UiPath Platform Reviews

We use it for handling processes that involve human effort savings. We are currently focusing on processes and problems that our users are facing in their day-to-day activities. It is used for the automation of business problems that are repetitive and error-oriented with a huge number of users working on them. We list down a set of processes where users are spending a lot of time, then we verify whether the use case is valid for automation using RPA. Once that is complete, we start programming the bot based on the requirements given by the user. We try to mimic each and every action performed by a human being by using UiPath Studio. It replicates what a human being does.

In terms of setup, the development happens in Studio that's on-premise, but the deployment of the robots is done on the cloud. They have their own cloud service called Orchestrator. UiPath hosts that, and it is available at cloud.uipath.com. It is basically the UiPath Cloud. The interface is completely handled by UiPath.

The biggest benefit is that before implementing automation, the users were spending a lot of time doing mundane and manual activities. Implementing the robotic process automation for processes that they were involved in helped them to avoid doing these manual activities and focus on more value-added processes. On the whole, it has helped the users to spend their time more wisely and also get more benefits for the same time spent. It helps us to improve user satisfaction by improving their working methodology because they are only doing things that are value-adding.

We are automating all the manual activities that can be successfully handled by the robots. So, the users are really happy, and we are getting good feedback from the users in terms of time savings. We are also achieving 100% accuracy in the output, which was not the case when the users were performing these actions. When they were performing the actions, the users had to validate the outputs, and the outputs were not as per the requirement. There used to be an error rate of at least 10% to 15%, but with automation, the error rate has been reduced to zero. So, the removal of manual activity and the reduction of the error rate to zero are two of the main benefits.

We are using it in our finance operations for our accounts payable process to process invoices. For this process, we were receiving invoices at a rate of more than 50 per day, and having humans perform those actions was not sustainable in the long run. So, we developed a robot that would automatically process invoices that we received through email. It extracts and updates the data into our ERP, and then, it sends an email to the users telling them that the invoice has been received, verified, and uploaded into our ERP. Now, we have a process that saves approximately two hours for five or more users on a daily basis. At an annual rate, we can save approximately 10,000 hours. We develop the bot in UiPath Studio and then deploy it in cloud Orchestrator via an unattended bot, which is a bot that runs on a predefined schedule. We have a particular time when invoices arrive in our inboxes. We set the robot to run at that particular time, and then the robot is able to process those invoices and proceed to the next action.

We focus only on processes that can be automated end-to-end, completely eliminating human activity. UiPath is flexible, and it allows us to build robots that prevent human intervention right from the start and all the way to the end. Then, we are able to deploy it on the cloud by using the Orchestrator solution. From start to finish, we have completely eliminated human effort, supporting our mission of end-to-end automation. For process analysis, we use a UiPath tool called Task Capture to understand the business case and draw a flow diagram for the steps involved in a process. UiPath has all the solutions required to implement end-to-end automation, and we are successfully using them for all our business problems.

This end-to-end coverage is important. Basically, we select processes where we can avoid human intervention. End-to-end automation is one of the key KPIs that we check before we even start automating a process. It is the first thing that we look for because we prefer no human intervention at all, be it for any kind of input, validating the output, or checking the logs of a process. All of these are predetermined and handled by the robot.

It is cloud-based. So, we do not have any infrastructure costs for maintaining the servers, etc. That is a big advantage. Also, Studio updates for development are pushed automatically. We receive the updates and just click on them, and Studio is updated. Overall, it saves a lot of time for the IT team because there isn't any involvement from IT resources after we deploy or install Studio on our system. From there on, there is literally no involvement of the IT department. That is how beautifully they have designed the tool for the updates as well as overall maintenance.

We went for the cloud to avoid any on-premises server costs that we might need to take care of on a recurring basis. The cloud was a big advantage for us. We are able to save approximately 15 lakh Indian Rupees, which would be $10,000 to $15,000, by not going for the on-premises setup. We were able to save that sort of investment in server costs by going for a cloud-based tool.

We were able to synthesize the value of this solution right from the inception. As soon as we deployed the bots, we were getting actual analytics for the run rate of the process and the total time of bot execution. Indirectly, the time during which the bot executes is literally the time that is saved from human effort. We get proper metrics of the time being saved by using Orchestrator. The other important thing is logs. In case a process fails, from the logs, we are able to derive insights about when exactly a process is failing. We are then able to develop a solution to handle these failures and re-implement them. So, overall the cloud solution gives us insights. It adds value to even developers' time by giving us an overall metric of the time saved as well as utilizing the logs for insights about the process runtime, et cetera. Overall, the cloud functionality is a great value addition.

It affects our ability to scale up automation. When we develop and deploy a process, other users in different departments take a look at the processes, and they are getting confident about the fact that this can solve their problems. We have been receiving requirements, and in that way, we are able to scale up the automation. On top of that, we develop the robots in a way that is modular in nature so that when we implement a process, we have reusable components that can be plugged and played into the new process. This improves the speed at which we can automate processes.

It has indirectly brought innovation from the users' perspective and developers' perspective. The users are saving time, and they are getting innovative in their day-to-day activities. In terms of development, we are on a constant learning path. When the vendor releases new software updates, we are able to effectively utilize those and implement them into our processes on an immediate basis, which improves the speed of delivering a process and the quality of output.

We can scale automation without having to pay attention to the infrastructure for doing so. We don't have to be worried about the cost involved with the on-premises setup. It is a cloud-based solution. So, when a requirement comes up and a bot is developed, only then we need to apply for the license and procure a bot. It has been beneficial because we don't need to pay any upfront cost until the bot is developed and ready to be deployed, and because the bots are delivered completely through the software service, that also indirectly proved very beneficial for global deployments and scaling of processes.

Its AI functionality is helpful to learn from the existing use cases and then implement the learnings on the new and upcoming test cases. As a developer, we need not spend any time developing templates for the extraction, etc. The AI module in itself has the capability to understand new forms of data. It can then accordingly extract and plug in the data to our templates without much effort. So, AI functionality has saved a lot of our time in developing a solution as compared to doing it the manual way.

We had one process where we had to use AI functionality, and we were able to eliminate any manual efforts. Previously, we had somebody who was verifying the output of the bot and after that only processing went to the next step, but with AI, we got the confidence that the bot has the ability to complete the action without manual intervention. That is one great example where AI helped to eliminate manual effort and improve the quality of the output.

It has significantly reduced human errors. Bots have quite a high performance rate with minimal or zero errors. The errors only occur because we haven't updated the business case in the bot. Once the business cases are updated in the robot, we do not see any errors. The bots follow all the steps as programmed and do not deviate from the set of rules defined while developing them. This reduction in human error has had a positive impact on users. The users had been feeling more comfortable using the robot output rather than relying on their own output, which sometimes had errors. So, overall the confidence level has improved and the lead time in delivering the output has also improved. The time they were earlier spending on the validation of their output has reduced. 

It has freed a lot of time. We only automate processes where we find huge time savings. We count it as full-time (FT) employee benefits. We only pick processes that have three or four cumulated FT benefits. With automation, we are saving at least three or four hours on a daily basis. This time is being utilized by business users in completing any other backlog work, focusing on other important things, improving their own work skills, etc.

Excel automation is extremely reliable. Excel integration is one of the top features that I have been using. We also have a feature called Document Understanding for processing the PDF format of an invoice by a bot. It has the capability to scan an invoice and then pick out the required fields, such as the name of the vendor, the details of the products being sent, or the cost of the product. There is an AI functionality that allows a user to program the required fields to be extracted, and the bot automatically follows those rules and extracts the data. Therefore, the AI functionality of Document Understanding is another important attribute that I personally like about UiPath.

I also like the Computer Vision functionality, where UiPath provides image processing abilities for robotic process automation. This provides a big advantage because images can be automatically processed without involving any additional tools. With an API, we can automatically link the Computer Vision engine and start extracting and processing images at a quick rate.

UiPath is a low-code platform, or mostly no-code platform, where coding is minimal. We can drag and drop all the required steps and then develop a bot in very less time. I am good at programming, but even a user who doesn't know programming can easily pick up the tool. The ease at which anybody can learn it is quite high. Overall, it is a 10 out of 10 in terms of usability. It is really easy to use with the tutorials that they have in place. Everything about it is quite simple.

We use Orchestrator to keep a track of all the robots that are deployed, monitor the logs, and deploy the robots on the runner machines. We use Orchestrator to upload the bots from Studio to the cloud and then deploy them to runner machines across our virtual machines. Once a bot executes, we get the logs, and if needed, we can monitor them to check that the processes are coming in smoothly. In case of any failures, Orchestrator also has the functionality to re-execute the process. So, we are utilizing the cloud to a greater extent for managing our robots.

The UiPath community is wonderful. It is one of the best communities where we can get a solution for any question that we post in a matter of minutes or hours. Whenever we post a question about any doubt or a bug, someone from the UiPath support team or community replies. Their knowledge is useful for other users who might face the same problem in the future. They have an MVP promotion where if I answer more than 100 questions, they provide us freebies or maybe certification vouchers. That's a good thing that they're doing to grow the community. I'm really enjoying the community members' involvement as well as their support shown during any problems that we face. I have also used Power Automate, and the community support of Power Automate is not that great, but the community of UiPath is very responsive.

It is expensive. Its licensing structure should be improved. They can introduce a license structure where they charge you on a per-minute basis rather than a full upfront payment. 

In UiPath Academy, the certification that they provide at the end of every course can serve as a good motivating factor for somebody who's learning it. That is a good thing, but one of the negatives is that previously, the certification program was free of cost, which helped a lot of developers to become certified developers, but recently, they introduced a paid certification course. I wasn't expecting that move from them. I would like them to go back to their initial certification method which was free of cost.

Sometimes, we do find that the bots misbehave or there are bugs that prevent the bot from executing even when the business cases are completely listed out. It could be that the cloud Orchestrator doesn't send the trigger to the runner systems to start the process because of small internet fluctuation. Sometimes, we find that the processes are killing the execution themselves and going into a halt state without any errors in the program. So, we do see some reliability issues, but these happen once in 20 or 30 instances. They are not on a regular basis. However, when that happens, it does create panic, and we have to immediately rectify it. If they can focus on that, it would be good.

I have been using UiPath for three years.

It is great. We are able to scale at a rate faster than what we had thought of because of the way we are able to develop our processes. UiPath literally automates most of the processes that business users are doing. So far, we haven't had any use cases that cannot be handled with UiPath, which helps in scaling implementation at a faster pace.

We have about a four-member team with analysts as well as developers who work with it, but the developers basically handle all the IT-related tasks. 

We are a manufacturing company, and we have deployed our solutions in almost every department. We have finance, planning, control, human resources, sales, and supply chain. We have 15 to 20 in each of the departments, and they are saving close to three hours individually. Overall, our estimated time savings are upwards of 100,000 hours annually. 

Our current usage of it is 30% to 40%. We still have a lot more potential to tap. We are still on the journey to reach 100% of user involvement where everybody is aware of the process. We are yet to hold the discovery workshops with all the users so that they're aware of the process. Right now, it is limited to a few people within the departments, but its usage will increase with time as we continue to automate processes at this rate.

We use UiPath Academy for the certification or onboarding of new members. When we onboard new members, we tell them to go through the UiPath Academy to get an understanding of the tool. It is free of cost, and it covers all the required modules for becoming an RPA developer. We use it extensively during the initial days as a developer, and over time and with experience, we learn directly from the tool.

They have a very responsive community. Sometimes, within minutes, we get a response to our query. We are quickly able to understand the solution that they provided and implement it. If it is a complicated problem, sometimes, the UiPath moderator from the UiPath company responds to the query and resolves it. If it is not resolved, we can directly contact their customer support. We are enterprise users, and we get quick responses to the queries that we raise. I would rate their support a 9 out of 10.

Positive

In between, we used Power Automate just to see the functionality, but we did not find it as intuitive as UiPath. We gave up on Power Automate, and we are now full-time users of UiPath.

I was around when it was set up. I had personally taken care of the installation. I found it easy and not at all time-consuming. I was done with the process in a couple of hours. In about four or five hours, I was done with the installation and setup of Studio and Orchestrator, listing the licensed accounts, and deployment of the random bots. Everything was completed in a matter of no time. I am not directly related to the IT department. I am just a developer, but I was able to handle it with no external support.

We did it in-house. We only contacted UiPath. They delivered the license keys, and we just keyed in the license keys, and it started working. That's it. Nothing else.

It is lightweight in terms of maintenance. There's no maintenance at all. It automatically handles all the upgrades via the cloud. There are no issues. It requires zero effort from IT.

Overall, you don't have a lot of savings because of expensive licenses. The licenses are quite expensive, and they are not cheap. It saves money but not significantly. However, we are not focusing so much on the monetary benefits. We are focusing more on the quality of output and time savings.

It does reduce the cost of digital transformation, but that happens after a year or two from deployment. Immediate benefits are not evident, but within a period of one to three years, we are able to make a huge amount of savings in terms of time. 

This digital transformation doesn't require expensive or complex application upgrades or IT application support. We didn't have any issues, and we never needed IT to support the UiPath tool. We have been directly using it as it is without making any changes. The impact of this digital transformation on our infrastructure was zero. There were no costs involved. It was used as it is without any changes in the infrastructure.

During the initial two years, we hadn't reached a breakeven point. When the development was going on, we had both costs. On one side, the manual effort was going on, and on the other, there was the licensing cost. So, we didn't have cost savings. After the bot was implemented or after about one and a half years, we were able to receive proper monetary benefits or what we call a breakeven point. So, when we started eliminating human activity, that got converted to cost savings. The accuracy of the process also indirectly improved our customer satisfaction. All in all, we were at a breakeven point, after a two-year period. That would be the general thumb rule for most organizations. So, at an immediate level, we did not receive monetary benefits, but after a period of about two years, we received monetary benefits or savings.

We rely on UiPath Academy for knowledge during the initial days, and it saves a lot of time. We don't have any monetary spending for setting up training because it is available for free. So, we have made some savings. It has saved us time and money, and it has been helpful in getting employees up to speed on the solution.

It is expensive. Every product or component is built separately. All the components have a separate fee. UiPath Studio has a license cost. The cloud has a license cost, and bots have a license cost. These costs are recurring on a yearly basis. So, every product or component has to be licensed for a year, and on expiry, you have to renew it.

Their licensing structure should be improved. The cost of a bot is a lot. It is more expensive as compared to some of the competitors. It is probably $8,000 for an unattended bot. When I did a search on the internet, I found that other vendors offer much better plans. I would like UiPath to introduce some flexibility in the licenses. Instead of a full license, they can maybe introduce a license structure where they charge you on a per-minute basis rather than a full $8,000 upfront payment. If I'm just spending eight hours on the bot, the bot should only be charged for that time. There could be a per-hour rate. A plan like that would be beneficial.

Initially, it will be expensive, and it also won't be as per the initial thoughts that it is going to be a quick solution that saves a lot of time. With time, you can achieve cost savings but not immediately.

We had our eyes on UiPath from the beginning. We did not focus on others.

My advice would be to not use RPA as the only solution. You also have to use other complementing features, such as optical character recognition, so that the overall solution is usable. Just RPA can't solve all the problems.

There should be proper change management to bring awareness about the impact of RPA. A lot of time, people misunderstand and take it in the wrong sense that they might lose their jobs. The fact is that RPA can't automate everything, and skilled people will still be required for doing activities. We can only automate a certain set of manual activities.

I would also advise taking one step at a time. Automate a few solutions, check the user feedback, and then start scaling up rather than immediately scaling up without getting the user feedback.

I would rate UiPath an 8 out of 10. Overall, I have no complaints. Studio, Orchestrator, and all the other tools are top-notch. They are being updated with new features on a daily basis. The product is extremely good, and I have no complaints regarding that, but the license is something they can focus on. They can introduce some innovative plans for procuring the license.

Our core business is BPO, which is Business Process Outsourcing. We have massive operations that we have to perform for our customers and we have a digital section of the company that is assisting with that. The digital section is relatively new, being no more than two years old. We are building a number of solutions and tools that our digital section is using, and RPA is one of these tools. The goal is to help our customers innovate and assist them with their digital transformation, ultimately making them more efficient and more profitable. This is possible because some of the processes are very repetitive and performing them with humans is a very bad choice.

We have a hybrid environment, where some of our functionality is on-premises and some is on the cloud. For example, we have some cloud-based automation, and we use UiPath Apps, which is on the cloud.

We had a successful use case at the beginning of the year where we needed to process a large number of invoices that had contained errors when they were originally sent to the customers. There were approximately 200,000 invoices and we had a deadline of four days to complete the task.

It began with us developing the bot, which was completed in less than a day. After that, we sent the bot to our production environment to start processing the invoices. We were successful in the task, through the parallelism of 50 robots, we could process 5 invoices per second.

We have some metrics that describe how long it would take the process to be completed manually. It takes a human an average of between 60 and 90 seconds to process just one invoice. We estimated that it would have taken approximately 125 days to complete this task manually, with between 250 and 300 people working on it together.

We don't use the low-code functionality. Rather, we use the typical development features. When you're talking about developing inside the UiPath, you have something very user-friendly, so you don't even need to use the low-code options. It is very intuitive and you don't need to know technologies such as C# or .NET to develop automations.

The use of UiPath has helped to increase customer satisfaction by a lot. Our main goals are to improve the average handling time that the customer needs to complete transactions, as well as to improve quality. Customer satisfaction improves not only with the financial benefit resulting from a better average handling time but also, from improved quality in transactions. Our human resources department uses tools such as surveys to investigate the quality and they have their own metrics and KPIs for customer satisfaction.

Our first-contact resolution rates have increased because as we develop successful cases and implementations for different customers, future customers benefit from this through faster service, which leads to better customer satisfaction. I estimate that our first-contact resolution has increased by 15% to 20%.

The time it takes us to create automations depends on what we assess the complexity of the bot to be. We have a methodology and metrics that have been developed by our Center of Excellence, categorizing the bots into small, medium and complex. A small bot, which has simple logic, is something that we implement in between one and two weeks. A medium-complexity bot has a timeline of between two and four weeks, and a very complex bot takes four to six weeks to implement.

The most valuable feature that we are using is UiPath Apps because it makes it very easy to implement tasks. It is very easy to scale operations, which is important because we're not talking about just five or ten agents. We're talking about 1,000 to 2,000 agents. The Apps feature helps us to scale very quickly and very easily. We only need to develop one or two bots and then link them to UiPath Apps to process everything. All of the integration between the bots and the human, along with any scheduling that needs to be done, is taken care of by Apps. In our situation, the Apps feature is the best solution to handle this scale.

Utilizing our bots is very easy, and it is done using the licenses that we have with partner UiPath. We can access our licenses, then distribute them to the customers and we can use them dynamically. This is all done in a very easy manner. We just have to navigate to the web-based hub, where we have access to everything that we need.

UiPath is highly customizable and this is helpful for us because we can develop models and frameworks that can be reused for different tasks and different customers. For example, if we have a customer with a process that is very similar to one that we have previously developed for somebody else, we can reuse the models to scale the bots. This makes the new development very easy and very fast.

The Agent Console is able to provide customer insight in conjunction with the task and process mining features that we use. We install the tool into the machine that the customer uses every day, where it will capture the manual tasks and processes into a database. The insights that we receive are related to whether a process is a good candidate for RPA. For example, if it takes the human a lot of time to complete, or they are having trouble with it, then it might be suitable for RPA because putting a bot in place can optimize performance.

Another reason this is important is that human operators work very hard with day-to-day tasks, and they don't have much time to stop and look for processes that can be automated. Using task and process mining, it starts pulling out those insights. For example, it looks for the number of screens that the human is accessing and clicking on. It looks at each click, as well as every navigation and extraction. In the end, it generates a report for us.

The Agent Console has helped to decrease the average agent handling time, which is our main goal when it comes to these massive business operations. Average agent handling time is the metric that we primarily work with and as such, everything we do is related to reducing it. RPA in our use case is not used only to reduce the HC or FTEs; but it is used to boost this particular KPI too. In one of our use cases, we have had an average decrease of 30% in agent handling time, which is very considerable.

There are some enhancements that can be made within Orchestrator, such as the addition of new dashboards that provide us insights into processes that are already running, which would help us a lot.

We have been using the UiPath platform since last year, at the beginning of 2020.

The stability of UiPath is very high, and this is a very important point. In fact, stability was the problem that we had when we were assessing the competition with UiPath. We evaluated several RPA tools and moved on with the UiPath partnership because it was the most robust. It is important to remember that we have a high availability environment, and the entirety of it must be stable. Our team is tool agnostic and extremely skilled in the largest RPA tool providers, enabling us to develop automation on any platform.

UiPath is very easy to scale because, in every part of our solution, we use the Apps feature. This accounts for high availability and automatically provides us with scalability. For example, if we have a process that is handling 100 invoices at a time, but in three months we grow and need to instead process double that number, there is a feature that we can use to instruct the bots to run on additional machines. The scalability is very dynamic in this regard.

UiPath has a function within Orchestrator for dynamic allocation, where it can draw resources from a pool of machines in the infrastructure. For example, if there are 30 machines available then an option can be set to dynamically use the licenses. If there are 10 or 20 bots that need to perform tasks, the licenses will be automatically used to run the processes. You don't need to look at these machines to see what is running because all of the management will be taken care of automatically.

We currently have 25 staff involved in RPA. There are 20 developers and five architects, just to keep the projects and everything with the customers up and running. We expect this to improve and grow, doubling our numbers this year.

In fact, our expectation for growth is very high. Along with each implementation or development that we do, new opportunities arise. I would estimate that for each successful implementation that we have, four to five new opportunities are presented. Naturally, we will need to have more licenses and more contacts to increase the total number of bots in our environment.

From end to end we have about 50 robots already developed and running in a productive environment. We have human operators, back-office analysts, supervisors and coordinators involved in the whole process of execution and monitoring.

After our initial deployment, we have rarely needed to be in contact with support. Our in-house team can do most things autonomously.

We have a premium support package from UiPath and they are very useful and very helpful. They help us with whatever we want and without any doubt support is one of UiPath's strengths. This is not just in a technical sense, but in terms of business and strategy, as well.

As mentioned earlier, our RPA team is agnostic to the tool to be used. We can give our recommendation based on the customer's needs but if he has any premise that a specific platform should be used, we follow his needs.

The initial setup is very straightforward. We have a very good team of architects and we also had some assistance from UiPath. It was not simple, but it was not too hard, either. It was okay and we didn't have any problems with the implementation. In total, it took between three and four weeks to complete the deployment.

In terms of strategy, I think for the best implementation, you need to first have the infrastructure set up. The infrastructure and architecture should be very well defined with UiPath because you have a bunch of functionalities that may or may not be useful, depending on the type of business.

Deciding what functionality is required is the very first step. Then, the second step is to have a methodology and a center of excellence for RPA, including frameworks and best practices. This will help to ensure that everything is implemented correctly and that you don't have problems in the future. Finally, you need to have certified developers and certified architectures because this is the most relevant part. You want bots to go live with the best quality to ensure customer satisfaction.

We now have the ability to provide this type of environment to a customer very quickly. We can configure the environment in between two and four hours, to have it fully up and running, and it is very simple to do. This is because we have an RPA infrastructure already built, so you just need to acquire the hardware that includes the machines and servers. Once they are up and running, we activate this section and we can develop and build the bots.

UiPath was a big help during our initial setup. We have premium support, and they helped us with parts of the architecture, the infrastructure related to servers and the cloud, and getting it all set up properly in our high availability environment. It was like a four-handed job and it was all done well.

We have many different projects and customers and I would estimate that it has saved us and our customers something between $4M to 5M in total.

Just looking for our success case of the invoices processing, we avoid a cost of $10M.

The price of UiPath is higher than competitors, although the cost depends on what functionality and tools you require. For us, we don't need anything extra in terms of functionality but our contract includes an extra charge for premium support.

We evaluated UiPath, Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, all the best RPA tools providers in the international Market. As we are agnostic with the platform, we can develop using any of those three tools.

One of the cons of UiPath is the price. It's a bit higher than the other RPA tools. In terms of the pros for UiPath, it is more stable, it works in our high availability environment, the support is good, it is very agile and we can develop automations very quickly. Also, implementation was very fast and scalability is important.

We have conducted a proof of concept using UiPath's unattended robot capability to enable a self-service chatbot. Specifically, we used the unattended bot to speak with our S3ND (messaging) solution, which is a chatbot. The scheduling was done via APIs and the communication was done through the chatbot. This is something that we have tested, but not yet deployed. We do think that this is an important next step for us to look at.

We do not use the Document Understanding and AI Fabric features at this time but we are already testing it in some of our customers to implement them as soon as possible.

Another feature that we do not yet use, but we are looking into, is using the AI Center to drag-and-drop machine learning models into RPA workflows. We recently had some discussions with the technical specialists at UiPath about the newer features that are available, and we are looking into arranging for training and webinars that will teach us how to use these new features correctly. Once we have a better understanding of how to implement them, we will begin looking for specific use cases.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from UiPath has to do with our customers and their operations. The most difficult and important challenge that we have is changing the mindset of our customers such that it is in line with digital transformation, and this is something that UiPath helps us with. They provide us with everything we need in terms of security, implementation, and high availability. Really trusting that these bots are doing the right thing is the biggest advantage that UiPath provides for us.

There are three main points that I would make for anybody who is considering UiPath. The first is the cost, in terms of money. The price of investment is high but the benefits are uncountable. Next, it requires that you look into what you really need, and whether it is all of the features that UiPath offers or just some of them. It is also very important that you look at your infrastructure because it has to be able to handle all of the bots. For example, we know that our processes need a lot of computing power and a lot of memory, so the hardware is important. This has to be built in advance of purchasing the software. The final part is the team, including the developers and architects. It is very important that they all be certified by UiPath. There is training and courses available, they make everything clear, and it includes learning the best practices, frameworks, and models to assure that you're doing everything right. If the company is audited and you are doing it properly then you won't have any headaches.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I have automated a few basic business workflows. They were simple automations.

In terms of complex workflows, generally, we have some kind of system to interact with over a browser. There are specific sites such as SAP or other HR applications that usually have browser UIs. Browser interactions are the best I have found with RPA solutions. 

We have tested the Document Understanding feature, which seems promising. Although I haven't developed a proper workflow for that use case, it looks useful. The framework seems to help set up the development process without needing extensive programming knowledge. 

We also use UiPath in our Microsoft environment, particularly for core applications such as Excel, Word, and Outlook. Excel activities are very useful, so it has become a core element of our workflows. As a developer, I enjoy using Visual Studio to create custom activities based on specific business workflow requirements.

There are also a few use cases for agentic automation. A core element is processing the source document, whether it's Microsoft Word, PDF, JSON, or XML. It parses the documents, retrieves required data, and pushes the data into a target system, such as a database or Excel table. The automation acts as an automated interface, moving data from a source system to a target system.

UiPath helps speed up digital transformation and ideally reduces associated costs. Though there are instances where the frequency of automation has decreased, impacting overall effectiveness, generally, our automations operate ten to hundreds of times faster than manual processing.

There's a notable reduction in human error. Partners are often surprised that the automated process doesn't make mistakes. While we can't predict all unexpected issues, business-related errors are virtually non-existent once a process is automated.

When considering specific features of UiPath that streamline operations, the management part of UiPath Orchestrator for unattended automation is helpful. The scheduling is very nice, easy, and simple to manage, allowing me to oversee workflows and their schedules effortlessly.

It saves time for the development team. The agentic automation from UiPath is user-friendly. It's definitely one of the stronger points. It's really easy to handle, even for someone who has never heard about RPA. It's generally simple. Once I install the system, I show them how to start and stop the processes, and that's basically all there is to it.

What I appreciate about UiPath is that, compared to the competitors, it has pretty much everything. There are so many out-of-the-box solutions that it's difficult to find a match. I have tried to compare it to free alternatives, and the difference is night and day.

It's simple to develop and use for developers and end-users as well, so I would say that's probably the most important aspect for us. The development time is very fast once a UiPath developer learns the basics of development. It usually takes a few days to automate a business process, which is mind-blowing compared to other options.

There is one major feature I feel is missing from UiPath. When someone starts an automation, there should be some notification window on the screen to provide information about the flow's status and progress. Currently, users can see if the flow is running and some basic information, but there's no core notification window that fully informs users. Incorporating such a feature would greatly enhance user experience.

I faced one issue with UiPath Studio where when automating a workflow takes several hours and the application remains open, it can consume an immense amount of memory, sometimes up to six gigabytes of RAM. Restarting UiPath Studio usually resolves this. I'm uncertain if this is a common issue or specific to my environment.

I usually use the UiPath Community, which is pretty much my primary resource. I occasionally explore the marketplace for specific activities that may already exist. However, I primarily rely on forums. Most of the time when I have a specific question, I find the proper answer there. About 90% of the time, I find relevant forum threads where someone has encountered the same issue or question.

I utilized the UiPath Academy heavily in the first two years, completing most developer-related lessons. It's challenging to keep track of all the lessons nowadays, so in recent times, my learning has shifted more towards forums and YouTube videos rather than strictly relying on the academy.

Neutral

I haven't worked with any RPA product before UiPath. We did explore other options back in 2019 and compared various competitors when we had a project in 2023. However, my development experience has solely been with UiPath.

If our partner requires an on-prem RPA solution, we create a compact UiPath architecture. We have several partners with on-prem orchestrators and associated servers. It's really simple to assemble. I know because it took just a weekend to set up all the servers. If someone prefers cloud solutions, it's even easier since much of the configuration is pre-set. Overall, I would say that it's not difficult to develop an on-prem architecture.

On paper, I believe there are cost savings thanks to UiPath. However, I don't have access to exact conversion numbers. I can see saved time and reduced FTEs, but I can't specify how that translates into actual money. Some workflows don't pay off the license due to infrequency, but overall, I believe it does contribute positively.

I would definitely recommend UiPath, although the major concern is that it's not super cheap. Despite its higher price, I understand the complexity behind it since it's the most comprehensive RPA solution. 

The cost can be a barrier in Hungary, making it difficult for me to persuade others to invest, especially when unattended robots come at a significant price point.

When we were trying to implement UiPath in our environment about four or five years ago, things were totally different than they are today. Many automation solutions didn't exist back then, making it challenging to get familiar with the product and its capabilities initially. Since then, the RPA ecosystem has expanded significantly. Document Understanding wasn't a feature in 2019 or 2020, but now, it is much improved.

We haven't really used the communication mining feature. I've checked it a few times, but we usually handle manual interviews with key users. As for task mining, I used it for documentation purposes when creating workflow documentation. It supports generating document templates, which is very useful for us, but we haven't used it for deeper automated workflow steps.

I would rate UiPath an eight out of ten.

We are using UiPath as an RPA solution, utilizing its capabilities for document extraction, intelligent OCR, and intelligent automation. Once it became available in-house along with the robot environment, we started using it.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation.

UiPath has freed up employee time because most accounting staff are now monitoring rather than performing tasks manually.

The robots are valuable, and UiPath is becoming stronger in the intelligent automation space, which is a good step forward. Also, Document Understanding integrated with Agentic AI is working well. The automation cloud is also good.

Their community is good. UiPath Academy is also good. You can get familiarized with the products. Whenever they release a product, they also release a course in UiPath Academy. So, you can get familiarized with the product and understand the new capabilities.

I do not like the Orchestrator setup and the licensing model. Its price is higher than others, and the licensing model is quite confusing. 

UiPath should develop models for situations when other applications disrupt automation and provide a mechanism to override that. Efficiency issues are present and should be addressed.

I have used this solution for almost seven years.

The solution is not very stable. Sometimes there are issues, for example, selectors may not work properly. 

The solution is scalable enough, but since the license cost is high and most of our solutions are deployed in Azure VMs, which is expensive, customers are hesitant to invest in more bots or solutions. If the licensing costs were to decrease, more bots could be deployed.

We have 20 to 30 people using UiPath.

Their technical support is average. Their community is good. For almost all the questions, we get answers. Initially, it was very difficult to get support, but nowadays, we do not have to go for support because most things get solved in the community itself.

Neutral

I was a .NET developer before using UiPath, so it was more of a generic transition for me. I have worked with ABBYY FlexiCapture. My experience was good because the automation has been running fine. The document is in proper format. It works fine.

For me, UiPath is much easier to use than Power Automate or any other tool because I have the most experience with UiPath. They tried to fine-tune the automation experience over time, so it is much easier compared to other tools.

The initial setup is straightforward and does not require much effort, just a bit.

We were using the on-premises version of UiPath, but we have now migrated to the cloud. The migration process itself was very easy because they have a cloud migration tool. We started using the cloud. It has more capabilities, and it is much easier for us to maintain. We do not have to update the Orchestrator after every release. So, it is good.

The deployment is done in-house.

Most RPA solutions are cost-effective. For accounting, we automated tasks in our old organization, and now, most accounting staff are monitoring rather than performing tasks manually. They are simply doing validations.

UiPath has reduced human error and saved employee time.

Its cost is a bit on the higher side. We are not very happy with their pricing. Most of the UiPath products are priced higher than competitors.

UiPath is evolving with current trends, particularly in AI, and is now focusing on Agentic AI. The future looks promising for UiPath. 

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten. It is a good product.

We are an auditing firm who has a certain level of tasks that are open for automating. These are complete steps, which can be performed by anyone, standardized, and do not involve any human intelligence. These are just basic human tasks. It is a long process, where in-between there are certain validation and verification steps as well as certain steps that involve a lot of documentation to go through. The organization is targeting all these tasks, which are completely static and can be automated, so they can get rid of them. Then, employees can work on something more useful as well as more productivity-oriented tasks.

Currently, I am dealing with our internal COE, providing RPA solutions to internal and external clients. UiPath is a driving force in our COE.

It is on-prem. There are a couple of discussions going around upgrading UiPath because there has been so much advancement with the solution.

Document Understanding was a game-changer. One of our clients has manual billing that needs to be processed. With the help of Document Understanding and UiPath Action Center, we created an excellent workflow for our client. It also gives us better accuracy. Now, there are hardly any exceptions in the client's billing documents that are being processed.

In my previous role, I presented some clients the end-to-end installation design of UiPath, e.g., building a PDD using Task Capture, going to UiPath Studio to build the actual solution, and then later going to post-production Insights. 

UiPath has helped to minimize our on-prem footprint. Most organizations prefer on-prem because it reduces the risk of compliance issues.

Attended robots have been very beneficial for our users. UiPath saves one robot for every user. We have a couple of clients who are using attended automation for their day-to-day tasks.

From an organizational point of view, the most used feature is Orchestrator because that is how we manage more than 100 users. When there are more than 100 users, it is important, and probably better, to have some place to manage them. Orchestrator is doing that for us very well. 

The most exciting new feature is UiPath Apps. I have explored it in-depth to get a better understanding. I think this product will be a game-changer for my organization as well as for my clients. It will revolutionize the way that we are providing licensing and proper access to a user. It also revolutionizes the way people are using it. Everything will be on the cloud, which I think is the most interesting feature of UiPath Apps.

UiPath Apps will definitely help to reduce the workload of our IT department by enabling end users to create apps. If you are creating an app and sharing it over the cloud, that removes the dependency of having UiPath installed with the correct version as well as Internet connectivity. Or, you might have a global server in the background that is not functioning very well. There are multiple issues related to connectivity of the UiPath robot when deploying it on a user's machine. 

If you are giving access to a group of users and adding Azure container or any other container provided by UiPath, then this reduces 10 to 15 hours of work from the IT or support guys who are manually doing all these things by themselves. Not every user must have the new step of getting the UiPath license and software installed, it is really static. You are eliminating that task completely by having UiPath Apps on the cloud. This is definitely convenient for users to use.

We are not using UiPath Apps in my current organization. About two to three months ago, I created UiPath when I was at TCS. It was there that we demonstrated the power of UiPath Apps versus normal, conventional methods. It reduced our work through scalability. It helped us to easily scale and was more convenient, because giving new or temporary access can be a pain. 

It is very easy to share UiPath Apps. When you want to start or remove it, you can do it with a simple click within the cloud. It is not that complicated. Also, the usage is better in UiPath Apps compared to the conventional UiPath robot. In UiPath Assistant, you can access the portal and simply run it over there. Therefore, you will not have a problem with the background functioning of the UiPath robot or even connectivity issues. Scalability and ease of use are favorable for users when they are using UiPath Apps.

Recently, I have been exploring Automation Hub. Its idea to pipeline a feature will be very useful for our guys managing RPA products on a large scale. 

When it comes to debugging, there is some improvement needed for UiPath compared to other RPA tools. There are features to edit the workflow or content of the automation file while we are debugging. For example, we have 10,000 lines of code that we have integrated by 10 different users. So, there is one integrated code and you are debugging it. After some time, you might find a line which is not an error. You may have forgotten to remove it or change the value to your desired criteria. It is really a pain to stop the entire debug session and just edit it, then start again at zero. It will do the same steps again just to reach that level or step where you were actually stuck previously. Whereas, in different automation tools, whether you are on the findings step or in-between a debug session, you can actually edit that information. This is good because sometimes the developer also forgets to add or remove certain values in-between a long code. I think this should be improved in UiPath. This should already be in consideration because I have been in touch with UiPath a couple of times because of this.

My current company is currently looking at the end-to-end solution. However, Insights and Task Capture are major concerns. Task Capture will give you a skeleton of the PDD, then you have to edit it. The skeleton is only there for simple automation, and we have complex scenarios. It is so complicated that the PDD generation using Task Capture will not give you even 20% of the output. While Task Capture is something promising, people are looking at it with greater expectations than it provides. People are not using Task Capture or Insight because of their limitations. These features could use improvements and enhancements.

I have been using UiPath for three years. I recently switched companies. I worked with Capgemini and TCS prior to this company, where I was in their COEs and providing solutions to clients. This is the first time that I have been on a project for PwC. Since the start of 2018, I have worked mainly in COEs and have interacted with around 30 clients up until now.

PwC, as a firm, has been using this technology for four to five years.

I have been using UiPath on a different powerful system that has high-end RAM. Sometimes, it crashes due to the use of multiple components at once. For example, when I was using Druid with data service and another UiPath product. Developing was quite easy. However, when debugging, sometimes it would freeze. I don't know whether it was because of my system and its compatibility, my system's configuration, or the fact that we were using so many high-end tools and products at once. 

The robustness of the tool, when it comes to using high-end products, is something that I am currently exploring. This is something that is currently a bit of concern for other developers as well. I have been interacting with a lot of developers around the globe. As a part of that, I tend to share my experiences. They have shared that it will sometimes freeze, even with simple automation. Because we are using new features or products all at once, it freezes. I think this should not be the case. If you are using long, heavy code, and it gets frozen at one point, I can understand that. However, 10 simple lines of code, while using three or four products at once, is getting frozen. That should be taken care of or improved.

To troubleshoot the system crashing, we contacted UiPath. They were kind enough to reply and have a discussion. They are working on this and trying to make it more convenient so future releases will solve this problem.

As a part of a COE, we get clients who expect us to present the entire proof of concept as well as a PPT or presentation. For example, why they need to go with UiPath, what are the advantages/disadvantages, if any, and why we should not go with another tool or solution as a whole, not just RPA. The main point for us when presenting UiPath is the ease of usability and scalability. We don't need major infrastructure changes, just two or three URLs to be widely fitted. Then, they need to decide if they want unattended or attended robots. The scalability is the major driving force which excites our clients and us, because there isn't a need to have media-heavy software or heavy processes changes.

Clients don't want every user in their organization who joins to have a long process to get through the start up. Automation Cloud is something they were very much interested in exploring because of the scalability. They find it very easy to use and scale, because not all the clients have a certain set of users using robots. 

I have seen user usage explode from zero to a bigger audience of 22 users.

UiPath is used extensively in my current organization on a large scale. There is also a plan to scale it to more users.

PwC has their internal teams providing a "help center" sort of infrastructure to them. If there was a need for any help, or some basic doubt, it is solved internally. PwC's internal help center exists already. However, for major issues, we reach out to UiPath, as a customer, so that we can receive a response and clarity on issues.

The technical support is really great. I have been in touch with all sorts of UiPath support because I was in the COE and our clients were completely global until my latest assignment. I think UiPath India, France, Belgium, and Canada are timely. They provide a very precise support experience. They were kind enough to let us know the actual reason, because just saying that it is a bug is not something that we can comfortably accept or digest. Also, they have been kind enough to follow back up on updates and bugs that we have reported.

As a whole, I have reported more than 25 bugs across all their products. They were kind enough to reach out to the same forum where we raised the ticket. They were kind enough to reply that these are the updates that they will roll out in the next version. It is good to have this interaction as well as a heads-up regarding your bug reports. I think the technical support is on the mark and doing their job really well.

The learning tools and support are really great. They have the most engaging forum across the globe, compared to other RPA tools. The learning and engagement are really up to the mark. That also brings confidence to our clients and us. We are a part of their global community forum, which is a benefit for us. 

Their marketplace has grown tenfold in the last year. It is because of the developer's involvement as well as involvement from people in the community. UiPath is creating their own statements and usable components, which adds value to our presentation. The tool is growing, and developers and community members are growing with them. 

My previous companies migrated from other RPA solutions, like Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and NICE Robotic Automation, to UiPath because of the value of its features and the quality of the overall solution. I migrated my clients from those companies so they could have a better ROI and reduce the cost of maintenance. We also migrated from scheduling tools, like AutoSys, to provide better accuracy and ease of use.

My current company was not previously using an RPA solution.

The initial setup and implementation are standard, simple, and user-friendly. UiPath just requires basic adjustment, then it is plug and play. It is very easy for everyone to understand, e.g., non-technical clients can understand what has been changed.

If the deployment is done properly, you will see better data accuracy with UiPath than manual entry. If the deployment is done by someone without much experience, it will affect the quality of the solution due to bad coding. You can't just leave it to the tool.

Using Automation Cloud makes it easier to deploy.

It takes almost two weeks for us to implement from scratch because we must understand the client's infrastructure, create a solution design, and then present it to them.

We present our clients with a PoC, including a document that justifies the work and costs. We also give them a standard robot that we created for demo purposes. This way, they can visualize how it will be implemented and mapped in their organization.

For deployment, one or two people are sufficient: one from an infrastructure background and another from a technical background. Sometimes, it is complex or hard to understand the client's needs when it comes to the deployment of Azure, Nvidia, or AWS servers on their VPN connection.

The amount of staff needed for maintenance depends on the size of the solution, e.g., the bigger solutions will need more people. However, the maintenance and support activities can also be automated and that reduces the need for support and maintenance. Three or four support team members are enough with the help of a robot.

The last ROI calculation that we did for a client showed that they saved 25% of their time by automating a manual task with an unattended robot for a single machine.

Overall, the cost remains the same to the client and us, when using Automation Cloud, because of the amount of money spent on the cloud migration and cloud usage.

At my previous company, in the best scenario, we removed almost 200 hours per month of client usage, making it automated with almost zero errors. So, about 32 employees were freed up from their work per month, and now there are only two. This has enabled employees to focus on higher-value work that involves human-base interaction. This saved the client money and provided a recruitment benefit.

UiPath has been useful for improving employee satisfaction. Employees are now spending time on more value-add work instead of something static, whether it is boring or hectic, that they have been working on for ages. This gives employees a sense of advancement.

I would rate the pricing as seven out of 10, where 10 is the most expensive. The pricing increased with the latest release. It used to be cheap. Now, it is expensive. However, it does come with supported features, which almost justify its cost.

Building automations is very easy. I have used multiple RPA tools. Developing automation with UiPath is very convenient compared to other tools. 

Development is very easy. I have been exploring certain markets based on the marketplace component and its native integrations with ServicesNow for the chatbot. I think development is where UiPath stands out as a winner compared to other tools because starting to automate is very easy.

Compared to other RPA tools, UiPath is leading with new feature additions every quarter. Obviously, all the new features will not be incorporated into the solution or be helpful for the client. We see the organization putting in efforts to grow at a rapid pace, including ML, scaling, and everything on the cloud, like data servers. UiPath gives us the confidence to present a tool that can be relied on because it is constantly growing. It constantly has certain new features added which can be beneficial.

With UiPath, not everyone needs to understand the code, which is great. This makes it superior over other tools because it is easy to understand. This contributes to profits because clients prefer UiPath over something else because they have more confidence using it.

Blue Prism has the ability to edit in the middle of a debug. As far as I have explored, Blue Prism is leading on the debugging front and stands out against UiPath. Debugging in Blue Prism gives users a lot of usability to edit the workflow. This makes it easier for developers to run things once and get things done. Otherwise, debugging multiple times can sometimes be a pain.

People migrate to NICE Robotic Automation because they were having difficulty maintaining their software with a limited number of staff. 

It is easier to become more proficient with UiPath than other RPA tools, especially Blue Prism. Training can be done at almost no cost.

I would suggest automating a policy that is not a requirement and follows a process. As an RPA user, it is your responsibility to get things done in an efficient way. If a user is doing A, B, C, D, it might not be required that the robot do the same thing. There might be a shorthand that can take you from A to D directly using the robot. For example, it can go directly to a page and not have to click 10 things like a human.

If you use it properly and consciously, it can increase accuracy and reduce error. If you don't, then it will be the other way around.

As features are concerned, it is reasonably priced compared to any other heavyweight tools in the market.

It is beneficial that there is a SaaS option because this offers a diversified cloud environment. If we expand and explore more cloud options, then having a SaaS solution for UiPath will be beneficial for us. Right now, SaaS comes with a certain amount of compliance issues for my company. 

UiPath AI Center is very useful. I think it is a game-changer when it comes to better usage. However, I haven't had much of a chance to explore it on an enterprise level. Not many clients are using it because of the exposure risk. Once a lot of developers start exploring and developing on it, then more companies will have the confidence to say, "Yes, we can push to that," which will increase the usage of UiPath AI Center.

Everything on the UIPath Cloud is a template. It is just a starting point. You have to dig into it and do more exploration to make it better.

Using Automation Cloud would be very beneficial for us, as a COE, because we are getting rid of the mundane tasks of infrastructure, maintenance, and upgrades, which we do not think are our primary job.

Biggest lesson learnt: UiPath has the fastest growing community with the quickest learning tools. It is easy to automate. It requires basic understanding and effort to get started. 

I would rate UiPath as 9.5 out of 10. I have concerns about the debugging capability, where if I need to edit something while debugging, I can't do it right away without stopping the process.

I am in consulting, and I implement UiPath for my clients across various use cases.

Immediate benefits include faster operation and the ability to run overnight, which clients value since the work is already completed when they start their day.

From my point of view, it is visual, making it easy to learn. It is super easy for me to learn and handle the automation, then replicate it, rather than using traditional code.

Everything is embedded. It is not only automation. It also includes document understanding and communications mining, with all add-ons in the same organization. 

We use Agentic automation. It's very good at automating processes. We're still at an early stage. We have access to the alpha version. I like what it is doing, however, it is not production-ready yet. I see its potential. Initially, I started playing with it via demos only. I've built a few things I have shown to clients, although I have yet to use it. 

We had a few use cases for Agentic. One use case was as an HR assistant, including providing invitations to candidates to say they are a fit for "x" roles and to set up interview times. Another use case was as a document extractor. I created an agent that could extract information from documents and provide a stable output and learn for itself. The third use case was for account payables, which is the one I've been demoing. I've created an agent that can read an invoice and provide recommendations, such as approving payments.

I have experience with UiPath's communication mining features. It can be used in real-time if you link it to a mailbox, for example. I don't see the power of linking to a mailbox. However, I see the power of using them to send an email and then get in return what the tool understands. I'm able to automate actions and responses. I have a demo on that. For example, I have an automation that scans the email, and it can tell what documentation the email is about. I can understand, for example, if the email or document is about a policy claim and then ask further questions or make further recommendations based on that.

It's fairly easy to build automation. I'd rate it overall a seven out of ten. It can get super-complex, however, it's fairly easy.

We can handle end-to-end automation for the most part. Now, with Agentic, it's easier, since you can connect automation. You just need to keep in mind there's a different approach.

I do use the UiPath forum. If I don't know something or if I'm facing an issue. Maybe someone has already faced it. 90% of the time, someone already has. I can ask questions and try to solve problems.

UiPath helps the team have less work. People, initially, when they use automation, fear they will lose their jobs. However, that's not the case. Now, people see that they can properly focus on other stuff. Their job isn't taken. They can focus elsewhere. Depending on the use case, UiPath has freed up 50% to 90% of a person's time.

The Academy is free, and there is a lot of content. For new joiners, they have to be certified, so for the first two to three weeks, we put them in full training mode. 

Licensing needs improvement. Licensing in UiPath is a bit confusing. They are already working on that, however, from my perspective, it is what I feel least safe discussing because the product changes two or three times a year. 

Additionally, it is confusing to understand the packages available, the number of packages, and updates with new versions. Therefore, from my perspective, licensing is an area for improvement.

The Agentic tool has a lot of noise. However, we have to get hands on to understand what the tool is capable of and what the tool is not capable of. That's one of the things that I am spending time with.

I have used all the platforms for five and a half years overall.

I have personally never experienced downtime. I'd rate stability nine out of ten.

Sclability is quite good, perhaps an eight out of ten. It depends on how the development is executed. If done properly, scaling is straightforward; otherwise, it can be challenging. However, the issue lies with the implementation, not the platform.

Every time I work with the official UiPath support, they are slow and might not have read my request thoroughly before responding, leading to incorrect answers.

If you know the right person, partner support can be good. I tend to not ask anything when I am trouble. The support in Australia is better for partners. 

Neutral

I have used Blue Prism at a beginner level and Automation Anywhere at a beginner level. As of now, I would not consider them competition. Blue Prism, for example, has not kept up with changes, and Automation Anywhere is making efforts, however, I am biased and would naturally choose UiPath. The main competitor would be Microsoft Power Automate.

Cloud deployment took me 15 minutes. A few years ago, most deployments were on-prem. Overall, the safe answer to fully deploy would be weeks, however, depending on the use case, it could be longer. The largest deployments I have done took four months due to complex automation. Typically, it takes three to four weeks, maximum.

We have around 500 UiPath specialists. Our clients are medium to enterprise.

The solution absolutely needs maintenance. If the applications change of something becomes unstable, you need to have maintenance to make changes. The same is true if a website updates, for example. It can affect an automation. 

We are already undertaking this at the regional level, so if UiPath has any activity in Australia, they will reach out to me.

I do not have the numbers at hand, however, there is clearly a return on investment when the automations are done properly, which is hopefully every time we develop anything for production.

From my discussions with clients, they normally find it expensive. This expense is generally not in terms of the bot or developer license. It's rather when it comes to AI units. Enabling document understanding, communications mining, or agents is considered expensive.

I'd rate pricing seven out of ten, with ten being the most expensive. 

We are UiPath partners.

The tool is already proven, so starting a proof of concept is a good idea. Users should create a POC that can scale. Automate steps one and two, for instance, so that you trust the tool and see what it can do. Then, quickly transition to phase one if phase zero was the initial step to see its scalability and impact on previously good information. 

I'd provide an overall product rating of seven out of ten.

I have hundreds of use cases for UiPath. Mainly, it's used for AP and AR automation, outboarding, HR, and for vendors and customers. 

It's helped us reduce manual work for our employees and customers.

Having expertise in IPaaS has allowed us to create a lot of automation for our clients that they normally couldn't automate. It's a profitable solution in that sense. Also, it automates many steps that normally would require a lot of FTEs to do that work. You can ensure it's being done on time without any human errors.

The UI automation is excellent. Being able to automate clicks on desktop applications and browsers is very helpful. A lot of the other tools are very good at automating online system processes and similar things. However, when it comes to desktop UI automation, they are by far the leader.

They're just starting to add a lot of AI functionality, so there's definitely room for improvements in leveraging the latest AI technologies - like GPT, et cetera.

I've used the solution for about eight years. 

The solution is very stable. I'd rate its reliability nine out of ten.

It's extremely scalable. I'd rate scalability ten out of ten. 

Most of our technical responses are related to third-party websites changing their designs. You have to deal with those changes. The modern selectors are smarter and can adapt to change. However, if the developer changes a lot of things in the background. 

UiPath support is quite good. Sometimes they take a bit to get back to us, however, most of the time, they are pretty responsive. 

They do have a higher tier of service that costs more, and they are quite excellent. 

Positive

I use both UiPath and Power Automate. We used to use a tool called Win Automation. We switched from then due to the fact that they were prone to failure and did not have enough tools to meet expectations. They have since been acquired by Microsoft, and Microsoft Power Automate is based on that.

I'd rate the initial setup eight out of ten. It's pretty easy to implement. 

We use Azure Virtual Machines to deploy the robots and usually use a lot of the Azure services in conjunction with the robots. The cloud is on UiPath's automation cloud. That's where we have our servers - to manage the robust deployed data on multiple virtual machines.

In terms of maintenance, there are always releases and updates, and then you can usually design your own robots to watch over the other robots, which is really interesting. You have the flexibility to make your own monitoring; if it sees something wrong, you can enter a ticket and then dispatch it to the support team to respond to it. 

My whole developer team is involved in maintenance; however, I have specific support team members. There's 28 developers and seven support team members in that group.

We witnessed an ROI fairly quickly. For the cost of one developer license, you can produce a lot of automation. The robot license is a 24/7 one-year license. If you can run bots 24 hours nonstop on it when you can run many different processes, each process can save hours, hundreds of hours of time for employees. There's also a lot of savings from your customer side on being able to service things quicker as well. That you can't fully quantify; however, you find you can offer better customer service in terms of speed of transaction, et cetera. Even if you spend $10,000 to $15,000 on a robot license, you quickly recover your costs. 

The pricing is very competitive. There are some parts of the solution that are considered consumable, and as you consume more, you increase the cost. However, that's similar to other products out there. There might be extra costs for AI units, robot units, and data services. That said, what they give you out of the box for every license is usually sufficient for most enterprises.

I'm a customer, reseller, and partner.

I'd rate UiPath ten out of ten. 

I would advise new users that the biggest part is to always sync in reusable components. That will drive your ROI much quicker. If you can reuse pieces or design them in a way that they're reusable, then you can use them across multiple processes instead of redoing the work over and over. Thinking modular from the beginning is going to go a long way.

My primary use case with UiPath is to automate workflows for processes in web-based applications, such as email and Excel automation. We also use it as a task or workflow management tool, capable of assigning tasks, checking on the status of tasks, and more.

Another thing that I have been doing with UiPath is replacing repetitive tasks performed within the organization. Automating such tasks makes the related process smoother and faster. 

We are using the UiPath automation cloud offering, which is a SaaS solution. One advantage to this type of environment is that we can get updates instantly. If it were an on-premises or hybrid model then the setup and maintenance take time, but this isn't the case with a SaaS model. This instant setup is what we needed because it made for a smooth transition from manual processes to automation. 

With respect to building automations, UiPath is a pretty straightforward platform. The major reason that we choose to implement UiPath is the interface that it provides, which boosts the usefulness of the entire platform. If we need assistance then there are many knowledge base documents available. There is also in-app help, which makes it very easy to understand and start using it.

I was able to learn how to use it within a week, which shows how easy it is. For example, it does not require a lot of coding. It's more of a drag-and-drop interface, making it easier to develop programs and automate processes.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation, and it has completely replaced the manual processes that we were using. This includes analyzing the process and implementing automation to collect the data. Data fetching is done using the robots that we create.

Since implementing UiPath, we have experienced better retention of our users. This is because we have been able to make our process much smoother, as well as quicker. Consequently, we have been able to deliver at a much faster pace. This has enhanced the customer experience and in turn, has improved customer satisfaction. Overall, we have seen an increase of about 30% in terms of user retention. This has translated to increasing revenue.

With respect to automating our processes, automation has reduced our manual efforts by more than 70%. This means that we are able to concentrate more on other aspects of our business. The business is growing because we are able to do things like work on our website, customer engagement, and customer relations.

UiPath has taken care of most of the backend work for us, which is a good bonus. It has reduced our investment in manpower by about 50% and decreased our overall output time by more than 70%.

Automation has definitely reduced the rate of human error when compared to our previous, manual processes. At this point, there is minimal to zero human error. I estimate that approximately one hundred percent of human error has been eliminated.

Implementing this product definitely helps speed the process of digital transformation, and reduces its cost as well. One of the goals of our organization is to completely digitize. We want to optimize everything so that employees can focus more on the customer relationship aspect, building more value for our brand. UiPath has definitely helped in improving the overall process.

Our digital transformation did not require any external support for third-party application software. It's an in-built process and we did not need anything extra.

The specific feature I like is folder organization, and it is in the Orchestrator tenant. This is very useful because it keeps all of my folders and data in a centralized tenant.

The menu options are easily accessible in the Orchestrator tenant, which is something that I like very much.

The UiPath Academy was pretty helpful for us in the initial stages. We were able to learn more about the software and what is there. They also provide courses and certifications, which assist with learning and getting employees up to speed.

It took only a week for me to completely get a handle on the software. Taking the initial training and certification courses is a hassle-free process. It is not difficult to induct somebody and have them start using the product.

The courses that they offer provide hands-on experience, and I think that it's a good initiative that they are taking on by doing so. It helps to ease the learning curve and allowed us to learn more about the world of automation.

UiPath has a user community that is very knowledgeable and friendly. Our peers in the UiPath community are able to dumb down responses to a beginner's level of experience, regardless of what queries we have put forth. Whatever we have wanted to do with RPA, they have been able to help. We now have a good level of comfort in terms of interacting with our peers in the community.

We have experience with other communities and have found that the discussions are generally at a higher level, which may be too difficult for a new person that is just starting out with the product.

Generally speaking, I like the features that I am using and I could not really say where improvement is needed in that respect.

The product could be made a little less glitchy. Specifically, when too many users are working at the same time, it hangs a little bit here and there.

In a future release, I would like to see drag-and-drop functionality in the robot creation process within Orchestrator. As of now, it is not available there. It would be helpful because from there, it is easy to create a process flow. Instead of switching between multiple menus and multiple tabs, we can do it from the Orchestrator or the main menu.

I have been using UiPath for approximately a year and a half.

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. Sometimes, when the load is high or there are many users working at the same time, or when I'm working on different parts at the same time, it lags a little bit. There is a slight drop in performance.

Otherwise, it's very stable and secure software.

Using the automation cloud offering has meant that scaling up automations has been very smooth for us. We started out with between 40 and 50 users working on this particular tool, and now it's between 150 and 170 users.

There are two levels of roles; admin roles and user roles. The admin role is able to assign and approve tasks, using the task management module. Regular users are able to perform all of the other functions.

It is definitely a scalable solution, being cloud-based and SaaS. It is also very customizable. Customizability is the unique selling point (USP) for this particular product, given the number of customizations that are available and the number of features that can be added.

The technical support staff is brilliant. They are very knowledgeable and very quick when it comes to addressing our queries. They don't ask us to wait for long when we have a problem, and we normally have a resolution within hours.

There is also a community forum that helps us to deal with problems ourselves, without the dependence on the technical support team.

I would rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

We did not use another RPA solution prior to UiPath. Before this, we were doing everything manually.

I was not involved in the initial setup and deployment.

As we opted to implement the cloud-based model, the maintenance on our part is minimal. We just have to update the software from time to time. The amount of maintenance that we perform is not only easy but saves a lot of time for our IT team.

The team of people for maintenance consists of six or seven junior IT staff. They perform the updates and nothing more.

Using the automation cloud offering has helped to decrease our time to value. An example of where we saw the benefits of this solution was with an Excel automation that we created. This process involves an Excel worksheet that contains between 20,000 and 30,000 records. We had to manually search for particular records, and the process to approximately a week to complete. Now, with UiPath, the same process is completed within a couple of minutes. 

Once we signed up with UiPath, we instantly saw growth in our entire business. It was a win-win situation. 

The additional time has enabled our employees to focus on higher-value work, such as R&D, customer engagement, and improving our brand. It also has an effect on employees' satisfaction, specifically, mine.

A lot of time spent doing repetitive and redundant work is something that was irritating me a lot. Now that the automation is in place, I just have to set up the workflow. It has definitely increased my overall morale and satisfaction. 

One of the downsides to UiPath is the cost of the enterprise version. It is a little bit on the higher side.

UiPath's cloud offering is a centralized, all-in-one platform. It saves money because you don't have to invest as much in other software, and it's cheaper than some solutions because you don't have to maintain the platform or the database. However, because it's not cheap, the overall cost reduction is not drastic at first. Taking a holistic view, it does because overall, it will reduce costs.

There is also a Community Edition that can be used free of charge. This is an option for users that find the price to be high. One main differentiating factor with the Community Edition is the number of updates. There are fewer in the Community Edition.

Also, the support offered for the Community Edition is not as quick. People will not have a great user experience. However, it is important to remember that in terms of cost, the Enterprise Edition is a little bit pricey for small and medium-scale enterprises. 

About a month ago, we started using the AI functionality of the software to design robots and processes. At this point, we are looking to use AI for our internal applications.

One example is that we are working on security-related automation that triggers an alert when somebody inserts or removes an external hard disk from a system. Taking advantage of the AI capabilities has helped us to maintain a much safer work environment, in terms of data security.

The AI functionality has definitely enabled us to automate more processes. A lot of manual work and redundant work has been reduced. Also, the number of errors that we had occurring during our manual processes has been greatly reduced.

This solution has definitely helped to free up employee time. Tasks that used to take approximately a week, now take just 30 or 40 minutes. This is a lot of time saved, which allows us to concentrate more on other aspects of the business. For example, improved customer engagement has resulted in gathering more leads. Also, we have more time for R&D.

I estimate that we are saving approximately five hours per day, so 20 hours per week, per employee. In addition to the areas that we have more time to concentrate on, it has helped improve the value of our brand overall.

My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing this product is that it's a must. This is the go-to software that I would recommend for anybody looking to automate their business in a smooth and efficient manner.

Cost, of course, is something that has to be considered but if they can afford this solution then they should implement it. It has a wide variety of features and functionalities, which are market fit and market ready. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.