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reviewer1777596 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Reseller
Automation Cloud helps SMEs implement automation without dealing with infrastructure, maintenance, and updates
Pros and Cons
  • "The only way you're able to show true value with an automation program is if you automate something end-to-end. UiPath does end-to-end automations and, among all the other tools that are available, UiPath is the leader in end-to-end automation."
  • "They can certainly improve their Automation Hub, which is their centralized place to gather new opportunities. The improvement could be, in part, in the capabilities. For example, it would help if there were a centralized dashboard. Maybe they could combine Insights and Automation Hub into one solution."

What is our primary use case?

As consultants, we have implemented UiPath for clients when they have asymmetric workloads because of COVID and they want to scale up but don't want to hire new people. We've implemented automations for clients that want to decrease their workflows. And we've seen efficiency gains as well when clients want to complement the work that humans are doing with the help of automations.

A good example of a client use case is a client that does mortgage loans. When someone comes to a loan officer, there's a lot of information that needs to be provided. There's a manual process that includes inputting the information into the system. Once the information is in the system, they need to run a lot of services, such as lien and credit checks, location verifications, inspections, flood reports, et cetera, before a loan application can be approved. 

We've automated this entire process for them. Our automations, built on UiPath, run all these services, generate all the reports, and store them in a centralized repository that can then be eyeballed by a human. That way they can make a judgment call on whether a loan should be processed or not.

Our in-house use case right now is around structuring reporting with UiPath. We have a Power BI layer and we use UiPath internally to check employee availability, as well as who is charging hours, and how many, to our projects. Overall, we use it for HR activities. We go into our HR management system, generate and download the reports using UiPath, and then modify and massage the data depending on business rules. We then publish that data into Power BI and that's used as a centralized dashboard for reporting for the organization. 

How has it helped my organization?

We recently did an engagement with some leaders in HR management. That organization has two kinds of certifications that they give out. We automated those processes as well as the reporting and the revenue reconciliation around them. They wanted to understand how many people were doing re-certifications, and their demographics. They wanted to see what the pass percentage was. They also wanted to be able to give the marketing team data about whom they should be targeting.

The automations we built for them using business rules produce information on whom they should be targeting. They help them understand which part of the world is doing their exams and which part of the world is not doing their exams, and where they need to spend more on marketing.

Before we automated these things, they had a team of four people doing that kind of work. Now, there is one person managing the automations instead of managing the actual processes. That was a big win for them as an organization. They were able to redeploy three people to do other work inside the organization. And in terms of savings, if the average person works 2,040 hours per year, we saved them around 8,000 person-hours of work annually.

Internally, in our company, the reporting process that we have automated used to take 45 to 50 minutes for the HR team to do. Now, reports are generated automatically. It has decreased the amount of effort that the HR team needs to do to generate reports.

There is also a lot of benefit with respect to human error. The tasks that you want to automate are usually repetitive, mundane activities—the swivel-chair activities where a junior analyst might be processing 500 loans in a day. People tend not to concentrate and they make mistakes in that kind of situation. Automation is not going to make those mistakes. There's a great reduction in human error when you implement RPA using UiPath.

In addition, as a small company, one of the biggest advantages we see from using UiPath is that they handle infrastructure, maintenance, and updates with the cloud offering. That helps a lot of small and mid-tier companies implement automation, companies whose IT practices aren't as mature. That's one of the most important features and benefits of UiPath.

The cloud version does decrease your startup time. Where you might have spent four weeks provisioning a server or a virtual machine, installing things, and then securing network assets, with this solution you don't have to do those things. It's all available directly, plug-and-play from UiPath. The time to value is decreased. Cloud instances are, obviously, a little bit more expensive than what you would pay with an on-prem solution, but because UiPath gives it to you at scale, the difference is that great.

For SMEs, the effort to stand something up themselves adds a lot of work to the automation. The ROI is quicker for SMEs when they do a cloud implementation.

What is most valuable?

The only way you're able to show true value with an automation program is if you automate something end-to-end. UiPath does end-to-end automations and, among all the other tools that are available, UiPath is the leader in end-to-end automation. 

In addition, they're growing their platform. It's no longer just an RPA program. It's a platform that gives you capabilities like AI, Computer Vision, and chatbots. It's not just about task or process automation, it's about the end-to-end life cycle. Previously, if you wanted to do a chatbot integration, there was no end-to-end solution for it. Today, UiPath offers direct integrations with chatbot services and direct integrations to some level of AI analysis on your processes. No other provider today does any of that. If you get into specific, end-to-end scenarios, UiPath certainly is a platform that allows you to achieve that end-to-end automation.

UiPath's AI capabilities are pretty good. Computer Vision is their AI functionality that helps you look into images. If you're automating inside a Citrix environment, for example, you really can't access the usual selectors or data boxes or text boxes. It's all an image. We had to do an automation in such an environment, and we used the AI capabilities of Computer Vision to build dynamic selectors. That was beneficial. I don't think any other vendor currently has that capability. The way they've implemented AI is not just a buzzword. They've really applied it in the Computer Vision feature.

And when it comes to the UiPath user community, nobody would be able to do implementations without it. It's a lot like Stack Overflow, but for RPA. It's a very strong community and it helps anyone who is doing development, management, initialization, et cetera. 

What needs improvement?

They can certainly improve their Automation Hub, which is their centralized place to gather new opportunities. The improvement could be, in part, in the capabilities. For example, it would help if there were a centralized dashboard. Maybe they could combine Insights and Automation Hub into one solution.

And they also need to revisit the pricing model of Automation Hub. It is an expensive functionality that clients don't really want to pay for. They feel that it should be part of the program and available out-of-the-box. Because it's not, clients just do things using an Excel sheet.

Buyer's Guide
UiPath
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I started doing automations back in 2015, and I've been using UiPath since around 2017. I work as a management consultant. The company I work for provides consulting services to organizations that want to use UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere.

I started out doing development with UiPath, and now I do a lot of infrastructure initialization. I've done development and implementations on the on-prem solution, although I've never set one up, and I've set up cloud instances of UiPath myself.

As a company, we also use the free Community Edition in-house so that we can build a point of view on solutions, but most of our implementations are for clients as consultants.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scaling is a benefit of the cloud offering because you can easily add a new license without provisioning a new server virtual machine, and you can also or decrease licenses. This is only applicable to an organization that does not have high IT maturity and does not have virtual machines that can be spun up. If a client is very mature, Fortune 100 or Fortune 50, with a very robust IT team that can easily spin up virtual machines, the cloud solution is not going to be beneficial when it comes to scaling.

How are customer service and support?

They have multiple tiers for technical support. I've used all of them. With the Premium Plus Support you get immediate remediation. You have a support representative available who is like an account executive and who is the go-to person for any issues. It's very easy and very quick. 

The mid-tier is Premium Support where you don't have a direct point of contact, but you still get priority service. 

We recently had a production issue with Orchestrator. I opened a ticket on February 2nd and we just resolved it this morning, six days later. It wasn't a big issue but it took them some time. That was with the free support. I didn't expect them to prioritize it

Overall, they are responsive. The top-tier support is a 10 out of 10, the mid-tier is about an eight out of 10, and the free support is about a seven or eight out of 10.

How was the initial setup?

One of the biggest advantages of UiPath is the ease of setup. Their cloud instance is probably four or five releases ahead of what Blue Prism or Automation Anywhere offer right now. You can buy a license in 30 seconds and get your own automation instance set up on the cloud within an hour.

UiPath has made setting up and starting an implementation very easy because it's a service. If you're going with the cloud, there's no installation, no setup, and no server or VM initialization.

UiPath also has something called REFramework (Robotic Enterprise Framework). The REFramework is built-in and helps streamline implementations with some of the industry best practices for development. UiPath provides that to everybody as a basic template to start an implementation. Blue Prism or Automation Anywhere usually provide you with a blank slate and a junior developer might struggle a bit to actually understand how to do exception handling or logging. UiPath allows you to do that very simply with REFramework.

We have also used the UiPath Academy courses and they have been very beneficial. UiPath started giving all their Academy material free of cost to everybody. They were the first RPA vendor to do that. By doing that, they created a competency, globally, inUiPath. It certainly helps everybody. If I don't understand something about a new feature that comes out, I open the Academy and watch a video, or I read some material or a white paper that they have published, and I understand it better.

The material is really good. It helps you understand their platform in a very robust manner. There are walkthroughs where you can do implementations and developments while the course is going on. That really helps as well.

The Academy helps us build an internal understanding of new capabilities and then go to clients and tell them, "This is another new capability. It's available to you free of cost because you've already purchased the licenses. Here is what its potential is, and this is how you should implement it." As a result of the Academy courses, we can advise clients better and help them unleash that potential.

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

UiPath changed the way that they do licensing, starting in 2022. Any partner that has status with them is now allowed to sell licenses, because UiPath itself does not sell licenses anymore. They have a sales team that manages licenses and works with vendors like us.

They can definitely work on the way that they publish material about their licenses. Every year they change their license SKUs. They change the definitions and the naming conventions. They change capabilities and functionalities. It becomes very hard, as a user, to track it. We recently had to renew our licenses and the way that they defined the RPA developer license had changed. The RPA developer license is now called an automation developer license. The two capabilities are very different. We had to go through learning to make sure that we would have all the capabilities that we had previously, and understand what the new capabilities are.

There was no material available on their partner portal or on the internet to help us understand which licenses give you which capabilities. That's something that they need to make more transparent and not reinvent it every year. They need a level of standardization.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

There is a tool called Power Automate which used to be called WinAutomation. Power Automate is available to everybody with an Office 365 license. The only other competitor to UiPath's community would be the WinAutomation/Power Automate community. It is a very community-driven solution, similar to UiPath. That community is as strong as the UiPath community.

UiPath recently got into the process analysis space. They've started doing things like task mining and process mining, but I wouldn't say UiPath is a leader in that space. They do have something called Task Capture that allows you to document processes for automation. But UiPath's process analysis piece is not yet as developed as much as something like Celonis.

The way we break down the process around automation is into three stages: advice, implement, and operate. The advice piece, which includes process assessment and building business cases is an area where UiPath is not great as a tool. It has the capabilities, but it's fairly new.

But at the "implement" stage, obviously it's a great product.

And the "operate" is where they have realized that the stickiness comes in with clients. There's always going to be a need for "operate" and they are getting into it. They provide something called UiPath Insights that gives you analysis about how your automation is running in production and to help you manage the automations. It gives you quick dashboards to present to senior leaders to show ROI and business case creations. UiPath needs to grow in the "operate" space and they are doing so. Neither Blue Prism or Automation Anywhere offers anything for process mining or task mining.

What other advice do I have?

In terms of innovation, I don't think that the cloud solution helps me innovate. UiPath's integration functionalities can help me come up with an innovative solution, but the fact that it's a cloud instance or software as a service, does not really help me innovate as much. I could do the same innovation with an on-prem solution.

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/Reseller
PeerSpot user
Shared Services Projects Leader at a construction company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Saves time on data entry projects, offers helpful training courses, and is easily scalable
Pros and Cons
  • "I've been pretty impressed with the stability."
  • "The on-prem orchestrator was an issue for us."

What is our primary use case?

I own the robotics process automation program for our life safety segment. I also own the mergers and acquisitions project management for our life safety segment. We've started out by using UiPath specifically for mergers and acquisitions when migrating customer data from the acquired companies to our standard ERP. We're also implementing sales and use tax, filings, and things like that as well.

How has it helped my organization?

With our most recent robot, we transfer information from acquired companies to our ERP. Typically, it would take about six temp associates for about four to six weeks to clean the data and move it into the ERP. About three weeks of that would be actual data entry. With this product, we took that three weeks of data entry, times six people, and rolled it down to 12 hours of robot running. It was a pretty significant amount of savings for us.

What is most valuable?

Citizen development is great. With it, it's easy to develop or have self-developed robot intelligence. For example, instead of having to hire a developer, you can make the robots do what you need using the UAPs studio tool. This has been the most valuable aspect. StudioX specifically for our newer citizen developer is useful and I really like using Studio for myself.

We have seen a reduction in, for example, time, and not necessarily in human error. For example, we did an interesting analysis. We wanted to see what the human error rate was for entering data, and, due to the fact that our ERP is Microsoft Dynamics 2012, capturing some of that data is a little bit harder. We structured error rates based on entry. What we did was we created a robot to go back and check all their entries to see if they were missing anything. Oddly, the errors that people were making were nominal. I don't see any data that showed that we necessarily reduced error rates. It was really the people aspect of the process where there were time-savings based on the needed amount of human input. We've been able to reassign workers to more valuable tasks where we can't assign robots yet.

We do about four to five acquisitions a year and those are typically six-week processes for each one of them. We could say that we save about 25 weeks of labor in a year, and that robot will be about a week's worth of labor. Therefore, we save about 24 weeks of labor.

We've been taking some UiPath Academy courses. We've actually found it more helpful if we chose UiPath South American Developers to teach us to build as we're building. For my team specifically, it's been really helpful to have an expert involved to say "this is the use case that we want to do" and have them walk us through building a specific robot. That way, it's real-life experience versus a video-based session. While the academy is helpful, hands-on experience is just much more valuable.

UiPath Academy courses affected the process of getting employees up to speed. It affected it a little bit. It probably more affected our decision to use UiPath over Automation Anywhere, or even the Microsoft RPA program. Just the fact that there was so much available content that we could lean on if we needed to was huge. The others had content, however, not anything close to UiPath's capacity.

What needs improvement?

The on-prem orchestrator was an issue for us. When we bought it, it was a mistake. Our IT team thought it would be the best option for us, however, it's way more complicated to use. Out of the box, it feels more complicated. That said, once you get to know it, it's fine, however, it was incredibly hard to set up on our enterprise systems. Whereas, with the cloud deployment, we were live and up and running in an hour.  The initial setup took us about two weeks. That was a little bit of heartburn. It would be helpful if UiPath could offer some sort of support outside of a ticketing system.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for about three months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I've been pretty impressed with the stability. We've had a couple of minor issues that our developers helped us figure out. It's programming and nobody on my team are programmers. Some of it could be just user error, however, overall it seems like a very stable platform.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is really unlimited. It boils down to the organization's ability to implement a governance model quickly and successfully. I know UiPath has a governance tool or some kind of a framework, however, it is one of those pieces where it's way more expensive than us using our regular service channel tool that we already have implemented to do those submissions and approvals, et cetera.

In our organization, the users include two developers - me and then one of my assistants.

How are customer service and support?

The only interaction we've had with technical support was during installation. The ticketing system and not being able to physically talk to somebody were difficult to deal with during the implementation process.

How was the initial setup?

The on-premises implementation was a bit difficult. We knew that we were going to have to pay developers to help us develop the robots, however, getting stuff installed, our only method of support was submitting a ticket and the turnaround time on that took a while. Our UiPath rep helped escalate what she could. It would be ideal if there was a setup hotline or something that we could call right away. Sometimes it's just easier to talk to somebody than emailing back and forth. That's probably the biggest area for improvement.

What about the implementation team?

We handled the initial setup ourselves. We do almost everything internally. We have our own IT team, including myself. Our solutions architects set it up with us. What we ran into in terms of problems was that the instructions were really not very good. We weren't able to appropriately install it as the instructions that came with it just weren't comprehensive enough. In terms of the instructions that were published online, we found a couple of instances where they were saying to use functions that didn't exist. These might have been a little out of date. Eventually, the ticket team was able to help identify that. I would grade the setup probably a C-minus, and everything else an A-plus.

What was our ROI?

We're so early into the implementation, the ROI is a wash right now. That said, our one robot has paid for our development time, and then someone will be able to use it on future acquisitions. We will likely see ROI within a year.

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

You can buy enhanced support, however, it's an additional $30,000 USD a year or thereabouts. That's just too expensive, honestly. The competition didn't charge for that. We also felt pretty confident in our IT team's ability to be able to dissect the instructions and install it. However, the instructions just weren't that good. We had one of our top engineers working on it and it took a lot of effort to get it installed correctly.

The pricing, in general, is fair. It's a little bit more than some of the competitors, however, it's a little bit more flexible than some of the others. There's value there. The OCR pricing is out of market. We need it, however, we're actually going to use some third-party bolt-ons due to the fact that UiPath is way too expensive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at Microsoft and Automation Anywhere. We also looked at help systems and Brick is one that we currently use and one of our segments, however, they're only a five-person company, which is pretty small. I wouldn't even put them on the same level. We were looking for shared services. We were looking for the best in class so we could take a solution enterprise-wide. In the end, we boiled the options down to Automation Anywhere, UiPath, and Microsoft, and UiPath was the winner.

In terms of Brick, they don't have a citizen developer model at all, so their developers have to do it. They are less expensive and they're a little bit more turnkey where they do it for you, however, they're really novice. The methodology that we've really bought into it was the community developer, as we want to empower our associates to figure out what works for them to improve their work-life balance. Using a service like theirs takes that away as we have to do the due diligence and figure out what fits in the bucket, what doesn't, as opposed to just empowering the person to do it. That was the key to why we chose UiPath.

The sales process was way better with UiPath. Our UiPath rep was far more knowledgeable about the product than the other options in that we ultimately had more confidence, knowing that whatever we needed, UiPath would help take care of, which was huge. My organization's a little bit disjointed. We try to go after what we feel is going to be impactful without a whole lot of due diligence. That's why, with UiPath, having that resource to lean on was helpful.

What other advice do I have?

We use attended automation right now. Primarily this is due to the fact that the ERP system that we have really can't function unintended. It's a Citrix space environment and it has some odd security protocols where it'll shut down or refresh out for so many hours and it's not planned refreshes. It's hard for us. It's almost random. It's hard for us to build an unattended robot to deal with that. I'm sure we could, however, right now, we want to start with attended robots as we know what functions we need. We decided to go that route and eventually we'll add unattended.

I'd advise new users to make sure they have team buy-in for the concept. That doesn't mean necessarily getting the team to know exactly what they're going to be automating. You just need to make sure that they understand it's not about replacing people. Rather, it's about making their jobs easier. That was key for us. That said, most of my team was overworked, and they were glad to take on the project of lightening their load. Most organizations would benefit from making sure the communication is solid in that regard, however. 

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. With better technical support, I would give them a perfect ten.

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
Buyer's Guide
UiPath
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.
RPA Engineer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Real User
Great end-to-end automation that increases efficiency and reduces human error
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup is good. There are no problems."
  • "Between version 19 and version 20, the orchestrator tool interface has changed a lot. It totally changed. The menu changed, the place of the button changed. It took me a week to understand and to make myself used to this new interface."

What is our primary use case?

I am an API developer and I use UiPath for development. I use it to develop solutions for banking problems, like banking automation.

For example, in my previous company, I used the API for developing automated reporting solutions that take a lot of Excel files, check their data, and try to generate a web page containing many graphics based on the Excel data. It's basically translating the data on the web and it's made automatically every month. 

For my current company, it's a banking company, and I'm working on the banking solution. It's a process of verification of the user identity or the client's details. This process is based on taking the ID card of the person and digitalizing the data. It's a technology meant for reading data from documents. After reading this data, we automatically take this data and put it into the database and create accounts for the user or do a lot of automated things. 

At my current company, the use case is for the process of managing the relationship between the client account and any fees. A robot always checks if there is something to pay for the client and can take the fee automatically if that is the case. Then there is a transfer of money based on the request.

For example, when someone wants to do a transfer they add the money and sign a paper. This paper contains the information of the client's account, including details such as the client name, the account number, and the amount of the transfer. We take the data and the robot automatically takes the data and, via the web, goes to the apps of the bank in order to search for the client, search for the account, say the amount, and take the proper amount from his account, et cetera. We're able to save steps as everything is automated.

How has it helped my organization?

The actual company has three environments. There's one for development, one for pre-production, and one for production. Every element has two UiPath robots and one Studio. We have in total three studios and six robots, and each one has its own lessons. 

In the first, there was only one robot and one studio. They upgraded the solution from one studio one robot to three studios and six robots and they have found a good benefit in that. They know that it will give them more opportunities and more advantages within the banking environment. They made an investment in this technology to make their work easier so that they could be the best in the market of banking. It's helped them become more efficient.

What is most valuable?

There is an additional library that I discovered that allows me to work with the previous version of UiPath. There are some libraries that are new on the UiPath Studio, which are also helpful.

In terms of the ease of building automation using UiPath Studio, I must say that I used Automation Anywhere once as well. However, the way the UiPath connects the idea for development makes it so easy to build with the components that we can just drag and drop in. It's the easiest way to develop a solution and is an easier tool to use.

UiPath helps implement end-to-end automation starting with process analysis, then robot building, and finally monitoring of automation.

Being able to implement end-to-end automation is important for me. As much as they make me work, they make the work easier for me. For example, I use it to make the connection between ABBYY Studio, a solution for OCM, and writing scripts inside. I try to launch the script and take the output of the file and try to do a lot of things to make a connection between UiPath Studio and ABBYY Studio. UiPath Studio has given us a strong and new plugin, that we'll put some parameters around and we are done. It makes things easier like that. The features added into the latest update are helping a lot.

UiPath Studio has helped minimize our on-premise footprint in that there's less staff required. Previously, the company had three or four people doing the same thing. Now, only the robot does it. The four people are doing something else now. It's allowed them to focus on other tasks. The robot did not replace them, however. They still work in the same company, however, they are focused on doing different jobs - specifically jobs that can't be automated. They work on jobs that require a human operation, human intervention, and that's it.  The employees are happier too. The current company recently won an award based on employee happiness. In 2021, they were awarded excellence in employee condition. Automation hasn't made them bitter or changed their work ethic.

Robots started doing a lot of tasks that four people take one week to finish, except they can do it in one day. It's saved lots of time. For example, if we have 52 weeks, every week the robots can do a week's task in one day. A human may only be able to do 52 tasks in a year, whereas a robot can overperform by roughly 86% over the course of a year. 

UiPath speeds up and reduces the cost of digital transformation. The robots are extremely helpful, as they can work 24 hours a day, every day. They can do processes faster than people. It makes everything ultimately speed up.

The product has reduced human error. Even the robots make some errors, however, at least we are aware of them. The errors end up being fewer than that of a human counterpart. The issue with human errors is that we can't know if and when an error is made. At least with the robot, if it makes an error, the person is blocked somewhere and therefore we know that the robot missed something or it found a wrong account number, for example. The robot will notify us of an error whereas a human might miss it completely. 

What needs improvement?

Between version 19 and version 20, the Orchestrator tool interface has changed a lot. It totally changed. The menu changed, the place of the button changed. It took me a week to understand and to make myself used to this new interface. In the end, I found it's a good change and it's helping so much in understanding what the robots are doing in terms of checking logs, extracting some data there to make some analysis, and giving reports to the director.

The scaling could be better. There are so many parameters and options to check and so much to do before the solution is ready to use. Not everyone knows what to do at the outset and it's all a little bit complicated.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using UiPath for one year and a month. The company may have been using it for longer than that.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

While the stability is fine, with a license that needs to be paid yearly, UiPath will put out a new version annually. That way, when companies go to renew, they often need to upgrade or pay for a new license. The product does this to keep earning money year after year. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

For me, having the ability to scale automation without having to pay attention to infrastructure is okay, generally, however, even though I find that the company can use the tool to make the process automate well, I don't have so many people working with process automation. There are now just a few people developing in the APA and the licensing is still expensive and clients aren't excited to do anything even if it's a good solution for automating the process.

If you have a lot of money, you can put it all in UiPath and make the robot far bigger. I heard about a company located in Qatar that has 3600 robots. They buy it every year. It's a banking company and every year they pay for it. They are not using all of the robots, however, they've given their developers full reign of the environment.  

In my current company, I'm the only one using it. Many companies actually spend a few years testing it before they officially start using it. However, the company does plan to increase usage and does plan to add three or four more people to the team who would be working with me. I would manage them and provide training as we expand. 

How are customer service and technical support?

There's a third party that takes responsibility for troubleshooting. They made the environment, and they are in charge of everything. Personally, I go first to the UiPath forum if I need help. I've found a lot of answers there. If I don't find something useful or helpful, I write an email to the third-party provider so that they can take charge of the problem and solve it.

They are good. There are three people who assist me typically. One is from the Middle East, one is French and the other is from India. Their way of communication, their way of giving information, and giving support have been great.

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

Both companies I have worked for that use this product have never used an automation solution before. 

How was the initial setup?

I have worked with the solution for two enterprises. One was a Canadian company. I implemented the solution for them. I met the organization's boss, and I also put the training together too. I made the environment and I developed the solution and did the full implementation. 

The second, which I am actually working for, is a combination between Europe and Africa on the main. In both companies, the solution is already implemented and I work with it. The solution was started by another department. We don't share or manage the site of escalation or choose which kind of installation. The installation in this case is on-premise. We have constructed on our IAS, local server, and that's it. It's on the server, and we're not using UiPath's cloud.

The initial setup is good. There are no problems. Setting up the robots is also good. For the Orchestrator, sometimes I face some issues surrounding not UiPath, but the OS. For example, installing the Orchestrator on Windows 10, version 19.02, it's not the same process as it would be with Windows 10, version 20.82. Sometimes the visuals of the operating system change and it affects the installation too. This is well documented in the UiPath community. You'll find that many people face problems while working with the Orchestrator.

The deployment sometimes took me two hours. Sometimes I come across an issue and it takes more time. However, often, it can be deployed in 30 to 50 minutes if all goes well.  

With the installation for a Canadian company, I have a very simple installation experience. The environment was already prepped and ready and I just needed to start the installation. 

There is an IT team that does perform the maintenance as required, for example, if there are any updates or upgrades. I don't handle that aspect. I'm only a developer.

What was our ROI?

We might study potential ROI in the summer of 2022. We're still on the development part and therefore we still can't make reports. We don't have statistics.

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

There can be costs related to digital transformation. There are two ways this can happen. The first is when the robot is using an internal application, the application made by the company. There often is some modification to the interface of this app. There are some options that become available only for the robots. The second is when the robots use the websites of external companies. Internally, we made some changes to the robots to ensure they work well. In terms of the expense and how much it costs, the information is managed by another department. I don't have information about that.

I can't speak to the exact price, however, recently I heard in a meeting that one license for Studio Path costs 2,825 Euros per year. This price is approximate and may fluctuate.

The license is always per year. They don't show the pricing on the internet. You must contact the support or a seller. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

For the company I currently work with, I was in the meeting that chose the automation solution and they put the UiPath blueprint and Automation Anywhere on the table. The company wanted to choose between them. They found that, in terms of money, performance, and popularity, UiPath was the best. That is why they choose UiPath.

What other advice do I have?

We are not resellers. We are customers and end-users.

For now, I am fine with UiPath Studio and I will likely keep developing automation solutions on this tool.

For the attended robots, we are not using them yet. We are only using unattended robots. First, we must make the financial employees understand how robots work. They need understanding or training as a first step before we can use attended robots in development. We are going to use attended robots in the future, however, for now, we're focused on unattended robots.

We don't yet use AI functionality. We're going to start using artificial intelligence and also the machine learning solution of UiPath via AI sensors. We'll use it to measure credit and to gauge the likelihood of clients paying, however, for now, we are not yet using AI features.  

We are also not using UiPath apps.

UiPath Studio has reduced the costs of our automation operations, although I don't have an exact statistic that reflects this.

Sometimes, when you come to a company and you tell them that you will make a robot to do their job, the first thing they will start thinking is "we're going to lose our job. They're going to fire us." With that mentality, they often aren't cooperative. 

For example, in a Canadian company I worked for when I was working on the process, the parts of the activity for Excel automation, I kept notifying them that they should keep using the same name of the file so the robots can read the file. However, I would get files in different names with letters off or symbols in them as if the staff was trying to get the project canceled by trying to show the robot wouldn't work. However, over time, as they came to understand no one would lose their position, they became cooperative. They weren't happy at first, however, they came to embrace the project.

UiPath has a huge marketing strategy, and they have been the first in the world with a lot of this technology. If a company wants to integrate automation into its processes, it will likely start looking at UiPath first.

If a company is considering UiPath, they should know exactly which process should be automated. When you know what kind of processes will be automated, they will understand better if they need attended robots or unattended robots, and then can proceed with a purchase. What one recent company did is they went and bought one studio and one robot. Then, later, after understanding which process was going to be automated, they figured out that they needed three studios and six robots. It's better to know which process to develop to make it automated, then later go to buy solutions for it.

We will still always need human workers. Of course, there are some tasks that can be automated 100%. However, in the end, and specifically in the banking domain, we always need humans to understand some things that make the work easier. if we combine automation, things like robots, and human intervention, then we can get great results.

I'd rate the solution at a nine 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
Saket Pandey - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at a hospitality company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
AI has given us accurate results from some complex automation scenarios
Pros and Cons
  • "The automation-creation process is quite easy and the accuracy is quite good. That last aspect is critically important... and we have been getting that so far."
  • "The only concern is it's a bit tough to understand the first time, and you have to invest in the technical improvement of your team in general."

What is our primary use case?

We are using this product to develop automation in the billing section of our website. We are integrating bots so that they can do the basic listing and then our salesperson can take it from there.

How has it helped my organization?

The biggest improvement has been in cost. We have been operating it for about eight months for about $8,000. Earlier, it was taking us somewhere around $30,000 to $40,000, so that is a big improvement.

The other part has been accuracy. Before, when we had employees for the same process, there were some minor errors, as well as some time issues. But with this system, I believe the accuracy has been at par, although there are several times when we have had to reframe or do some minor modifications in the AI to make the model work for a new set or variety of clients.

The reduction in human error means we get more leads into the hands of the right salespeople who can work on them. Fewer errors means time savings.

With time, the AI automation has improved. Specifically talking about the kind of business that we do, which is putting things into the right sections so that the right people are taking the right leads, even in some complex cases, we have seen accurate results from automation. AI is doing its job.

AI has also enabled us to automate more processes. Earlier, we had different sets of protocols for differentiating among the different kinds of inbound information we were receiving. Since deploying this automation, we have automated a large chunk of the reception. The accuracy has been maintained and the time has been reduced significantly. We are able to convert the leads in a way that gives us more to work with from the leads we get.

What is most valuable?

The automation-creation process is quite easy and the accuracy is quite good. That last aspect is critically important because we have used RPA to replace one of our employees and we are taking on a lot of responsibility. The most important thing that we require is accuracy and we have been getting that so far.

The end-to-end coverage is important because each and every part of the input we are receiving from our customers—and they're highly valued customers—is information that goes into our software via automation, and we do not want to miss out on any types of leads.

The UiPath Academy courses have been great at giving an overview of the solution and allowing employees to learn things at their own pace. Other users out there also helped our technical staff, so they have added value. The biggest benefit was that at the time our technical staff was getting used to the product, they felt that there was a scarcity of people who knew about how to execute things. Having this UiPath course was a little helpful because it gave them the initial confidence they needed to start doing things, whether it was right or wrong, and they kept getting feedback and improving.

What needs improvement?

The only concern is it's a bit tough to understand the first time, and you have to invest in the technical improvement of your team in general.

For how long have I used the solution?

About 6 Months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There's no need to worry about the stability.

The only concern is as we move towards scaling it. What happens if the system goes off? Although it's not a big concern, we have been getting reassurance from UiPath that they have a solid backup of everything.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

With RPA, scaling is not an issue at all. Once a bot has been trained to do a specific thing using ML, multiple bots can be added for the same automation process, as many times as we want. Scaling is not a concern.

How are customer service and support?

We have not used technical support.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

In terms of our decision to go ahead with this product, although we had received a recommendation that we should be moving forward with it, we were severely concerned about whether doing things over and over would take us the same amount of time, in terms of the technical ability and the workforce, or whether it would be easier. After having a technical call with UiPath, we quickly knew that it would be easier. That was a crucial part of our decision.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was easy, but making the AI understand, and using the machine learning algorithms in it, took a long time. It took more than we expected it would take. The UiPath team had us understand that it would be functional after one or two months, but it eventually ended up taking about four months. That was more time than we expected, but the initial setup was easy and straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We used a consulting firm. There were three meetings over the duration of the two-month contract. The advices we received we about our model selection with regards to pricing and data storage capability.

What was our ROI?

We have been using it for eight months. For the first four months, I do not believe we were saving time because we had to intervene a lot of times with help from the vendor as well. But from that moment onwards, once the integration was operating smoothly, we started saving time.

We do a regular analysis each month and we have been seeing constant growth. A month is a good amount of time to see the progress of a newly implemented solution.

Previously, we were not using automation operations. I believe we have now reduced costs significantly, which justifies the cost we are paying for the service.

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

Pricing is good if your venture is looking for growth in 1-10 million size of customer domain.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

yeah we got in touch with the IBM team for their automation tool.

What other advice do I have?

Building automation takes some time. The first time, it took us a month, but after that, it was easier. The next time we build an automation, it's a kind of reciprocal of what we did the previous time. The first time involved some help from other resources, but from that time and onwards it has been going well.

The innovation did not happen as fast as we thought it would for the first half. We had to recruit some IT guys to our technical team so that our entire team could become familiar with the process. The innovation potential is there. It helps to get very familiarized with the solution. But for the first few months, the innovation part was delayed. The technical level required to handle it smoothly was not there on our team.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

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
Eswar Sai KS - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior RPA UiPath Developer at Crystal System
Real User
Top 20
Is user-friendly, helps reduce human errors, and saves time
Pros and Cons
  • "The technical support is extremely good."
  • "While it excels at handling structured and repeatable tasks, it struggles with those requiring human judgment or intervention."

What is our primary use case?

We use UiPath to replace the manual tasks done by humans through automation.

How has it helped my organization?

I recently automated a process within our SAP web portal. The bot I developed can extract data from an Excel sheet, which contains a list of approximately 200-300 company codes on average per day. It then processes each transaction by following these steps: Logs in to the SAP web portal, retrieves a company code from the Excel sheet, enters the company code into the SAP web portal, searches for the specific company details, locates the necessary data within the portal, and generates an invoice for the corresponding company code. This automation allows the bot to generate invoices significantly faster than a human operator.

UiPath saves seven minutes per transaction.

Building automation with UiPath is remarkably user-friendly and accessible, even for those with no coding experience. Its drag-and-drop interface and minimal need for coding make it easy to learn and implement, regardless of technical background. This low barrier to entry allows anyone to quickly grasp the fundamentals and build basic automation, making UiPath a great tool for both technical and non-technical users.

UiPath enables end-to-end automation. This not only helps them save costs and reduce processing time but also allows them to work faster and achieve greater efficiency. For example, sales teams can close deals quicker, increasing revenue and market share. Similarly, finance and accounting departments can streamline workflows, boosting accuracy and productivity. With these benefits, it's clear that embracing platforms like UiPath can be a significant step towards growth and development for businesses of all sizes. While there are other competitive tools like Blue Prism and Microsoft Power Automate, UiPath offers a comprehensive suite of automation solutions that cater to a variety of needs.

It offers a valuable User Community forum. This forum serves as a platform for users of any UiPath product to find quick and helpful answers to their questions and concerns. Regardless of their experience level or specific product use, the community actively responds to posted queries. This responsive support is a major advantage for UiPath users, making it easy to obtain solutions and assistance throughout their product journey. On a scale of one to ten, the effectiveness of the UiPath User Community deserves a high rating of nine and a half. Not only is the response time impressive, but the community also provides multiple solutions from diverse users worldwide. This allows us to choose the approach that best fits our needs and preferences. Overall, the User Community forum significantly enhances the UiPath user experience, and its responsiveness earns it high praise.

The UiPath Academy is a valuable resource for anyone new to UiPath. It provides a user-friendly platform where anyone can learn at their own pace through detailed videos. The Academy offers a wide range of courses, from beginner basics to advanced topics, all presented in a step-by-step format. This makes it perfect for anyone eager to learn UiPath and gain the skills they need to automate tasks effectively. By following the courses in the Academy, users can easily grasp the concepts, understand best practices, and even practice their newfound skills.

Human error is a frequent occurrence, and designing processes to deliver the desired results for clients consistently can be prone to human mistakes. UiPath helps eliminate these errors by automating tasks, ensuring accuracy and efficiency.

UiPath helps save time. The bot can complete five times the amount of processes a human can in the same amount of time each day.

UiPath reduces manpower requirements and enhances daily task completion, thereby contributing to cost savings.

What needs improvement?

UiPath isn't suitable for automating every process. While it excels at handling structured and repeatable tasks, it struggles with those requiring human judgment or intervention. For instance, document verification in hospitals often involves manual checks like blood pressure measurement, which UiPath can't automate. In such cases, alternative solutions are needed.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for five and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Generally, UiPath is stable. We sometimes encounter servers that crash and we have to transfer the process onto another server but overall the solution is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is extremely good. Using the enterprise license ensures we receive a response within the hour. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

For any product deployment, we utilize dedicated virtual machines. During the proof-of-concept phase, each product is deployed onto a separate VM and scheduled for daily monitoring. A dedicated team oversees all running bots, ensuring smooth operation. Should they encounter any issues, they will flag them to the development team. Upon receiving exception reports, we, the developers, debug the code, fix the problems, and redeploy the code back to production. This iterative process ensures smooth product deployment and maintenance.

While deployment is straightforward for a single knowledgeable person, expediting multiple deployments simultaneously requires additional personnel.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath a nine out of ten. UiPath is at the top of our list of automation tools because of the ease of use for non-technical users.

While I haven't yet had the opportunity to directly work with generative AI and machine learning features, I'm actively exploring their potential. UiPath has been at the forefront of integrating these advanced functionalities, including machine learning, natural language processing, and even generative AI itself. Their offerings extend beyond core process automation, encompassing process mining, communication analysis, and mining processes in general. Moreover, they're incorporating these capabilities into their educational platform, UiPath Academy. Although I haven't encountered a project requiring these advanced features yet, I'm excited to apply them in future endeavors and leverage their cutting-edge capabilities.

I worry about the potential downsides of overreliance on technology. Like anything in excess, too much technology can be harmful, both to the environment and to society. Just as deepfake videos can damage reputations, unchecked technological advancement can have unforeseen consequences. Therefore, we should approach it cautiously and employ it strategically, not haphazardly. This applies to individual use as well. For example, virtual machines are great tools, but they're not infallible. If a scheduled job on one machine gets stuck due to a technical issue, it can be difficult to diagnose and resolve. In such scenarios, relying solely on technology becomes impractical, and alternative solutions are necessary. Overall, while I recognize the power of automation, I believe moderation and critical thinking are crucial when it comes to integrating technology into our lives and work.

While the UiPath tutorials are extremely helpful for basic automation, some situations require coding knowledge to develop custom logic or fulfill specific client requirements. This is because building any complex logic often involves using syntax from a programming language. Therefore, it's highly recommended for users to learn the basics of a coding language like Java or Python. This foundational knowledge will enable them to understand how syntax works and build logic effectively, making the automation process smoother and more achievable. While UiPath does provide syntax options even for users who don't know a programming language, these methods are limited and may not always deliver the desired outcome. Understanding coding fundamentals allows for greater flexibility and control over the logic, ultimately leading to more robust and customized automation.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private 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.
PeerSpot user
Abdul Shakoor - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Quality Engineer at i2c Inc.
Real User
Top 20
Is easy to automate, saves us time and money
Pros and Cons
  • "With UiPath, we can automate any module, whether it is a desktop application, web application, or native application."
  • "The error notifications sent to users can be improved by including more detail."

What is our primary use case?

We use UiPath to automate PDF processing and extract financial and other information from PDF files. We store the extracted information in our database for our orchestration tool to process.

We have used UiPath both on-premises and in all the cloud services. 

How has it helped my organization?

Building automation using UiPath is easy even for non-technical people.

It enables us to easily implement end-to-end automation.

The UiPath User Community is helpful for our technical users.

UiPath has helped our organization because its ease of use for non-technical people makes it easy to understand and implement the automation framework. The automation server is of high quality, and UiPath is cost-effective. We realized the benefits during the training process.

We reduced our on-premises footprint with UiPath. For any organization that still requires all of its information to be secured on-premises, we can do that as well using UiPath.

I have completed two certifications using UiPath Academy courses. The academy has taught me a great deal about UiPath services, the automation framework, and how to use UiPath with SAP automation.

UiPath helped us accelerate our digital transformation and reduce the cost of that transformation.

UiPath has helped reduce human error to zero for any process that has been fully automated.

UiPath saves our staff time by automating the routine tasks.

It has saved our organization money by reducing the number of resources we need by 50 percent.

What is most valuable?

With UiPath, we can automate any module, whether it is a desktop application, web application, or native application.

What needs improvement?

The error notifications sent to users can be improved by including more detail.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for almost one and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support center is available through the web.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

Deploying the system can be complex for non-technical users.

What was our ROI?

We have seen a return on investment with UiPath.

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

The license cost is expensive because we have to pay for each tenant.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath eight out of ten.

We have almost 30 users of Uipath.

Maintaining UiPath is easy.

I recommend Uipath. UiPath is easy to learn and provides good-quality automation. 

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
Maaz Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
RPA Developer (Senior Officer) at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Real User
Top 20
The biggest benefits are fast implementation and the ability to run unattended bots
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is image processing. It's something I use daily when I need to do some work on a VM remotely. Image processing enables me to locate the connectors and click to perform my job or task."
  • "UiPath's OCR features could be improved. It's to do complex OCR captures with UiPath. I would also like improvements in the dashboard for executing processes."

What is our primary use case?

I develop RPA processes at a financial services company. We use UiPath for tasks like data entry, image processing, and reporting. 

How has it helped my organization?

The biggest benefits of UiPath are fast implementation and the ability to run unattended bots. When they implemented UiPath, my manager was kind of shocked. 

We could run a process to extract every file from the portal each employee needs, which saves almost two hours per employee daily. You could see the benefits immediately. The hardest part of RPA is often convincing management that the expense is justified. The company can hire fewer employees because it's automating repetitive tasks. However, some of that savings is offset by the cost of licenses and hiring developers. 

I completed the UiPath Academy course, but I haven't received a certification. It helped me to understand how to implement UiPath processes. The main benefit is that it contains complete information about the tool. I know enough about using UiPath that I don't need to search the knowledge base when I get a new requirement.

Another advantage of implementing robotic process automation is that you can greatly reduce human errors. The RPA process almost never makes mistakes. It increases productivity and frees up employee time. For example, we have a guy who is responsible for creating memos for the checks. It involves 200 checks, but he was reassigned to something else, and now all those checks have been automated. The organization saved the equivalent of about 60 FTEs. 

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is image processing. It's something I use daily when I need to do some work on a VM remotely. Image processing enables me to locate the connectors and click to perform my job or task. It's easier for me to develop a process using UiPath compared to Power Automate.

UiPath enables us to set up end-to-end processes. For example, I have a process for taxes that gets a statement from the bank, checks incoming and outgoing transactions, calculates the withholding and exemptions, and files it on the income tax site. If I get stuck when I'm working on any process, I can easily ask the UiPath Community forum, and the public can respond to it. 

What needs improvement?

UiPath's OCR features could be improved. It has to do complex OCR captures with UiPath. I would also like improvements in the dashboard for executing processes. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used UiPath for a year and a half. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is stable, but you need to adjust the process when a web application changes its interface. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath is quite scalable, in my experience. We have a large environment and 150-160 processes. 

How are customer service and support?

I rate UiPath technical support nine out of 10. They're always on our level when we contact them about any errors or limitations we face. They respond consistently, and they're available when we need a meeting to discuss something.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I have also worked with Power Automate. UiPath is more flexible and dynamic, whereas Power Automate is a little harder to handle.

How was the initial setup?

The initial installation is straightforward. You install the UiPath enterprise license and apply the license key after completing the task. For unattended bots, you need to deploy the Orchestrator on-premises, which is somewhat complicated, but the overall experience is straightforward.

When we implement it on-premises, we need to take some steps for security. We have to configure some ports and connect all the PCs, but everything is under the control of an enterprise security security solution. During the initial installation, we needed five people, but once it's deployed, a single person can administer the platform. 

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

The pricing depends on whether you're running attended or unattended bots. Unattended processes cost a lot more, and you have to pay cloud costs, too. It's costly. The licensing for the tenant dashboard, developer's toolkit, etc. was reasonable, but unattended bots are quite expensive.  

What other advice do I have?

I rate UiPath nine out of 10. I suggest new users study the knowledge base on the UiPath website. Many people get information from YouTube or another source that doesn't cover all the steps of this tool. However, if you study using UiPath Academy, you can gain complete knowledge of the tool.

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. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator
PeerSpot user
reviewer2274327 - PeerSpot reviewer
Regional Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
MSP
Top 10
Provides excellent features for automating processes, reduces human error, and frees up employee time
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath Document Understanding and Task Mining are valuable features."
  • "The add-ons are not well documented."

What is our primary use case?

We work with the government on HR-related data and banking reconciliation. We use the solution in the insurance industry for claims management.

We use the product in different use cases. We use it for automating repetitive tasks, email and document parsing, and posting data from different systems to centralized systems. In most cases, we use it to compare different Excel sheets for reconciliation and updating the master system.

How has it helped my organization?

The tool helps us to envision the automation processes and gives us an edge in offering our solutions to the customer. UiPath keeps innovating new technologies. It also localizes technologies like OCR for extracting data from documents to the regional market. The reporting tools are fantastic. It also helps us calculate ROI and manage bugs.

What is most valuable?

UiPath Document Understanding and Task Mining are valuable features. I am satisfied with the product overall.

What needs improvement?

Saudi has two calendars. UiPath does not support the Hijri date. They should add it in future releases. We also face regular issues while parsing from right to left and left to right. The Arabic language is not related to the platform. We have Arabic scripts which are sometimes difficult to understand. Also, the license is complicated.

The add-ons are not well documented. When we offer and pitch to the customer, sometimes we get confused about which one to offer based on the third-party tools. The solution must focus on microservices and web-based platform building. It would be fantastic if they could produce web applications connected automatically to UiPath.

OutSystems is a low-code platform for building web-based and mobile applications. If such features are available in UiPath, it will eliminate the need to integrate with different applications. We can directly build applications using UiPath.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for the last four or five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product is very stable. When we deploy it in the cloud, there is no need for maintenance. UiPath manages everything. Maintenance of the configuration has to be done by us.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

When we need a technical team member's support, they join the call and try to guide us. I rate the technical support a seven or eight out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

I have worked with Automation Anywhere. It is a good solution but not on par with UiPath. Automation Anywhere has a lot of features, which is very nice. However, UiPath exceeds our expectations.

UiPath has better support, resources, and scalability. UiPath provides very good vendor support. Automation Anywhere allowed users to download preconfigured processes already deployed elsewhere so that we could just fine-tune and use them.

How was the initial setup?

The product can be deployed both on-premise and on the cloud. I worked as a solution architect. So, I get involved in the conversation if there is any conflict in the deliverables. The tool is easy to deploy. The time taken for deployment depends on the complexity of the processes. It takes two to four weeks for simple processes. For complex processes, it takes six to ten weeks for deployment. After the project's completion, our engineers are on standby to resolve any issues on the project's go-live date.

We focus on high-value solutions and look at the repetitive processes we can use. The HR initiative we did is on-demand in our region due to the regulations. We can develop the process once and deploy it multiple times with zero or minimal adjustments. We focus on the high return to the organizations, the shortest ROI, and the highest value to the business so that the customer would realize the importance of such technologies. When we build trust with the customer, we have very big upsell opportunities and referrals from them.

What about the implementation team?

We need one or two people to deploy the product for a small project. For large projects, we need a team of six or seven. Our team has 10 to 15 people, including developers, solution architects, and support personnel. The tool requires maintenance. Our support people are responsible for different services. Around 10% of the resources in our company are involved in maintenance.

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

UiPath gives pretty good discounts.

What other advice do I have?

The ease of building automation using the product is fantastic. The product speeds up and reduces the cost of digital transformation. I haven't seen many major upgrades to the customer's infrastructure or applications. I design and modernize the processes. If we can’t extract the data from databases, the customer will put that data in a flat file or Excel sheet and add it to a folder. We pick them up and do the processing.

We are not supposed to touch the core system in the banking industry. So we may get it with APIs. Sometimes, APIs are not available when we do the implementation. It takes some time for the banks to build those APIs. UiPath is equipped with different integration tools, whether it is native or not.

The solution has helped to minimize our on-premise footprint. It is very important to many of our customers. To minimize the cost and provide more streamlined processes across different customers, we have created a shared pool Orchestrator to connect multiple customers to the same Orchestrator. They pretty much share the same processes, but they have different system endpoints. We can clone the processes and modify the endpoint interactions and input data. Sometimes, they use flat files. We change the configuration minimally. The rest of the processes are cloned, enhanced, and supported.

The solution enables us to implement end-to-end automation. We can automate end-to-end based on the scope, expenses, and processes. The implementation could be lengthy or short, based on the processes involved. End-to-end automation provides an edge to us as a consulting company to provide our customers with very advanced automation tools. We have different services and products that we can integrate UiPath with.

We have a content management system. When we use Document Understanding, we relieve the users from indexing documents. UiPath would do the indexing using Document Understanding and archived document repositories. We sometimes do integrations with archives, too. It depends on the context of the implementation. Sometimes, we can automate 60% of the process because some are not UiPath-targeted processes, but we can automate the other process with other systems.

We do not use AI much. We rely on Document Understanding, which is part of AI. In the next couple of years, because of AI's popularity, I believe UiPath will provide more features and enhancements related to AI. The tool has freed up employee time by 70 to 80%. UiPath has saved costs for our organization.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a case about HR contracts in the Ministry of Labour in Saudi. By the end of this year, they want to digitize their contracts and link them to their official portal, where employee contracts are issued. They currently rely on Excel sheets to do the entry. UiPath processes that we support have proven that there are zero percent errors in them compared to human data entry errors.

The as-is process was that an HR personnel must log in to the platform and do the data entry so the contract would be issued and sent to the employee. The HR personnel would interact with four or five pages and provide data like employee ID, mobile number, date of birth, position, salary, and increments. If there is an error in the data, it has a negative impact on the company. It's an official contract that is issued to the employee. If there are any discrepancies, they would have to rectify the whole process again. Besides, it would affect the company's reputation in the market.

For example, if the HR personnel enters 50,000 instead of 5,000, the employee can claim that money. To avoid this, companies can export the HR master data into Excel sheets and put it in a folder. We can program UiPath to pick all the information and paste it into the Ministry of Labour portal. We can verify the data, do a quality check, and post it to the system. This process used to take three to five days to finish, along with an error margin. With the help of UiPath, we shorten the time by 80% with zero error margin.

We have subscribed to UiPath Academy. All our engineers are certified in different UiPath certifications. I am a solution architect. I have done a lot of courses and certifications. In addition to the certification courses, UiPath Academy provides us with resources, information, built-in demos, and process standards. We deal with all the stakeholders in the customers' company.

The product must empower localization. People who want to use UiPath must ensure that the processes they are targeting to automate are fulfilling the conditions for automation. Sometimes, a customer would expect to automate everything. We need to ensure the processes we are targeting to automate are repetitive. We also need highly skilled people to manage the automation. We must automate the high-value processes of the organization to see the results and recognize the return on investment immediately.

Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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