Venkata Bhargavareddy - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Consultant at KPMG
Real User
Enabled us to eliminate manual processes, saving time and money and allowing employees to concentrate on other tasks
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath has enabled us to implement end-to-end processes. That's important because we don't want to depend on third-party tools. With UI Path, all the resources are within the application for generating an end-to-end process, so we don't have to struggle to develop such a process."
  • "When it comes to document processing, they could work on more accurately identifying objects from PDF files."

What is our primary use case?

The first use case is related to our email process. We need to download multiple attachments in the form of PDF and Excel files from emails. We only accept the PDF files into a specific folder, while the Excel files go into another. We split them based on the file extension.

The second use case is related to the retail domain, in which we need to update an application with data that we get from a client. We process a few Excel operations and then update all of the invoice records in the application and generate a PDF invoice form with the client's details from Excel. That PDF is then emailed to the client.

How has it helped my organization?

With UiPath automations, work has been made easier for our employees. Previously, people were working on those processes manually. Now, they can concentrate on other work and on improving their skills in other areas. They have also improved their knowledge of RPA technology. There are time savings and we are more profitable. For just one of our processes, we have saved approximately 20 hours per week.

We are also able to deliver the output to our client easily. When things were processed manually, there might have been errors, but with the automation, they have been reduced as much as possible. Bots don't think about other topics while they're working.

In addition, while I haven't used the AI functionality of UiPath very much myself, my colleagues do use it, and it has enabled them to automate more processes overall.

But the main thing, when it comes to our business side, is that the solution helps to reduce the cost of digital transformation. In terms of ROI, it is helping the profitability of the organization. It has helped to reduce the employee count, has sped up the delivery of solutions, and it has helped us obtain more clients. We can generate more output, good results, in less time, enabling us to improve the overall expectations of our clients. Our cost savings have been greater than expected and the business team is more than happy with the results.

There is also the issue of employee satisfaction. Using myself, as an example, I feel very happy about developing and monitoring the results. It is satisfying to see that a process is working as expected, and that the results are more accurate compared to the previous manual work.

What is most valuable?

UiPath has enabled us to implement end-to-end processes. That's important because we don't want to depend on third-party tools. With UI Path, all the resources are within the application for generating an end-to-end process, so we don't have to struggle to develop such a process.

In addition, the solution doesn't require much infrastructure. We can easily install and operate the tool in a Windows environment.

I also did the Advanced RPA Developer course in the UiPath Academy. I learned how to create end-to-end implementations using the UiPath tools. The course helped me to develop my skills. In the course within the Academy, you learn about every command in UiPath. It is easy to learn the information very quickly, when compared to other learning resources. The Academy has all the resources for regular, advanced, and master developers.

What needs improvement?

When it comes to document processing, they could work on more accurately identifying objects from PDF files.

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March 2024
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For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using RPA tools, such as UiPath, for the past four years. We are using the Enterprise version.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

With the help of all the dynamic options in UiPath, the stability of the bots has been very good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have deployed automation solutions for a lot of our clients in their environments, and they are happy with the results as well. There are more than 100 users.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support has been very responsive. They provide very accurate answers to our inquiries.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What was our ROI?

Our business side has been happy with the ROI, compared to other vendors.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Our business team looked at other tools, including Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere, before selecting this tool. They were much happier with the results generated with UiPath than with the others.

The main differences are that UiPath provides a more efficient implementation and it's easier to monitor the results. It's also more efficient when it comes to analyzing a process. Compared to other vendors, implementation takes less time with UiPath.

What other advice do I have?

I can recommend UiPath to others. It will make their work easier. It's very easy to learn and to run the tools compared to other automation options.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
ThomasMitchell - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of uipath delivery at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
Top 20
An easy-to-use solution for building automations quickly and automating more processes
Pros and Cons
  • "Their core platform of Studio is valuable. The ease of use and the ability to build these automations quickly is definitely a highlight for us. Our average process from start to finish takes three to four weeks. We can knock out automations as quickly as we can identify them. That is probably the best feature I see."
  • "There should be more clarity around the feedback loop along with the auto-update feature when you deploy machine learning packages. They should give some rule-based options so that if the confidence is returned higher than the previous model trained, then it would auto-deploy. If it is less, then it should send you an email rather than auto-deploy."

What is our primary use case?

We are a consulting firm. We started last year, and we are growing pretty rapidly.

We have quite a few document-understanding processes that we are working on. We are a partner of UiPath, so we have various clients in different industries. Currently, we are processing vendor statements to create payments in NetSuite. We also have a three-way match cache application process, and then we have a basic user interface for scraping vendors' websites for payment data and that kind of thing.

We are trying to figure out how to incorporate LOMs with everyday processes and get reliable information back. We are also training a lot of machine learning models to extract data from PDFs along with processing contracts. I hope that those get easier to train and that there are more reliable answers or outputs from the models that we train.

How has it helped my organization?

Our AI-powered automation initiative has fundamentally changed what our organization is able to achieve. Document processing has come a long way and become a lot more user-friendly with validations and Action Center. The straight-through processing has increased.

They are constantly making improvements to Action Center where you have more feasibility in assigning tasks. There is a lot more flexibility and data around it. We have been incorporating insights into our automations, which helps us create a business case for future automations based on what we have done in the past.

The use of AI in our automations has definitely increased the accuracy of our operations. It has also increased the ability to process certain use cases that were not available before. It gives us more opportunities to automate processes, and therefore, drive revenue.

The use of AI in automations has freed up time or resources for other tasks for our customers. The time saved depends on the use case, but they are probably saving about a thousand hours a month on the vendor statement processing. They are getting 2,000 to 5,000 statements a month. Each one takes roughly 45 minutes.

What is most valuable?

Their core platform of Studio is valuable. The ease of use and the ability to build these automations quickly is definitely a highlight for us. Our average process from start to finish takes three to four weeks. We can knock out automations as quickly as we can identify them. That is probably the best feature I see.

What needs improvement?

In Action Center, saving progress in data validation, specifically for table content, is currently not available. There should be more clarity around the feedback loop along with the auto-update feature when you deploy machine learning packages. They should give some rule-based options so that if the confidence is returned higher than the previous model trained, then it would auto-deploy. If it is less, then it should send you an email rather than auto-deploy.

With task assignment, if there was a round-robin feature within the bucket to automatically assign it to a certain group of people, that would be helpful. 

There should be the ability to add custom fields to validation tasks because there is a lot of potential for it. It would be helpful when somebody needs to identify a scenario. For example, we have a customer who is processing rate sheets for trucking, and sometimes, depending on their customer, they have an all-in rate versus an adding fuel mileage rate. If they are able to specify that, even if it does not say it on the rate sheet, it would allow them to process more documents successfully.

We use UiPath's AI Center, but some clarity is missing around when to use AI Center versus when to use the Document Understanding module within Orchestrator. We are trying to figure out the benefit of one versus the other. We have also seen that the out-of-the-box models that we train versus a custom model that we train with the same data end up with the same output result at the end. We are trying to see where these out-of-the-box models are providing value if we are going to take the time to train them.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath since 2019.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have run into issues with integration services where we developed something, implemented it, put it into production, and all of a sudden, it does not run unattended. It is a very frustrating situation to be in. 

There were some issues with sharing connections between different accounts, and we have learned from that experience to do more upfront testing of new features before we build automation on it. 

Event-based triggers not working is probably the biggest stability issue that we have run into, and integration services not working is probably the biggest gray area. Other than that, it is a stable platform.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is definitely a scalable platform.

How are customer service and support?

Their support is good. I have had good success with submitting support tickets and getting answers quickly. If it is a bug that is identified with the process or with the platform, they resolve it within a matter of a week. There was a production issue. It was a throughput issue for the AI model. We were not able to access a 100-page document because of this exception. They implemented it and fixed it within a week, which I thought was awesome. I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I did not use any other RPA solution previously. I have only used Power Apps a bit, but it was a very small part that we have looked into. Overall, we are strictly focused on UiPath.

How was the initial setup?

I have probably set up 100 Orchestrators at this point, so it is straightforward. However, the initial setup is confusing for new people who have not done it where they are matching machines to the tenant and plugging it in their machine key, but I am not sure if there is any way to get around that. When you have done it once, it is easy. 

The other thing is the licensing aspect of it. You need to assign a license to the machine template and then the machine template to the folder, and then you have to make sure that the machine is connected. There seems to be some confusion amongst our developers on how to make sure it is all set up correctly, and then you have the robot account. You have to make sure that it is also set up correctly to run unattended automations. It is a challenge, but if you do it two or three times, you get the hang of it.

In terms of the implementation strategy, overall, we look for quick wins upfront so that we can build the program and get support behind it, and then tackle the more advanced use cases after we get three or four in production.

We have cloud deployments. We have had different cloud providers, such as Azure, AWS, and GCP.

What about the implementation team?

We are a consultant. 

What was our ROI?

We have definitely seen an ROI in terms of hours saved and quality of work. Once you get off the ground, there are a lot of other departments that end up getting excited and looking forward to future automation. I feel that is a win for morale.

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

Overall, the model is fine except for AI units. It is usage-based, which makes sense if you are processing documents, and you have one unit per page. It is the hosting cost of the models where there are issues, so we are running into potentially designing poor solutions because we are having to say, "If the documents are very similar but different enough, even though you would prefer to use two models, maybe consider not using two because of the hosting costs."

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Power Automate is something we might look at. UiPath has orchestration while Power Automate does not. Orchestration is vital for us.

What other advice do I have?

If you are trying to do in-house development, the user experience is much better than any other platform that we have evaluated. It is easy to pick up. The UiPath academy, training, and forums are great. The biggest selling point for me is that you can pick it up as a business user and learn the platform in a matter of days or weeks as opposed to months or years.

I would rate UiPath a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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UiPath
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
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Hassan Sami - PeerSpot reviewer
RPA Developer at Phenologix
Real User
Top 20
Great reliability, top-notch orchestrator, and reduces human error
Pros and Cons
  • "The Orchestrator feature is the most valuable of all the automation solutions I have used, including OpenBots, Robocorp, and Microsoft Power Automate."
  • "The UiPath Academy Orchestrator training needs to be updated to reflect the recent changes."

What is our primary use case?

We use UiPath for invoice processing and PDF extraction.

How has it helped my organization?

Building automation using UiPath is extremely easy. Everything required is available online.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation, which is the most important aspect for us.

The UiPath User Community is strong.

UiPath has helped us to minimize our on-premises footprint. We are using an on-premises orchestrator and working in the financial services industry, where we have to process 30,000 invoices per day. This would normally require a lot of manpower, but with UiPath, we are able to do it with only five bots.

We use the UiPath Academy courses and my team recently received the AI certification.

We use the AI functionality in UiPath to help automate more processes overall. 

UiPath helps speed up our digital transformation.

It has helped reduce human error a lot.

UiPath has helped free up our staff time by automating the manual work and saving our resources. 

What is most valuable?

The Orchestrator feature is the most valuable of all the automation solutions I have used, including OpenBots, Robocorp, and Microsoft Power Automate. It is essential for managing all of the processes in UiPath.

What needs improvement?

The UiPath Academy Orchestrator training needs to be updated to reflect the recent changes.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for one and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath is scalable.

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

The price for UiPath is on the higher end.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath ten out of ten. I have used five other automation solutions and UiPath is the best.

No maintenance is required.

The development, scalability, and reliability of UiPath are the best, and I recommend the solution 100 percent.  

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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Rahul Lakshmanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation Consultant at Bauer Corporate services
Consultant
Top 20
Helps scale operations, has built-in AI models, provides free tutorials, and has a helpful community
Pros and Cons
  • "We like using the prebuilt AI models in UiPath rather than creating our own AI models. We also found the UiPath Community very good."
  • "An area for improvement I saw in UiPath is API integration, particularly with Microsoft. If you compare my experience with Power Automate in terms of integration, it is seamless. Integration via Power Automate is easy, more of dragging and dropping and then starting, which is still not the case with UiPath."

What is our primary use case?

We use UiPath for SAP automation, detecting document sections, web automation, and external applications. 

We use both UiPath RPA and UiPath Document Understanding.

UiPath Document Understanding is for data extraction, while we use UiPath RPA for basic purposes and use .NET.

We also used UiPath once to automate processes dealing with good causes, particularly in Ecolab. The company dealt with floor cleaners and hand sanitizers for hospitals in the US, and at that time, the demand for sanitizers and floor cleaners was through the roof. It was so high that we had to automate processes using UiPath to fulfill the number of orders coming in, for instance, thirty thousand orders a day.

We use UiPath in multiple departments, such as HR, Procurement, and Manufacturing.

How has it helped my organization?

We were able to scale our automation and operations through UiPath, for example, up to thirty thousand orders a day, and the direct impact was that all hospitals could order whatever they needed from our company and get what they wanted.

UiPath also helped us send information, particularly the list of requirements to vendors, for example, the number of materials needed, the size of each material, etc., so we found UiPath useful.

What is most valuable?

One of the features of UiPath that we found good is Document Understanding. We also like using the prebuilt AI models in UiPath rather than creating our own AI models.

We also liked how UiPath enabled us to implement end-to-end automation.

The UiPath Community is very good. When UiPath started, there was no community and documentation, but then UiPath built its community and started giving all courses and training for free along with IT requirements. We found that very helpful, especially then, because other solutions, such as Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere, were not providing free tutorials. Only UiPath provided free tutorials; it was the first company to do that. It even gave practical use cases along with the required data and even built its own application and website, which was why we could automate, including learning about automation.

We found the UiPath Community very helpful because we get answers when we input some queries. We feel that it's always good to look in the UiPath Community to keep learning from the questions other users ask and even reply to questions by other users. If we want to dig deep and further understand how things work, we go to the UiPath Community, which we find good.

The UiPath Academy courses beneficial. I've even completed the advanced course there.

We started using the AI functionality in UiPath for our automation programs. As the solution comes with three built-in AI models, we like that we can directly use those current AI models rather than building custom models. We can plug and play the built-in AI models in UiPath, which helps make our development faster than last year's development speed.

We found that UiPath made digital transformation happen within our company. Digital transformation increased for us.

We also like that the solution helped reduce mistakes and freed up the time or hours of our workers, as seen on our dashboard, which helps keep track of the number of hours worked. UiPath helped in freeing up sixty percent of the workers' time.

What needs improvement?

An area for improvement I saw in UiPath is API integration, particularly with Microsoft. If you compare my experience with Power Automate in terms of integration, it is seamless, and you don't have to create trust with other applications. Integration via Power Automate is easy, more of dragging and dropping and then starting, which is still not the case with UiPath, so that should be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been working with UiPath for eight years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability-wise, I'd give UiPath a seven out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate the UiPath technical support as eight out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup for UiPath was a bit complex in 2017 because the documentation available at the time was not that great, but nowadays, setting it up may be fine.

What was our ROI?

We've seen ROI from UiPath in our organization.

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

Whether UiPath has reasonable or expensive pricing depends on the scale of your organization. It could be a bit pricey for startups, but if you belong to at least a mid-level organization, then the pricing would be okay.

What other advice do I have?

I'm a customer of UiPath.

Whether building automation in UiPath would be easy or difficult depends on the application interface or the website. You first have to check if the application, interface, or UI is going to change over some time. If it won't, you must check whether the selectors are stable enough or if there are runtime changes. This is the initial check you must do to determine if it would be easy or challenging to build automation in UiPath.

In terms of UiPath minimizing the on-premise footprint, my company doesn't have anything on-premises except for SAP systems, so most of it is on the cloud and a portal.

I cannot exactly see currently if company costs were reduced or not by UiPath.

In terms of my organization's implementation strategy, the team started with one bot for development, which was the attended bot, and then scaled it into ten or twenty bots and also used bot operators for the implementation, and then after COVID, switched the automations to unattended.

The number of people required to deploy UiPath depends on the number of deployments your organization has.

UiPath requires some maintenance, but since my organization moved to the cloud, the maintenance part is only secondary and only involves updating the firmware, so there is no maintenance from our side.

Overall, UiPath is an eight out of ten for me.

My advice to others looking into implementing UiPath is to deploy it at a medium scale rather than deploying it at the start, as that would be a bit expensive.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

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

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Raghu Vamshi Mankali - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Software Quality Assurance at Kanerika Inc
Real User
The data extraction is good and it saves time and money
Pros and Cons
  • "The document extraction or document understanding feature of UiPath is valuable. It basically extracts data from the PDF."
  • "While working on Excel and PDF, there should be a feature to define which content to extract and which table to extract from a document. It should extract only that. There should be a possibility to ignore everything else. I should be able to show one sample for one page, the second sample for the second page, or one sample for all pages. I would love to see such functionality in UiPath."

What is our primary use case?

We do regular process automation for web applications and Excel. In one use case, we have a web application, and we need to scrape data and update it in a specified format in a spreadsheet and then upload it into another application. This is the use case on which I am currently working. There is another use case where I extract data from a web application and add the data into another web application, input the data into my Jira using APIs, or directly insert the records into a database.

We do not use UiPath to automate processes that deal with a "good cause" that our company is involved in. We are automating internal processes for the project engagement we have with our customers. We have general developer access. We do not do process mining, but we use UiPath Task Capture.

How has it helped my organization?

It is easy to build automations using UiPath. Previously, we had to write lots of code and handle any changes or errors. All those things are now just a checkbox away for us. It is very easy. It saves a lot of our time. There is also consistency. When there is code failure, I can select the retry option, and it will retry for the specified number of times. That is a great feature.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation. It saves a lot of time and eventually, it saves money. Those are the benefits that we are seeing. The process that used to take a day can now be completed every morning within an hour. Similarly, a process that used to take an individual five to six business days now takes one and a half hours. We have better accuracy and more confidence that nothing has gone wrong. These time savings always get converted to money. People are able to focus on other things, which has an impact on money savings.

UiPath has helped to minimize our on-premises footprint. When I try to run my scripts that are somewhere on a remote desktop and are not accessible because of some issue, all my processes are on hold, whereas I do not find that problem with the cloud. I can log in anytime even from my mobile and then trigger a process from Orchestrator. That is a great thing to have. 

UiPath speeds up digital transformation and reduces the cost of digital transformation, but this happens over a period of time. It takes at least six months to one year to see these benefits.

UiPath has reduced human error. There were a lot of exceptions that we had in the application. All the exceptions should have been extracted from the application and assigned to the respective team. When we started automation and extracted all the exceptions, we could see hundreds of exceptions. Some of them were even 300 days old. They were not attended by anyone. All such things were uncovered by UiPath.

UiPath has freed up employee time. In one case, it reduced their time from a day to an hour. In another case, it was reduced from 40 hours to 2 hours.

What is most valuable?

The document extraction or document understanding feature of UiPath is valuable. It extracts data from the PDF.

If I have any technical challenges or I am not able to proceed because I do not have the expertise to use a feature, I browse through the UiPath community. There are usually a lot of people who have faced similar challenges. There are also multiple answers or workarounds. I try them out, and they usually work for me. This way the UiPath Community has been very helpful. The community of Power Automate is also very helpful.

A lot of my team is currently using the UiPath Academy. The biggest benefit is that I do not have to train them on anything. I tell them the courses they need to complete, and after they complete a course, they show me how they have done that assessment. We try to understand the process they followed to complete that assessment. It is part of their academic certification. It is a great feature. It saves time that I would have had to spend on teaching my teammates. It allows them to learn at their own pace. Not everyone is in the same place. There are people who can go fast. Every individual can proceed at their pace. They do not have any dependency on others.

What needs improvement?

While working on Excel and PDF, there should be a feature to define which content to extract and which table to extract from a document. It should extract only that. There should be a possibility to ignore everything else. I should be able to show one sample for one page, the second sample for the second page, or one sample for all pages. I would love to see such functionality in UiPath.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for almost a year now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable. It is 100% stable. I am very confident of its stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. It is able to increase its capacity and functionality based on our demands. Whatever use cases we are getting, we are able to implement them with UiPath. We are seeing a lot of features for which we have not even found the use cases. They are ahead of the market needs.

We have only two developer licenses, and we have four bots. Apart from that, we have four virtual machines in which these bots are deployed. We have one admin from the IT team who owns the controller.

We have plans to increase the usage of UiPath. We are proposing UiPath for all upcoming projects.

How are customer service and support?

I have not reached out to them for anything since we got the license because we got all the support from UiPath forums, UiPath documentation, and UiPath Academy. 

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

I did not use any other solution before UiPath, but after I started to work with UiPath, I also started to work with Power Automate. A lot of AI features that are available in UiPath are not available in Power Automate.

We recommend a solution depending on the process that a customer wants to automate. Depending on their requirement and business criticality, we suggest a tool. We cannot say only one solution is the best. If someone wants to automate only one or two web applications and Excel, Power Automate is good enough to do that. They do not have to go to UiPath. If they have a complicated process that requires implementing an AI model, the UiPath is good. It depends on the case.

How was the initial setup?

We were not very experienced in the implementation. We spent two to three hours a day, and we were able to do it in two or three days. That is a good amount. We did not have to spend too much time.

For implementation, we first had to go through all the prerequisites for installing the developer tool and deploying a bot. We had to understand these things, do the infrastructure setup, and then deploy it. The deployment did not take a lot of time. Meeting the prerequisites took 50% of the time.

UiPath does not require any maintenance. It is only our scripts that will need maintenance for any changes.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it ourselves. We had one person doing all the setup and installation, and we had two people helping him wherever required.

What was our ROI?

We have seen almost 70% to 80% ROI.

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

Before we procured the license, the pricing they quoted was too high. We continued to negotiate for almost a month. This is something they can improve from their side. If they had quoted the right price, we would not have had to negotiate. We got more than a 50% reduction in the price, which is bad on their part.

What other advice do I have?

To those evaluating UiPath, I would advise first understanding their needs and the features that the tool is providing. They also do not need any external training to implement UiPath. Their identified resources can just go through the UiPath Academy and reduce their implementation costs or training costs unless they have a very complicated process to implement.

I would rate UiPath an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Joselito Coutinho - PeerSpot reviewer
RPA Developer at CVT
Real User
Helps eliminate human error, saves time, and is easy to use
Pros and Cons
  • "The RE framework is a valuable feature because it offers the possibility of working with a large amount of data without the need to transmit all the information."
  • "AI can become more intelligent to facilitate the ease of automation."

What is our primary use case?

I work for a telecommunications company, which involves various processes in different areas. For all the company's needs, I primarily utilize UiPath. We have employed it to automate tasks such as packet installation, software attribute utilization, and coupon allocation. These are time-consuming tasks that involve a significant amount of data, making it impractical for a single person to handle. Therefore, we assign these tasks to a bot to expedite the process.

How has it helped my organization?

Building automation using UiPath is straightforward. As a developer, I have colleagues who want to learn simple automation quickly, and UiPath is one of the best solutions for this, thanks to its tutorials and the UiPath Academy courses.

Our organization is beginning the implementation of end-to-end automation using UiPath. The implementation is easy and enables users to interact with the testing, thus saving a significant amount of time.

The UiPath User Community is one of the best aspects of the solution. The community is extensive, and everyone is willing to assist by providing information and guiding us in the correct direction.

We quickly realized the benefits of UiPath once we implemented it, including cost savings. We began automating areas where we encountered difficulties, and within the initial three months of automation, we started witnessing the advantages. After completing the necessary courses, we were able to automate quickly.

UiPath has helped our organization minimize its on-premises footprint, which is important for the implementation of the RPA in our day-to-day activities.

I have taken several UiPath Academy courses, and they are easy to follow.

UiPath has accelerated our digital transformation, leading to reduced costs and time. Our customer IT team has provided invaluable assistance throughout the process.

UiPath has eliminated human errors when dealing with large amounts of data. One of the first automation we needed to have done was one that, if not processed at that time, would risk losing money, time, or even a partner. So what we did was automate the task that consumed most of our time. By the end of the day, we were able to complete the task and ensure all the client information was corrected.

UiPath has freed up our employees' time, allowing them to focus on more important tasks. 

What is most valuable?

The RE framework is a valuable feature because it offers the possibility of working with a large amount of data without the need to transmit all the information. 

What needs improvement?

AI can become more intelligent to facilitate the ease of automation.

I would like UiPath to support the Python language. It is easy to develop in Python, and there are thousands of libraries available that I can use within its environment. Such support would greatly expand my capabilities for performing my RPA activities.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I encountered some stability issues initially when I had limited knowledge. However, I now find it to be quite stable. UiPath stands out as one of the best options in our market when it comes to stability, thanks to its frequent updates and bug fixes.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath truly emphasizes the capability to scale.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good and has responded to all of our questions.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The deployment was handled by two people from our IT group.

What was our ROI?

UiPath offers a significant return on investment due to the rapid realization of its benefits.

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

UiPath is reasonably priced for being a leader in the market.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have evaluated Laiye UiBot, Hover Corporation, and OpenRPA.

I prefer OpenRPA because one of its advantages is being open source. That's great. Additionally, it offers great features, such as quick comparison capabilities with Velocity. This impressed me. Another notable aspect is the ability to code in various languages and run them independently. This allows me to seamlessly integrate with my workflow and agents. I can execute the code in my environment and directly communicate with the robot, which is a fantastic feature.

Compared to UiPath, OpenRPA is slightly faster, open-source, and allows for the incorporation of work codes, but UiPath offers greater functionality. 

What other advice do I have?

I give UiPath a nine out of ten. The design and appearance of UiPath are excellent, and its functionalities are perfect. The impressive aspect is how people create packages and new automation using the solution. I have nothing negative to say.

UiPath is currently deployed in one location within our organization.

We have a dedicated maintenance team of two individuals who are knowledgeable and have not encountered any difficulties.

I suggest utilizing the Community forum to acquire knowledge about UiPath because it contains a wealth of information beyond what is found in the documentation itself, and the support provided there is exceptional.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

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

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Robotic Process Automation Consultant at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Consultant
Easy to learn, easy to hire resources, and good community and partner support
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath is much easier to learn than other tools. Its interface is not that complicated. It is very user-friendly."
  • "They should give the flexibility to customers to reduce the number of licenses. UiPath does not want you to reduce the number of licenses. It is not easy to reduce the number of licenses even though there is a provision to do that. It would be good to give flexibility to customers to upscale and downscale whenever they want."

What is our primary use case?

We are a platinum partner of UiPath. We work exclusively for UiPath and do implementations. We provide solutions using UiPath products.

One of the use cases was for a client from the manufacturing industry for onboarding apprentices. We did this project in India. They were onboarding 300 to 400 apprentices. Their insurance and other things were done manually, which was time-consuming. It used to take them a week to complete the whole process, which was a problem in case an accident or incident happened in the first week. They wanted to do automation to ensure that on the first day itself, after the employees are onboarded, the insurance and other tasks are completed.

How has it helped my organization?

RPA as a technology has many benefits. UiPath comes with all those benefits. In addition, you also get flexibility, the availability of resources and new features, the ability to scale up, and an excellent partner ecosystem with UiPath.

As a tool, UiPath is becoming a hyper-automation platform. Every six months, they add something new to the platform. If you want new features, you can subscribe to those. From just an RPA tool, it is becoming an intelligent automation platform. They bring everything into the same platform. When you subscribe to Office 365, you get the entire package from Microsoft. UiPath also does the same thing. They bring automation, process mining, and all other things into the same platform. You can pick and subscribe to whatever you want. You can scale up as you want.

At this point in time, everybody is looking for intelligent automation solutions. UiPath has something known as AI Center that consists of multiple machine learning models. Solutions that have the intelligence to automatically understand and make decisions are the demand of the hour. For example, earlier, invoice processing was template-based. It was done using ABBYY and other OCR tools. UiPath now has a product for document understanding that supports the customers in extracting the details of the invoices without templates. It has a machine-learning model. I have been using their AI Center or document understanding module since 2019. It matures every year. For example, in 2019, if we loaded 15 to 20 invoices, it extracted only 20% of the data, whereas now, it extracts more than 80% of the data because over time, the model has got trained, and it gives better results. 

As a company, they are growing very fast. They are acquiring multiple companies. If they do not have competency in any field, they either partner with other firms or acquire them. They have recently added a communication mining product. It is something that is going to help the BPO industry a lot where call centers have many people taking the calls and rerouting them. Putting a machine learning model or a communication mining product on top of it will definitely help to reduce the effort. It will help with cost reduction and optimization of the existing operations. All the new features that they are adding are aligned with the usage of the platform as an intelligent automation platform.

UiPath also has benefits in terms of resources for implementing automation. If a customer wants to build a COE, they need to onboard resources and train them. UiPath is the easiest in terms of finding resources. For Pega Automation or SAP automation, you may not be able to find as many resources in the market as UiPath.

When clients want to automate a manual process, their expectation is that once automated, they do not want anybody to look into that process. It should run without any human intervention, but sometimes, there are scenarios where human intelligence is required to make a decision or trigger something. For example, if you do automation on a portal, there might be a captcha or multi-factor authentication where you enforce a human to come into the picture. Generally, everybody is looking for automation that runs without any human intervention. If 10 to 15 people do an activity, usually, the customer expectation is that none of those people should have to look into it, but realistically, only about 80% of those employees can be used for other tasks. 20% are still needed to monitor the system. 

UiPath speeds up digital transformation. RPA is normally the first step of digital transformation because it is the technology that you can add with minimal investment. The rest of the things require much more than what is required for RPA. Digital transformation starts with identifying the right candidate for automation and putting a process or a bot to do the processing. After that, you can build AI on top to make decisions. This digital transformation does not require expensive or complex application upgrades or IT application support. If any of the processes require upgrading the existing system or additional licenses, we normally do not recommend RPA for that. We can do automation using API calls and other methods.

UiPath saves time. RPA technology is generally adopted for the reduction in FTEs and time. The time savings vary based on different engagements.

What is most valuable?

UiPath is much easier to learn than other tools. Its interface is not that complicated. It is very user-friendly. Among all other similar tools, UiPath is the one that came out last. It came out in 2016 or 2017. They had the opportunity to understand what are the best features of other tools. They also knew how to put it together so that people pick it up faster. UiPath's founders are from a technical background, so there is a developer-oriented approach, which is another benefit of this solution. In the RPA market, if you want to hire resources, you will get more UiPath developers than any other technology. If any customer wants to adopt UiPath as a tool and build a team, there are more options for UiPath. You get a bigger resource pool to select from. For other tools, you will not find that many resources. This is something that we have seen while hiring people.

UiPath Community is one of the main differentiators from other tools. You can easily compare the number of subscribers of UiPath Community or UiPath forums with Stack Overflow, but Stack Overflow is not just one tool. You have everything there. You have Java, you have Python, and you have .NET. From a technical perspective, queries related to different technologies are there. In UiPath Community, you get the same level of support. I have seen developers solving puzzles and tricky questions. About 90% of questions get answered in the community. The way UiPath promotes its community is also not unique. It is not like anybody else. I have not noticed anything similar to the MVP programs that they run in other tools. They promote people who contribute more to the forum. Anybody who is giving a solution gets marked and evaluated based on the support provided in the forum. They give them exposure on the platform. They mention their MVPs for each year, which is motivating many people. I do not think anybody else is doing that. I have a team of 120 people. I see the motivation in the team to spend an hour or half an hour on a daily basis to see if any questions are there to which they can respond to have an opportunity to get into the MVP segment. UiPath is doing a lot to ensure that there are more active users in the community and people give good suggestions and solutions.

The UiPath Academy is one of the best self-training portals. They have two types of portals. One is for everybody. Anybody can subscribe and log into it and start taking courses without paying anything. They also have another portal for partners, which has more details. They do not have static material. They update the material every six months. When they have a release, they update the information. UiPath Academy is a very good platform for self-training purposes. They also have other training programs such as instructor-led training. UiPath's training and support mechanism is excellent.

What needs improvement?

Their technical support should be improved. Their support has deteriorated with the increase in the number of customers. That is one area of improvement.

They should give the flexibility to customers to reduce the number of licenses. UiPath does not want you to reduce the number of licenses. It is not easy to reduce the number of licenses even though there is a provision to do that. It would be good to give flexibility to customers to upscale and downscale whenever they want.

For low-code development, they already have something called UiPath Apps, but it needs improvement. Generally, to build a small workflow, we use Microsoft Power Apps. Even though UiPath has a local platform, it is not comparable to the Microsoft Power Apps platform. If they invest a bit more in that, for creating workflows, we can use UiPath Apps rather than opting for a third-party tool.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with UiPath since 2018.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Nowadays, all RPA vendors are trying to bring in something new every six months, but they don't get adequate time for doing the testing. As a result, there are multiple bugs. They should stabilize the release, do proper testing, and then only launch it. Otherwise, we need to wait for the next release for a bug to be fixed. Similarly, the training material for all established products from all the vendors is good, but with constant new releases, it is a challenge to get the latest material. They should release the training material before they start selling the product so that everybody is well aware of the features and the issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

With the cloud model, you can subscribe to whatever you want and scale up as you want. You also get the flexibility of a monthly subscription from the cloud. If you want to run automation for one month or a certain period, options are available.

If a customer is subscribed to the UiPath Cloud and wants to add more processes, they just need to ensure that they have their infrastructure on-prem for only putting the robots. The load on the Orchestrator is handled by UiPath. You do not have to worry about that, so scalability is handled by UiPath. These are no issues, but for on-premises, all these things have to be handled manually. You have to increase the storage, but from the product perspective, there is no challenge in scaling up. Today, if we run 100 processes, and tomorrow, if we need to run 1,000 processes, we just need to procure the licenses and additional hardware.

How are customer service and support?

Their support could be better. As the company grew, the number of customers increased, and their support deteriorated. When you raise a ticket, rather than addressing the concern of the client, they just want to close the ticket. It has gone to that stage. This could be because of the number of customers. It was not like this earlier.

We have been working with them for a long time. We know what questions we need to ask. Our concern mainly comes when a client contacts UiPath's customer service. Rather than asking them for additional details, they give a response saying that a particular feature is not supported and close the case. I would rate them a six out of ten at this point in time. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

I have worked on other platforms, but at this point in time, I am predominantly working on UiPath. I have worked with Blue Prism. I also have some experience with Automation Anywhere and WorkFusion.

How was the initial setup?

I have worked with the on-prem and cloud deployments. In earlier versions, the cloud model was not there. UiPath has a product called Orchestrator, which is an application web server. In on-prem installations, you had to put this application web server on a Windows Server. It then orchestrated the entire automation. You also had to install Developer SDK, called UiPath Studio, on a Windows machine. You had to connect that Windows machine to the Orchestrator tool. For running the process, you needed a bot. You installed that bot on another virtual machine or Windows machine. These were the three mandatory components earlier in 2018.

After that, they brought in the concept of cloud subscription. With the cloud subscription, they install the Orchestrator itself and give a public endpoint to the customer. The benefit is that customers do not need to install Orchestrator on their premises. They can directly connect to the Orchestrator that is hosted on their cloud platform. Of course, they have the authentication and all those things. With the cloud model, there is no requirement of installing their application server inside the environment. UiPath Studio and the bots still remain in the client environment. 

Previously, anybody with Windows experience could do the installation. Our developers used to do the installation, but since machine learning came into the picture, the platform changed because Windows was not able to do the processing. Machine learning requires resources, so they converted the platform from Windows to Linux. If you now want to install Orchestrator with the machine learning model and all other things, it is not a Windows installation. It is a Linux installation, so earlier, somebody with basic Windows skills could do the installation for machine learning models and other things on-prem, but now, this cannot be done by a normal developer. Somebody with Linux experience is required for installation. However, they offer a cloud subscription where you do not need to install anything on Linux. You can directly access the endpoint and start using it. They also offer a disaster recovery tool. UiPath provides something known as HA for on-prem installation. It is a multi-node installation. This HA tool is also installed on Linux, so previously all tools were on Windows, but all the new products or tools are on Linux. They require Linux expertise for on-prem installation as well as knowledge regarding firewalls, etc. You need an infrastructure engineer for that.

UiPath provides training for different roles. They have training for developers, business analysts, solution architects, and infrastructure engineers. These are the four main roles for which they provide training, and these are the four roles that are manually required for implementing the UiPath product.

In terms of maintenance, UiPath updates the product every six months. They have two main releases. They have a spring release and a fall release. They have .6 and .10 releases. If I am installing the 2023.6 release now, they will provide support only for three years, which will be till June of 2026. After that, they will not support it, so customers need to upgrade their environment once every three years. For the on-prem setup, when you do the upgrade, you need to bring down the environment because robots are there. Once they are upgraded, you need to ensure that everything is running properly. It requires the infrastructure team and the application development team to ensure that everything is working fine. It is normally a one-month activity, but it can vary depending on the number of processes. It requires at least two weeks. In the cloud model, product upgrades happen automatically. Orchestrator is hosted in UiPath Cloud, and they upgrade it. There are no issues. You just need to take care of UiPath Studio and the robots in the machine. That can be easily handled by the application development or support team. In terms of support, the number of people required depends on the complexity and the criticality of processes. If you have automated a banking application, you may require somebody for monitoring around the clock.

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

They have been increasing the price. The explanation that they provide is that they are adding more features. This works perfectly fine for customers who are looking for new intelligent automations, but there is another set of customers who use UiPath for vanilla, plain automations. Offering them something that is not required and asking them to pay more puts a burden on them. That seems to be a problem for the customers. Many of them have mentioned this concern because it is increasing the prices of automation every year, which is not acceptable to all customers.

As a company, they try to move from on-prem to the cloud. They give cloud subscriptions unless a customer specifically requests an on-prem solution. With the on-prem solution, you will not get the latest features automatically. You need to update it on a periodic basis. There is an overhead in terms of maintenance. In their new licensing model, they charge the same for the on-prem product and the cloud product. For an on-prem installation, you have the infrastructure cost in addition to the licensing cost. By going for the cloud version, you can easily skip the infrastructure cost.

What other advice do I have?

When you start your RPA journey, you should never start with just one process. You should have a pipeline in your mind in terms of the number of processes. You can start small, but you need to have a roadmap of what you are going to do by the end of the year. If you automate only one process, you will not get value from this product. Tools such as UiPath and Automation Anywhere are capable of doing so many complicated tasks. They charge you so that you can do all those things. If you do just a small task with that, your cost and your outcome will not match, and you will not appreciate the platform. That is why I recommend having a roadmap. You should also go for a tool for which you are able to get support when you get stuck. There is no question that UiPath is the easiest one.

RPA as a technology is going to be like Microsoft Excel. Soon, everybody's system will have bots to automate activities. It could be for extracting data from the internet for your analysis or for your project. It will be used for all redundant activities or rule-based processing where you have to extract the data and follow some steps. In five or ten years, it is going to be a mandatory technology. 

Overall, I would rate UiPath an eight out of ten. I am not completely happy with the way they bring out new versions or features in a half-cooked state. Stability or reliability is critical when you are launching something new.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
RPA Technical Consultant at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Consultant
Top 20
{layed a crucial role in generating significant capacity and managing all the challenging tasks efficiently
Pros and Cons
  • "The AI feature has enabled us to automate more processes overall."
  • "It would be beneficial to have the capability to track defects during the regression testing of applications."

What is our primary use case?

We utilize UiPath to automate manual and repetitive tasks that range from simple Excel manipulations to web scraping. We have several use cases related to refinancing, such as handling accounts payable for invoice processing, remittances, and accounts receivable, among others. In addition to that, UiPath enables us to develop public-facing applications that are integrated with automation. This automation is triggered automatically whenever there are user interactions or events, resulting in numerous use cases. For instance, if the requested data is not already available in the document, we can obtain input from customers using UiPath. 

Furthermore, we employ UiPath products for automatic invoice processing. When we receive invoices in PDF format, we digitize them using our own OCR engine. Subsequently, this information can be utilized to save data into systems like SAP. We extensively automate ERP systems, including SAP, Oracle, and NetSuite.

We also use UiPath for application testing. We have built several test cases for suppression, user acceptance, and so on, which can be scheduled to run or run on demand.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath has a small learning curve because we leverage Microsoft technologies, benefiting greatly from UiPath's integration with the Windows Workflow Foundation. Moreover, there is also a version tailored for business users. Personally, I have a tech background, but we have received feedback from other users who find it very easy to create simple automation. However, for more complex automation, some experience or training might be necessary. Fortunately, UiPath offers completely free on-demand training through their Academy. Once someone completes the training, they will be able to proficiently build automation.

We employ our bots to collect data on emissions, consumption, and byproducts. We do not have any byproducts. Recently, we published a report detailing where and how we have achieved our sustainability goal.   

With UiPath, we have been able to achieve a 100 percent scale-up in the finance department without increasing the headcount. Therefore, it has played a crucial role in generating significant capacity and managing all the challenging tasks efficiently.

Being able to implement end-to-end automation using UiPath is crucial. We have use cases where human involvement is necessary. For instance, if there are invoices exceeding ten thousand dollars, we require approval. Therefore, UiPath allows us to pause automation until we receive those approvals from various stakeholders. Once the human input is provided, the bot proceeds with the remaining steps. It is highly reliable and adaptable to changes in the sales flow. We have utilized UiPath for automation without the need for additional staff.

Whenever there are new features or releases that lack detailed information, we can use UiPath's User Community to discuss the posted topics. For example, we can seek assistance in understanding how to make the most of a specific feature or determine the necessary settings for our properties to leverage those features effectively. Additionally, training resources for these products are available within the community. Webinars are frequently hosted in the UiPath User Community, which we also utilize to gain insights into the functionality of the product and its application in solving various use cases.

There are several areas in which UiPath has benefited our organization. We gain process intelligence and revenue intelligence. Additionally, we are able to perform virtual investment analysis using automation. UiPath enables us to free up a significant amount of capacity for more meaningful work.

UiPath has helped minimize our on-premises footprint. It's all about the SaaS cloud-based offerings. Therefore, several products are currently available quickly, specifically on the cloud. Essentially, we only utilize virtual machines for the robot itself, which execute alongside all the other services. Everything is hosted in the cloud.

The biggest benefit of using UiPath's Academy is that it offers various labs and exercises, which greatly assist us in utilizing and improving our understanding of the tool. Additionally, the Academy provides certifications that can help individuals become certified in the technology. These are some of the benefits offered by the Academy.

For most of the document understanding process, we utilize machine learning models that are hosted in the UiPath AI center. Additionally, AI is integrated into the process mining and task mining products we employ, which help us discover new automation ideas and opportunities by analyzing information flow within data from ERP systems, among others. Moreover, UiPath recently introduced communications mining, which utilizes a large language model. This enables us to examine emails and other modes of communication to gain insights into the processes and occurrences. There are numerous concealed insights pertaining to both the processes themselves and the sentiments of customers, all of which can be obtained through these AI tools.

UiPath AI has simplified the automation of more complex processes because it doesn't require machine learning, knowledge, or technical ability. It is a very simplified, no-code, local platform. This has greatly helped us build solutions that previously required extensive coding, saving us a significant amount of time during implementation.

UiPath helps to accelerate and reduce the cost of our digital transformation.

UiPath has helped reduce human errors. There are several errors that occur when working with financial data, such as missed dates and miscalculations. However, the bots prevent such mistakes from happening.

UiPath has generated sufficient capacity, allowing us to avoid hiring additional personnel for our department. Despite an increase in workload, the bots are capable of handling it.

UiPath has helped our organization save costs.

What is most valuable?

The AI feature has enabled us to automate more processes overall.

What needs improvement?

It would be beneficial to have the capability to track defects during the regression testing of applications.  

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for six and a half years.

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

I have used Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and Power Plus Automation, but UiPath is more user-friendly.

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

The price is reasonable. UiPath is priced for the market and is even better considering the value it brings.

What other advice do I have?

I rate UiPath a ten out of ten.

We have implemented UiPath across multiple departments, including HR and Finance.

No maintenance is required.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

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

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free UiPath Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free UiPath Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.