Blue Prism Reviews

We implemented Blue Prism some time back. I'm not using it right now. 

I get most involved during the evaluation and the deployment phase.

With Blue Prism, we automated back-end processes. Blue Prism is more like service-side automation. It is not good for attended automation.

Blue Prism can lower the average handling time immediately by 20-40%.

You also need to look at what is the long term goal. A long term goal could be that you want to keep, not integrate, with anything else. 

Blue Prism has a long learning curve because the coding is complicated. You need to be a very highly skilled developer. Blue Prism has a high coding skill and certification requirement that hinders your ability to automate quickly. 

Blue Prism moves out new versions very fast and their back-up compatibility is not good as compared to their competition. Essentially, this means you spend a lot of money just upgrading the bots.

Blue Prism is quite stable. It has the interactive client that is really good. The licensing model is very simple as well.

The user interface is okay. I don't think there is much of a problem.They need to also have a better capability in attended automation. Blue Prism has not invested enough in AI development.

They need to have a Bot store. If they can introduce AI bots that will automatically diagnose why something failed and keep sending data back to admins, it would be an improvement.

We have been using the Blue Prism RPA ( /categories/robotic-process-automation-rpa ) solution for almost one year.

Blue Prism is quite stable.

When you need to run more processes, you buy more licenses, but you will spin up more VM. Scaling not is a problem for Blue Prism.

We started with Blue Prism.

The initial setup of Blue Prism is standard and not difficult. The instructions are very clear and easy. It doesn't take long to implement. The setup is not difficult.

Changing the board and getting it deployed didn't take too long. The deployment into production and moving to the environment took somewhere between eight to ten weeks. It could have been a little less.

reduction of Operations effort

These prices are deal-specific, it will probably not be right to review negotiations with the vendor. Currently, there are no new licensing agreement changes for us.

We evaluated Automation Anywhere.

If you need only server-side back-end process automation, use Blue Prism. If you need assisted automation or services automation, use Automation Anywhere or UiPath. On a scale from 1 to 10, I would rate Blue Prism with an 8.

The first automated processes were mainly backoffice procedures. Accordingly, unattended robots have been used to do the job. To me however, a big portion of the potential value added from RPA comes from attended automation, especially in a people-intensive professional services company like the one I`m working at. Typical examples for solutions desired by the staff are digital assistants taking care of the tedious and error-prone data transfer processes reaching from HR and Marketing to Finance.

Of course, Blue Prism is capable of improving one´s processes, especially in terms of efficiency. I´m not saying that it didn´t improve things at all at my company. However, my personal opinion is that improvement is behind what´s possible nowadays. As desribed before, attended automation and digital assistants keep becoming more important - if not crucial for a company´s RPA journey. And that´s exactly where Blue Prism in my opinion fails. Developing processes, you can feel that the solution is not made for attended automation. 

Valuable feature are for sure the modelers. They are quite easy to understand and use. I think they are what people mean when they say Blue Prism is a bit easier than UiPath. Whereas I definitely like the ease of use, this comes at a cost. In direct comparison to UiPath, the Studios feel like Kindergarden to me. Trying to make robot development accessible to people with limited technical understanding, they are taking away the endless possibilities resulting from the fact that a software robot is still a mature computer program. Not being able to insert code - or even complex expressions - is not a feature to me. Summing up, I like the ease of use of BP but to me, the sacrifice is too high.

When I am comparing Blue Prism to UiPath, it lacks many features. For example, I am missing all variable types that I am used to having in UiPath.

I don't like that it is so limited, anything that you do feels limited in your capabilities.

Usually, you have dropdown menus with 10 choices but if you need that 11th or 12th one it is so difficult to work around it. 

For me, I feel that it is lacking in features.

It consists of simple actions that work quite well together, and the integration is good but the scope of things that you can do is too narrow.

The interface could be brought to a more modern state of the art interface. It still has this gray Windows 95 style, which is outdated.

The way that humans interact with robots is a feature that is very poor in Blue Prism. 

The focus is on the unattended automation, for example, robots running in the background at some bank. If you have more digital assistance, assisting humans in their daily work is something that is very difficult and I would like to see this improved.

I have been using Blue Prism for two months.

The stability is quite good.

This solution is scalable, but I don't have a lot of experience with this area. I am basing this only on what I have heard.

We have approximately 500 end-users.

Due to the limitations, we don't have plans to increase our usage. We are considering a change.

I don't have a lot of experience with technical support. At this time, I cannot say anything good or bad.

Previously, I was using UiPath and because of a change in job, I started using Blue Prism.

This solution was already in place when I joined the company. 

The setup and deployment were already complete.

We have a team of five to maintain this solution.

We did the implementation internally.

We have a three-year contract that is paid on a yearly basis.

To my knowledge, there are no additional costs other than the standard licensing fee.

I don't think that I could recommend this solution. I prefer working with UiPath.

I have been using this solution to develop internal web-based applications. Some of the applications are interacting with desktop applications.

It saves time. By automating repetitive tasks, we are able to save a lot of time. There are also fewer human errors.

The credential manager and logs are most valuable. We are using Blue Prism for complex processes because it is easier to troubleshoot in Blue Prism, and the logs are very accurate. It provides the ability to create smaller tasks, which makes it easier to troubleshoot.

Its image recognition or the OCR part should be improved. The quality has improved in the latest version, but some of the handwritten documents are not that accurate. 

Its interaction with the Citrix environment should also be improved. Their technical support should also be improved.

I have been using this solution for at least three years. 

It is pretty stable as compared to other RPA solutions. Its stability also depends on other applications.

Their technical support is not that reliable. They are quite slow, and their response is not that proactive for our questions or issues.

For other RPA tools, you can just search the web for information, but for Blue Prism, there isn't that much information.

It is not hard to install. You just need to design the database. 

Deployment is pretty fast. For deployment within our team, the server is the same, and we just configure it to run on our machine. For deployment outside our team, we just need to install the server and then configure the machines. It is not that complicated.

We did it on our own.

In the Philippines, fewer companies are using Blue Prism because of its cost. I don't know the price, but I know that its price is higher than UiPath.

It has good stability, and it is easier to troubleshoot. We don't have a need to increase its usage because we are currently using it for complex processes, and our number of users isn't going to change.

I would rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten because it has some room for improvement.

We are a service provider and I develop RPA solutions for my clients.

Blue Prism is one of the RPA products that I develop bots for.

Most of our clients are interested in automating processes that are related to payroll and other aspects of finance.

Using Blue Prism takes away from the work required to complete manual tasks. Also, repetitive tasks that are completed using RPA are more accurate, compared to those done manually.

The most valuable feature is that people with zero coding knowledge can use Blue Prism very well.

The user interface is good.

Blue Prism is lacking in document processing capabilities.

The addition of better testing tools, or some kind of test suite, would be an improvement.

If this solution had a framework for exception handling then it would be very helpful. As a developer, we have to put exceptions in as the first step.

This product does not have AI Fabric or process mining tools.

I have been using Blue Prism for about a year and a half.

There are no issues in terms of stability. It is as stable as any other tool.

The scalability depends on the code that we write. For example, there are business objects as well as processes. If they are architected and coded properly then it is very easy to scale with less effort. I have no complaints regarding scalability and it is as good as other tools.

I have only been in contact with technical support one time when I had some issues writing Blue Prism certifications. They responded within one day.

For any technical questions that we have, we look at the forums for answers. Blue Prism have their own community and the forums are very good.

I am proficient in UiPath as well as Blue Prism, and I have just started using Kofax RPA. I am also looking into Automation Anywhere.

Of all of these solutions, I prefer to work with UiPath. Blue Prism does have an advantage that non-coders can work with it. However, it lacks in document processing features that are available in Automation Anywhere and UiPath.

I am not involved in the installation of the RPA tools, although my understanding is that the initial setup is quite easy and doesn't take long.

My IT team handles the deployment of Blue Prism.

The licensing fees are low compared to other tools.

The suitability of this product depends on the use cases. For example, if you are looking into processing invoices then Blue Prism is not the tool that I would choose because the others have better OCR capabilities.

If document processing capabilities and a test suite were added then it would be great because our customers who need these features would not be forced to use other products.

If I were to rate this tool in isolation then I would score it a six or seven out of ten. However, as I am comparing it to other similar solutions, I have to score it less.

I would rate this solution a four out of ten.

The solution was deployed on-prem. We have about 100 users.

We were partners with Blue Prism.

There has been a huge amount of cost savings and freeing up. Employees got more vacation time allotted. That was a direct result of the time saved by RPA.

As a developer, I liked the layout and UI, specifically when it came to testing. Dragging and dropping stages and actions made development quick and easy to learn. The UI, allows you to watch as the bot moves through each step of the process at the same time it launches, interacts and closes applications, which really aids development and troubleshooting, unlike with AA and UiPath.  

I don't have an suggestions for improvement, at this time.

I used Blue Prism for five years. The last time I used it was a year ago.

The solution was stable.

Scalability was easy.

Technical support wasn't great. On a scale of 1 to 5, I would give it a 3.

Initial setup was straightforward. On a scale of 1 to 5, I would rate the difficulty of setup a 4.

Deployment took a couple of months from development to publishing it into production. We didn't have an implementation strategy. 

We had 25 developers for deployment and maintenance. We had about a dozen in production for support.

Deployment was done in-house.

I would rate this solution 7 out of 10.

I work for the healthcare industry, and I use it for claims orders. We have claims orders, and we have integrated service manager tickets to bring tickets from different locations or websites and update them to the SharePoint tracker. From there, we send any notifications to the concerned person.

I am currently working with an on-premise solution that is connected to the cloud UI.

We are trying to speed up the process for our client because, being in the healthcare industry, they do have a lot of defects and issues. They are working on the latest products, which have different defects and issues. Being able to speed up this process, provide information to different business people, and make things easy is the value add. These tickets are also related to claims audits, so it would also speed up the claim process.

Blue Prism supports the multi-bot architecture, which is really good. It is also really good at OCR. Blue Prism is integrated with Abbey OCR, and it provides at least 90% right information on period documents. This is something that is really good in Blue Prism.

Blue Prism can deal with a huge amount of data. We can track each and every record, and then we can see the data. If you don't have much coding experience, it makes it easy to build automations and deploy them. It is also easy to learn and easy to work with. It has a lot of features, which makes it reliable for any sort of automation.

The activities that we do are a bit difficult to do in Blue Prism as compared to UiPath. UiPath provides create activities and create packages related to AI analytical skills. This is something that Blue Prism doesn't have.

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

We don't interact with their technical support. I work in an environment where we implement use cases and give them to the clients. We build use cases, do UAT for these use cases, and then deploy them for our clients. The clients already have their production support team for support. If there is any issue in the production, we do support the clients.

All these use cases are something on which we work with a fixed scope. These are not things that can be built on long-term projects. We just focus on trying to get the use cases from them, and we then build, implement, and deploy them.

I also use UiPath. When comparing Blue Prism and UiPath, there are some pros and cons in both tools. UiPath does some of the things really well but lags behind in some aspects and vice versa. Blue Prism is really good at something like multi-bot architecture and tracking of the tickets for the records. UiPath provides create activities and create packages related to AI analytical skills, which is where Blue Prism lags behind.

It was a bit complex because when I started with RPA in 2018, Blue Prism was not a free source tool for us, which is where I found difficulty in learning things and becoming familiar with all the products in Blue Prism. UiPath was a free source tool, and they provided most of the training and made it easy for us. They also provided a free community version for us, which was helpful in learning it.

I don't have an idea about Blue Prism, but I have an idea about UiPath. UiPath is scaling its business in different products. It has got products for intelligent document processing (IDP) to test or log integrations for chatbots. If you want to work on something like a true test automation, you have to buy a test book. In such cases, they have a predefined way of working with, implementing, or running things. This is where I see that UiPath might be a bit costly or expensive when compared to Blue Prism because UiPath charges for each and every product.

I would rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten. It is a good tool. 

Normally, we work with the insurance and financial sectors. We create automations for reconciliation, account opening, account closing, and similar processes. Mostly, we work with Windows and mainframe applications.

The most valuable features are the exception handling and embedded control room.

This is an all-in-one product, so you don't need to have another application.

The debugging in Blue Prism is very nice.

They introduced AI and machine learning capabilities in-house, rather than third-party.

The intelligent automation, like document processing, is lacking and should be improved. I would like to see PDF processing capabilities, and invoice automation templates.

Technical support is in need of improvement.

We have been using Blue Prism for the past four and a half years.

The stability is fantastic and is one of the great points of this solution.

This product is easy to scale.

We have seven or eight people in the company who use Blue Prism on a daily basis.

I would rate the technical support a five out of ten. Sometimes we have problems because we understand the technical aspects, and they will give us a workaround instead of explaining that something does not work.

Technical support is an area that needs to improve.

In addition to Blue Prism, we use UiPath and Power Automate as well.

UiPath is more advanced, technology-wise, than Blue Prism, and they have more functionality. That said, Blue Prism has a beauty of its own.

Blue Prism is cheaper than UiPath.

The initial setup is really simple. Most of our clients already have their VMs up and running, so it normally takes a day to deploy, or a day and a half at the maximum.

We do the implementation in-house.

The DBA can perform the maintenance because we have a script running, and it's really easy maintenance.

Blue Prism has a really simple licensing model, where the licenses are not confusing and there are no hidden costs the way there are in UiPath. 

My advice for anybody who is implementing Blue Prism to first think about what their reason is. Based on that, see how they want to bring the product into the sphere. They have to think about infrastructure and then what kinds of applications they want to automate. This will dictate how they need to configure their hardware and environment.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

I am an RPA consultant and the use case varies depending on my client. Basically, it is a tool that helps users to automate repetitive tasks.

We do not automate in our own company but we do help our clients to implement it.

I do not have any IT training, but I am still able to master this skill and develop Blue Prism solutions. It has a very user-friendly interface for a non-technical person.

The most valuable feature is the work queue. This helps the user to create a workflow, and it is a very powerful tool for generating management reports.

One area that needs to be improved is the resource monitoring with respect to queuing processes. Specifically, if the user is trying to schedule more than one process then the product will reject it, saying that the process cannot be run due to license limitations. However, competing products do not have this problem. Rather, the processes will be queued and then completed once the resource is available. The robot will automatically pick up the process and run it. I think that this is an area where Blue Prism can do better.

In the next release of this solution, I would like to see support for attended robots.

The stability of this solution is very good.

The scalability is dependent on the design. If the process is designed, in advance, such that the capability of expansion is in place, then it will be very easy and simple. Otherwise, it will be quite difficult.

Our client's roles vary. Some of them are developers, others are business users, and the end user will be the process controller. Some of our clients are looking into purchasing additional licenses because they are using this solution extensively.

The technical support is quite helpful. Whenever we raise a support ticket, they respond to it in a timely manner.

We did not use a solution prior to this one.

The initial setup is very dependent on the company's policies. If the company policy does not have heavy restrictions then the implementation will be very fast. However, if the company has a very tight IT policy then sometimes it will take more time to configure.

Normally, the deployment should not take more than two months. Part of the process is identifying the correct opportunities that are suitable for automation. Some clients fail because they do not know how to pick which processes, or which activities can be automated. 

A minimum of two people is required for deployment and maintenance, but it will depend on the company itself. If they have deployment applications then they will not need a controller to deploy. Also, it depends on how many processes there are.

If it is a good design that is developed, following best practices, then the support may be minimal because the processes will be stable and not require attention.

We perform the implementation for our clients.

This solution provides a good user experience for the target audience. The non-technical users may not be able to appreciate the competing products.

My advice to those looking to implement this solution is to have a clear understanding of what RPA is. Some of our clients are confused between RPA and AI, so before planning to implement any automation, they have to have a full understanding of what RPA can do, and what the limitations of it are.

This solution does not have support for attended robots. Most of our solutions are for unattended robots that perform unmonitored tasks. In some of the departments, they have a need to automate tasks that are in front of them, and without this feature, there are certain operations that cannot be handled.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.