is good.

The solution can be suitable for all sized businesses, but it depends on the use case.

The support from Blue Prism is very good.

I have used UiPath and Robocorp. Blue Prism is more stable and provides good support, and a monitoring and development perspective.

Robocorp provides Python as a programming license and the cost is very low. All the features are available, but coding knowledge is required.

The initial setup of Blue Prism is of a moderate difficulty level.

I do the implementation of the solution with my clients.

The price of Blue Prism is high compared to others solutions. It would be helpful if they could provide a trial version for new users to try. Other vendors provide a community or trial version. There are not any hidden costs.

There are three different packages Blue Prism provides.

We are completely satisfied with the solution.

From a monitoring perspective, we have various stages and phases in RPA that enable us to perform monitoring, scheduling, and management simultaneously, which is a significant advantage. As a result, I can recommend to my colleagues that they utilize this capability and obtain certification.

I rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten.