Blue Prism Reviews

In one of the use cases, we import Excel tables. We extract the Excel data from the output of a proprietary application. This application produces Excel tables as an output, and we then create PDFs for certificates for the people who are flying. They have to do training, flying hours, and things like this. In this project, we closed the gap between the proprietary application, provided by a different team, and the HR application.

It is deployed on-premises. Due to security issues, we are not allowed to use cloud services. We only have centralized application servers that are operated by the central operations team. It is not on users' desktops, which is possible, but it is not our focus.

RPA processes are helpful when we need interaction with different applications and close the technical gaps between them. In one of the use cases that we evaluated, there was a single Excel template from a vendor. The Excel file has 7,000 objects, and it included information about the part numbers, prices, and some of the details about each object of a complex maschine. This file had to be input to SAP, so a human had to enter these 7,000 objects one by one, which is a pretty mechanical and uninteresting task. The RPA bot was easily able to import this file. Without RPA, this import had to be done by a person who had to do the same task 7,000 times just to import one contract. This is where RPA processes and RPA tools are very helpful. RPA tools have the possibility to close media gaps. RPA tools are like macros on steroids. They now have got the maturity level for big data centers.

We see some security issues in Blue Prism. The German vendor Servicetrace is better at this point. This is also reflected in the Gartner report where Servicetrace is mentioned as the tool of choice in high-security environments. So, security, particularly in terms of administration, needs to be improved. We must have the possibility to prevent the administration from taking a look at the ongoing process. When we have restricted data flow, the operations team should not be able to take a look at the data that is processed.

I have been using this solution for about three years.

It has been pretty stable. Most errors are human errors in the input files. When we have issues, they are usually because of the content of the input file. There are no technical issues with the product.

It is not currently an issue on our side because the company has pretty strong and fast machines. Because these machines do only RPA and nothing else, they can handle the work of a lot of employees and do a great job with that.

I'm not sure if our contractor has many tasks to handle with the vendor itself. During the software evaluation, we had discussions with the vendor about product details, but the support is taken care of by the contractors, and I'm not sure how often it is required.

The installation itself was pretty straightforward. The installation of the software is pretty easy, but it can get tricky when you go into bot development and have to close the gaps between different applications. The most complex use case took us about two and a half years.

We have a project team of five to six people for implementation. Operations are handled by three people. The project team is extended by external persons or contractors. The basic operations are done internally.

We definitely save money by using RPA.

Due to our financial structure, we need fixed costs. So, a license based on the usage would not be feasible. If we have a license model that is based on tasks per year or something else, it could create a very dynamic range of costs. Due to our public financial input, we have to know what it will cost. So, we have licenses per server. This helps us in planning, and we know exactly when we need additional servers. We can then request additional money for them.

It is a pretty good solution. I would rate it an eight out of 10.

We've primarily used the solution for financial purposes. We have payroll management and a lot of manual processes. With this, we can run automated reports. There are about 15 to 18 interfaces where we get the information. We can consolidate emails, PDFs, and Excel. There's automation to pick everything up and understand all the sources and different kinds of data. We can input raw data, consolidate it and then handle calculations. We can download data and save it in folders.

The solution offers very good accuracy.

The automation on offer is great.

Whenever we used to have issues, the developers used to follow up with the technical team. They're good.

The initial setup is simple and straightforward. 

The solution can scale.

We have found the product to be stable. 

Everything on offer is great. We could hardly find any procedural issues at all. All the processes are really quite good. 

They should come up with these open-ended certifications, like UiPath, where people can just go ahead and get the certification. That way, people can evaluate and pick up certifications easily to make it easy to learn.

Everyone uses Workday and Salesforce and all that stuff. If they had specific plugins to interact with these enterprise tools, that would be very helpful. 

We've used the solution over the last 12 months. 

The solution is stable and reliable. it's problem-free. there aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

It is scalable, it depends on the requirements. At this moment, it is scalable. In terms of enterprise scalability, I'm not sure. However, it does scale from one particular area to many areas, including accounting, treasury, payroll, et cetera.

Technical support is good. they are helpful and responsive.

From my understanding, the team never had issues in terms of reaching out to the Blue Prism support team and getting solutions. They were all fine.

The initial setup was not complex at all. It was very, very easy. Initially, there were very few hiccups. Once we got up and running, it's amazing, it's perfect. There's not a problem at all.

We have our own center of excellence. I hired employees and contractors to help as needed. We were the business architects and we got the requirements and came up with the process design.

We have definitely seen an ROI.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We were using Blue Prism mainly for simple RPA processing.

I work with advisors, and we have a lot of clients that have a lot of processes. We use the solution for the cost and management processes. When we need to organize some information we join the information into a report.

I use the basic features that are very useful.

There are some new tools on the market that work better than Blue Prism. When Blue Prism receives information I have found other RPA solutions refresh the application better. At this moment it's not the best application.

Blue Prism could improve the integration with the development of applications. For example, a type of automation where we can build applications and integrate them with the RPA. This is something that we would use a lot and is not available in Blue Prism.

I have been using Blue Prism for approximately two years.

The support is great for Blue Prism when you are implementing the solution. However, since it is a new solution there is not a lot of information on the forums.

The installation difficulty level depends on what processes are going to be being used.

My advice to others wanting to implement this solution is to make sure they evaluate their requirements and it is important to have good integration with their systems. I would recommend using templates for their data because if they do not it can create problems.

I rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is simple. The deployment is pretty fast.

The stability is good. 

We've found the solution to be scalable. 

Technical support has been responsive when we have needed their assistance.

It's been our concern that we will be able to move more towards sustainability within our own company. We do rely a lot on third-party vendors, and we're hoping we can have more internal talent to actually manage all our projects. That's our number one goal and concern. We are looking into providing training to our business users that is similar to something like PowerBI, where you can basically configure and use less coding. That's what we want to leverage.

The license cost is a bit high. Being a finance guy, that's number one for me. 

Number two is that whatever bots that you put inside, they only can run a specific activity at a specific time. For example, let's say I want to do a bank reconciliation at 10:00 AM, and, at the same time, I want to do some kind of asset capitalization, I can't do both. I need to choose which I can run at 10:00 AM. With one, I may need to re-time it. I'd basically like the bot to work on multiple activities at once. 

The deployment of the bots should be much faster and more intuitive.

The stability has been good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. it performs well.

We are actually expanding into other centers of excellence, or what we call a COE.

Due to the fact that we are a COE, the group finance, the group tech, we have about a thousand plus users at this time, and that will grow.

Technical support is okay. They're quite responsive.

That said, in terms of support, we do have our own technical panel internal itself, and they are actually the first layer, or level one. Subsequently, for level two issues and onwards, the vendor comes to the picture.

This is the first RPA we've worked with. We did not use another solution previously.

The initial setup is quite straightforward, and the deployment is quite fast.

The cost of the solution is high. It should be lowered. They need to make it more affordable. 

We are currently looking into ServiceNow that also has RPA capabilities. 

I'm actually not a technical person, I'm actually more of a finance person. I'm a business user.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

I'd advise potential new users that they need to take an actual use case, an actual business point, and do a pilot on it first to visualize how the solution could potentially work. If they find that it's satisfactory, then perhaps they could work on other rollouts. The key is to develop more on the user experience side of things.

The product is pretty good so far.

The initial setup is not complex.

It's not too difficult to configure everything.

It's fast to get up and running if you use a cloud deployment.

We haven't really used it extensively. I can say that even though it feels like a good product, there are some things that are completely missing the mark for me in Blue Prism.

The solution isn't complete. There are items that you have to pay extra for, such as the Interact. Those things should be part and parcel of the Blue Prism solution. I can't see it as a standalone separate service, therefore, why do I have to buy this separately? It should be part of the base offering.

From a monitoring perspective, the way the screens are set up, or the reporting within Blue Prism, is not really user-friendly. You need a technical person to basically put that up. It's not necessarily easily viewable.

As far as the assessment is concerned, the assessment tools need to be refined as it is really difficult for one to just use it out of the box. The cloud offering basically says that you can start right away, and you don't have to wait for all of these configurations and things. However, we have purchased the on-premise solution and not the cloud solution. For me, I just need a better experience on that deployment, even though it should have been the more mature solution.

From a Blue Prism perspective, user-friendliness is really an issue. The components that I now have to buy extra to do automation, things that, if I look at a tool like UiPath, that is already part of their toolset. You don't have to buy any user integration with other solutions. I can't understand why Blue Prism doesn't do the same.

They are not really very innovative. There's nothing that wows me if I would compare them to the newer tools that are coming out that's got the cognitive automation tools that are built into the product.

Within Blue Prism it's very difficult to manage a team of coders, for instance, or a team of developers developing on the same application. That is not in Blue Prism. You can't do that. It's one developer at a time working with one thing. The source code management within the toolset really needs to improve. They don't seem so managed and packaged well, and integration to maybe other repositories where one can store that information would be better. That is where it's lacking at the moment. The configuration, as I said, of the reporting, of the dashboard, out-of-the-box, should actually be easy to configure and not so challenging.

I've been using this solution for about six months.

I've worked with UiPath in the past.

The solution's initial setup has a sort of medium level of difficulty. I won't say it was complex per se. I would definitely not say it was complex to do it or to configure it. 

The price is low and it's reasonable, however, I expected more to be included in the product. Now, if I have to go and buy all these other extras, that price is going to go up. For instance, if I use OCR capability and I'm not using their product, the Decipher product, I have to go and buy an ABBYY license separately. That means I have to manage more licenses. It's not included in the package where I have a good OCR solution that works with it, I must now go and buy and manage separate licenses. It is just a nightmare.

If you look at the supply chain, you now need to get a separate license from another company if you want to buy licenses to OCR with Blue Prism. And that is where the cost increases and then the investment becomes a little bit more difficult to justify. 

I'm a customer and an end-user.

I'm in a position within our company where people are saying to me, "We've got Power Automate from Microsoft, why should I use Blue Prism?" And with the Microsoft suite, Power Automate, and all of the cognitive automation is already included as part of Azure. And here I sit with Blue Prism, and now I need new gateways to integrate with that. It's going to be a little bit more work to make it work with Microsoft Azure than the product that is already there in Microsoft Azure. I must now basically justify to the business why do I need Blue Prism.

It makes it very difficult in terms of their strategy if all the extra products that we want, we have to buy additionally. Whereas, if I compare it to the Microsoft Azure Suite of things, you get all of these features without having to buy them separately as you would need to with Blue Prism. It's a very difficult sell to the business.

I would advise others to go straight to the cloud and not mess around with the on-premise solution. The reason is the on-premise solution will take you six months before you can start to show anything. Going to the cloud is probably a better option to get the results out faster.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

One of the most powerful features in Blue Prism is exception handling. It's one of the features that really differentiates it from other platforms.

It is really easy to use; it's user-friendly. 

Also, you only have one database and can consolidate everything, database per environment. I think that helps to have more control, to trace all the data and all the loss, and scale in an easier way.

It is stable and easy to scale.

It is easy to set up as well.

Blue Prism needs to work in a web-based account. I think that Blue Prism will need to have the main features be web-based so that you can control the box in a web-based environment and not in a client's environment.

You need to enter the machine and study the client in that machine to see what happened in the box. In other platforms, you can do that in a web-based environment, which is easier to access.

The OTR can be more powerful.

They also need to have an easy way to have more sessions for Telco machines. 

I started using it five years ago as a developer. It is deployed in cloud and hybrid environments.

The stability is really good.

It's really easy to scale.

If you have problems in production, they have technical support 24/7. They respond quickly and help you resolve the issue that you have.

It is easy to set up. In a position setup, at most it can take eight hours. In a box environment, it can be set up in 10 minutes.

I highly recommend Blue Prism and rate it at nine on a scale from one to ten.

I'm working with an investment bank domain with multiple processes, both post-trade and marketing. I am trying to automate all of the operation work into an automation solution.  You can include a reconciliation process and invoice processing.

We use it for operations-related processes and other operational processes for analyzing and researching comments and reconciliation. These are all of the post-market trades we have. 

We find all features valuable.

I like the error handling, it's very good. The reuseable components are very helpful.

I am now analyzing the Decipher components, which is a new feature for me to use and utilize.

The OCR capability, along with the connectivity with some of the legacy tools, needs to be improved.

I found a few connection issues. I'm not sure whether it is a system issue or maybe the Blue Prism connectivity or connection string is not available there, but in some of the applications, we do face challenges to connect with another application. For example, the Chrome extension doesn't work on an unattended bot, which is why we have installed the upgraded version of Blue Prism.

In the next release, I would like to see the OCR capability increased, have a built-in solution to enhance the hyper capability itself. 

It should be compatible with all of the Internet Explorer options, such as Internet Explorer, along with Chrome and any others. 

Also, the cloud-based installation option, for example, there should be an option to set up in-house, along with cloud-based, that can be operated from anywhere.

I have been working with Blue Prism for a year and a half.

We are working with version 6.3, which is the latest upgraded version of Blue Prism.

We do follow good practice to create reusable components and at the same time, while being a part of COE. For a complex project, we target three months to complete any of the complex projects. So even in terms of scalability from the critical.

We have plans to increase our usage.

There have been a few complex issues, where we followed up with the support team. One example of that was the Chrome extension. We are still in the process of implementing the upgraded version to resolve that issue.

We have almost 80 to 90 percent of our issue resolved. But we have a few components that we are still not able to capture on Chrome. We are trying to analyze whether it is an issue with Blue Prism or is it with Chrome to upgrade.

So far, the technical support is good.

There might be issues with our legacy system, we are not sure what the cause is exactly, but the support has been there to help us.

I am working with UiPath and Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup is simple. We did not find any complexity.

We have an infer team to take care of the installation and deployment.

The licensing is approximately $1,100.

I provide a warranty period of one year to any of the profits as an automation solution, it gives me a little less profit, but for a long-term perspective for example two to three years, I would say it is much more affordable as compared to the other.

It is possible but I was not part of this process. We have a technical team who makes the decisions.

There is always room for improvement. I am expecting a lot.

I would rate Blue Prism a seven out of ten.

We have got the Blue Prism license for financial auditing purposes. 

The whole auditing activity is run at the backend without any screen scraping activity and other stuff that generally requires human involvement. It was deployed for this purpose, and it has been working perfectly well so far. There are certain hiccups that come in between, but our team is able to handle them. So, it is mainly being used for high-volume backend batch processing.

It works very well for batch processing at the backend. Scalability-wise, it is very robust. It is also stable.

Its front end is not very good for things like screen scraping. UiPath and AA are very good for that. Blue Prism's license is costlier than UiPath and AA. They should be improving its price.

Its artificial intelligence and cognitive features are not that strong enough. Cognitive automation should be their next area of improvement.

The decoding of the bot is a highly painful activity, and this is an area of improvement for Blue Prism. It is tough to find variables and get the code in place. You have to open the whole bonnet of the car to get things in place. 

Their training should also be improved. UiPath and AA have their learning communities. They provide free of cost basic certification. As a result, you get trained workforce in the market that can directly work on projects, but this is not the case with Blue Prism. It is costly to get the resources trained, which increases the overall cost of getting a resource for Blue Prism.

Their tech support can also be improved. Many times, the issues that should have been addressed by L1 have gone to L2.

I have been using this solution for one and a half years.

It is stable. There are no issues.

Scalability is not at all a problem. It works perfectly well for a batch operation.

In terms of usage, we have seven users who use this solution.

Their tech support is good but can be improved. Every ticket first goes to L1, and then it goes to L2. Many times, the issues that should have been addressed by L1 have gone to L2.

It was a bit complex because we were already using AA, and we were more habitual of that interface. That's why it took us some time with Blue Prism.

It took around two months to set it up and get the first use case in place from the development perspective.

Its license is costlier than UiPath and AA. They should improve its price.

We have a two-year contract with them.

Blue Prism is best for backend processing, but its artificial intelligence and cognitive features are not strong enough. It could be because we have not explored it that much. My experience with this solution is more related to backend processing. If you are looking for backend processing that is quite heavy in nature and you have a team that is trained in Blue Prism, you should go for it without any doubt.

I would rate Blue Prism a seven out of ten.

In our case, all use cases are relevant to the telecom industry. In the telecom industry, we are the service providers for various telecoms such as Vodafone, AT&T, et cetera. We are the service providers. We are doing some processes and we are doing support in the networks as well. In terms of the internet, when it comes to supporting the network, there are some processes that need to be completed manually. Therefore, we will take those processes from all the verticals. For example, we did this project for Telus, and we identified the processes to where we can implement automation. We sought out processes that were good areas for automation adoption.

We identify those areas for clients and map them out.

The solution's most valuable aspect is the fact that it is systematic. It's a very systematic tool. We can do all these things like array and cache. It's very useful.

We were able to create a few new processes which we automated. 

The mapping is very good. On mapping, we can order the tools required for automation.

The analysis itself is very good. We're able to say which areas can be improved and which are the easiest areas to automate. Typically, it's good at revealing which decision-making areas could be automated effectively.

The tool is very technically sound.

The product is very secure. 

The solution is not user-friendly. It has a very high learning curve. People should be able to learn it easily so that they will get interested in using it. 

While the solution is more secure, it's very hard to find people trained on that. I need different people, not only those who are trained on RPA tools. I cannot get people in Blue Prism. Without the resources, people just move to Automation Anywhere or UiPath which are more user-friendly. In comparison, UiPath is much easier to use and you can find people who are well-versed in it.

The product needs to put out more videos, similar to Automation Anywhere, which does that a lot. You can find a lot of videos online in relation to Automation Anywhere and UiPath, however, this is not the case with Blue Prism. There's just less information available. 

Blue Prism needs to provide better training. They need to start something similar to Automation Anywhere University or UiPath Academy. If they had some courses at different levels (basic, advanced, and master), there would be more educated personnel available.

The solution needs to provide a trial license - whether it is on cloud or on-premises. They need to provide a standard environment to work with. We need to have practice in installing the data center and connecting it to the database. 

We need to understand how we can migrate from one lesser version to the higher version and what is the load balance and how we can manage that. We need to understand better how our core system is managing that. Proper training would help with understanding.

I've been using the solution for about two years at this point.

The solution is quite stable. We haven't had any issues with it. It isn't buggy or glitchy. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

I'm strongly involved with Automation Anywhere. I've been working with Automation Anywhere since 2019.

While Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere are very similar to each other in terms of capabilities, Automation Anywhere is much easier to use. 

Even in Blue Prism or UiPath or Automation Anywhere, the attributes are very similar to each other. However, Blue Prism is got a larger barrier to entry due to its high learning curve and lack of strong training.

We prefer the fact that, for example, on Automation Anywhere, we can use trial versions and we can use that time to train employees on how to use it. With Blue Prison, there doesn't seem to be a trial option.

We are not very familiar with the Blue Prism installation or if it's easy or not. Those areas are a bit of a gray area for me as I'm not doing many installations. 

The setup and installation we didn't do ourselves. We did these projects in the client end roadmap. The client has the Blue Prism tool. They set up everything themselves. Our job is to go there and to be able to provide the roadmap.

Likely, the installation takes about two or three hours, I would estimate.

The product has its own database, such as an SQL server. We often install supporting tools, however. There are some coming out now, such as Python, Java, and VBScript editors. Certain items, such as Java Runtime Focus should be installed. There are different installations depending on the client. If it is not on the cloud, the installations definitely take some time. It might take two hours or more.

Our clients handle the initial setup themselves.

Unlike other options, you need to buy a license. You cannot do a trial. At least, that was always the case a few years ago. With UiPath or Automation Anywhere, there are trial versions. It's a drawback for clients if it is still true that no trial option is on the table.

I'm no longer using Blue Prism. I deal more with UiPath now. However, I am certified in Blue Prism. I tend to take care of the delivery part. We talk with the clients and understanding the clients' requirements, understand the project, then divide the project into activities and map them out. I will help to architect it. If there is any trouble in capturing those areas then I will analyze this in Blue Prism or Automation Anywhere. 

So far, in those Blue Prism projects, it's very straightforward with rule-based - straightforward in the process automation. We will concentrate on low-hanging areas first and we will identify only those areas that we can automate easily. I'm sorry. In terms of automating end-to-end process, we will concentrate only on to 60% to 70% for our automation.



Premarajan:
So come back to the courses, in that way, we are not much familiar with the Blue Prism installation, how this installation takes time, it's easy or not. Those areas are a little gray area for me because I'm not doing much in the installation. But if you ask us if in the installation of Automation Anywhere, definitely, I can say I'll answer that. I can see that screen by screen. When we install it, the watch screen will come first like that. I can say that because I personally did installation Automation Anywhere installation.

Premarajan:
I set up a lab system in Tata so that our employees can train. I did a lot of things. Like that, I installed a UiPath as well in my system. I installed even [inaudible 00:26:08] also they provided, Microsoft has. They also provided a trial license to me when I asked. They also provided.

Premarajan:
But Blue Prism, those days, didn't provide me the trial version and they didn't help me, how to install it. No idea. That is a shortfall I can say about Blue Prism. [crosstalk 00:26:29]-

Emma:
So you were-
Premarajan:
It's very limited when we needed the license or those who purchased the Blue Prism people can work on Blue Prism tool. Others had no chance to learn. That I can say one way it's good. In the other way, people were not aware of the tool. That is, I can say it's good except for one drawback.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

We are primarily using the solution to automate the enterprise processes that are so widely used by many staff and where we want to reduce the specific deviation where FTE may be high. 

The solution has been quite stable so far.

The new features that have come out have been great.

So far, the solution has been faultless. We've been very happy with it.

The solution has been very good in terms of helping us automate processes.

If that bot is running 24/7, we have to allocate people 24/7, 24 hours a day. The cost of support can be quite high.

If there was a way that robots could self-heal if they stopped running for whatever reason, that would be helpful.

I've been using the solution for about two years at this point. It's been a while.

We've found the stability to be very good. there are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The solution might be scalable. It depends on the process that we want to automate, actually. It looks to be pretty scalable overall, however.

We only have about 50 users on the solution currently.

We do plan to continue usage.

We don't really use support, It can be expensive. We need it to be 24/7 as our processes run 24/7 and if something goes wrong, we need to have access to them at any time, which means we need to pay more.

That also means we need to have our own staff on 24/7 to make sure the bots are working as they should.

We didn't previously use a different solution. This is our first and only product for the purpose of automation.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The specific developer or team is doing the deployment. Then, we often go live, and after we stabilize, we hand it over to our support team to continue the operation. Overall, we have had around six to eight people for the support portion. It must match the size of the project. Typically, you need two to four people with different roles per project.

We tend to sign two or three-year contracts for licenses. Afterward, we may renew or tender a new company.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

I'd recommend the solution to other companies. That said, companies should venture out and try other tools as well. You want to compare to ensure you're getting a comprehensive solution that covers your needs as an organization.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.