UiPath Platform Reviews

We use UiPath for robot authentication. We primarily use the software for accounting, particularly in our financial department, where we place some details from the client site, put them on a particular website, download the details, and then send those to a specific client.

I work for a big organization with many team members who access UiPath. On the client side, mostly enterprise clients, UiPath also has many users.

We've seen many benefits from UiPath, particularly from the client side.

The first benefit is manpower reduction, or reducing the number of people required to do the work.

Another benefit of UiPath is the reduction of errors. Sometimes, you'll notice errors from human intervention, but when the work is done via UiPath, you won't see any errors, so the solution has improved the success rate.

What I like most about UiPath is that it significantly reduced the amount of human intervention, which means that what usually takes people to do in ten to fifteen minutes would only take the robot one to two minutes.

I also like that UiPath runs 24/7.

I find the ease of building automation in UiPath valuable. It's easier to do that in UiPath versus other platforms, such as Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere. My organization has a lot of activities and needs to give specific details and accesses, and I found that UiPath works in the final product.

UiPath enables my organization to implement end-to-end automation. Sometimes, it's required for the user interface, but implementing end-to-end automation still depends on the product and agenda.

The solution helped minimize the on-premises footprint of my organization, mainly because it allows you to do a significant amount of work remotely, so UiPath is the best way to minimize your on-premises footprint.

My team has utilized UiPath Academy, precisely the basic course, then the development course, and then the advanced certification. You have to start with the basic course that shows you how the platform works, then move on to the development course, and then the advanced course or certification.

What I like best about UiPath Academy courses is that you see several maintenance scenarios you don't get to observe daily. You'll see perfect examples of different scenarios in the videos plus the instructor has a good teaching style, so my team was able to understand the lessons easily.

I also found that UiPath has helped in significantly reducing the cost of digital transformation.

In terms of reducing human error, UiPath has helped decrease it by twelve to fifteen percent. Sometimes, humans working for five to ten hours become tired, while the robot can work twenty-four by seven without getting tired, complete the work on time, and ensure that all details it encodes are correct.

Because of UiPath, my organization doesn't need so many people, but you still need to manage the robot, monitor it, and ensure that reporting works fine. It's not like my team has to do another project after utilizing UiPath. Still, the solution requires managing routers, which now requires one person with UiPath versus ten people without UiPath, so that's one example of what the solution has helped reduce. UiPath helped free up about thirty percent of employee time.

I like the most recent update that was completed for UiPath because it helped solve the clustering case, and then the modern authentication is good.

What needs some improvement in UiPath is its Document Understanding functionality. It should be simplified because, right now, it's a little complicated to use, as you have to give it data or details, so in the future, I hope that could be improved.

I have been using UiPath for more than four years now.

UiPath is a stable solution.

Currently, we find UiPath scalable, but we still need to observe and monitor it for an extended period to check its scalability.

We have not had any issues with UiPath technical support. They've helped us a lot and have provided a lot of input, and we are satisfied with how they've handled different types of issues.

Our rating for them would be seven out of ten.

Neutral

I've used Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere.

In my organization, my team previously used Excel Automation, which means the team uses scripts and macros to automate tasks. However, there was a lot of limitation, while in UiPath, there was none, so my organization switched to UiPath.

Deploying UiPath wasn't as complex. My organization has a lot of members who can access everything. There wasn't any issue with deploying the solution.

At the moment, I haven't seen ROI from UiPath, but maybe in the future, I will.

I find UiPath a reasonably priced solution.

My organization currently doesn't use UiPath to automate processes that deal with good causes, but there is a possibility in the future.

The organization I belong to has not implemented the AI functionality of UiPath in its automation program.

UiPath is currently deployed on-premises, but the team is considering moving it to the cloud.

Sometimes, the solution requires maintenance, specifically on the server side, as that runs 24/7, so you need to integrate and do some checks to maintain UiPath.

I recommend UiPath versus Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere. If you are using other platforms, I suggest moving to UiPath.

My rating for UiPath as a solution is eight out of ten.

My organization is not a UiPath customer. My organization is an integrator that creates the robots and recommends UiPath to businesses.

I work on database automation. We just delivered a dynamic workflow in an Excel automation as well. We work on many types of formulas. In addition, we develop physical automation. For example, we created a process that posts many photos at once on many groups.

We are able to produce output with UiPath in less time. Where a manual process takes one to two hours, we can develop a UiPath solution that takes 15 minutes. In terms of saving time, one bot has saved 60 to 70 percent of the time the task used to take. We have also seen human error reduced by about 60 percent. 

We have automated processes with 20 to 25 bots, and our organization is very happy with UiPath.

It's easy to go with UiPath. It's user-friendly, and any IT person will find it easy to use. It can be learned in six months to one year.

Also, we can use Orchestrator with Action Center for end-to-end automation. With Orchestrator, we can schedule automations.

I would like to see the setup improved. First we install it, then we log in with Orchestrator, and then we have to log in to the UiPath website. I would like all this to be merged into one setup.

I have been using UiPath for 2.7 years.

The stability of UiPath is a nine out of 10.

The scalability is between eight and nine out of 10.

Support can take a lot of time, two to three days to receive a response.

Neutral

I have developed Excel automations with Power Automate.

We are using the Community Edition of UiPath and it is deployed on our servers. We use it in one location in one department. It was not a complex process to install it, although there was a little bit of complexity to it.

If there is any activity or anything changes in the environment, maintenance of UiPath can be required.

We have saved both time and money and have definitely seen return on our investment.

The price of UiPath is not too expensive or too cheap. It's in between.

We have four people involved in deploying automation: one developer, a team lead, and two DevOps developers.

My recommendation is to learn flow development.

We can't disclose our exact use cases, but we do intelligent automation with UiPath.

It reduces human error and most bots are able to generate 50 to 60 percent savings in terms of employee time. It's definitely helping our organization to save costs. We are able to do work at one-sixth of the cost. Even after adding an FTE for bot support in the back end, UiPath saves us significantly on costs.

The Task Mining is one feature that is very helpful to any business analyst. I do business analysis, and the info that I produce goes to our UiPath team to develop automations. Task Mining is the only part I leverage.

UiPath is pretty flexible and offers security aspects as well. It helps us do intelligent automation, providing multi-language support. It can also integrate with any kind of application, such as Java or legacy-based applications. We can call APIs when needed, and it can be scheduled. We can even manage UiPath licenses for multiple uses.

It has certain built-in Excel features, so if you want to pick data from Excel or crunch data in Excel without using Excel macros, you can use UiPath and take that data to any type of ERP application. In that way, it's quite flexible. It has very good features that help you process data across different technologies and platforms.

The UiPath Academy courses are also very useful. I became certified in UiPath business analysis training, and have also done UiPath technical architect courses. It helps you kick-start your career in UiPath. It's very helpful.

UiPath helps with digital transformation at the outset, but I focus on the amount of runtime support needed for managing bots. If a bot is going to save four to six onshore resources, at least one offshore resource is needed to support it. That is one area where UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and every automation software has to focus. A lot of bots are highly sensitive. Even the slightest change in screen behavior or a small change in the process and, many times, they are not intelligent enough to run on their own. That means there is a high level of dependence on the support team. Automation software providers need to improve on this.

Also, UiPath could bring in a type of low-code or no-code automation so that it can be used by the masses instead of only by technically proficient people to develop solutions. Low-code or no-code automations would be really helpful. 

In addition, for intelligent automation to become really robust, a lot of features need to be added, and the accuracy of the model has to be improved. Right now, if I am going to implement any UiPath or AI solution, in the beginning, it will only be 30 to 40 percent accurate. It doesn't get to 70 to 80 percent.

These are the types of things that need to be improved in UiPath.

I have been using UiPath for between six and seven years.

It is a stable environment. It doesn't encounter any errors on its own, unless there are system or functional exceptions.

It has good scalability. We can even redeploy an existing use case to a new use case. Or when a new migration takes place, we can use UiPath by modifying it and making it work in the new enrollment.

Our support team handles technical support. I haven't contacted them.

The price is reasonable, although Orchestrator is really costly. Not many organizations will be able to afford that, but without Orchestrator, you can't do bot management. It becomes pretty difficult. UiPath has to focus on orchestration pricing. They need to bring in some innovative pricing.

From the business analysis angle, refine your use cases and make sure you are identifying the right ones, before deliberating about any automation platform, whether it is UiPath or not.

Our primary use case is for RPA. We use it for checking invoices and sending out electronic letters. It is also going to check the absence entered by people when they are sick and see if those fill-outs are correct.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation. It is very important. It makes us more efficient. It does not require that much labor.

We find UiPath quite good in terms of ease of building automations. It does not require an enormous amount of knowledge. It is quite easy to use, but we need to do some scripting and programming in addition to the software.

We use UiPath's AI functionality in our automation program. It is necessary to interpret PDFs. We only use it in one process so far. It has only been six months, so it hasn't enabled us to automate more processes overall.

UiPath speeds up digital transformation and reduces the cost of digital transformation. This digital transformation does not require expensive or complex application upgrades or IT application support.

UiPath has reduced human error. In the use case for checking the invoices, it helps us to handle an invoice more correctly and send the invoice to the correct person internally so that it does not go in a loop somewhere.

UiPath has freed up employee time. By the end of this year, it would have saved us two whole man-years.

UiPath has saved us costs. In the six months of running it, it has saved us something like one and a half million.

The software does what it is supposed to do. I do not have any specific features that are valuable. We mainly use it for automation. We use the standard application screens. It meets our requirements.

We would like to use several modules of UiPath, but they are very costly. All the additional features that we need are there, but they are in the modules that we have not bought.

Its stability could have been better. 

It was installed around September of last year.

The stability could have been better. We started out with one developer license and then we had another developer license. When both developers are working in the cloud platform, it shuts down. I am not sure if it is solved yet.

I do not know about the scalability yet. I hope it is scalable.

We have not used their technical support. We used the UiPath community for some issues. We were trying to learn how to program, and we were stuck and trying to figure out how to do certain things. We posted a couple of questions to the community. There are always people there who are willing to help and come up with good ideas to solve the problems that you have been stuck with.

We did not use any solution previously.

It is in the cloud. Our cloud provider is Digital Workforce.

The deployment took four months. It was straightforward. There were no issues. The integration between the cloud platform and our internal networks with the firewalls was really smooth.

It does not require any maintenance from our side.

It was Digital Workforce that showed us that this is how we would want to do it. We based everything on their strategy.

With the rate at which we are going with automations, it should take us a year and a half or two years.

UiPath has several modules that we would like to use. They will enhance our installation, but they are very costly. 

We are quite happy with the solution as it is. If I were to go for UiPath again, I would not choose Digital Workforce as a supplier.

I do not have any experience with any other solution, but we have had some glitches, so I would rate UiPath an eight out of ten.

I create robots for clients of our company. We have an insurance client that asked us to help with sending letters by email and extracting documents related to insurance, between their insurance agencies.

We also do e-signatures using an API with a server to get digital signatures for all the customers of a bank. And with other banks, we have worked on onboarding clients. We have all the information about them and we do subscriptions for them.

We also have a lot of clients that ask for filters and updates in Excel files.

Employees who were doing the same tasks every day are happy to have time to do innovative things and stop doing tasks that a robot can do. They feel free from those unwanted tasks. These kinds of tasks are often boring, and employees can make mistakes. They spend a lot of time doing them without any benefit, because it's something they do every day. There is no innovation when they have to do those tasks. The most important part is that we can help employees in these situations.

The benefits include managing employees' time. A robot can work at night or even on the weekend, whenever you schedule it to run. It's helpful because employees can let it do their jobs when they are at home. There are also fewer errors because when you give a robot a formula, it does all the iterations in the same way. Even if there is a special situation or an exception, the robot can help itself get through it. So it helps with an employee's time and efficiency, and they are happy about that.

There are two kinds of robots that we deliver. One type of robot works independently, giving our client's employees time while the robot does its work. And there are other robots that do work but need a human to verify things. But even that type of robot reduces the work, leaving only the validation.

And when we start discussing RPA with a client, we can see the difference in the costs. We ask them how much they spend on a task or how much time it takes, because even hours have a cost. We then give them the difference. If a robot does that task, it will spend X amount of time on it and you will save this much money. It depends on the project, but sometimes we save them 30 or 40 percent of their time or even more.

The scraping for data extraction is very important. There is also a connection with all Microsoft tools, like Outlook, Excel, Word, et cetera. And OCR, the Document Understanding feature, is important because we have clients that ask us to read data from scanned documents.

UiPath Orchestrator is also important to help us schedule our bots.

In addition, UiPath is a low-code solution, which is very useful and helpful. Given the features and solutions it offers, it's quite easy. The ease is a seven out of 10, or even more. The challenge for us is connected to the demands of the client. Sometimes we work with banks, sometimes with insurance companies, and the challenge is to know what they really require before we start developing. We need to know the exceptions that we might face. But the development part is quite easy thanks to the UiPath Academy and the forum. It's not that hard.

We can even teach our clients a little bit about the use of the UiPath. It's easy and doesn't require an IT engineer. They get excited to use it.

I started my use of UiPath with the UiPath Academy and I'm still learning there because there are updates and new features to learn about. The Academy is very helpful with its videos and explanations, and with the questions at the end of the lessons. I like that it allows me to learn on my own time. It's very constructive because things are explained well and I like that I don't have to be at a school to learn it.

Also, the UiPath community is very good. Anytime I have a problem, or something blocks me, I post a question on the forum and people spend a lot of time helping me. Even if the first solution doesn't work, they come up with another one. When I started working with UiPath, there were only a few people who knew the platform and I had to wait days and days to get an answer, and sometimes I wouldn't get one. But over time, I feel the difference because there are more people in the community and they are more responsive and very helpful.

We have the new license, the Flex Plan with Automation Suite, but we don't have practical examples and we have found it a little bit difficult when dealing with it. We could use more specifications about it and practical examples. Sometimes clients ask us questions, but, even on the UiPath forums,  we don't have answers. We have to spend a lot of time trying to find them. Practical responses about installations and the differences between the kinds of installations would be helpful.

I have been working with UiPath for almost three years.

It's very stable. I haven't faced a problem with UiPath Studio. I would give it a 10 out of 10 for stability.

It's scalable. I would rate it a nine out of 10 on this aspect.

I have needed their help too many times but they have been so helpful. They respond with emails, and sometimes I even talk with them on Google Meet. They are responsive.

Positive

We have worked with UiPath on-premises, on Azure, and on a private cloud. That's where we use it the most. An on-premises setup is easy to do, and on a private cloud, it's not complicated. But with the Automation Suite, it is complicated and we asked UiPath to help us.

When we deploy it for our customers, we ask them to prepare the production environment for us so that it is already ready. For deployment, we have an architecture and an infrastructure engineer. Sometimes we need the infrastructure engineer if something is complicated about the infrastructure. We work with the IT department of the client and our infrastructure engineer.

For unassisted robots, we take the robot from the development machine or the test machine to the deployment machine. For clients using Orchestrator, we create the robot, the job, and we execute the robots from Orchestrator.

Maintaining UiPath is not difficult. One engineer can handle it, for now.

I did some research on Power Automate, but I haven't worked with it. I only saw the interface and some examples. We are planning to learn more about Power Automate and the differences between it and UiPath, but for now, we are only working with you UiPath.

My advice is to use the UiPath Academy and do some practical exercises. And when working with your client, ask all the questions that you have, including exceptions and real cases. Technically, everything is good. Just attend the Academy and use the forums and everything will be okay.

My major use case with UiPath is to create automation applications that reduce manual work. At the same time, we use it to record and update our processes. 

UiPath has helped us elevate our automation process and reduce silos in our businesses. We have been able to deliver better results by using UiPath.

UiPath has improved efficiency with its end-to-end automation process. For example, we do data transfer using UiPath automation. Right from the insertion of data to the transfer of data to the end-user, everything is completely automated now. It's very apt as end-to-end automation software. End-to-end automation is very important because there is no manual intervention needed, once it has been set up. A lot of time and a lot of effort has been saved because of end-to-end automation.

Because no manual intervention is needed, 80 percent of our time, overall, is being saved right now. For example, tasks that required around 10 employees to do only require two employees. The remaining eight employees can focus on something else, to improve sales or our product feature list, et cetera. And invariably, overhead costs and employee costs have been drastically reduced with UiPath.

We are using the cloud version of UiPath, and it has definitely helped us to reduce our on-premises footprint. There is absolutely no on-premises maintenance because everything is on the cloud for us. Server updates and the like happen on the cloud. Currently, we just have a couple of systems on-premises for manual work, but apart from that, our on-premises footprint is almost zero.

Another benefit is that UiPath has reduced the cost of digital transformation because it's complete, end-to-end automation software on the cloud. Everything is digital for us now. There is no paperwork or manual intervention needed. Employees who work remotely can get easily connected and download and process data, as well, with UiPath. This digital transformation didn't require expensive or complex application upgrades or IT application support. UiPath is very straightforward software. It's one of the easiest-to-understand RPA platforms. So we have not used any third-party applications or anything else to do our tasks.

We deal with a lot of data and UiPath has definitely reduced human error. Previously, while transferring data, data loss would happen here and there, and that consumed a lot of time. But since the end-to-end automation with UiPath, there are zero errors. It's very useful and has greatly improved our efficiency. We have seen about a 25 percent improvement in overall efficiency since we started using UiPath. It has saved us three hours per day out of an eight-hour workday.

The most valuable features for me are the Automation Hub and Studio. I engage with the Studio functionality in UiPath, as that is where most of the design happens. I'm from a non-technical background, so for me, it's very easy to just drag and drop the fields using the Studio functionality and place them in my workflow module. That is my favorite aspect of UiPath.

The option in Studio of the drag-and-drop functionality makes it very easy to design certain applications. One project that I have been working on is building security automation for our organization. For example, if anybody plugs malicious devices into a laptop or our system, a notification pops up. And if somebody logs in to our system from a different account, a notification pops up. It has been very straightforward to do that. It's not rocket science. Just drag and drop and proceed from there.

Also, the user community is fantastic. I just post whatever queries I have on the user community and I get a lot of responses immediately. That has been very helpful for me. It's one of the premium communities out there for any software. I'm enjoying the user community.

In terms of the product, I don't have any complaints. Here and there, small server downtime happens, but that is expected with any cloud-based software.

I've been using UiPath for about a year.

Being cloud software, it's stable. They just need to make sure that it's up to date.

Initially, we started out with 15 users and now we have 25. In that way, it's scalable, but any automation software is scalable.

They could provide much more premium, quicker customer service. I'm from India and the customer support team is elsewhere. There's a time difference and, whenever I post a query or ask them for help, the response is delayed. That is one way they could improve.

In terms of their product knowledge and quality, I'd rate their technical support very highly, but it's their response where they could be much more efficient.

Neutral

Before this, we were actually trying to develop an in-house application ourselves, but things didn't pan out for us. That's why we switched to UiPath. We didn't use any other software.

I was partially involved in the initial setup. I wouldn't say it was complex; it was a smooth process for us. It took around 25 days for us to get it up and running in our organization. We expected the process to go on for two months at least, but that didn't happen. It was quicker.

A couple of our guys, along with two employees from the UiPath team, worked together on the implementation. They gave us initial training on how to go about things.

We are a very small startup company. We have three teams in our organization and the platform is deployed across all three teams.

UiPath has resulted in a greater return on investment in terms of profits. We have seen a 20 percent increase in our overall revenue for the last financial year. We have seen a good return on investment from UiPath.

For the features and the quality of features that they provide, it's a very reasonably priced product.

We didn't evaluate any other options before going with UiPath because we knew it was one of the market leaders. It was just a matter of whether it fit our budget or not. Luckily, it fit our budget, so we purchased it.

The biggest lesson I've learned from using UiPath so far is that, in the current digital age, automation is everything. Automation is going to be the future. I would definitely urge others to start using at least the Community Edition of UiPath. That is the free edition. Try using that edition first, to get a handle on things, before going for the paid edition.

I use this solution for mortgage loan origination, loan servicing, and IT administration. I'm currently using version 21.

We use the solution on-premises.

UiPath saves us a lot of time, which translates into operational cost savings. We saved around $40 million in operations last year by operating 140 bots in production. UiPath saves us costs, improves compliance, and helps with scaling up and down our operations.

We use attended automation but not on a large scale. We have three or four bots.

Attended automation improves our ability to automate processes that are more complex or involved. We use attended automation for use cases that involve websites that require actual users to log in. It's really helpful because a lot of use cases deal with federal websites and external websites where we need to download client information, credit reports, and fraud reports. That kind of information can only be done by a human, so attended automation is necessary for those types of use cases.

Right now, we aren't completely into AI. We explored document understanding for text extraction, and we know the capabilities. We haven't even started our ML journey, at least from the RPA automation perspective. They're still in the robotic process, so we haven't moved to include automation.

This solution speeds up digital transformation and reduces the cost. It gives leverage for the teams to transform digitally, because the traditional digital solutions take a long time to set up. It can take a few months for a solution to be in place. That requires expensive or complex application upgrades or IT application support to support the digital transformation. If we wanted to add a new app that would have oversight of all the loans being originated, it would take between two to three months to build UIs, dashboards, and all the features around it. With UiPath, the same kind of overview can be set up quickly: within two to three weeks.

The solution absolutely reduces human error. Most of our use cases involve looking at the input data, doing calculations, and updating fields. That always needs to be done by a human, day in and day out, continuously throughout a work shift. This RPA solution reduced that piece of human error drastically. I would say that more than 99% of human error is reduced.

The solution freed up employee time so they can work on other useful tasks. That's one of the main advantages of this solution.

Some of the processes have to be performed after hours and over weekends. When those tasks are automated, it gives valuable work-life balance back to our employees so they can do something useful with their time. The main ROI is saving manual effort, which is how we reduce our operational costs.

We see improvements in saved time, cost, quality, and risk production.

Attended and unattended automation, which support web and email automation, are the most valuable features for us. Building automations is easy and quick.

The solution enables us to implement end-to-end automation, starting with process analysis, then robot building, and finally monitoring automations. 
We aren't using the complete suite, like Process Mining, Process Insights, and UiPath Insights, but we use custom tools. Having end-to-end coverage of all these processes in one platform reduces cost and makes maintainability very easy. 

We use Kibana Dashboards with UiPath Insights, which was introduced within the last two years. For process analysis, we still use a traditional business analyst type of setup, but we don't use Process Mining. It's something we are exploring.

We use the academic courses to train all of our new developers and also upscale ourselves with new platforms. UiPath Academy is a single source of training for our team and it's free. We also hire college developers and new developers from other teams who want to work in RPA. We recently started StudioX citizen development. Academy is where citizen developers can get trained quickly.

It covers all of the various products, and it's easy to search through courses. We can skip different sections and get to the part we're looking for.

The UiPath community is a big and vibrant community. I think contributors are being rewarded for their contributions, and that happens in an organized fashion. That's the reason why people are so actively involved in contributing to the community. I would say that 90% of our development queries are answered in the community forum. It's really good compared to other platforms.

There are a lot of AI and ML-based enhancements that could be included in the core product and activities. Right now, there are plugins available from external vendors like Microsoft and Google. If those AI and ML activities can be provided out of the box for developers to use, that would really help the product go from an automation RPA to one automation suite.

I have used this solution for four years.

The latest versions are pretty stable. I haven't seen any issues with stability.

It's scalable. If we have enough bots, we can quickly scale up and down. If it's on the cloud, it's easy to scale up. If it's on-premises, we need to set up the machines, which takes time.

It can take a long time to get a response from technical support. They have to go through multiple hoops to get a solution, so that could be improved.

I would rate technical support as five out of ten.

Neutral

For the initial setup, we needed UiPath's support team to be on board. On-premises setup is always really tough. I think the cloud version would be really easy to set up, but we haven't explored that.

I would rate this solution seven out of ten. 

It's a pretty robust solution. When it comes to automation, it's pretty easy to set up and easy to use. My advice is that the cloud version is the best way to go forward when you're setting up UiPath.

We have 12 bots in production right now. I can't speak exactly to all the bots. My role is in process mining. With process mining, we're using the PDP process and we're building out a model for sales orders.

The most valuable features of UiPath are the possibilities. For example, we're excited about what's coming and we've saved some time with the bots, however, we're still learning. The idea is once we get really good at process mining it will be really good at building bots. We'll be able to uncover those opportunities and then execute on capitalizing on them.

I'm not sure of how much time we've saved, in the tens of hours per month. While it's not nothing, they've been small use cases to build up the capability. We are still figuring out how to build bots, and how to get the orchestrator all set up. 

We're doing a crawl, walk, run, taking our time and doing it right. We are building up the center of excellence. We're out of crawl and we're in to walk, however, we're not running yet.

So far, the conversation around automation and cultural change has been really powerful in terms of re-thinking our processes and asking if there's a better way to do it. right now, we're beginning to understand that we don't have to be stuck where we're at.

It's changed the dynamic of how we look at our processes and how we talk about why and how we do what we do. That's been tangible.

Our teams have used UiPath Academy courses. It has been instrumental and we couldn't do it without those courses. That was one of the reasons why we selected UiPath. They're robust and it is easy to access training modules.

The biggest value that we've realized from the Academy is confidence. Just getting over that initial hurdle of understanding what we're doing has been huge.

In terms of the ease of building automation via UiPath, it takes a long time to set up the environment and get the training and be able to do it.

The overall ecosystem and platform, which I know that they're working on, needs to be better. Being able to connect idea generation and opportunity into discovery and then into automation needs to be seamless. It needs to be end-to-end and also more robust. If I had to give them a piece of advice, it would be that the RPA is one component of process improvement, and they own the RPA space, so I realize that's their bread and butter, however, RPA isn't the only tool in the toolbox. I'd like to see more in relation to how we can eliminate waste and how we can lean out our processes.

Maybe the improvement solution isn't RPA. I'd like the solution to address how can I see more opportunities and capitalize on the improvement of any kind with an obvious focus on RPA. That's where the real power is going to come from. That said, it's not the only focus.

I've used the solution for over a year. 

The stability has been great. I don't have any issues or comments there. I don't have any concerns with the stability of the company or the platform's software. We haven't experienced many bugs or anything like that. We're happy with the stability.

The scalability is where the solution is going to come into play. Likely, it will, as we have learned the possibilities are ripe and endless. 

Right now we're using it extensively, however, we're only building bots and deploying process mining within our controller and finance area. That's our learning curve and it is probably the ripest ground for automation. We plan to increase usage. We've just scratched the surface there. We've only done maybe 5% of controllers. Then, we have the whole rest of the organization and the whole supply chain.

Technical support was great. They helped a lot during the implementation. I would rate them at an eight out of ten simply due to the fact that the premium support person was very, very helpful and honestly I don't know what we would've done without them. However, that did come at a price.

Making that service standard as part of the implementation process would probably pump my technical support rating up to a ten in that, while the experience was a ten, we paid for it.

In terms of the initial setup, once you have people that are familiar with the software and you have all your environments and connectors set up, the Building Box is very user-friendly. That said, it doesn't happen overnight.

From contract signing to putting our first bot into production, the setup and deployment were about six months.

Being on-premise, there was added complexity. Had we opted for the cloud version, it would have been a simpler process. We had the standard provisioning servers and had to get them set up and installed the software, et cetera.

The process was complex simply due to the fact that it's an advanced technology, however, UiPath is really great at helping out. We had a premium plus support person.

A lot of the details and things that we'd never done before, they were there to help us on their end and give us pointers and tips on our end.

We have not yet seen an ROI. When we look at the savings we have realized versus the upfront costs and the time investment, we're probably still under water, however, we recognize that this is a long game.

For the quality of the product that we get,  it's a fair price. I'm a believer in you get what you pay for. You always want to maximize your value, however, that doesn't necessarily mean a lower price.

Before choosing UiPath, we did look at Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism. Those two were the ones that we actually did full demos of. We also looked at the websites of some of the smaller players.

The main one that we really looked at where and it came down to a head to head was with Automation Anywhere. The key difference for me, with my focus, was process mining. Automation anywhere had some capability there, however, it was a recording device and it was intrusive to the end-user. You also couldn't go backward in time. When you got everything plugged in and turned it on, you could start recording and building your processes. You could see last week's processes next week, however, the UiPath solution uses the audit tables. Therefore, when I turn it on, I can go back in time, for not just a week; I can go back two years. I can go back that far to see how the process has evolved and where we're at. I can build a more robust baseline to change from today rather than having to wait for six months to build my baseline.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we are using. We just installed it earlier this year, therefore it's probably the latest and greatest.

We do not use AI functionality in our automation process. We also do not use UiPath apps features. While we're learning about some of those new things, we're not using them today.

The main thing that I would advise others is to get leadership on board and get their ducks in a row in terms of the culture that they want to create and the long-term vision that they have for this.

You can't capitalize on it in six months. If you're going to throw in the towel if you're not seeing ROI in your first calendar year, then don't even start. It takes some leadership fortitude and some stick-to-itiveness. It doesn't happen organically or on its own. If a company is not dedicating the resources or not freeing up people's time, they won't get far. The bots aren't going to create themselves yet. Maybe with AI, in the future, that will be possible, however, that's way off.

On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate the solution at a nine for now. I'm really happy with the program that we're building up. I'm happy with the solutions that they offer. It'll jump up to a ten when we get to scale and it's paying for itself.