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Eric Lizotte - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Development Consultant at Skidmore Sales & Distributing Company, Inc.
Consultant
Top 20
The solution enables intelligent document processing, improving productivity and reducing our backlogs
Pros and Cons
  • "I find the intelligent document processing features extremely interesting. They're fun and represent an actual practical use of AI. There are so many impractical ways to use AI, but this offers a tangible ROI, and you can see its benefits directly."
  • "There are small issues, such as the Action Center not auto-refreshing. The user has to keep clicking "refresh." It's minor, but if you're waiting for something in your queue, you don't want to sit there and keep clicking. Logging could be improved, and there are a few connectors where I would like to see enhancements, but nothing major."

What is our primary use case?

We're a food ingredient distribution company that receives documents on ingredients' nutrition, allergens, microbial testing, etc.  We primarily use UiPath to process these documents. It was our proof of concept for using the system initially, and we'll expand it to process invoices and other related use cases.

We operate using an enterprise operating system. It's not a technological thing. It's how you determine project priorities. Soon, we'll set up process mining. Then, the IT team and technology group will decide what we do. Right now, the business units effectively vote on the next quarter's priorities. 

How has it helped my organization?

We're a high-tenure organization. The average tenure is 15 years, so we want to avoid growing our headcount. We're continuously growing by 10 to 15 percent annually, so we've had to add enough staff to process the documents. Our primary concern was to stop the increase in staff. Even after we added staff, we were falling behind because they were much slower at processing those documents. 

We get documents from our suppliers and, as a distributor, send them to our customers. If the supplier hasn't sent them, we need to hound them. We were falling behind on our backlog of 250,000 documents. UiPath enabled us to avoid adding more employees. Automation was the way to go. We haven't added any more headcount, and the backlog is going down, but it isn't as much as we had hoped.

The automation has allowed us to provide customers with better-quality documents faster. It has also given employees more time to locate the documents we don't have, freeing them from mundane tasks. It's freed them from the work of typing data on a form into an ERP system. 

We are talking about using it for our environmental and social governance initiatives. We're considering bringing together some of those pieces through automation to track our energy usage or what we've spent on some of the other bits and pieces and have a better ESG profile.

What is most valuable?

I find the intelligent document processing features extremely interesting. They're fun and represent an actual practical use of AI. There are so many impractical ways to use AI, but this offers a tangible ROI, and you can see its benefits directly. 

What needs improvement?

There are small issues, such as the Action Center not auto-refreshing. The user has to keep clicking "refresh." It's minor, but if you're waiting for something in your queue, you don't want to sit there and keep clicking. Logging could be improved, and there are a few connectors where I would like to see enhancements, but nothing major.

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December 2024
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For how long have I used the solution?

We started using UiPath in January of this year, so we've used it for less than a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is solid, and I've had no issues with stability. The one issue encountered was due to a version change, where the changes in that version were unexpected.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is great for scalability, and we can always add more bots as needed. We haven’t found it limiting at all.

How are customer service and support?

Our experience with UiPath support has been mixed. The responses take a little long, which isn't bad when we only need a question answered. However, our system went down twice, and it took four to eight hours to get our first response from support. If I submit a ticket at 2 pm, I might not get a response until 10 pm. That's still relatively soon, but I might not be paying attention that late at night or be available to respond. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We did not use a different solution for document processing before this.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty easy and straightforward. It didn’t take much time to get UiPath running.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented the solution in-house ourselves. We do have a partner, Empower dot AI, which we plan to work with on future projects.

What was our ROI?

We are probably just starting to see a positive dollar ROI versus what we spent implementing UiPath. We only started this in January, and it was fully implemented by late June or early July. Hence, we are still in the infancy phase of experiencing ROI.

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

UiPath's pricing is reasonable. The model of charging per AI unit makes sense, and the licensing for Action Center and other parts is good. The cost does not seem excessive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?


Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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reviewer2588007 - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Process Improvement Analyst at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
Offers UI, web, and Excel automation and has the ability to package all of these in one software suite
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are UI, web, and Excel automation, as well as the ability to package all of these in one software suite."
  • "Setting up the infrastructure with different virtual desktops and making the connections stable in our environment present challenges. More direction on cleaning up these issues would be useful."

What is our primary use case?

We have been using the RPA functionality in UiPath mostly for cash management. Our biggest use case is submitting wires and payments.

How has it helped my organization?

We aim to reduce routine tasks and allow people more time to do more important things. We were mainly looking at time savings for employees, and we may not have gotten all of the time savings that we wanted, but we definitely have found some. In addition to saving time, we also hope to mitigate risks for some of the tasks we've implemented and reduce human error in some of these processes, 

In bot development, we have had a lot of conversations about what we want bots to do, how to process exceptions, who exceptions go to, and who needs to be aware. Once the bot goes live, we have to keep the chats and lines of communication open to ensure everything's working.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are UI, web, and Excel automation, as well as the ability to package all of these in one software suite.

What needs improvement?

Setting up the infrastructure with different virtual desktops and making the connections stable in our environment present challenges. More direction on cleaning up these issues would be useful.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for about two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We've had some stability issues, but we're unsure whether UiPath caused them or if it was our company's older internal infrastructure. We haven't had any downtime caused by UiPath.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath has been able to scale as our environment grows and keeps up with demand.

How are customer service and support?

I rate UiPath support eight out of 10. We receive good support from UiPath when we need it.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

Personally, I did not use a different solution before UiPath, but some departments at the corporation have used other RPA tools, and some still do. We chose UiPath because we worked with some consulting firms that were familiar with the development capabilities of the solution. They could help with the initial development of the bots. We like the direction of the tool.

What about the implementation team?

We worked with consulting firms familiar with the development capabilities of UiPath to assist with the development of bots.

What was our ROI?

We have seen a return on investment due to time savings with high-value employees. However, as we continue to make new things, it's hard to determine the exact return at this point.

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

I am not involved in the purchasing, but people have been generally happy with the pricing so far. Some pieces we use now may not provide expected value, and we might remove those in the future.

What other advice do I have?

I rate UiPath nine out of 10.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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UiPath
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
825,661 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Evan Woodfin - PeerSpot reviewer
Program Specialist at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Computer Vision helps us read and process handwritten documentation
Pros and Cons
  • "Computer Vision helps us read and process handwritten documentation. That will be incredibly important. The unique thing about UiPath is the robustness of the Academy that's built into it."
  • "UiPath could be more intuitive in how it formats strings, variables, or databases. This can sometimes be difficult, even for someone with a computer science background. Additionally, some tasks require a team effort as one person can get overwhelmed or discouraged."

What is our primary use case?

One of our simpler UiPath use cases involves running an SQL query, copying the results into a spreadsheet, and then emailing them to the appropriate people. 

We also have a third-party system for parking at the hospital. Visitors need to fill out a web form, and the automation process kicks in once the web form is filled out. The data is input into a database and then automatically processed in bundles. The form is filled out automatically for them, and it batches every thirty minutes. 

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath helps us automate many tasks people do daily that they don't want to do. They can spend that time on tasks that humans are better at, such as being creative and thoughtful instead of copying down information, filling up databases, making spreadsheets, sending emails, etc. I have one automation that normally takes me about four hours to do. 

Automating certain tasks can potentially save employees approximately 60 hours per week. This was particularly true in our parking pass processing. People used to get overwhelmed with that task, so automating it saves significant time.

What is most valuable?

Computer Vision helps us read and process handwritten documentation. That will be incredibly important. The unique aspect about UiPath is the robustness of the Academy that's built into it.

What needs improvement?

UiPath could be more intuitive in how it formats strings, variables, or databases. This can sometimes be difficult, even for someone with a computer science background. Additionally, some tasks require a team effort as one person can get overwhelmed or discouraged.

For how long have I used the solution?

We are only about a month or a month and a half into using the solution.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is generally good, but it can't really be driven without support for prolonged use.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scaling UiPath is easy. You just purchase more bots.

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

Previously, we used Power Automate and a proof of concept for Automation Viewer, but we decided to switch to UiPath because it has a better deployment model. We use the Orchestrator. It's a server that we can add our robots to and configure them. 

UiPath is good at handling the sequential flow of processes. The way it breaks down sequencing is commendable. It was shocking how disorganized some of the other solutions we reviewed were.

What was our ROI?

We are seeing a good return on investment potential, but we haven't fully realized it yet since we are only a month and a half in.

What other advice do I have?

I rate UiPath eight out of 10. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Bhuvanesh Shakthi - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Engineer (UiPath Developer) at Virtusa Consultancy services Pvt. Ltd
Real User
We don't need to know much code because most activities are drag and drop
Pros and Cons
  • "I like UiPath's coding engine."
  • "We only use the UiPath Community for support. It would be nice if a team of developers or a support person were available to help us work internally on our project. That would be helpful."

What is our primary use case?

I'm using UiPath on an automation project for my company in the banking domain. The use cases are for things like insurance claims and debit card transactions. We use it for our clients' requirements and also internally to address any of our company's needs for UI automation. 

How has it helped my organization?

When we started the client's project, they had a simple process, but they were dealing with a large volume of data. Most organizations primarily rely on Excel as their main solution, and they're doing processes through that. They wanted to automate Excel processes that they had been doing manually. UiPath improves productivity and saves time. For example, I developed a bot for processing insurance claims in UiPath. It involved checking documents and comparing them to the information in the databases. The process would take around 40 minutes to perform manually. We reduced that to eight or nine minutes per process through automation. It greatly increased the volume we could handle, producing a lot of value for the organization.

As we developed more automations for Excel, their manual work decreased, so they gave us more requirements. I've developed about 15 separate processes for the banking project I'm working on. Each process has its own way of doing it. We have developed network solutions. UiPath has contributed so much to the development of automation in our company. Our clients are pleased because they can boost their revenue by introducing bots.

UiPath has helped us reduce our on-premise footprint. The development cycle depends on whether it's a major or minor process. We start development, test, and deploy. After that, a support team will maintain the process, and we will not be involved again. We have multiple people working on a particular project, and it changes with every sprint of a cycle.  

UiPath Academy has lots of videos and other resources. While we can go to YouTube or some other source to learn about UiPath, we don't get a comprehensive understanding of the solution or the latest features. We can only get this through UiPath, and everything we need is in the courses. You can take a foundational course to learn the basics and get a certification that is valid everywhere from the advanced developer courses. Every company expects its UiPath developers to have this certification. 

UiPath's AI functionality is useful if we're working with unstructured data. For example, if we have a PDF where the data we want to extract is not separated, we can use AI to define the data for automation. I have done some practice use cases for learning purposes, but I haven't used AI in a project.

The solution helps to speed up digital transformation. I'm not sure about other countries, but many banks in India are still doing things manually and not using UI automation. This is a revolution in banking technology because bots are doing everything, and they don't need a lot of people to do the tasks.

UiPath can reduce human error, but a developer needs to understand the process completely that the bot will perform and provide all the conditions for how to perform things. After the client approves a project, we create a bot, and it will function based on the solution documentation. The UiPath bot will perform whatever conditions I give it. About 80 percent of the solutions we develop will complete the process without human intervention, and the remaining 20 percent of automations require some manual effort.

The solution frees up employee time because UiPath doesn't require much coding knowledge. If we can find a working solution for many purposes, we can download it. We don't need to spend time developing as many processes. 

What is most valuable?

I like UiPath's coding engine. We don't need to know much code. Most of the activities in UiPath are drag and drop. It's easy to build automations in UiPath. If we need support also, that doesn't require much effort. The UiPath tool gives us a structured framework. That is used in almost every project I work on. It made our development process effortless. We've completed a lot of projects with the help of the framework. 

The UiPath community enables users to share knowledge and bots that they've developed. If I have a bot installed in our machines, it doesn't require much effort for other users to run it. The user experience is seamless and user-friendly. Everything is ported on the back end, and it works as expected everywhere. If we have any doubt about a topic, we can post a question on the user community forum, and people from around the world will offer solutions in minutes. It takes very little time to get the solution. 

What needs improvement?

We only use the UiPath Community for support. It would be nice if a team of developers or a support person were available to help us work internally on our project. That would be helpful.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used UiPath since 2020.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is stable. All of my colleagues in other companies feel that this is highly stable compared to other tools.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

I rate UiPath eight out of 10. We primarily get support from the UiPath Community, but sometimes their solutions work differently when we take it to our machine sometimes we have this capability. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I also learned Automation Anywhere at the same time, but I found that the UiPath interface was easier for beginners to learn. 

How was the initial setup?

We use UiPath as a cloud service. You create packages that are deployed through Orchestrator. Any machine with access to Orchestrator can just download the package and run it. The deployment is straightforward if we have the necessary access. We need to add a package to Orchestrator and download it. It doesn't require much time. 

We have a team of people. Every deployment includes developers, a support team, and an engineering team that will deploy the code to the production machine. The support team will ensure the bot is running properly after deployment, while the developer is the one who creates the package. UiPath doesn't require much maintenance aside from upgrading the bots with packages from UiPath. 

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

The pricing model is based on the number of processes. My colleagues tell me that UiPath's pricing is pretty normal compared to other solutions. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate UiPath nine out of 10. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in RPA. It's easy to learn and implement. You will not be disappointed. I still have a lot to learn. There are so many capabilities. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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Ganesh Dharmarajan - PeerSpot reviewer
RPA developer/ Software Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Action Center allows us to combine robotic processing with human confirmation
Pros and Cons
  • "If an organization has more than 50 processes and you want to monitor them at the end of the day, there is a very good dashboard called Orchestrator. It will show you a report on process status, success or failure. If it failed, it will show you the exact reason."
  • "Whenever they release a new version, there are some bugs. They should strengthen their testing team to avoid these errors and not release the product to the market with bugs."

What is our primary use case?

UiPath fills the gaps; it's a type of bridge between daily tasks and end-users. For example, on a daily basis, a user may need to prepare and send a report on time. There are many tasks like that on a daily basis that are boring if you are doing them continuously. UiPath can act smartly, eliminate human involvement, and capture everything.

How has it helped my organization?

If you have a meeting but also want to prepare a report, a robot can do it on your behalf and do so with zero errors. Whatever we program it to do is what it will do. It reduces human error by more than 90 percent.

And talking about digital transformation, I have worked with a lot of the taxation forms in the APAC region, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and these forms are a bit tricky and a challenge. The new digital product they brought in is very nice and is able to crack them and capture all the necessary data from those forms. It's pretty cool, using the AI.

UiPath also reduces the time people spend on tasks. I'm working with a client whose only KPI is the time things take, and the dashboard is showing automation is saving 90 percent of human time with UiPath.

Some organizations have an exact ditto—a mirror environment set up between their production and UAT environments. But a few organizations are not like this. Their UATs slightly deviate from the production environment. In this scenario, we have what we call PAT, production acceptance testing, before things are moved to production. UiPath overcomes the challenges of that. It enables you to easily update any changes between these environments. That will not take much time for the developer. Selectors play a major, vital role in automation, and if a selector is changed from one environment to another, it is not that hard to update it. It's very easy, actually, meaning you can do it in less time.

What is most valuable?

It's a no-code platform. You don't need to have in-depth coding knowledge, which means people can adopt it and move forward with it. It's very convenient to use. If you are interested in learning new things, UiPath is an open platform that you can play around with however you want. And there are a lot of roles, not only as a developer but other roles as well.

Also, if an organization has more than 50 processes and you want to monitor them at the end of the day, there is a very good dashboard called Orchestrator. It will show you a report on process status, success or failure. If it failed, it will show you the exact reason. It's good to have this kind of dashboard in your life.

For financial payments, for example, at the end of the day, humans are smarter than a robot. Only humans know the scenarios that decide whether we can make a payment or not. So humans fill this gap at a certain point in time. UiPath has introduced a product called Action Center. With this product, a robot will process all the payments, and then it will ask permission through Action Center for whether it can proceed or not. If they press OK or approve something, the robot will continue. Otherwise, it will not. It's end-to-end automation.

When we recruit any new employees, we first suggest that they sign in to the UiPath Academy and go through the courses. One of the good things I like about it is that they keep updating it. Whenever there are new features, they are immediately reflected in the Academy. It gives you detailed information, both text and video. And at the end of the module, they check your knowledge, what you have learned from it. They also have certifications, such as UiPath for developers, associates, and business analysts. They want to encourage the community to use the Academy. I recently received my UiPath certification, which is a bit harder than other certifications. You have to have in-depth knowledge to get it. Overall, the Academy is good.

I have gone through all the new AI features. They say the robot is able to smartly create the body of an email based on your content. I have already done some testing on that, and it worked fine. It's pretty cool.

What needs improvement?

Whenever they release a new version, there are some bugs. They should strengthen their testing team to avoid these errors and not release the product to the market with bugs. They do release patches, but they should take their time. Their target is to release a new update quarterly. I would suggest they take an extra 15 days to do proper testing and then release. As a developer, I see a lot of Activities have bugs.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for almost six years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is an eight out of 10.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is a nine out of 10.

How are customer service and support?

Their technical support is very fast. I have created a few tickets for license-related bugs, and they have replied fast. Their support is good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

Deployment takes three to four days, generally. They will say it takes hours, but every organization is different in terms of its IT security policies, et cetera. It takes some time.

There isn't any separate maintenance required for the solutions. A robot will just keep on working. All you need is a good backup system.

What was our ROI?

ROI may differ from company to company. Some think about human resources, and some think about money. But I have seen ROI in all these ways. It saves you a lot of time and money as well. If you have an employee that was responsible for a process, they can now spend that time on other tasks.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

There are a lot of automation tools in the market, such as Power Automate, but UiPath is number one right now. Initially, we started with it for automation purposes, but they have released many other products as well. Day by day, it's getting bigger.

I have worked with other tools as well, but in a complex situation, such as HR-related processes, where there are mathematical calculations, it's those calculations that are a challenge for users as well as developers. But UiPath will come up with a very good way to do a lot of arithmetical calculations. That makes it very easy to finish a complex process. With other tools, it may take some time. As a developer, UiPath is easier.

There are a lot of pros and cons when you're comparing one product to another. One important difference is robot speed. Power Automate works much faster than UiPath. When I develop, I can see a difference in the time it takes. This is something for UiPath to think about. And the pricing, of course. People say the robot license for UiPath is costly. Power Automate provides a very cheap rate, like $50 per month. UiPath is an annual subscription, but with Power Automate you can pay monthly as well. UiPath doesn't have that option.

What other advice do I have?

If you have a very simple task, you can achieve it very quickly with UiPath. But complex tasks can also be achieved very easily. If you have good developers and they have the knowledge, they can easily crack more difficult tasks. I have worked on a lot of calculation-type tasks, Excel-based complex applications. We do well with this solution.

My advice is to go ahead and install it. As long as you're ready to invest in the product, it will give you better results. But go with the option of a proper project management team as well as developers. With that kind of team, you will see value for your money. The product is good, but you should have the proper people.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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Brian Hannigan - PeerSpot reviewer
Operations manager for the ipa at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
Improves accuracy and throughput but has poor support
Pros and Cons
  • "I have no issues with stability. UiPath improves how our infrastructure works and how stable everything is."
  • "We would like to see better connectivity with different technologies. We found credential management to be something that is a real problem for us, especially working with third-party systems."

What is our primary use case?

We do a lot of claims processing for healthcare providers. We handled the billing, and it was very beneficial for us to use automation to perform those claims management and submit the claims for those various providers.

We utilize Orchestrator, the robots, both attended and unattended, and team sites.

How has it helped my organization?

Our organization was trying to achieve better accuracy and better throughput with this AI-powered automation initiative. We were just getting all the claims processed that we needed to because we just couldn't keep up with the workload. Using automation was a requirement.

It is very important that UiPath has orchestration. Without Orchestration, we wouldn't be able to do anything we do. My team specifically manages the Orchestration, and after the automation goes live, they come to my team to manage. 

Without Orchestration, I couldn't comprehend how we could do it. We have 360 machines running over a hundred processes with thousands of transactions a day. Without Orchestration, I don't see how we would be able to use the function.

What is most valuable?

Unattended robots with Orchestrator are our bread and butter. We don't do very many attended automations. It just seems that they are much more resilient when we run a program in a way that doesn't involve any users. 

We did have insights at one point, but that was prior to it being re-engineered by UiPath. We have to pick that back up because it didn't really work for us back in the day, but I've been told that they've changed the vendors that they've used for that product. We've re-licensed it, and we're in the midst of reimplementing it.

We are working with a vendor, Namica, the UiPath vendor and we are starting with task discovery processes. We're just touching more on task capture instead of process mining.  

What needs improvement?

We would like to see better connectivity with different technologies. We found credential management to be something that is a real problem for us, especially working with third-party systems. 

Being able to manage those credentials and have a product that could help us with that would be nice to have. We've ended up using CyberArk WPM for this purpose. But it's not something that's prepackaged; we've had to do it ourselves.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have no issues with stability. UiPath improves how the infrastructure works and how stable everything is. I haven't had many problems. There are a couple of quirks that different product levels will address or resolve, but it's documented pretty well on the support side.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is pretty good. We did scale. Our initial rollout was 65 machines within Orchestrator, and we have since gone to 360 with one Orchestrator and one tenant. It's pretty good—I don't have any complaints about the scalability.

How are customer service and support?

When I need support, I need them to respond. I actually had an instance last week where Orchestrator was not performing well. There were a lot of locks on the database, and it was bringing the Orchestrator trigger down. 

I opened a ticket and marked the criticality level as high. There's only one above that, and I didn't get a response back for a few hours. 

I had to go back to my sales personnel and explain to them that it was unacceptable. There was a problem with support.

In that particular instance, it was pretty poor, but I hope they saw that it was a problem and are working to address it.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Negative

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

We used Microsoft Power Automate very briefly because it's just part of our Office 365 package. We've used it very sparingly. It was more of a means to an end than a plan. 

We're actually looking to use it with a UiPath automation that we've created because it's Microsoft-centric, and it'll work quicker and do what we need it to do without having to invest a lot of time in the development. It might just be a subset of what we do.

How was the initial setup?

We're currently on-prem, but we're looking to change that. We're up for renewal in January and are already discussing that shift over to the cloud. We can utilize AI better if we shift to the cloud. 

I manage the infrastructure and the deployment of all the processes. I have a pretty solid background in infrastructure, so it seemed pretty straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We have a lot of departments within our organization that can do the implementations. But personally, I'd rather just do it myself and make sure it works.

What was our ROI?

We have an admin team that makes sure that the ROI is there before we even start.

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

The pricing is competitive. I like the solution's pricing structure. However, the development tools can have a better discount because we'd like to have more developers be able to do the work. 

In the long term, running the product and running the automation unattended, I completely understand the pricing structure there, but on the Studio side of it, UiPath can come down a little bit on the pricing.

What other advice do I have?

The product is leading the way toward AI, and there's some onus to make sure that we stay current with what UiPath is doing. It's the other way around too, where they need to understand where we are and help support us and our program. It's a two-way street. They need to make sure we understand where they're going, and they need to understand where we are. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

I would recommend making sure your process discovery is done correctly because no matter how many automations you can put in place if you don't have a good understanding of your processes, it's not going to do anybody any good. 

Process discovery and getting buy-in from management are key.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Muhammad Shaf Mairaj - PeerSpot reviewer
Robotic Process Automation Consultant at Powersoft19
Consultant
Top 20
It's handy for tasks like scraping and manipulating data
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath's most valuable features are its UI automation activities like scraping and manipulating data. We need to scrape the data before we can manipulate it or save it in another application. I think that part is very valuable and important."
  • "I would like UiPath to improve its screenshot feature. It should have the option not to take screenshots unless the user specifically allows it. Sometimes, it is a security issue for companies that do not want to share screenshots of the main application. Another thing I want to see is a standalone mobile application that we can run anywhere. I would like more cross-platform application support."

What is our primary use case?

In the past, we have used UiPath to automate repetitive manual processes for companies in the finance and banking sectors, but healthcare is our current focus. This industry involves processing tons of data from patients, customers, and doctors, so it's a huge field. 

Previously, I developed bots for compliance at financial companies. I've also created processes for reading PDFs, sending emails, Excel automation, logging, and exception handling. We have also contracted with insurance companies that need to pull data from emails into their main enterprise application.

How has it helped my organization?

The healthcare companies cannot provide us with direct access to their systems for security reasons. We are currently accessing their network through a middleware system so it doesn't compromise their security. UiPath doesn't work on that third machine and cannot retrieve the values as it should. If we scrape data from the web, it will get to the HTML that is behind the site. 

When we are accessing the third PC, we cannot get to it because it is a desktop machine. We are using the completed version activity, which is working mainly on the image image-based activity. This capability is available in UiPath, but I don't think Power Automate or Automation Anywhere can do this. It helps because we don't need to do any coding. 

UiPath tends to be deployed on the cloud, so clients can minimize their on-premise footprint. We deploy on-premise and cloud-based UiPath depending on what our clients want. For some companies, uploading data to the Orchestrator on the cloud is potentially a security concern that hasn't been resolved by the UiPath developers. Power Automate has an advantage in that regard. 

Our employees use the company's credentials to get training from the UiPath Academy and obtain certifications. I have a personal account on UiPath Academy, but it has some license issues. The academy is helpful because UiPath is implementing new features every three months or so. It's all about the documentation. We can learn about new features and do more. With more knowledge, we can develop something bigger.

UiPath reduces costs by eliminating human labor. Let's use an insurance company as an example. Let's say they have employees who are responsible for reading emails. Every day, they receive information via email from the customers, and their job is to retrieve the details and enter them into the main database. The average insurance company receives 400-500 emails daily. These people will spend the whole day completing the task of manually transferring data to their main application. 

We have a bot in pre-production that can handle 1,100 emails daily for the company. It has a significant impact on the efficiency of the operation because the bot can input the details into the database quickly and without any errors. The employees who were responsible for this work are now monitoring it and also learning about UiPath at the same time. It is a great tool for increasing productivity, thereby proportionally increasing the company's profits.

The first company I worked with had 20 employees in their compliance department working on some PDFs. The company had to send emails to around 6 million customers. We deployed the bots, and five bots could do the work of 10 employees. The company kept the other 10 employees but reassigned them to monitor the bots and fix errors. They also learned to develop their own bots. They could cut 10 positions and save money while improving productivity. Those employees weren't working as fast as the bots and cost more money.

The solution also greatly reduces human error. In the financial compliance use case, they were dealing with upwards of a million rows. That was labor-intensive work, and no human could complete the task in under three days manually. Sometimes, we would have some errors in which the values were reversed by accident because humans make mistakes when they are tired. In this kind of work, we're working with digital amounts and currencies, and we are applying mathematical formulas to the amounts, like credit, debit, or some business calculations. 

UiPath doesn't have large hardware or software requirements. We only need one physical PC on the client's premises. That computer requires some minimum specifications, such as a 1 terabyte hard drive and an i5 processor. We need that computer hardware and a license for the client. 

If the client doesn't want to purchase an enterprise license, UiPath offers a community version. There are no restrictions on the features, but it can only run one bot at a time. The enterprise version can run multiple bots. If our client only needs one process, we can provide them with the community version and deploy it on their PC. 

UiPath can free up employees to work on more important things. One of my colleagues was doing some tedious work manually, but once the bot was in place, he only needed to click one button to run UiPath, which extracts all the data and updates the Excel spreadsheet in 10 or 15 minutes. Previously, he spent up to six hours preparing the data before he could complete the other tasks. The important work was being delayed every time. It increases productivity, which benefits the company. 

What is most valuable?

UiPath's most valuable features are its UI automation activities like scraping and manipulating data. We need to scrape the data before we can manipulate it or save it in another application. I think that part is very valuable and important.

Having worked with other tools like Microsoft Power Automate and Automation Anywhere, I find UiPath to be the most user-friendly because it provides all the actions on the side, and we can just drag and drop them. It's a simple interface that we can easily understand. Automation Anywhere has a more complex interface. UiPath is straightforward enough that our junior employees can easily pick it up. 

UiPath's ability to offer end-to-end automation is critical. We typically provide our clients with a simple demo of what UiPath can do. After that, they provide us with details about their end-to-end processes, which we use to determine what can be implemented through UiPath.

For our healthcare client, the initial assignment was to scrape the data from the website and put it into Excel. Later, they decided that they wanted the data in another application, so it could be stored in the main database. We constructed an end-to-end process for maintaining a million records in their primary database.

I also like the UiPath Community forum. I go there when I get stuck with anything. When I run into an error, it's easy to find the answer. The community is highly active. If I post a question, I can usually get a response from community members in an hour or two. 

I have tried a bot that uses UiPath's AI capabilities, but I didn't develop it. It's a portal for patients to make appointments and check into reception at the hospital. We implemented ChatGPT on an Android device, so customers can ask questions and get information. 

We also developed a bot that can derive the same types of data from PDFs with different structures and formats. For example, let's say the patient's name is on the first row on one form, but on the third row on another. We can configure a bot to extract the name regardless of where it is. We can train our ML module by telling it when the data is wrong and running it again. Now, it's mostly accurate.

What needs improvement?

I would like UiPath to improve its screenshot feature. It should have the option not to take screenshots unless the user specifically allows it. Sometimes, it is a security issue for companies that do not want to share screenshots of the main application. Another thing I want to see is a standalone mobile application that we can run anywhere. I would like more cross-platform application support.

UiPath can get unwieldy if the process becomes too big and complex. I had one client based in Saudi Arabia that had an application with 1,500 pages. Once the bot we were developing got much bigger, the application started having stability issues. It performs well in typical cases, but once we exceed that average, the application starts to crash or behave abnormally. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used UiPath for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Overall, UiPath is stable for most processes, but Power Automate is better at handling large, complex projects.

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

I have worked with Microsoft Power Automate and Automation Anywhere. The primary advantage of UiPath is that it's more accessible than the other solutions. You can learn UiPath without any knowledge of programming or computer science. It takes only about a month to learn the tool, even if you have no skills. For example, if you're a blogger and you want to automate posting to the website, you can do that through UiPath, so it is beneficial for personal use and commercial use. 

The other advantage is cost savings. UiPath saves organizations some money, and it's more accurate than Power Automate or Automation Anywhere. Automation Anywhere is my third choice. Power Automate comes in second place because It was developed by Microsoft, and most enterprise companies have a Microsoft subscription. If their license includes Power Automate, they prefer to use that instead of buying a separate subscription for UiPath. 

Many companies are switching to Power Automate because of this bundled licensing. The UiPath enterprise subscription is somewhat expensive. Microsoft can provide the same functionality, and it integrates with tools like Excel and Outlook. Companies can get all those tools within the same license, so that's an advantage Power Automate offers over UiPath.

Another advantage of UiPath is that you can also work with image-based processes. If we cannot get any selectors or access the HTML code behind the application, we can use image-based processes. This feature isn't available in Automation Anywhere. UiPath has the AI center, and Microsoft also implements AI in Power Automate processes.  However, Automation Anywhere cannot use AI in their product.

How was the initial setup?

My current company is smaller, so I'm responsible for multiple tasks. I am the requirement gatherer, developer, and deployer. At my previous company, they had a business analyst who talked to the client and made an inventory of their requirements that he provided to us. Then, my only task was to develop the bot. It was the other team's duty to deploy the bot on the client's physical machine. 

The process involves three steps. We need to connect UiPath and provide the logs. Our client can access the Orchestrator to see logs of what the bot is doing online. He doesn't need to physically access the machine. There is also middleware called the UiPath Assistant that we use to connect UiPath to the Orchestrator. 

The number of staff needed for deployment depends on the complexity of the processes. If it is a single process, we don't need a deployment person or team. The developers can deploy the bots. My company has five developers, so everyone is developing their own bots and handing them over to the deployment team. For every five developers, we have two deployers. If the five developers are developing automated bots daily, we need only two deployers to deploy them on the machine. Also, if we want to have a backup version, we can deploy it on GitHub to make the repository and organize everything.

The maintenance aspect can sometimes be difficult. Exceptional cases can arise during the process. When we initiate some processes, we need to monitor them for about 30 days. We don't monitor some processes because we're not seeing any errors or exceptions. We have to monitor other bots, stop them as needed, handle the exception, and run them again. After 30 days, the bot should be mature enough to handle the exceptions without intervention. 

What was our ROI?

UiPath offers an excellent return. For example, a recent client in Pakistan was scraping data from a website with 349 products. His job was to scrape the title, price, and variants and place the data in an Excel spreadsheet. He was working all week alone, so I proposed UiPath. I told him UiPath has a function called "Extract Data Table" that can scrape all the details of the products and just dump it into Excel in five or ten minutes. He was impressed, and I developed the bot in front of him. 

Now, he's running my bot and dumping all the results in his Excel sheet. He's also working on other projects, and his routine has become very stable. He has more time to spend with his family. It has surely made an impact and yielded a positive ROI.

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

I don't know the exact cost, but UiPath is more expensive than Power Automate and Automation Anywhere. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate UiPath seven out of 10. Learning a little JavaScript coding is helpful because there are some scenarios in which UiPath doesn't help you. In some cases, you may need to write a little code to perform some actions or call some functions. I would also take advantage of the UiPath Academy so you can stay up to date on the latest news and features. 

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Software Engineer at Accenture
Real User
Top 20
Has minimized our on-prem footprint, freed up employee time, and increased productivity
Pros and Cons
  • "The screen recording feature is valuable."
  • "The data team support that provides the UI and the chat services has room for improvement."

What is our primary use case?

UiPath is an end-to-end automation tool that helps businesses accelerate their processes by providing solutions for automating routine activities. These solutions enable faster and more efficient business exchanges.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath offers a user-friendly automation building process utilizing a drag-and-drop workflow feature for UI automation. Additionally, the platform includes recording capabilities and a playback feature to ensure accuracy. Advanced scraping options are also available for more complex tasks.

We utilize UiPath to automate processes that relate to good causes. Our approach involves creating a playbook task and subsequently automating the process. After that, the IT department assists us in collecting and interpreting data from various applications in the UA portion.

UiPath's automation capability is important because it saves us a lot of time. There are two sides to consider: the client side and the server side. On the client side, the UI allows developers or data users to communicate directly with the system. This can be done using tools such as RobotStudio or data browsers. Essentially, these operations can be seen as back-end tasks. On the server side, tasks and workloads generated by the user are stored in SQL databases.

UiPath has minimized our on-prem footprint.

The UiPath Academy courses are beneficial. 

The AI functionality in UiPath helps us save time by streamlining our workflows within the studios. Additionally, it enhances our automation capabilities, speeds up order processing, and enables us to make better decisions, ultimately reducing the risk of errors.

The automation has saved us between 70 and 80 percent of our processing costs.

UiPath has freed up employee time and increased productivity.

What is most valuable?

The screen recording feature is valuable.

What needs improvement?

The data team support that provides the UI and the chat services has room for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath is highly scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

Before, I used Blue Prism, but now at my new organization, we use UiPath. Unlike Blue Prism, which only specializes in back-end applications, UiPath works with both front-end and back-end applications.

What other advice do I have?

I give the solution a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free UiPath Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: December 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free UiPath Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.