What is our primary use case?
I've worked in two organizations where I have used UiPath. The first organization was in banking and we used UiPath to help automate banking and financial forms. The second organization, the one I am currently working for, is a technology company with several sub-companies that include banking/financial, the hotel sector, and some overseas organizations. In this organization, we automate tasks that are repetitive, as well as reconciliations.
How has it helped my organization?
The main advantage is that we've synchronized our process across 70 sub-branches covering the entire island of Sri Lanka. Previously, we had three or four employees manually inputting the user entries for the various branches. We eliminated those positions so that data entry is now done by robots and performed in the head office.
We have multiple robots directing all of the data to the robot platform in the head office. We saw value within six months. That's how long it took to eliminate the positions. We stopped recruiting people who had previously done that task. More tasks remain, but the main use case was realized within six months.
The APIs are helpful in our workflow. We have a separate application for the government sector, and the Sri Lankan government provides that API. It's a matter of due diligence because we get the customer information, like the national identity card number. We use the API to exchange that information.
We get quick information about existing loans, including how they perform and whether the borrower is paying on time. If they are red, it means that the payments aren't being made in that period of time. That is the kind of information that is exchanged with the API. We can process 20 or 30 users every minute through the API on average.
Previously, our staff onboarding involved a large number of hard-copy documents—around 50. We have automated what was a long manual process, using automation to go through the documents to create a customized onboarding process, one that includes the government regulatory platforms that we are required to use. We used to have to store those documents in an archive, taking up our storage capacity. With UiPath's OCR platform, we get the information we need to do the task. That has resulted in huge savings for the organization, including environmental savings in terms of trees used for paper. It has also saved a lot of the human effort involved in verifying data in those documents.
In our previous process, the documentation was written entirely by humans, including data entry. That data entry was a critical point but there was a lot of human error. That has been reduced by 85 to 90 percent. In my current organization, we have automated about 70 processes and the amount of employee time saved depends on the process. For example, one of our automated processes has saved eight hours for one FTE, while another has saved 10 FTEs two hours each.
And we have done an end-to-end automation for an insurance platform, for renewals. There is no human touch at all.
UiPath has also helped us to reduce our on-prem footprint, compared to our previous platform. In our previous model, we worried a lot about our data. But with UiPath in the cloud, could our entire database be somewhere else, meaning not in our custody? A few years back, UiPath introduced governance and audit platforms, and that's when we felt that it was okay and that we didn't need on-prem platforms anymore. It was okay, at that point, to go for a cloud platform. We are migrating our on-prem platform to the cloud now.
What is most valuable?
UiPath Orchestrator is incredibly useful. It's the main dashboard platform we use. Orchestrator provides a single platform where we can connect with legacy systems and manage all the bots.
Orchestrator lets us see the entire process across various department units so that they can see the separate tenants and units. The application can multi-task to handle processes even when we have a long queue. If the queue is piling up, we can assign multiple robots to clear the queue quickly. We can find the ETA for the queues and everything inside Orchestrator.
The Studio and development boards are also helpful.
The UiPath community staff is the best I have ever seen. I have worked in several communities, not only in RPA platforms but for other tools, but the UiPath community is the best. I am an active member of the community. If someone has a question, we always look after it there and are very happy to help them.
The UiPath Academy is very useful as well. My colleagues and I are always going through the new features that are available for our automation and new developments. We always keep in touch with the Academy.
What needs improvement?
Previous Orchestrator versions were very user-friendly for the admins and the users, but the new Orchestrator is a bit advanced. If they could reduce its complexity, to something more like what it used to be like, it would be better.
Also, if they can improve the performance of robots, that would be good.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using UiPath for more than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There are no issues with the stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable and very easy to scale but, again, that comes back to the pricing.
UiPath scales easily, but scaling for the cloud and on-premises versions is different. For the on-premises solution, we need to add new licenses to scale up. But it's easy in terms of scalability on our end.
How are customer service and support?
Support can be divided into two tiers: enterprise users and community users. Enterprise users like us get high priority because we are dealing with live operations and customers. When we raise a ticket, we have options like critical and onsite support. They reply in one or two hours, or in less than 30 minutes if it's critical. Their technical support is very helpful and the ticketing platform is very good.
We also get a fast response for non-technical customer service issues.
I hope their support can be developed because when there is a difficult case, sometimes it seems that it's a new issue for them as well. I have experienced that. That should be improved a bit. Overall, support is very good, but there is room for a bit of improvement.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We didn't have an automation solution previously. As a developer, there are lots of costs in our country associated with switching to automation. There weren't other solutions that could integrate our entire operation like UiPath. I don't think it was possible to select another one.
As a user and an administrator, I can manage the entire server from the main controller. I know everything that UiPath is doing. I also can't think of another solution that has the same broad user community.
How was the initial setup?
UiPath runs Orchestrator and the application in the cloud, but our robots work on-prem in our data center.
In my previous organization, I deployed UiPath, but when I got there I didn't even know what UiPath was. Fortunately, they have nice documentation on the UiPath website, step-by-step. I followed that and was able to deploy things. Since then, I have helped several organizations, via the UiPath community, to deploy Orchestrator within two or three hours. If they have completed the relevant prerequisites, it can be done in that amount of time for a standard installation.
We had a detailed plan in place that progressed in phases. In phase one, we eliminated the data entry function in the main office and the branches. In phase two we would optimize our existing processes. Once all the automation is finished in the head office, we optimize those head office processes.
What was our ROI?
We have seen significant cost savings throughout the company. Before we started to use UiPath in 2019, we had three or four people doing data entry in every branch. It has eliminated human data entry and also frees up our cashiers because the cashier cannot go anywhere when the queue is long.
We calculated what we have spent for our entire RPA platform and what our ROI is. Our calculations showed that after one and a half years, we had recouped our entire spend on the RPA platform. That included the entire robot cost, servers, the software license, et cetera. That means we had ROI after 18 months.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
When it comes to unattended robots, the cost for us in Sri Lanka is huge. It's tricky for us to convince management when they think about the price. We have to prove the value with evidence. We explain that we will save this or that amount, so please help us with this tool.
Maybe for Middle Eastern or other countries, the price of that robot is not a big deal, but roughly $10,000 for an unattended robot is a very big deal for us.
They are switching their licensing from a legacy mode to flex licensing. With that kind of license, they have given up a certain fee, which is okay, but the robot cost is high. Orchestrator is now free on the cloud platform, but we need UiPath Studio, the developer platform, as well as attended and unattended robots, and those are the things we pay for. The unattended robots are the highest priced. On a scale where one represents the most expensive and 10 is cheapest, I would rate UiPath at about two.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We have looked at several automation platforms. We have done several demos and looked at the price of Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism. But they are more complex than UiPath.
If you consider other applications, like Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere, the UiPath platform is better because it's user-friendly, making it easy to get tasks done. Even for a beginning developer, it's easy to catch up with all the stuff in UiPath.
UiPath has noticed that I'm an active contributor, so they contacted me to get feedback and invite me to build the community. If I check my LinkedIn profile, I can see all the things I've done in the UiPath community. I don't see that with the Automation Anywhere platform.
If I don't know how to do something, I can watch one video and learn everything I need to know. If we post a question on the forum, we get an answer in one or two minutes from another user.
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.