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RPA Financial Systems Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
MSP
Oct 24, 2021
Saves time, is simple to use, and is easy to learn
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath support is amazing."
  • "While I do not have an exact ROI metric, it's my understanding that we have saved way more than the solution costs; for example, if we are spending $300,000 on the licenses in a year, we are definitely saving more than $1 million, or maybe more than that, due to the number of hours that we are saving, it's a huge amount of savings we're receiving."
  • "They could always continue to add new features, however, I don't have anything specific in mind right now."
  • "Sometimes it doesn't have too much detail on the advanced level of things."

What is our primary use case?

We have around more than 300 bots that are active right now. All the automation we have is based, basically, on Oracle and Oracle ERP. We have other automation as well, however, for now, I am focusing only on Oracle-based automation.

We have so many other use cases that we want to implement within our organization. We try to look at how we can save time for our employees so that they can spend their time on other valuable things, and not waste their time on unnecessary time-consuming tasks. 

Our employees use Oracle ERP, so they have to process so many invoices at one time and it takes a lot of time to consume a single invoice. I'd estimate it would take at least 5 to 10 minutes. But with the automation, we can process one invoice within a minute, or maybe less in some situations. It saves a lot of time - likely hundreds of hours for each employee. It saves manpower for the company and saves you valuable time for the employees. They don't have to do the same things again and again and waste their time on that.

For example, if they have to download an invoice and process that for some reason. They have to go to some ERP tool, log it onto that first, type in the information, and then download the invoice. It takes a lot of time. They don't have to do this once or twice, it's hundreds of times due to the fact that they're not for the same couple of invoices. Therefore, this is one of the best use cases that we have for now. We are still looking for other future use cases, but for now, this is the one we have.

What is most valuable?

UiPath is saving employees hours of time and has also been able to dedicate their free time to more valuable tasks.

The most valuable feature of UiPath is the time-saving employees get. It's definitely sometimes complicated for the developers when they are automating. However, from a business point of view, I would say this is one of the best tools that every organization should have, to help save time and work hours.

Sometimes if you are doing the same task, again and again, we do make mistakes. Automating those tasks removes that human error. Also, with those types of tasks, a human gets annoyed very, very soon if they keep doing one thing again and again. With the help of robots, we can fix it. There is no error with the bot. The only error would be if there is an exception if something is wrong. That said, from a business point of view, when I'm working on a bot, I make sure that it is not throwing any errors and making sure that there are no mistakes. From a development point of view, we can always fix that, however, we don't want our bot to have an error on the production level.

The ease of use and building automation using UiPath is pretty straightforward. It's not complicated. Even a person who is non-technical can become a citizen developer and use StudioX to automate some of the tasks that they think are time-consuming for them. Otherwise, from a developer's point of view, I don't find it complicated. Initially, when a user is learning and at the initial stages of learning RPA, it's definitely complicated, however, once you get used to it, it's pretty straightforward. I love working as an RPA developer.

UiPath has saved costs for our company. I don't have any metrics on the spot, however, I would say it's a big amount of saving. Our organization is very happy that we are using UiPath. We have a few complications right now, however, in a few months we'll fix everything. By next year, when everything is all settled down within our team, then we can start looking at exact metrics in terms of cost savings.

Our teams have used the UiPath Academy courses. I have been using UiPath Academy for a long time. I tend to keep on checking what's new at the Academy. If something new is there, I always try to learn it as soon as possible. If somebody were to ask me "How can we learn UiPath?" The first answer I’d give them is, "Just go to UiPath Academy and follow the learning path over there." That's what I always recommend to any new person.

UiPath Academy courses have positively affected the process of getting employees up to speed in UiPath. It’s helping employees and companies to learn, and I would say it's a one-stop place for anything related to RPA. You don't have to go to other places. You will find everything at UiPath Academy. Sometimes it doesn't have too much detail on the advanced level of things. However, it provides enough information that you learn by experience. If you need more information, you also have access to the UiPath Forum for that.

The biggest value of the courses is that they definitely save time for someone who wants to learn. I don't have to read a book and I don't have to go to any other place or learn from multiple sources. Everything is in one place and I can just follow the learning path and it's a good education in the tool.

Sometimes we don't see what processes can be automated. When we think that, "Okay, we can do that. It's not so time-consuming," however, we can figure it out with the help of UiPath apps and we likely will use them in the future to automate even more.

What needs improvement?

In terms of improvements, to be honest, I don't have anything I'd want to be added right now. If I have any problems, UiPath is always there. It's easy to find everything. I don't think anything can be improved. It's going very well. It's working for us.

They could always continue to add new features, however, I don't have anything specific in mind right now.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been on UiPath for almost more than a year now within our organization.

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July 2026
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I'm satisfied with the stability of UiPath. It's good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath is always there if you want to scale over UiPath-related items. It is scalable.

In terms of who uses the solution, on my team, it's only me who is an RRP developer. That said, every person in the team knows what UiPath is, and they are joining bots onto the system on a daily basis if they have something to do. In the finance department, there are almost 40 to 50 people using UiPath. It might be more. We have more than 300 bots active right now, and I'm not working on all the bots. We definitely have other developers and other people who are working on it in other divisions within the company. 

We also do have plans to create more bots. We are going to use the UiPath apps in the future to see what kind of automation we can do there as well. for example, the Task Capture is a good tool. We haven't used that yet, however, sometime in the future, I would love to set it up for everyone on my finance team and run that application in the backend so that we can see what processes might be automated.

How are customer service and support?

UiPath support is amazing. We talk with someone on a weekly basis. They suggested we use UiPath technical support as we were having a few technical support issues with UiPath and we couldn't figure it out. When I submitted a ticket at UiPath, they were able to answer within a few hours. At maximum, we would get a response in one day. Not more than that.

They also answer with a solution, and the solution always works. I'm very satisfied with them. We don't have to search on the forum and do our own research. We just submit a ticket and once they get back to us, implement the suggested method and after that, it's all good. I'm really, really satisfied with UiPath's level of technical support.

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

It's my understanding the company did not use a different RPA tool before UiPath.

That said, there are so many automation tools and I do know a few. There's Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, and Microsoft has their Power Automate. I'm not familiar with all of them as my focus is only on UiPath for now. I haven't used others. I wouldn't be able to compare them. UiPath does seem to be one step ahead, however, as others do not have a free learning academy the way UiPath has. They do not offer a free trial version initially either. That is the best thing UiPath has done from a business point of view.

How was the initial setup?

I was not present for the initial setup of UiPath.

What was our ROI?

While I do not have an exact ROI metric, it's my understanding that we have saved way more than the solution costs.

For example, if we are spending, for example, $300,000 on the licenses in a year, and we are definitely saving more than $1 million, or maybe more than that. due to the number of hours that we are saving, it's a huge amount of savings we're receiving. 

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

The pricing is worth it. It's definitely expensive, however, I wouldn't say it's overpriced. The services that we are getting from those licenses help us to save way more than what we are spending.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

My managers were telling me that they were comparing which tool to use before choosing UiPath. While I'm not sure what they were looking at, they said they liked UiPath from the first day and that's why they're sticking with UiPath now.

What other advice do I have?

Maybe in the future, we might switch to the cloud, however, for now, we have an on-prem deployment. We're using the most recent version of the product.

We do not use UiPath's AI functionality in our organization yet. We are not using all the UiPath apps right now.

My advice to potential new users is that the first thing that they should do is they should go to the Academy just to get familiar with the tool and how they can use it. Then, move through to the next steps.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Shared Services Projects Leader at a construction company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Oct 24, 2021
Saves time on data entry projects, offers helpful training courses, and is easily scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "I've been pretty impressed with the stability."
  • "With this product, we took that three weeks of data entry, times six people, and rolled it down to 12 hours of robot running, which was a pretty significant amount of savings for us."
  • "The on-prem orchestrator was an issue for us."

What is our primary use case?

I own the robotics process automation program for our life safety segment. I also own the mergers and acquisitions project management for our life safety segment. We've started out by using UiPath specifically for mergers and acquisitions when migrating customer data from the acquired companies to our standard ERP. We're also implementing sales and use tax, filings, and things like that as well.

How has it helped my organization?

With our most recent robot, we transfer information from acquired companies to our ERP. Typically, it would take about six temp associates for about four to six weeks to clean the data and move it into the ERP. About three weeks of that would be actual data entry. With this product, we took that three weeks of data entry, times six people, and rolled it down to 12 hours of robot running. It was a pretty significant amount of savings for us.

What is most valuable?

Citizen development is great. With it, it's easy to develop or have self-developed robot intelligence. For example, instead of having to hire a developer, you can make the robots do what you need using the UAPs studio tool. This has been the most valuable aspect. StudioX specifically for our newer citizen developer is useful and I really like using Studio for myself.

We have seen a reduction in, for example, time, and not necessarily in human error. For example, we did an interesting analysis. We wanted to see what the human error rate was for entering data, and, due to the fact that our ERP is Microsoft Dynamics 2012, capturing some of that data is a little bit harder. We structured error rates based on entry. What we did was we created a robot to go back and check all their entries to see if they were missing anything. Oddly, the errors that people were making were nominal. I don't see any data that showed that we necessarily reduced error rates. It was really the people aspect of the process where there were time-savings based on the needed amount of human input. We've been able to reassign workers to more valuable tasks where we can't assign robots yet.

We do about four to five acquisitions a year and those are typically six-week processes for each one of them. We could say that we save about 25 weeks of labor in a year, and that robot will be about a week's worth of labor. Therefore, we save about 24 weeks of labor.

We've been taking some UiPath Academy courses. We've actually found it more helpful if we chose UiPath South American Developers to teach us to build as we're building. For my team specifically, it's been really helpful to have an expert involved to say "this is the use case that we want to do" and have them walk us through building a specific robot. That way, it's real-life experience versus a video-based session. While the academy is helpful, hands-on experience is just much more valuable.

UiPath Academy courses affected the process of getting employees up to speed. It affected it a little bit. It probably more affected our decision to use UiPath over Automation Anywhere, or even the Microsoft RPA program. Just the fact that there was so much available content that we could lean on if we needed to was huge. The others had content, however, not anything close to UiPath's capacity.

What needs improvement?

The on-prem orchestrator was an issue for us. When we bought it, it was a mistake. Our IT team thought it would be the best option for us, however, it's way more complicated to use. Out of the box, it feels more complicated. That said, once you get to know it, it's fine, however, it was incredibly hard to set up on our enterprise systems. Whereas, with the cloud deployment, we were live and up and running in an hour.  The initial setup took us about two weeks. That was a little bit of heartburn. It would be helpful if UiPath could offer some sort of support outside of a ticketing system.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for about three months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I've been pretty impressed with the stability. We've had a couple of minor issues that our developers helped us figure out. It's programming and nobody on my team are programmers. Some of it could be just user error, however, overall it seems like a very stable platform.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is really unlimited. It boils down to the organization's ability to implement a governance model quickly and successfully. I know UiPath has a governance tool or some kind of a framework, however, it is one of those pieces where it's way more expensive than us using our regular service channel tool that we already have implemented to do those submissions and approvals, et cetera.

In our organization, the users include two developers - me and then one of my assistants.

How are customer service and support?

The only interaction we've had with technical support was during installation. The ticketing system and not being able to physically talk to somebody were difficult to deal with during the implementation process.

How was the initial setup?

The on-premises implementation was a bit difficult. We knew that we were going to have to pay developers to help us develop the robots, however, getting stuff installed, our only method of support was submitting a ticket and the turnaround time on that took a while. Our UiPath rep helped escalate what she could. It would be ideal if there was a setup hotline or something that we could call right away. Sometimes it's just easier to talk to somebody than emailing back and forth. That's probably the biggest area for improvement.

What about the implementation team?

We handled the initial setup ourselves. We do almost everything internally. We have our own IT team, including myself. Our solutions architects set it up with us. What we ran into in terms of problems was that the instructions were really not very good. We weren't able to appropriately install it as the instructions that came with it just weren't comprehensive enough. In terms of the instructions that were published online, we found a couple of instances where they were saying to use functions that didn't exist. These might have been a little out of date. Eventually, the ticket team was able to help identify that. I would grade the setup probably a C-minus, and everything else an A-plus.

What was our ROI?

We're so early into the implementation, the ROI is a wash right now. That said, our one robot has paid for our development time, and then someone will be able to use it on future acquisitions. We will likely see ROI within a year.

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

You can buy enhanced support, however, it's an additional $30,000 USD a year or thereabouts. That's just too expensive, honestly. The competition didn't charge for that. We also felt pretty confident in our IT team's ability to be able to dissect the instructions and install it. However, the instructions just weren't that good. We had one of our top engineers working on it and it took a lot of effort to get it installed correctly.

The pricing, in general, is fair. It's a little bit more than some of the competitors, however, it's a little bit more flexible than some of the others. There's value there. The OCR pricing is out of market. We need it, however, we're actually going to use some third-party bolt-ons due to the fact that UiPath is way too expensive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at Microsoft and Automation Anywhere. We also looked at help systems and Brick is one that we currently use and one of our segments, however, they're only a five-person company, which is pretty small. I wouldn't even put them on the same level. We were looking for shared services. We were looking for the best in class so we could take a solution enterprise-wide. In the end, we boiled the options down to Automation Anywhere, UiPath, and Microsoft, and UiPath was the winner.

In terms of Brick, they don't have a citizen developer model at all, so their developers have to do it. They are less expensive and they're a little bit more turnkey where they do it for you, however, they're really novice. The methodology that we've really bought into it was the community developer, as we want to empower our associates to figure out what works for them to improve their work-life balance. Using a service like theirs takes that away as we have to do the due diligence and figure out what fits in the bucket, what doesn't, as opposed to just empowering the person to do it. That was the key to why we chose UiPath.

The sales process was way better with UiPath. Our UiPath rep was far more knowledgeable about the product than the other options in that we ultimately had more confidence, knowing that whatever we needed, UiPath would help take care of, which was huge. My organization's a little bit disjointed. We try to go after what we feel is going to be impactful without a whole lot of due diligence. That's why, with UiPath, having that resource to lean on was helpful.

What other advice do I have?

We use attended automation right now. Primarily this is due to the fact that the ERP system that we have really can't function unintended. It's a Citrix space environment and it has some odd security protocols where it'll shut down or refresh out for so many hours and it's not planned refreshes. It's hard for us. It's almost random. It's hard for us to build an unattended robot to deal with that. I'm sure we could, however, right now, we want to start with attended robots as we know what functions we need. We decided to go that route and eventually we'll add unattended.

I'd advise new users to make sure they have team buy-in for the concept. That doesn't mean necessarily getting the team to know exactly what they're going to be automating. You just need to make sure that they understand it's not about replacing people. Rather, it's about making their jobs easier. That was key for us. That said, most of my team was overworked, and they were glad to take on the project of lightening their load. Most organizations would benefit from making sure the communication is solid in that regard, however. 

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. With better technical support, I would give them a perfect ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
UiPath Platform
July 2026
Learn what your peers think about UiPath Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user1695009 - PeerSpot reviewer
Supervisor Automation Development at ConocoPhillips
Real User
Oct 20, 2021
Helps free up employee time but governance needs improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "The ability to do citizen development is the most valuable feature. That initiative has helped us to expand it because that gives folks that are closer to the business the ability to develop their own solutions that are tailored to what they need to do, as opposed to waiting for someone in IT to contact them to build it out. Or to wait for a business analyst to provide some type of value metric, but they can actually go and build it themselves."
  • "Our biggest metrics are in our financial org, they have more of a cost avoidance where we don't have to backfill those positions, it's around $2 million a year because we don't have to bring in personnel to complete the processes."
  • "Governance has room for improvement but that's more of a cultural thing. It depends on your company. We have the reference architecture that we have in place, but it's easy for someone to say, "Okay, I need to make an adjustment here outside of that reference architecture." Because it's so easy for them to do that, they leave the company now that a non-compliant bot is out there running a production process, we need to be able to rank that in. There needs to be footwork that we have to do as an organization for my team as opposed to a true problem with the platform."
  • "We've had a little bit of back and forth whenever we have an issue and some of the solutions we got back were pretty boilerplate-type answers."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use cases are in our financial department. We had a bit of a downturn, but we still had work that needed to be completed. So we developed several automations to manage a lot of the financial work and a lot of our payment processing systems. We expanded that out to include more of our traders' work processes, just because we saw there were a lot of workloads coming in and a lot of repetitive work. So we used UiPath to eliminate a lot of that for our commercial traders, then we did the same thing for our operations and production teams so that they have their own automated processes.

We plan on scaling it and using it in more functions.

How has it helped my organization?

Our biggest metrics are in our financial org, they have more of a cost avoidance where we don't have to backfill those positions. It's around $2 million a year because we don't have to bring in personnel to complete the processes.

It has helped solve certain human errors but that's an unintended bonus because we're automating a process as it is that a machine is going to repeat. We don't really have a person to do it.

UiPath has helped to free up employee time. The additional time enabled us to focus on higher-value work. By removing a lot of the repetitive work, it's given them the ability to do more analytics and to dive into the data science realms of their job to do more data-driven analysis of what they're doing.

What is most valuable?

The ability to do citizen development is the most valuable feature. That initiative has helped us to expand it because that gives folks that are closer to the business the ability to develop their own solutions that are tailored to what they need to do, as opposed to waiting for someone in IT to contact them to build it out. Or to wait for a business analyst to provide some type of value metric, but they can actually go and build it themselves.

My job is to actually be the evangelist to these groups. I'd say we've been pretty successful. My developers are working with the citizen developers who help to guide them and to teach them how to build their own automations for their business process.

It's pretty easy to build automation. The no-code process has really driven the adoption by the business people so that they don't have to skill up and learn how to code anything. They only need to know how to click a button and build it out. That's the best component.

We used the UiPath Academy course. It's our training regimen for our business users. We have to introduce them first to the platform and understand how to work through the platform. It's a pretty straightforward and easy course. With our citizen development program, we also have the Academy where they can either do hands-on learning or use the Academy to get some video training as well.

The biggest value of the Academy is the ease of being able to access the training. 

What needs improvement?

Governance has room for improvement but that's more of a cultural thing. It depends on your company. We have the reference architecture that we have in place, but it's easy for someone to say, "Okay, I need to make an adjustment here outside of that reference architecture." Because it's so easy for them to do that, they leave the company now that a non-compliant bot is out there running a production process, we need to be able to rank that in. There needs to be footwork that we have to do as an organization for my team as opposed to a true problem with the platform.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using UiPath for around five years now. It's the on-prem version, but we have it deployed in the cloud in our Azure tenant. We started on-prem then we migrated it about three years ago.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's pretty stable. It's more of the architecture and how it runs because it has to leverage VDIs and as Microsoft releases an update, we have to be watching that process because it'll make the box really brittle. Any change to the UI anywhere will break and that's where we have to step in and fix it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Every corner of the business except for folks out in the field uses UiPath. It's around 200 people or so.

How are customer service and support?

We've had a little bit of back and forth whenever we have an issue and some of the solutions we got back were pretty boilerplate-type answers. We had an issue with a Microsoft update. They said, "Well, could you potentially reach out to Microsoft and have them let you know." 

They're just going to release the update. We need to be a little bit more proactive on the software side. Our account executive took care of it for us. He stepped in and enabled us to not have that response again. 

How was the initial setup?

I wasn't there for the initial setup but I heard about it. It was complex, but that was more of a cultural thing.

The deployment took around a year to get that through planning, discovery, and implementation.

What was our ROI?

Our biggest return is our cost avoidance and not having to backfill personnel.

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

I think the pricing is comparable. It's fair pricing for the size that we're deploying.

What other advice do I have?

My advice would be to make sure that you have a really good understanding and a really good culture in your company that understands and wants to get on board with automation because it will require that type of mindset of understanding what you're doing before you do it.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Eduard Shlepetskyy - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at ECTIVE Automation
Video Review
Real User
Oct 13, 2021
Reduces errors, offers fantastic technical support, and has a strong community around the product
Pros and Cons
  • "Both on-prem and cloud solutions are very stable."
  • "UiPath enables mainly our clients (through us) to build end-to-end automation in their processes."
  • "One of the products where I would definitely see a need for improvement would be a Task Capture."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for automation of the back office. When speaking about our customers and use cases, I wouldn't highlight one specifically, however, mainly, we are using UiPath to build a center of excellence. The aim is to automate a majority of the processes in the company, and that includes Order-to-Cash, HR, supply chain, and even IT, among others. We are not approaching needs for one or another specific process. We want to automate the enterprise end to end.

What is most valuable?

There are many great features in UiPath that our clients consider valuable. I definitely like Studio. The Studio's a very powerful product, which helps very easily to build automations. Nowadays, there's also a StudioX for citizen developers, which doesn't require coding.

Orchestrator, which helps users monitor and schedule robots, manage assets, credentials, et cetera, is also very useful.

The third feature worth mentioning, I would say, is Insights. It is reporting and dashboards. Once the robots are running, it is quite valuable to see how those robots are performing. You can see KPIs and other aspects of both robots and processes.

Worth mentioning is the Automation app, which helps to manage the automation initiative end to end, especially building the pipeline and collecting the ideas.

It is quite easy to build automations with UiPath, especially now that they are segregated depending on seniority, meaning that you have the regular Studio and Studio Pro, which are truly for developers, however, you also have StudioX, which is more for people without a previous coding background. That makes it quite easy to use. People with a business background find it quite easy to pick a tool up and use it in daily automation. They didn't have any previous experience with programming or making macros or whatever else, and still, they have no problem with UiPath.

UiPath enables users to build end-to-end automation, and this is what we are doing on a daily basis. UiPath enables mainly our clients (through us) to build end-to-end automation in their processes. When I mean end to end, I mean that we help them to automate the chain of processes and do not focus on the single practice itself.

End to end coverage within UiPath is a great advantage and offers great possibilities. It is really important to have the ability to do end to end. Though it is not applicable all the time, it still is a nice option to have and use when needed.

Very soon after starting the RPA journey, customers realize much more important benefits than time-saving itself and FTE saving or FTE reduction. There are things that happen, like quality improvement. Whenever the work is done by robots, it is running in a much more stable manner and without any human mistakes and errors. It is also sustainable, predictable work, meaning that robots do not get sick or have a bad day, or face conflicts with each other, et cetera. They just do their work. They also can’t get viruses, such as COVID which means that we don’t have to worry about losing staff.

We have a customer speech workload that was growing dramatically in relation to COVID and having processes already automated, it was very easy to sustain and even upscale the delivery. The customer experience is better as well. It is not only important to spend less time or fewer resources in delivering the service to the customer, it is also important that the customer gets a quick response. Overall, the customer experience can be much improved when using robots in the processes.

In terms of the Automation Cloud offering, UiPath handles infrastructure maintenance and updates to save time for our client's IT department. Having UiPath in a cloud enables enterprises and customers to focus more on the automation initiative itself, instead of managing all the hardware and dealing with all their hardware problems and having more or giving more time to the IT department. Instead, you can use everything out of the box from day one and focus on bringing benefits to your end customer or end employee.

The Automation Cloud offering has helped to decrease time to value from UiPath. I would say that Automation Cloud increases time to value dramatically in the sense that you can start from day one. Literally day one, you can go and start automating the processes without bothering with all the infrastructure topics. The time required to deliver the first benefits is reduced dramatically.

Automation Cloud’s offering helps to decrease the solution's total cost of ownership by taking care of things such as infrastructure maintenance and updates. It helps to reduce the cost of infrastructure maintenance, especially in the early stages of the projects, as well as on small and medium projects (for the long term). Not all customers or enterprises have strong IT departments or strong infrastructure in-house nowadays. Even large enterprises are moving more and more towards cloud services, even though they have strong IT infrastructure teams in place.

Automation Cloud is able to scale well due to the fact that we can, in a matter of minutes, or, in the worst case, hours, double the capacity. I would say that it positively and dramatically affects the scaling factor.

UiPath is a SaaS offering. It enables our customers to really quickly adapt and start using the technology almost from day one. It is very easy to start developing. It is very easy to start.

We are using UiPath Apps for our customers. However, this feature has not yet helped to reduce the workload on our IT department, or on our client's IT department by enabling end-users to create apps. Mainly, we are still involved as a service provider in the creation of the apps for the end-users. That said, where it brings added value is it reduces the limitations or the need to have an additional user interface, as you can create this app or user interface directly in UiPath to have an even better user, employee, or even customer interaction.

UiPath apps definitely increased the number of automations created. You can take more into the scope, what wasn't there before, with just attended or unattended automation, considering the fact that you can build a better user interface or any user interface from the very beginning. Before, there were only simple message boxes and prompts. Now, you can build really nice forms to interact with your end-users. It helps to accelerate initiatives.

Our teams have used UiPath’s Academy courses. Every team member of our company went through UiPath Academy. We always start with and actively involve UiPath academy.

UiPath Academy courses are a part of our standard onboarding procedure in the company, especially if we onboard junior developers. The very first thing we direct them to is UiPath Academy. Everyone starts with a basic foundation and goes through to a diploma and certification, and only then will we build on top of that more specifics about our standards, of our delivery approach, et cetera. I would say that UiPath Academy is a core and basic start for each and every employee in the company. Based on that education, we will later elaborate on different topics.

The biggest value I see behind UiPath Academy is its simplicity in terms of delivering the information. Even if you don't have any previous development experience and coding experience, all the explanations, videos, practical tasks, and reading material is formed in a way that is really easy to understand. The biggest value I see is its ability to bring people up to speed from really different levels, including very, very junior people with no previous experience in coding, programming, or the creation of robots.

UiPath's user community is excellent. Being an MVP, for me, the community has huge value in the whole end-to-end journey of RPA. Meaning that, at the very beginning, whenever you need to learn new things, you can always find a lot of useful hints in the forum and in the community. Later, when you already have delivered some solutions, you might face some problems. Luckily, very likely, you are not the first person to face those problems. There is always someone who already has had this problem and may have even raised it in a forum or on YouTube, et cetera. Even when you are already deep in delivery, sooner or later, there will be a point where you reach out for help to the community. The community, therefore, plays a crucial role for developers and automation specialists - be it business analysts, developer architects, et cetera. Having a strong community is definitely one of the most important factors that sets UiPath apart.

I'm not actively involved in other communities, and therefore wouldn't be able to compare UiPath to other similar communities. I can only say that the UiPath community is very supportive and very active in responding to any queries. The way it’s organized, it’s inspiring the next generation of forum members to help others and pay forward with insights based on the help they receive. UiPath’s community is really responsible and supportive.

In terms of reducing human error, at the very beginning, almost every company when starting the RPA and automation in Germany thinks of FTE saving as the main benefit. However, very quickly they recognize how huge the value is behind the quality improvements that happen after automation. It is quite obvious that robots are not doing human-like mistakes that may be caused by, for example, not paying attention or not getting enough sleep et cetera. Robots also cannot get bored. Very often, and whenever you have to process 1,000 or 10,000 records in more or less the same manner, it just becomes super repetitive. A mistake can appear in manual work as humans can lose focus on redundant tasks. This is not so when robots are involved.

In terms of time savings and error reduction, usually in our initiatives, we can see not higher than 5% of error rates when executed by robots. Even in those cases, I wouldn't say they are errors and more likely exceptions, which are documented and later handed over with specific explanations. A good KPI for our robots is to have less than a 5% exception rate. Related to this is that, by improving quality, we still save a lot of time as it can reduce the number of reworks which we might have afterward. For example, in one of the projects we were delivering, it reduced by eight times the amount of reworks or fixes, which the customer needed to process due to human-directed errors. Mistakes and fixes, therefore, were reduced by eight times.

What needs improvement?

What I would improve in UiPath, or I would just say, keep on improving, is the other products in end-to-end automation. UiPath started with Studio and Orchestrator as a core product, and still, we are actively co-operating UiPath and suggesting improvements for the other products. 

One of the products where I would definitely see a need for improvement would be a Task Capture. It is already good, however, there are many aspects and many ideas, which, for example, our business analysts have, which can be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using UiPath since 2016. It is already over five years. I'm familiar with the product.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Both on-prem and cloud solutions are very stable. The cloud is stable thanks to the UiPath team and on-prem, in our case, is stable thanks to our customer IT infrastructure team. Between the product itself and the infrastructure, be it Azure Cloud or on-site infrastructure, the stability is good. If there's any instability, it could be related to the people involved in using it as I've had a good experience with both cloud and on-premises stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of UiPath is one of the main competitive advantages, compared to other products. The software and the solution give you the opportunity to stably run it and scale it. With stable operations, you can focus on the new automation instead of maintaining already existing solutions. UiPath is very good at scaling in a friendly way and has good support that can help too.

How are customer service and support?

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. I never give ten, just to keep the motivation to improve high. I still believe that there are areas of improvement, though I really rate UiPath's support very high. The response time can always be shorter, the specification on solving problems can always be better, et cetera. Overall, I am extremely happy with the support UiPath provides in over 95% of the cases. For the remaining 5%, we still received the needed support, it only takes another iteration to move through another team and have a look at the problem.

How was the initial setup?

Comparing the initial setup on cloud versus on-premise, the cloud configuration is much easier. This is one of the purposes of the cloud solution. It's meant to be easy to deploy and easy to scale. Documentation for the cloud is definitely straightforward. In terms of on-premise deployments, it is also quite straightforward, especially at the start, however, the complexity grows with the demands and requirements from the customer. If we have to get into the area of high availability and more of a complex server setup, it takes some effort to establish everything.

The simplest deployment on the cloud would take a matter of 15 minutes or maybe even as little as five. After five minutes you are ready to go and can use Studio and the cloud Orchestrator. It is very fast. You still need to have your admin rights available on your PC, however, that's the only prerequisite. 

For deploying on-prem, it's nearly the same for a simple deployment. If you only want to use the Studio and attend the job, it is very easy to configure in a matter of 15 minutes. Whenever you get into Orchestration, it will require more complex setups. It might take one or two days to set up, depending on how good of an infrastructure team you have to onboard.

The strategy in implementation remains the same no matter which deployment. In the end, you still have the same setup of products, be it Studio, Orchestrator, Task Capture, or whatever else. You have the same configuration of the products. It is only on the backend that is slightly different as it is hosted in another place. You don't really recognize the difference between cloud and on-prem hosted services.

What was our ROI?

At the very beginning, when we started the RPA journey, we were always tasked with understanding and looking at the potential return of investments. Therefore, we don't start automating the process before understanding the savings. For each and every process which we automate, we start with understanding what it will bring to the end customer. Even if we see minimal savings in the processes, we automate these. The biggest processes which we were automating were saving more than 20 FTEs (Full Time Equivalents). We are speaking to just about one process.

For us, FTE saving and time-saving are the same thing. It’s just different units of measure. You can measure it in people equivalent or in an hours per year equivalent.

What other advice do I have?

The good thing about UiPath is that they are very active when it comes to listening to feedback. Every release incorporates some of this feedback into the product life cycle.

We are using both UiPath's Automation Cloud offering and the on-premise solution. We have customers, which need on-premise as well as customers which are running it in the cloud. On-premise, we have clients using different versions, however, it's my understanding that we are using version 2020.10.

I would definitely recommend, when starting the RPA journey, to start to use UiPath. Think about RPA as a robot factory, as a strategic thing, however, do not focus on one or another process. Think big and aim for automating all the manual processes in the corporation and from day one, and work to adjust all your procedures and infrastructure, the way that you've been able to get to this point. Do not get stuck at some point and feel you need to rework anything. Rather, change your standards in order to scale. In fact, aim for scalability from day one.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. We are a happy partner of UiPath and we have had many successful implementations with our customers. I can confidently say, after five years of experience using UiPath, that I've been happy with it. I still believe that there is always space for improvement. However, I really do have an appreciation for the tools. They're making a really good product and they should keep on improving at the same great pace. We plan to keep on using this product to deliver the same great services to our customers.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
reviewer1642950 - PeerSpot reviewer
Application Development Specialist at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Sep 6, 2021
Easy to use, quick to build automations, saves us time, and facilitates better use of resources
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath has good recording features that help to create automations."
  • "Prior to UiPath, approximately 80% of our costs were spent on developing automations, and with the benefits that come with UiPath, the RPA costs are now only 45%, so as the costs have decreased and the volume of automations increased, it improves company profit."
  • "Better support for databases should be included. For example, interacting with SQL Server and SQL Developer would be beneficial features."

What is our primary use case?

I am a software developer and I am a full-time RPA developer for my company. We create automation for internal purposes as well as for our clients.

I have implemented 15 to 16 processes end-to-end that cover use cases including Excel, front-end web-based applications, backend Windows applications, and sometimes Citrix. I have also done some Adobe Flash Player automation.

The REFramework (Enhanced Robotic Enterprise Framework) is what we use for most of our use cases.

We are using Studio for development on-premises and we use Orchestrator in the cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath has helped to improve our organization in several ways. Prior to UiPath, the company was using legacy methods of automation. These were time-consuming and required that more code be written. With the ease of use and speed at which automations can be developed using UiPath, the company is bringing on new clients and therefore, more business.

UiPath and the automations that we create help us to better utilize our resources. For example, a manual task that used to take between seven and eight days can be completed in one or two days with automation.

This product is bringing new clients to the business and nowadays, all of our clients require something to be done in the domain of robotic process automation. 

With respect to ease of use and building automations, UiPath is very good. I would rate them at least a four out of five in that regard, especially when compared to other products on the market. The ease of building automations makes them quick to create and it can be accomplished by people in the business sector.

UiPath enables and helps us to create end-to-end automations, and it divides all of the subtasks up in a good way. For example, monitoring processes is different from developing code, and each of these is separated such that they are independent, but we can link them together for the benefit of the process. This is important because I am a complete process developer, so having all of the different subtasks available in one tool allows me to best develop automation for our clients.

This solution has helped to decrease our time to value, which is something that is evident when you look at the automation we were doing previously. Our technologies included Python, VBScript, and other ways. These approaches took more time to develop and are a little bit more complex. With the help of this tool, it takes less time to build the same automation. It allows us to focus on building the logic and algorithms, without having to deep-dive into things like syntax. By allowing us to focus on the business logic for each process, it leads to significant time savings.

We use the attended automation feature and it helps us when it comes to tasks that require interaction between user and application, such as the necessity to enter credentials. It is quite helpful, in particular for BPM processes, and this is something that is important to us. The typical case is when somebody is doing repetitive work as part of their task. In other words, they are working on one task, and the bot is working beside them but needs the occasional input from the user. In these processes, the bot is doing 80% of the work and the user is doing the remaining 20%.

We use the AI functionality because it makes it feasible to automate processes that are quite complex. For example, Document Understanding and NLP from the UiPath Cloud are things that we use. 

The AI features enhance UiPath's capabilities and allow us to automate more processes overall. Previously, when we were doing a specific task, we may not have been able to fully automate it. With the help of AI, we can do more.

In previous iterations of our bots, before the AI features were used, we were not able to get all of the information that we needed from PDF files. This is specific to certain use cases, to present an example. The AI functionality generally gives us more data, whether from document understanding, computer vision, or otherwise.

UiPath has helped to reduce human error because the bot is doing everything and eliminates the opportunity for people to make mistakes in the process. UiPath has had a positive impact in this regard, although we have had successes with other similar tools as well.

UiPath and automation have helped to free up employee time and nowadays, they are more creative because of it. With many of their tasks automated, they have time to work on things that are more creative and have a higher value.

For example, for a task that used to take an employee 10 hours, they are now spending between three and four hours on it. In the remaining six hours, they can be more productive and work on more important tasks. This not only helps the employee but adds value to the company as well.

What is most valuable?

The selectors work to help automate at the front-end or backend of applications, and they are quite useful. If you use selectors correctly then the automation can be done in a systematic way. For example, selectors can be used for clicking tabs in an application, and what we do is create an algorithm with the correct logic to go with them.

UiPath has good recording features that help to create automations.

We use the REFramework as a template, which divides things such as the opening of applications, applying the business logic, using the queues, and closing applications. As part of this framework, UiPath provides a systematic architecture to us. We just have to understand and work with it by applying our business logic and coordinating effectively to create end-to-end automations.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see more AI-related features added. Improvements could be made to the models so that they are more compatible with data science and machine learning.

Better support for databases should be included. For example, interacting with SQL Server and SQL Developer would be beneficial features.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with UiPath for more than three years. The company started using it before that.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability is something that UiPath is working on. The new versions have added more stability and important features like test suites and the workflow analyzer. Adding features and improving stability is a continuous process.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In my previous company, which is a large MNC, there were between 700 and 800 people working regularly with UiPath. In my current company, we have between 400 and 500 people working with RPA using UiPath. As we continue to take on more clients, we will expand our usage.

There are a variety of roles for the people that work with UiPath. Some are developers, whereas others are set up or support teams. Our company is very heavily focused on this domain.

The number of people required for deployment and maintenance depends on the size of the process. A larger and more complex process requires a larger support team to maintain it. For example, a simple process can be deployed and maintained with a two-person team, whereas four people are required for a medium-sized process, and a six-person team would be used to handle a complex process.

How are customer service and technical support?

I would rate the technical support between seven and eight out of ten.

In general, we express whatever concerns we have and then within a few days, we get updates from them. However, sometimes we have to elaborate a lot before we receive an answer. The documents and repository that they use for analyzing and improving our processes could be organized in a more systematic fashion.

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

We were using a variety of legacy tools that were more time-consuming and needed code development to a greater degree. These included things like Python code and Visual Basic scripting. There are still other tools that are being used, in addition to UiPath.

Prior to UiPath, approximately 80% of our costs were spent on developing automations. With the benefits that come with UiPath, the RPA costs are now only 45%. As the costs have decreased and the volume of automations increased, it improves company profit.

I have worked with Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere, and I find that UiPath is easier to use. However, to capture more market share, UiPath has to continue expanding its machine learning and AI features.

Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism are still being used for some processes in the company. We have switched away from them in some cases, opting instead for UiPath, because in general, it is easier to implement automation tasks using UiPath.

What about the implementation team?

We have a setup and deployment team in-house that is responsible for implementation. They take care of the deployment for our clients and bring things into their production environment. 

The team does their best to keep updated on what UiPath features are available and what the current version is. If updates are pending then they will be aware of them.

What was our ROI?

The company is experiencing quite a good return on its investment in UiPath.

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

I began learning UiPath with the Community version, which is available free of charge.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing UiPath for any particular job, the company examines the process to see how complex it is. Based on the time that it will take to implement it, as well as the number of resources, whether in UiPath, Blue Prism, or something else, the decision is made. Different tools are used for different processes based on these assessments.

What other advice do I have?

I started my UiPath journey using the Community Edition, version 2018.4. After I spent some time learning UiPath personally, I began using it full-time in my company.

We have several different teams that use UiPath in different ways. First, we have the developers, who do the coding and create the bots. Then, we have the testing team, who ensure that the bots perform correctly. Next, we have the deployment team and after that, there is the support team.

My advice for anybody who is implementing UiPath is that they need developers who are good with logic. They should come from a coding background with experience in logic, algorithms, have some knowledge of C#, and have some knowledge of HTML tags.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using UiPath is that technology can be made more efficient by using these tools.

UiPath has all of the features that are required to make automation successful. It is currently just ahead of other similar tools on the market and if they continue to add features then it could be the market leader.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Sr. Consultant at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
Real User
Aug 25, 2021
The Automation Cloud helps to decrease the solution's total cost of ownership
Pros and Cons
  • "For our organization, the Orchestrator has the most useful setup. All automation is more or less the same. With UiPath, the difference is the Orchestrator. The amount of integration it has is actually what makes it different from all other vendors."
  • "Something that takes 15 minutes in UiPath would take one day in most of the other options."
  • "I've struggled a lot with automating Citrix applications with UiPath."
  • "The documentation isn't the best. It's pretty difficult to search."

What is our primary use case?

Our current use case is primarily to automate business processes pertaining to finance, HR, and IT. Finance and HR have been bigger players, and other supply chain areas are currently being targeted. It's still in the ramp-up phase. We do not use it in a contact center environment.

How has it helped my organization?

In my former employment, not my current employment, we implemented some banking processes during the implementation phase, and last year, when the lockdown happened, due to the automation, things were much simpler, much easier to manage, and it was less dependent on people. This was not an Indian client, however, I could see that in the Indian market, Indian banks were actually struggling with the same function. That is where we could see a very significant difference. A lot of banking processes are dependent on manual processing.

What is most valuable?

For our organization, the Orchestrator has the most useful setup. All automation is more or less the same. With UiPath, the difference is the Orchestrator. The amount of integration it has is actually what makes it different from all other vendors.

I would rate the ease of building automation using UiPath at a nine out of ten. For automation in UiPath, you use a package. For example, if you want to do MS Office automation, you have an MS Office package. If you want to do Outlook automation, you have a certain set of packages that support that. If you have the package for that purpose, it's very easy to manage.

For ServiceNow, they did not have a package until last year. There was a UiPath team-supported package that was an unofficial package developed by a UiPath employee. Last year, UiPath came out with its own package, and that helped. Now we have standard automation for ServiceNow. That's actually made things more streamlined.

In terms of implementing end-to-end automation, the process analysis is currently outside of UiPath, but everything except that can be done by UiPath. For us, creating end-to-end automation using UiPath is not that very critical. Process analysis is a bit of a situation-specific thing, and at times, it's usually better to keep it outside of the tool. It always helps within the tool, however, it depends on the convenience and comfort that the client has. I wouldn't want to expose my ERP data directly for automation.

Typically, it takes two to three years to see the breakeven. The difference between on-premise and on-cloud is that the lead time is a little less. That's about it. Therefore, the amount of trouble and setup and that sort of thing is the only item to consider.

The Automation Cloud offering helps to decrease the solution's total cost of ownership by taking care of things such as infrastructure, maintenance, and updates, however, only to some extent. It's not a lot. In the long run, it makes it easier to get breakeven from the initial implementation. The maintenance happens a little less as well. When you're updating the Orchestrator, that is where your major maintenance jump comes in. If you're not upgrading your Orchestrator version, it's more or less the same. From an ownership perspective, if you're not upgrading Orchestrator, only your VM license and hosting cost will be different. This depends on the client.

If you already have an Orchestrator in place, having an automation cloud doesn't really increase or decrease the ability to scale. That would only be only in the case where you want a complete separation environment. In that case, you'll have to use a multi-tenant kind of setup. If you do that kind of a setup, it's the same if you do it on-premise or on-cloud. The time to ramp up should be the same.

We use a mix of attended and unattended automation. Attended automation is primarily helpful for a few things like where the application's less stable, where things like Citrix are involved, which already have their own set of infrastructure issues.

UiPath has reduced human errors in the organization. The lead time is reduced, as well as the lead time to activity and the lead time to develop. Specifically, if you do development in UiPath versus any other OEM, you see a very significant difference in implementation lead time from a development perspective. They're much simpler to develop and manage in UiPath. If you go to other OEMs, it's very complex at times. If it takes 10 steps in another OEM, UiPath takes it in one to three, max.

The solution has freed up employee time by as much as 30 minutes per day. It's allowed employees to focus on higher-value work. The primary benefit of automation is doing low-complexity repetitive work outside of working hours. That's the biggest advantage that I've seen. Even if you're sleeping, there is already work being done in the background, so that the next morning, when the employee comes, he has more relevant work in front of him. He doesn't have to do any paper-pushing jobs. Automation can do that instead. That's the biggest advantage.

What needs improvement?

The fact that UI handles infrastructure, maintenance, and updates for Automation Cloud saves some time in the IT department. It is a trade-off. The biggest challenge that we've seen with Automation Cloud is primarily with documentation. At times, we raise it to UiPath, and after that, documentation comes up. I'm not saying that's bad, however, that's something that UiPath can work upon. This is a consistent behavior that I've seen.

Back in 2018, I was with another employer, not EY. I started using Orchestrator API within 10 days of its global release, and we had struggled at times for documentation. It's a theme with Orchestrator, with the new Automation Cloud, specifically on the Orchestrator side. For Tableau reporting, there was nothing. We had to raise it to UiPath saying, "Hey, do you have something for Tableau reporting?" They said, "No, we don't have anything for Automation Cloud." Very recently, they came out with it, however, before that, there was nothing.

The documentation isn't the best. It's pretty difficult to search. We would have to raise a ticket to the UiPath team, and they would have to come back with the relevant information. It's difficult to try and do a day or two of research only to have to raise a ticket to UiPath as a vendor.

I've struggled a lot with automating Citrix applications with UiPath. I know how Citrix is not very stable when it comes to automated logins. In that case, attended automation is good. We've seen some good use cases. However, it depends on the consultant's choice and the business's goals.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using it since 2018.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is very easy to scale and allows users to scale whenever they want.

How are customer service and technical support?

In general, UiPath support is good. It is better than other OEMs. They're usually really good.

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

I have experience with other RPA solutions. The development time is the biggest difference. The amount of automation one can do with it, that's the main difference. It's huge. It's not even a small difference.

I've looked at leading vendors in Gartner's Magic Quadrant. I've actually worked on all the vendors that you can see in the Magic Quadrant. There is a reason why UiPath is leading. Development is great, and, if you want to integrate a third-party application, UiPath has a lot of integrations set up either in its Orchestrator or in its Studio. Something that takes 15 minutes in UiPath would take one day in most of the other options. In Automation Anywhere, for example, you have more trouble.

How was the initial setup?

The Orchestrator setup doesn't take a lot of time if you have everything in place. Cloud deployment is a good option for smaller clients, or small to medium clients, that are just piloting or don't have any very sensitive data out there. They should go on the cloud.

It's a straightforward setup. It's pretty easy. That said if it's a new solution to you and if you don't know it, it might take a little while. Even then, it's easy. It's not complex.

Prior to StudioX coming in, it was very easy. Within 15 minutes for just a Studio client. However, with Studio, things changed a little. If you install StudioX and do not want to revert to the regular Studio, you'll probably have to uninstall the installation. StudioX usually comes with a separate installer and so on. With Studio Pro and the regular Studio, they come with their own thing.

UiPath is already working on providing an integrated installer for all of its offerings, so that should make it easier. If there is a wrapper application, and if from there you can select which one that you want to install, it'll be smoother. You'll be able to just click and go.

What was our ROI?

I have seen ROI in the past. My previous clients love UiPath. The current client is not in a spot to say just yet, however. It's a very new setup.

To see the ROI, that's where the off-work hours come into play. The automation works outside of working hours, and that actually speeds up a company's business processes in general. For those kinds of things, it's good. It shows a clear ROI.

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

The pricing is okay. It can be reduced a little. It's still fair, however, pricing can be reduced by the company if it wants to spend less. Depending on the industry, or depending on the features that an organization is going to get, it's possible to scale down. For example, if I don't want to use the AI set of features, I just want basic automation, I don't have to get what I don't need. They've already done a good amount of corrections in the product offering. If somebody wants only a certain section of the offering, they should be given modular pricing, especially for the managed cloud, which should be pay as you go. If I don't want that service at all, why should you pay for it? If I want something, it's a different situation and I should be charged, however, if I don't want something, it's good to have the option to opt-out and save money. You can't really put the whole cost on a customer.

SAP IRPA has a good model whereby their offering is based on the number of hits. The more API hits that you're asking for, the price per hit reduces. That should be the typical model. I'm not sure what UiPath is doing in that respect, however, I feel that is the best approach.

What other advice do I have?

My organization has a business relationship with UiPath.

In the current setting that I'm working in, it's basically an on-cloud deployment. We have these Automation Cloud Services, to which we have been subscribed. In the past, I've used the on-premise UiPath deployment.

Since it's a SaaS offering, it's always available online.

We are using a relatively new version.

We do not use UiPath's AI functionality in our automation program currently. We also do not use UiPath's apps feature. That said, I am aware of some organizations that use it.

I would advise new users to fix up their processes first, check if their applications need to be upgraded or digitized. After that, they will be in a position to then take a long-term vision with UiPath and have a strategy, have a long, two to three-year strategy. It's not a good idea to take a "do as it comes" approach. There needs to be, ideally, a three-year strategy in place in order to get a lot of business benefits. 

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten. If the pricing was better, I would rate it higher. 

Specifically, if you see Automation Anywhere's pricing, their basic automation is cheap, however, if you want to use the intelligent aspect, the intelligent aspect comes at a very good premium. That's most important. If I want to do simple process automation and if you're running a company at that scale, you need to understand your competition. There are a lot of players coming into the market and a big differentiator is going to be the cost. Power Automate is going to be successful based on that logic. It has high availability, big integration, and low pricing. It can disrupt UiPath's space.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Business Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Aug 25, 2021
Fast, easy automation building that free up employee time
Pros and Cons
  • "The product has freed up employee time. It’s likely freed up more than a day, an average of 12 hours at least. That’s 12 hours per day. It allows our employees to focus on more high-value work."
  • "There are so many offerings and configurations and customizations that make things a bit complicated. Streamlining it would be ideal."
  • "The solution is helpful in terms of speeding up or reducing the cost of digital transformation for our clients, however, the license cost is a little high."

What is our primary use case?

It's on multiple platforms like Oracle EBS and other IT applications. We have a few of the local government applications that the client uses. We have worked on multiple use cases with all of these applications. All of the client's major work is all through Oracle EBS. We have finance-related use cases. They have Seabridge applications, which are one of the applications that we are automating using UiPath.

What is most valuable?

Oracle itself has been very helpful when using this solution, thanks to the redundant task they've currently defined. All those are being automated. We mostly use the UiPath Assistant, Video, and Orchestrator. These are the only three products that we use day-in and day-out for our clients.

The ease of building automation using UiPath is great. It technically provides good features in order to develop, automating different kinds of applications using UiPath.

UiPath enables you to implement end-to-end automation, starting with process analysis, then robot building, and finally monitoring automation. It's usually very important. In some regulation cases, redundant cases, it’s been very useful. Instead of avoiding human intervention digitally, we are utilizing the UiPath to build up automation and run those in unattended mode.

If we could use the UiPath Apps feature, it would increase the number of automation and reduce the time it takes to create them. That said, at this time, I do not use this aspect of the solution.

UiPath has reduced human error in some cases. For example, a client has monthly payroll activities, which have to be done for multiple entities and in multiple in order to ensure the reports to be pretty good. It's a huge asset, having these multiple entities. It takes a lot of time for a human to execute the task. Here, automation plays a key role and it creates everything automatically through unattended mode. Of course, when a human is involved, there are chances for errors, such as missing the entities and updating the parameters. All of these things are instead being taken care of by automation. The likelihood of error is removed when the human intervention is.

The product has freed up employee time. It’s likely freed up more than a day, an average of 12 hours at least. That’s 12 hours per day. It allows our employees to focus on more high-value work.

What needs improvement?

We do use the Apps feature, however, it hasn't really helped reduce any workload. Everything is dependent upon the client's local language, which is Arabic. That is the major reason why we could not implement or utilize much of the Apps. It's not able to recognize Arabic versions properly. That is the challenging area which we are observing currently.

The solution is helpful in terms of speeding up or reducing the cost of digital transformation for our clients, however, the license cost is a little high. We are facing some challenges in the form of money. The license is costly. 

While employees can now focus on more high-value work, I would not go so far as to say it has improved employee satisfaction.

In UiPath, we have multiple products and recently there have been many product videos. There are videos around customization, deployment, et cetera. are all scattered all over. There are different products and different server setups and various other things, however, it is not organized. If it was simplified, it would be much better.

It could be more user-friendly. There are so many offerings and configurations and customizations that make things a bit complicated. Streamlining it would be ideal.

There are a few small things that should be included in UiPath. There are a few, although I can’t remember all. One, for example, is, when we are sending an email, we should be able to set up options and customize it a little bit. At this point, we need to create custom code and then go through APIs if we want to customize. It should be a built-in functionality, however.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for two years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise UiPath is good, however, it releases twice yearly. Therefore it will be a little hard for people to upgrade in-house each and every time. Clients also question why it's necessary every six months to upgrade. It won't be reasonable for the management. Every time when an upgrade is available, we have to complete the regulation for the previous use cases and whatever we already have deployed at production. 

When redeploying, everything is kind of a hectic task. Once in a year is okay, however, multiple releases in a year is a bit much. Clients would not be aware that yearly this many releases are happening and every release will have something more to add, that there are changes. Having to adapt to changes is something that is very difficult to make the client understand.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution can scale. 

You can use the application to automate any kind of application or any kind of use case. A few of them require some customization, using other technologies. 

Already we have some 25 bots running in production and a few of them are about to deploy to production and the client is looking for some more use cases. We are looking into a few more use cases that are in the discussion stage as of now. We are increasing our use cases and expanding usage.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is very helpful, however, there have been cases where we have had some urgent issues and support seems to move at its own pace. They won't rush for you. They don't seem to understand our concerns and they seem to only focus on their own timelines. 

Our SLA expectations are not always matching theirs. Even when we mark something as urgent, still there's a timeline of two to three hours. In that time it'll be hard to hold on.

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

Our clients did not use a different RPA solution before UiPath.

I do not have any other RPA solution experience beyond UiPath.

How was the initial setup?

I am the solution architect who setups.

I was working on the 2018 version of UiPath. The 2018 and 2019 versions are very easy and very straightforward. There were not many changes or many complications in order to set up or upgrade. However, when it comes to 2020, from 2020 onwards it's very complicated.

Now there is an IAS. There is no connection string update. We cannot update any connection strings, and yet we could in the 2019 version. From 2020 we're not able to do the changes at all unless we go further and do another upgrade or something like that.

Earlier it was straightforward. Maybe there was a little bit of conflict, fine, however, now that it's split into multiple things with a conflict DLL file, orchestrated DLL file, identity server file, then an app setting the adjacent file. That is gathered completely into all of these things, where until and unless you have both end-to-end documentation understanding, you cannot go ahead and do anything.

On top of that, there is the SSL certificate. Until 2019 we didn't require each and every robot or a development machine to have the same SSL certificate. Now, we have to export and import to all the machines and add the user's perspective.

From the licensing perspective, licenses were straight, and there was no migration required for the license to be utilized in any of the versions. From 2020, there is a license migration required from the UiPath end. We now need to contact UiPath for that in order to get this migration done.

All of these changes, as well as the identity server database creation, everything has a kind of impact on the ease of deployment.

Upgrading doesn't take much time, however, users deploying the solution should have a ton of knowledge about each one of the steps. They need to remember everything in order to perform the upgrade or else something might be missed. Even if you miss one step you will have to spend hours and hours in order to rectify that.

For the 2020 version, for the initial deployment, I did not actually do it from scratch. I just upgraded. That said, if a user wanted to do it, I would estimate it takes more than a day to complete.

The implementation strategy depends upon the requirements of the client. For example, if it is on-premises versus if it is on cloud and/or if the client is looking for Elasticsearch or Insights or test automation, et cetera. All of these things will be dependent on the other. If you ask for Insights, you need to have an extra server setup for that. The same thing follows with the test automation and SQL database. What we call roles and responsibilities also will be dependent.

What was our ROI?

The unattended licenses are a little costly. That's the challenging part for us. That said, with the continuous support to the client, as we are increasing the use cases, it will lessen the cost probably by the middle of next year. At least, that’s what we are hoping for. We hope to see an ROI then.

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

The license cost is a little high. Unattended modes are really costly. If it's not as costly, then we could propose and purchase the licenses. Of course, we get discounts from UiPath, however, just for 10 bots, not even 10, if we load 5 to 10 unattended bots within the production orchestrator with the three development licenses, we have to pay for them twice. I'm not sure how much it is exactly in terms of the dollars, however.

What other advice do I have?

My company does not have a business relationship with UiPath.

We do not use UiPath in a contact center environment.

We use completely unattended automation. 

We do not use attended automation at this time, or AI, although we are aware those are options. We're looking forward to AI and it is part of the reason we recently upgraded to the 2020.10 version.

It's one of the best tools where you can work for automation. If you have more redundant work, then it is very helpful.

Except for this upgrade and installation initial steps, apart from that, the solution is pretty easy to use.

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
RPA Lead at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Aug 13, 2021
Speed ups and reduces the cost of digital transformation and offers good AI functionality
Pros and Cons
  • "The product is well-integrated with different tools that can help with logging, et cetera."
  • "For example, in one project, which we used as a test, typically the turnaround would have been 15 days, however, with UiPath, we were able to churn out this product in 30 minutes."
  • "For a few of the projects, we have saved money, however, on a few of these projects we've noticed less revenue. The orchestration cost is a bit higher when we are working on smaller projects."

What is our primary use case?

We deal in banking and finance. The use case is based on the transaction dates. For example, how customers are using credit cards, net banking, transactions, and what components they are buying. We gather this information in order to provide a CIBIL score. 

We do have multiple applications, which are provided to the banks so that they can work without taking much time. We have a set of test cases that need to be automated and we'll run it up. 

What is most valuable?

As of now, we test and we usually have a CSED pipeline as well. We are not only restricted to any one of the features in UFR. We are using Citrix, among others. 

The solution makes it easy to build automation. Earlier, we used to collect the data and create a hard copy. Now, these are all processes that are automated. There are fewer human interventions that are required to collect the data from the email or collect the data from the hard copy. It is auto-generated through auto-generated mail. It will collect all the details and save them to a repository. Based on that, our support team is providing the solution to the customer, and it's much easier.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation. These processes are very complete. Where there's not a single person is in practicum, however, it's only deployed in our productions. 

They have included the chatbot. Therefore, if the customer is having any issues related to any of the products, they will raise their queries. We will log these queries through a bot system, and this will get notified to the escalation team. They will locate into it through banking domains or through the solution of it and providing the solution on emails. It's very helpful.

End-to-end coverage is one of the best features. If their service display is not good enough, or if they are facing any issues, we can sort things out faster, which makes customers very happy. They are getting the solution on time, and they are running 24/7. Human workers are not able to provide each and every solution on an immediate basis, however, by using the solutions, we have got a solution for the end-user that responds immediately so that they are satisfied and their needs will be fulfilled much faster.

As of now, we are using attended automation, however, we also have created some of the use cases, which are going to be linked through unattended automation. Attended automation helped to scale RPI benefits in our organization, by automating department or all specific processes that require human-robot collaboration.

For example, in one project, which we used as a test, typically the turnaround would have been 15 days, however, with UiPath, we were able to churn out this product in 30 minutes.  It's amazing how much we are saving in terms of time. We've been able to shrink timelines.

We do use UiPath's AI functionality in your automation program. The complexities are always a part of the banking industry as data is from many places and over a large amount of time. However, when we talk about the calculations, it's when human beings are involved where it really takes a while to get a task completed. With automation, we can shrink that down to 15 or 20 minutes and know in that short amount of time a person's complete financial background and if they are credible or not. This customer doesn't have to wait so long to get the results they need. 

UiPath's AI functionality has enabled us to automate more processes overall. Now, for example, it's feasible to process data, and, if we have to, get the data explained very simply to calculate a score and find out if a person is genuine or not. We can look at credit histories, transactions, et cetera, and based on that, be able to process requests in order to enable users to get loans in seconds instead of days or weeks. 

UiPath both speeds up and reduces the cost of our digital transformation; it increases processing speed and saves costs that would otherwise be taken up in longer-term tedious tasks.  

I've used the UiPath apps feature, however, I cannot say it's fully required for our processes. That said, it was very helpful when we did use it. 

UiPath has helped us reduce human error. We can achieve our goals, as mentioned, in 30 minutes, without having to manually go from one stage to another, which may cause errors. It frees up our employee's time as well, to help improve their focus. That, and, within a week's time, we can save 30 hours on a single resource. It allows those employees to really focus on higher-value work. Employees are happier as they now have the time and space to build their skills.

Overall, UiPath has reduced the cost of our automation operations. This reduction is around 30% savings. 

The product is well-integrated with different tools that can help with logging, et cetera.

The task capture is great in that we have all of this data we are receiving that's automated and we don't need to invest much time in creating documents.

What needs improvement?

For a few of the projects, we have saved money, however, on a few of these projects we've noticed less revenue. The orchestration cost is a bit higher when we are working on smaller projects.

From the improvement perspective, I am from the testing background, and UiPath has recently released some announcements related to scrums. I would be happy to see their products be involved with scrum teams.

Just like they have data for the JIRA automation, maybe if they can include some of these options in the Rally solution. It's a tool that is used locally for various projects and having automation activity included there would be useful to us. 

From a migration perspective, if we can get something better than the manual process that would be great. It would be nicer if it was smoother for those doing implementations. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for five years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I can say it's a very good tool from the RP perspective. It is helping us to get our work faster, saving time as well as offering multiple functionalities. We haven't had any issues with it. 

Everything is good - except the capture part. They could improve on that as we are getting less accuracy as compared to the other functionality. Other than that, the rest of the components are fine.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is very good. 

On my team, somewhere around 14 people are working on the UiPath product. There are several other teams also on it. Likely, there are around 50 plus people in total on the solution.

We are regularly using this product. I cannot say I'm not using a single day. 365 days a year this solution runs, as these processes are basically used on the weekends as well. Based on the schedule, it is pretty much always running in the UAT or QA environment. 

How much we use it depends on the products. If we get more products, we will increase usage. 

How are customer service and technical support?

The customer support is very nice. Most of the time, we are getting a resolution from there.

I would rate them at more than eight out of ten. Over the last three years, I've been interacting with the web team on customer support. I tend to get an immediate response from their team for the assignment of my ticket, and they schedule a call. However, in some of the operations, it's not possible to directly interact on the WebEx.

It's important for us to have them extend their communications or extend their environment. Not every organization can get support as they offer it. Using Microsoft Teams or Zoom or a more popular platform may be helpful.

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

We did not use another solution that is similar. We previously used an automation tool that was purely used for the testing perspective. We decided to move to UiPath as it was an easy-to-use solution. However, I was not a part of the RPA tool decision-making process. 

How was the initial setup?

Earlier, it was a bit complex as we had to configure our robot with the orchestrator or the studio that was providing details. Now, when we are installing, everything is taken synchronously. We don't need to enter the required areas. It is automatically catching that from that environment.

The time it takes to deploy depends on the system resources or the system specifications. Usually, it will take around 23 to 40 minutes for the installation, however, now that they have improved their installation time as well, it may only take 20 to 30 minutes.

For us, the deployment plan is basically to focus on the data perspective. We don't want to lose any of the aspects of the data, which is already running, so we do take a backup first. The orchestrator has a different environment structure, which has already been configured like a development rather than a UAT.

These are the phases that we are using on a regular basis. Once it is certified for the first stage, only then does it move to the next phase.

We require 22 people to maintain the product. They are largely comprised of the DevOps team. 

What was our ROI?

While the solution is a bit expensive, we do see ROI. When we compare the ROI with the expenses differently, ROI is on the higher side. Of course, for the organizations who have a small product base, who may have less automation required, will find that expenses are higher. The more you automate, the more you save.

However, in relation to sharing actual data points, that's a bit tricky.

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

As compared to the licensing costs or the pricing of other tools like Automation Anywhere or Blue Prism, it's a bit cheaper, however, when we talk about the open-source tools such as Robocorp or Robot Framework, the cost is on the higher side. Microsoft Power Automate is also cheaper.

There are no other costs beyond the licensing. 

What other advice do I have?

We are just customers and end-users. I'm an RPA lead.

We are using an operating system related to Microsoft and several other features related to Microsoft. If they offered this type of product on a regular basis, that was less costly and had the same compatibility, security, and features, we'd likely adopt it. 

I'd advise those considering the solution to check the processes and compare them to their potential ROI. A company needs to consider if the tools will help them based on their environment and goals. It's important to first analyze the internal capabilities before jumping in. If they don't think they'll be getting the ROI they desire, they should look at another tool. 

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
it_user1639815 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Aug 12, 2021
Frees up employee time, lowers human error, and offer end-to-end automation
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution has freed up employee time. It depends on the process, however, if I had to take an average, it is probably freeing up one full-time person, which is eight hours. On a monthly basis, around 150 hours are saved for a medium process."
  • "Employees are happier, and, depending on the process and what they were doing, what kind of involvement it requires, the solution is motivating employees."
  • "They can probably focus more on attended stuff or creating a UI around that. We are not using the attended bot a lot, however, I have seen some use cases in other organizations, as I'm working in consulting. I've seen in some other areas where an organization wants to use attended automation, however, the feature is not very well designed which makes it difficult to use."

What is our primary use case?

I have been using it for a couple of different things, mainly insurance-related. As of now, we are using it mainly in insurance platforms, insurance portals, and doing some admin support in terms of the backend insurance tasks.

I've used it before in payroll where it was processing the payroll, generating the payslips, creating the payments for our outsourced invoices, processing invoices, making payments, sending reports to banks, and more.

How has it helped my organization?

In terms of improving the functions, we had to have a lot of time-critical tasks, which we have seen improvement on. In insurance, it is mainly around the claim processing and then paying the invoice to the third parties or doing the payments to the end customer. Most of the time it is missed, and then there are SLA penalties involved. This solution offers good savings for us in all those areas. On top of that, there are fewer errors now. Previously, there were many manual errors due to the time-critical aspect of the tasks. People were trying to put in their best efforts while working quickly against time, which caused them to work too fast and make mistakes. We get savings on two fronts now. One is mistakes. There are no mistakes anymore. The second thing is we are doing tasks faster and can run 24/7.

What is most valuable?

The orchestrator is one of the good features they have.

Internally, internal queue management is another feature that is really helpful when it comes to managing the work and checking the workload.

The latest thing that they added is reports that show the handling times and all those things.

The ease of use of building automation using UiPath is good and I would rate it and an eight out of ten with the version I am using. If we move to the latest version, there may be a couple of new features, such as modern variable management, that would bump it to nine out of ten. 

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation, starting with process analysis, then robot building, and finally monitoring automation. With the new versions, it does, at least. We are not using those features in my current organization, as we have some other tools in place. 

End-to-end coverage is important to us. We use the older version. We started using it three years ago, which is why we build a lot of items ourselves. If the features were released two years ago, we'd likely use UiPath for everything.  

It is important that we can scale automation without having to pay attention to the infrastructure of the automation. We're very interested in the cloud. It offers many benefits. Even though we are on-prem now, in terms of managing the infrastructure, it will likely be really helpful to move to the cloud, so that we don't have to bother about all this infrastructure stuff in the future.

It reduced the cost of digital transformation and it is allowing us to actually move to digital items, as, most of the time, when we were trying to present things and things were not digital, it helped us to advance very much into a digital space easily.

It does not require any expensive or complex application upgrades or IT support. For some applications, it requires some modifications. Even if it's 10% or 20% digitized, we are trying to use UiPath to do the stuff for us instead of doing the application, upgrading, all those things. In most cases, it's not very costly for us.

UiPath has reduced human error. It does all the time. In claims, there used to be a lot of human error. Especially in payments, sometimes it would pay more or less or the wrong person, and now, it's all automated and errors have stopped.

The solution has freed up employee time. It depends on the process, however, if I had to take an average, it is probably freeing up one full-time person, which is eight hours. On a monthly basis, around 150 hours are saved for a medium process.

This additional time has enabled employees to focus on more important work. Employees are happier, and, depending on the process and what they were doing, what kind of involvement it requires, the solution is motivating employees. 

The product is reducing the cost for other operations, as it's an automation tool. While we are paying for automation, it is reducing the overall operational cost. Not specifically automation operational costs, but other operational costs. We are seeing an average savings of around 30%.

What needs improvement?

UiPath hasn't really helped us minimize our on-prem footprint. We are still using the on-premises deployment and everything is on-premises for us. We have, however, used some machines on the cloud. Still, the on-premises footprint in terms of UiPath is not lower.

There are a couple of minor items that could use improvement. Overall the tool roadmap looks fine. They have improved a lot from 2019 to 2021. In two years, there have been lots of additions. It seems like there's no particular improvement which they need to make. They have already improved a lot in the 2021 version, which is adding a modern framework and then modern folder structures. 

They can probably focus more on attended stuff or creating a UI around that. We are not using the attended bot a lot, however, I have seen some use cases in other organizations, as I'm working in consulting. I've seen in some other areas where an organization wants to use attended automation, however, the feature is not very well designed which makes it difficult to use.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been in automation for almost four years. I'm using all of these different tools, not only UiPath, and moving around within tools. For example, I'll use UiPath for six months, and then do three months on another tool, and then eight months again on UiPath.

However, overall, in terms of automation, I've been familiar with various solutions for three to four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable. It can perform very well for small to medium complex processes. It takes a little bit of time to adjust for very complex processes, however. It takes some time to build and to develop and deploy for very complex processes. That said, it is very stable overall, with the caveat that, for very complex processes, it's difficult to build or manage.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability-wise, it is good in terms of connecting the bots and the Orchestrator can support thousands. 

In our case, we have around 137 to 140 registered users on the Orchestrator. Most of them are developers. I would say it's around 20 odd VAs or other staff, however, most of them are developers. Around 100+ developers, with the remaining users being process analysts.

We are always trying to find new work in the pipeline, and, as of now, it is not used across the entire organization. It is currently used by 50% of the teams and the plan is to take it to 100%. 

How are customer service and technical support?

I would rate technical support at an eight out of ten as of now. They're not always right on the first try, however, most of the time we get what we need on the first or second try.

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

I'm constantly jumping back and forth between various automation tools. 

I previously used Automation Anywhere. I'm working in consulting, so I switch between tools, and for one of the clients, it could be Automation Anywhere, for another it could be UiPath.

Each tool has its own pros and cons. An ideal tool could be probably a mixture of all of the tools on the market as some have some great features. UiPath is great for its ease of use. Anyone can quickly jump in and start learning it. Some of the tools take a little bit more time to understand and probably need more time to deploy or build code. Some others have better debugging. I would say UiPath debugging can be better. This is one of the things which can be improved. It is improved in the latest version, however, if it can be compared with others, such as Pega robotics, it can be improved. That said, Pega robotics is not an automation or RPA tool. It's basically RD. It's a front-end tool.

How was the initial setup?

I have set UiPath up from scratch for one of the companies I worked with in Sydney, Australia. It was in 2017 or 2018 when I was comparing the tools, and deciding which one is better based on the roadmaps. At that point, I set it up from scratch.

The time when I did a setup, it was very complex. 

When I started doing it in 2017 or 2018, there were a couple of issues with installing the SQL server and configuring everything for the Orchestrator machine, et cetera and it was very complex.

Now, they have simplified it. It's a one-time installation, and the cloud makes things really easy. With the new versions, it is better. For me, the support was not very good at that time.

The deployment took us a couple of days. It was complex. The documentation was not really very great, and the support was also not very good. It took us a couple of days, maybe five to ten days, to implement it end-to-end and then set up multiple instances.

In terms of the strategy, we have followed the guidelines, whatever the document said, and then took help from UiPath support. Other than that, it was a standard installation.

For deployment and maintenance, it depends on process counts. Usually, when processes are stable and running for a long time, one person can support four to five processes in general. In our case, we have a mix and match model for supporting production. Overall, I would say that there is a different team for each different support platform. A platform team is just supporting the infrastructure, and overall there are around 20 people, which offer support.

What about the implementation team?

I did not use an integrator. I work with a consulting company, and we help with the installation. However, at the time, UiPath didn't have a very good presence in Australia, which made it difficult.

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

I'm not very involved in pricing or licensing.

We are mostly using developer licenses and they have unattended, attended pro and developer licensing. We also have development and production licensing as well as licensing for the orchestrator. Different licenses have different costs.

We pay our licensing fees on a yearly basis. 

What other advice do I have?

I'm not using the latest version. We're a little behind. We need to update it.

We do use a bit of attended automation, however, it isn't very much. It is helpful, however, we are getting better benefits with the backend automation. For us, the level of importance in terms of having attended automation is five out of ten.

We have done a couple of POCs with AI. We don't have anything which is in production. It's all POCs and a couple of minor display things. We aren't using AI very much at all. Therefore, we don't have proper use cases. We haven't solved other processes. The first priority is to solve everything practical instead of moving to experimental tasks.

At this time, we do not use the UiPath apps feature. I haven't seen it and I'm not aware of it.

The support is really good now compared to what it was a couple of years back. Support teams are really helpful when it comes to upgrading or installing the new versions, and it is very straightforward compared to what it was. I would say planning is important however, UiPath support is always there when they are required to be.

The biggest lesson we have learned is it's important to have a roadmap. We've connected a lot of tools and built a lot of things. We invested a lot. However, it's important to be flexible enough to adjust so that you can change if you need to, as it's hard to predict the future.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
PeerSpot user
Sr. Software Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
MSP
Aug 10, 2021
Easy to use and simple to build automation processes with helpful integration capabilities
Pros and Cons
  • "Stability-wise, it's really good. When it comes to backend automation, it's amazing."
  • "The processing time for this application previously was somewhere around 20 minutes, per record now the time has been reduced to three minutes and previously there were 18 people working on any particular application, right now there are only two bots working on this website and they are doing work like magic."
  • "The Orchestrator portion can be difficult. Previously, the Orchestrator which everyone was using, was quite simple to use. However, the new one is quite complex to understand."

What is our primary use case?

We do not directly use UiPath in our organization but we do have some use cases. One of those is sending bulletins. These are the notification emails that go to users on their birthdays, on their work anniversaries, sometimes they are sent after some sort of achievement, like if they have a baby. These notifications go via UiPath

The way it works is that the data is maintained within our tracking sheet, which is sometimes on SharePoint, and UiPath uses this tracking sheet to check the data in addition to the user and will cc everyone within the organization. For example, when we receive birthday emails, it goes to the person whose birthday it is on that day and cc's in everyone within the organization or within the relevant department. 

How has it helped my organization?

In the case of one of the clients I've worked with, they're working on a process where they need to provide students with a student visa pass. It's within Singapore and every student that has joined this institute needs to apply over a website. 5000 applications are received every year. These applications need to be manually added to the government website.

We automated this process, starting from the beginning to the end. There's a lot of interaction required. The team worked on an Excel sheet. In fact, a number of people work on these Excel sheets. With many people, there's always a chance of misleading data, as I might at one point be doing some more revision on the sheet, and someone at the other point might be doing more revisions. There is the chance that data will clash. In order to make sure that this won't happen, we came up with a SharePoint list where we could add the data, and if anyone changes anything, there's a simple and clear record of who made the changes, and what the change was.

At the same time, the bot can work on the SharePoint list as well - and there is no chance of a clash occurring. We can create a process and a number of steps that involve reading the data and extracting data from an application while swapping or extracting data between two forms. 

There's a lot of swapping. We extracted the data via the backend, via the database, and directly put that into the IC application. The processing time for this application previously was somewhere around 20 minutes. Per record now, the time has been reduced to three minutes. Previously, there were 18 people working on any particular application. Right now, there are only two bots working on this website, and they are doing work like magic. 

What is most valuable?

If we look at the development part, UiPath Studio has been great due to its ease of use and its UI. The availability of the UI store helps us understand the complete pre-hierarchy of the UI elements that's available on the browser or website. It's easy to use and it can be manipulated in the way we want it to. It allows us to do more work on the browsers. 

The integration aspect is very useful. Right now, I'm working on SharePoint and that integrates nicely with UiPath. The integration model is really, really great, and 99.9% of the time it works. While technology can fail occasionally, UiPath has a great track record. 

The ease of building automation using UiPath is quite good. The kind of projects or processes we have been able to automate has been helpful. We need to determine if it's a complex process, which is dictated by the number of steps. We look at the number of steps and work to determine if we can improvise and reduce the number of steps, and, if so, how. We look at if the process ever requires human intervention and where. The type of human intervention might dictate the complexity of the process, as well, for example, the number of applications we are working on. We might have to write some code on the backend or maybe we are working with an API. Everything needs to be assessed before going into an automation process.

UiPath has reduced human errors. Previously, everything was manually tracked with changes noted on the tracking sheet and we would do a copy/paste from one place to another. There was always a chance of human error. However, when this process is automated, there was zero chance for mistakes. While there may be exceptions, it would be only in rare instances the automation itself would make an error.

The product definitely reduces cost. If a company deploys automation within their organization, they need to understand that automation needs some time. One process will not necessarily reduce the cost. They need to see there will be results in the long run. It just takes time and they have to understand automation. They have to implement automation within the organization. Often, organizations will start the automation process, and then they leave it as they believe the cost is going up. They perceive this due to the fact that they need a separate system for development, a separate system for testing, and a separate system for operation, plus they need three servers for the Orchestrator. However, in the long run, automation actually lowers costs. It's just a hard up-front number to look at.

What needs improvement?

Whether or not the solution has freed an employee's time depends. If you talk about the business level, definitely not, due to the fact that, for them, it might be a burden. To the business, it might be a burden. However, if you talk to the IT department or IT level people who are working differently from users they would say that the best thing is that deployment is easy, debugging is easy, logging is very easy, and tracking is very easy. Anyone from IT can easily track how things are going. Yet, if we are talking about it from the point of view of business, for them it's not their cup of tea.

For example, if the system freezes on a person, they just close the browser, however, if the system freezes on a bot, from that moment everything must be manually re-initiated. For a regular business user, doing that process may go above their head and they may not understand how to fix it.

The Orchestrator portion can be difficult. Previously, the Orchestrator which everyone was using, was quite simple to use. However, the new one is quite complex to understand. Even with developers, they sometimes don't understand it either. 

There's a lot of things coming up that need to be learned. They need to put some more information into the academy to help others understand the Orchestrator end-to-end, especially for the new version. The previous one was quite easy. The new one is very inefficient in terms of the user interface. That's the area that I find still needs improvement.

I would suggest that they should provide a more disciplined document where users can see what exactly needs to be done in case of failure. For example, there's a very clever document on the deployment of the setup, but there's no documentation on what happens if there is a failure. Users need to be made aware of what to do if exceptions happen. 

UiPath is already aware of these exception scenarios, and when you call support they know what needs to be done. These details need to be on documents somewhere, maybe in the form of knowledge articles. That way, if someone has some issue, they can go to an article and see what's going on. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for about four years now. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, it's really good. When it comes to backend automation, it's amazing. With the UI automation in mind, I would say it's quite stable. However, there is a chance of errors. I would say, if you're doing a process based on a UI interaction, the stability it gives is somewhere around 5% to 10% on each process. Again, it depends on a number of things, such as the start-up package you are working with and/or what is the response of that individual. It's something that somewhat falls outside of UiPath, in terms of stability, however, when it comes to the process, everything counts. Even, for example, electricity counts. If there's system slowness or a system crash, it can affect everything, even if it's not necessarily caused by UiPath.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Attended automation has helped to scale RPA benefits. It is scalable, as, moving forward, there are multiple processes in relation to the same person, and right now it's done manually by a number of users. Probably, in the future, we can help develop a direction for that. Right now, the client is happy with what they got.

The solution is quite scalable. It's easy to scale a process or a UI. With big automation, it depends on the number of people who are going to utilize it. In those cases, we need to make sure that that network is available to scale. If you don't take into account the number of users, or if there are a lot of people using it, then the chances of failure can go up. That said, it depends on how big the organization is and what sort of licenses were bought from UiPath. 

How are customer service and technical support?

I have not really used technical support, and therefore cannot comment. With Studio, we've had maybe a few minor interactions. It's the same with Orchestrator.

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

I have worked with a number of tools including Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, WorkFusion, Kryon, and Kofax. I have knowledge of a lot of other tools. 

Kryon, for example, has a process discovery feature, and UiPath also started up with this process development. However, what Kryon provides is amazing. The way they capture everything, the way output comes, the way each step is explained with the process, et cetera, makes discovery on Kryon amazing. In comparison to UiPath, UiPath just isn't as good in this area.

WorkFusion integrates well with the part where we have to read documents, especially bot scanned reading. UiPath does not have these capabilities, as of now, on its own. You can integrate Abbyy with UiPath, however, that's a different tool altogether. With Fusion and with Kofax, these features are amazing. On top of that, their invoice capabilities are amazing. There's a vast difference between UiPath and Kofax and Fusion when it comes to reading documents. 

That said, when it comes to working on the backend automation, when it comes to working with the UI automation, UiPath stands out from the crowd. It's amazing. The way it writes, the way it provides precision handling, the way it works with the queue, et cetera, is amazing. There is no other tool on the market that offers these capabilities. 

The one feature that I believe should be better with UiPath, however, is storing data in an independent manner. With UiPath, even though you store your password on the Orchestrator with the credentials, or even with any credential manager if you get at the end of the day and somebody has not reviewed your quote, you can tell your boss to send his password in a simple text format. This is where the UiPath lacks, and this is where Blue Prism comes into the picture. It's just better at securing data. People prefer Blue Prism for this reason over UiPath. 

How was the initial setup?

With my current organization, the department model is quite simple. We have three different environments for this: development, testing (what we call acuity), and production models. We have these three stages of deployment that we deploy robots and the Orchestrator based on the requirement of clients.

The deployment took a maximum of one to two hours from one machine to another machine. A complete department deployment, however, depends on the process type we are working on, as there are some features we need to develop. Apart from publishing these packages, the deployment of the server, or of the Orchestrator, or the deployment of Studio, will take a day or two to do the complete setup on one machine.

In terms of the implementation strategy, the first thing to do is the pre-checks. We need to figure out what sort of system we need. Therefore, we need to first confirm the prerequisites. Once that is done, we need to download a package and install it, and then apply the license. After all of that, we just need to create one small robot just to check that everything is working fine. There are some tools that need to be installed with that. For example, if we are working on UI automation, in that case, we need to install an extension. If we need to install the network load balancer as well, we need to install some of the prerequisite packages on the machine, on the server, to make sure that this runs smoothly.

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

While the licensing models are quite simple, as a developer, I don't handle details about pricing or cost.

What other advice do I have?

My company does not directly partner with UiPath, however, it's a partner via a client. If anything happens with the client, it goes from my company via one of those stakeholders who take care of these things.

Currently, we use attended automation. The reason being is, it's more about password prediction, as the company does not want to store the passwords. There are a number of options that we have given to users where they can store their passwords in the credential manager. However, the company does not want to do that. The only reason we are using attended is for this, which is that the user has to manually go and insert the credentials.

I have not yet used UiPath's AI functionality in any automation programs. I have done some POCs for this, for documents in this setting. However, we've never practically implemented it within the organization.

With the current organization and with the current client we are not using Orchestrator at all. We only use attended robots and not Studio and Orchestrator. However, with other clients, we have used the cloud-based enterprise Orchestrator and have had the Orchestrator installed within the premises of the organization. I've used both.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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Buyer's Guide
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Updated: July 2026
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