Ankit Hasija - PeerSpot reviewer
Training Head at MedTourEasy
Real User
With bots there is a minimal chance of errors when compared with results of human work
Pros and Cons
  • "The AI and machine learning that are built into these bots really help us to make bots at a mature level where they're able to track with real-world customers. They also help with employee engagement and business productivity and take them to a whole new level."
  • "The UiPath community has grown quite a bit, but it's still not on par with the kind of support that you would find with Automation Anywhere. That is still missing because UiPath is a relatively new entrant in the market. The community support is growing, but that is definitely one of the areas that can be improved."

What is our primary use case?

We've used it to automate most of our processes. Our organization is completely technology-driven and we have been able to automate a lot of our processes with UiPath. The main thing that we are using it for is document creation with multiple fields and approval processes.

We're using it to automate daily tasks, using small bots for multiple processes. In the long-run, they're actually connected together. A lot of people have left our organization in the past couple of years and, instead of hiring new employees, we actually try to build a bot for whatever the work those employees were doing.

How has it helped my organization?

By not replacing employees who have left, we have been able to achieve our aim of running a lean company. We are able to save a lot of money on HR costs as well as on the costs of hiring new employees.

In addition, our document-processing time has been reduced for every customer that we are catering to, and that has resulted in great ROI as well as customer satisfaction.

We have compared the performance of humans with the bots who replaced them as they left the organization. The humans were making a lot of errors compared to the bots. The bots are not perfect and they do make their share of errors, but they are quite different from human errors. Everything is logic-based, and everything happens with triggers, so the possibility of an error is minimalistic when something is being handled by a bot. That is especially true for a bot that is created with UiPath because it's so mature. Overall, there are hardly any errors that come out of the bots made with UiPath.

Another benefit comes from the UiPath Academy courses. It saves us on training costs because we don't have to develop the content for training new employees. We're not product experts when it comes to UiPath and the Academy delivers training in a fashion that is easy to understand. There's a lot of support provided with the training courses as well. Not only does the Academy help in terms of training-development costs, but it has minimized the duration of training for each employee who starts to use UiPath. The results are great savings for the organization, both monetary, through automation, and non-monetary when it comes to training.

The AI and machine learning that are built into these bots really help us to make bots at a mature level where they're able to track with real-world customers. They also help with employee engagement and business productivity and take them to a whole new level. Obviously, we cannot develop such technology from scratch. We used built-in processes and automations in the past, but once we found, first when we were using Automation Anywhere, and now while using UiPath, this type of technology, it really took over the technology suite that our organization had been using previously and replaced it completely. UiPath is a complete suite that can handle most of our needs by itself.

What is most valuable?

Document creation is one of the most important features for us. As a healthcare company, we have a lot of documents with complex fields. For example, if a treatment is booked by a customer in another country, a lot of paperwork has to be completed. That paperwork first goes to the healthcare provider and, once accepted there, it comes to the company to be approved by the management. Then it goes back to the customer.

In addition, the process has been integrated into mobile apps. That way, a senior manager gets a request on the mobile app and to approve the transaction they just have to press the "Accept" button and everything else happens on its own. All of that happens in a matter of seconds.

Also, the UiPath Academy courses are very user-friendly and enable us to achieve a lot more. Those courses have taught us a lot, especially for our new automation employees. Once the basic courses are completed by any new employee, we actually recommend that they complete the certifications that are available via UiPath, and some of them are actually free of cost. Only after completing certification do we allow them to work on the floor. We have found the Academy content to be really amazing in terms of design as well as its functionality. We have made use of all of the courses there are.

What needs improvement?

The UiPath community has grown quite a bit, but it's still not on par with the kind of support that you would find with Automation Anywhere. That is still missing because UiPath is a relatively new entrant in the market. The community support is growing, but that is definitely one of the areas that can be improved.

Also, sometimes there are failures in the cloud during migration. Say you're migrating it from one instance to another instance. There are failures and there's not much support for such cases in the UiPath documentation. While it is a rare instance that we need to migrate, whenever we do have to migrate, we generally face some issues. I feel that there are bugs in that area.

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March 2024
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For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using UiPath for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The platform is really stable. There's never been a point when it's been unstable or has had runtime issues. There have been really minute server crashes, unexpectedly. But I don't think that is due to the platform. It is more due to the server environment and the hosting environment not being configured properly. There are no problems whatsoever in terms of the stability as well as the performance of the product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product is very scalable. It is meant for scalability. It is specifically meant for a situation where there are a lot of tasks that have to be completed by and it automates everything. Even if large volumes of data and tasks have to be completed with lightning speed, that is exactly where UiPath fits in. It does the job beautifully. That is the reason it was able to replace the whole technology suite that we were using, a suite that consisted of different products.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support has been great. The only issue that we've had is that there aren't enough specialized support people who can help with the server issues. Configuring Google Cloud Platform with UiPath can be challenging. There were some errors that we were not able to figure out on our own. There are two support teams that we could reach out to, either the server support or the UiPath support. Sometimes both of them were confused about what was causing the issue. And sometimes, it takes more than the anticipated time to resolve the issue. But overall, UiPath provides great support.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

At first, we were using a completely in-house technology system. After that, we used Automation Anywhere for a couple of years. But once we started using UiPath, we were able to replace that completely.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was fairly easy. We've been using the Google Cloud Platform to host the entire automation platform and there isn't much documentation for deploying it on GCP. There are a lot of settings and configurations that are location-specific and that relate to the load and the number of bots that you are going to make with UiPath. There are a lot of things that come into the picture and the documentation is not up to the mark.

To sum it up, it is a little difficult, but not impossible to deploy it initially.

It only takes a few days but it depends on the complexity of the kinds of bots that you plan to run with the platform. Certain bots could take time. For that situation, there are consulting services. Also, there are certain bots that are already there as a template and you can customize them. But if there are processes that require a custom bot to be built from scratch, that could definitely take time. That could take from months to a year if it's a very complex bot and you're creating it with an in-house team.

Our implementation strategy was to take one step at a time. We had designed a complete project deployment roadmap, in which we had certain milestones that we planned to achieve within a few months. There were then more milestones that we planned to reach within a year. We did have to take on some consulting services from UiPath partners for the customized bots, but that resulted in the development costs being reduced, as it went a lot faster than it would have gone without the consulting support. It has gone pretty smoothly.

What about the implementation team?

Apart from the consultants for the customized bots, the initial deployment was completely handled by our in-house team. There was a fair bit of documentation provided with the system itself and we found it sufficient to take care of the initial deployment.

What was our ROI?

The ROI has been really excellent. We're able to save a lot of costs that were previously paid for subscriptions to multiple suites of software. We were able to save all of that and invest it into one product, UiPath, as well as into development of the bots.

The ROI has been very positive for us. The main issue is that there is an initial investment that you have to make. Once you do that, the ROI keeps on growing year-on-year. For us, it has only been three years. If we compare our costs and ROI over a longer period, I'm sure we'll see a lot better ROI.

The costs are related to infrastructure and development and, of course, at a later stage, include monitoring and maintenance. If you compare all of that over a longer period of time, you'll see savings of anywhere between two and 15 times compared to an equivalent system, over a period of about five to seven years.

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

Another area with room for improvement is the pricing. Initially, the pricing was a lot more affordable. Now, it seems a bit excessive.

Get an estimate of the cost from UiPath sales representatives. Don't just include the UiPath cost, but also the consulting costs that you might have to pay, and the number of licenses that you might need as an organization. The third thing to consider is the development cost of the bots. All of that has to be considered well in advance.

I don't think there is anything that UiPath bots aren't able to do. But be aware that the budget could become excessive by using UiPath because there are so many different costs that come into the picture. You could require trained employees, people who have previous experience with UiPath, to develop bots that are a custom fit for your organization.

Cost would be one of the things that I would recommend that other organizations consider in advance to see if it suits their budgets. They should also consider whether they have the resources that can deploy and design bots that are able to automate the tasks and the processes that they want to automate.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Apart from UiPath, we also used Automation Anywhere. The reason we use UiPath far more than Automation Anywhere is because we have been using it for some time and we have some resources who are quite well-trained on it. It suits us pretty well. It has automated most of our processes and really kept our system moving. Whatever issues we have had with the product have been very well resolved by the customer support team in a very timely manner, and that is another reason we prefer UiPath over Automation Anywhere.

What other advice do I have?

You need to have resources who are trained in UiPath. You could take the initiative of training employees, but you need some senior resources who have prior experience with UiPath who can be project managers and guide the development and analyst teams on how to reach the goals that the organization is trying to achieve.

UiPath was a fairly new product when we started using it. They were giving a 60-day free trial and were also providing free certifications for that initial period. That is how we started with it. Over the years, we've seen that the UiPath community has grown quite a bit. From being a new entry in the automation market, it has grown into a very mature product and it has now taken over as the main system that our company is using. We rely on technology to support our backend processes and we need a system that is very reliable in terms of delivery. UiPath has turned out to be a system that works out very well for us. The UiPath community really helps whenever there are bugs or glitches that our company is facing. You can reach out to the community where there are very senior developers as well as analysts and you can get a lot of help there, apart from the customer support.

It runs in its own private cloud in the Google Cloud Platform. We have some projects that are run on UiPath that are given to independent contractors to work on. We give a contractor a license for the system and they have to install UiPath on their computer and complete whatever work they have to complete on that. But for our internal organization and employees, we have a private cloud over which UiPath is running.

The biggest lesson would be to just take one step at a time. Make use of the partner support at the beginning. Initially, we tried to build everything ourselves and that cost a lot more than it would have if we had used consultants. There are companies that provide consulting support and there are companies that will actually build your bots exactly to your requirements. That way, you can just deploy them from day one. They also provide maintenance and support for the bots they have developed for you.

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?

Google
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Director, Enterprise Operational Improvement at GROWMARK
Real User
Offers excellent training, saves time, and has helpful technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "It's changed the dynamic of how we look at our processes and how we talk about why and how we do what we do. That's been tangible."
  • "I'd like the solution to address how can I see more opportunities and capitalize on the improvement of any kind with an obvious focus on RPA."

What is our primary use case?

We have 12 bots in production right now. I can't speak exactly to all the bots. My role is in process mining. With process mining, we're using the PDP process and we're building out a model for sales orders.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of UiPath are the possibilities. For example, we're excited about what's coming and we've saved some time with the bots, however, we're still learning. The idea is once we get really good at process mining it will be really good at building bots. We'll be able to uncover those opportunities and then execute on capitalizing on them.

I'm not sure of how much time we've saved, in the tens of hours per month. While it's not nothing, they've been small use cases to build up the capability. We are still figuring out how to build bots, and how to get the orchestrator all set up. 

We're doing a crawl, walk, run, taking our time and doing it right. We are building up the center of excellence. We're out of crawl and we're in to walk, however, we're not running yet.

So far, the conversation around automation and cultural change has been really powerful in terms of re-thinking our processes and asking if there's a better way to do it. right now, we're beginning to understand that we don't have to be stuck where we're at.

It's changed the dynamic of how we look at our processes and how we talk about why and how we do what we do. That's been tangible.

Our teams have used UiPath Academy courses. It has been instrumental and we couldn't do it without those courses. That was one of the reasons why we selected UiPath. They're robust and it is easy to access training modules.

The biggest value that we've realized from the Academy is confidence. Just getting over that initial hurdle of understanding what we're doing has been huge.

What needs improvement?

In terms of the ease of building automation via UiPath, it takes a long time to set up the environment and get the training and be able to do it.

The overall ecosystem and platform, which I know that they're working on, needs to be better. Being able to connect idea generation and opportunity into discovery and then into automation needs to be seamless. It needs to be end-to-end and also more robust. If I had to give them a piece of advice, it would be that the RPA is one component of process improvement, and they own the RPA space, so I realize that's their bread and butter, however, RPA isn't the only tool in the toolbox. I'd like to see more in relation to how we can eliminate waste and how we can lean out our processes.

Maybe the improvement solution isn't RPA. I'd like the solution to address how can I see more opportunities and capitalize on the improvement of any kind with an obvious focus on RPA. That's where the real power is going to come from. That said, it's not the only focus.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for over a year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability has been great. I don't have any issues or comments there. I don't have any concerns with the stability of the company or the platform's software. We haven't experienced many bugs or anything like that. We're happy with the stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is where the solution is going to come into play. Likely, it will, as we have learned the possibilities are ripe and endless. 

Right now we're using it extensively, however, we're only building bots and deploying process mining within our controller and finance area. That's our learning curve and it is probably the ripest ground for automation. We plan to increase usage. We've just scratched the surface there. We've only done maybe 5% of controllers. Then, we have the whole rest of the organization and the whole supply chain.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support was great. They helped a lot during the implementation. I would rate them at an eight out of ten simply due to the fact that the premium support person was very, very helpful and honestly I don't know what we would've done without them. However, that did come at a price.

Making that service standard as part of the implementation process would probably pump my technical support rating up to a ten in that, while the experience was a ten, we paid for it.

How was the initial setup?

In terms of the initial setup, once you have people that are familiar with the software and you have all your environments and connectors set up, the Building Box is very user-friendly. That said, it doesn't happen overnight.

From contract signing to putting our first bot into production, the setup and deployment were about six months.

Being on-premise, there was added complexity. Had we opted for the cloud version, it would have been a simpler process. We had the standard provisioning servers and had to get them set up and installed the software, et cetera.

What about the implementation team?

The process was complex simply due to the fact that it's an advanced technology, however, UiPath is really great at helping out. We had a premium plus support person.

A lot of the details and things that we'd never done before, they were there to help us on their end and give us pointers and tips on our end.

What was our ROI?

We have not yet seen an ROI. When we look at the savings we have realized versus the upfront costs and the time investment, we're probably still under water, however, we recognize that this is a long game.

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

For the quality of the product that we get,  it's a fair price. I'm a believer in you get what you pay for. You always want to maximize your value, however, that doesn't necessarily mean a lower price.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing UiPath, we did look at Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism. Those two were the ones that we actually did full demos of. We also looked at the websites of some of the smaller players.

The main one that we really looked at where and it came down to a head to head was with Automation Anywhere. The key difference for me, with my focus, was process mining. Automation anywhere had some capability there, however, it was a recording device and it was intrusive to the end-user. You also couldn't go backward in time. When you got everything plugged in and turned it on, you could start recording and building your processes. You could see last week's processes next week, however, the UiPath solution uses the audit tables. Therefore, when I turn it on, I can go back in time, for not just a week; I can go back two years. I can go back that far to see how the process has evolved and where we're at. I can build a more robust baseline to change from today rather than having to wait for six months to build my baseline.

What other advice do I have?

I'm not sure which version of the solution we are using. We just installed it earlier this year, therefore it's probably the latest and greatest.

We do not use AI functionality in our automation process. We also do not use UiPath apps features. While we're learning about some of those new things, we're not using them today.

The main thing that I would advise others is to get leadership on board and get their ducks in a row in terms of the culture that they want to create and the long-term vision that they have for this.

You can't capitalize on it in six months. If you're going to throw in the towel if you're not seeing ROI in your first calendar year, then don't even start. It takes some leadership fortitude and some stick-to-itiveness. It doesn't happen organically or on its own. If a company is not dedicating the resources or not freeing up people's time, they won't get far. The bots aren't going to create themselves yet. Maybe with AI, in the future, that will be possible, however, that's way off.

On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate the solution at a nine for now. I'm really happy with the program that we're building up. I'm happy with the solutions that they offer. It'll jump up to a ten when we get to scale and it's paying for itself. 

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.
PeerSpot user
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Dir., Resource Management Systems and Data at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Eliminates mundane, redundant processes, enabling our workforce to be more efficient, and to feel better about their work..
Pros and Cons
  • "Since we are getting information out to folks faster, they can spend the resource time needed to determine the best approach for what to replace it with, or if we need to work with a sales rep. It ensures that our staff have the best tools to do their job faster."
  • "We have not seen it do OCR, and that would be helpful. Right now, the tool will not read a PDF file, and we can't use PDF files. We want it to able to take an image, then take that image and put the particular field out in the right spot in a table. We have not seen it where you can scan a document in, then it reads fields and places those in a table."

What is our primary use case?

We are in healthcare, and the supply chain can be a fragmented process, and now with the Pandemic quite fragile. In recent years, companies have been implementing leaner supply chains to reduce their costs. We found that our best approach to dealing with supply distributions was to create a partnership with a distributor who could provide us with a very large percentage of our day-to day-supplies. We have Central inventories in each of our hospitals; however, we use a stockless operation Monday-Friday. This means we fill supplies for our nursing units on the weekends, but during the week, the distributor is picking, packing, and shipping those supplies in a low unit of measure. Orders are placed electronically by noon daily, and start arriving by late evening. A 'back order' list is sent to us each workday in the late afternoon - too late to do anything with it. 

We did work with our distributor to develop a more customized spreadsheet that detailed each item, by hospital and delivery location. Each following day we would break the file down so that we could e-mail it to each area, to get feedback from them on critical needs.  This took our resources time to prepare and send the next morning. Staff getting the information didn't have much time to review and respond. In addition, we would update each PO line item with the revised 'due date', for back-ordered lines - this was a manual process.  This same resource would then use a tool to send each requestor a 'delayed delivery' e-mail notice.  The overall PO update and communication process took an additional 1-2 hours a day in staff resource time.

With the robot doing this work for us, the vendor sends a file to an address by a certain time. They send it in at about 3:30 PM every day. The robot now takes that file and works that file, which it has ready for us usually by 4:30 PM. Now, it still may be too late for us to work, but the first thing in the morning, we have the file, and the Bot has already sent out notifications to all the users of any backorders. First thing, when they walk in the morning, they know what their backorders are. They didn't know that until halfway through the day before. Now, they get the information first thing in the morning so they can react. Now, we are getting the information first thing and have the time to work with the manufacturers and distributors to come up with other products so that we might backfill or get a branch transfer.

Our end goal was to make sure that we had a daily tool that was 100 percent accurate and could be deployed across a broad spectrum of healthcare workers. Then, they could get information faster and more accurately with as much information to eliminate a lot of extra calls and communication. That is what we embarked on. We dissected our current process and looked at all its different triggers to see how we could turn this into an automated tool. We broke down our process and identified everything that we were doing, then UiPath helped us identify what we needed to modify. We worked that into a tool where a Bot could come along and process it every day, then deliver every afternoon. That was our end result, and it's been extremely successful. We started using the tool last December.

We combined some automation that we already had in this process into this tool to make it a whole automated process, rather than partially bringing it under. We have a vendor who delivers us a report daily of all their backorders because we use the main distributor, so they deliver us a backorder report. Therefore, we made sure that they aligned it in a way that the robot could read it. Then, we wanted to break that down in a way so each of our hospitals could see their section. So, we added some data to this tool which allowed the robot to see that record, and say, "This belongs here, and this belongs here."

How has it helped my organization?

Our staff have been reassigned to more value-added tasks. We haven't eliminated anyone because it's been very challenging for us to keep up with the COVID-19 issues. Now, we have resources who have the time to contact vendors, and find out, "When are we getting this? Can we get ourselves pushed to the top of the list?" They can actually be a voice on the other line, a human voice, who communicates. When you're sitting there doing all this other work, you don't have the opportunity to spend it on being a voice for the health system. So, we put people back on working back orders with other vendors and doing other things that needed to be done. We have not eliminated staff because we are using them in more productive ways, getting more work done.

Our staff can now do the things that we need them to do. It has given us the agility to pivot and move to other things, because we are not trapped in trying to work these files every day.

Our customers are getting information about 12 hours earlier, which makes it much faster to resolve back order concerns for their areas. If they have procedures, or certain kinds of cases coming up, and see that they have a back order, then they have much more time to react and try to address their shortage.

What is most valuable?

It provides information to people by automating that information in a much faster time.

Since we are getting information out to folks faster, they can spend the resource time needed to determine the best approach for what to replace it with, or if we need to work with a sales rep. It ensures that our staff have the best tools to do their job faster.

What needs improvement?

We have not seen it do OCR, and that would be helpful. Right now, the tool will not read a PDF file, and we can't use PDF files. We want it to able to take an image, then take that image and put the particular field out in the right spot in a table. We have not seen it where you can scan a document in, then it reads fields and places those in a table.

For how long have I used the solution?

We began our journey last Fall - 2019 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable. Once we got all the kinks worked out, there hasn't been any maintenance. 

We had a little problem with getting it to run at night. We moved it off of one platform and put it on another one, which fixed that problem. These are things that we encountered early on that went away as we figured out how to resolve them. Most of those changes that we made were internal to our process and caused by some slow responses within our Citrix environment. Once we resolve those, we have not had issues with the tool itself.

I have one person in IT doing deployment and maintenance. We also have a second person under contract if we need support.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable. 

The robot processes the file in an unattended mode, then sends out an email with a link to its output file. From there, all the users, and there are probably about 20, get this file and react to it. They review it from their perspective because there are many hospitals involved. Each one of them has their own tab because the robot creates a tab for each. This makes it easy for them to go right to what they need. There are a lot of folks reviewing the results of what the robot has produced.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have not used their technical support.

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

We were passively looking at some tools to automate some of our procurement processes. We are highly automated in our department, but we are always looking at ways to take the things that are not already automated, get into those, and see what parts of those we can streamline.

We met with UiPath last Fall. At that time, we went through a company by the name of Speridian, UiPath is a partner with them. We came to the conclusion that we had a manual process where the right components could be automated. Therefore, we made that our focus and started answering all the questions around the process to ensure that we had everything necessary for a robot to be able to answer the questions and keep moving the process forward.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very straightforward. We outlined what we do and what our end result needed to be. They asked us some questions, then sat down with our resources and walked them through it (or did it through Webex). I don't think there was ever any confusion on what was being discussed.

We didn't spend that much time on the process. Overall, as far as our work, the deployment was 10 to 12 hours, if you look at the meetings and such. Most of the time was spent on their side, because they had to go back and do all the development. So, I thought it was very painless.

What about the implementation team?

We worked with the UiPath team and Speridian to ensure that the bot would know how to handle each aspect of the data and where apply it. As we tested it, we saw that we needed to go back and reconfigure this or this isn't how this is handled. We were kind of working through the things we forgot until we got to the point where, "Yes, this is it. We can do this every day." 

We had the robot tied into an automated tool that we were already using to send notices out. They were able to pull up that tool and have these automated components to all this stuff that we had a manual person sitting there doing every day. She was sitting there taking this data and sending it out, and now the robot was like, "I got the data. I'll send it out." So, we just ran it through the whole process. However, it does take having resources who can ask the right questions. What I found with this team was they were good in actually asking the right questions and helping us with what the robot would need in order to make decisions. Because that's what the robot is doing, it is automatically looking at a value, and saying, "I do this. I have that." 

We learned with it: How we need to respond and how we need to give the robot the feedback. It was quite an interesting process for us. Although you're always thinking you can automate so many things, there are components that you do need a person's brain to figure out. We found those pieces in this tool. We found some areas where, "Here's the exception." So, it even writes off the exceptions for us. While I do still need to have a person looking at exceptions, rather than the 100 lines that they used to have to look at, now they look at two, three, or four lines, then make decisions on those.

They gave us the opportunity to create a tool which would automate as much as possible, then provide us the data that we needed to act on. It has basically filtered out all the things that we didn't need to deal with. It has taken care of those, leaving us with everything that a human being needs to respond to.

I felt very comfortable with the UiPath person who was doing the programming, though I never really met him. I was very impressed. We talked on the phone a time or two, but they just seemed like they got it. They understood. It didn't take a long time for them to figure out what it was we wanted to do. They were able to tell us, "This is what we're going to need. Can you get it?" So, they were easy to work with. They also acted quickly. I thought the whole process of developing everything that we did went very quickly. 

They were able to link into our tools. They made suggestions to us, "Well, these are exceptions. We can put these here. We can do this. We can give you all this." They were providing us with ideas on how we could even expand on this. I found that to be very helpful. I really thought that they did it very quickly. They did not take long to understand what we were trying to do before getting in and really learning the impact. When we needed a change, the changes have come very quickly. 

It has gone so well that we will be doing a few more enhancements. Now that we've worked with the tool for a while, and know that the ability of UiPath and what they can do, we can enhance it even further.

What was our ROI?

We are doing things at a much earlier time in the day. The robot compressed the time it takes. We are getting our users' information earlier in the day. Now, it may take five to 10 minutes, where processes used to take half an hour or 45 minutes to go through everything. 

With COVID-19, so many supplies have been impacted. Our line items expanded and grew, so it would have been very difficult management manually. Thankfully, we had this process in place last December. It really came to our aid in March, April, and throughout this year, because it has streamlined the process. It has given everybody more time to pivot and make decisions.

The UiPath tool takes redundant processes away, and says, "Let us handle those, then you do all those creative things." It has given us back a lot of staff resources that were being used up by mundane, redundant processes. That's how it worked in our world. In other areas, anytime you fill out a form or answer a question, a robot can post that to a table. There are all kinds of things it can do. However, for us, it took these manual processes that we were doing day in, day out without a lot of thought and gave us that time back to be more thoughtful of what it is we need to be doing to be more thoughtful of what it is we need to be doing, in order to ensure that our health system has the products that it needs to support the community. In my mind, that is what it is about: Giving back your resources to use them in the way they were intended and using a robotic tool to do those things that you can eliminate, like mundane, redundant processes.

What other advice do I have?

Start with processes that happen over and over every day. Something that you have to do, like data entry, whatever it is. Peel back the onion, then look and see how you can automate some of that through a tool. You have to look at what your processes are and understand how those are getting done today. Maybe even share that information with somebody outside your area, because people from the outside might say, "Well, why don't you do it this way?" Because you've lived it so long, you don't even know why you wouldn't nor do you know the questions to ask. Therefore, look at your base processes that you're doing day in, day out and see how you might be able to automate any aspect of those that doesn't require human thinking. I'm sure you will uncover many things.

It is a learning process for everyone, but I thought it was a very fast track learning. Sometimes, you think, "Well, this is going to take six months," and it didn't. In a very short time, we were seeing samples of what we were going to get. Therefore, I was very impressed with the amount of resource time that it took. It was beyond what I expected.

Some tools we are working on will reduce the purchase order build, but we haven't implemented that yet. That's a whole other project that we're working on with them, and that piece goes into procurement.

It is very doable. I was probably fairly skeptical, but once we started thinking about it, it became very clear that this would be just a slam dunk. You have to open up your mind to it, but it was something that when they said, "Well, we want to use some robotics." The fear is you're going to take my staff away. There are some cases of that, but it is not so bad. I don't have to worry about the robot taking days off, getting sick, having a mother in the hospital and needing to be with them. I don't have to pay it scale. I just don't have to do any of those things. Now, the robot can't automatically think outside the box, but sometimes it can depending on the questions I ask it. 

Everybody just needs to take a breath step back, and say, "Yeah, maybe it can replace this." However, that doesn't mean we won't use this resource in another way.

I would rate this solution a 10 out of 10. I'm not the type of person who just gives a rating of 10 all the time, but this solution has just been a phenomenal tool for us.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Process System Administrator at Rich products
Real User
Good training and helpful activities in Studio are helping to restore value-added time for our employees
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of Studio are all of the activities that UiPath and their partners have developed."
  • "If there was a little more flexibility with the selectors, and they were a little bit more adaptive, I think it would be helpful."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Studio and the attended robots, but we haven't implemented Orchestrator yet.

Our primary use is to automate tasks within the accounts receivable, accounts payable, and trade settlement realm that we work in. We're also getting into some more internal audit automation.

We run automations in Windows Virtual Machines. It was a long process for us to get started, getting our IS to buy into letting us set up this environment and get started with it.

With respect to how easy it is to automate our company's processes, on a scale of one to five, I would rate this solution a two or three. They offer upfront training, the UiPath Academy, and that makes it easier but you still need to have a technical mindset to understand it, as it is now.

We have all used the Academy. On a scale of one to five, judging how beneficial it is, I would rate the training a five. It's a great experience and very beneficial.

From the point that we purchased our UiPath license until we had our first robot was approximately six months. It took us a while because we had a bunch of other projects in front of getting our first automation. The process was hard, although it was not complicated. The approval process involved going through a security review. 

How has it helped my organization?

We have not found that our automations have saved us money, yet. However, it's giving people back the time so that they can do more value-added work.

With respect to saving time, we have just measured the out rate. We're probably saving thirty hours a week with what we have going now, so almost one FTE.

This solution has absolutely helped reduce or eliminate human errors, although I cannot estimate by how much at this time.

Using this solution has definitely increased the confidence and communication that we have between departments because we're saving a lot of department time, and they can focus on their value-added tasks. With this, they're a lot more willing to work with us, and they're happier employees.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of Studio are all of the activities that UiPath and their partners have developed.

What needs improvement?

The biggest problem that we have when working with this solution is the selectors. If there was a little more flexibility with the selectors, and they were a little bit more adaptive, I think it would be helpful.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

With respect to the stability, on a scale from one to five, I would rate this solution four and a half to five. We haven't had any problems.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Currently, we have twelve automations running.

In our organization, we have three people directly doing automation and design work. There are probably six or seven more than are trying to get the larger enterprise into UiPath and get their departments set up with it.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support for this solution is excellent. They got back to me really quickly and provided the solutions that I needed. It was very helpful.

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

We were not using another RPA solution prior to this one. In deciding to invest in this technology, we recognized that people were doing a lot of tedious processes and that we can make better use of their time.

What about the implementation team?

Huron Consulting assisted us with the implementation and deployment, and they were very helpful. On a scale from one to five, I would rate them a five.

What was our ROI?

We have been asked to start measuring for tracking ROI but have not yet begun. However, I can say informally that we have seen performance benefits. People are very happy with the things we've automated so far and they're just glad to be relieved of some of that tedious work.

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

Right now we only have a couple of Studio licenses and a couple of bots, so we're at about $8,000 USD per year. We're hoping to ramp that up pretty soon.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere before choosing this solution.

One of the major reasons that we chose UiPath was because they gave a free trial at the time when we were looking at it, and none of the other vendors did. Then they also have the UiPath Academy, which allowed us to look at it first and then learn how to use it before we actually had to make an investment.

What other advice do I have?

From a cost perspective, the unattended robots are going to be of more benefit because they can run twenty-four hours a day. At the same time, the attended robots are pretty affordable. I think we're coming up with more use cases where people have it on their desktop and want to be able to run it on demand. We have definitely benefited from both types of robots.

We are looking forward to some of the new features that are going to be released. One of them is in the UI, where you can document what your processes have and figure out if any have the potential for automation. That is going to be very helpful.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to first speak with a partner. If someone is new and hasn't been in this space before, it's going to be kind of confusing and they're going to need somebody to guide them it setting it up.

This is a really great product and there's a lot of potential for it.

I would rate this solution a nine 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.
PeerSpot user
Senior RPA and AI at Bertelsmann
Real User
Savings in time and money helps us compete with services offered by lower-cost countries
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of unattended robots is that they are always available."
  • "We would like to see improvements in Studio such as syntax highlighting and documentation functionality for audit purposes."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Orchestrator, attended robots, and unattended robots.

Our primary use case for this solution is in the financial industry.

We do not yet run our automations in a virtual environment.

With respect to how easy it is to automate our company's processes, on a scale of one to five, I would rate this solution a four. The whole interface needs some TLC because it can be a bit tricky.

We have used the UiPath training and it has improved a lot since we first tried it. When I used it a while ago, it had its problems. I think it came due to the fact that it was not developed by native English speakers. For example, they had questions that were simply wrong. It has improved a lot and now it is beneficial. I think that the biggest challenge is for them to stay up to date.

From the point that we purchased our UiPath license until we had our first robot was approximately four and a half months.

How has it helped my organization?

This solution has saved us time, but more importantly, it has saved us money by not paying certain fees or certain penalties. With respect to saving money, the last amount that I saw was six figures. Legally, I am not allowed to say more.

Being in the finance business and having certain audits, this solution helps to make sure that we have validations and checks in place to help us to do our processing quicker. Also, with invoices, normally when you pay them by a certain date you get a certain discount. So, we've managed to significantly increase the savings we get just from having invoices processed earlier or on time.

In terms of eliminating human errors, we have one process where we've eliminated errors completely. The average is that we eliminate errors by fifty to sixty percent.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature in Orchestrator is the scalability.

The most valuable feature of unattended robots is that they are always available.

What needs improvement?

They have added a lot of new features over the past months, and things are a little more complicated. In the interface, sometimes you just have the screen full of windows and figuring out what goes where can be a bit tricky.

We would like to see improvements in Studio such as syntax highlighting and documentation functionality for audit purposes. That would be great.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

With respect to the stability, on a scale from one to five, I would rate this solution a four. There are a couple of things that break the robots, and it has to do with the technology itself. The user interface and other components are prone to error, and it's not one hundred percent automation. This is something that you take into consideration when you do RPA. They have also had a couple of updates over the past years where they made significant changes that basically broke the robots.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have more than a hundred people involved with RPA.

How are customer service and technical support?

So far, I have only used the ticketing through email support, and it is sometimes frustrating. I've only just learned that there is telephone support. It is hard for me to rate customer service because I was looking for telephone support, thinking that it was not available.

In general, there is room for improvement support-wise.

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

We are in an industry that is heavily targetted by low-cost countries, so in order for us to stay competitive, we had to do something. When we did our research, the two obvious solutions were RPA and AI.

When we started, it was with Blue Prism, and we learned from the issues we had. When we were looking at what we could do as an AI, UiPath started to emerge and started to become a big player. We then looked at capabilities and the licensing model, and at the time there were two vendors that had pretty similar capabilities.

These two were Automation Anywhere and UiPath. Automation Anywhere had a very high initial investment requirement and UiPath didn't, which is why we stayed with UiPath. I believe that you had to buy at least a hundred licenses for Automation Anywhere, whereas with UiPath you can buy one or two.

It looks like we made the right choice.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of UiPath was straightforward. The approvals on our side slowed things down. If it were not for that then we could have been up and running in six weeks.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented the solution ourselves.

What was our ROI?

We only automate processes where we expect to see ROI within twelve months. As such, most of our processes have an ROI between six and twelve months.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere before choosing this solution.

What other advice do I have?

We are in the process of moving this solution to the cloud.

From a cost perspective, it is very hard to get ROI with an attended robot. The price is too high.

My advice to anybody who is researching this solution is not to overthink it. RPA is a technology that you learn by doing it.

This is a very strong product. I think that there is a lot of good investment and a lot of good attention out there. This is the best or one of the two best tools out there. They are listening to what the market wants and just need to be careful not to get greedy. That said, there is always a little bit of space for improvement.

I would rate this solution a ten 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.
PeerSpot user
Automation Lead at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Good training and a forward-thinking platform, Unattended bots save us time and eliminate errors
Pros and Cons
  • "The Orchestrator management tools are growing a lot and are constantly improving."
  • "The technical support is a bit of a weak point for this solution, and ideally, they can improve turnaround time so that we don't have to figure things out ourselves as often."

What is our primary use case?

We are using unattended bots, Orchestrator, and Studio.

We use this solution for doing a variety of things. It includes a lot of back-office finance and accounting, tax, and a little bit on our operations side. We're also using it for some test automation within our IT group, so helping to test our points of sale, and some of our data transfers as well.

Orchestrator runs on a dedicated server, but our bots all run on virtual dedicated machines in our data center. There were some challenges in setting everything up to run in a virtual environment. We implemented a couple of years ago, so I think that it has improved by now, although it was challenging.

Part of it was on our end, where our people were not familiar with it. The challenges included picking the right type of VM to run on, having the right kind of setup, and having the environment configured correctly. We needed this to allow the RPA team to have enough control over the day-to-day maintenance, and not have bottlenecks with the technical side. Managing things when we had issues or needed to add something new was also a challenge.

The documentation was kind of broad and didn't go into the detail that we wanted it to, although I have seen that get better, so that is really good. I'm sure if we were trying to implement it today, it would probably be a lot smoother with the tools that they've come up with.

With respect to how easy it is to automate our company's processes, on a scale of one to five, I would rate this solution a four. I think there are still a few things they could do and it looks like they are working towards that. It still requires a good bit of training and ramping up for someone brand new to it, especially without a programming background, to jump in and start building. I think they can continue to refine that and they definitely are moving in the right direction. It's a little bit of a technical hurdle to overcome to be able to build not only just basic automations but enterprise-scale automations and automations that are reliable and can check up on themselves. I think they can work some more of that into the actual tool because we've had to do a lot of figuring out how to build best practices and how to program it directly, and the best way to be able to allow us to support it cleanly through the lifecycle. It is good, but there are some things they can add in to truly make it a five. My standards are pretty high, but I'm sure they'll get there.

On a scale of one to five, judging how beneficial it is, I would rate the training a five. We are big fans of it. I typically don't get the luxury of hiring people with technical backgrounds. We usually have people coming out of school or people transferring from other departments who are interested in RPA. So, the Academy tools have been a lifesaver for us and they've been very good, especially for the RPA developer track. It is very detailed and we can really get someone through that training and feel like they're at least able to perform the basic functions of the tool pretty well. From there it is up to us in terms of getting them familiar with our best practices and how we program things and get some hands-on training with the more senior RPA developer to learn some further tips and tricks. Overall, I'm very pleased with the Academy offerings and they're one of the best I've seen from many of them.

From the point that we purchased our UiPath license until we had our first robot was perhaps a month or two. It did not take long, and that included time for training. When we started off, we bought the software, went through the training as a team, and then started building a few small things. We probably had the first one in production within two months of buying the software.

How has it helped my organization?

We have seen a lot of improvements to our organization.

We have one that was a really high-visibility project, where it was kind of a data entry thing that all of our retail managers were spending time on. The data was fed through to a vendor that we franchise through, and they were spending an hour or two a week across hundreds of locations.

We took that into the back office and got data feeds for all the data they were putting in, and then had a bot go through to the current system of reporting, and enter that data for every single store location. We were able to free up those managers with a bunch of time. It was about 5,500 hours a year.

In terms of eliminating human errors, I can say that it has happened but it is difficult to approximate by how much. This is in part because we have a wide variety of software of processes that we've implemented. So, in some, it's definitely higher than others. On the whole, it's been good and it's been helpful, for sure.

What is most valuable?

A lot of the value from this solution comes from Studio and the activities. They really enable us to make things happen accurately, with the clicks and the types they support. Of all the automation tools I've tried or used, they seem to be the most accurate and most consistent.

The Orchestrator management tools are growing a lot and are constantly improving.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see more interconnectedness of everything, including making the APIs a little easier to use, and having bots be able to call other bots and get them to start things. Having all of this a little more seamless would be really helpful.

I would like to see more seamless AI functionality built in to allow teams without data scientists or strong data people to be able to build and deploy simple models that will help enhance their bots further and let them do more.

The technical support is a bit of a weak point for this solution, and ideally, they can improve turnaround time so that we don't have to figure things out ourselves as often.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for a couple of years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

With respect to the stability, on a scale from one to five, I would rate this solution a four.

We've had some issues with stability, and I've talked to a lot of other companies who've had maybe more issues than us. It concerns ongoing support and the issues with bots not performing as expected or doing unexpected things as well. The problem is running into unexpected issues that can result from things that are not very readily apparent on the surface. This can be caused by underlying configuration differences in Windows, or patches that have happened, that sort of thing. It's still a challenge to manage and we often have bots that don't seem to have the issues when we are troubleshooting.

Sometimes it is our fault because we're not programming in enough breaks or logging enough to really track what's going on. It seems very dependent on the underlying operating system and things like update states of office applications. Occasionally, it'll just get stuck or hung up and we can't really figure out why, and that's frustrating. It definitely takes people time to go in and resolve those issues and figure it out.

It just seems like there's a lot of times where we just rerun the bot and then it works fine. I find it odd that it would stop at one point and then you just rerun it again and it works. A lot of those are, I will admit, due to input data issues or the system going down, or a website not being available or loading too slowly when it checks. However, I would like to see them continue to focus on stability as a platform, to avoid those as much as possible any issue.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

My team that I work with directly is probably about ten people in total. There are a couple of other teams who are working more on test automation that are kind of separate and that's probably a total of about five other people right now, and we're looking to expand to another couple of teams. That will probably be about five more people within the next year, and then my team is growing. We're looking to add a few more people next year as well.

I am the automation lead, and the users are RPA developers and business analysts.

How are customer service and technical support?

When it comes to the technical support for this solution, I feel that it may be a little bit of a weak point. When we reached out to customer support, we haven't gotten a ton of help, or it takes them quite a while to dig through the issue. It is understandable because they're going through someone else's code essentially, to try to resolve an issue. So, usually, we end up relying on internal people, more senior developers.

Sometimes it's just a matter of rerunning it or changing some input parameters and then trying it again, which is not the cleanest troubleshooting by any means. The problem is we felt like we had to, given the slow turnaround time on their support desk. We've kind of had to have the internal ability to figure things out.

Overall, I would rate their technical support a three out of five.

I know that they're a growing company and that they have a lot of new people. It seems like we've maybe had some bad luck in terms of the people that we've been in contact with when we've reached out. Perhaps they were new and maybe not fully understanding. There have been times we've reached out to support where we feel like we know the system better than they do, and that's frustrating. Again, that's why we've had to focus on internal knowledge building, which is a strength of theirs, through the training offered.

We do have a CSM assigned to us who I work with and he's somewhat spotty at times. I think he has a lot on his plate. So, at times we have questions that take a while to get answered.

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

We did a proof of concept that was driven by a consulting company and it was not a success. After that, we decided to implement an in-house solution using UiPath and from there it was successful.

We began with RPA because our management was interested in the potential and in trying it out. Even though the PoC failed, I think there was a promise with the software that we were able to see, so we made the purchase and dove into it. Obviously, it has been successful.

How was the initial setup?

Installing the software itself, the Studio, most of the elements of the licensing and that sort of thing, were all very straightforward, which is great. I would say that the technical side, regarding the virtual machines, took a while in terms of setting up accounts and getting all the VM stuff figured out. All of that took a little bit longer than we expected before we had a stable platform. I think that there could've been some more resources available there, which I think they've partially fixed by now.

What was our ROI?

We were calculating our savings and our estimate is that in a little under a year, perhaps as little as six months, we probably earned back the amounts that we had paid for the platform for a year. Even into the journey, we felt like we had broken even and were making more money on top of that. ROI was very fast.

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

I can estimate our licensing costs are approximately $100,000 USD per year.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

In addition to UiPath, we evaluated Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism.

My main reason for selecting UiPath, I think, was the strategy of focusing on a very open platform and allowing anyone to try out the trial, and allowing anyone to register for the Academy. I'm really focusing on democratizing RPA and making it available to everyone. It was a big focus for me because the other two had very closed-off systems and while they were able to give us demos, we didn't really get as good of a feel for how the software works as we did with UiPath where we could just download it and try it.

Also, we just had very good experiences with the salespeople and the people who demoed the product. They were very positive and very excited about RPA, and kind of matched what we were looking for. We felt like it was a much better fit for us, focusing on easy to use automation, not as much on code security like Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere didn't seem to have a clear strategy for what they wanted to do moving forward.

Ultimately, UiPath has been a successful choice, and I feel that they have continued to grow their lead on the competition.

What other advice do I have?

I really liked a lot of the things I see coming in terms of the future improvements for Orchestrator. I think it's going to continue to grow into a true kind of Cloud Platform for end-to-end automation, whereas right now, it's a little more focused just on building things in Studio, and then managing monitoring them in Orchestrator. So, I'm excited about some of the further integration with the dashboards and everything for managing how it works.

Upcoming is better management of projects from end to end. I've built a lot of things myself to keep up with that. But having UiPath support, a lot of that, a little bit better, it's improved. This is including the focus on the process mining and the design phase, and it's often a bottleneck of not having enough time to go through and really thoroughly map out and document the processes.

I am interested in trying the specific Studio for test automation. I think UiPath has a big advantage in that space with their RPA software. It really solves an issue that a lot of other test automation platforms have, which is not being as consistent as they could be, or being too hard or too complicated to program correctly.

From a cost perspective, we have definitely got our money's worth on the unattended bots, which is what we have been focused on. We have bought a few attended bots to try them and this next year, we will be looking for good use cases. It requires a little more integration and using the API. We're looking at leveraging more attended bots, and we may end up buying more, but we're still evaluating how to use them. Unattended bots felt like the clearest advantage for us to implement, and we were successful in starting with those.

We were an early adopter of this solution in our region, so I often speak with people who are researching this solution. I tell them that UiPath is a really great platform and it's growing. It's moving in a really great direction, and I recommend people to take it in-house. Find a small team of people who are really passionate and interested in learning it, and then start small. Start with a few small things to get your feet under you, build an operating model that will support scaling, and then slowly scale it out over time. That's what we have done, and it has been successful for us.

Overall, I am very happy with UiPath, but I do have a few small quibbles. On the whole, it's been very successful and I'm very happy.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Bhuvanesh Shakthi - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Engineer (UiPath Developer) at Virtusa Consultancy services Pvt. Ltd
Real User
We don't need to know much code because most activities are drag and drop
Pros and Cons
  • "I like UiPath's coding engine."
  • "We only use the UiPath Community for support. It would be nice if a team of developers or a support person were available to help us work internally on our project. That would be helpful."

What is our primary use case?

I'm using UiPath on an automation project for my company in the banking domain. The use cases are for things like insurance claims and debit card transactions. We use it for our clients' requirements and also internally to address any of our company's needs for UI automation. 

How has it helped my organization?

When we started the client's project, they had a simple process, but they were dealing with a large volume of data. Most organizations primarily rely on Excel as their main solution, and they're doing processes through that. They wanted to automate Excel processes that they had been doing manually. UiPath improves productivity and saves time. For example, I developed a bot for processing insurance claims in UiPath. It involved checking documents and comparing them to the information in the databases. The process would take around 40 minutes to perform manually. We reduced that to eight or nine minutes per process through automation. It greatly increased the volume we could handle, producing a lot of value for the organization.

As we developed more automations for Excel, their manual work decreased, so they gave us more requirements. I've developed about 15 separate processes for the banking project I'm working on. Each process has its own way of doing it. We have developed network solutions. UiPath has contributed so much to the development of automation in our company. Our clients are pleased because they can boost their revenue by introducing bots.

UiPath has helped us reduce our on-premise footprint. The development cycle depends on whether it's a major or minor process. We start development, test, and deploy. After that, a support team will maintain the process, and we will not be involved again. We have multiple people working on a particular project, and it changes with every sprint of a cycle.  

UiPath Academy has lots of videos and other resources. While we can go to YouTube or some other source to learn about UiPath, we don't get a comprehensive understanding of the solution or the latest features. We can only get this through UiPath, and everything we need is in the courses. You can take a foundational course to learn the basics and get a certification that is valid everywhere from the advanced developer courses. Every company expects its UiPath developers to have this certification. 

UiPath's AI functionality is useful if we're working with unstructured data. For example, if we have a PDF where the data we want to extract is not separated, we can use AI to define the data for automation. I have done some practice use cases for learning purposes, but I haven't used AI in a project.

The solution helps to speed up digital transformation. I'm not sure about other countries, but many banks in India are still doing things manually and not using UI automation. This is a revolution in banking technology because bots are doing everything, and they don't need a lot of people to do the tasks.

UiPath can reduce human error, but a developer needs to understand the process completely that the bot will perform and provide all the conditions for how to perform things. After the client approves a project, we create a bot, and it will function based on the solution documentation. The UiPath bot will perform whatever conditions I give it. About 80 percent of the solutions we develop will complete the process without human intervention, and the remaining 20 percent of automations require some manual effort.

The solution frees up employee time because UiPath doesn't require much coding knowledge. If we can find a working solution for many purposes, we can download it. We don't need to spend time developing as many processes. 

What is most valuable?

I like UiPath's coding engine. We don't need to know much code. Most of the activities in UiPath are drag and drop. It's easy to build automations in UiPath. If we need support also, that doesn't require much effort. The UiPath tool gives us a structured framework. That is used in almost every project I work on. It made our development process effortless. We've completed a lot of projects with the help of the framework. 

The UiPath community enables users to share knowledge and bots that they've developed. If I have a bot installed in our machines, it doesn't require much effort for other users to run it. The user experience is seamless and user-friendly. Everything is ported on the back end, and it works as expected everywhere. If we have any doubt about a topic, we can post a question on the user community forum, and people from around the world will offer solutions in minutes. It takes very little time to get the solution. 

What needs improvement?

We only use the UiPath Community for support. It would be nice if a team of developers or a support person were available to help us work internally on our project. That would be helpful.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used UiPath since 2020.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is stable. All of my colleagues in other companies feel that this is highly stable compared to other tools.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

I rate UiPath eight out of 10. We primarily get support from the UiPath Community, but sometimes their solutions work differently when we take it to our machine sometimes we have this capability. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I also learned Automation Anywhere at the same time, but I found that the UiPath interface was easier for beginners to learn. 

How was the initial setup?

We use UiPath as a cloud service. You create packages that are deployed through Orchestrator. Any machine with access to Orchestrator can just download the package and run it. The deployment is straightforward if we have the necessary access. We need to add a package to Orchestrator and download it. It doesn't require much time. 

We have a team of people. Every deployment includes developers, a support team, and an engineering team that will deploy the code to the production machine. The support team will ensure the bot is running properly after deployment, while the developer is the one who creates the package. UiPath doesn't require much maintenance aside from upgrading the bots with packages from UiPath. 

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

The pricing model is based on the number of processes. My colleagues tell me that UiPath's pricing is pretty normal compared to other solutions. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate UiPath nine out of 10. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in RPA. It's easy to learn and implement. You will not be disappointed. I still have a lot to learn. There are so many capabilities. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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Ganesh Dharmarajan - PeerSpot reviewer
RPA developer/ Software Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Action Center allows us to combine robotic processing with human confirmation
Pros and Cons
  • "If an organization has more than 50 processes and you want to monitor them at the end of the day, there is a very good dashboard called Orchestrator. It will show you a report on process status, success or failure. If it failed, it will show you the exact reason."
  • "Whenever they release a new version, there are some bugs. They should strengthen their testing team to avoid these errors and not release the product to the market with bugs."

What is our primary use case?

UiPath fills the gaps; it's a type of bridge between daily tasks and end-users. For example, on a daily basis, a user may need to prepare and send a report on time. There are many tasks like that on a daily basis that are boring if you are doing them continuously. UiPath can act smartly, eliminate human involvement, and capture everything.

How has it helped my organization?

If you have a meeting but also want to prepare a report, a robot can do it on your behalf and do so with zero errors. Whatever we program it to do is what it will do. It reduces human error by more than 90 percent.

And talking about digital transformation, I have worked with a lot of the taxation forms in the APAC region, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and these forms are a bit tricky and a challenge. The new digital product they brought in is very nice and is able to crack them and capture all the necessary data from those forms. It's pretty cool, using the AI.

UiPath also reduces the time people spend on tasks. I'm working with a client whose only KPI is the time things take, and the dashboard is showing automation is saving 90 percent of human time with UiPath.

Some organizations have an exact ditto—a mirror environment set up between their production and UAT environments. But a few organizations are not like this. Their UATs slightly deviate from the production environment. In this scenario, we have what we call PAT, production acceptance testing, before things are moved to production. UiPath overcomes the challenges of that. It enables you to easily update any changes between these environments. That will not take much time for the developer. Selectors play a major, vital role in automation, and if a selector is changed from one environment to another, it is not that hard to update it. It's very easy, actually, meaning you can do it in less time.

What is most valuable?

It's a no-code platform. You don't need to have in-depth coding knowledge, which means people can adopt it and move forward with it. It's very convenient to use. If you are interested in learning new things, UiPath is an open platform that you can play around with however you want. And there are a lot of roles, not only as a developer but other roles as well.

Also, if an organization has more than 50 processes and you want to monitor them at the end of the day, there is a very good dashboard called Orchestrator. It will show you a report on process status, success or failure. If it failed, it will show you the exact reason. It's good to have this kind of dashboard in your life.

For financial payments, for example, at the end of the day, humans are smarter than a robot. Only humans know the scenarios that decide whether we can make a payment or not. So humans fill this gap at a certain point in time. UiPath has introduced a product called Action Center. With this product, a robot will process all the payments, and then it will ask permission through Action Center for whether it can proceed or not. If they press OK or approve something, the robot will continue. Otherwise, it will not. It's end-to-end automation.

When we recruit any new employees, we first suggest that they sign in to the UiPath Academy and go through the courses. One of the good things I like about it is that they keep updating it. Whenever there are new features, they are immediately reflected in the Academy. It gives you detailed information, both text and video. And at the end of the module, they check your knowledge, what you have learned from it. They also have certifications, such as UiPath for developers, associates, and business analysts. They want to encourage the community to use the Academy. I recently received my UiPath certification, which is a bit harder than other certifications. You have to have in-depth knowledge to get it. Overall, the Academy is good.

I have gone through all the new AI features. They say the robot is able to smartly create the body of an email based on your content. I have already done some testing on that, and it worked fine. It's pretty cool.

What needs improvement?

Whenever they release a new version, there are some bugs. They should strengthen their testing team to avoid these errors and not release the product to the market with bugs. They do release patches, but they should take their time. Their target is to release a new update quarterly. I would suggest they take an extra 15 days to do proper testing and then release. As a developer, I see a lot of Activities have bugs.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for almost six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is an eight out of 10.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is a nine out of 10.

How are customer service and support?

Their technical support is very fast. I have created a few tickets for license-related bugs, and they have replied fast. Their support is good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

Deployment takes three to four days, generally. They will say it takes hours, but every organization is different in terms of its IT security policies, et cetera. It takes some time.

There isn't any separate maintenance required for the solutions. A robot will just keep on working. All you need is a good backup system.

What was our ROI?

ROI may differ from company to company. Some think about human resources, and some think about money. But I have seen ROI in all these ways. It saves you a lot of time and money as well. If you have an employee that was responsible for a process, they can now spend that time on other tasks.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

There are a lot of automation tools in the market, such as Power Automate, but UiPath is number one right now. Initially, we started with it for automation purposes, but they have released many other products as well. Day by day, it's getting bigger.

I have worked with other tools as well, but in a complex situation, such as HR-related processes, where there are mathematical calculations, it's those calculations that are a challenge for users as well as developers. But UiPath will come up with a very good way to do a lot of arithmetical calculations. That makes it very easy to finish a complex process. With other tools, it may take some time. As a developer, UiPath is easier.

There are a lot of pros and cons when you're comparing one product to another. One important difference is robot speed. Power Automate works much faster than UiPath. When I develop, I can see a difference in the time it takes. This is something for UiPath to think about. And the pricing, of course. People say the robot license for UiPath is costly. Power Automate provides a very cheap rate, like $50 per month. UiPath is an annual subscription, but with Power Automate you can pay monthly as well. UiPath doesn't have that option.

What other advice do I have?

If you have a very simple task, you can achieve it very quickly with UiPath. But complex tasks can also be achieved very easily. If you have good developers and they have the knowledge, they can easily crack more difficult tasks. I have worked on a lot of calculation-type tasks, Excel-based complex applications. We do well with this solution.

My advice is to go ahead and install it. As long as you're ready to invest in the product, it will give you better results. But go with the option of a proper project management team as well as developers. With that kind of team, you will see value for your money. The product is good, but you should have the proper people.

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