DevOps Specialist at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
The solution's most valuable features are RPA automation, auditing, and validation of metrics in web applications
Pros and Cons
  • "It is a stable solution."
  • "They should incorporate more functionalities in the analytics tool."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution for features such as two-factor authentications, product compatibility, etc. Also, we use it to monitor dashboards and for logging different applications.

What is most valuable?

The solution's most valuable features are RPA automation, auditing, and validation of metrics in web applications.

What needs improvement?

They should incorporate more functionalities in the analytics tool.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution for a year.

Buyer's Guide
Blue Prism
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Blue Prism. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable solution. Sometimes service failure occurs. But it fails due to the infrastructure rather than the tool.

How are customer service and support?

I once raised a query regarding the user bucket issues.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have used Micro Focus earlier for IT operations management and HPE operation orchestration features.

How was the initial setup?

The installation process takes a week to complete. It gets installed in three stages, development, test, and production environments. Sometimes, while configuring the solution with Windows servers, we are restricted from testing a few functions for security purposes. We can't test Blue Prism's Agent components because of the restrictions.

What about the implementation team?

Our team of three executives, including me, a Database Administrator, and an Operating Systems Administrator, implement the solution for customers.

What other advice do I have?

I rate the solution as a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Implementer
PeerSpot user
Alin Mistode - PeerSpot reviewer
Enterprise Architect at a wholesaler/distributor with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Top 5
Focused on processing manual data, but there are challenges managing authentication
Pros and Cons
  • "We find the stability and the ease of reusing code design valuable."
  • "We had a lot of challenges managing authentication and reusing or using external authentication providers."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case for the solution varied, and some of the use cases were in financial and billing, while others were in managed services and automating infrastructure. It is deployed on-premises.

How has it helped my organization?

The biggest benefit the solution provided was in the financial sector. Specifically, in billing and processing orders for customers. So it focused on processing manual data that was coming from various systems or interfaces and putting it into the billing platform.

What is most valuable?

We find the stability and the ease of reusing code design valuable.

What needs improvement?

We had a lot of challenges managing authentication and reusing or using external authentication providers. For example, in API interaction, we need to get tokens from a centralized authentication platform that was always running for us. The solution can include attended robots similar to UiPath in the next release.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution for approximately five years and are currently using version 8.6.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good, but it is not perfect. I rate it an eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate the scalability an eight out of ten and it could be improved.

How are customer service and support?

We had a good experience with customer service and support. I rate them a nine out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

I was not part of the initial setup.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented the solution in-house, with an internal IT support operational team consisting of approximately ten people covering shifts so that they will be able to monitor and maintain the robots 24/7.

What was our ROI?

Based on the project, the solutions have a return on investment or breaking point at roughly 18 months. I rate the overall ROI a six out of ten. It is just a little bit above the breaking point but it is worth it. It does not have much benefit in the long term because our businesses are changing, and the time to use the robot was short.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is costly. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten, with ten being the highest price. It was approximately 700 euros monthly. Additionally, there was 25% included on subscriptions for maintenance but the percentage varied from year to year.

What other advice do I have?

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. The solution is good, but its authentication features can be improved, and the price can be more affordable. I advise new users to have a clear business value and a good process defined before implementing the solution.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Blue Prism
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Blue Prism. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Digital Strategy Manager at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Stable, scalable, and good for heavy backend processing, but needs easier decoding, better pricing, and better AI and cognitive features
Pros and Cons
  • "It works very well for batch processing at the backend. Scalability-wise, it is very robust. It is also stable."
  • "Its front end is not very good for things like screen scraping. UiPath and AA are very good for that. Blue Prism's license is costlier than UiPath and AA. They should be improving its price. Its artificial intelligence and cognitive features are not that strong enough. Cognitive automation should be their next area of improvement. The decoding of the bot is a highly painful activity, and this is an area of improvement for Blue Prism. It is tough to find variables and get the code in place. You have to open the whole bonnet of the car to get things in place. Their training should also be improved. UiPath and AA have their learning communities. They provide free of cost basic certification. As a result, you get trained workforce in the market that can directly work on projects, but this is not the case with Blue Prism. It is costly to get the resources trained, which increases the overall cost of getting a resource for Blue Prism. Their tech support can also be improved. Many times, the issues that should have been addressed by L1 have gone to L2."

What is our primary use case?

We have got the Blue Prism license for financial auditing purposes. 

How has it helped my organization?

The whole auditing activity is run at the backend without any screen scraping activity and other stuff that generally requires human involvement. It was deployed for this purpose, and it has been working perfectly well so far. There are certain hiccups that come in between, but our team is able to handle them. So, it is mainly being used for high-volume backend batch processing.

What is most valuable?

It works very well for batch processing at the backend. Scalability-wise, it is very robust. It is also stable.

What needs improvement?

Its front end is not very good for things like screen scraping. UiPath and AA are very good for that. Blue Prism's license is costlier than UiPath and AA. They should be improving its price.

Its artificial intelligence and cognitive features are not that strong enough. Cognitive automation should be their next area of improvement.

The decoding of the bot is a highly painful activity, and this is an area of improvement for Blue Prism. It is tough to find variables and get the code in place. You have to open the whole bonnet of the car to get things in place. 

Their training should also be improved. UiPath and AA have their learning communities. They provide free of cost basic certification. As a result, you get trained workforce in the market that can directly work on projects, but this is not the case with Blue Prism. It is costly to get the resources trained, which increases the overall cost of getting a resource for Blue Prism.

Their tech support can also be improved. Many times, the issues that should have been addressed by L1 have gone to L2.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for one and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is stable. There are no issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is not at all a problem. It works perfectly well for a batch operation.

In terms of usage, we have seven users who use this solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their tech support is good but can be improved. Every ticket first goes to L1, and then it goes to L2. Many times, the issues that should have been addressed by L1 have gone to L2.

How was the initial setup?

It was a bit complex because we were already using AA, and we were more habitual of that interface. That's why it took us some time with Blue Prism.

It took around two months to set it up and get the first use case in place from the development perspective.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Its license is costlier than UiPath and AA. They should improve its price.

We have a two-year contract with them.

What other advice do I have?

Blue Prism is best for backend processing, but its artificial intelligence and cognitive features are not strong enough. It could be because we have not explored it that much. My experience with this solution is more related to backend processing. If you are looking for backend processing that is quite heavy in nature and you have a team that is trained in Blue Prism, you should go for it without any doubt.

I would rate Blue Prism a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior SAP Analyst at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
Has cross-application features where it can be set up with SAP, email, or SharePoint
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution has cross-application features where it can be setup with SAP, email, or SharePoint."
  • "The solution could be more user-friendly. I would like the see the inclusion of a recording feature as in Microsoft, SAP, and other legacy systems. Users can play the recording and use it for future use cases. The recording can help with the automation and configuration. I would rate the tool’s interface a seven out of ten. It needs to improve."

What is most valuable?

The solution has cross-application features where it can be set up with SAP, email, or SharePoint.

What needs improvement?

The solution could be more user-friendly. I would like the see the inclusion of a recording feature as in Microsoft, SAP, and other legacy systems. Users can play the recording and use it for future use cases. The recording can help with the automation and configuration. I would rate the tool’s interface a seven out of ten. It needs to improve.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution for around two to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product is quite stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable. We have around 100 users for it in our company and we intend to scale up the numbers.

How are customer service and support?

We have never contacted the tech support team since we have our own internal technical team.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is enterprise software so we will try to maximize our usage during the available slots. We will get ROI with the high price since there will be some value added with automation. I think that after doing a cost-benefit analysis, we are on the positive side.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Srikanth RB - PeerSpot reviewer
BA Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5
Very accurate with good automation and an easy setup
Pros and Cons
  • "The automation on offer is great."
  • "Everyone uses Workday and Salesforce and all that stuff. If they had specific plugins to interact with these enterprise tools, that would be very helpful."

What is our primary use case?

We've primarily used the solution for financial purposes. We have payroll management and a lot of manual processes. With this, we can run automated reports. There are about 15 to 18 interfaces where we get the information. We can consolidate emails, PDFs, and Excel. There's automation to pick everything up and understand all the sources and different kinds of data. We can input raw data, consolidate it and then handle calculations. We can download data and save it in folders.

What is most valuable?

The solution offers very good accuracy.

The automation on offer is great.

Whenever we used to have issues, the developers used to follow up with the technical team. They're good.

The initial setup is simple and straightforward. 

The solution can scale.

We have found the product to be stable. 

What needs improvement?

Everything on offer is great. We could hardly find any procedural issues at all. All the processes are really quite good. 

They should come up with these open-ended certifications, like UiPath, where people can just go ahead and get the certification. That way, people can evaluate and pick up certifications easily to make it easy to learn.

Everyone uses Workday and Salesforce and all that stuff. If they had specific plugins to interact with these enterprise tools, that would be very helpful. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We've used the solution over the last 12 months. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable and reliable. it's problem-free. there aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable, it depends on the requirements. At this moment, it is scalable. In terms of enterprise scalability, I'm not sure. However, it does scale from one particular area to many areas, including accounting, treasury, payroll, et cetera.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is good. they are helpful and responsive.

From my understanding, the team never had issues in terms of reaching out to the Blue Prism support team and getting solutions. They were all fine.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was not complex at all. It was very, very easy. Initially, there were very few hiccups. Once we got up and running, it's amazing, it's perfect. There's not a problem at all.

What about the implementation team?

We have our own center of excellence. I hired employees and contractors to help as needed. We were the business architects and we got the requirements and came up with the process design.

What was our ROI?

We have definitely seen an ROI.

What other advice do I have?

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Vice President at YASH Technologies
Real User
Can be straightforward to install, but the intelligent document processing solution could be better
Pros and Cons
  • "From technical perspective, Blue Prism is pretty good. Overall, it's a stable and scalable solution. Installation is straightforward as well."
  • "Blue Prism could be compatible with Oracle's suite of ERPs. We have seen some issues related to this. They could do much better with their intelligent document processing solution. They're pretty behind and don't have attended bots."

What is our primary use case?

As for primary use cases, we have done purchase order processing for close to five countries, and we also do non-compliance in terms of the field assets deployed by a company to hospitals. That is, we use it as an asset tracking solution.

What is most valuable?

From technical perspective, Blue Prism is pretty good.

Overall, it's a stable and scalable solution. Installation is straightforward as well. 

What needs improvement?

Blue Prism could be compatible with Oracle's suite of ERPs. We have seen some issues related to this.

They could do much better with their intelligent document processing solution. They're pretty behind and don't have attended bots.

I would also prefer a better UI in the administration screens The user interface is pretty bad from an administration perspective.

I would like to see a lot of features like process mining.

I would also like to see a lot of different innovative solutions like human-bot interaction, handover managerial systems, and collaboration systems for process capturing, storing, and evaluating and getting discussions done within businesses.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been providing Blue Prism to customers for more than three years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

From a platform perspective, we see compatibility issues with Oracle's JD Edwards software sometimes, but overall, to my knowledge, the solution is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's a scalable solution, and scalability is not a problem.

How was the initial setup?

With regard to the initial setup, it's a pretty straightforward from Blue Prism's perspective. It's not as complicated as the installation of a WorkFusion solution, for example.

The actual installation, that is, setting up of the environment, can be done in less than a week from scratch.

We have four or five customers using this solution, and I have close to 50 or so people working across these customers. We have a combination of staff, such as architects, developers, managers, infrastructure engineers, etc.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Our customers pay for an annual license.

What other advice do I have?

The product is good even though there are a lot of shortcomings. Also, the access to the company itself is very difficult. Obtaining a partnership is difficult, and getting support is difficult as well. So, I'd rate them at seven on a scale from one to ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
GRC Analyst at a marketing services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
It is stable and self-sufficient, and it makes custom developments easy and quick
Pros and Cons
  • "The ease of development is the most valuable. Standard VBOs are pretty useful there with Excel and different things. Our custom developments for SAP and things like that are pretty easy to set up and quick to get going."
  • "The control room is its worst feature. It can be laggy, and it is not as user-friendly. We're with staying Blue Prism, but we're moving it from on-premises to Microsoft cloud for cost savings. We looked into Blue Prism cloud. It has a lot of features, but it comes with a lot of costs. Right now, we have six spots, and we're only at 13% utilization. The cost didn't really weigh out for us for moving to Blue Prism cloud, but on-premises, it is working for what we need."

What is our primary use case?

We have about 20 use cases in production. Probably half of them are related to finance, monthly closures in our company, invoices, and bank reconciliations. On the IT side, use cases are about audit requirements with user attestations, user reviews, and schedules.

We're currently using the on-premises version, but we're internally moving to Azure cloud rather than moving to Blue Prism cloud.

What is most valuable?

The ease of development is the most valuable. Standard VBOs are pretty useful there with Excel and different things. Our custom developments for SAP and things like that are pretty easy to set up and quick to get going.

What needs improvement?

The control room is its worst feature. It can be laggy, and it is not as user-friendly.

We're with staying Blue Prism, but we're moving it from on-premises to Microsoft cloud for cost savings. We looked into Blue Prism cloud. It has a lot of features, but it comes with a lot of costs. Right now, we have six spots, and we're only at 13% utilization. The cost didn't really weigh out for us for moving to Blue Prism cloud, but on-premises, it is working for what we need.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Once it is set up and gets the steamroll, it seems pretty good to stay. It is self-sufficient in many ways with the processes. Change control and password are a bit of a struggle sometimes, but that's general with automation and trying to be fast-moving. Overall, it is pretty stable and self-sustaining.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. We are using some central objects.

How are customer service and technical support?

We probably haven't gone through their standard support channels, but we reach out to our contact there when needed, and he gets us in touch with somebody right away. So, within a week, we're talking to an expert and getting some assistance.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We just started with Blue Prism. We didn't deploy anything else previously.

How was the initial setup?

I'm more on the production side. I didn't really do any of the setup functions.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I don't recall what it was. Initially, we had our licensing through the consultant, and when we stopped using them, we renegotiated licensing. Blue Prism gave us temporary licenses during the negotiation. When all things were said and done, it came out to a decent price even without the vendor. So, our management has been happy with that.

What other advice do I have?

Try to think of standard automation questions related to security, change control, and things like that before you get started because once you get developing, it is hard to go back and implement those things.

I would rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Project Manager at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Good for structured data and easy to implement and understand
Pros and Cons
  • "It is good for transactions that are very straightforward. It works very nicely with the structured data. It is user-friendly. It is easy to implement and easy to understand."
  • "We didn't find it much useful for unstructured data. It is not easy to do the automation with Blue Prism if you have unstructured data. It should have better automation processes or connectors for unstructured data such as PDFs or pictures. It has a connector for different applications, such as SAP, but we use a few other applications for which it doesn't have a connector. It should have a more comprehensive dashboard that we can use to see the processes that are running and control the parameters."

What is our primary use case?

We use it to automate various backend processes in our company, such as PO processes and finance processes. We are using the latest version. It is deployed on the cloud as well as on-premises.

What is most valuable?

It is good for transactions that are very straightforward. It works very nicely with the structured data. 

It is user-friendly. It is easy to implement and easy to understand.

What needs improvement?

We didn't find it much useful for unstructured data. It is not easy to do the automation with Blue Prism if you have unstructured data. It should have better automation processes or connectors for unstructured data such as PDFs or pictures.

It has a connector for different applications, such as SAP, but we use a few other applications for which it doesn't have a connector.

It should have a more comprehensive dashboard that we can use to see the processes that are running and control the parameters.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Blue Prism for almost two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There are some issues with its stability. On a scale of five, I would give it a four.

How are customer service and technical support?

There is a partner who is doing the automation for us, and they contact the technical support. We don't have any visibility on that.

How was the initial setup?

I wasn't there when we did the initial setup at the company, but from what I know, it was not that painful. We were able to set it up quickly.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others. I would rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Blue Prism Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Blue Prism Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.