UiPath Platform Reviews

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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 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.

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.

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

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. 

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.

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

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

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. 

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Currently, we are using it for reading emails. We download the attachments that we get in emails. After downloading those Excel sheets attachments, we process the data based on a few rules. The processed data is input into the SAP application. In the SAP application, based on the business rules, we process the data and commit.

It is very user-friendly in terms of building automation. We don't need to be experts in coding. We can learn it easily and build complex business tools in UiPath. We don't need prior coding experience.

It reduces the cost of digital transformation. Every day, we get 10 Excel sheets, and somebody has to sit and read the Excel sheet and load the data manually into the SAP application. Three to four employees are required for the same job, but if we automate this process, it can be done in a minute. It is easy, and we save time and cost.

It reduces the time taken for a task. If we are manually filling timesheets, we need to open the website, fill the timesheet, and submit it. It can take 10 minutes. With automation, it will take just a minute.

Orchestrator is very useful for deployment and publishing, maintaining queues, and running jobs.

In UiPath, REFramework is useful for different use cases with predefined code templates. There are well-established steps. There is a step for code marginalization. Similarly, there are separate steps for initialization and processing. For closing an application process, a step is there. So, it is very well modularized for getting the transaction data. If there is one exception or anything wrong happens with an application, it will log the exception in the orchestrator and send an email. It can also close your applications and end data processing. So, everything is well organized and separated, and we can log the exceptions separately in the queues as business exceptions or application exceptions. We can have the complete report of a particular queue.

For document understanding, there are so many features. I haven't used them practically, but to read a PDF, there are patterns and semi patterns. A wait option is also there for somebody to come and correct it. It can wait until somebody comes and corrects it, and then it will do the processing. So, all of the features are very useful in UiPath.

In exception handling, wherever exception occurs, the out arguments are not being passed. It would be good if there is a way to pass the out arguments. 

Sometimes, when an element is not there, UiPath gets stuck, and it doesn't even throw an exception. It stays stuck for hours until we go and check the logs. When this happens, we have to kill it. It happens in some cases, so an improvement is needed there.

I have been using this solution for three and a half years.

Other than the issues related to the exception handling and UiPath getting stuck, it is very stable.

It can scale well, but we don't really have a need to scale it. Currently, we are automating 15 projects. We are planning to use other functionalities of UiPath to automate extra things.

Currently, we have 1,000 people who use this solution. They are consultants, developers, and business analysts. A business analyst takes care of making design documents and solution documents. The RPA developers develop the code and test it. After that, for deployment, someone is there to take care of all technical things. After that, the support team is there to look after the deployment.

I didn't call UiPath support, but I know about them from my friend. We had called them for some issues, and they answered those very well. I would rate them a nine out of 10.

I have worked only on UiPath.

Its initial setup is straightforward. It is not that complex. We need to install UiPath Studio, and then we connect it to Orchestrator for getting logs, etc. It doesn't take more than an hour.

I took the help of my colleagues.

I'm not sure about licensing and pricing, but the pricing for their certification is a little bit more. Previously, we could do it for no price.

I would definitely recommend it to my colleagues and others. It is very user-friendly.

In terms of reducing human error, it is not up to the mark. It detects human errors, but it waits until we place the correct files for processing. For example, when comparing files, a human can detect two almost-similar addresses as the same, but a UiPath bot cannot do that. So, in some cases, it won't work as humans. It cannot decide. It works on predefined rules.

Considering its areas of improvement and the cost of certification, I would rate UiPath a nine out of 10.

I've created an app for conversions and exchange rates. Every day I need the exchange rate of a certain currency and I use the API free exchange and UiPath.

It's also used for the reconciliation of invoices.

I've used it for the creation of an onboarding bot for employees to be onboarded onto a website with a remote system. I used AWS and a virtual machine and created a Google Form from there, and used UiPath's computer vision to do onboarding activities and extract data from files. PDF files can then be entered into the remote system. UiPath can be used to fill the forms.

It can be used for web extraction tasks as well, for example, for booking flights, where you can extract the flight details for particular search criteria and place them into an Excel sheet.

It can also be used to extract data from invoices in order to populate an Excel sheet, for a portable format. I've created a process that used documents as a learning model and extracted the invoices, using logic to output the transactions. 

Another use case I tried was extracting data from Amazon based on exact data. The same can be done on Linkedin using the Linkedin API. I'm fine-tuning and extracting data, putting the outputs on Google Sheets.

I've experimented with many use cases and automated many processes. 

It's low code/no code which makes it very easy to work with. 

Building automation using UiPath is easy. If I see a video or some instructions, I can do it. Things are doable. You learn. If there are use cases or there is information online, you can replicate the process.

Adding activities is easy. All of these partners are integrated into UiPath now - including AWS and G-suite. You have activities already built right into UiPath and they are working to make everything as low-cost as possible.

Then you have OCRs which offer the Document Understanding. I can do a PDF extraction using just OCR in a normal way.

I love the Document Understanding. You can see whether a document is valid or not. You can accept or reject. I came up with a .NET background. I used to write so many lines of code for doing a certain thing. Here, you have a for a loop. You don’t need so much code.

I remember when I used to work for a UK client, a gas utility, and at that time we used a read-through data driver, and got the Excel data, and again validated everything. However, for that, we used to write around two, three pages of code. Now, using UiPath, you just do a real Excel activity and you get the entire sheet. Automation has made our lives easier.

I can scale automation without having to pay attention to infrastructure. Now, since the cloud has come into the picture, everyone is going to the cloud and everything is easier but with the new cloud partners like Google, AWS, Azure, and Oracle. A company may not have its own on-premise orchestrator.

Earlier, you needed three servers for production, testing, and development. Since UiPath has both cloud orchestrated and on-premise, it's easier for organizations to use less physical space. For smaller organizations, they can go to the cloud. For larger they can have their on-premise orchestrator. It’s flexible.

UiPath enables me to implement end-to-end automation starting with process analysis and then robot building and finally monitoring of automation. There are many process mining tasks, capture tasks, mining, et cetera. More things have to be automated - such as deploying, managing, and enhancing for continual improvement. It has all the components.

For a beginner, end-to-end coverage may not be essential. When we talk about automation, we should know what can be automated so that we ease our lives and that doesn't mean we have to remove the resources. You don’t have to involve the employees. You just need to simplify the task so that there is continual improvement. Users should consider not only, how to automate but what needs to be automated. If it is automated, how it can be improved gradually and what are the returns? Sometimes that doesn’t necessarily mean you need end-to-end. You just need simplicity.

I do use the attended automation. For some processes, I use the attended automation for testing purposes. I use the attended if I'm using UiPath assistant, otherwise, it's normally background processes that are unattended.

Attended automation will be for Document Understanding when I'm training a robot, for example, for what is the format or validating the time I'm using attended one. If I'm asking a user for particular search criteria, or for currency exchange it's mixed but mostly unattended.

Both attended and unattended work together - the human as well as the robot. However, it depends on the scenario. Unattended means you are not dependent on any human resources.

The orchestrated cloud, which is a SaaS, it's quite helpful. If I just want to install UiPath studio in my system and I'm least bothered about what environment it should be, what infrastructure should be, where I'm going to deploy, it is quite useful and quite easy when there is a SaaS option available.

I’ve used the AI functionality for sentiment analysis such as getting reviews from the websites about a particular product or service.

UiPath offers great object detection where you have a magistrate and you can detect whether you want to detect the people. If you want to extract how many people are there in that image, for example, during a social distancing sort of event, that can be used for object detection. I've used object detection for images in terms of extracting a number of people.

I’ve trained the system to read different types of invoice formats. I've used the email or Document Understanding that can read separate invoices, receipts, utilities, et cetera. I’ve used the solution to create processes for invoice reconciliation.

The AI functionality is quite easy to use. For tollgates, for example, when they charge for tolls, the solution can be utilized for seeing the number plate, and through the image, get the data, extract the number of data from the numbers plate, use the driver information from the number plate of the car, et cetera. It becomes a very easy AI model. Without any type of knowledge in AI, you can use those out-of-the-box functionalities.

The more training you do with machine learning, the better results you get in the end.

I use the automation cloud feature.

We are not bothered about any patches or any work that has to be done to maintain the infrastructure; the vendor does it.

The automation cloud offering has helped decrease time to value, however, since I have not deployed real-time projects, I cannot give exact numbers on the decrease. That said, from my experience, I feel that it is true.

It’s my understanding that the automation cloud offering helps to decrease UiPath's overall cost of ownership, however, at this time, I just use the free version.

The solution enables you to be better and better with cloud features that are quite accessible.

In terms of UiPath Apps, I have used them, however, just for my own purposes, for my own training purposes, as I was learning. It is easy to use and pretty much drag and drop. For the basic things, the user can do a lot with minimal training. You can do everything with low code and less coding knowledge as well. A person may not be technically sound, however, even with minimum knowledge, they can create apps using UiPath apps. That's the interesting part of UiPath apps.

UiPath reduces the cost of digital transformation. It does not require expensive or complex application upgrades or IT support.

UiPath has reduced human error. For example, let's say I'm filling a form using a document. Typos, errors, spelling mismatches, et cetera, are reduced when it is handled by automation. When we automate this process, the robot minimizes the error since a human is not involved in this case of data entry. It will extract whatever data there is in that document and it will fill in the form. Similarly, for calculating Excel data, we can avoid calculation errors.

More videos are required. There are basic videos that can help you learn about the product, however, there need to be more in-depth videos to help you through certain tasks. For example, I was trying to use an API for conversion. I was doing it for a single transaction, one by one. There can be cases where it will not go for a simple conversion or simple transaction, and it will be a bulk action. In that case, I may need to upload a file. I was searching for an upload control however, I could not find anything to assist me.  It would have been helpful to find some sort of instructional video for this task. The file upload, where you upload a file and select a file so that you can extract data all those things based on that file is a commonly used feature - and yet, that was missing. 

UiPath apps may be able to increase the number of automation I can create while reducing the time it takes to create them. However, they need to elaborate on the process. I need more articles on that. From the point of view of the person developing the automation, I need more details on writing the correct code or doing the automation, which I hope will be coming in the next releases.

They require an improvement in the IEP. I don't know whether it's a bug or something. I find that, with drag and drop, you have to drag it in a particular fashion. 

When they add new features, they should offer some in-depth sessions on them to help people get comfortable with the changes. 

It would always be helpful to have new partnerships between UiPath and different cloud vendors. 

I started using the solution in February of this year.

I am on a gap year. I used to work for an IT company, and I have taken a gap. To re-skill myself I started learning UiPath. 

The stability is quite good. You have other options, such as Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism. UiPath will be like coming out with new revisions in the coming years that will continue to compete with those.

Even now, it's quite stable and quite reliable, even if the changes which are coming, in the much of the deployment, are felt good. There are frequent revisions. I have no experience in other automation, however, from what I've seen, even as it changes, it's stable.

Scalability is quite good. It has alliances with different cloud vendors so that you can scale your robots. You can have different instances, different new virtual machines, and in the cloud. You're not concerned about what to install and you just pay as you use. The cloud vendors make it very scalable. 

Once I am employed, I do plan to increase usage.

I use the forum for any queries. I didn't face user technical problems for any robots that I am using. I have not been in direct contact with technical support.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

You just go to UiPath.com and register with your user ID or any email ID. From there, you install the UiPath Studio and you set your workflows. Once you publish, you get it in your orchestrator, attach the process, create a job. And then you run it. 

It's quite easy to create a workflow, publish it, and deploy it in the orchestrator. Next, you have to tag the correct robot, the correct machine, and the correct sponsor. In any environment you want.

For small processes, the deployment would hardly take a few minutes to deploy.

Maintenance is light for the cloud instances and really does not need much. The cloud vendors do the work, however, users need to pay for the services which they use.

I handled the initial setup myself. I did not need an integrator or consultant. 

I can't speak to the exact pricing of the product as I am using a free version of it right now. I'm not paying any licensing fees to UiPath.

I shouldn't say you need licenses for many things for today, however, for working on Visual Studio, if you want to automate something, you need a license, which costs you around 5,000 to 6,000 Rupees. If you want to do some extra Microsoft office activities. You need the maximum office license, which is 70,000 Rupees. That said, with UiPath, you need not have Microsoft Office installed. You can still read the data and extract the data in an Excel format. You can then share the data from those automation activities with no third-party license cost and no software licenses.

UiPath can help save costs in an organization. There are so many legacy systems wherein you have so much data migration, and many things which are done manually can be automated and you can save resources while doing something new. 

I'm just an end-user. 

My first experience with automation was, "Okay, which product to learn?". After all the reviews and reading, I decided to start with UiPath. My previous background was .NET web development. I was a full-stack web developer with seven-plus years of experience and I found that I really like when a product is built on a .NET framework. I realized that "Okay, it's better to do something, learn something and I have a background of the platform so let's start from there".

When I started using this product, I found the academy was quite open, and in the forum, there were people who were training as well. I found that while I may not get 100% of the answers I need, 85% to 90% of the time the answer is there if you search. 

Many people do not know RP automation, and it's great that they have these free resources - which is rare for such a product. Each region has a chapter where people working in this area come and share their knowledge and experiences.

Currently, I'm using the 2019 version of the solution. It's not the latest, however, it's not much older. I'm using the enterprise as well, which is free for 60 days. I started using UiPath apps as well. I'm learning so I use the cloud orchestrator to deploy my processors. 

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I've been using it since 2018.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.