UiPath Reviews

We use UiPath across a diverse range of functions and departments, encompassing accounting, human resources, loan servicing, employee progress tracking, and loan origination.

Our primary objective has always been to navigate the cycles effectively, ensuring that we can manage fluctuations without the need for constant hiring and downsizing. It's all about maintaining a consistent workforce over time.

The most valuable component is Studio—it's the cornerstone of our automation efforts. Recently, we've delved deeply into Insights, which has proven to be incredibly beneficial. Our key focus is on eliminating time-consuming tasks and enhancing reliability, especially in repetitive processes, which is where automation has proven to be a significant asset.

Simplification and adaptability for smaller businesses would be a welcome enhancement.

I have been using UiPath for approximately six years.

It is highly reliable, and we didn't have any issues with it.

When it comes to scalability, one aspect to consider is understanding the licensing for on-demand bots and related components. There have been some challenges, mostly on our side, particularly concerning high-density servers. 

The ideal scaling strategy involves adding more instances to these servers. We have opted for standalone virtual machines for each partner, and while this approach offers scalability, it does require the manual setup of additional machines, which can be a slower process for a small IT team like ours.

I contacted customer support only once when we encountered an issue related to changing the institution name within an application. Fortunately, the support team was able to resolve the matter successfully. I would rate them ten out of ten.

Positive

We were using a software called Winautomation, which wasn't very robust. So, we made the decision to switch it, which has been a beneficial change.

The initial setup was relatively straightforward. The main challenge we encountered was obtaining security approvals when transitioning to on-cloud.

Initially, there was just one automation tool in place. Our first step was to rebuild that process using UiPath and then we engaged with various business teams to explain the concept of RPA and gather input to create an initial backlog. Afterward, we collaborated with management to prioritize the tasks and determine the order in which we should proceed.

I find the licensing structure to be perplexing, and it frequently changes. The inclusion of AI units, raw document units, and Cloudmont licensing, along with various sub-licensing options, can be quite complex and non-intuitive.

We were considering a few alternatives, such as Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere. The primary goal was to find a solution that we could commit to for the long term. Ultimately, it appeared that UiPath, which is an industry standard, was the best choice. I also had previous experience with it at a previous company, which made the transition more comfortable for me.

Overall, I would rate UiPath ten out of ten.

Our primary use case is more of a reactive ad hoc use case to solve business problems on the fly. We can build automations to update thousands of records. 

We're putting a little bit more money and resources into it, and we're starting to go down more of the unattended automation path to actually do more end-to-end processes. 

The use of AI has freed up time and resources for other tasks in our company. We are a little bit more of an ad hoc approach right now. I just finished up a new cross-set of processes about two weeks ago that allowed us to onboard a client. I wouldn't have been able to without this automation. It would have taken a couple of months of several people's time to get them to get all this work done in the back end. 

It is helping. It provides value where we wouldn't be able to do certain things without it.

The broad functionality is the most valuable feature because it can interact with many different factors, and there are several ways to solve a problem. 

There's not just one cookie-cutter way to achieve what you need to achieve. You can get there in various different ways. That's a key aspect for me.

From the UiPath product perspective, this might be a problem because we're on-prem, but they add new functionalities pretty rapidly. It feels like there are releases constantly, and I don't want to update it too often. 

I feel like I'm behind even though I might not be. Sometimes, we'll go a year without doing any major upgrade to Studio or Orchestrate or anything. 

That's more of a personal problem, but that's because there are frequent updates to understand.

We started using UiPath about three years ago. We're a small company, an 80-employee bank, in Denver, Colorado. 

We're smaller than a typical RPA client. Our development is probably underutilized compared to larger institutions. Still, we thought it was important to get in the game early and start establishing the foundation of an RPA environment.

The stability is good. We have run into some issues that they believe are more related to their environment than to the application itself.

We're in the process right now of scaling. It is a scalable solution.

The customer service and support have been amazing. It is honestly the best product support. 

I have no complaints about the support. I don't even get worried when I have a situation. I might need to open a case. I like partnering with them. It's a good experience.

The initial setup was difficult because I didn't have a lot of past experience setting up a new program. This was a whole new program for us. Not only was it installing things, but it was also wrapping your head around how to set up properly so that we can get out of this.

It was a little challenging, especially with the on-prem solution and working in Citrix, to make sure these different servers were talking to each other properly, but overall, it was not too bad.

We're on-prem right now, so we're not even in the automation cloud. We're looking into that in probably the next year. The UiPath platform has been great for getting to understand those products a little better.

I see a return on investment. Even with underdeveloped automation, we definitely have a good ROI. 

If people don't understand the benefits, they might think it's a bit pricey, but for me, it's very cost-effective.

We looked at Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism. It was three years ago.

I work in banking. We are highly regulated in our server infrastructure, so we decided to do a VDI environment that works in Citrix. 

At the time, UiPath seemed like the best product to work with Citrix which was a large reason why we chose UiPath. 

We wanted to make sure we were getting something that was going to play nicely with our environment. It has proven to be true to this day. 

We feel like we chose the right vendor.

Overall, I want to give it a ten out of ten. I have to give it an honest nine just because I haven't used other RPA solutions. But I love UiPath.

If you're going to go in, go all in. We didn't go all in at the beginning, and we should have. We're playing a little bit of catch-up because of that. My advice would be to go all in and be organized with your approach.

My company builds software for various businesses, and we use UiPath to automate data entry, perform repetitive tasks, and develop and deploy the software. We also use UiPath for document management, reporting, and analytics.

We use UiPath in multiple departments, including marketing and analytics. There are 17 users. Most of them are software engineers and developers, but our entire executive team also has access. 

UiPath has significantly increased our efficiency by automating repetitive, time-consuming tasks, such as data entry, processing, and testing. This has freed up our team, giving us more time to focus on other tasks. 

It has improved accuracy because automated tasks have a high degree of virtualization, reducing human error. We used to make a lot of errors, but a robot doesn't make mistakes. It doesn't make those mistakes. I estimate it reduced our errors by around 80 percent, especially in data entry. 

We've also saved a lot of cash because we previously needed to hire many employees to do this work. We're spending much less money because most of these jobs are automated. It has improved our data management by enhancing the process of managing and organizing software documentation. Compared to what we spend on UiPath, we've saved a good amount of money. I don't have an exact figure, but it's at least a 40 percent reduction in labor costs. 

Automation has decreased our on-premise footprint, which has helped us because we don't have a sizeable in-office workforce, especially since the pandemic started. Things have been hard, but we had already adopted UiPath before COVID. It helped us during that time because we could still provide the same quality while laying off employees. 

The UiPath Academy has been helpful. The courses helped me in the beginning because I didn't have a lot of knowledge about using this kind of software. I had to go through the learning process. It took some time before we could start using it. So, the whole team went through the training first. 

The most significant benefit of UiPath Academy is that it provides a ton of information quickly. We could quickly grasp how to use the platform and learn to do so many things from a short training course. It provided significant value by showing us the platform and how we could use it. 

UiPath has sped up our digital transformation. Now everything is so much easier. Everything is fast and automated. We don't have to repeat the same things we have already done. It gets the data and processes it quickly. 

The automation capabilities allow us to automate repetitive tasks that were so time-consuming. Our data entry process is much smoother and more efficient, and testing is quick. We don't require as many people to do these tasks, which has simplified everything. 

They have robust libraries we can use to automate a wide range of tasks, and UiPath integrates with multiple technologies. It's an excellent platform with many valuable features we find useful in our business.

The UiPath community is excellent. When we have a problem, we typically don't open a support ticket first. We go to the community and ask questions to find the solution. In many cases, someone else has had the same problem, and their question was answered. The community is a good place to get help with any issues you're experiencing. There is a vast knowledge base, and you can browse the questions people are asking. It provides a lot of value. 

Handling unstructured data is challenging because UiPath works best with structured data. It could also be better at handling complex tasks. UiPath doesn't work as expected when automating tasks that require a high degree of decision-making.

I have used UiPath for almost two years.

UiPath is stable. Depending on a platform like this can be scary at times because it would greatly affect our business if it ever went down. That said, nothing bad has happened so far. It has been working well for us. We haven't had any issues, but it's important to be cautious. 

You can use UiPath to scale your business. It's scalable. 

I always go to the UiPath community to get answers, so I've never spoken to technical support.

I was on the team deciding to go with UiPath, so I've been there through the selection and everything else to this point. The initial setup was straightforward. It didn't give us much trouble. After we purchased UiPath, it was already deployed on the cloud as a SaaS product. 

We announced to the team that we would be using the platform and then onboarded and trained everyone. It took a day or two to get started. After that, we began training. The only maintenance required is when we need to change things in the automated processes. If everything is working well, we don't need to maintain anything. 

We've seen a good return on our investment. I can't quantify it precisely, but it has had a positive impact relative to the money we spent. We've reduced labor time and costs by at least 40 percent. 

It might be a little pricey for some small businesses. When we were getting started, we had a difficult time deciding to go for it because of the pricing. Our company wasn't generating as much revenue, so it was a little high for our budget then. We can handle it today. 

However, the cost might be prohibitive for small startups. UiPath should consider plans for businesses that are just getting started and would like to use the platform.

I rate UiPath a nine out of ten. We have a few issues here and there, but they've done an excellent job overall. It's an innovative product. This is an excellent tool if you want to save time and money by automating repetitive tasks. 

We use the solution for RP automation to perform any processes we require, automate workflows, and integrate with third-party tools like SharePoint and Outlook. The deployment model varies based on client needs. 

UiPath increased our productivity, saved us a lot of time, is simple to use, and helps us solve business problems, especially regarding vast amounts of data. The solution also reduced human error, enhanced our business by scaling up productivity and sales, and made our tasks easier to perform.

Using the solution saved our staff time, approximately one to two weeks per month.    

The ability to automate is the most valuable feature; UiPath has many prebuilt tools like drag and drop, which is excellent. 

It's very easy for us to automate processes to carry out all manner of tasks using the solution.  

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation, which is excellent for maintaining workflows and developing process automation for heavy tasks. 

I took a UiPath Academy course, UiPath Studio, which was a great way to enhance my skills; the online automation training platform provides certified courses to improve skills and familiarize users with new features.   

Depending on the task or project requirements, we use the solution's AI functionality in our automation program. It makes more complex and involved tasks easy to perform and provides accurate results within a few minutes. 

The solution's AI functionality also allows us to automate many more processes overall.   

The UI and processes sometimes freeze, so it would be good to see some improvement there. The system configuration and internet speed also have some impact on this.

We've been using the solution for two to three years. 

The tool is very stable. 

The scalability is excellent; 10 out of 10, it's highly scalable and robust. We don't currently have plans to increase our usage, but depending on client or project requirements, that's a possibility.

We've encountered issues in the past and contacted tech support if we couldn't find a solution from the community. The customer support is excellent; they resolved our issues very rapidly.

Positive

This is the first RP tool I've used. 

The deployment is average; it's not very easy or exceptionally complex and doesn't require any maintenance.

We deploy ourselves, and if we need support, we can always post a query with the UiPath community.

The product gives a great ROI. 

I put the price as average; it's neither particularly expensive nor affordable.

We didn't evaluate other options as we were delighted with UiPath.

I rate UiPath a ten out of ten. It's an excellent tool that plays a vital role in our team, tasks, and organization. 

The solution's user community is great, as other users can help with any doubts or queries.  

My advice to those considering the product is that it is highly effective in automating processes and gives accurate results, so I recommend it to everyone, small and large businesses, and individual developers. It's a great tool.

I'm using it for automation.

UiPath saves us a lot of time as well as money. It has saved between 50 and 80 percent of employee time, processing our tasks efficiently. It boosts our productivity and helps to scale up our business.

It has sped up digital transformation in our organization for sure, and also helps to reduce human error, although that depends on the task you are automating.

It's very helpful in terms of everything.

It offers me various benefits such as AI capabilities and works very well for me on all types of processes. It makes our tasks easy and provides accurate results. For example, if we have a web application we can automate the entering of login credentials.

It provides end-to-end automation, which is very important. We can integrate it with third-party tools, like SharePoint or Outlook, and perform various tasks.

The user interface looks modern.

And the user community is great. We use it as a knowledge base and for training purposes.

It sometimes lags when internet connectivity is poor. It depends on the location. Otherwise, it is the most fantastic tool ever.

I have been using UiPath for the last three and a half years.

It's very stable.

It's very scalable. I give it a 10 out of 10 for scalability.

We have 5000-plus users of the solution in our organization.

Customer support is very important and they resolve issues immediately.

Positive

Sometimes we deploy on the cloud, sometimes on-premises. The deployment is very straightforward.

It doesn't require any maintenance. It works well.

We have seen a 50 to 80 percent ROI.

As an application, it is not very expensive. It's very reasonable.

The time it takes to see results depends on the task. Sometimes tasks are bigger and sometimes tasks are smaller. Sometimes it gives your results within a minute, and sometimes it takes time. On average, it takes a few days.

I'm fully satisfied with this great tool. It is the best solution for all types of businesses, both small and large. I recommend it to everyone who wants to become an RPA developer. It is a fantastic tool and plays a vital role in RPA.

We use UiPath to make processes. In addition to UiPath Studio, the platform that develops processes, UiPath includes other applications like Orchestrator, AI Center, Test Suite, Action Center, etc. 

I had the opportunity to work with UiPath Studio to develop and deliver processes to clients and scheduled them in production using the Orchestrator. I had the chance to automate many platforms in Excel, emails, et cetera. I developed around 20 processes.

I work with many medium-sized and large enterprises and a few small ones. Typically, the clients send us their PCs, and we work on their infrastructure. My clients usually have many departments, and all of them use UiPath. I use Orchestrator in the cloud, but clients, like banks, prefer the on-prem version because of security constraints. For me, there is no significant difference between the Orchestrator in the cloud and on-prem. We can schedule and maintain robots. They have essential common functionalities.

I work with many clients who recognize the impact and return on investment from using UiPath to develop automated processes. We always use the UiPath Academy courses. You can get a certification, and when we have questions that can't be answered on the forum or YouTube, we return to the courses. The courses are a way for the developers to understand the nuances of the product or do some workshops. The Academy combines theory and practice for each application, and in the end, we get a certificate. 

The AI Center can optimize many hours and lines of code. You can train your data on the Orchestrator in place with patent code, which takes more time. I compared the custom AI model and UiPath's presets, and we saved many hours. For example, my client had a difficult process that took lots of time to develop with Python and integrate into UiPath Studio. At first, they decided not to create this process with UiPath, but ultimately, they could develop it using Document Understanding with OCR and AI Center.

UiPath cuts down on human error and has included many updates in the latest release to reduce errors. Generally, our robots are rules-based so that we can see an important reduction in human errors. Automation generally speeds up tasks by about 50% because a person can control the robots in place to do all the jobs that robots do.

The amount of employee time saved depends on the bot. For example, if the robot is scheduled daily, and the task takes three hours, it frees up three hours. It depends on the complexity of the job and the time an employee spends on it. 

Enterprise clients can potentially save millions of dollars or euros per month. It depends on the client and the complexity of the process. We have a center of excellence that develops around 100 processes in large organizations. Smaller enterprises save a little bit less. In terms of cost savings, it's about 60 percent.

UiPath has a large user community that shares information. We can help each other find solutions, and the community publishes custom open-source libraries to help other UiPath developers. Members of the community also organize many events. Throughout the year, people from UiPath present new products and updates to the community, and community members help educate us about the latest features and how to use them in our existing robots.

I like the structure of the selectors. They're robust. With other software like Automation Anywhere, we always have problems with recorders, plugins, et cetera. UiPath is more powerful and efficient. UiPath Studio has features like the Excel package, selectors, and recorders. 

There are also many types of recording features. UiPath Studio's most interesting feature is the REFramework. UiPath's frameworks help developers handle exceptions efficiently.

Another critical feature of UiPath is end-to-end automation, starting with the design part of the process with many applications like Automation Hub, Task Capture, and Task Mining. We can use Task Capture in the community version, and they help with the design and conception of products at the start of the project. 

Then, we can use UiPath Studio, UiPath StudioX, or UiPath Web to develop the process. Afterward, we can use Orchestrator to schedule and maintain our developed processes. Finally, we have other products that can help us integrate business end users, such as UiPath Insights or UiPath Apps. With UiPath, we can assist automation in many industries or areas of applications.

I used the Document Understanding feature and developed a custom model to use in the community version. I had the opportunity to test the AI Center. The AI Center can make our robotic process classic RPA. 

AI Center allows us to evaluate and add intelligence to our classic RPA developers. We can add our custom classification model with drag-and-drop functionality in UiPath Studio. I like the integration between AI Center and UiPath Studio. Many of our clients are mature in RPA and want to use the AI Center or integrate artificial intelligence into their IT code.

The reporting part of Orchestrator could be improved. For example, UiPath could automatically email us if there are errors. Adding this feature would help us.

I have used UiPath for three years.

UiPath is stable. 

UiPath is scalable.

I rate UiPath support eight out of 10. They're available when you need them, and you can schedule meetings with them, too.

Positive

I also use Automation Anywhere for other clients, but I prefer UiPath because of the robust selectors and AI elements. UiPath can handle exceptions better, whereas Automation Anywhere lacks REFrameworks, which helps us handle exceptions. It's more difficult. 

UiPath has end-to-end automation, with a suite of other products that help us digitize internal and enterprise processes. UiPath has other advantages, like the community and the forum. 

Deploying UiPath is easy. It takes about 20 minutes or less to get UiPath running. You find the AI and download the latest version, then you start. The newest version is connected directly with the Orchestrator. 

One person can usually install it by themselves, but it depends on the number of computers. If you install it on one computer, that takes 30 minutes, but if we have more, you might need more people and more time. After deployment, UiPath requires some maintenance. The number of people necessary varies. For example, in some sectors, we have a team for maintenance and one for development, but developers might maintain their own processes in some instances.  

I don't have hard numbers on hand, but our clients generally see a 50-60% ROI. 

The UiPath license is a little expensive, but we get a lot of good features for the price. 

I rate UiPath eight out of 10. UiPath is the leader. It's the best automation software I've used. UiPath has rich documentation and a large user community. Developers can always find help in the forum. UiPath is a robust software solution that yields a high return on investment.

I recommend first trying UiPath Studio and UiPath products in general to experience all the features. Sometimes, we don't realize all the available features to help us solve our problems.

Our primary use case with UiPath is to create automation software for the HR and the accounting department. Some of the automations that we do are automated attendance tracking, billable hours calculation, work hours calculation, expense reimbursements, et cetera. We have also completely automated our sales processes, such as contract building, invoice creation, etc. We do all this through UiPath automation. Earlier, all this was done manually, and it consumed a lot of time for us, but now, with automation, it's super-quick and efficient.

We are using a public cloud model. We host it on AWS.

It helps us to do end-to-end automation. The accounts and the HR department have a lot of employees to manage and a lot of queries come up. Previously, most of the tasks that we had to do were very time-consuming. For example, just attendance tracking and expense management consumed two days of the entire week, but after the end-to-end automation with UiPath, we hardly spend four to five hours per week on the same tasks. That definitely helped us.

Time-saving is the main benefit that we have got. The Build a New App feature helps us create our applications in a very quick and efficient manner. We can also share them with multiple stakeholders, which has saved us a lot of time. We used to spend two days per week on a manual task, but now, it's just four or five hours a week. A lot of time has been saved, and efficiency-wise, by introducing automation, very less errors are happening. That's one of the biggest bonuses of using UiPath.

It has definitely reduced human errors. With the end-to-end automation that we are doing, in addition to a lot of time savings, efficiency has been improved in terms of the number of manual errors. It has reduced about 95% of the errors. There are still minor hiccups here and there, but that's expected. With fewer manual errors, we are able to do things in a much quicker and more reliable fashion. Earlier, unnecessary time was being wasted on this, but now, we are completely dependent on automation. Automation and robots take care of everything for us. We just need to oversee things. That has made our life much easier.

We use the platform on the cloud. It has definitely reduced the on-premise footprint. One benefit of having a cloud product is that we need to do very little maintenance from our side. We just need to do the regular updates and install the patches that they give. It's on the cloud, so it's very easy. We just have to keep our application updated. It's very useful, and it saves a lot of time. With an on-premise model, a lot of maintenance is required.

It definitely speeds up digital transformation. We deal with a lot of employees or internal customers, and with automation, we are able to design applications that are very user-friendly. They are able to give us the data we need in a much quicker fashion. It has definitely been on the positive side for us.

For this digital transformation, we did not require any third-party or costly applications. Everything was there in UiPath itself. We just needed to subscribe to UiPath. It's a one-stop solution.

It has freed up a lot of employee time. The tasks that previously required two days per week now require just five hours per week. It has saved us that much time.

It has definitely saved costs for our organization. With the saved time, we are able to concentrate on different aspects of our work, and we are able to clear up most of our pending tasks. So, the efficiency has improved, which has been good for our business. Around 30% of our overall expenditure has been reduced because we are able to put in that much more work.

There is a feature called Build a New App in UiPath. I found that to be very good. It makes our job much easier to know how to build applications. There is also the Studio module. I am from a non-technical background. So, for me, designing and creating applications was very tough initially, but with the Studio module and the activity tab that they have, it's easy. Most of it is just drag and drop. I found that very valuable.

It's straightforward to build automations. The UiPath Studio has a lot of in-built templates to choose from. Most of the functionality is just drag and drop, and it can't get easier than this. It's really straightforward.

UiPath's user community is very active and very useful. The answers to most of my queries are already in the community. It's very user-friendly, and we can also clarify our doubts and have conversations with the UiPath community.

UiPath's academic courses on academy.uipath.com are also very useful. In case you have any doubts or you want to do any certifications, you can just log in. It's free of cost. You can just log in there and do your certification. You'll learn a lot. Both UiPath Academy and the UiPath Community are very good.

I'm from a non-technical background. For me, getting my head around designing and understanding RPA processes was very tough. UiPath Academy basically dumbed it down to my level. It has made it very easy for me to know and understand RPA. I have started designing and developing applications with UiPath. So, even a person from a non-technical background, like me, can produce reliable and very useful applications with UiPath.

The reports could be improved. They could be much more in-depth. 

There are some selector issues when it comes to web automation and desktop automation. There is a robot selector. When we feed the data, it tries to fetch the UI elements from that particular data, but that's not happening 100%. That could have some improvements. Apart from that, everything else is fine. I have not faced any other major hiccups or issues with UiPath.

In terms of additional features, some integration and API connector services need to be added, especially with the CRM software. Currently, they have a limited set of API connector services. They could increase that for the CRM software.

I have been using UiPath for nine months.

UiPath is a very stable application. We haven't faced any hiccups or any major downtimes. Being a cloud platform, it's very good. The only thing that we need to take care of is our internet and our system. Apart from that, I haven't faced any downtime issues or performance issues with UiPath. 

It's scalable. It definitely has all the capabilities for scaling up, but for our department, we most probably aren't going to scale it up because we currently have a sufficient number of users. We have been able to extract the best out of UiPath from the current usage, but it definitely has all the features to scale.

Currently, in our organization, it's deployed across multiple departments. There are 15 departments in our organization, and eight of those departments use UiPath. In our department, seven of us use this application. We have seven user logins for UiPath, but I am not sure about the number of users in other departments. The majority of users are non-technical staff and developers. There is a 50:50 ratio.

I have been in touch with their technical support, but my involvement is very less. They are very friendly, and they are very knowledgeable. They could solve most of the queries within 24 hours, and for most of the queries, they also had help documents that they shared with us so that we could learn, and the next time it happens, we are able to resolve it ourselves. So far, their support has been very good. I would rate them a 10 out of 10. I don't have any complaints so far.

Positive

We did not explicitly use any other product for RPA. 

I was not involved in its deployment.

We got some training from UiPath's third-party team on how to go about using the software because we didn't have any clue. For initial installation and deployment, we did not require anyone else. We did it ourselves. We just required some training on how to go about using the software.

In terms of maintenance, it requires minimal maintenance. It's a complete cloud product, and its maintenance involves downloading the latest release or updating to the latest release. That's it. We just have one person who takes care of all of these aspects. We don't have an extensive team to take care of the maintenance of the product. It's very easy for us to do maintenance. One thing that we like very much about UiPath is that it requires very little maintenance.

We have definitely seen a return on investments on UiPath. Basically, a lot of time was saved for us. We were able to concentrate on other aspects of our work. Tasks that previously required two days now just require four to five hours. There are about 30% cost savings with UiPath. 

The return on investment is quicker with UiPath. Earlier, the output that we wanted from a task took around 15 days, but now, it just takes around a week. That's the return on investment that we are getting from UiPath.

It's fairly priced. It's not too costly, and it's also not too cheap. When you bundle it with the UiPath Academy courses and the great community that they have, it is worth the price. 

We did try out Automation Anywhere. We did a trial of that software, but that was not reliable for us. We didn't like the performance that it offered. That's why we went for UiPath, and we have been using UiPath since.

Non-technical people have this misconception that automation is only for people with a coding or development background. I would definitely suggest trying UiPath because it breaks that barrier. Anybody with a little bit of computer knowledge will be able to design simple-level applications.

You can try the community version of UiPath. It's a free version of UiPath. If you are interested, I would also recommend trying out the UiPath Academy courses that are being offered by UiPath.

I would rate UiPath a 9 out of 10. If they can bring the integrations and the API services, it would make the product the best in the market. All other aspects are very good.

We started with a pilot for our payroll department. It essentially takes the transactions that come into our payroll department on Fridays and Mondays, and sorts through those transactions. If there are any discrepancies or errors based on the defined criteria, it notifies the payroll department, and they can rectify those. Otherwise, paychecks don't process. 

Other than that, we have some data migration between Excel spreadsheets that we do, and we have contracts that we host on a web server that, if they don't have transactions for the same period of time, we have the automation go in and close those contracts out so the transactions can't go against them.

This was pretty much our first experience with automation. There wasn't anything prior. As far as UiPath is concerned and how automation has transformed the agency, we've found that hundreds of thousands of hours are being saved every year now, thanks to these processes. On a division-by-division basis, hundreds of thousands of dollars are being saved every year.

The wide variety of activities that are available for third-party applications has been quite useful when it comes to APIs. It's allowed us to leverage the other applications that we use within the agency. We can actually utilize the UiPath Suite over things like Microsoft Power Apps, Blue Prism, or Automation Anywhere, where they didn't have the capability to really interact with a bunch of third-party applications. 

UiPath helps save taxpayer dollars, which is a good, socially responsible, cause.

The UiPath community is very good. Eight to nine times out of ten, if I have a question or I'm stuck, I can go to the forums, and I can find experts, or I can find YouTube videos, and I can talk to other people. The contractors that we've worked with in the past were super helpful, and everybody's cooperative. Everyone wants to share ideas. At the end of the day, we all want just to make everyone's lives easier.

I've used the UiPath Academy's courses. I was thrown right into the fire. This was thrown on my plate, and they said, "Hey, you're going to be working with the contract; you got a month to spin up an automation." 

I learned while I did; however, as our center of excellence has grown within the agency, we've decided to adopt some new developers into the program, so we don't have to run into that same issue with new people. With the two or three that are coming up to be trained for the end of this year, it's definitely proven a lot of value, since we don't have to sit around and have people sit over shoulders for projects. It allows them to take their time, go through it, and practice. For me, going through some of the advanced courses, for the most part, I found them very well run and have been satisfied with them.

One thing that I would really like to see is some migration processes between environments. Right now, we either rely on a very rough CI/CD pipeline and/or manual efforts to transfer packages from one environment to another. Having some in-suite migration process would make our lives so much easier. 

The education aspect is probably the hardest part of getting people on board. Our server administration is separate from the rest of our CoE. We have to rely on them, and they're not necessarily privy to the UiPath Suite in general. Making it easier for them would make our lives easier, thus making our customers happier.

We've used UiPath for about two and a half years. We adopted it in late 2019, or early 2020.

We host on-prem, so I can't speak for the cloud support, though I've heard only good things. As far as stability is concerned, in terms of everything that we've moved into production, the only reason anything's ever broken, the only reason anything has ever not worked in general, has been due to agency oversight of people changing things without notifying the proper teams. As far as the UiPath's concerned, I would say it's pretty close to 100% stable.

The scalability question is hard to answer. The bottleneck is the fact that we are in the public sector, and we're dealing with a lot of state bureaucracy. We're limited in scalability, due to constraints that are outside of UiPath. I will say that as time has progressed and the more this technology's been adopted - including education and business awareness - the technology itself is very scalable. What's holding it back is general knowledge and public knowledge.

Most of the technicians I've worked with have been very helpful. Even if they don't have the answers, they're usually pretty good at getting back to me within two to three days and have relatively good answers. Or, if they can't answer it, they might steer me in a direction that will help me. 

As far as our accounts are concerned, we actually just received a couple of new tech advisors that deal with our agency. The team has been nothing short of fantastic to us. There have been times when we'll have our weekly meetings where they won't have the answer for us, and they'll say, "I'll get to you by next week." There have been times he gets back to us an hour after the meeting, and have detailed everything, or scheduled a call, so we can work on something together. That's been fantastic.

Positive

I did not previously use a different solution. 

I did the development, and I worked with our administrative team to deploy that automation.

It was straightforward. The education part and trying to have our center of excellence be centralized and having people all on the same page takes time. It came down to that whole migration where we are either working with a third-party application or system, like GitLab or some CI/CD pipeline, to get those packages migrated, or doing it manually led to a lot of hiccups throughout the course. 

What could have been done in a matter of hours or maybe a day or two, ended up taking, for almost every one of our automations, about a week or two, thanks to meetings, communication, and lack of education.

We have two environments. We have our Test DEV, then we have our production.  Once the developer completes the testing, it's sent over to our BAs; our BAs test it, then they verify that information with the customer to ensure the results are satisfactory. We then contact our server administrators, migrate the package over, and discuss the run time with the customers. 

Also, all of them, up to this point, have been unattended, so they're able to select a time and a date, whether it be daily, or weekly, or whatever that case is, and a time. We settled on a Thursday implementation date, no matter what, and the server administrators above the back page, then it goes on from there.

As far as consultants were concerned, they worked with us on the initial pilot. Everything else was done in-house. We have taken a step back to readdress our statement of work and how we plan on governing RPA going forward. We are working with a consultant company now to deal with more of the administrative overhead that was involved with this. However, we do plan that moving forward all development and deployments will still be held in-house by our developers and our administration.

My understanding is we are expected to hit the ROI that we're projected to hit next year. Even this year, with only three automations running for the entire year, we were able to cover our costs in that aspect essentially.

There are no more than five automations in full swing, and we would like somewhere between 15 and 20 next year. Likely, the ROI will continue to snowball. 

One of the automations that we put live essentially monitors updates to vendor contact information and conversations that are held with the vendors in our agencies and uploads that to a web database. Then, those conversations are logged in an Excel Spreadsheet that managers like to keep updated. This is roughly saving, on average, about 40 hours a week. Multiply that by 52 work weeks, and it's a lot of savings. It's roughly the cost of two full-time salaries that we are saving.

I am not super privy to pricing information. 

In the beginning, we were choosing between Blue Prism and UiPath, and keeping Microsoft Power platforms on the side burner to possibly automate things that were specifically within Azure and AD. 

While those three were being measured and worked through, we had to go through the bureaucratic chain of state government. It turned out that the UiPath suite, in general, was covering the bases we needed to cover with the third-party application integration. At the same time, the ease of getting everything up and running, the fact that we had a one-stop shop, and we didn't have to buy all these extra additional components just to make simple automation was worth it. Then, just talking with different industry leaders, contractors, and consultants, everybody suggested UiPath when it came down to Blue Prism and UiPath. That was the route we went.

We have yet to use the AI's functionality.

If you were a company looking to expedite as well as remove the monotony of a lot of the work that gets done, especially in the public sector, this is a good option. You likely have the same thing written down probably five times in 16 different places. Getting rid of that workload to free up people for doing other things, is the way to go. 

The most important aspect of all of this isn't having an amazing developer. It isn't having your great server admins or whatever the case is. It's making sure that the people you want to work with are educated and on board before it even starts. Making sure that people understand what RPA is and what UiPath can do for them is the most important thing. Our biggest roadblocks and the biggest things that have sprung us forward are all based on that educational aspect.

I'd rate the solution a nine out of ten.

If you asked me that question two years ago, I probably would've been closer to a six out of ten. The product improved, and the overall competence in the industry, and within the company in general, has improved across the board. The people I've worked with, including our tech advisors or sales rep, are great. There's a lot more confidence and stability. It's definitely given our agency a sense of confidence, and it's much easier to see where this is going. The results are what we've imagined. Everything seems to be much more real at the tail end of 2022. We're hoping this will be stable for our agency in 2024 as well.