UiPath Reviews

I use UiPath for work projects that involve various applications, including license rebate processing and healthcare licensing. I develop reusable components for these projects.

Specifically, the process involves launching different licensing websites and extracting essential information such as license number, status, effective date, expiration date, and any disciplinary actions. This data is collected from providers like physicians, dietitians, opticians, and speech therapists. We validate the extracted information against existing databases or applications, updating records where necessary.

This validated information is crucial for determining the approval or denial of applications, such as those related to provider enrollment. Essentially, my work centers around creating processes with defined inputs and desired outputs.

Currently, I'm focused on a project within the manufacturing sector, specifically a constant bidding branch. Here, we gather order information for stakeholders, including tracking numbers, tracking statuses, and approximate order values. We store this data in an Oracle database, generate a CSV file from it, and distribute this file to stakeholders via email.

Building automation using UiPath is easy for developers. It is easy for them to manage and start building with the automation.

UiPath empowers organizations to improve their staff's time management and become more cost-effective. By automating routine tasks, it frees up employees' valuable time to focus on higher-priority work. 

UiPath enables end-to-end automation. Our process begins with meeting stakeholders to determine which processes are suitable for automation. We assess if existing tools are sufficient or if new ones need to be implemented. We also identify applications that automation could potentially replace. If all requirements are met, we obtain sign-off for automation and prepare process documentation, such as Process Definition Documents. We then consult with business stakeholders and obtain managerial approval on the Solution Design Document. This phase can take several weeks and involves outlining the specific solutions and applications required for the automation. Next, we create a video demonstrating the automation workflow and explain the process to stakeholders. After securing sign-off from management and SMEs, we begin the development phase. The completed development is sent for UAT and then moved into production. We typically monitor the automation in production for one to two months. Any errors trigger email notifications, allowing us to promptly address issues within UiPath Studio and re-deploy to the live production environment.

The UiPath User Community is a valuable resource for developers. It allows us to share knowledge and find answers to questions or issues we encounter, without needing to submit a support ticket.

It has significantly improved our efficiency by automating many manual tasks, leading to a noticeable benefit for patients. Now, thanks to automated benefit processing, patients receive instant approvals or denials from their insurance providers.

Our company encourages us to complete UiPath Academy courses to further our understanding of Robotic Process Automation. These courses equip us with the skills and knowledge necessary to solve complex problems encountered in real-world scenarios. Completing the Academy courses and obtaining certifications can be beneficial not only for career advancement within our company but also for understanding new features and process flows implemented in future updates. Additionally, these certifications can be valuable when transitioning to other companies as they demonstrate our expertise in UiPath products.

Human error is minimized by utilizing exception handling.

UiPath helps free up our time.

The most valuable feature is the easily accessible tool, such as the ARI framework, which I have used extensively. My interest in the ARI framework has grown significantly because the templates are built directly into UiPath, making it possible to automate more complex processes, while also simplifying the development and understanding for developers.

The UiPath Community Edition lacks some key features that developers find essential for learning and building their knowledge base before transitioning to the paid Enterprise Edition. To provide developers with a more comprehensive evaluation experience, UiPath could consider including all features in the Community Edition for a limited trial period. This would allow developers to fully test the solution's capabilities before making a purchase decision.

I have been using UiPath for four years.

UiPath operates reliably around 80 percent of the time. However, automation speed can sometimes be hindered by internal applications.

I had to contact their support once and they were extremely helpful in resolving my issue.

Positive

While I have experience with Automation Anywhere, I find UiPath to be more user-friendly and offer a more robust orchestration tool. Although Automation Anywhere offers child bots and AI IQ bots, it is not as well-suited for handling complex automation scenarios.

The initial deployment is straightforward. We can sign up with UiPath and set it up on our local desktop, or we can deploy it from our cloud cluster.

I would rate UiPath eight out of ten.

The amount of maintenance required depends on the project and the bots being used. On average maintenance is done monthly.

I work in the banking industry and have used UiPath to automate end-to-end processes for seven projects. I am also currently using UiPath to help our clients automate their RPA lifecycle end-to-end.

In my role within the banking domain, I am typically responsible for complex bots. I currently have two applications and data messaging tasks requiring the creation of BRM reports and their subsequent email delivery to users.

With my UiPath experience building automation is easy to do.

UiPath enables end-to-end automation. My preferred development process begins with creating Process Definition Documents and thoroughly gathering requirements. I carefully review this information before commencing development. After that, I conduct User Acceptance Testing. Finally, I place the process in hypercare for one or two weeks, depending on the bot's complexity, before moving it to production.

The UiPath User Community is incredibly helpful, especially when I'm stuck on code during research and development.

UiPath is a leading platform for end-to-end automation, offering advanced capabilities for streamlining workflows.

UiPath Academy offers valuable courses that equip learners with both knowledge and practical experience. I recently completed some advanced coursework in the program.

UiPath speeds up and reduces the cost of digital transformation.

UiPath helps organizations reduce costs through automation by minimizing the staff needed to complete tasks.

UiPath helps reduce human error.

UiPath helps free up significant staff time. It can complete tasks in five minutes that would typically take a human seven hours to accomplish.

On-premises deployment of UiPath requires a significant amount of RAM for optimal performance.

I have been using UiPath for just over two years.

To ensure the stability of our on-premises UiPath solution, a minimum of 1 TB of RAM is required for optimal performance.

I also work with Automation Anywhere. While both tools offer valuable functionalities, UiPath provides additional features, such as flow and list views, for managing automation workflows. Additionally, UiPath offers an orchestrator capability for centralizing and managing automation, which is not available in Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup is straightforward. I can do the deployment myself within ten minutes.

I would rate UiPath ten out of ten.

Maintenance is required for updates.

I recommend UiPath for implementing robotic process automation.

We use UiPath to build attended and unattended automated processes for public and private sector clients. I try to make the processes as slim as possible so that they aren't as dependent on external applications. We have an abundance of documentation, and the goal is to have very little overhead. 

All the businesses where we've deployed UiPath were pleased with the solution. They saw immediate benefits to the bottom line, and employees were no longer stuck doing repetitive stuff. Organizations typically start realizing the benefits in the first month.

UiPath has reduced human error. It also offers visibility that helps build rapport between contractors like me and my clients in the federal government or other process owners we're working with. The solution cuts the costs associated with digital transformation. The more you want to digitally transform your business, the more expensive it will be. With UiPath, that means the solution needs to use more of the product offerings, like IDP, the AI panel, and other stuff like that. But even with the minimal architecture, it will still cost at least a little bit.

UiPath significantly frees up employee time. On average, I estimate it saves between 50 to 100 hours per automation annually. The amount of money saved offsets the cost of licensing because you're saving time and reducing headaches. 

I like UiPath's Orchestrator. It's the core piece.  Automations are relatively easy to build. There is a learning curve initially, but I would rate it seven out of 10 for ease of building automation. The end-to-end automation is critical. It helps us develop a strategy where everyone has their things automated, saving time throughout the organization. The UiPath community forums are a helpful resource where you can contribute and get answers. 

I think UiPath's documentation for new features is a bit incomplete at times. 

I have used UiPath for around four years.

The stability depends on the VM you're running UiPath on, so that's not even really UiPath at that point.

UiPath prides itself on being very scalable. The unattended RPAs make it easy to scale. If you need to add more bots to run more processes, you can just have your IT department provision a new VM and buy more unattended licenses. 

I rate UiPath support five out of 10. Sometimes, UiPath support is like a lottery. They have many intelligent people who can get you what you need, but it depends on whether the person you're assigned knows the solution. It might be that they have so many customers and not enough staff. The ticket response times can be pretty slow.

Neutral

Previously, I used Power Automate mainly for its API integration and cloud workflows. I wasn't using it as an RPA solution. 

Due to the ridiculous nature of the government and the premium associated with adopting newer things, we can only do attended bot deployment right now. That means we publish new packages, send them via email, and deploy them on their type of system. In any other RPA shop, we would publish to Orchestrator and manage the process from there. The deployment is straightforward once you know what you're doing, but we need to maintain some oversight on the beginners to ensure they publish the processes correctly.  

I would like to see a GitLab model. In a CI/CD pipeline, it runs a series of tests after every commit to ensure that everything's functioning. It doesn't require maintenance so long as the engine keeps running, but we review the processes annually to see if there are any pain points or if anything needs optimization. 

There's an ROI despite the high cost. We save time, and many of the processes are much more robust than they could be if they were performed manually. UiPath can process an Excel file with thousands of rows. Human employees can do that by themselves, but bots can do the job so much faster. 

I think UiPath costs too much. They know they're top dogs, and that's fine, but I would never recommend them for anything other than a large enterprise or the federal government. There are development costs and unattended bot licenses are more expensive. UiPath has additional apps you can purchase that all have separate costs. 

I rate UiPath eight out of 10. 

We are a consulting firm. We started last year, and we are growing pretty rapidly.

We have quite a few document-understanding processes that we are working on. We are a partner of UiPath, so we have various clients in different industries. Currently, we are processing vendor statements to create payments in NetSuite. We also have a three-way match cache application process, and then we have a basic user interface for scraping vendors' websites for payment data and that kind of thing.

We are trying to figure out how to incorporate LOMs with everyday processes and get reliable information back. We are also training a lot of machine learning models to extract data from PDFs along with processing contracts. I hope that those get easier to train and that there are more reliable answers or outputs from the models that we train.

Our AI-powered automation initiative has fundamentally changed what our organization is able to achieve. Document processing has come a long way and become a lot more user-friendly with validations and Action Center. The straight-through processing has increased.

They are constantly making improvements to Action Center where you have more feasibility in assigning tasks. There is a lot more flexibility and data around it. We have been incorporating insights into our automations, which helps us create a business case for future automations based on what we have done in the past.

The use of AI in our automations has definitely increased the accuracy of our operations. It has also increased the ability to process certain use cases that were not available before. It gives us more opportunities to automate processes, and therefore, drive revenue.

The use of AI in automations has freed up time or resources for other tasks for our customers. The time saved depends on the use case, but they are probably saving about a thousand hours a month on the vendor statement processing. They are getting 2,000 to 5,000 statements a month. Each one takes roughly 45 minutes.

Their core platform of Studio is valuable. The ease of use and the ability to build these automations quickly is definitely a highlight for us. Our average process from start to finish takes three to four weeks. We can knock out automations as quickly as we can identify them. That is probably the best feature I see.

In Action Center, saving progress in data validation, specifically for table content, is currently not available. There should be more clarity around the feedback loop along with the auto-update feature when you deploy machine learning packages. They should give some rule-based options so that if the confidence is returned higher than the previous model trained, then it would auto-deploy. If it is less, then it should send you an email rather than auto-deploy.

With task assignment, if there was a round-robin feature within the bucket to automatically assign it to a certain group of people, that would be helpful. 

There should be the ability to add custom fields to validation tasks because there is a lot of potential for it. It would be helpful when somebody needs to identify a scenario. For example, we have a customer who is processing rate sheets for trucking, and sometimes, depending on their customer, they have an all-in rate versus an adding fuel mileage rate. If they are able to specify that, even if it does not say it on the rate sheet, it would allow them to process more documents successfully.

We use UiPath's AI Center, but some clarity is missing around when to use AI Center versus when to use the Document Understanding module within Orchestrator. We are trying to figure out the benefit of one versus the other. We have also seen that the out-of-the-box models that we train versus a custom model that we train with the same data end up with the same output result at the end. We are trying to see where these out-of-the-box models are providing value if we are going to take the time to train them.

I have been using UiPath since 2019.

We have run into issues with integration services where we developed something, implemented it, put it into production, and all of a sudden, it does not run unattended. It is a very frustrating situation to be in. 

There were some issues with sharing connections between different accounts, and we have learned from that experience to do more upfront testing of new features before we build automation on it. 

Event-based triggers not working is probably the biggest stability issue that we have run into, and integration services not working is probably the biggest gray area. Other than that, it is a stable platform.

It is definitely a scalable platform.

Their support is good. I have had good success with submitting support tickets and getting answers quickly. If it is a bug that is identified with the process or with the platform, they resolve it within a matter of a week. There was a production issue. It was a throughput issue for the AI model. We were not able to access a 100-page document because of this exception. They implemented it and fixed it within a week, which I thought was awesome. I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I did not use any other RPA solution previously. I have only used Power Apps a bit, but it was a very small part that we have looked into. Overall, we are strictly focused on UiPath.

I have probably set up 100 Orchestrators at this point, so it is straightforward. However, the initial setup is confusing for new people who have not done it where they are matching machines to the tenant and plugging it in their machine key, but I am not sure if there is any way to get around that. When you have done it once, it is easy. 

The other thing is the licensing aspect of it. You need to assign a license to the machine template and then the machine template to the folder, and then you have to make sure that the machine is connected. There seems to be some confusion amongst our developers on how to make sure it is all set up correctly, and then you have the robot account. You have to make sure that it is also set up correctly to run unattended automations. It is a challenge, but if you do it two or three times, you get the hang of it.

In terms of the implementation strategy, overall, we look for quick wins upfront so that we can build the program and get support behind it, and then tackle the more advanced use cases after we get three or four in production.

We have cloud deployments. We have had different cloud providers, such as Azure, AWS, and GCP.

We are a consultant. 

We have definitely seen an ROI in terms of hours saved and quality of work. Once you get off the ground, there are a lot of other departments that end up getting excited and looking forward to future automation. I feel that is a win for morale.

Overall, the model is fine except for AI units. It is usage-based, which makes sense if you are processing documents, and you have one unit per page. It is the hosting cost of the models where there are issues, so we are running into potentially designing poor solutions because we are having to say, "If the documents are very similar but different enough, even though you would prefer to use two models, maybe consider not using two because of the hosting costs."

Power Automate is something we might look at. UiPath has orchestration while Power Automate does not. Orchestration is vital for us.

If you are trying to do in-house development, the user experience is much better than any other platform that we have evaluated. It is easy to pick up. The UiPath academy, training, and forums are great. The biggest selling point for me is that you can pick it up as a business user and learn the platform in a matter of days or weeks as opposed to months or years.

I would rate UiPath a nine out of ten.

We do not have any specific use cases for UiPath. We automate areas where we have a large volume of work.

UiPath makes it easy to build automation because it uses a drag-and-drop interface and requires little coding.

We use UiPath to automate our repetitive processes. This reduces manual effort, freeing up employees to focus on other tasks, such as learning new skills and improving their careers. Doing repetitive tasks on a daily basis does not help employees develop their skills or advance their careers.

An associate in the loan approval process must validate licenses, forms, and certain records of the floor person before approving the loan for the next level. This person goes through a lot of paperwork on a daily basis, which can be very tiring. However, we now have UiPath, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to extract all the information from the licenses. This reduces the associate's workload by 50 percent, allowing them to complete the rest of the job more easily.

UiPath's automation has resulted in zero errors.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation. The solution includes all of the components necessary for end-to-end automation, from process identification to deployment. End-to-end automation is very important because it can help businesses save time and money. To identify a process that can be automated, we can either speak with the business team or use UiPath's process mining capacity. Process mining is a technique that can automatically analyze business processes and identify areas that can be automated. Once we have identified a process that can be automated, we can use UiPath to create a robot to automate the process.

UiPath's user community is very large with millions of users. Everyone has questions, and if we have a question, we don't have to post and wait for an answer. There is always someone who already answered the question. For example, if I have a question about selectors, there will be answers to my question. The user community is like a database of answers.

UiPath helped our organization by eliminating repetitive job tasks.

UiPath helped us minimize our on-premises footprint, which is important. For example, let's say an employee used to have to come into the office to check papers or documents to determine if a loan could be processed for a particular individual. Now, that employee can do that work remotely. There is no need for them to go to the dealer and collect all the papers, which can then be submitted or uploaded into a software program. The employee can now do all of this work from their computer.

All team members are required to participate in the UiPath Academy courses suggested by UiPath and to complete the certification. Access to UiPath Academy is great because our employees do not have to go to a particular coaching center to get a certification. They can do it on their own, on their mobile devices, at home, or on their laptops. They can learn at their own pace and in their own time. UiPath Academy has excellent examples and assessments for each chapter, which makes it easier to complete the course.

The AI functionality affects our ability to automate more complex processes. For example, in the UK, there are five different types of licenses that individuals may need to obtain in order to be approved for a loan. This means that there are numerous licenses that need to be processed for each loan application. In order to determine whether a license is expired or legitimate, we need to manually review each one. This can be a time-consuming and error-prone process. However, using AI and machine learning, we can automate this process. AI can be used to identify the different types of licenses that are required for a loan application. Machine learning can then be used to train a model to determine whether a license is expired or legitimate. This allows us to automate the entire process, which can save us time and money.

In our data center, we are unable to develop certain processes because existing rule-based automation is not sufficient. End-to-end automation helps our data center implementation.

UiPath helps reduce the cost of our digital transformation and it does not require upgrades or IT application support.

The solution helped reduce human error by 100 percent. We now have zero errors.

UiPath freed up our employee's time to work on other processes that can not be automated.

By eliminating the need for human intervention in repetitive processes, UiPath saved us costs.

The most valuable features are CR capabilities and logistics automation.

UiPath can improve its AS center region by expanding its reach and addressing technical difficulties in certain areas. While the platform works well on-premises, there are some technical issues that can be resolved when moving to the cloud.

I have been using UiPath for five years. 

I give UiPath's stability a nine out of ten.

I give UiPath's scalability an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is straightforward. However, it requires some technical knowledge, as we will need to connect to the SQL Server and Elasticsearch to create the tables. There is documentation available online that we can use, and we may also need to contact UiPath for assistance.

One person is enough for the deployment.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have seen a return on investment with UiPath through the elimination of quality errors.

UiPath is a bit more expensive than other similar solutions, and its price is increasing daily.

We evaluated multiple tools to verify our requirements, cost, licensing, and support capabilities.

I give UiPath a nine out of ten. I recommend UiPath to others.

UiPath does not require maintenance.

Our customer had one attended robot and wanted to scale up. We used UiPath to identify possible processes that could be automated and also required the ability to scale up the architecture.

The ability to use end-to-end automation with UiPath is the key to success but it takes a lot of work.

UiPath has absolutely helped minimize our on-premises footprint by automating.

The solution has helped speed up and reduce the cost of digital transformation.

I believe UiPath has reduced human error.

The solution has freed up employee time through the automation provided. 

If we go into every specific role in every specific use case, depending on the role, we have the capacity to free up over 50 percent of employee administrative time. 

The solution enables us to implement end-to-end automation.

The entire training support package provides different paths we can follow according to different roles. Automating basic processes is very easy. The setup phase is very quick.

The possibilities with process mining are fantastic.

They offer new vendors UI Academy courses and the four-hour BA course gave me the basic knowledge I required.

The vendor can improve the solution by building up the BA path included in the UI Academy courses. There's too much focus on development, but not enough on BAs, scrum masters, and project managers alike. 

I am interested in low code as a general concept and would like to have a better methodology for how BAs and other IT professionals can be closely connected with professional developers and included in the automation process.

I would like to have integration with other programming languages. We primarily need to know Visual Basic or C Sharp to develop using more traditional development. For example, for front-end automation, it would be helpful to use Javascript instead.

I used the solution for a few months.

The stability is good. I did not encounter any issues with UiPath.

We conducted a pre-study using the solution and we saw the possibilities to scale up.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Building automation using UiPath requires some level of technical expertise. As a BA, I have some programming experience, but not in-depth programming knowledge and that is enough for me to automate some basic processes, following the training. I worked together with senior developers who would be able to automate more advanced processes, but we didn't get to that level in the project.

We prepared the information and I was involved in the UiPath training, but we didn't get to actually scale up and automate new processes because the project was never completed.

I'm currently working on a pre-study for a large company in the public sector, and they are not using UiPath presently. The organization is currently using NICE but UiPath is one of the solutions that I'll advise them to continue evaluating.

In Sweden, there are a lot of issues and different regulations around GDPR, so we always deploy on-premises.

I would recommend that anyone thinking about using UiPath should have knowledge of the entire ecosystem in order to get the full experience. The concept of intelligent automation is the track that UiPath is on right now with integrating AI solutions for identifying processes. A new user should take a more holistic approach. Focus on identifying, assessing, and not just automating processes. 

We were looking for robotic process automation and we have been trying the UiPath Community Edition. We mainly need to automate day-to-day activities related to wireless connections, such as our WiFi device registration process. We currently have three to four employees currently doing this process and it is really time-consuming. We want a bot to do these repetitive procedures.

We will be doing the same procedure for server-side configurations as well for repetitive Windows-based processes. We are looking to save most of the system admin headaches.

We have three system admins and had three to four data entry people. These people uploaded our WiFi registration information daily for the university. After this implementation, we saw a drastic change in the time this process takes. People were taking five to eight hours to do everything, but now, the task hardly takes one hour or less for a bot to do. We don't need dynamic data entry operators anymore because the robots are easily handling all the dynamic data, updating it to the server in minutes.

End-to-end automation also means a lot to us as an educational organization that is concerned about security. We prefer to have fewer people involved on the operations side. By using bots we can reduce the number of people handling sensitive data. With the implementation of the bot, it now takes only one person, the UiPath administrator, for these tasks to get done. He is the only one required. He just needs to review the activities. We have been able to considerably reduce our staff costs.

Also, RPA software does not need a break. It can operate 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. In most cases, a single RPA robot can replace two to five full-time workers. Robots can do the same amount of work in less time.

It's really a cost-effective solution. There are minimal operating costs and we can make more efficient use of IT resources. In that way, we are saving a considerable amount of our yearly budget. We can spend much more money on other productivity items, rather than giving tedious tasks to employees. Overall, UiPath has reduced our costs by about 40 percent.

Another important aspect is that it is highly secure. There is absolutely no risk of information leakage from one component to another, because each only performs a single task. Access is strictly monitored, making it highly secure.

We have been on the path of digital transformation for the last three or four years. We have purchased many new technologies to move forward. UiPath has significantly reduced the cost of this process. We don't require further hardware to automate something. It is completely a software-based solution. Even with Community Edition, we are able to use all the features of the product. The limitation is the bot count. We can only use three or four robots. Still, it is the best solution.

In addition, we were prone to many human errors and this resulted in complex issues with our clients. Regarding our WiFi infrastructure, we faced hundreds of issues daily with misconfigurations. With the UiPath implementation, these errors have been reduced considerably because everything is automated. We need much less human intervention. Errors are now negligible.

The option to record processes is the most important feature of UiPath. We can use it to record every action automatically and it is then converted to a workflow. This workflow defines the complete set of processes so that we can automate every requirement.

A related feature that is one of the highlights is the AI. We have used many other scraping solutions, but none of them was effective. UiPath, however, can easily scrape data from webpages and applications and it works flawlessly with any program including .NET, PDF, legacy, and SAP.

UiPath has three components, UiPath Studio, the robots, and UiPath Orchestrator. UiPath Orchestrator is a web-based application for deploying, monitoring, and scheduling bots. With Orchestrator we can manage everything regarding the bots. We can customize the actions, but there are also templates. For example, one of the templates enables you to upload to OneDrive from Excel sheets. We just add the parameters and the automations are done.

We have used a few of the UiPath Academy courses, basic classes, because we use the Community Edition. When we move to the more advanced version of UiPath we'll be doing more of the classes. The Academy is very user-friendly. We don't require any further lectures or other sources for learning. A user can watch these videos and start operating the next day. All the actions and features, everything, is clearly demonstrated in the videos. It has proved to be very informative for us.

We have used it with Windows and it has been perfect. But recently, we tried it with Linux and we faced some issues regarding this automation. The auto-recording didn't happen as much as in other operating systems. They need to add more user-friendly automation and templates for that. They don't have many templates for other operating systems.

I have been using UiPath for six months.

It is extremely stable. We can actually trust the bots more than humans because it is completely error-free.

We currently have the Community Edition but we are moving to the other version so that we can deploy more bots. As a testing phase, we have limited it to only the IT department of the university. We have about 25 users of UiPath in that department.

The Community Edition is not that scalable, but the Enterprise Edition is completely scalable.

We haven't had to contact them for technical help.

This is the first automation tool we are using.

The initial setup was very simple. It only required a few clicks. After the implementation, to configure it, we required more advanced help and guidance.

It doesn't require attention for maintenance or updates. The updates work flawlessly.

We have no other product with this much return on investment. We are able to save money and time. No other product guarantees saving both at the same time. Sometimes you need to compromise on money to save more time. But in the case of UiPath, we definitely save on both. 

And UiPath has features that can enhance our server team. They can actually move into becoming UiPath administrators after getting used to this product. So the return on investment is huge in terms of time, cost, and exposure.

The Community Edition is free for everyone and you get all the features, but there is a limitation on the number of bots. The Enterprise Edition is a bit costly for the advanced features.

We did not look at any other tools. We were not even planning on going for UiPath, but a friend, a peer from a different organization, suggested that I check into it. We became very interested in it after testing it.

I would recommend UiPath for IT-related implementations because it can save a huge amount of time. Whether you are a small business or a large enterprise, all kinds of companies can use it for automation. It reduces costs and helps with efficiency. If you are considering any other AI-based solutions, I would still prefer the UiPath Community Edition. It has a large set of features and is free. If you like it and it suits your organization, you can then go for the paid version.

We started out with a lot of unattended use cases and then moved into using attended bots to help users. I've been with two separate companies. One was a financial services company. However, there was a lot of support for external clients. In the company now, we're doing a lot around the back office, HR, finance, and supply chain. UiPath just runs the gamut of all different kinds of use cases.

It's definitely made it easy to build automation. We have a team of about four or five developers. One of them was straight out of school, and they had never really had professional experience. We've also taken a couple of developers that were more into custom code and converted those over to using UiPath. It's interesting to see the level of excitement when you use a tool like UiPath from someone who is straight out of school and can convert over. 

We enjoy the constant innovation. It's coming out with new things that we can use and new features all the time. RPA has been around for a while now; however, the fact that we're adding integration services, adding apps, and all these other features, makes it possible to expand our use case.

We use UiPath to automate processes that deal with a good environmental cause. For example, for the company, however, we get invoices for bulk fuel. Our company sends out a lot of trucks, and a lot of customer engineers to actually service equipment. All this was manual, and a lot of not knowing how much we were paying. We automated that, and then the next step of that process is, "Okay. Can we start figuring out exactly how much money we spend on fuel, now, let's try to figure out ways to lessen that?" I could see how that could be environmentally friendly as we're trying to reduce consumption.

The user community is interesting. I've met a couple of people here and had really good conversations. It's interesting in the virtual world that we live in now, where everybody's just a face on a screen.

We've used UiPath's Academy. Being a solution architect, I'm not hands-on with code every day. I got certified as an RPA associate so that I could better understand what the developers are working on and using. When I'm designing solutions, I have a better knowledge of what's possible. I've taken a lot of the courses on UiPath Academy.

We're actually looking into a document to understand the use case. It's essentially car titles, and we're struggling. We've used several different OCR engines to try to train the model and try to improve it. For us, a little more direction on how to actually achieve this would be useful. We've been struggling for a couple of months now trying to get it working and getting it to the level we need it.

I've been using the solution for five or six years. 

The stability is great. I compare it to what I would think the best in class is. It's like Microsoft releasing patches. I've had fewer issues with UiPath updates than I do with my Office client on my computer. Therefore, it's very stable. 

We've had it where we had an update, and it did break some of our robots, and we had to go and do some troubleshooting, yet that's only been one time. It's pretty good overall. 

It remains scalable for us. We're not a huge shop yet as far as the number of bots, so it remains to be seen. It will be interesting when we try to reorganize our Orchestrator to make it more scalable. I can't really answer that one yet, as we haven't really tried to scale a lot.

Technical support is great. It's easy to reach out to them. It's easy to get feedback. As with any organization, a lot of times, the first answer is, "Go read the FAQ." I usually respond, "Well, I've already read the FAQ. That's why I'm asking." This is normal. Once you get past that, they're really ready to jump in and help.

Positive

I started out in 2016 looking at what was the best solution for the company. We looked at several of the top options. They're still the top ones today if you look at Gartner, Forrester, and publications like that. I used some of them. I've used Power Platform and other low-code tools like Pega and Appian. There are a lot of different tools in this space, and they all bleed into each other. 

I've been with two companies that focus on UiPath. It's just the constant way they try to keep up and keep innovating has made them a bit different than other options.

I was not involved in the initial deployment of the platform. I came in about a year ago. Since then, we've done things like automating month-end close processes, automating a lot of manual processes from moving from an old legacy HR system to Workday, and integrating with Workday. There have also been several other different smaller use cases like that. That said, for the implementation of the main platform, I wasn't here for that part.

The deployment of automation depends on how it's built and how you structure your UiPath Orchestrator, which has changed a lot in the last one or two years. They've got this concept of modern folders now in UiPath.

It's taken a lot of effort to transform what we did previously into what we're trying to do today. We very much had one tenant for one automation or a group of automation. Now, we're trying to do more. We ended up with a lot of tenants. Now, we're trying to consolidate into fewer tenants with these modern folders and trying to understand how that all works.

We have definitely seen an ROI. The team has talked about a million hours returned back to the business for other activities. It took a few years to get there, however, now it's every year. 

The pricing changes every day, however, it's not unlike any other SaaS platform. Sometimes it's hard to understand. That said, I'm more on the technical side. Some of the big questions are unattended versus attended since there's a lot more cost to unattended. When we get into document understanding, it's the number of OCR models, and the models you use that increases cost.

I looked into the other two big ones in this space. One of them, and this was in 2016 or 2017, didn't have a concept of attended automation. They thought it should all be unattended and no one should touch it. It should just run. That was really a barrier for us since one of the big value propositions is just automating those small tasks that people do to free up more time. Attended automation eliminated them.

One of the other ones we looked at couldn't support us. It was a proof of value, proof of concept type exercise, and they couldn't give us the support we needed to execute it. It was pretty easy to disqualify them when they couldn't go through that pre-sales motion to really get us. Why would we want to sign a contract? Why would we want to move forward? 

Potential new users should focus on the business driver or the business use case and find the best tool. UiPath lives in this space of RPA, low-code, AI/ML. There will probably always be three or four of these tools to choose from at any enterprise or sizable company. How do you pick the right one? It's really about what the business is trying to do.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Support is good, reliability is good, and innovation is great. There are just some things they could get better on to catch up with some of the other players in surrounding technologies. UiPath started as RPA. Other companies started as integration platforms. I know we're getting into connectors and things like that. It just keeps moving in that direction.