What is our primary use case?
I'm the lead robotics engineer in my organization, and we are involved in marketing and research for new technologies such as mobile phones and laptops. We are an organization with 219 employees and started using UiPath for laptop marketing and advertisement for our customers.
Our clients have different requirements and strategies, and we build software robots tailored to their needs. A customer can send an email with attached PPTs, Excel sheets, PDFs, and images, and the bot can extract all the data and express it in the required format. This is uploaded as an article onto our website, and on our platform, so the marketing, advertising, and technology solutions specs are taken care of without any human intervention or involvement. We designed 39 robots for the same number of clients.
Our second use case is for invoicing; customers share checks for payments with us via email, and we have bots to extract that data and input it into our SAP ERP system, which is fantastic. The RPA automates billing on the financial side of our organization.
We use the solution across 17 locations with servers managed centrally from our main office, connected using the UiPath Orchestrator. We have 19 licenses but only use 17 currently. We don't have more than seven end users as this is purely a tool for internal use; our customers don't have access.
What is most valuable?
UiPath's OCR enables data processing of handwriting, which in turn allows us to automate elements of the billing process from incoming customer checks, which is a fantastic feature for us.
Document Understanding is an excellent feature; it's very easy to use and provides the required data in a structured format.
The solution has excellent integration with third-party tools.
We use ServiceNow, which is connected to UiPath, and they have fantastic integration. Therefore, we have calculated our time savings to be approximately 91,000 hours in the current year. Automation is a critical time-saving solution for us.
What needs improvement?
The UiPath Academy courses could be improved, there are many courses, and some are more useful than others. I would also like to see improvements in course categorization to make it easier for newcomers to learn the solution.
Customer support could also be improved; they are very knowledgeable and helpful but hard to reach, and there are delays in getting to them.
We encountered some difficulties on the OCR side, and I requested new features and capabilities to address these. This may be an oversight on my part, but I would say some aspects of the OCR data extraction process can be improved. OCR and screen scraping are the only data extraction methods which isn't good for redundancy. I want more options in this regard, so this is another area with room for improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using the solution for nearly three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable; we didn't have any downtime outside of updating our environment.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is very scalable, and many managed packages are available to make that easier, as well as the drag-and-drop functionality.
We plan to increase our usage and are in touch with the UiPath sales team to discuss purchasing new licenses. We have around 60 new customers and need to upscale the solution to accommodate them.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support team's expertise is impressive; they're very expert. However, raising a ticket is complex, and there can be significant delays, which isn't ideal when waiting for a fix. There is no clear route to contact UiPath, and this information isn't shared with new customers. If you know how to get in contact with them, then they are very knowledgeable and quick to help, but establishing that contact is difficult.
There was one occasion when I submitted a ticket and discovered it had been sent to their sales department after a couple of days, but I required technical support. There have been a few issues like this, but once you contact them, the support is fantastic.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used Automation Anywhere for over three years at a position in a manufacturing organization. When I came to my current job, it was my choice to go with UiPath, and I chose it because it's more affordable and has better integration with third-party solutions such as Service Now, Office 365, and Check. Another consideration is OCR, as Automation Anywhere can't extract data from handwriting to my knowledge. UiPath has excellent capabilities, is efficient, and is more user-friendly than Automation Anywhere.
How was the initial setup?
The setup was somewhat complex, as it was a new product for us, and we didn't have a clear deployment plan. The challenges weren't on UiPath's side; they were on our side. We had to build some infrastructure to support our on-premises deployment, and UiPath provided helpful instruction to assist.
Overall, the deployment took approximately three weeks and involved nine staff in total; my director, myself as robotics lead, two consultants, a developer, two members of the infrastructure team, and two staff from UiPath's side.
They could be better at sharing the appropriate setup information with the customer, as it was difficult for us to follow the steps outlined in the provided documentation. We had to get help from the technical support team, who are experts; they did what took us over a week in two days. If a good course were available in the UiPath Academy, that could have saved us that time. I must say that the UiPath technical support team was a great help during the setup. They provided substantial practical information and were central to our planning and implementation strategy.
Every solution requires some maintenance. As our deployment is on-premises, upgrades to our environment necessitate some downtime, usually one and a half to two days. One day to integrate the UiPath guidelines on updating the solution, and another day to upgrade the environment.
What was our ROI?
Our OpEx and CapEx costs have been reduced by around $38,000. Before using an RPA solution, we had 17 employees responsible for data entry and uploading. Now, we have robots doing these tasks, resulting in considerable savings. I would say our ROI is significant.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We find the yearly licensing cost affordable, and the UiPath pricing team is very accommodating to us. They allowed us to pay in installments during the integration phase. The friendly pricing is one of the main reasons we chose the solution.
We purchase 17 to 19 licenses and typically use 14 of them. They offer free extras like attendant reports, the Action Center, and Document Understanding APIs. The pricing and licensing are exceptional.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
When using Document Understanding with PDFs, if the document is over 16 pages, then the UiPath API must be used, which is available from the orchestrator. The API is both important and easy to use.
Our HR department is looking to hire an additional 17 employees to assist in managing our customers. We receive substantial data every hour from our 30 customers, which require reports.
I highly recommend researching the solution and contacting UiPath for support with a proof of concept before any implementation. Having a plan and an idea of how to build the infrastructure is essential. UiPath is one of the best solutions available, but I would advise customers to follow the steps very closely during implementation.
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.