UiPath Platform Reviews

The primary use case of UiPath, with every organization that I've worked with as a consultant, has been to make business processes more efficient and the work of their employees more enjoyable. 

By utilizing this technology, you're able to get value through your value streams quicker. When you realize value, that means you can work with your customers more quickly, as well as build customer loyalty and employer loyalty. These have definitely been some of the byproducts of using the software.

When I was working as an RPA manager, managing a program for an insurance company which supported insurance lifecycle processing, one of the components was that they had to review insurance policies annually. It was very cumbersome. We were talking anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 daily. It was almost a 20-FTE process. We were able to automate that completely.

However, the real value came when the organization understood how to apply RPA and it actually began creating brand-new business processes specifically for RPA. So instead of hiring new people, they said, "Hey, we've always wanted to do this, we don't have the budget to bring on and train people, so let's build bots to do it from day zero." Once they were able to understand that I could do more than just automate processes, that I could build new business lines with bots, that was an incredibly valuable result of using this software.

The benefits are very high when you automate business processes. Before using RPA, I was working in technology, building macros and things of that nature. But the way we're able to build sustainable, functional bots that really work well in the long-term makes the benefit a ten out of ten.

This is going to be an interesting answer, but the most valuable feature of the software is not the software itself, but the community that supports it. When I first started learning the software to support a program, I had to self-teach; there wasn't a budget for training. But going through their learning platform and then connecting with the community when I didn't understand how to utilize some of the functionality, that was far more powerful than the product itself. The network around the product is amazing.

The great thing about the UiPath RPA Academy is that it's not stagnant. Even though my first go at getting certified as a developer was three years ago, I literally have to go back the Academy and learn it every year because there are new features and new functionality. An example is the RE Framework they've incorporated. The living nature of the Academy gives a lot of value. But hands-down, the way that they give practical exercises, the fact that they give you applications you can download to learn how to interact with bots by simulating an actual operational environment, makes it a very impactful learning experience.

In addition, I find the solution easy to use. I have personal experience using all three of the major software vendors that are in this space right now, including Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, and I would put UiPath as number-one, specifically from a learning perspective. I've been able to take people with absolutely zero technical background and quickly scale them up in a matter of weeks so they're building bots. I haven't been able to accomplish that same feat with the other platforms.

Being a person who has held every RPA role from developer to analyst, architect, and executive, one feature I think it needs - from a documentation perspective - is the ability to easily extract variable details and data. They do have a Variables panel that you frequently interact with, but I constantly have situations where those need to be adjusted or I want to be able to present those to a business. Sometimes it's difficult to extract those, and if you're not tracking them while you build, you can quickly get into 200 to 300 variables in use, especially using the RE Framework where you're passing workflow arguments in and out. I would like to see something like that.

In addition - and obviously UiPath is aware of this - we have to continue to improve the OCR capability. Computer Vision is excellent. I've used it on Azure. I've created PeopleSoft environments and worked through the Computer Vision feature. It works amazingly in a Citrix environment. But I speak with multiple organizations and a lot of them have the same problem of processing documentation from the mail room or from vendors, etc. That's a huge component. If we can get that embedded in UiPath, so we don't have to rely solely on OCR vendors like Captiva or ABBYY, that would be a huge step forward in being able to service all organizations.

There could be improved logging and functionality. But if you truly understand the software, adding logging to what the bot is already doing is as simple as typing on the right line. It's incredibly easy and you can embed it. Even though what it currently logs is limited, it's easy enough to create logs or reporting without a lot of effort.

Outside of that, it's really hard to come up with other recommendations. The software is solid.

I was recently reading about the document processing framework that they just implemented. I gave a demo two weeks ago on the Computer Vision functionality that was in beta. So the sustainability is there. They're focused not on just how good RPA is and on making it better, but they're also integrating it with future-tech. That is where the stability comes in.

UiPath's scalability and stability are exceptional. They are constantly releasing new versions.

Scalability is all in the delivery. I've definitely run into multiple organizational roadblocks with my clients because they get six months down their delivery timeline and they're not meeting their OI, they're not scaling. That generally comes down to how it's being delivered. If you have experience, you're working with a partner, you're working with people who have used this solution at scale, you can generally bypass a lot of those roadblocks. It's definitely scalable if you have the right expertise.

I have used both technical and customer support. When I was going through training, trying to learn some of the software, I had issues when I finally purchased licenses. The issues were related to putting them in Orchestrator and installing them. Support was definitely very supportive, very responsive when trying to get feedback.

Even when it comes to the community, as well, if you're just trying to learn the software, to learn the features and functionality, the community network is there to quickly respond and support you so you can get back to getting value, instead of getting hung up on one piece of functionality.

I have seen cases where an organization moves from a different automation solution to UiPath. At one point, we were transitioning from Automation Anywhere. There were very basic bots, these weren't complex processes, but we built a bot in UiPath that read the XAML of the Automation Anywhere script, converted it into activities in UiPath, and built a bot. We had a bot that builds a bot.

An example of why people move to UiPath is that when I was the director of RPA for a finance company, when I set up the program I had to go to EVP and pitch the prices and the costs. When I gave him the cost for all the software, to bring a vendor on, he told me "no." It was way too expensive. But UiPath has this amazing option called the Community Edition. What I was able to do was download the software, teach myself how to use it in about 45 days and, within two months, I had automated a pilot process, completely on my own. I was able to walk it into the EVP and say, "Look what I was able to complete. You told me no money, no funding, but now can I get funding?" Then I got funding and was able to bring on a team. That's one perfect example. They said "no," so I got a free version that cost me nothing.

In terms of how companies know that they need to invest in automation, in this day and age, with the speed at which information and technology move, it's at the point where this is not a new topic. A lot of organizations, through word-of-mouth, internet searches, or conferences, or events such UiPath 2019 here in DC, realize it as soon as they hear the success stories. It's impossible to ignore. Most organizations are like that. They hear about it, they realize that it's something they should consider, it's something they have to do, and they take the next step.

The initial setup is absolutely straightforward; it provides a quick and easy installation. Given that you may have to go through some technical hurdles to get permission to download it, I'm not talking about that. But if you have all the permissions and you're allowed to download and install it, it's absolutely simple. It shouldn't take more than ten minutes.

Technical prerequisites are not needed to use the software, but technical resources can speed up the ease with which you deploy. Given that you're generally not interacting with UiPath in isolation but with other business applications as well, you want to make sure that there's technical support in case you have some issues. Or, if there's something that you didn't experience in UAT but that comes up once you get into production, it's good to have some additional support. It's not a requirement but I would recommend it.

ROI is one of the most frequent questions I get from organizations. You should be seeing ROI in less than six months. If you're not returning your cost and more, from a licensing and personnel standpoint, in the first six months, then it is not a software issue and it is not a delivery issue. In that case, it is a scoping issue. You're probably looking at processes that shouldn't have been automated in the first place.

Every organization that is successful with the software is reaching their ROI in six months or under.

The amount of time saved with bots is an interesting question but it's hard to answer with a pinpoint response because it depends on an organization's strategy. I've seen multiple organizations that use attended bots, so they're just saving a fraction of the time. But then I've been in organizations where they've automated a process end-to-end. A process that previously required 20 FTEs went from having 40,000 hours of manual work to zero.

For pricing there is a variable at play, and that's scale. Depending on how you want to scale - whether working with a partner or directly with UiPath - there's a specific cost per license. But then it's all about optimizing a process, and what we call "license utilization." We try to maximize each license, and we'll have it running three or four processes.

The cost is nothing, it's peanuts, when you see the capabilities. When you're talking about one license supporting what was previously done by 14 people, what is $1,500, or whatever the licensing cost is for unattended bots?

Even more importantly, as a technology expert, I know that I could do some additional coding and automate the running of the bots. But why would I spend that extra time when they have Orchestrator. I could have a person running them as well, but the Orchestrator license is far cheaper than a resource; just click "run." When you compare the results that you get, the price is a moot point.

If I was going to give any advice to someone who was just about to utilize the software, I would say that the most successful organizations that apply this technology make it an entire team effort. It's not started in one business unit. And if it is, it's socialized across the enterprise. That's the quickest way to scale: getting everybody onboard. The second-biggest thing is that the most impactful projects you will get will come from your people, your internal workers. And until you get them to understand what the software can do and its capabilities, it's going to take you longer to scale your program. So make sure everybody's socialized, and make sure everybody truly understands what the software can truly do. They're going to give you the best opportunities to benefit from it.

Deployment should definitely be done using the support of experts. Even when I owned my own RPA program, and I wasn't in a consulting capacity, I still reached out to a third-party to get support. While setting it up is something that you can do internally, given that most objectives include speed-to-market and quick scaling - wanting to see results in 60 days instead of six months - it's going to be very difficult to do alone, especially if your goal is to have 100 bots in a year. If your goal is ten, you can probably manage it. It's important to use experts if you are looking to rapidly scale.

I have implemented UiPath in virtual environments, including on-prem, Azure VMs and servers, SQL-based data storage, as well as AWS. I've never had any issues with the responsiveness or the application having any problems operating. The biggest consideration that you have when trying to deploy robots in a virtual environment is making sure that your architecture is sound. You have to integrate through severs and you have to take into consideration firewall updates. And then there's interacting from the cloud if your applications are on-prem. You have to make sure that the bot doesn't have any issues. But if your architecture is solid and your infrastructure is set to support the applications in a cloud environment, there shouldn't be any issues. You wouldn't notice any difference compared to having them on a desktop on-premise.

I would agree that UiPath eliminates human error, but I would add the caveat that good code eliminates human error. I've been doing this for a while and I've seen bots that mess up. It's in your delivery methodology. If you have a sound delivery methodology - you're going through a rigorous UAT cycle and are having outputs audited by the subject matter experts - you should literally get to zero errors. Maybe you will have five percent exception cases, but your error percentage should be zero.

Having worked with all the tools, they all have little niche components. As long as UiPath continues to focus on knowing what the next wave of technology is that businesses really need to use to be efficient, and they start embedding that skillset in their software, that's all you could ask for. They need to stay in front of the power curve of technology, which is impossible, but they're trying.

I've never had a bad issue with UiPath. My experience with them has always been pleasant and engaging. They're never stuck at just giving you software, showing you how to use it, and then walking out. They're always focused on improving your business. If you focus on that, and focus on generating value, you can't lose.

Automation technology is the number-one driver across an organization now. Trying to find ways to do more with less has been the going mantra for organizations for years now. It's no longer feasible to simply run operational efficiency or Six Sigma projects to try to get gains. The only way that you're going to get significant gains is going with an automation-first approach. That's where I see a lot of organizations headed, even spending more on RPA software than on cloud implementation. It's a very big focus, and I don't see that slowing down any time soon.

On a scale from one to ten, I would you rate UiPath as an eleven. It's excellent software.

We currently have 150 bots in production. It is used the most where there are repetitive, cumbersome tasks. Where we do need to have somewhat of a decision made, we put it into a decision tree. This is our primary use case. 

We are looking into other use cases, such as:

• How do we use it as a platform for pretotyping?
• How do we use it as a platform to drive forward machine learning and artificial intelligence usage in our company? 

We have automated assignments where we previously used employees. The outcome of this has been a greater customer experience achievement. We simply are solving tasks faster, and at the same time, we have been scaling down employees. 

We have started to do tasks more often and faster than we have ever done them before. For instance, some of the things in finance, we only did that once per quarter. Now, we have started doing them once a week. This gives us greater insight into those areas. 

The most important outcome here is the amount of insight which you receive when you put power to a process. It gives you the insight that you wouldn't have had when you had 20 employees working. With two bots doing the work, you suddenly get a data foundation that you didn't have before. Then, you can build upon the bots, instead of thinking you know what is happening.

The platform is object-orientated. You can create and reuse objects, which is a great feature. 

UiPath has decided that people who are great at what they do can be invited into the platform and utilize services on the platform. This is another great feature, and one of the reasons that we initially chose the product as our platform.

The solution is easy to use. When you put it together with the UiPath Academy, it's easy to get it going and understand. The drag and drop feature makes it simple and easy to use. The UiPath Academy is great and helpful.

We tried utilizing the virtual environment, but we had some issues in that area. It's one of the areas that we haven't revisited over the last half year because our volume is that high for us. Thus, it is one of those things that we have sort of left on the side for now, but I do hear there is some great stuff coming with it.

We haven't had instability issues.

It can scale.

The customer and technical support are great. We have received fast, sufficient responses. There is easy access. 

We did not have a previous RPA solution.

We were in a place where we needed to do something differently. At the time, RPA was something different. So, we needed to sort of examine, "Could this help us?"

The initial setup was straightforward.

We saw ROI in eight or nine weeks, so it was fairly fast. We have seen a lot of performance benefits, which I would rate as a ten out of ten.

The solution has helped to eliminate many human errors.

Our licensing costs are roughly 1.1 million Danish krones a year. 

We see some elements in the license model that we're trying to figure out how to utilize. There have been some elements in the license model where UiPath has helped us solve them commercially, and having a license model which is more focused on scalability would be a great feature.

If UiPath really wants to put Attended Robots out to everyone, there will be a cost issue. We have some that we are testing now and what their effect will be. However, these are the robots where the license model needs to change before we go full throttle in that direction.

We also looked at Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere. We selected UiPath based on its object-oriented approach.

There is something off in UiPath's licensing model. Their competitors have started targeting us now because they know that we have a lot of bots. They have different types of licensing models, and say, "Because you are having so many jobs with so many job bots, you can save money on the platform by using us instead." 

Play with it and have a playful nature. Acknowledge that you don't know what you're doing with it, then just acknowledge that you're going to make mistakes. The only difference between being good or great at this solution is your ability to learn from your mistakes, because you will be making mistakes. Also, you will be overpromising when working with this solution.

For automation technology, in general, the system landscape is quite wide. We are just starting to put RPA on the shelf for automation. We are pushing a machine-first approach. RPA is the sort of tool on the shelf now helping us become a more efficient customer-oriented company. It is a tool in the landscape with plenty of existing tools, but this is the one that is the most easily accessible for the business people.

We built ourselves some automated documentation, and it was fairly easy to copy. One of the things that people start doing is documenting what they're doing in an organization and updating the documents, then freely sharing them. We would like some sort of automated documentation, as this would be helpful.

Primary use cases would be within the finance sector. We supply financial services for other government agencies. The main robots that we have in use right now are concerning floating of financial periods, uploading reports, commenting on these reports, and so on. We are starting to look at invoice processing, to a larger degree. Then, we have a few quality and control robots which do checks on data quality, customer information, customer carts, etc. 

We are using approximately 20 robots right now for different uses.

We've opted for professional, traditional developers and programmers to do batch robots. We don't use it in our business units. Possibly because we are a government agency, we don't necessarily get enough IT security around the users applying their own robots. 

It is not easy to use in this way because we do use traditional programming skills. We are considering moving some tasks out into the workforce for Attended Robots, etc. We think that this will be a problem for us in regards to getting it pushed out there and still maintaining good quality. However, we haven't tried it yet.

We are able to smooth out peak workloads. Because with a lot of the period closures, like monthly and yearly closures, we work in peaks. Everything has to be done within a few days. When we can prepare a lot of the data and reports through the night, the employees can start on those in the morning. Therefore, we are leveling out some of the workload features, which is one of the main benefits.

Automation technology for us is mainly a way to get around the long-term IT projects. This is the future for us, when using UiPath, to start moving into the AI part of it. In addition, the bundling of the offerings into UiPath is quite important, so we don't have to go to several different vendors. We can try it out on our own and see if this is something we want to do. Then, we might bring in another partner or vendor to do some specialized training, debug the networks, etc. We're never going to get that capability ourselves. We don't have a large IT department nor do we have data scientists. For us, it's important that one or more of these skills are getting baked into the system.

The ability to integrate between legacy systems is the most valuable feature. We use it mainly to replicate manual processes, where you just have to pull out data or pull down large volumes of customer information, in general. We work across many individual customers, who are individual entities or individual databases in our ERP system. We work across about 220 databases. Therefore, the task of logging onto different databases alone is quite cumbersome.

The main thing is to make data available to the employees when they start working mornings, instead of them starting drawing out reports to see if there is anything that they need to act upon. With these legacy systems, which work on a one-to-one basis, we tried to batch process them a lot more.

We have looked at it with Citrix, and there are problems with it. Some of the new features coming will address it.

We have been looking at Attended Robots, which result in the inability to lock your screen. That is simply a no-go for ever using them in most government agencies, as IT security will prohibit us from using them. If UiPath wants Attended Robots to be used inside a government agency, it needs to be applicable on a virtual desktop.

A lot of what is coming is what we are looking towards: Both on the skill set with computer vision, but especially also on the enhanced identity management and security. The ability to debug and lock at a less complex level for us to look at. 

One to three years.

UiPath's stability is quite good. We don't see any problems with the stability of the platform application. All our problems stem from the basic systems that we operate on, which are quite vulnerable to network problems, time outs in various systems, etc. However, these have nothing to do with UiPath. Perhaps some of the things which are on the road map will help with the debugging of some of these issues.

One of the things that we are lacking right now is not stability, but usability with debugging, e.g., when you can't see what went wrong. We have to look through 50,000 pages of logs or so. 

The scalability is quite good. 

The main problem around scalability is the licensing structure and the inability to dynamically assign licenses across robots. While I know this is coming, this is our main gripe with scalability: the licensing structure. Because we are part of a larger setup with our own IT supplier, who does a multitenancy setup with Orchestrator, to have more flexibility with the use of licenses would be very valuable.

We are using virtual desktops to deploy and run the machines with robots. It is necessary, as we cannot scale it on individual on-premise machines.

We have used the customer support. Our main issue with them is they need to understand the problem that we are writing about, and not reply too soon with a standard answer.

All our developers are using UiPath Academy and are RPA certified. While they like some thing, some of the frameworks which were used in the Academy examples, the developers didn't agree with. This is probably because they are IT professionals themselves and are used to doing things a different way. Whether it's because the use case wasn't good or they were just used to something else, this was the main gripe.

The product has a lot of backing from our director, who has been pushing the agenda. To be able to stay relevant, even as a government agency, we have to reduce our costs every year by two percent. To be able to produce that, we need to be more efficient at what we do. The target is: Not to reduce staff, but keep up with the increased demand for production and costs.

I wasn't part of the very first setup.

We mostly did the deployment ourselves or with our own IT partner, who is not a partner of UiPath. So, it has mainly been done by our own IT people.

On the individual robots, we do have good return on investment. However, once you add in the governance, including when we are scaling up the solution and the maintenance of robots, then I don't think we are at a break-even point. This upcoming year, we are expecting positive ROI. For us, the return on investment is high quality data. 

It has helped us to eliminate human errors. We have a robot that is specifically requested to avoid, for example, uploading reports on the wrong customers because of GDPR cases, where data protection officers will have to get involved, even though, it's not sensitive data. We have seen problematic use cases drop from a couple of incidents from maybe 100 transactions to zero. We are looking to completely eliminate errors in some cases, not just reduce.

It has saved our organization time. We use the robots to try to address some of the peak workloads that we have. They are not there so much to address a certain number of hours that we want to save. We want to be able to use the robots to help address our customers' needs during designated time frames to reduce extra stress on our employees.

We would like to see improvement around the licensing and multitenancy. 

We also evaluated Blue Prism and Kofax Kapow. The reason that we went with UiPath has a lot to do with scalability, as our IT supplier has committed to a multitenancy set up, which was not possible with Blue Prism. 

We are quite happy with UiPath. We are not looking at other vendors at the moment. They are all offering similar solutions, but with a slightly different focus. We could use any other solution, but the development is so fast that even changing now would be no guarantee that we end up with what we want, because everybody is moving at a pace where we can barely keep up with the development of the products.

Try out different vendors and their labs. See how it fits to the processes that you are trying to automate right now. Some applications are better at old mainframe systems, and if that's what you will be focusing your efforts on, then maybe UiPath isn't the best vendor for you. There are others who focus more on that sort of environment. So, be realistic about what you want to automate, and choose your use case initially from that. 

We see the biggest benefit right now from Unattended Robots, but that's all we use. In the very long-term, Unattended versus Attended Robots will be able to generate a greater benefit. However, with the current licensing costs, they will need to change for it to be a positive business model. We have to be able to move licenses from one person to another. If we have to apply a fresh license to each person in the workforce, with our budget, it will not be possible.

We are primarily utilizing the platform within our department to gain buy-in for the customer's system.

We are a traditional development team, and using this platform has enabled us to work with multiple teams efficiently.

The governance aspect is very important to us. UFS Studio is also crucial for our operations.

There are significant delays between the technical team and the actual team. We are also missing some integrations with Google.

I cannot specify the exact amount of time we've been using it.

We have a dedicated development team. That said, we do have the resources to help with implementation.

I cannot speak on how it compares to other models or other components.

My primary use case is mainframe automation from legacy mainframes that previously hadn't been automated with other automation tools. The product worked like a dream with the mainframe automation.

We're trying to get rid of the boring, mundane tasks that people do every day so that they can spend more time doing more important things like figuring out why there are issues happening rather than just putting a Band-Aid on.

In our first year of jumping into it, we set up the infrastructure and everything, so it's been less of a year of development, but we have saved a hundred thousand hours.

The automation efficiency depends on what the job at hand is and how much it saves. But some of the tasks done constantly throughout the day, even if it's only saving five minutes, add up really fast. 

We use Task Capture all the time. We have a bank business analyst who uses it and teaches people how to use it. We're constantly getting process definition documents to review and add to our pipeline.  

Studio itself has all its great features and is easy to use. 

There are bugs here and there. My only complaint is that each time we open a new ticket, we get someone new and have to explain how everything is set up all over again. 

It would be nice if they had that somewhere on record for support.

I have been using UiPath for two years. 

It is a stable solution; everything seems to be running pretty smoothly altogether. The biggest issues are not on the UiPath end, but on our company's end like, network issues and issues like that keep popping up every now and then.

The support's been pretty decent. We have a TAM, so we have someone we are constantly in contact with.

We meet with them weekly, and they're very helpful. If we do have to open up a support ticket, there's a bigger issue that they can't help with. They usually help get the ball rolling.

Support has been pretty helpful. Like any other support though, they ask all the basic questions in the beginning just to figure out what has or hasn't been done.

My only complaint is that each time we open a new ticket, we get someone new, and we have to explain how everything is set up all over again. So it would be nice if they had that somewhere on record.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. There's plenty of documentation that is easy to follow. 

The hardest part was more on our company's network and infrastructure, trying to navigate all the hoops that we have to go through just to make sure it's secure and the network's secure. Getting access to what we need to get access to.

We're still kind of new to things and working on migrating to the cloud. We're one small team in the organization. By moving to the cloud, we're hoping we can onboard more and more teams to be able to use it and spread it throughout the company.

UiPath helped us along the way. 

There are other automation tools that the company uses, but they can't do everything that UiPath can. All of the potential automations just kept being pushed to the side until we started using it.

We used Microsoft Automate for a very short time. We started looking into it for some tasks. The issue is that we're trying to automate it deep inside our corporate network, so, we haven't really been able to use Power Automate.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. The amount we could do in one year is pretty impressive. 

We use UiPath for automation.

As a consultant, we have been involved in many client projects and deployed UiPath using a hybrid model.

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

UiPath's User Community is good.

UiPath helped us reduce our on-premises footprint.

UiPath helped us reduce human error.

UiPath's support for various types of interfaces is the most valuable feature as it aids in automating the end-user systems we want to streamline.

I would like to have the ability to make changes at different stages of the development process without having to start from the beginning each time.

Automating with UiPath is not as easy as it appears in the advertisements.

I have been using UiPath for seven years.

UiPath is stable, but not 100 percent reliable. I would rate its stability an eight out of ten. If we need to restart the project, open the file again, or close down the program and open something else, UiPath does not behave consistently every time.

UiPath is highly scalable.

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment takes around one month.

I give UiPath a seven out of ten.

Maintenance is required. We need to make changes to the code due to updates in the systems on which the automation is running. There are updates in the IT environments, such as operating systems, and also in the UI part. The newer features in UiPath bring new updates, and its components necessitate modifications to the code.

We're still building up the program, but right now our primary use case is for report review. We're looking to branch that out more.

It's reviewing reports. I worked for a bank and there are reports of transactions from the previous day. UiPath was looking for anomalies for fraud and things like that.

It's still very early on but we have caught a few instances of fraud that we would not have if we weren't using UiPath. 

UiPath has reduced human error. We're very early, so it's not a big impact, but we did find a few instances of fraud that we would not have found without it. 

We see time savings for our users in the sense that they now can do more tasks that should have been done all along but weren't getting done. That's more where the gains have been this far.

I like the whole ecosystem. They're not just looking at the automation tool, they're looking at automation from end to end. 

It's pretty easy to build automations. I have a coding background so it's not particularly challenging for me to use Studio, but for a person who does not have that coding background, I think that the Visual Builder guides you through the process pretty easy.

UiPath Academy is a good training program for people without that coding background. It's good to get them into the mindset of how exactly flows works of automation.

The Academy offers us familiarization with Studio and how it functions.

The API integrations need improvement. They should build a better framework for the ability to integrate with other external APIs.

I have been using UiPath for less than a year. 

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. 

It's pretty straightforward. It either runs or it doesn't. Occasionally it does crash and we've had to restart services and whatnot to get it going again.

We haven't been using it enough to see how it can scale. 

There are two ITs who use it in my company.

We have plans to increase usage. 

We don't really see our staff as being good candidates for citizen development. There are a few that could, but we do plan to expand out into other departments as far as gathering ideas and implementing processes for other departments.

Their support is pretty average. It's not good or bad. It's off-shored. There are always difficulties with cultural differences and language barriers. They know what they're doing but sometimes it takes a while going around in circles to get the question that you're asking across. That's pretty normal. Most companies are the same way. I would say all companies have huge room for improvement there.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It was easy. The installation instructions walk you through the process. We didn't run into any problems. It took less than a week. 

We also looked at AntWorks and Blue Prism. We went with UiPath because of the maturity of the product that seemed far more mature than its competitors. The product seemed more thought out.

Based on our experiences, I would say you have to have employees that are dedicated to doing this. This can't be done as a side project.

I would rate UiPath a nine out of ten. Nothing is completely perfect. The stability of it could use a little bit of improvement. The support is not great. UiPath is very good, but no one is perfect.

We primarily use the solution for interactions with customers. For those coming through the contact center, we are automating responses and actions.

The solution has improved the company in that when a customer needs to come in and have a consultation with an agent, it opens up a video conference to actually see the other end of the product, the full consultation, instead of being described over the phone. It makes the meetings much more effective.

One of the most valuable aspects of the solution is that we are able to automate a process that doesn't have an easy API or integration. It’s an easy way to complete an outcome without having to read another application.

I have seen a reduction in human error. The assumptions that agents were making previously via verbal communication compared to actually physically seeing something are now completely different.

UiPath has freed up employees' time. I don’t have the exact metric in relation to that, however. Also, this additional time has enabled employees to focus on higher-value work. We’re not chasing issues that can be seen physically, instead of trying to gain understanding by going back and forth via calling or email or chat.

It’s my understanding that UiPath has saved our organization money.

I have used UiPath's Academy courses. It has helped a lot in terms of helping users to understand the whole process. It goes under the hood to help users figure out how everything gets applied and then how we can write code as well. It gives a solid direction of what it takes to be a good developer.

There are definitely some changes I would like to see. I’d like to see, for example, more note code for applications. Some of the complexity of the scripting is hard. If note code was there, it would be easy to just scale it.

I've been using the solution for five to six months.

The stability so far has been good. We just have got to make sure that we don't change anything on the back end and adjust it. Right now, it's a critical path that we need to be aware of in needing adjustments. It offers a great interchange.

Scalability is good in terms of adding more RPA processes across the board. There's also a question of, when things change and adjust, how it reacts to those changes. Scalability can cause issues.

Right now, the number of people who use it in the organization is small. There are
maybe three or four engineers. It's used at a high level. There are more in-depth engineers that are involved with it.

Technical support has been pretty good for asking questions and giving responses. I'm not sure anyone would get a perfect ten out of ten, however, they are good. To be perfect, support would always have to have an answer and do all the work for me. 

The solution was chosen when I was brought on board. I'm not sure what was used previously.

That said, I am familiar with other RPA solutions. For example, Blue Prison is more foreign to me, compared to UiPath. Automation Anywhere seems very familiar from what I have seen, however, I don't really have a good understanding of all the theory, technically, except in terms of UiPath.

The initial setup started off as straightforward, however, it can easily get complex. For example, not knowing the other applications and what it takes to interact with them will make things a bit more complicated. Also, the APIs versus actually scripting information, especially when you're talking databases or backend reports, et cetera, gets complicated.

Our deployment took three months.

The CTO and development team were involved in the process of implementation.

We deployed the solution ourselves, internally.

We have yet to see an ROI, as we just started using the product.

The pricing, in comparison to others in the market, is fair. 

We don't scale that big. If we scaled larger, we might have different opinions about pricing. 

We have the solution on the cloud. It hasn't affected our footprint too much as we haven't really integrated too much at this point.

We use a mix of attended and unattended automation, however, for the most part, it's attended.

I would advise companies to train as many people as they can through the training portal and provide simple boxes and procedures to execute on things that are scalable components.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. A perfect ten can't happen. However, I'd rate it at a seven due to the fact that it's got the possibility of the cloud, which is great. While I don't have a problem with scalability, there's an issue around how much more it is going to cost. There's a question around scaling and ROI and if it is worth it.