What is our primary use case?
Most of the time, I am a developer. I also have to develop some best practices, but a lot of the time, I'm working on the application and creating Unattended Robots. We have a large amount of old school manual processes which we need to automate, because we have a lot of full-time employees just doing boring stuff.
I started last year, so I am a bit fresh in the organization. We have two people: One who analyzes and other develops.
I am using version 2018.4, which I find easy to use. We can see some major changes with each version. The IT department sort of hates that I come by every quarter of a year and want an upgrade, but it is very much worth it. There is a lot of stuff happening out there, and it's dangerous to be left behind by a few versions.
How has it helped my organization?
We have a few people who are very happy to be relieved of their (almost) full-time job of processing customer applications, then processing those applications further along into the company and having that be their full time job. Now, these employees are able to do some more enlightening stuff.
The automation technology is mainly in the financial involvement. We also supply a lot of the power for users. We have a lot of documents which have to be signed and processed, and in those areas, it's nice to have automation and easy to see the benefits.
What is most valuable?
The seamless integration with programming underneath, so if you choose to, you can get a bit technical with stuff. If there is something missing, you can make it yourself.
The increasing amount of possibilities in Orchestrator to control robots and schedule them, with the possibly of a dynamic schedule in the future. In addition, there is API access to Orchestrator.
What needs improvement?
I've seen the roadmap. It looks like some of my wishes are in there, such as the debugging of the last X amount of savings before the robot fails.
I would also like more script access to the flow of activity, so we can try to see a text version of what we have in the user interface.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Most of the time, the product boils down to making something that works by itself.
I haven't encountered any real issues with the stability of the product. It is hard to evaluate since it works through so many systems.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We haven't had that many scalability questions arise yet, because we are still in the process of getting people to adopt this new technology. I have looked at the features, and it looks promising.
We have a plan for licensed upgrades, which is a straightforward, easy procedure. This is based on our knowledge from migrations of earlier versions.
How are customer service and technical support?
We started out by going through the few basic certifications which were in the UiPath Academy a year ago, though there are more now. Even though my coworker is not a developer, he just wanted to have insight into how you use software, so we both did it.
The UiPath Academy was very good. It tries to help and provides a sort of education not from where somebody is attempting to sell you something. While you are sold product, you push yourself to pass the courses to get to the juicy stuff, and it is on your own accord.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
This was a new product for the company. Leadership though this was a good place to start.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was complex, which was done by the consultants. After that, we adapted the product a bit, and it has been pretty easy.
The initial setup for our virtual environment was straightforward, as was the installation with it. Afterwards, we were up and running with our virtual machines.
What about the implementation team?
We originally used a consulting company, Deloitte, but then decided that we wanted the knowledge to be in-house.
What was our ROI?
It has helped eliminate human error. Data quality is a concern, and it helps to alleviate some of our data quality issues.
It has saved the company time.
We use the performance benefits of it to make a case for future hiring of people, so I have great expectations from it. I would rate the current ROI and performance benefits as an eight out of ten.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I heard that they also evaluated Blue Prism. The leadership went with UiPath because it had more transparency, had a better cost, and was more risk-free. They decided to give UiPath a shot before deciding on a long-term solution.
What other advice do I have?
Get buy-in from your leadership early on, because it's very hard to get stuff done without it.
We are only using Unattended Robots at the moment. However, we are very excited about Attended Robots getting a foothold. It is something that we want to investigate more, since Attended Robots are feasible in our organization.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.