Senior Software engineer at Wipro Technologies
Real User
Our organization can scale up because the bot can work accurately 24/7 without any maintenance
Pros and Cons
  • "I have found Orchestrator is UiPath's most valued feature. It has the ability to automate different applications, such as, mainframe automation and Excel macros. It is so efficient. We can download up to seven days back in just one click, monitoring errors."
  • "We have seen that UiPath doesn't have the capability to identify unknown pop-ups. This needs improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We have a cross-platform infrastructure, where two servers are sitting. We have Orchestrator, which we connect to our virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). In the VDI, we have a UiPath stationed. 

From India, I work for an Australian client. Previously, I worked for a European client. In order to work with the client network, we have a dedicated Wipro laptop. In that Wipro laptop, we log in and connect via the VDI. In that VDI, we have UiPath Studio. Using UiPath Studio, we are doing development for the client and automating functional business processes.

We are extracting data from Salesforce using a particular report that is sent by the business SMEs. We pick exact fields end-to-end, then we put these values into Salesforce. Next, we extract the value and data from Salesforce, putting that into an Excel application. After putting the return to Excel application, we generate a service request for the business and send transaction reports of the bot's performance and accuracy at the end of the day. The business was taking around four to five hours. Our robot takes around eight to nine minutes in order to automate this end-to-end automation.

For another use case, there is an application that submits invoices for an insurance client in Australia. Right now, the business is doing this. Whereas, the bot operations reads a file on the hard drive, picks up that file, and puts it into SharePoint where the bot performs some operations. After doing those operations, the bot will report the status, whether it is valid, invalid, or an exception. When we get the file, we develop the application that submits the invoice. After that, we capture the data from the Excel application and submit a request. This is an end-to-end process. This bot only runs after business hours, five days a week, so it doesn't impact the application. With this process, we send daily transaction reports, the success ratio to the client, and present the entire picture to our peers and business holders.

We have set up our own cloud, which is internal. UiPath has a different cloud. Per our governance, we are not allowed to use another cloud. We are using our hosted internal cloud, which is hosted on our internal servers in Australia.

How has it helped my organization?

With our rule-based tasks, we pick the processes which involve a higher transaction volume and run many times in a week or month. Next, we analyze how much time the subject-matter experts (SMEs) uses to do their end-to-end journey. We calculate that, then decide the scope of the operation and whether to use an attended bot or unattended bot. We do analysis to determine which parts of the operation can be attended and unattended. Our preference would be the unattended bot, because it handles a lot of volume and is uninterrupted. 

In our analysis, we thoroughly check the scope of the application, whether it is a legacy or new application, and the dynamic nature of the data. Based on this, we define certain rules. Combining these rules, we design a complete end-to-end solution and give a presentation to the business that this is our commitment, e.g., this is the amount of Average Handle Time (AHT) and FTE that the bot will do. FTE means that if four people are doing a task, then it will give me back four FTEs. We then calculate the cost, meaning how much they are paying to that FTE and the cost of the bot. We compare the two and present our case. If the numbers are good, and the business agrees, then we proceed further in our discussions with them. This is the power of analytics.

We don't need that much infrastructure. If an analyst is doing reporting with an Excel sheet, then we can give him a bot and capture what he is doing without paying attention to the infrastructure. From the captured information, we give them a bot that will help them to do their regular task. This process helps them to understand automation while not investing in infrastructure. 

We design end-to-end solutions. We have different roles, teams, and divisions. I am part of the technical department, so I design the solution. I am responsible for analyzing and developing the solution. Once I develop the solution, I monitor the bot for two weeks, which is the "hypercare period". After the business is satisfied that the bot is performing, we give it to the support team. This is how our RPA lifecycle flows. It has around nine stages, including discovery, analysis, design, development, support, presentation, and solution. 

We have developed a bot process called "Padlock". In "Padlock", there is security development. It is very important that the user input his credentials. Per the governance of the process, we are not allowed to store the credentials on the cloud. It is very dynamic and encrypted. We have deployed about 25 robots for this particular process. The robot does its job after the SME. After a certain point, there is a CAPTCHA. The robot helps the SME do things, and they need to input their credentials and click the CAPTCHA, which happens in real-time. They verify all the information, giving them more confidence in their regular processes. We have deployed a large number of bots using this process. This has brought a lot of value because we have saved on a good number of costs when it comes to attended automation. 

What is most valuable?

I have found Orchestrator is UiPath's most valued feature. It has the ability to automate different applications, such as, mainframe automation and Excel macros. It is so efficient. We can download up to seven days back in just one click, monitoring errors.

It gives you the ability to efficiently monitor the bot.

With the new updates, a lot of analytics have come from AI Center.

Its features help us showcase what the bot has done and efficiently delivered to the business.

They are improving the OCR feature for reading text and images as well as the operations for automating that. They have integrated third-party OCRs, such as, SharePoint, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and mainframe automation.

The advantage of using StudioX is I can see how long the bot will take or what went wrong for any particular use case.

What needs improvement?

In the future, I would like new services that can utilize robots as a service (RaaS).

Our legacy applications are a bit old, so we get issues sometimes in automating those. However, modern applications are very compatible with the UiPath tool.

We have seen that UiPath doesn't have the capability to identify unknown pop-ups. This needs improvement.

The API needs a lot of improvements because it does not give proper results. There are always some issues with the logs.

When it comes to real-time scenarios, we see in production that Citrix automation always crashes. This integration could bring a lot of value to UiPath. Our business could save a lot of time and money if we could automate Citrix effectively.

All of our code resides in GitHub, which is our central repository for managing the code. There was a performance issue using GitHub with UiPath; it was slow. They have recently upgraded the performance so we are happy with it now.

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For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for more than four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We always design a stable unattended solution that helps the business.

If fields are scattered, then the bot might get confused. 

Maintenance is handled by our support team. When something crashes, our dedicated support team monitors the bot. If the application crashes in production, the bot will send an application link to the support team and business stakeholders because the bot has faced some downtime in the application and kindly look into that issue.

Because I have automated a lot of enterprise solutions, I would go with the UiPath tool. They are frequently rolling out updates to the software. It is very stable compared to other tools in the market.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Infrastructure is quite important at an enterprise level. There are a lot of mundane and repetitive tasks. Once we have the infrastructure, then we set up best practices and governance. Based on that infrastructure, everything can scale up. Though, if we are going to build a lot of bots on a personal laptop to automate something small, then infrastructure is not as important with that.

We started with two to three bots. Now, we have around 25-plus bots. There are around 300 to 350 using both attended and unattended automation.

How are customer service and support?

I have spoken a number of times with the UiPath product team. Initially, we were not able to use Excel, so we contacted the UiPath team. They provided a solution. They support the product well. I would rate the tech support as seven out of 10.

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

I have previously used Selenium. We switch because of scope. The Selenium tool was good with bot automation. With UiPath, we can do various automations, like mainframes, ServiceNow, SharePoint, etc. In order to increase implementation of automation from my end, I started with UiPath. I liked it because of its ability to automate applications. Those are the main reasons that I switched from Selenium to UiPath and SoapUI to UiPath.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup and deployment are pretty straightforward. They provide free training, which is a good thing. We do the training correctly and religiously. Once we are good with the training along with a little programming knowledge that we have acquired over the years, it is easy to adapt and work on UiPath because it is structured and organized. 

Our setup is a mixture. Orchestrator is hosted on a server and the application is installed on a desktop or system.

In order to use UiPath on servers, we need to set up two servers: one in Australia and the second in New Zealand. 

The implementation is not that big of a task. It is very organized.

What was our ROI?

It has been a huge monetary benefit. Since the bot has been running for two and half years, it has given my organization a lot of business. When I joined Wipro in 2019, there was one guy who was developing the bot. We named the bot, "win-back". As the name suggests, 'win-back' means winning customers back. That was a maintenance bot which possessed a lot of qualities. If a person was physically doing the task, then we might need to spend $90,000 on them. This is the difference. While the robot has some costs, they are not huge when compared to the salary or compensation that we give to an SME. This is how an organization can scale up, because the bot works accurately 24/7 without any maintenance. Also, seeing the bot's accuracy, as well as the volume that it handles, motivates other business holders to go for automation.

We automated an internal solution because there were long keywords that led to spelling mistakes, since spelling mistakes don't look good on invoices. Therefore, we input this extracted data to an application, using end-to-end automation. This reduced human errors tremendously. For example, with the "win-back" solution, errors tended to happen because the volume is high. Therefore, we wrote a code that has reduced errors for the "win-back" solution.

Because of the bot's accuracy, it has saved us a lot of time and money, making the life of the subject-matter experts easier. It is a win-win situation. They are making the most of the bot, running it continuously. They don't need to wait for a particular report. For example, people, in our organization, work eight hours then send a status mail, which says, "I have done all these tasks." Instead of having us create the report directly, the bot saves a lot of time. 

The bot marks in the report what is successful and unsuccessful as well as the reason for not being successful, e.g., if it was an application, data, or particular element issue. There are a lot of areas that we call "exceptions". Every day, we are getting all these details in one go. Whereas, a person would be frustrated or bored providing all these figures. That is the cost of human error. If you are not paying attention to a particular task, then errors will happen naturally. 

The bot currently performs four times faster than the SMEs for the tasks that we automated.

After three or six months, we send out a survey to different SMEs in various production areas, asking how the bot is doing. From the survey, we have found that the bot is helping them out a lot. They are very satisfied with it.

The solution has reduced our costs by approximately five percent.

I have seen very high ROI from the processes that we automated. It is very good to invest in automation.

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

There are three leaders in the market: UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism. UiPath is in-between the two. BluePrism is on the higher end when it comes to pricing. Automation Anywhere is on the lower side when it comes to pricing. When comparing the automation of business processes, analyze the amount of work that your organization will save using automation, particularly compared to the pricing.

You will be compensated for buying the product when you see processes automating.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I also evaluated Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and EdgeVerve (which I used in a previous organization).

The trend of the other technologies is moving to the cloud. Other competitors of UiPath, like Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, have already moved their applications onto the cloud. This brings more robustness to the product, because its performance is significantly increased. It is also very scalable when putting in new features. 

What other advice do I have?

I have attended a lot of UiPath's webinars.

We are in the initial stages of using the AI functionality.

The RPA technology is part of our digital transformation. For example, we are doing digital transformation by automating the Salesforce application.

They roll out an update every three months. With every update, we see a lot of new features. We are always exploring using those features so we can automate the stuff.

Don't rely completely on the UiPath tool to achieve automation. You should have some background and knowledge to understand what can be automated. There isn't a magical algorithm for building robots. You educate the robot on what can be automated.

We always rate a product based on other products. I would rate this product as nine and a half out of 10.

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Associate Project Manager at InfoBeans Technologies
Real User
Easy to learn and use, responsive and helpful support, and it saves our clients money
Pros and Cons
  • "I have trained people to use this product and it is so easy to use that even on the first day, people are able to start working with it."
  • "The combination of Orchestrator and Studio is a bit on the higher side, price-wise, for some companies."

What is our primary use case?

We provide RPA services and I am currently working on two different projects.

These projects are for two different clients that are each using a different version of the platform. In both cases, it is an on-premises deployment. Our clients only use the end product and don't do any development themselves.

One of my clients is a retail organization and the primary use case is invoice automation. Previously, the process was totally manual. They have different products and different departments and for each and every department for which they bill, like HR, there are printing and supply chain tasks to be completed. As part of their process, they generate invoices monthly.

To generate invoices, they need to gather data from different sources, such as a database or Excel files. What we have done is fully automated the process. They now only need to work with a consolidated Excel sheet and then email it, once complete.

Once they send the email to a particular email address, the robot retrieves it and reads the attached Excel sheet. After doing some cleaning, consolidation, and validation, it generates invoices each month in a particular template, and then it submits them to the EBS portal.

The manual invoicing task used to take between two and two and a half weeks. Now, they start it at 4:30 when they leave and it works overnight. The process is now fully completed within two days. The time saved is now time that can be used to focus on higher-value work. It has also improved employee satisfaction.

How has it helped my organization?

With respect to building automations, UiPath is very easy to use. I have trained people to use this product and it is so easy to use that even on the first day, people are able to start working with it.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation and it starts with features like task mining, process mining, and task capture. Then, we have Orchestrator, where there is a control room that gives you insights, and you can create dashboards using Kibana.

We have done work for a giant logistic firm, and the end-to-end coverage is very important for them. If you are spending and investing money then you should get a return, and the return, in this case, is measured by FTE savings.

Another way that UiPath has improved the way our organization functions is that we have introduced automation to clients that were not even aware of it. For example, we have a client that we have worked with for many years and we were ultimately able to introduce them to RPA. At this point, we have automated many of their processes. Essentially, when you automate a process or task for a company that is not even aware of RPA, they will start using it, which is very helpful for us.

UiPath has definitely helped to minimize the on-premises footprint for our clients. We work with a non-profit organization that we have done some automation for. Since they are non-profit, keeping infrastructure costs down is important. They run events each quarter and in the administration of those events, they have highlighted what they want to have automated and some of the processes include using AI and ML. As a result, the company is growing and creating new products.

I have seen companies that were hesitant about starting with automation because they were worried about the cost. However, in the long run, it saves a great deal in terms of FTEs, effort, and costs. Ultimately, it has helped to reduce the cost of digital transformation for our clients.

This product definitely helps to reduce human error. For example, if there is any human input that is required by the process then UiPath will help to catch these kinds of errors.

UiPath has also helped us to free up employee time. One use case that helped to free employee time was for our client that had to reset lost passwords manually. It was quite common that one of their users lost a password and needed to have it reset, so we created automation for it. The bot interacts with the Unix server to reset the password and the process is now free of manual effort.

Especially for a larger organization, time is money and if you're saving time, it's definitely saving you money. Overall, UiPath has reduced costs for our clients. 

What is most valuable?

The feature that we use the most is Studio.

Document Understanding is a good feature that is very helpful to us. We have an ongoing project that requires reading PDF files. We need to use different OCR engines and see which ones give us the correct data. Document Understanding allows you to extract the data into different types using different extractors. For example, there is an ML extractor and other types that allow you to pinpoint fields and determine which should be accepted. Based on the confidence level, it gets better every time. In this way, the feature has helped us a lot.

This is the friendliest community and forum that I have ever seen, which is something I see as added value.

What needs improvement?

I have been using UiPath for close to four years and I have worked with many of the features, but there are still some that I don't know. It is not obvious what all of the features do and it would be helpful to have more information about them.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for between three and four years, since 2017.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is pretty stable. Over time, I have seen them add new features and I have not found anything that wasn't working.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Automations are very easy to scale, regardless of what project you are working on. You don't have to think about the infrastructure, which is helpful. One of the things that make it more scalable is that we can integrate third-party tools and applications.

Our clients are expanding their scope in terms of RPA, so we expect to expand our usage. We will be looking for more use cases and developing more bots.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have been in contact with technical support and my experience was very good. They responded the same day and resolved the query.

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

Neither we nor our customers were using a different RPA solution, prior to UiPath.

I have a little bit of experience with Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, although I have not used either of these to implement a bot for production.

The biggest differences between UiPath and these other products are user experience and ease of use. For example, with UiPath Studio, I can easily find things. Even after training on the other solutions, Uipath is still easier, which is a big plus.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It was installed with the MSI installer. I have also installed the Orchestrator, both on-premises and in the cloud, and it is also straightforward.

For Studio, it takes a few minutes to install it, or uninstall and upgrade it. If you have the prerequisites and the AI settings and other configuration options decided, it will take between five and ten minutes to complete.

If you have a reasonable and straightforward process then it can be developed and pushed to production the same day that you install UiPath.

To maintain the Orchestrator and the other components, one or two people would be enough. One person might have the Orchestrator and UiPath knowledge of what settings are required, whereas another person is purely IT and can assist in that regard.  

What about the implementation team?

I have deployed this solution for a client on my own, so a single person is able to do it, without help from a third party.

What was our ROI?

Based on what my clients have saved in terms of FTEs, they are extending their scope of automation. For example, in one organization, they saved two FTEs and are now automating processes in different departments. I cannot estimate a dollar value but this saving in FTEs is their ROI. Overall, they are finding it very helpful.

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

The combination of Orchestrator and Studio is a bit on the higher side, price-wise, for some companies.

Overall, I think that the pricing is reasonable and it is similar to competitors. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

What other advice do I have?

We have used attended automation for our clients but I have not worked with that functionality. My work has been unattended RPA tasks.

I have tried the Automation Cloud offering but only personally, for learning. The SaaS option is very good and important for some companies because it allows them to save money. Regarding the price, not every organization can afford the Orchestrator, Studio, and everything else that goes with it. These types of companies sometimes want to be service-based, rather than purchasing everything on-premises, and this SaaS offering allows them to save money doing that.

I have implemented the UiPath AI functionality in a PoC, but not in any project as of yet. It is able to handle very complex automations, including those that include third-party integrations, as well as multiple environments on remote machines. We have tried some examples using Excel, Word, and PDF activities and at the same time, interacting with SharePoint, and Microsoft CRM. We are also getting data from the Citrix environment. Applying the AI functionality, it is very much capable of accomplishing complex tasks of these types.

We have not yet used the UiPath Apps feature, although I have explored it. It is a low-code option that you can use to create apps based on where you can see and interact with data, and then use them from Orchestrator. We plan to implement it in one of our projects soon.

There is a myth that when companies develop automations, they will lose jobs. In our experience, there is nothing like that. In fact, we have hired more people since we started working with UiPath.

They have added many features in the time that I have been using UiPath. For example, the AI/ML capabilities have improved to include things like a chatbot. Document Understanding is another new feature that was added, along with an ML Extractor, and AI Center. These packages have a lot of good features that will be helpful for everyone.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using UiPath is that there are a lot of processes in an organization that can be automated, and it is worth investing in RPA because you can reclaim that time for something more important. After using UiPath for some time, I am much better able to recognize processes that can be automated.

My advice for anybody who is thinking about implementing UiPath is definitely to go ahead with it. I recommend using it without thinking about anything else. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
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RPA Developer at a maritime company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
We have automation that runs every night through all our invoices, improving our cashflow
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath continues to add services to the Portal. It is fairly important that they are all managed from the same place because it is a single point of access, which was a factor that really played into our choice of vendor, UiPath. We use Automation Hub to sort of collect ideas and discover what ideas are good for information, then we use Orchestrator to manage them once they have been developed."
  • "I really wish that UiPath would have moderators in their forums who are more active. There are a lot of questions that go unanswered, and that is a shame."

What is our primary use case?

We are a small but global company. We are about 1,200 people. We are a logistics company, and most of our employees work in our warehouses. So, our office workers are somewhere between 400 to 500 across the globe. Being a logistics company, we are maybe a little bit old-fashioned. There are a lot of papers going back and forth, and we are trying to automate different scenarios. We cater provisions to ships, so we are basically a grocery store for ships. 

One important thing is when a ship is going into port somewhere, they put in an order for whatever provisions they need for when they leave port again. So, we need to be quick at expediting their orders. When they put in a request for a quote for whatever products they need, we need to respond very quickly, because the tendency is that whoever responds first gets the order. So, we want to do that. We are trying to sort of increase the speed of those types of operations as well as the quality of them. 

It is hard to really pinpoint what it is we are doing, but it's the communication between customers. When we receive a communication from a customer, we want to move the process through our company as quickly as possible and with high quality.

We are fairly new to UiPath still. We do intend to use it company-wide and have started out with purely unattended scenarios so far.

How has it helped my organization?

We invoice every month quite a substantial amount of money to our customers. We saw a problem in that about 20 percent of our invoices were sent to the wrong addresses. That meant that, at month's end, when we were expecting money to come in, we would be missing around 20 percent of our cashflow that month. Of course, we wanted to prevent that because 20 percent of the cashflow of $300 to $500 million a year is a lot of money. 

We have automation that runs every night through all our invoices. Because we have some problems with our master data in the company, it does a number of measurements, on whether an address for an invoice seems to be the correct address, and a number of checks, such as, what ship was the goods delivered to? After that, it looks up information through the international registers of ship ownerships, then it will do a number of checks, giving each invoice a score as rating the probability that the address is correct. If it is below a certain threshold, then we will do some manual processing, and we are looking into UiPath Action Center for this. For four or five of our largest branches in the US and Asia, we have seen a significant improvement in the payments at month's end, which has definitely improved our cashflow.

The administration is a SaaS solution, which helps to minimize our on-prem footprint. The only things that we have running on-prem are the machines running the robots. Everything else is handled in the cloud. We don't need to worry about backups, etc.

We are adopting as much as we can some of the things that should reduce the maintenance costs. We are using Robotic Enterprise Framework in our development and Automation Hub to sort of qualify our ideas. So, we are trying to implement a uniform way of doing things throughout the lifecycle of an idea. UiPath supports this fairly well, and I think it will get even better.

What is most valuable?

Just this week, we are launching our Automation Hub effort because we need to start building a pipeline for our automation candidates. Right now, we have eight or nine ideas in our Automation Hub. That will grow quite quickly because we need the help of Automation Hub to decide on which idea that we will be moving forward with next.

UiPath continues to add services to the Portal. It is fairly important that they are all managed from the same place because it is a single point of access, which was a factor that really played into our choice of vendor, UiPath. We use Automation Hub to sort of collect ideas and discover what ideas are good for information, then we use Orchestrator to manage them once they have been developed. We are hoping to use Insights at a later point, when that is available in the cloud, so we have a complete end-to-end solution in one place. 

What needs improvement?

Automation Hub is an immature product. We have only been using it seriously for about a week and have already seen some things that will give us a few headaches down the road. We are committed to using it and will continue to use it, but I have some suggestions for improvement. We have been in contact with our local UiPath office about that, and their initial response was positive.

We would like to see more detail and refinement. It is still a young product, and we are confident that the product will improve a lot over the next few months.

We are hoping for some integrations between Automation Hub, Orchestrator, and Insights.

We are missing a way to quantify that money isn't everything with this solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

Our license was activated sometime in July. So, we have been using it for about six to seven months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have seen a few quirks here and there. Overall, we are satisfied with the stability.

We have only a couple of handfuls of automations running, which are very stable. So, we are not doing much maintenance at all. Maintenance needs half an FTE, if even that.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The potential scalability is really good.

I don't know what the scale is for UiPath Portal. There are still signs that it is a young product, but we see it moving and improving at a really good pace. So, we have high expectations.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support has been good. I have only used them a couple of times. The response has been good. They are knowledgeable. 

One of the big reasons why we chose UiPath is that it has a big following in online communities. It has a good forum itself: Forum.UiPath.com, but I really wish that UiPath would have moderators in their forums who are more active. There are a lot of questions that go unanswered, and that is a shame.

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

We didn't previously have any other automation solutions in this company.

How was the initial setup?

Our initial setup was very straightforward. Our deployment took only a couple of days. We are a small operation with only two unattended licenses. We created the Orchestrator account and installed the robots on two servers. 

As far as development goes, we really just have the base package. Then, we are adding on Automation Hub right now.

What about the implementation team?

We did engage with their local consultancy. They sort of helped us build a strategy for the infrastructure structure setup and strategy, as far as how to identify candidates, operations, and development. However, initially, we just wanted to pull the trigger very quickly. We had an evaluation phase of a couple of months, where we were testing different products and had tried to set up UiPath before, which helped.

We have used Carve Consulting, and our experience with them has been fantastic. We are working with this third-party consultancy to have them come up with a couple of ideas for some solutions that would involve AI Center for the end of this year or next year.

The initial deployment needed just a couple of people from our side, including me. I worked a little with some of our infrastructure guys, getting the accounts set up, the service division, provisions, etc.

What was our ROI?

We just haven't scaled to a point yet where there has been any kind of return on investment.

There are not very many users because the stuff that we have automated so far has just taken work off people's hands. Where a person used to spend all day uploading pricing data into a database, we have a bot doing that now. So, people are not using UiPath, they have just sort of been relieved of their duties. While that sounds bad, we have made an effort to find areas where FTEs get to spend time doing what they are best at.

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

The licensing is too expensive. It is not a cheap product. We constantly have to build business cases where we have to justify our existence as an RPA team. 

We have engaged in a long-running licensing agreement because we believe in the product.

We have used a third-party consultancy, and that's definitely not free.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at a local variant of Kofax RPA called SmartRPA, which was built by a Danish company. It is basically Kofax RPA with an Orchestrator service built on top of it. We evaluated that. We also looked at something called OpenRPA, mainly due to price.

UiPath is built on top of Windows Workflow Foundation, which is a platform that I have worked with previously. So, there was a lot of familiarity and extensibility. Then, we looked at how good the product is at automating desktop applications. There was not really a contest there; UiPath was better by far.

The fact that this is a SaaS solution very positively affects how fast we are able to innovate when it comes to automation. When we did the evaluation of what product to choose, UiPath versus something else, the ability to assess deployment of the whole administration was a key factor.

In our decision to go with UiPath, it was very important that we didn’t have to worry about future installations and upgrades of Orchestrator. We just didn't want the trouble of having to do upgrades. With UiPath being a young product that is evolving very quickly, we would be doing on-prem upgrades every few months and we don't have time for that. So, we liked the idea that it is a cloud-based setup.

Security was a factor in our decision to go with the solution. We didn't look into all the technical specs and certifications. We just looked at some of their customers, and said, "If that bank is using it, and it is used in the defense industry, then they know what they are doing." They had good references.

What other advice do I have?

It is the best product.

It is an automation product. At the end of the day, it is software development. If there is anything that is important in software development, it is that you have a defined process from beginning to end, from the birth of the idea until it has been put into production and eventually retired. So, you need to have a defined process for different stages in the lifecycle that you need to be in control of. The product somewhat helps us do this with Automation Hub and the Robotic Enterprise Framework, but we are looking forward to even more tools for stuff like that.

So far, we are still in the meat and potatoes space. We haven't really gone into the AI or Document Understanding stuff yet. 

UiPath Portal is good overall for enabling administrators to work with Orchestrator. I have seen a lot of improvements, even in the last six or 12 months. We are learning as we go. For the first few months, we were working in a classic folder. Now, we are adopting modern folders in order to better be able to scale our efforts.

UiPath provides granular, role-based access control and management. Right now, that is not so important to us because we do everything unattended. So, we have a couple of service accounts that run everything. However, once we move into attended scenarios, then it's really important that we have that granular control.

I know that there are some new features coming out in regards to deploying automatically and elastically, but we haven't looked that much into them. We don't expect them to be a problem.

We are looking forward to doing attended robots, but that will probably be in the second half of this year when we start looking into that.

For the size of our company, we started fairly big. We went all in, buying licenses, consultancy hours, etc. We have spent a lot of money this first year. I would probably advise someone to start small but still be ambitious. Do a lot of PoCs and see how it fits into your organization. There needs to be a lot of disciplines surrounding it, e.g., if you just stay with five or 10 automations, then things are good. However, once you build 100, you start running into maintenance problems and things like that, so there needs to be a discipline. 

You don't need to spend a million dollars to sort of get off the ground, so I would advise people to start small.

I would rate this solution as an eight (out of 10).

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
Lead Consultant at Konexo UK
Consultant
Enables us to shift activity nobody enjoys onto a robot and lets staff focus on the stuff they've been trained to do
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable aspect of UiPath is the fact that it's a low-code platform. Being able to use a low-code platform really lowers the barrier entry of introducing automation. Normally, you fill in a request to go to IT to get a development resource allocated, and then you spend six months trying to do a project. Because UiPath is a bit of a platform, you can quickly, within weeks, start to knock off automation and get it checked and then successfully deployed. The low-code development environment is key for us."
  • "As things become more and more data-heavy and accessing other people's products and managing things, like obtaining the data through APIs, it feels like there could be a lot more for them to do, to make interacting with data or manipulating simple things like text strings. You need quite a strong development background or a reasonable level of understanding to achieve that. I think that could be made a little bit more achievable."

What is our primary use case?

Originally, we were using UiPath to draft documents and send emails on mass to where we had large communication exercises. We used a robot instead of a small army of paralegals to generate the documentation and draft up the emails where we had to communicate with 2,000 to 3,000 people. It was a little bit more involved than just doing a standard mail merge, but we were able to use UiPath to create a number of documents and email it to an individual customer, all through a central email address.

Fast forward to where we are now, we have a few of these things focusing in on what we call post-completion activity, like the things you do after you sign a contract. So, it may be you're uploading it to the client's contract management system, applying stamps, or registering the contracts in an official register. The robot is able to do that for us post-completion. Those are our primary use cases at the moment. We're looking at more data integrity type stuff, like comparing our internal data sources against public record.

How has it helped my organization?

The ability to displace some activity that was traditionally on our paralegal team has improved my organization. We're an outsourced managed legal services provider. We're primarily a people-based business and UiPath displaces some activity off those paralegals and brings in automation. For me, it becomes an additional type of resource. The long and short of it is that we are able to move work that was traditionally done by people and would be charged at a rate, off to automation where we can bring the costs down. It enables us to reduce our running costs of our clients. A single bot running post-completion has saved as two FTEs.

UiPath has helped to speed up case resolutions in a couple of ways. It's focused on doing particular jobs, so it achieves the job faster. People don't need to complete an entire task end to end. They can stop at a certain point and the robot takes over. That allows a person to get through more work. Also, the fact that the robots are able to do this stuff overnight 24/7, means that we have more capacity to do stuff.

It gives us the ability to respond to clients. It gives us an option in how we're going to automate work for clients. It's hard to say if it has reduced the cost of our digital transformation because we deal with all the people. I suspect it hasn't done it internally, but suspect that has made some things cheaper for our clients. It enables us to deliver digital services cheaper for our clients. 

UiPath had an effect on our legal staff. It takes work that people don't want to do at the moment, having to download the document, take some details off the top and the bottom of the document, apply a stamp, and then re-upload, it's not what our paralegals and new trainees want to be doing on a day-to-day basis. So we are able to shift activity nobody enjoys onto a robot and let them focus on the stuff they've been trained to do.

In terms of how much it has reduced the processing times, the task itself still takes as long but we've got a robot doing it instead of a human. I don't think that the impact isn't that dramatic on-site processing times. At the moment, humans are only involved in 80% of the transaction and 20% has been held by robots.

These automations have decreased errors but it's hard to quantify by how much. They've inserted 20,000 transactions a year. I have no doubt that the error rates improved. It's just a hard thing to quantify.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable aspect of UiPath is the fact that it's a low-code platform. Being able to use a low-code platform really lowers the barrier entry of introducing automation. Normally, you fill in a request to go to IT to get a development resource allocated, and then you spend six months trying to do a project. Because UiPath is a bit of a platform, you can quickly, within weeks, start to knock off automation and get it checked and then successfully deployed. The low-code development environment is key for us.

Now that we're scaling up and taking advantage of Cloud stuff, it's become a lot easier to use. When we started our journey, we just bought a couple of bots and had them sit around on machines. It was a bit chaotic and we thought that if we take advantage of their wider platform, the orchestrator environment, it would make life a lot easier because we have all the monitoring and management. We have access to that in one platform rather than having to watch the individual robots, which is where we started.

We're going to use the solution's AI-enhanced document understanding feature. It's something we're looking at to help us with invoices and incoming bills that come in. It's on the backlog. We haven't got to it yet.

UiPath enables me to free up capacity for people to work on new work because they are involved, they're less accessible. At the moment, the majority of our staff is focused towards the end time making sure that things are filed correctly. It's more about focusing resources rather than being more responsive.

What needs improvement?

As things become more and more data-heavy and accessing other people's products and managing things, like obtaining the data through APIs, it feels like there could be a lot more for them to do, to make interacting with data or manipulating simple things like text strings. You need quite a strong development background or a reasonable level of understanding to achieve that. I think that could be made a little bit more achievable.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three years ago we started using UiPath relatively small and we are looking to scale up significantly this year. Originally we started on-prem and as we're scaling up, we're going to move towards the cloud instance.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

So far the stability has been good. With all of the low code platforms, it's actually more of a problem of what we've developed and deployed. It's how well we make our own software so that the platform will provide. It seems to stand up very, very well. I have not really had an issue. Anytime we have encountered a bug or whatnot, it's something we've introduced to ourselves, but thankfully there's a strong community where we can post questions and queries to get a response within a couple of hours.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I don't see scalability as being too much of a challenge. If we need more capacity on the robots, we're able to buy more licenses and additional VMs on the machine. If we need to expand or scale, it's just about deploying more machines. I don't feel it's that complicated. I suspect there are some constraints on how you build your applications, but that's more of an internal decision rather than UiPath's.

There are three people who are responsible for how to put a source of business analysis as well as development. Their role is to work with SMEs or people within our business units to understand a customer's process, get them deployed, and work with them to do it. The stuff we've taken on tends to be the easier, quick wins. We have three internal developers who were able to break down processes. We're a large organization. We have a large IT function that helped us with virtual machines and data centers, etc. We're not directly involved with them.

It's very easy to build an automation and just let it run. One of the key lessons we learned is the fact that you have to keep an eye on these things and that things change in the environment. Passwords run out and expire, folders may move as people move things around the network and a robot is just as susceptible to everything else that our user is. In terms of when you're designing any solutions, you have to pay a little extra attention to things that may cause you problems in six months' time. The simple fact that a password that you were using has been reset or is expired or something else, could cause the robot to failover. While the robot can tell you it's got a problem, you still have maintenance effort to keep an eye on. There is a maintenance commitment that you need for everything that is put on it. You need to spend a bit of extra time detailing exactly how you are going to respond to those things. Just because it's easy to deploy stuff, it doesn't do away with the fact that you have to keep an eye on it.

There are three analysts who are respondents to book fixes, etc. We have people in the business who we work with to automate these processes. They take a level of responsibility and keeping an eye on anything we try to automate. They're the first line of support. If anything's going wrong or something they can keep an eye on it and then if it is a technical book fix or something that needs to be resolved, that's then escalated to one of those three developers.

How are customer service and technical support?

I only had one issue which was to do with the proxy setting when deploying some of the software. I raised the ticket on the website, got a response within half a day and it explained what I needed to do to fix it. That's my only experience of having to deal with them. I raised a ticket, I got the answer, and it worked. My experience so far has been fairly good.

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

We decided to use UiPath three years ago when RPA was starting to become a bit of a buzzword. We took a look at it and realized that it would be a very, very good solution for the right project by allowing us to automate mass activity all at once. One of those projects came around and we had to communicate it to a large audience. The process once agreed upon and nailed down could be very heavily scripted. We looked at a way that we would communicate it to the 30,000 people, all with documents that are pretty much the same but with a slight variation. We knew we wanted to try an RPA solution. UiPath was a very strong contender in those days and it was easy to access. That's why we ended up with it. We're able to achieve something with a single bot. All of those things make the software easy to test out. And then from there, you're able to make a decision.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was really straightforward. In such a large law firm that has high data security obligations, we set these things up, appoint the orchestrator, and it just works. I have not encountered too many problems. 

It doesn't feel like a heavyweight ERP system or some larger workflow tool. These things are deployed onto a desktop and they speak to a server. It's not heavy. It doesn't feel like a piece of software with a heavy footprint.

The deployment took a week. It took us longer to end-to-end to get the invoice approved.

We've taken advantage of the architecture. Our IT team set some ground rules about where the virtual machines need to be hosted and deployed, but it's not that heavyweight. We increase some standards with IT and then install the software on those machines. We're using the Cloud version so there's not a lot to worry about.

What about the implementation team?

We were able to do the deployment internally. 

What was our ROI?

Some of our ROI is quite dramatic. We have to email lots of stuff out to different people and our projector will require this to have a team of six or seven staff working solidly for a couple of weeks. The robot was able to get it done after a couple of weeks of configuration. This thing was able to pay for itself in a matter of hours once it was done. One of our post-completion robots took a week or two to develop and get stable enough to deploy. It's able to offset seven or eight hours a day. If we target the use cases correctly, we are able to get a return on the automation we deploy.

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

Take advantage of the Cloud-based implementation. You'll have to handle the Orchestrator licensing costs. It's obviously different for every organization. It's beneficial to get away from the on-premise installation. Also make sure that your business case justifies whatever the license cost is for an unattended or attended bot. 

Show your business case and that the automation will help you to exceed the license cost. You want to look at things that are going to give you a return on investment in about six months' time. Take advantage of the Cloud-hosted version so as not to pay the cost for Orchestrator. Then for your bots, make sure you will see a six months ROI in terms of how much automation you've gotten and how much you can get the robot to get done.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also looked at BluePrism and Automation Anywhere. We took a quick look over the top three solutions at the time. UiPath seemed to be one of the leaders in the area.

We partnered with an organization to help us deliver it. We got some consultants in and sorted out what they were comfortable with using and what they recommended. For us, it was the size of the platform. We were looking at Automation Anywhere or BluePrism. It just felt like it would be a bigger project to implement when in reality all we wanted was one robot to do one job for us at the start of the project. It was more about the barriers of entry to getting started.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath an eight out of ten. It feels like nothing deserves a 10, and I highly recommend every organization has a handle on RPA. There are still a huge amount of features we're still yet to explore.

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
Tax Systems Manager at QuikTrip
Real User
Anything you can do on a computer with enough effort, you can get the robot to do it
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath Academy RPA training is well put together. It paces well, not too fast nor too slow. You are constantly given new things to experiment with and things to learn which keep you interested, engaged, and moving forward."
  • "I have interacted with the community a whole lot, and if the amount of responses that they give in the community is any indication about how fast they would be with the enterprise technical support, then I can only imagine that it would be top-notch."
  • "The robots work where you can scale additional servers. They just need a place to work and a process to perform, then you can add-on. Ten bots can easily turn into a hundred bots, then those can turn into a thousand bots. From a scalability aspect, it's great."
  • "Anything you can do on a computer with enough effort, you can get the robot to do it."
  • "We should receive a list every time transactions are performed, and it would be nice if we wouldn't have to format it every time the robot sent us a spreadsheet."
  • "It's a complex environment with all its moving pieces."

What is our primary use case?

We are automating back office business processes focusing on business finance and tax, specifically. We are just recently starting our implementation, but we have been doing a proof of concept for the last year or so on the community edition. We recently signed the license agreement will be moving forward with implementing it full-time.

I am functioning as a lead developer. 

How has it helped my organization?

We just started the implementation. 

I foresee as we automated mundane tasks, it will free up time for the existing workforce that we already have to do more tasks where they can use their brain to make decisions. Then, they can think things through and work on the more complex processes that we currently can't automate.

What is most valuable?

  • Its flexibility
  • Anything you can do on a computer with enough effort, you can get the robot to do it.
  • It is ease to use and user-friendly.
  • The Academy training is well put together.

What needs improvement?

Once we've taken the data that the robot has done something with, we want to send it over to a human a lot of times. However, they need it formatted in a fashion that makes it a little more readable. It would be nice to have some activities without the developer having to do a lot of effort to make the spreadsheet look prettier. 

Instead, we should receive a list every time transactions are performed, and it would be nice if we wouldn't have to format it every time the robot sent us a spreadsheet.

For how long have I used the solution?

Still implementing.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This one area is lacking, but I attribute this to the constantly evolving platform. However, while there is some stability issues, they are quick to respond to them with updates. They are also very receptive to listening to feedback from the community, which is great.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The robots work where you can scale additional servers. They just need a place to work and process to perform, then you can add-on. 10 bots can easily turn into a 100 bots, then those can turn into a 1000 bots. From a scalability aspect, it's great.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have not yet used customer or technical support.

I have interacted with the community a whole lot, and if the amount of responses that they give in the community is any indication about how fast they would be with the enterprise technical support, then I can only imagine that it would be top-notch.

UiPath Academy RPA training is well put together. It paces well, not too fast nor too slow. You are constantly given new things to experiment with and things to learn which keep you interested, engaged, and moving forward.

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

Our Director of Tax heard from word of mouth about RPA and decided with tax being what it is, we have a lot of areas of mundane, monotonous, repetitive tasks, return filings, etc.

How was the initial setup?

It's a complex environment with all its moving pieces. However, it is well-documented, everything is, and as long as you're willing to spend a bit of time reviewing the documentation, it's not so complex that you can't figure it out. It's clearly there documented, and it tells you what to do, you have to take the time to read through it.

What about the implementation team?

My supervisor and I were the implementation team. We were heavily involved with figuring out Orchestrator, how to connect the robots, how to build the process, then put all those pieces together. Eventually, we figured it out.

With the current implementation, we are a skeleton crew. My group consists of four people, who are in the financial systems group within the business, not in IT.  I hope that that will grow as the implementation grows, if for no other reason than the more bodies that we can throw at it within reason, the more benefit we can get out of it. To maximize gains, we are going to need to be more than four people, sooner rather than later. However, I am not the decision-maker, so I can only cross my fingers and hope. Right now, we have a laundry list of things that could be automated. We have to prioritize those, then figure out where the bodies are who can do the automating

What was our ROI?

One of the processes that we first implemented was simply monitoring an e-mail mailbox and pulling out the invoices from there that needed to be manipulated. The robot is not actually doing anything with the invoices yet, as much as just pulling them out and handing them off to the human. Because previously, there was a group of people who were spending quite a lot of time just looking through that mailbox trying to make sure that they caught everything and items still get missed and overlooked. 

I've been told that quite a large amount of savings has happened in the discounts from paying those invoices on time, because someone didn't just overlook something and forget to send it on. As long as it meets the criteria, the robot always catches it. So, that's great. We've definitely seen a return already, and we're just scratching the surface.

I don't see any end in sight for opportunities to leverage it, increasing our efficiency and revenues. It may not necessarily reduce headcounts, but it should cap growing headcounts. Because, as our markets expand, we traditionally increase headcounts in the back office, but we are trying to move away from that.

I would rate the performance benefits as a nine out of ten. The robots can move faster than you can keep track of what you are doing. It's astronomical the levels of magnitude the increase in efficiency that you can get. We have had humans who were taking, according to best estimates, eight hours to accomplish something that the robot can do in minutes.

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

They give it away in the community edition for free, so I use it at home.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I've only dabbled with the other products, but the UiPath software is easier to dive into and start working with.

We looked a bit at Automation Anywhere. I tried a trial of it. 

We looked into Blue Prism, but I've not interacted with it firsthand.

I have the most experience with UiPath. 

We did do our due diligence in investigating, if not firsthand, by at least reading about what the other offerings were from Pega to some of the other competitors.

What helped us make the decision to choose UiPath was how available the community edition is and how engaged the actual community is. I don't know for certain that some of the competitors don't have something similar, but I was blown away because they got us hooked on it. They gave it to us for free, then we used it, tried it, and fell in love with it seeing what it could do.

As long as upper management says it's okay, we're going to keep buying more of it and utilizing it until something else comes along that replaces what it can do, which I don't see happening anytime soon.

What other advice do I have?

Try it out for yourself. Just go and download the community edition, install it on a computer, and within a few minutes you can have simple automation up and running using the recording tools, etc. Anyone really can do something just to see what it's capable of and see what RPA is. Try it out for yourself.

It has exceeded my expectations. Early on, I didn't have high of hopes for anything I could do which is rule based and have the robot to do it. Yet, I keep trying to come up with anything can't be done with a little bit of effort or through some other activities, especially with the availability of the community, which can leverage someone else smarter than me, who has figured out how to get it done.

UiPath can do pretty much everything another tool can do plus a whole bunch of extra things.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Shivendra Pratap - PeerSpot reviewer
RPA Developer at Signity Software Solutions
Real User
If you implement the correct logic and exception handling in your code, it seldom makes mistakes
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the Orchestrator and the AI Center. The AI Center has many pre-trained trained models you can adapt to your requirements."
  • "UiPath's processing speed is a little slow. That's its only drawback compared to other tools."

What is our primary use case?

My company delivers projects to clients based on their requirements. We use the tool for web and UI automation.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath reduces human error. If you implement the correct logic and exception handling in your code, it's seldom wrong. The solution saves time compared to other tools, especially when you are trying to automate something that's complicated. It simplifies complex processes and makes my work easier. 

What is most valuable?

I like the Orchestrator and the AI Center. The AI Center has many pre-trained models you can adapt to your requirements. You can train your AI or upload your own model as well. You can use the AI to extract the information from structured or unstructured documents.

UiPath is easy to use and implement. The tool has so many capabilities that we can use without using any code. Everything is there, and it's a low-code solution. We only need to drag and drop the elements and apply the logic.

The UiPath community is helpful. Most of the questions have already been answered on the forum, and you can easily solve your issues there. I've done the UiPath Academy courses. I took the fundamental course and the advanced developer course. I also received an associate developer certification. You can develop a complete understanding of the tool and its capabilities using the Academy. 

What needs improvement?

UiPath's processing speed is a little slow. That's its only drawback compared to other tools. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used UiPath for about two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is highly stable. 

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

I have used Microsoft Power Automate and OpenRPA. I believe UiPath is the best because of its capabilities, but I also think Power Automate is nice. Power Automate has robust integration with Microsoft platforms. That's one thing I like about it. 

How was the initial setup?

I found the initial deployment to be difficult, but it became easier once I gained some experience. UiPath doesn't require any maintenance unless there are changes on the website that cause the bot to not work properly. You can find the issue in the error log. 

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

UiPath is a costly solution. Many of the clients choose another solution after hearing the price. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate UiPath ten out of ten. UiPath is the best tool on the market, but the licensing cost is high and many clients don't have the budget. They prefer other tools like Power Automate, OpenRPA, and Automation Anywhere and all that. Otherwise, it's a great product with more capabilities than the other tools.

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.
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PeerSpot user
Solution architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Efficient and scalable robotic process automation with user-friendly interface, extensive set of pre-built activities and vibrant community support
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable aspect is its simplicity in coding."
  • "It would be beneficial if the system could proactively generate alerts, notifying the client about any delays in the process execution."

What is our primary use case?

Our company is considering UiPath and Automation Anywhere for automating a mainframe application. I have explored UiPath, evaluated its capabilities, and completed a use case.

How has it helped my organization?

Building automation with UiPath is exceptionally straightforward. However, clients need to exercise caution by ensuring that the automation doesn't require intricate human logic. If they seek simple automation without incorporating human elements, UiPath facilitates an easy and automatic implementation, excluding the need for advanced AI features.

We leverage UiPath to automate processes aligned with the good cause our company supports. This includes tasks related to warehouse management and maintaining a clean architecture. For instance, activities like clearing out mailboxes, collecting bills, and optimizing server data storage contribute to reducing running costs for the machines involved.

We employ UiPath for comprehensive end-to-end automation in the client's operations. They have successfully automated around two hundred use cases, forming a critical backbone for their extensive operations. The dependency on automation results is notably high, especially in areas like warehouse management, where the efficiency gains are substantial. Enabling automation to handle these tasks daily liberates the workforce from repetitive manual efforts, allowing them to redirect their focus to other crucial aspects of their operations. This strategic use of automation enhances productivity and expedites the completion of automated tasks.

We have a robust user community within UiPath, and I have actively participated in it. Although I wasn't as engaged this year due to a significant impact on the client caused by a cyber attack on their network, the community support has been exceptional. Despite my increased workload in addressing the aftermath of the incident, the UiPath user community has proven to be like a supportive family. Whenever I've raised queries or sought assistance, the responses have been prompt and helpful.

The advantages of using UiPath are evident in the efficiency gains achieved by minimizing human efforts. For instance, when uploading a report to SAP or executing a job in Insight SAP, these processes can often take several hours. Without automation, users may be tied up in monitoring these tasks, risking potential human errors due to prolonged attention. However, implementing UiPath effectively liberates users from this prolonged monitoring. Automation ensures that tasks run seamlessly according to protocol, allowing users to easily obtain results and simultaneously engage in other important activities. The goal is not to overcomplicate processes but rather to streamline and optimize them for enhanced productivity throughout the day.

UiPath has played a crucial role in reducing our on-premises footprint and enhancing the solution's capacity. The company we're currently assisting primarily focuses on order management, dealing with a significant influx of orders. By leveraging UiPath, we've effectively streamlined the order management process, optimizing the solution's capacity to handle a large volume of orders.

Our team actively engages with the academy courses provided by UiPath. As UiPath continuously expands and introduces new features, the courses serve as an invaluable resource. We find that the admin courses are particularly beneficial for us. When we come across new elements or features, we go through the courses to understand them thoroughly. This allows us to assess their compatibility with our solutions and implement them at our own pace. Additionally, if there are issues with older automation, the admin courses assist us in applying updated solutions to enhance performance. It not only helps with incorporating new automation but also in maintaining and improving existing ones, making it an excellent resource for managed support.

It accelerates digital transformation and significantly lowers IT costs. This is achieved without the need for expensive or complex application upgrades or extensive IT support. Currently, we are reducing the number of active machines and servers in operation. Although there might be an initial investment in bringing up users, the efficiency gains result in substantial savings. As we streamline processes through automation, we not only reduce the number of calls and machines but also realize long-term ROI by saving on infrastructure costs. In essence, the more automation implemented, the greater the cost savings and efficiency improvements over time.

UiPath has been instrumental in minimizing human errors, particularly in the process of uploading orders into the system. With automation, validation, and auditing integrated into our workflows, potential errors are identified at the initial stage. This allows us to promptly notify users of any issues, providing details based on the preset parameters. Through these efforts, we have observed a substantial reduction, estimated at around twenty to thirty percent, in errors that could potentially lead to future problems.

It has effectively liberated employee time by automating around two hundred processes within our sizable company. Based on my estimates, we have saved approximately three to four months' worth of workdays. This translates into significant time savings for our team and contributes to improved efficiency and productivity for our client.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable aspect is its simplicity in coding. All that's required is a fundamental grasp of coding principles and a bit of logical thinking. Once you've acquired these skills, you can effortlessly write a substantial amount of code and easily upgrade it as needed.

The integration is seamless and streamlines our workload.

What needs improvement?

It would be beneficial to enhance application insights, and I've shared this suggestion with the UiPath committee as well. Occasionally, clients expect a process to run at a specific time, but due to various factors, it might get delayed by half an hour or more. Currently, we only become aware of such delays by actively checking within the application. It would be beneficial if the system could proactively generate alerts, notifying the client about any delays in the process execution. This would provide transparency and enable clients, as well as our team, to be informed and take necessary actions, such as considering a migration if needed.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with it for approximately six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It exhibits high stability. With a robust security department in place, we conduct thorough code reviews, contributing to a secure and stable process. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at nine.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Our clients are a massive enterprise with approximately two hundred automations in place. Scalability is dependent on the process level. If you have independent processes that can be executed, scaling up is straightforward.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is readily accessible to us always. I would rate it ten out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

When comparing Automation Anywhere to UiPath, it's important to mention that Automation Anywhere has undergone numerous updates in recent years. In my assessment around 2020, it lacked features such as the concept of attended and unattended bots, as well as multi-bot automation. However, I believe they have since introduced these features, though I haven't personally explored them. In terms of features, Automation Anywhere lagged behind UiPath.

What about the implementation team?

The deployment process took approximately three months for us due to various IT issues. This involved obtaining clearance from the IT, firewall, and security teams. In the current client setting, which has about five to six internal auditors, securing approvals was a meticulous process. Once all the necessary clearances were obtained, the actual implementation only took around fifteen days. Additionally, we received direct support from the UiPath team during the integration process. From our side, only three individuals were involved in the implementation process.

It has been deployed across multiple departments and various regions, including APAC, Europe, and Australia.

Maintenance is not a major concern. System-level maintenance is required, but if your automation is rigid and doesn't necessitate frequent changes, it's easy for us to manage and monitor. For maintenance, our current approach involves regular database cleanups and similar tasks since we are on-premises. However, once we migrate to the cloud, I believe such procedures won't be necessary anymore.

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

I believe that the price is on the higher side. From an ROI perspective, I would give it a rating of five out of ten. However, if we exclude the ROI considerations from the overall assessment, I would rate it at seven.

What other advice do I have?

From my perspective, it's a strongly recommended tool. However, from the client's viewpoint, especially since they are venturing into RPA implementation for the first time, they prefer a proof of concept before proceeding. Overall, I would rate it 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. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
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Intelligent Automation Anakyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
Has a strong focus on innovation that ensures scalability and efficiency
Pros and Cons
  • "It offers an advanced and in-depth set of features, allowing for intricate and specific automation tasks."
  • "Having a tool that can assess the entire workflow of an automation created by someone would be highly beneficial."

What is our primary use case?

We had two distinct automation needs. First, we aimed to simplify the process of obtaining weekly updates on new employees. This involved automating navigating a portal, identifying new employees, and distinguishing between contractors and full-time employees and aims to streamline maintaining an accurate and current employee database for your company. 

The second use case focused on case number categorization. We needed to categorize cases originating from sources like SSM, DC Salesforce, and others into different categories, such as origin-related or finance-related, to prioritize and address them based on their urgency and type.

What is most valuable?

It offers an advanced and in-depth set of features, allowing for intricate and specific automation tasks. It is designed for a more user-friendly and localized experience, catering to individuals who aren't necessarily focused on development. 

The ease of use in both running and developing automation bots is a key factor for us. We also measure customer satisfaction not only in monetary terms but also in terms of the hours saved. For example, if we can save ten thousand hours in a year, it's a substantial achievement because it translates into cost savings for the organization. Ultimately, the hours saved through automation equate to tangible financial benefits.

What needs improvement?

The concept of process analysis would be helpful. Having a tool that can assess the entire workflow of an automation created by someone would be highly beneficial. This tool could identify areas where enhancements or improvements are feasible, simplifying the process of refining and optimizing automation workflows. In the case of case number categorization, we encountered an issue. While creating the automation, the system was designed to detect and categorize cases into various specified categories.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for a year and a half.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The performance of the automation largely depends on the developers and the environment. For unattended automation, ongoing monitoring is necessary, especially when your team is actively making changes to the interface of the platform or system you're automating.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is highly scalable as it can be deployed to handle large datasets and execute numerous processes concurrently. This scalability enhances its efficiency and productivity, making it a valuable tool.

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

My company made the decision to opt for UiPath over other vendors approximately five to six years ago. The primary reason for this choice was its superior technology and the seamless integration it offered for running our processes.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward.

What other advice do I have?

It doesn't have many direct competitors that offer a comparable blend of advanced automation features and competitive pricing. What sets them apart is their commitment to continuous improvement and innovation, evident in their advertising and technology enhancements. 

Overall, I would rate UiPath nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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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.