Pega Robotic Process Automation Reviews

My experience was predominantly Pega Robotic solutions. I worked as an individual contributor with the developers. And I worked with the team, I led a team of five members in the last organization.

We worked in insurance. My last couple of projects were in insurance. It is mostly back-end process automation, like manual tedious tasks. One of the latest use cases we worked on was for creating third-party cases for dubious claims. Every insurance agency has an investigative third-party company that investigates dubious claims. Every time we have to log a claim, it was a very tedious task. Previously, each day, users would log about 150 claims with the third party and each one would take five to six minutes. We have automated this process.

The data entry and the automation of data entry are the most valuable aspects of the product. It was very smooth and very seamless to create automations. There was no scope for any errors and it was really error-free. That really helped us.

The initial setup was pretty easy.

There aren’t many areas for improvement. The process itself was really fine. There was no unnecessary jargon and unnecessary steps.

In one of the past projects, however, I observed they made it unnecessarily complex by, let's just say, exporting a screenshot at the end of each step which was cumbersome - especially when you could just save it in a drive locally or a shared drive. Extra necessary steps just make the automation complex. You really need to think out the process and simplify as much as possible to avoid complexity.

I would like to see some features improved that are already in there. One thing is the ease of deployment. They have integrated the deployment. They have tied the deployment with the Pega BPM product, the robot manager. You need to have the BPM installed. On top of that, you need to install this robotic manager solution. I understand that they want to tie their products together and make customers use both or all of their products in one suite; however, it can be annoying. It makes things unnecessarily complex. It would have been great if they just provided a standalone deployment system.

Features-wise, I'd like to see the OCR Optical Character Recognition. Pega is way behind its competitors in terms of OCR implementation and OCR capabilities. I'd like to see that improve. I haven't personally tried out many OCR solutions, however, on a proof of concept level, we did a few things and there is significant room for improvement there.

I've been working with RPA solutions for about five years now. I’ve used Pega from the beginning. My entire RPA experience was predominantly with Pega Robotics and also WinAutomation. It’s been around four years now.

The solution was stable. There were no bugs or glitches and it didn’t crash or freeze. It was reliable.

Just in the UK, there were about seven to eight people using the solution. It is not done 24 hours a day. There are no dedicated resources. Manually, we may work on it for one to two hours a day. Once it’s deployed, just one or two machines are needed to run the solution.

I have found the solution to be scalable.

Pega Robotics itself makes solutions really scalable. If you want to integrate it into this process with existing automation, you could just plug in this project to the existing ones. The scalability is really good.

I personally have dealt with multiple issues and have gotten support from them. The response time is definitely quick. The turnaround time is good. However, when solutions get tricky, where the answer is not straightforward, and there is research that needs to be done, they take time. That is quite understandable. However, it would've been great if solutions were provided quicker. You don't reach out to them unless it is absolutely essential. First, you try to fix it internally. Once you reach out to them, it’s vital to get a quick resolution. Therefore, that turnaround time is imperative.

I also have experience with WinAutomation.

This use case itself is not that complex, which meant the setup was easy. It is pretty much a straightforward solution. It is A to B to C. There were no exceptions. On paper, it was a very good solution with a good process and a very stable process at that, which made things easy. Some are relatively easy to implement. They vary. I’ve had others that were harder in the past.

The last project was entirely an individual project. For the deployment, we tested along with the user. We did user acceptance testing. Once it was approved by everyone, we did a pilot run, and then we handed this over to the deployment team. They deployed it. They were a team of six or seven members. They handled setups individually as well. Typically there are not more than three hands on an entire solution. Once the solution was handed over to the client, it took them a day or two to set everything up.

Maintenance is handled via tickets. If there are any improvements to be made, we get tickets and resolve the issue. The engineers typically work on the solution and fix anything. Upgrades depend on the ticket's priority. It’s allocated to whoever has time to pick it up and action the maintenance.

The ROI is good. RPA, in general, provides a good return on investment. Pega Robotics is not an exception. They’re exceptionally good

Licensing is based on the number of machines that you deploy it on. Usually, it is based on the other products you buy per anum or per machine. In Pega Robotics, it is based on the number of solutions you deploy and the number of times you run. The cost is variable. My previous client worked based on this hourly model, the number of robots and the number of solutions that are run. They also provided per machine.

Pega doesn't just provide these robotic solutions. It comes with their BPM products as well. It depends on what the client uses. If the client uses this along with the BPM products, They might get added discounts, et cetera. Every contract is unique.

I’m a customer and end-user.

We started with the eighth version. The last one I used was 19.1. Until the latest build from February, we used the 19 version, the 19.1s. We stopped using the solution in February.

I’d rate the solution seven out of ten.

If a person is familiar with the .NET framework, it will be a great visual studio in general. Plus, picking up Pega Robotics will be very easy for them. It’s good in general to brush up on programming skills, along with Pega Robotics. If you need to add capabilities out of the scope or out of the realm of abilities of the tool, programming is essential to customize your solution.

Our use cases are for the RD and the RDP processes. I'm the technical project manager. 

This solution is a kind of visual studio base. You can do a lot of things with it including adding custom DOLs. The most valuable feature is the logs. The solution is user-friendly, easy to understand and has many features including the ability to track. Pega has a very quick loading time which makes for great performance and provides good data transcripts. 

One of the difficulties we have is not knowing when we will receive alerts.

I've been using this solution for about 10 years. 

The solution is very stable. 

The customer support is excellent. 

Positive

The initial process is very straightforward. 

We've definitely seen a return on the investment in this product. 

The solution is quite expensive.

Concept-wise, all robotics platforms are similar. The difference between them is in the technical aspects, the methods and properties. Once you start learning Pega, the additional skills can easily double up because sometimes you need to write your code in a visual studio, making it also a visual studio platform.

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

We are using Pega for automation for a client that has huge hangars where all the planes and helicopters are stationed once they are back from the journey. There is a particular person called an aero inspector who goes to each and every helicopter or plane and collects and inspects all the elements of it whether it's a small plane or a large plane, such as the engine, windshield, air conditioning, etc. It's a 300-checkpoint document that he has to fill up. We have developed a mobile application for this particular individual or for his entire team, so instead of writing it down with a pen and paper, they can now just go and do it with a few clicks. The entire thing is transmitted to Pega, and then Pega feeds it into their SED system so that everything is recorded, everything is seen, and the management has the dashboards for what's happening on the ground for various businesses. This is only for their operations in Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden.

We are working with Pega's latest version.

Pega is very mature. It's very old. They have grown with time, and they have learned. Other robotic process automation solutions are basically focused on only doing the automation, whereas Pega also gives you a workflow system so that you can create a workflow.

A good thing about Pega is that the resource availability is pretty good. If you go out in the market looking for a Pega resource versus an ABBYY resource, it's most likely that you will get a Pega resource much earlier than an ABBYY resource.

The new players such as UiPath and ABBYY are moving very quickly, but Pega is not. I'd definitely like to see Pega doing a few more interesting things on the AI or machine learning front so that we can use the platform for multiple things.

I've been working with this solution for six years.

It's very stable.

On-premise, it's a bit tricky and time taking, but on the cloud, it's just a few clicks.

Their support is good. Pega has a global support team, and you can reach out to them at any time. They also provide support on non-working hours at the US time and UK time. So, you can get support on Saturdays and Sundays. If you have an outage at 01:00 UK time, they will provide support to you.

It's a bit more complex than ABBYY. It should take around three to four weeks to set it up to render all the files inside and do things over there. 

They offer both on-premises and cloud models. The deployment is pretty simple. One developer is enough to do the deployment. It's also very easy to maintain. You can reach out to their support team at any time. So, the maintenance part is pretty good.

For one of the clients, the profit went up by 7.5% in the last quarter.

Pega is as competitive as the basic players such as UiPath or Automation Anywhere. UiPath is the most expensive, but Pega is at par with Automation Anywhere.

I've only used the enterprise licenses so far. I've not used any standard licenses. The licenses are already secured and given to me, and then my team starts working on that, so I do not have a very good idea about it.

Pega is an LCNC platform, so learning Pega is very easy. It would not cost you even a single penny to start learning it. Everything is available on YouTube and the cloud. You should have at least a basic idea of Pega before doing any installations or using it. As a program manager and as the head of robotic process automation, I've seen people burning their hands with smaller companies. They didn't have any idea. They picked up the project just to make some money and then came to me. It would be ideal if someone from the IT team of the customer at least does a basic Pega course, which is totally free, before implementing it.

For workflows, Pega is the ideal tool. It's probably one of the best and one of the first ones in the world, but in terms of RPA, there are many other players, such as Automation Anywhere and UiPath, who are ahead of Pega. That's not because of the technology they have. That's because of the marketing and sales initiatives that they have. For example, currently, UiPath is the market leader in RPA, but UiPath's product is not as good as Automation Anywhere. UiPath is the leader because their sales team is very aggressive. So, it's not about the technology part. There are many aspects of how a particular product grows. Pega is not expanding its operations into Asia, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Until and unless you have a global presence, you will not be counted as number one even if you are the best in the market.

I'd rate Pega a seven out of ten. Its rating would be a bit lesser than UiPath and Automation Anywhere. 

My use cases are slightly difficult and challenging. It was largely used for automation purposes. 

Anything goes with Pega. If you want to make any kind of base automation, you can easily code exactly what you want. 

The advantage of Pega is that coding your automation allows you to hook all of your events and connect in the automation space. It's very flexible.

There are no specific features I've found to be the most valuable.

What I see as a difficulty in Pega is that, from the programmatic perspective, you need to know how to program. 

In this modern world, in this automation space, if Pega could provide more options that are user-friendly and provide a way to quickly develop an automation solution that is drag-and-drop with a minimal coding approach, then it would be great for automation. 

They need to make it quicker in terms of doing the development. 

I've been in the automation space for the last six years. I just moved on from Pega, which I used about one year ago. 

I've worked on many automation products. I've found that UiPath and Automation Anywhere provide more drag-and-drop capabilities. 

I'd rate the solution six out of ten. It could be simplified, however, being able to code your own automation is very powerful. 

We use the product for workflow automation features. 

The platform's most valuable feature is the ability to perform most tasks reliably. It efficiently integrates with other systems and automates various tasks.

The solution's configuration and settings could be more comprehensive. 

We have been using Pega Robotics Automation for approximately five years.

Internally, Pega Robotics Automation is deployed in a private cloud behind a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). However, it is also exposed to customers through a public cloud to automate their solutions.

The setup process is complex. It varies depending on the case and system integration, but it tends to be more challenging overall.

I rate the product a seven out of ten. 

This is a client solution that assists operational teams on a daily basis. If a client wants to automate tasks, they provide their requirements to us and we build a solution for them using Pega to deploy onto their infrastructure. 

We have a very large operational team and we are able to avoid mistakes and ensure accuracy and speed using Pega.

There have been some scenarios where the bot was not able to replace some of the controls and could not recognize and personalize the task we wanted to automate.

This is a stable solution. The stability is dependant on the solution that an architect provides for their particular bot. It also depends on the design and the development that was done.

We have also use UiPath which is also a good tool. UiPath has a couple of new features which give it the edge over other solutions. 

The complexity of the initial setup depends on if the customer is new and if they have an existing enterprise structure environment. This determines the kind of installation that is needed.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

The solution is primarily used for any process automation. However, it is also is great for any DevOps deployment. It's a zero-code, no-code kind of development as well. 

The low-code/no-code development aspect of the solution is great. 

It's a pretty good, robust application. 

The product has been very scalable.

The stability is good. 

Technical support is great. They know what they are talking about. 

The development experience needs to be improved. It could be better.

The initial setup could be a bit easier. 

I've been using the solution for four years or more. 

The stability of the product is very good. It's robust and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability of the product is great. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so. it's not a problem. 

We have ten customers on Pega right now. 

Technical support is pretty decent. We're very satisfied with the level of attention we get when we need assistance. They are pretty knowledgeable. We have no complaints. 

We would like to see the initial setup be a bit easier. Right now, it's a complex process. 

The initial setup only took about six to eight hours or so. 

We have a big team that can handle deployment or maintenance. We have about 30 or 40 people who can handle any related tasks. We have mostly engineers and then a few team leads. If you include the team leads, we're looking at about 50 or so people that can cover this area. 

There are different licensing models for the product on offer. 

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

I'd advise potential new users to do process evaluation with respect to Pega before you jump in. It's a complete end-to-end product suite. You have to know which product suite is applicable to your environment.

The most valuable feature is the workflow. The workflow system is very intuitive.

It would be nice if they brought in some pre-defined functions such as drag and drop coding.

I would like to see an enhanced auditing feature included.

I have been working with Pega Robotic Process Automation for 36 months, three years.

We are using the latest version.

It's a stable solution. We have not had any issues.

It's a scalable product.

I have a team of approximately 50 people who are core Pega developers.

The community support is awesome. They answer your questions and they support them.

The technical support is okay. I would not rate them a ten, but maybe a six or a seven out of ten.

I have used other solutions and if you were to ask me about Robotic Process Automation, I would first choose Blue Prism and Pega would be second. The last would be WorkFusion.

The initial setup was straightforward.

It took a couple of weeks for the team to set it up.

We have our in-house community for Pega deployment. In fact, I lead the community.

Pricing is handled by my legal team. This is something that is out of my control or knowledge.

For anyone who is interested in using this solution, I would suggest doing a POC, (Proof of Concept) before the implementation.

Blue Prism, is a little better.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.