Blue Prism Reviews

I'm one of the senior consultants in the company I work for, we are a service provider and we provide IT services to our customers. One of these services we provide is automation, using tools, such as Blue Prism.

We are upgrading to version 7.01 of Blue Prism in a few months.

We are using Blue Prism recently for statistics processes, which is the automation of SAP transactions for our logistics departments. Additionally, it is being used for SAP transactions within our IT finance service department. We do many things with it, such as partial reset and ticket re-keying. We have incident tickets logs from the IT department, which can be from emails, and we do re-keying exercises.

Blue Prism can improve a lot. The interaction with Google Chrome can be massively improved. I know in the next version there are slight improvements. We don't know how much, but we are comparing them. At this moment, Google Chrome is a massive issue within the toolset, due to the way Google Chrome receives updates regularly but Blue Prism is unable to cope. The spy method of Google Chrome is not as user-friendly as Internet Explorer is. However, Internet Explorer is being discontinued from their support, therefore it's not the best browser to be using. This has caused us major issues in the last six months. 

Our customers go through platforms, such as CyberArk and Citrix. The way that Blue Prism interacts with these applications could improve. There are a few other issues, such as memory, but these are the key problems that have offered issues in the past six months or so.

I have used Blue Prism within the past 12 months.

We have had a mixed experience of the stability of the solution. The problem that we have faced might be our infrastructure. The application itself can't be completely blamed. I think some of the issues are down to our VM infrastructure, the application service that we use, and the host that the servers are hosted on. In terms of the application, we have not seen many issues.

The technical support is very good.

I have used UiPath previously.

You don't need to be a technical developer to develop in Blue Prism, you follow the natural way you have developed. Whilst with UiPath, you need some development background to be able to develop in it.

We have been using Blue Prism for approximately eight years and when we first set it up it was a bit complex, but we always had support from the license of Blue Prism and other providers that we have within our organization. The whole process was fairly easy because of the support we had.

My advice to others would be to make sure they fully understand the use cases. If they are implementing it for customers, you're going to come across connectivity issues and make sure that you fully understand that it's not going to work right away. You're going to have to have a few releases into production, be mindful of Google Chrome and the issues that you may come across.

I rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten.

As for primary use cases, we have done purchase order processing for close to five countries, and we also do non-compliance in terms of the field assets deployed by a company to hospitals. That is, we use it as an asset tracking solution.

From technical perspective, Blue Prism is pretty good.

Overall, it's a stable and scalable solution. Installation is straightforward as well. 

Blue Prism could be compatible with Oracle's suite of ERPs. We have seen some issues related to this.

They could do much better with their intelligent document processing solution. They're pretty behind and don't have attended bots.

I would also prefer a better UI in the administration screens The user interface is pretty bad from an administration perspective.

I would like to see a lot of features like process mining.

I would also like to see a lot of different innovative solutions like human-bot interaction, handover managerial systems, and collaboration systems for process capturing, storing, and evaluating and getting discussions done within businesses.

We have been providing Blue Prism to customers for more than three years now.

From a platform perspective, we see compatibility issues with Oracle's JD Edwards software sometimes, but overall, to my knowledge, the solution is stable.

It's a scalable solution, and scalability is not a problem.

With regard to the initial setup, it's a pretty straightforward from Blue Prism's perspective. It's not as complicated as the installation of a WorkFusion solution, for example.

The actual installation, that is, setting up of the environment, can be done in less than a week from scratch.

We have four or five customers using this solution, and I have close to 50 or so people working across these customers. We have a combination of staff, such as architects, developers, managers, infrastructure engineers, etc.

Our customers pay for an annual license.

The product is good even though there are a lot of shortcomings. Also, the access to the company itself is very difficult. Obtaining a partnership is difficult, and getting support is difficult as well. So, I'd rate them at seven on a scale from one to ten.

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.