Nico Thumm - PeerSpot reviewer
RPA Developer at a construction company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
We no longer need to engage external software developers for automation, speeding up and simplifying the process
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the REFramework. It's one of the unique selling points of UiPath because it gives you a framework within the software to structure your processes. It's perfect in terms of error handling and it provides a lot of functionalities for processing multiple transactions. It makes the whole solution more robust."
  • "I tested the Process Mining at my previous company and I don't think it's suitable for RPA processes. It operates at a way higher level and, using it, you may find an area in which you can optimize a process, but it doesn't just give you a defined process for automation. It doesn't necessarily help you to identify the processes."

What is our primary use case?

We work as a center of excellence and we develop automations centrally for other departments. All our deployments are unattended bots that are deployed and managed by us, centrally. They are all running on a virtual machine. Nothing is running on client computers or laptops. We do not have any attended use cases. The process owners are interacting with the bots.

We use the bots for a lot of reporting, including monthly and weekly reports. We are a construction company and we have a lot of reports for all kinds of things, such as construction projects, different construction sites, and various subsidiaries for regional departments. A region like Bavaria, for example, needs its reports. And there are plenty of controlling departments in all of the subsidiaries.

We also have some ticketing use cases. One of them is for IT services, meaning internal ticketing. That bot regularly checks our ticket software and automatically processes some of the tickets. For example, when an employee needs rights to a specific system, the bot checks whether they fulfill the requirements and approves or declines the ticket.

Another type of ticketing use case is more about processing customer tickets. As a construction company, we also do facility management, and that means there are a lot of external customers with their own systems in which they record tickets. The tickets are not visible in our local systems so someone has to go to the external systems, export the tickets, filter them, and then tell everyone what they're supposed to do to their buildings as a result. The tickets might be about small repair jobs, for example. We run this daily and, in the morning, everyone receives an email with all the tickets that have to be done within one day, three days, one week, et cetera.

Both of the ticketing use cases are connected with SLAs. If you miss a certain time frame before processing a ticket for external customers, you have to pay a penalty fee. For the internal tickets there are SLAs for internal tracking purposes. Because those tickets have to be processed within two hours, that bot runs every two hours and checks for new tickets.

Another IT services use case is for getting access rights to local drives.

We also have many recurring processes. For example, in HR they have to go to the system and confirm a process. It’s a necessary evil which is probably due to the legacy systems we have. Someone defined this process a long time ago and it still has to be done.

We also have use cases in finance and treasury. They are not tickets, but they process requests from employees. For example, they can request cash on a specific card and the bot will check the emails and then basically transfer data from an email, or from a PDF form attached to an email, and enter it into the finance system.

One last type of use case is where the bot works as an interface between systems. Data has to be exported from one system and imported to another system and there is no existing API. The bot exports and imports the data. We have one bot that exports PDF documents and sends them to an email interface. It defines a specific subject and then attaches the file. That file will automatically be uploaded to another system. Or the bot may log in to a system and upload the document. These use cases are due to the fact that there is no interface between two systems and they're either not big enough to develop an API or they may involve an external customer system and the customer has no interest in providing an API.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath has freed up our employees' time and that's its main purpose. We don't have huge use cases, but for our bigger use cases it could be saving us 35 to 40 hours per month. With the smaller processes, people save about two hours a month. We have 23 use cases that are live at the moment and the total time saved by them is about seven or eight person-days a week. The big processes account for 50 to 60 percent of all the savings.

Employees have more time for more important things, but there are no direct cost savings from our automations. What we do have are a lot of efficiency gains and some time savings. Any cost savings are on the lower end of the scale.

The solution also definitely reduces human error. We have some processes that involve penalty fees if there is human error, so the reduction in errors has probably affected the business on a very small scale.

In terms of the cost of automations, before UiPath the whole automation process was much more complex. There might have been software providers involved in that process, charging us and providing APIs. And the whole process took way longer. Now that we have a UiPath license, the cost of implementing any automation is zero, other than our salaries, which would be paid anyway. The automation creation process is definitely a lot faster. It's also cheaper because there is no involvement of an external software developer, which is probably the most expensive part.

What is most valuable?

I like the REFramework. It's one of the unique selling points of UiPath because it gives you a framework within the software to structure your processes. It's perfect in terms of error handling and it provides a lot of functionalities for processing multiple transactions. It makes the whole solution more robust.

What needs improvement?

I tested the Process Mining at my previous company and I don't think it's suitable for RPA processes. It operates at a way higher level and, using it, you may find an area in which you can optimize a process, but it doesn't just give you a defined process for automation. It doesn't necessarily help you to identify the processes.

The Task Capture component offers the ability to record a process and it will give you process documentation. It tells you how many clicks are being made, and it will create screenshots. It tells you the basic activities that are being done in the process. When we tested it, the quality of these documents was very low. It took more time to take the output and make it useful than it would have taken to analyze and document the process ourselves. 

We are not using any of that. Together with the customer, we are manually defining and documenting processes. We are doing the actual automation, of course, with UiPath. In terms of monitoring it afterward, it's 50/50. Standard Orchestrator definitely offers you some ways to monitor your processes. It tells you how many processes failed and why they failed. You could also define a process that sends you an email when it fails.

UiPath also offers some BI components, but that requires a separate license and costs. We are not using them. The whole BI reporting functionality of standard UiPath is not that great. We use external dashboards in Power BI.

We also have a calendar application because, with standard Orchestrator, there's no overview about when you have bots running and when you have free slots. So it's also not great for planning license usage. The whole visualization piece, out-of-the-box, is not so nice. UiPath is mainly the automation tool for us, and it's definitely great for that. But in terms of analysis and monitoring, there's definitely still potential for the software.

Buyer's Guide
UiPath
November 2023
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2023.
746,635 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for two and a half to three years.

How are customer service and support?

Their tech support replies quite quickly. But when we had technical problems, most of the time, we had to have multiple calls. It's not that great. They definitely provided us with all the experts, but they just didn't immediately find solutions, most of the time.

It often took two to three days to fix our issues. We would have to explain the issue one or two times and then they say, "Okay, we need to do a call." After the call we would try out the solution but it wouldn't work and there would be another call. Support is another potential area for improvement.

Also, we bought our licenses from a UiPath partner. We are actually supposed to talk to them for support, but they charge for their consulting services. They are the reason we didn't have constant communication with UiPath. From my experience at my previous job, where we worked with UiPath, we were in close communication with the UiPath success manager. There was way better communication and support because we always had a channel that we could talk to regularly. And they already knew what our issues had been. If you are working directly with UiPath, the tech support is good, although not great.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

We did not have a previous solution.

How was the initial setup?

I started in RPA with my previous company. My boss just told me to get into this topic. I started with the UiPath Academy before we were even using the software, but I could follow all the courses. It's all video training, so it's easy to follow. The Microsoft training often consists of long sets of text and it says "expected reading time is 23 minutes," but it's 23 minutes just to read the text. Now, UiPath even offers training exercises. 

And because they offer the Community version, you can download the full-featured software without actually having a license, for personal use and for training purposes. That way you can try out whatever you learn. That makes the learning very practical. And the Community version is not limited to 30 days like test versions of some other solutions. It's a version that you can use for testing forever and you can use all the functionalities. That definitely helped me when I did the training. That's how I got from knowing nothing about RPA to knowing a lot about RPA, before working with it.

If you have a basic understanding of the software, the most important thing is to develop with it, because that gives you practical experience.

They also have very specific, deep-dive courses, for working with Orchestrator, among other things. They're easy to find. You can invest two hours and learn the most important aspects of the UI and look for what you need.

With the Advanced RPA Developer certification, there is an exam. That is where I got the most practical experience. It's not just quizzes, it's also practical projects.

Overall, the Academy is great. It has training paths as well as very specific courses. 

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

UiPath is quite expensive and whatever additional components you want to use will have additional costs. We are not using the Document Understanding feature because of the cost. For Document Understanding, the cost may be per transaction.

Compared to Power Automate, UiPath is quite expensive to set up. What we are trying to do, and likely everybody tries to do this, is fully occupy one unattended-bot license before getting another one. So it's not just a matter of buying a few licenses, because they are quite expensive. That definitely also affects the return on investment, especially if you automate smaller processes.

Also, we are currently working with centralized automation development, but we are planning to decentralize it with citizen developers as well, for smaller processes. For that, we intend to use Power Automate Desktop because in that scenario the pricing disqualified UiPath. If you give a UiPath Studio license to many people—to fulfill the vision of a bot for every person—or even to one person per department, they would have to work quite hard to see a positive return on investment. 

For UiPath, you need Orchestrator, which is already quite expensive, although you can use just one to start with. But if you have multiple unattended-bot licenses and multiple Studio licenses, it gets expensive quite fast. 

Also, the whole pricing structure is very unclear. You can't find out anything about prices before talking with UiPath or with a partner. At that point, you're still not sure what kind of price you're getting. Of course, they offer savings when you order many licenses, but there's no fixed reference point if you haven't talked to UiPath before. There is no real information about what you actually need and how much you can expect it to cost. 

With the Microsoft platform, you can directly see the kinds of packages they have and whether they're charging per process or per transaction. You see the price. It's very transparent.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

When I compare UiPath with other providers' solutions, UiPath offers a very structured development interface. It is more structured than the interface of Microsoft Power Automate, for example. It offers a very visually appealing way of structuring the processes in flow charts as well as in sequences. It makes it easy to see an overview of a process. I definitely like UiPath's development interface.

UiPath Orchestrator is definitely great, and better than what competitors offer because it enables you to use queues very easily, which again helps to create robust automations.

In addition, the UiPath community is the best among all the software communities that I've seen. There's a great forum. Whatever question you have will either be answered by other developers or even UiPath employees who participate in the forum. Also, there is already a huge stock of questions and answers about automation. Usually, you will get an answer to any question within hours or even minutes. Together with the training platform, the whole ecosystem around the community is much better than that of any other software I've ever seen.

In my previous company, we evaluated the big ones at that time: Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and UiPath. 

In my current company, we mainly evaluated two solutions. The first was UiPath, because it's probably the most powerful solution. The second was Microsoft Power Automate, which is now becoming more mature. Power Automate is probably also the easiest to implement because we are Office 365 users. We could just provide a Power Automate desktop license to any of our employees. It's definitely much easier to acquire Power Automate licenses and provide them to the users. It's directly integrated. There's no need for IT involvement.

What other advice do I have?

In my opinion, UiPath is easy to use. Once you have been using it for a while, it's pretty easy. If you're using it as a citizen developer, meaning that you want to automate your own processes, it's probably a bit complex. It offers a lot of functionality and properties that can be edited per activity. You have to have a basic understanding of variables, arguments, et cetera, if you want to build a robust solution.

The macro recorder is not that nice. It's not like you can just record a process and then run it over and over again. It definitely requires some experience to create a robust process. All in all, I think it's easy to use. 

I also tried the StudioX version, just for testing purposes, and that may be a bit easier to use, but it's still not a tool that you can give to someone and they will be able to start developing on their own. In particular, they will not be able to run something unattended because that requires a lot of testing. It requires basic knowledge, which comes with experience, about the HTML selectors.

In general, UiPath is the most powerful solution there is on the market right now for RPA, mainly because of the easy structure provided by UiPath Orchestrator for larger transactional business processes.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
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
Sushil Arya - PeerSpot reviewer
Software developer at Fiserv
Real User
Top 10
It saves time and increases productivity, and its drag-and-drop functionality and visualizations make it very easy to use
Pros and Cons
  • "Its ease of use is valuable. For building an application, if I give this product to a newbie, he or she would be able to easily use it and build an application with minimum knowledge. No extra training is required. Its features are self-explanatory, and anyone can understand them, which is the main feature of this product."
  • "It can be improved in terms of platform integration. It is platform-independent, but it should be easy to integrate with different platforms, such as Windows, Linux, Cloud, etc. If I am using AWS for my server response, I should be able to integrate that into UiPath."

What is our primary use case?

We are working with automation, and it is very useful for my enterprise and our clients. We are using UiPath for building applications for automation purposes. Some of our clients are in the banking industry. They ask us to create applications to automate their processes, and we use UiPath for that.

How has it helped my organization?

Our overall productivity has increased because the bandwidth of our people has increased. Previously, when we were manually doing a particular task, it used to take us two hours, and after building the application with UiPath, the same task is taking around 10 seconds. From two hours, the time has come down to 10 seconds, which increases our bandwidth and productivity.

We are moving into robotics, and in robotics, advanced NLP and AI are being used. As tasks move from being manual to being automated, it definitely reduces the effort and improves productivity. The saved time can be utilized in a better way.

What is most valuable?

Its ease of use is valuable. For building an application, if I give this product to a newbie, he or she would be able to easily use it and build an application with minimum knowledge. No extra training is required. Its features are self-explanatory, and anyone can understand them, which is the main feature of this product.

I extensively work on the automation part, and I like the drag-and-drop functionality for workflows. Its graphical workspace or visualizations make it a unique product. It provides good visualizations, which are helpful in understanding the workflow. I am very impressed by its drag and drop functionality, and I would recommend it to everyone.

What needs improvement?

It can be improved in terms of platform integration. It is platform-independent, but it should be easy to integrate with different platforms, such as Windows, Linux, Cloud, etc. If I am using AWS for my server response, I should be able to integrate that into UiPath. 

If I can get some manuals along with the product, it will be good to see all the features that are available in it.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for the last eight years. I have been in the software industry for about eight and a half years, and I have been using UiPath very regularly for my day-to-day work. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Its stability is good. In the last couple of years, I didn't have any problems. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have a team of 30 to 40 people who use this solution. At this time, we don't have plans to increase its usage. If the usage of this tool grows, it would definitely be better. It will increase productivity and more efficient use of our company.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate them a nine out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I have used Visual Studio previously to build applications. I switched to UiPath because I like its interface and the drag-and-drop functionality. When I am building an application using this, it's very easy to edit the flow. I am very impressed with UiPath.

How was the initial setup?

I'm involved in the development and deployment of applications. I have the knowledge, so for me, it is straightforward. Most of the features are self-explanatory, but there are certain features for which a newbie might have to refer to the manual.

The duration varies from application to application. It can be anything from 30 minutes to six hours. For the development of applications, we use the SDLC model. When our testing is complete, we deploy the application. We have a team of six to eight people for implementation. They are from the product team and the support team. They are software developers at different levels.

In terms of maintenance, it requires upgrades. It is a timely activity, and it happens once or twice a year. We do not have a separate team for maintenance. The same team involved in its deployment takes care of its maintenance.

What was our ROI?

We are able to build applications for our clients, and they are also buying them. So, we have definitely seen an ROI.

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

We are an enterprise. So, its price is bearable for us,  but I am not sure about the small industry. It might be expensive for them.

What other advice do I have?

It is a promising tool. It is very helpful for my day-to-day work. For automation applications, this is the best solution. Its drag-and-drop functionality and visualizations make the work easy. It is a very good tool for me.

I would rate it a nine out of ten because I'm very impressed with this tool.

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?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
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
Buyer's Guide
UiPath
November 2023
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2023.
746,635 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Sr. Manager at VaaaN Infra Pvt Ltd
Real User
Top 20
Features an excellent UI with great functionality and third-party integration
Pros and Cons
  • "The software has an excellent UI; it's very user-friendly. The drag-and-drop options are some of my favorite tools, as they speed up the process, and I find that UiPath offers a solution for all kinds of automation."
  • "The pricing could be more friendly."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution to speed up automation. We were looking to overcome the challenge of handling vast amounts of data, and we use UiPath to create bots to handle that. Tasks can be automated, and human error is reduced.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath improved our organization as it has many benefits; it's straightforward and quick to use, has excellent third-party integration, and simplifies all our task automation.

What is most valuable?

The software has an excellent UI; it's very user-friendly. The drag-and-drop options are some of my favorite tools, as they speed up the process, and I find that UiPath offers a solution for all kinds of automation.

The solution saves a lot of time via automation; a task that took over an hour now takes around two minutes, and it's all handled by bots.

We use the drag-and-drop options, and they speed up our workflows.

What needs improvement?

The pricing could be more friendly. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution for one year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable, it's a reliable software. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product is scalable; it has very good third-party integration and scalability options within the software.

We use the solution in our office, so there are slightly under 100 total users.

How are customer service and support?

The community support and documentation are helpful. I required some training initially, and was able to learn using UiPath websites and YouTube videos. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

I wasn't directly involved in the initial setup, but it took our team one to two months to get to know the product well.

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

I'm not directly involved in the financing, but the IT team considers this product costly.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. It's an excellent product, but there is always room for improvement. 

I highly recommend UiPath as it's easy to learn and offers significant advantages for all kinds of automation. 

The solution is perfect for our requirements. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
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 Automation Analyst at a non-tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Replaces manual work, reduces human errors, and has helpful user community and learning courses
Pros and Cons
  • "The UI Explorer in the UiPath Studio is valuable. We can get a unique and dynamic selector for every element in the UI, which is helpful for me in finding out a particular UI element. Most of my automations have had UI interactions. So, I found it the most helpful feature."
  • "When I started working with UiPath, there were no activities for SAP, but in the version that I'm using right now, there are SAP activities or SAP modules. Previously, I had to code everything from user login to user logout, but now, all the activities are available. I just have to drag and drop and give the username and password. I don't have to do it from scratch. It would be great if they can include activities for all of the most common CRMs and ERPs. They can integrate it with different activities for the most common systems."

What is our primary use case?

My previous company was in the banking sector, and we had done automation with websites, UI, SAP, Excel files, and PDF. In my current company, it is being used for finance and HR. We have ERP, CRM, chatbots, etc. We are using this solution to integrate different systems.

I use UiPath Studio to develop the code, and I use UiPath Orchestrator to publish my work. We have our own UAT systems to test the code. We can install the UiPath in the test environment and find all the compilation errors in the debug mode and fix them. We also have version control. If we upload a version and it doesn't work, we can downgrade the version. Everything is tracked in UiPath Orchestrator.

We are using it on-premise. In my previous company, it was on the cloud, and we accessed it through the cloud. 

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath Academy courses have been helpful for me. There were lots of activities that I didn't know about, and UiPath Academy was helpful for that. There are multiple ways to do an activity, and UiPath Academy helps you to find out those activities. When you start using it, you can find out which activity will work the best for you. The courses are interactive and not boring with just videos or PDFs. They have a mix of PDFs, videos, and interactions. It is fun and interesting if you have a passion for it.

I found the UiPath community very helpful. At the beginning of my career, I had lots of doubts, and I posted them in the community. We had got an unknown error, and we posted our query there thinking that there must be at least one person who has had the same issue. They solved the issue quickly. It was a quick response. If you post a question, sometimes, you can also get a response within five minutes.

I use attended automation, and it has helped to scale RPA benefits in our organization for processes that require human-robot collaboration. We have a process for reconciling bank statements. When the finance department is done with their files, they send them over to me by email, and I have to start the process manually from UiPath Orchestrator. It needs human interaction. It is a monthly process, and we don't want to automatically trigger based on something.

We use its AI functionality a little bit. We have automation for processing invoices that are in different formats. We are using an ML model to train and replicate the output based on the incoming PDFs. We don't have to manually identify the PDF format and process it. Its AI is very helpful in the case of dynamic files where when a PDF is in one format, we want to process it in a certain way, and when it is in another format, we want to process it in a different way. We have automation to automatically identify the fields and then process the documents accordingly. It is helpful in the case of dynamic files. 

It has reduced human errors. We have a process to send emails to the end-users based on the training they complete in our LMS. I did the automation, and the SME was very happy with that automation. She used to have lots of manual errors where she might miss one email id or put an incorrect email id. With the bot, we automated it and added exceptions, etc. It is more stable now, and there are fewer human errors. It is also very helpful for data entry work where there are lots of chances of human errors. All this can be avoided with a bot.

It has freed up employee time. The time saved depends on the complexity and the length of the process. For our LMS use case, the SME used to take around one hour every morning, and now, she doesn't have to do that. Even if she is on leave, our bot is available 24/7/365. 

What is most valuable?

The UI Explorer in the UiPath Studio is valuable. We can get a unique and dynamic selector for every element in the UI, which is helpful for me in finding out a particular UI element. Most of my automations have had UI interactions. So, I found it the most helpful feature.

It is pretty easy to build automations. I am from an engineering background, but even if you don't have much coding or programming knowledge, you can easily learn and use this tool. I used UiPath Academy to learn about this tool, and they have got a detailed explanation about everything. So, even if you don't have prior experience, you can easily use this tool.

They give updates every year. Before the new features go live, they put them out in the Community edition. When the features are stable, they release them. They have got a helpful community forum. If you have any roadblocks, you can post your question there and you will get a response, sometimes even within five minutes, depending on the complexity of the question.

What needs improvement?

When I started working with UiPath, there were no activities for SAP, but in the version that I'm using right now, there are SAP activities or SAP modules. Previously, I had to code everything from user login to user logout, but now, all the activities are available. I just have to drag and drop and give the username and password. I don't have to do it from scratch. It would be great if they can include activities for all of the most common CRMs and ERPs. They can integrate it with different activities for the most common systems.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for around five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is mostly stable. We recently upgraded our UiPath Orchestrator, and we stopped receiving the emails that we used to receive in the morning about the status of our bots and jobs. I created a ticket, and they said that the particular version or update that I had wasn't stable. They provided me with a different version that was stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is great. In my previous company, one single bot was doing all the processes. In this company, we have six bots, and every day, around 50 processes are running. So, it is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

For the email issue that we had, we created a ticket, and they responded the next day. The response time was less, and they also provided me with the correct solution.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

When I started my career, I started working in Python and website development with Django. When I heard about UiPath and RPA, I felt that it is going to be the future. So, I switched to RPA. UiPath is the first tool I used, and I'm still using it.

I have used Power Automate from Microsoft, but I found UiPath much better because it has a single package with UiPath Orchestrator, Studio, etc. It has everything in a complete package.

I have also used Blue Prism. Blue Prism is more expensive. I used its Community Edition recently because I wanted to explore other tools, and I felt that its UI is not as good as UiPath Studio. They both have drag-and-drop functionality, but Blue Prism is not as user-friendly as UiPath. I have never used Automation Anywhere, but I have heard from my peers who are from the same background that it needs programming knowledge.

How was the initial setup?

It was a bit complex because we have two virtual machines, and each one had three robots in it. We had to do remote desktop on the virtual machine to run the automation. We have recently improved all the processes in our company. They are now dynamic, and they can run in the background. Even if the virtual machine is closed, they will run.

What about the implementation team?

It was implemented in-house.

What was our ROI?

We have definitely seen an ROI. It replaces the manual work and allows us to do other productive tasks rather than doing repetitive and manual tasks every day. If someone costs $50 per hour, and we are able to save one hour of manual work every day for that person, it is a substantial saving.

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

It is a bit expensive, but it is cheaper than Blue Prism. We have six robots in total. There are no other costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

What other advice do I have?

I love this tool. They have been improving it every year based on the user experience, or they have been releasing a stable version for any bugs.

I would rate it a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
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
Application Developer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Greatly reduces human error and time expenditure in a user-friendly solution, providing a robust ROI
Pros and Cons
  • "Human error was greatly reduced and the solution saves a significant amount of time, these are the two main reasons we started using UiPath."
  • "Technical support could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

We are a financial services company, and our primary use is to increase daily efficiency and create automated solutions for our operations team. Our primary concern is time. By implementing a robotic solution for mundane tasks, it frees up our teams to focus elsewhere. For example, going to a website, extracting data, putting the data somewhere, and manipulating it can all be automated, freeing up the team to focus on data analysis. This makes us more time and cost-efficient. 

As a smaller company, it was very important to us that scale automation would be taken care of by the vendor. It was one of our key points in choosing a solution.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution saved us a great deal of time and money, while teams have been freed up to focus on more important work.

What is most valuable?

Human error has been greatly reduced and the solution saves a significant amount of time, these are the two main reasons we started to use UiPath.

The solution helps us to keep track of tickets and send notifications used within our department. It helped a lot with our back and front-end offices. Our main operations team normally had a lot of data manipulation, which is now taken care of. They can now focus on market analysis.

This product is very user-friendly, it only requires knowledge of the most basic coding and how to work with logic. They are quick to respond to software issues. They either fix them quickly or provide a workaround if there is one. Overall, UiPath makes building automation very easy.

We do use the solution's Automation Cloud offering. Sometimes we aren't informed of software updates, meaning we have to figure that out for ourselves, especially when there are issues. We mentioned this to support, as figuring out solutions to issues brought in by updates sometimes increases our workload. Overall though, I would say the solution does save a lot of time for our IT department.

The solution has increased our TTV significantly.

The Automation Cloud offering decreased the solution's TCO by taking care of infrastructure, maintenance, and updates. 

We used the Automation Cloud to build out our own pipeline and connected it to Azure. This has really solidified our SDLC, which in turn allows us to quickly put out automations whenever we need to. 

My team and I used the vendor's UiPath Academy course. The course was very effective, as none of the team had prior UiPath experience. We trained using UiPath Academy for around a month, which got us to a point where we could start to use the solution for projects, which helped us learn even more.

The community is much larger than I expected. I'm regularly on the forum or the community blog, which says a lot about how good it is, because almost any information you need can be found there. Everything is well documented, there's always UI path support, and people answer questions on there, so it's very useful.

Since UiPath is one of the bigger vendors in the RPA industry, there's a larger global community. Everyone is really helpful and I think that's great.

What needs improvement?

Technical support could be improved.

The setup documentation could be improved to make that process easier. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution for two years now. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I'd say the solutions are around 80 to 85% stable. There are some areas that we have to reach out to support for, and they work to improve these areas for the newer versions. For that reason, I can't say the solution is 100% stable all the time. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The features provided by UiPath make it very easy to reuse, so it's very scalable.

We haven't deployed the solution to its full potential at our company yet. It's used by nine to ten teams out of a total of around 200 teams. We have a lot more to do, as we only started two years ago. We are working towards implementing for more of our teams, but we need a bigger team to push out solutions faster. 

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is inconsistent, it can be good or bad, this depends on who you get connected to. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

It was before my time at the company, but I believe they previously used Nintex RPA.

How was the initial setup?

I wasn't there for the initial setup, but I do know quite a bit because we did have to set up more bots later. I'd say it's a little complex if you don't already know what to do, but once you do know, it's very easy to set up. I would say the documentation wasn't that clear.

We're a small team that consists of two developers, one tester, and a manager. This is sufficient for the deployment and maintenance of the solution.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented the solution ourselves.

What was our ROI?

I would say the cost of the software is around 10K and we've had around 50 projects, with probably $500,000 saved per project. That's a lot of money saved that can be diverted to other areas.

The solution has sped up and reduced the cost of digital transformation without requiring expensive upgrades or support. The product has greatly reduced the incidence of human error.

The solution has saved us a lot of time. I would say it saves us an average of 900 to 1000 hours per month. The additional time has enabled employees to focus on more high-value work.

Overall, the solution has reduced the costs of our automation operations.

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

The cost of the software was around $10,000.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

The solution builds robots and monitors automation. There is a product called UiPath Task Capture which can do process analysis or business analysis, but I would say it's always better for a human to take care of this. For that reason, I wouldn't say the solution is end-to-end, though we could configure it to be. I would say it works very well from building to the end, and in the testing and monitoring that comes after that. 

We used unattended automation and quickly realized we need attended, because with unattended automation projects take up a lot of time. With unattended automation, we can't run two project processes simultaneously, but with attended automation, we can take out another server and give access to the UiPath cloud to our business partners to run whatever projects they need. We can do this at any time, which is very helpful.

RPA generally isn't widely used, and some people overlook it, but it can transform a business. I would say it's an essential part of any digital transformation, and UiPath is a vast vendor with a user-friendly product. 

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
Saurabh Arya - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Developer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
We can simply drag and drop based on our application requirements, so things go smoother and faster
Pros and Cons
  • "I find the whole product useful, but I like the intuitive design the best. It's a well-designed UI, and it's comfortable for this use case."
  • "UiPath should improve the test case criteria in future versions because the test cases are not well-designed. I feel everything is fine other than that."

What is our primary use case?

UiPath is deployed on AWS EC2 instances, and we use it for basic automation.  Very few developers are working on UiPath here. Our end-users don't deal with this. We only use our database and the data collected from UiPath, but the automation is not visible to our customers. We only use it in our internal development or design phase or to collect some automated data. 

We haven't used UiPath's machine learning capabilities, but we are working on that. That could be useful in a few use cases for triggering some queues and running processes in the background. We are using asynchronous jobs, but we don't rely on AI yet.

How has it helped my organization?

It helps us design the automation capabilities of our products. You can quickly create some AI-driven, easy-to-use, automated tracking products. We can also design the workflow to enhance the optimal automation process. Before using UiPath, we needed to write code to define some UI tasks manually. It required a vast amount of coding and used up much of our developer bandwidth. 

UiPath saves us some time and development costs by helping us quickly design some automated tasks and workflows. We reduced our work time by at least 70 percent because developers no longer need to write a considerable amount of code for a single automated task. UiPath can do all of that.

The drag-and-drop APIs reduce the time it takes to build workflows because we can define an orchestration URL and how we log in to the system. We can easily define entire edge cases and workflows. This helps us a lot. The AI will help us, too, but we are still in the development phase. 

In the early stages, it took a little time to see value from UiPath. Our engineering team needed to learn the product, but we were good to go in two weeks. 

What is most valuable?

I find the whole product useful, but I like the intuitive design the best. It's a well-designed UI, and it's comfortable for this use case. You can easily automate anything. The drag-and-drop APIs make things easier for us. We can simply drag and drop based on our application requirements, so things go smoother and faster.

What needs improvement?

UiPath should improve the test case criteria in future versions because the test cases are not well-designed. I feel everything is fine other than that.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using UiPath for about two and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have been using this for about one and a half years, and it's highly stable so far. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Based on our current use case, we believe we can scale toward the AI path of that product, and we are still in the process of evaluating this. Once we implement the AI features, we expect to scale up further.

How are customer service and support?

I rate UiPath support nine out of ten. I'm impressed with them. It has a steep learning curve, but UiPath provides a lot of online documentation, helping us figure out everything ourselves.

The technical support from the updates team is nice. They provide instant support for any issue, but we've barely used them because everything is well-documented, and the UI is intuitive. 

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

We were working on coding architecture and directly defining and using our code.

How was the initial setup?

A different team handled the installation. We have two people managing the solution, but it doesn't require much maintenance. We install patches about once a year. The updates can affect our data and the process we use, so that's a challenge sometimes. 

What was our ROI?

We have definitely seen a return because UiPath has cut the engineering cost significantly. It frees up our engineers to do other tasks. It has reduced our workload by around 80 percent. We still required one or two developers to develop all these UI cases.

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

We find UiPath's total cost of ownership is cheaper because we significantly reduced the resources required for development. We believe it's a reasonable price for the value we get in this application use case.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We tried Automated Anywhere, but that doesn't work for us. UiPath provides much more features, and we can enhance things better. UiPath's drag-and-drop functionality also makes things easier for us. After trying these two products, we found that UiPath is a major gamechanger for our use case.

What other advice do I have?

I rate UiPath an eight out of ten. The test cases could be better, and we're still evaluating the AI-driven part. Otherwise, I would rate this as a nine. I highly recommend this product because of all the advantages it offers, and UiPath has great documentation and videos available on multiple channels. It has considerably reduced the manual work we are doing. 

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?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
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
IT Project Manager at Orange España
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Streamlines tasks, offers drag and drop functionality and has good APIs
Pros and Cons
  • "The APIs are very effective in building workflows."
  • "When we have to capture some text from our invoices and from our notes and do some manual work, sometimes the tool doesn't extract the data in a precise way."

What is our primary use case?

It serves our day-to-day work. The product is used for robotic process automation. We have some manual tasks that we need to automate so that we can save our organization costs and manpower, and we use UiPath to help us do this.

How has it helped my organization?

It saves our organization costs and also saves our time and effort. We automated 90% to 95% of the tasks. Also, the overall cost of the solution is not so high, so the organization can easily adapt that solution and work accordingly to their workflows without having to worry about costs getting too high. Their consultancy and their support team are also very good. They're providing excellent support whenever we require it.

What is most valuable?

Its in-built bots and the workflows with the desktop application are great. We can record our workforce and the workflows can automate our tasks as per our defined processes. This is the most important feature for us. Accordingly, the user is able to save the organization a certain amount of cost and manpower.

It takes around a month to realize the benefits of the deployment. The implementation was done within one or two months. We did a few pilots for our work before going with the full lifecycle. When we realized that our pilot project was going perfectly, we then upgraded to the fully-featured software.

We’re in the healthcare industry. In the healthcare field where systems often don't talk to each other, UiPath helps by sharing data between systems. UiPath is excellent in terms of integration. We can integrate our legacy application with UiPath. UiPath's integration with APIs is wonderful. Also, they have the flexibility to integrate with applications and can automate tasks from applications.

It is very important that we share data and integrate it. However, healthcare data is very critical for every user. UiPath has some inbuilt security features in which we can encrypt our data in a way that only limited users or limited groups can access the data.

The ability to share data within the system affected our staff in a positive way. We have not faced any issues yet.

With patient information spread among many systems, we’ve used UiPath to pull patient information into a single view or dashboard. We have a central dashboard in which we are monitoring all of the patients' details, hospital details, and facility details in a single application. There is manual data that we have access to and there is automated data coming from UiPath. Sometimes we have to configure our dashboard to go to the requirements, however, overall, it’s good.

This single view of patient information works well. Senior management always wants a single application or a single dashboard in which they can monitor everything centrally. It is very critical for us to understand their requirements, and deliver on expectations. We have as well customized UiPath according to our requirements in that sense.

The single view has affected patient care as all the patient information that is very critical is accessible. Staff on a daily basis can see how many patients are there, who are critical and what other requirements for adherence of the patients are required. This is very critical information that we need to capture and we need to monitor.

We are using UiPath for the automation of the patients' records, which is coming from Excel or another source to automate the manual record to the application. UiPath has in-built security and data encryption features to keep information safe. We automated the data, which isn’t as sensitive. We’ve automated the first name, last name, et cetera, however, we haven’t automated sensitive medical histories at all. That information is very confidential.

Automation using UiPath saved our staff time. That's why we are adapting UiPath. We had around 45 to 50 people just for the main tasks of entering the reports with the application. With UiPath, we are eliminating that human effort. Now the bots are taking the place of humans. That's how we decreased the time, the effort, and increased the efficiency of our application and our work or innovation operations.

UiPath helped streamline tasks specifically for healthcare staff and not just for administrative staff. It suits both administrative and healthcare staff. There are so many manual tasks that they need to capture onto the application. Field staff is also required for that. At the field level also, we have deployed the bots and some cards for automation so that they can deploy their application onto UiPath. They are now spending their time on administrative areas, not manual tasks.

This enabled our healthcare staff to engage in higher volume activities. They are now engaging in voluntary activities as well for the patient, for campaigns, for advertisements, and for awareness of the program.

We make use of UiPath's drag-and-drop APIs. This is a wonderful feature. All the features are coming as a user interface UI label. Any user can drag and drop the workflows and they put output processes according to the requirements.

The APIs are very effective in building workflows. They are very effective as the APIs all came in Java and Python. Any third-party application or tool can easily adapt those APIs and integrate them into the UiPath system.

What needs improvement?

Sometimes the automation task doesn't work so well. When we have to capture some text from our invoices and from our notes and do some manual work, sometimes the tool doesn't extract the data in a precise way. This happens in cases where we have some big data or some large amounts of text that we need to convert. 

Sometimes the data extraction or patching of the data from other sources takes time. This is a challenge that we have faced. Sometimes there are bots, which are not responding properly. We have to reconfigure them accordingly. Otherwise, as compared to the other software solutions like Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, et cetera, UiPath works well.

The bots are not responding according to our requirement center process. They were not given the right accurate address and we had to monitor and then manually configure the bots to the requirements. If we ran the bots for any mathematical calculations, occasionally, our results were not as expected. We have to check the results. 

Higher internet bandwidth is required since it is a cloud-based system.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for two years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. It is a fully matured software that is used by many organizations across the globe. Many big companies are using that. Timely updates are provided by them as well. We have no issues with that. They have taken care of the application version releases.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I'd rate the scalability nine out of ten. Sometimes we are tricked by the functionality of the bots.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is very good. They are fully cooperative and they understand the user issues and provide overall resolutions for the application. Their L-1, L-2, and L-3 support are all very good. They are able to provide a solution within 24 to 48 hours.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

Earlier, we were using Excel macros. Now, the tasks are very big and the is a lot of data, so we are now eliminating those applications and tools.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was fine. It was done within a month.

We have some development teams who are taking care of the implementation. I'm involved in the implementation of the proposal and negotiating with the vendors.

It's deployed in multiple locations in the Asia Pacific, the US, and the UK.

The solution does require some maintenance. We have a support plan for three years and they provide the overall maintenance upgrades and the updates of the application. The operations and maintenance are excluded from the overall pricing. We are paying extra fees for that.

What about the implementation team?

We worked with the vendor to deploy the solution. We did not use a third party.

What was our ROI?

We have seen a positive return on investment. It saves time and human labor which translates to organizational cost savings. 

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

The pricing is good. We have some allocated budget for implementing such kinds of automated solutions. Budget is not a constraint and we need fully functioning software that can help to automate our processes.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at Blue Prism. We went with UiPath due to the overall price, the supporting team, and the overall features and functionalities. It fit our requirements best and the overall pricing is very good. 

What other advice do I have?

We will make use of UiPath's artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. We have been planning to adopt it and are in process of adapting. We are currently working on the pricing and the overall API conditions.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten overall. If any organization or prospective buyer is looking for some kind of solution for automating their work, then UiPath is a great choice. They can simply go with that. I recommended this to prospective buyers.

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?

Microsoft Azure
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
Siddhant Tripathi - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Executive Officer at Astrix Study
Real User
If we don't use it, content may get missed and we would lose a lot of opportunities
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath has saved our staff time. Using the automation of UiPath, it triggers an email or notification for a process that we have created. This keeps us informed at all times. However, if we don't use it, content may get missed and we would lose a lot of opportunities."
  • "It could be improved with tutorials or documentation-wise. Some of the features of the artificial intelligence or Orchestrator have been a little confusing for me. So, I would like an easy YouTube video tutorial or quick demo call. It would be much better for every user if they could introduce that."

What is our primary use case?

UiPath offers direct integrations with multiple platforms that we need, like Google Drive, Slack, Visio, etc. For Slack, UiPath automates the process when we upload a new file, document, or a new version of it. It automatically sends an email or any other sources that we automate through it. That is our main use case.

How has it helped my organization?

We upload a lot of content for our website or internal work on Google Drive. When a team member uploads content, we do not get a notification from Google Drive that a document has been uploaded by someone unless they share it. With UiPath, we have automated it so if someone uploads a document in a Google Drive folder, we get an email on a certain email address that a document has been uploaded. Or, when there is a version change, we also get an email. So, we have automated these kinds of processes using UiPath.

It is mainly the automation process for internal tasks. All our direct integrations are for internal work, mainly email triggers that we built using UiPath. These are very useful.

What is most valuable?

The direct integrations are most valuable. You can directly link your account to multiple platforms, such as Google Drive and Visio, without using an API.

We have used the Orchestrator's trigger creation workflow to create multiple triggers for our automation processes.

What needs improvement?

It could be improved with tutorials or documentation-wise. Some of the features of the artificial intelligence or Orchestrator have been a little confusing for me. So, I would like an easy YouTube video tutorial or quick demo call. It would be much better for every user if they could introduce that.

For how long have I used the solution?

Around six to seven months ago, I started using UiPath.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath has always been up so stability is not a problem.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is really scalable, even for large businesses. We are pretty small, but as you grow, UiPath has great options for scaling up.

We currently have two people using it: the co-founder and me.

How are customer service and support?

I haven't needed to contact their support yet.

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

We previously used basic process automation platforms.

We switched to UiPath because it offered better features that we needed. For example, its direct integrations are pretty useful. It has every integration that we directly need so we don't need to use APIs or code anything. It is simple and direct. That is the main reason that we use UiPath.

How was the initial setup?

It was straightforward from the process of registering your account to creating an organization, then doing the integrations. The process was really easy and did not take too much time the first time. I think it took us an hour to deploy.

What was our ROI?

We are on the Community plan, so it has great return on investment.

UiPath has saved our staff time. Using the automation of UiPath, it triggers an email or notification for a process that we have created. This keeps us informed at all times. However, if we don't use it, content may get missed and we would lose a lot of opportunities.

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

The pricing is good. They offer a Community edition that we currently use, which is free. Their paid pricing is pretty affordable for businesses as well.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I went to review websites and saw that UiPath is great.

What other advice do I have?

In case you are not going to drag and drop APIs, they should definitely go and have a look at direct integration. 

I would rate the solution as nine out of 10.

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.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free UiPath Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: November 2023
Buyer's Guide
Download our free UiPath Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.