The area for improvement in Blue Prism Cloud is the support component. Whenever I reach out to the Blue Prism community, they consistently request knowledge sessions for everything, whether it is an advanced feature or not. They are not supporting in terms of scheduling calls from their end, with knowledge sessions being chargeable from an organization level, making my organization unwilling to conduct a session for each use case. I believe that desktop automation should log out if it is idle for 10 minutes, as that would be more secure for business users.
Blue Prism Cloud needs to improve its AI capabilities. They should integrate more ML models to stay competitive with cutting-edge technology. Moving everything to the cloud from desktop technologies would also be beneficial.
Edge browser extensions could be made slightly more resilient. It would be nice if they could package new libraries for end users rather than have them search for libraries. The extension resiliency would be huge. If we're looking for intelligent document processing and OCR functionality, we haven't found them yet.
Owner at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5
May 28, 2024
Blue Prism Cloud is a solid product that fulfils its intended functions well. Although there is room for improvement, it has integrated various cognitive and intelligent document processing features into a single product. But needs to effectively automate RPA processes despite some initial challenges addressed through product updates and new features.
Intelligent Automation Delivery Manager at Digiblu
Real User
Aug 23, 2023
If Blue Prism could integrate into Azure SQL because it's essentially an on-prem code, on infrastructure as a service. So, Blue Prism has moved the infrastructure into the cloud, but they haven't necessarily moved the application into cloud-native. So, for now, integration with Azure SQL is one of the critical points for me. Another area of improvement is pricing. The fundamental problem is that Blue Prism is essentially an on-prem solution that's been moved to the cloud by leveraging infrastructure as a service. Because Blue Prism has to license virtual machines and everything and deploy on virtual machines, which means within their cost structures, you get a little bit of benefits using virtual machines in the cloud, but you don't get the same cost benefit as if you make your software cloud-native. For example, the SQL server and its solutions are essentially using SQL instances, server instances, in the cloud. So, you essentially have to pay for the licensing of an SQL server. This is the licensing that would be associated with it. Therefore, the input costs change.
The AI part is currently missing in Blue Prism Studio. AI is available in the cloud system. It would be good if the AI part is included in Blue Prism Studio, which can make it much more efficient and good to work.
We have limited integrations in place, and my objective is to integrate Sentinel. However, there are constraints as some individuals have only one or two options for SIM integration solutions. Given the urgency of quick resolutions in today's landscape, prevention and detection are crucial. While these measures provide significant security, it's equally important to focus on response and recovery. In the case of a ransomware attack, it's not enough to solely prevent and detect. Once detection is in place, a response model should be implemented to automate the process and minimize the time required for tasks, such as creating investigation reports. In the past, it would take approximately seven to eight days to create an investigation report for a specific attack, including writing a case study. This process can be streamlined and improved through the automation of contextual investigation reports. By saving base templates and content, including screenshots and attack details, automation can be achieved. We are currently working on integrating Microsoft WAF and Excel for this purpose, but having a built-in tool would be ideal.
RPA Developer at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Apr 4, 2023
The tool’s customer support should improve. There were instances where I tried to call them up and was put on hold. However, they do revert back through emails once a ticket has been issued. They should be quick with their responses on calls.
Technical Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Dec 21, 2022
Pricing for Blue Prism Cloud is a pain as it's a little higher, but if you compare this tool with other tools, it's the perfect fit for any organization.
The version control could be improved and made consistent. There is a discrepancy between the versions on premise and the cloud versions. There has not been any upgrades to the UI of this solution for some time. Blue Prism seem to be falling behind in this regard compared to other solutions on the market. In a future release, we would also like to the option to integrate with Github.
Digital Transformation Officer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
May 13, 2022
I believe they need to become more competitive within the market in order to maintain their market share. We were essentially a Blue Prism shop and sold Blue Prism, but because of the price point, many clients are now looking at competitors.
Senior Digital Program Manager at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Sep 27, 2020
To be honest, I've been happy with the solution. We are moving away from it, however, it was more of a business decision and not related to useability. The company now has a general agreement with UiPath and we need to change, even though, in North America, we're quite satisfied with the product. The pricing was a bit high, from what I understand. That might have played a role in the decision to migrate to another solution. They have a good price, however, maybe for simpler tasks, it could have a smaller price tag.
Head of Delivery at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Sep 27, 2020
I think some of the issues we have experienced have been more painful because of the support. In the past, support was a bit weak. It would take a while to get a response and it could take a while to get an issue resolved. If we had a client that wanted Blue Prism Cloud Thoughtonomy, then it could take a little while to get that up and running. In comparison, getting Enterprise up and running is much quicker. I suppose the cost of Enterprise is quite a lot in comparison as there is an investment in the hardware. I do not really develop in Blue Prism Cloud, so I do not really know what can be improved on the development side. I do not really have any level of detail about it or feedback from appropriate users.
Project Manager at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Sep 16, 2020
There isn't much of a difference between UiPath and Blue Prism. However, if we want to customize, Blue Prism is not that developer-friendly. UiPath is much more flexible and easier for people (who are not in IT) to use. I wouldn't call Blue Prism user-friendly. It's one of its downfalls. They would benefit from having drag and drop functionality, for example. It would make them a strong competitor in the space. There needs to be less reliance on coding for customization, similar to Microsoft's Power Automate. UiPath also has a stronger community presence. Blue Prism is new to community versions and they're still building their user base. They came pretty late to the game. The solution needs to make it easier in terms of maintaining the bots. It's a bit hard to maintain the product. UiPath is much easier in that sense. OCR tends to work better with UiPath, as opposed to Blue Prism. During COVID, people have realized that they do want a more secure solution, and one with good AI and OCR capabilities. All of these items are things Blue Prism should continue to develop.
I would like to see a web-based control room, rather than the one that is in-built with the desktop version. Integration with different databases would be an improvement because there are certain things that are not compatible with Blue Prism. The is much improvement needed in the hyper-automation components, such as insights. We would like to have more reusable components from different vendors, as it would make things easier for us. For example, drag-and-drop downloads that can be used within our automations.
Research Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Consultant
Jun 10, 2020
The vendor does not make their pricing clear when you are searching for it, which is something that needs to be improved. When we are researching solutions for our clients, it is important for us to be able to give them at least some generic prices or the cost of licenses. It would help in the decision-making process.
The user-friendliness needs improvement. It's still a bit more IT-minded. I'm personally looking for a more business-minded RPA. It's the two big ways of using RPA in my experience. You can implement that RPA from an IT perspective, and then it's just one of the many tools, and it's not really a revolution, it's just a small state, or you can see it as really a business tool. Business people use it and automate their own business processes and it's really revolutionary because you don't need any IT knowledge. You just need a good app for processes. Those are the two ways of approaching RPAs, and for my part, I'm interested in the business parts.
Senior Consultant - Intelligent Automations at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Consultant
Mar 16, 2020
There are a lot of things that can be improved. I know most of the things are in the pipeline. They've now admitted, for example, a web-based control room would be much more beneficial. They're working on building that. The solution needs a more out-of-the-box connector with leading applications around the world. There should be more flexibility to do some calculations on the goals from the studio itself. I personally would like the solution to be supporting more languages. There should be a digital exchange where users can download functions to incorporate into their existing processes.
RPA Practice Head at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Feb 12, 2020
Improvement could be made with training and access to an ecosystem and developer's forum. I would suggest building out the ecosystem for developers to obtain training on the tool without having to make a heavy investment in licenses. For additional features, there's always a huge need to deal with unstructured input with RPA and I'd love to see built-in intelligence automation tools to deal with unstructured inputs.
Head of Solution Development at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Feb 11, 2020
The product could be improved by including advance features like OCR - optical character recognition - which are currently not native to the product. We are looking at integrating Blue Prism with other products. They've told us that Blue Prism Decipher is coming with intelligent document processing solution, but I haven't seen it. It would be good to see OCR integration and OCR capabilities included in the solution and, of course, going forward, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.
Senior Program Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Feb 3, 2020
Selecting the right business processes that are stable enough to automate can be challenging. Introducing new ways to accelerate the automation journey would be a real help.
Application Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Feb 2, 2020
The solution needs to simplify the user interface. It could be much better and much more appealing. The cost is a bit high. Other tools are much cheaper.
RPA Lead Architect and Manager at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Jan 30, 2020
Currently, we use version 6. Solution 6 has better features when compared to the 4.5 version. The main issue is screen scraping with Blue Prism gives us a big challenge because we need to define which technologies are web-based and have been built as opposed to it discovering the technology that it is built on. Whether it's a Window-based or Java-based application.
Robotic Process and Test Automation Consultant at OFGEM
Real User
Jan 29, 2020
Blue Prism is slightly difficult for the non-technical user. The centralized, client-server model that this solution uses does not work well and should be broken down into something that is web-based and locally controlled. Designing something in a client-server model is okay, but distributing those packages into a cloud model would be more appropriate. It is not easy to get training online. They recently opened up their online training for a month, but that is not sufficient for training an individual who has other jobs to do. Blue Prism has to tidy up their licensing policies. They are restrictive and the minimum length is three years. Smaller organizations do not have the budget for this and would prefer a one-year contractual period. Many smaller businesses plan ahead perhaps six months or a year, and they do not have a multi-year detailed vision or plan. Three years is quite long for this business model.
Executive Director at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Jan 27, 2020
At this point in time, we're very satisfied with the solution. I'm not seeing any features that are missing on it. I handle the business development side and I'm not really using the solution on a technical level, however. The pricing of the solution could be improved. It's a bit expensive right now. They should work to make it more competitive.
Data Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Jan 16, 2020
One area that the product can be improved is the ease-of-use because it is not easy to work with. Another area where it could improve is adding more automation features that it does not yet have like tended robots. Right now this solution only has unattended RPAs (Robotic Process Automation). One of the additional features which I would like to see included in the next release is process recording. It is a feature that can actually record some process and convert the processes to code. This can save time so that development could be much more rapid. That would be a very valuable addition. The interface is pretty user-friendly as it is, but I think it is also an area of Thoughtonomy which could be much better. So it is not bad now but there is quite a bit of room for improvement.
Blue Prism Cloud offers robust automation capabilities for backend office operations with a user-friendly, no-code interface, enhancing security and cloud integration for organizational efficiency.Blue Prism Cloud, a comprehensive automation platform, provides efficient process automation, leveraging features like Object Studio and flow design for ease of use and reusability. Non-programmers benefit from its intuitive interface, allowing for quick project turnaround with low-code development....
The area for improvement in Blue Prism Cloud is the support component. Whenever I reach out to the Blue Prism community, they consistently request knowledge sessions for everything, whether it is an advanced feature or not. They are not supporting in terms of scheduling calls from their end, with knowledge sessions being chargeable from an organization level, making my organization unwilling to conduct a session for each use case. I believe that desktop automation should log out if it is idle for 10 minutes, as that would be more secure for business users.
Decipher, one of their solutions, is a waste of time. Other than that, there's nothing specific I can think of.
Blue Prism Cloud needs to improve its AI capabilities. They should integrate more ML models to stay competitive with cutting-edge technology. Moving everything to the cloud from desktop technologies would also be beneficial.
Edge browser extensions could be made slightly more resilient. It would be nice if they could package new libraries for end users rather than have them search for libraries. The extension resiliency would be huge. If we're looking for intelligent document processing and OCR functionality, we haven't found them yet.
Blue Prism Cloud is a solid product that fulfils its intended functions well. Although there is room for improvement, it has integrated various cognitive and intelligent document processing features into a single product. But needs to effectively automate RPA processes despite some initial challenges addressed through product updates and new features.
Improvement should be per customer requirements.
Blue Prism Cloud needs to improve support, though documentation is available online. It is not detailed, which does not help.
The product’s licensing cost is expensive compared to other tools in the market.
If Blue Prism could integrate into Azure SQL because it's essentially an on-prem code, on infrastructure as a service. So, Blue Prism has moved the infrastructure into the cloud, but they haven't necessarily moved the application into cloud-native. So, for now, integration with Azure SQL is one of the critical points for me. Another area of improvement is pricing. The fundamental problem is that Blue Prism is essentially an on-prem solution that's been moved to the cloud by leveraging infrastructure as a service. Because Blue Prism has to license virtual machines and everything and deploy on virtual machines, which means within their cost structures, you get a little bit of benefits using virtual machines in the cloud, but you don't get the same cost benefit as if you make your software cloud-native. For example, the SQL server and its solutions are essentially using SQL instances, server instances, in the cloud. So, you essentially have to pay for the licensing of an SQL server. This is the licensing that would be associated with it. Therefore, the input costs change.
The AI part is currently missing in Blue Prism Studio. AI is available in the cloud system. It would be good if the AI part is included in Blue Prism Studio, which can make it much more efficient and good to work.
We have limited integrations in place, and my objective is to integrate Sentinel. However, there are constraints as some individuals have only one or two options for SIM integration solutions. Given the urgency of quick resolutions in today's landscape, prevention and detection are crucial. While these measures provide significant security, it's equally important to focus on response and recovery. In the case of a ransomware attack, it's not enough to solely prevent and detect. Once detection is in place, a response model should be implemented to automate the process and minimize the time required for tasks, such as creating investigation reports. In the past, it would take approximately seven to eight days to create an investigation report for a specific attack, including writing a case study. This process can be streamlined and improved through the automation of contextual investigation reports. By saving base templates and content, including screenshots and attack details, automation can be achieved. We are currently working on integrating Microsoft WAF and Excel for this purpose, but having a built-in tool would be ideal.
The tool’s customer support should improve. There were instances where I tried to call them up and was put on hold. However, they do revert back through emails once a ticket has been issued. They should be quick with their responses on calls.
Pricing for Blue Prism Cloud is a pain as it's a little higher, but if you compare this tool with other tools, it's the perfect fit for any organization.
The version control could be improved and made consistent. There is a discrepancy between the versions on premise and the cloud versions. There has not been any upgrades to the UI of this solution for some time. Blue Prism seem to be falling behind in this regard compared to other solutions on the market. In a future release, we would also like to the option to integrate with Github.
How we basically integrate any AI models, I’d like to see something which I could do more of a transfer share with. It could be more flexible.
I believe they need to become more competitive within the market in order to maintain their market share. We were essentially a Blue Prism shop and sold Blue Prism, but because of the price point, many clients are now looking at competitors.
It would be useful if some of the information protocols came built within the app instead having to create them.
To be honest, I've been happy with the solution. We are moving away from it, however, it was more of a business decision and not related to useability. The company now has a general agreement with UiPath and we need to change, even though, in North America, we're quite satisfied with the product. The pricing was a bit high, from what I understand. That might have played a role in the decision to migrate to another solution. They have a good price, however, maybe for simpler tasks, it could have a smaller price tag.
I think some of the issues we have experienced have been more painful because of the support. In the past, support was a bit weak. It would take a while to get a response and it could take a while to get an issue resolved. If we had a client that wanted Blue Prism Cloud Thoughtonomy, then it could take a little while to get that up and running. In comparison, getting Enterprise up and running is much quicker. I suppose the cost of Enterprise is quite a lot in comparison as there is an investment in the hardware. I do not really develop in Blue Prism Cloud, so I do not really know what can be improved on the development side. I do not really have any level of detail about it or feedback from appropriate users.
There isn't much of a difference between UiPath and Blue Prism. However, if we want to customize, Blue Prism is not that developer-friendly. UiPath is much more flexible and easier for people (who are not in IT) to use. I wouldn't call Blue Prism user-friendly. It's one of its downfalls. They would benefit from having drag and drop functionality, for example. It would make them a strong competitor in the space. There needs to be less reliance on coding for customization, similar to Microsoft's Power Automate. UiPath also has a stronger community presence. Blue Prism is new to community versions and they're still building their user base. They came pretty late to the game. The solution needs to make it easier in terms of maintaining the bots. It's a bit hard to maintain the product. UiPath is much easier in that sense. OCR tends to work better with UiPath, as opposed to Blue Prism. During COVID, people have realized that they do want a more secure solution, and one with good AI and OCR capabilities. All of these items are things Blue Prism should continue to develop.
I would like to see a web-based control room, rather than the one that is in-built with the desktop version. Integration with different databases would be an improvement because there are certain things that are not compatible with Blue Prism. The is much improvement needed in the hyper-automation components, such as insights. We would like to have more reusable components from different vendors, as it would make things easier for us. For example, drag-and-drop downloads that can be used within our automations.
Having more AI functionality would be an improvement.
The vendor does not make their pricing clear when you are searching for it, which is something that needs to be improved. When we are researching solutions for our clients, it is important for us to be able to give them at least some generic prices or the cost of licenses. It would help in the decision-making process.
The user-friendliness needs improvement. It's still a bit more IT-minded. I'm personally looking for a more business-minded RPA. It's the two big ways of using RPA in my experience. You can implement that RPA from an IT perspective, and then it's just one of the many tools, and it's not really a revolution, it's just a small state, or you can see it as really a business tool. Business people use it and automate their own business processes and it's really revolutionary because you don't need any IT knowledge. You just need a good app for processes. Those are the two ways of approaching RPAs, and for my part, I'm interested in the business parts.
There are a lot of things that can be improved. I know most of the things are in the pipeline. They've now admitted, for example, a web-based control room would be much more beneficial. They're working on building that. The solution needs a more out-of-the-box connector with leading applications around the world. There should be more flexibility to do some calculations on the goals from the studio itself. I personally would like the solution to be supporting more languages. There should be a digital exchange where users can download functions to incorporate into their existing processes.
Improvement could be made with training and access to an ecosystem and developer's forum. I would suggest building out the ecosystem for developers to obtain training on the tool without having to make a heavy investment in licenses. For additional features, there's always a huge need to deal with unstructured input with RPA and I'd love to see built-in intelligence automation tools to deal with unstructured inputs.
The product could be improved by including advance features like OCR - optical character recognition - which are currently not native to the product. We are looking at integrating Blue Prism with other products. They've told us that Blue Prism Decipher is coming with intelligent document processing solution, but I haven't seen it. It would be good to see OCR integration and OCR capabilities included in the solution and, of course, going forward, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.
Selecting the right business processes that are stable enough to automate can be challenging. Introducing new ways to accelerate the automation journey would be a real help.
The solution needs to simplify the user interface. It could be much better and much more appealing. The cost is a bit high. Other tools are much cheaper.
Currently, we use version 6. Solution 6 has better features when compared to the 4.5 version. The main issue is screen scraping with Blue Prism gives us a big challenge because we need to define which technologies are web-based and have been built as opposed to it discovering the technology that it is built on. Whether it's a Window-based or Java-based application.
Blue Prism is slightly difficult for the non-technical user. The centralized, client-server model that this solution uses does not work well and should be broken down into something that is web-based and locally controlled. Designing something in a client-server model is okay, but distributing those packages into a cloud model would be more appropriate. It is not easy to get training online. They recently opened up their online training for a month, but that is not sufficient for training an individual who has other jobs to do. Blue Prism has to tidy up their licensing policies. They are restrictive and the minimum length is three years. Smaller organizations do not have the budget for this and would prefer a one-year contractual period. Many smaller businesses plan ahead perhaps six months or a year, and they do not have a multi-year detailed vision or plan. Three years is quite long for this business model.
At this point in time, we're very satisfied with the solution. I'm not seeing any features that are missing on it. I handle the business development side and I'm not really using the solution on a technical level, however. The pricing of the solution could be improved. It's a bit expensive right now. They should work to make it more competitive.
One area that the product can be improved is the ease-of-use because it is not easy to work with. Another area where it could improve is adding more automation features that it does not yet have like tended robots. Right now this solution only has unattended RPAs (Robotic Process Automation). One of the additional features which I would like to see included in the next release is process recording. It is a feature that can actually record some process and convert the processes to code. This can save time so that development could be much more rapid. That would be a very valuable addition. The interface is pretty user-friendly as it is, but I think it is also an area of Thoughtonomy which could be much better. So it is not bad now but there is quite a bit of room for improvement.