UiPath Reviews

We implement automation for clients to create savings by cutting the number of FTEs. We've used UiPath for various kinds of automation, including mainframes, browsers, Excel, account payables and receivables, fixed assets, healthcare projects, HR projects, reporting robots, and IT services projects. 

Recently, we did a massive US taxation project that spanned eleven months and covered enterprise and individual taxation extensions. It was a huge project that yielded a lot of savings. 

If I want to leverage a specific UiPath use case, I build small use cases around that particular feature and try to envision a product out of it. I've had several hackathons and general discussion calls because I'm a solution architect. Everybody wants to work on apps, and UiPath is comparable to the blank canvas apps that Microsoft PowerApps provides. 

When we had an automation program that involved 200-plus automations, we created around 100-plus libraries, saving us thousands of hours of development time. UiPath is designed to save time. The object repository was liberating because it enabled us to move from simple to extendable libraries. UiPath's apps increase our business by helping us leverage the UI layer in a way we couldn't in the past.

It gives us the ability to share data between systems in healthcare applications.. However, it's still tricky because so many system controls are in place. That's not a limitation of UiPath per se, but every department has restrictions on passing data to other departments. They have their own due diligence in place, limiting data flow from one system to another. UiPath gives us the fluidity and freedom to do it, but the limitations within each domain often get in the way.

Let's use claims data, for example. The data regulation team won't be too keen on allowing the marketing department to use data from the claims division to generate new business. The data flow from one department to another isn't that fluid. Organizational controls rather than system controls bind it.

We should look at each separately in terms of AI and machine learning. If we want to do data analysis, we have to call an inverse Python script, which is a little difficult. However, we can host our own model, and that's good. The ability to use that opened some doors. 

At the same time, it's helpful to have out-of-the-box features like Document Understanding and an ML passer there. The integration is quite fluid. We can directly call a Document Understanding model and then give it to ML passer and then get the results out. It's smoother for integration. The client has to focus on one particular software or multi-stack that they're comfortable with. UiPath has opened some opportunities in that sense. It made life easier because the capability is sitting inside the platform itself. 

UiPath is a separate solution, but it can talk to other services and doesn't restrict you to the passer, but that's how the ML features within Document Understanding help us. Custom model hosting and the AI center also help. We don't have to host the custom model somewhere else and call that service then pass it and do the post-processing within the system. It isn't a third-party service, so we know it's sitting within the system. If any issues are also there, we know where to diagnose and deposit them.

UiPath Orchestrator is a treasure, and UiPath Studio includes various packages to integrate with solutions like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Excel. They also have mainframes, web automation, and the API package. 

Orchestrator contains a lot of useful apps, data services, and machine templates. From a usability perspective, the most valuable aspects are its custom activities, libraries, and object repositories. In terms of integration, I like the ability to use APIs and call automations from UiPath apps. The most valuable feature from a human-in-the-loop perspective is the action center. 

Our customers appreciate the support that UiPath provides, and they don't want to go with a third-party vendor like Microsoft Visio, Form Recognizer, or Google Cloud. They're hesitant because some integration is required. The lead times for closing queries are longer with third-party vendors. For instance, it takes me about two or three weeks to set up Document Understanding in my project. But it took us three months to establish Form Recognizer with a client.  

In addition to the out-of-the-box functionality UiPath provides, it can host our custom models. That's something that comes in handy when we need a custom model. So far, we haven't taken it to production yet, but we are still baselining the technology. At the moment, we are doing a baseline project where we try to perform four POCs simultaneously. We are baselining Google Cloud Platform, Azure, and AWS with UiPath's AI center and machine learning services and comparing the four.

UiPath's performance could be improved. UiPath's framework was built on top of .NET Core. It was a 32-bit platform initially, but they recently introduced a 64-bit version. Let's say I have a huge machine with 64 gigs of RAM. If I have a server machine and want to use multi-threading to extend my automation and multitask, the design won't allow me. I can't separate things into multiple processes. 

The platform is designed to go step by step. Parallel activities are not truly parallel, but it creates the impression that it's running in parallel. For example, if you're on the left segment within a parallel activity, and there is some wait time, it doesn't stay there. It goes to the middle and then to the right. It schedules tasks based on a time-to-completion window and then takes them from end to end. 

UiPath optimizes the time and doesn't let the CPU idle, but it doesn't give you multi-threading or asynchronous methodologies. These are available in the C# and .NET framework but absent in this platform. It's a step-by-step process where you go through each activity. A casual developer or coder who wants to leverage UiPath should be able to. I'm not saying that the working code is not there, but it's quite basic. It doesn't support functions or asynchronous methodology. 

UiPath is attempting to make it easier for a citizen developer to automate processes. They don't have to know how to code, but a citizen developer can't do it when the use case becomes more complex. When they advertise that one doesn’t need to know coding to program bots, that's only true for easy or intermediate use cases. We still need a programmer for anything beyond medium complexity.

The marketing could be improved because the methodologies went from waterfall COE to an automated operation model. However, people are trying to do automation in an Agile model, but it's not exactly executable that way. When customers see the demos from UiPath, they expect that the results will be significant, and they are. However, we might try to automate something, and we’re unsure whether it can be automated because there's a gray area. There's always a 20 to 30 percent chance automation might fail. And that gray area is something that I want UI to focus on.

They have tried this with StudioX by adding checklists. The industry is not following this practice, though. I'm not sure how they should ensure that it gets followed within the platform, but the delivery model needs to improve. It's still niche. 

Another thing to consider is the work-life balance of the developer and the solution architect. The overall challenge of automation tends to become exponentially complex over time. For example, let's look at one aspect: the account tables. I can go to the account tables from a simple PDF perspective. The PDF is readable by the board, and the solution can extract all the data and do the account tables within SAP or Ariba and mix all of it and then submit a report to the business.

This can be extended to intelligent document processing using form recognizer and custom models, then passers, pre-processing, post-processing, and sending the report to the business. The complexity of it can be extended quite a lot. There should be a framework or methodology in place to hedge the bet so that it's not too complex and doesn't disrupt the life of a developer, solution architect, or business analyst. 

If the automation becomes too complex and challenging, our support team won't be able to sustain it in the long run. Once the development team is gone, the automation will die two or three months down the line. It's a balance to manage the complexity and extent of our automation.  

We've been using UiPath for a little more than four years. 

Resource utilization is one area where UiPath is lacking. UiPath says that the solution will run fine on a machine with four gigs of RAM, and they recommend horizontal scaling, but I suggest a mix of horizontal and vertical scaling. 

I've seen implementations on giant machines with high-density VMs and five users logged into the same VM. Therefore, the resource utilization isn't optimal. The RAM and CPU are not completely utilized. It only executes processes on a segment of the resources. I think that can improve. 

I rate UiPath's support nine out of ten. UiPath's support is excellent. They triage issues based on severity, and there is a clearly defined close time and lead time. Their support engineers will follow up with you 24/7 over phone, SMS, or email. 

The scope of support isn't limited to problems with the UiPath platform. We can reach out to UiPath if we are having problems automating a third-party application. They will help us if they have experience with the app. If they don't have experience, they baseline the issue and go through the log to do whatever they can to help us. We've had a great experience with UiPath's support, and our clients feel the same. Support is one reason UiPath is dominating the market. 

Positive

Most of the RPA solutions are fairly similar. The inspiration for UiPath's object repository was taken from Blue Prism. UiPath's integration services are like the connectors in Microsoft Power Platform. I'm not saying that UiPath is exactly copying everybody, but they're taking the best features from every solution and bringing them in-house. 

Other platforms are dominating in some areas. For example, Power Apps is more mature than UiPath Apps. I'm trying to add value based on my experience, and Power Platform's connectors should also bring value to UiPath. In the end, it shouldn't be redundant.

Every time we deploy the solution, we use an automation operation model. It's a massive document with policies defined on every level, from design to development, UATS, prods, escalations, business, teams, team leads, Agile boards, and reporting. 

All of that is documented from the start. We use that model to layout deliverables needing to be fulfilled. Once deployment progresses from one step to another, we have a way to document our progress. We've gone from a theoretical model to a UI model. It's not purely Agile or KanBan, though Agile framework and KanBan breakdown structures are there. However, it doesn't follow a scrum methodology. 

We're not on a two or three-week release cycle. One sprint is the entire use case from build to development and then from development to UAT to production. It's a custom delivery model, and it's working. Still, I feel it can be improved. 

Our clients have seen significant returns using UiPath, but their marketing could be improved. 

I'm aware of how UiPath's pricing compares to other tools, but it's hard because the offerings are different. It's not apples and oranges per se, but it's comparing an average tool to an excellent one. UiPath provides enormous value, so the licensing is justified.

I rate UiPath nine out of ten. It isn't perfect, but they constantly improve and surprise me. At the moment, I give it a nine, but it might be eight in the future. If you feel like some process will cause a lot of headaches, position it later in the cycle of automation. If you can save resources by automating, you should go for it, but you should be smart when deciding your use cases.

If you're thinking about implementing UiPath, I recommend having a design team that understands automation. You need people with some experience who know how automation is done. It requires some business analysts with at least a month of experience on UiPath from a citizen developer perspective. It would help quite a lot in terms of establishing automations that are relatively complex. Try an 80-20 approach operating principle when planning your automation.

We primarily use the solution for the typical banking and transactional use cases. An example could be something such as homeowner's association transactions. That incorporates multiple departments in a bank, including treasury management accounts and opening an ACH. All of those areas are very transactional in terms of the rules-based processes that they follow.

We also use the solution for wire transfers. We have a lot of those. Then, from a business perspective, we look at lines of business as well. It can be used for residential and commercial lending. It's very process-driven and very transactional. We're able to incorporate automation in those areas very easily.

The solution allows us to do more with less. If we have a relationship with a third-party bank to onboard with a thousand accounts with a 15-day turnaround time, depending on what the relationship is, without automation, without RPA, you'd have to hire at least 10 or 15 contractors to get that done. That’s from a contractual perspective, to make sure that you meet the deadlines. However, automation just allows you to scale. You can save the same scenario in multiple areas. The scalability and the time to scalability on offer are key. And that's where we see the value as an organization.

The time to value is excellent on this solution. It is incredible. Unlike any other technology, which is really generally workflow-related, this RPA will give you quick wins, as demonstrated by the return on investment.

The solution has saved costs for our organization. We look at it from different lenses. We look at it from an actual savings perspective. We forecast it and then we annualize it to understand where the product will be or what it will bring us in the long and not just short term. For us, it’s very ROI-driven.

I’ve been with the bank for nine months now, and we went from having two processes automated to now having actual savings of about a little over $300K. It's not bad. There are about 30 processes in production. If we annualize that and forecast out we can see how we can continue to grow.

We have been able to reduce human error. I would call that the cherry on top. You don't really track that until you have it automated. However, if the alternative is having end-users upset that mistakes happen, having the level reduction we’re getting is great.

The solution has freed up employee time by a lot. We see it wherever it's very transactional heavy, where we had multiple team members. Now the teams are built by bots and people. Where you had three people before, now you have a person and a bot executing. So far, we have likely saved, in these nine months, a little over 11,000 man-hours. That's quite a win.

This additional time enabled employees to focus on higher-value work. That’s the whole purpose. We tend to look at ROI, not just money. It's also what else are the employees doing. We’re saving money from a man hours perspective, and, from a cost avoidance perspective, we’re not having to hire. The folks that work for us actually can do valuable work. They can focus on better decision making, more time with the customer, better relationship making, et cetera.

My team has started to utilize the UiPath Academy. My team is composed of multiple different skill sets from PMs to BAs to engineers, and so forth. Even at the level of IT, with the teams that manage infrastructure, sometimes I have them taking some of the infrastructure courses in the Academy. The Academy works well due to the fact that they prep you to grow quickly. If you don't understand how the technology operates, it could be a little bit difficult. You do have to train a little bit to understand it a little bit, however, it's not very difficult, especially when you have access to the Academy.

Having the Academy has affected the process of getting employees up to speed big time. Their appetite to get better and better is just enormous - not just due to the fact that the product is good and it's providing that information to do that, but also due to the fact that they're seeing results. That's helping them want to do it better and faster. It’s a win-win situation there.

The Academy has a really good curriculum for very particular skill sets. It's hard to be an engineer and have to learn a bunch of different stuff that won't necessarily concern you. UiPath has been able to really compartmentalize that learning capability so that it makes sense to different groups and speaks to their level of expertise. That’s probably the most valuable aspect of it.

In the world of NextGen technology, it would be ideal if they could speed up their beta products. My team handles all next-generation technologies that we implement in the bank. For example, we're looking at task mining right now. It's theoretical, however, that product is going to be tremendous. That said, it's still a bit in beta. For us, if they were trying to get new items a little bit quicker out there, that would be ideal. They're running with it, therefore, I'm not overly worried. They also want to provide a good platform for its users, and so I understand why they want to make sure it's good. The competition, in reality, even though it's growing, is not as strong. The feedback is just me being picky at this point.

We've been using the solution since 2015.

So far, we have had very few issues and the issues really have been around very complex knowledge. We have reached out to UiPath to get advice, and they responded, and it hasn't been bad at all.

Scalability has not been an issue. It's not even a topic of concern. The concern is more on the business side and can you manage the growth from a business perspective. The technology's there and I want to automate more. However, with automation, the question is if you can manage it.

We do have plans to increase usage. 

We have about 30 automations in place. That means about 60 to 70 people are using it. They work in shifts and they'll come in and they'll use their bots to process stuff while they do other stuff. 

Technical support is great. In the times we've used it, they've come back relatively quickly.

I started with UiPath a long time ago and I actually worked for Automation Anywhere. I was head of their cognitive product. Therefore, I used them for a while. They're not a bad product at all. They're really good, however, their scalability is a little bit of concern. For us, coming back to UiPath was probably a good decision.

The initial setup is complex. However, that's okay. It's also not supposed to be easy. You have to learn a little bit about what you're doing. Any technology would be a little bit complex. Once it's in, you can get that learning curve moving. With the actual users, that's where the trick of the implementation piece comes in. Once you're through it, however, that's where UiPath becomes really tremendous.

The deployment was maybe 60 days, however, it wasn't necessarily just because of UiPath. In banking, there's red tape. It takes time to get certain aspects approved. It takes time to get the right infrastructure in place. The enterprise has to be willing to put the time in just as UiPath has to put a certain time. It's a blend. As we were implementing, we were still putting things together and setting up governance. It was not just the technology. You still have to prep on the business side.

In terms of maintenance, on my team, I have about seven people, three engineers, a couple of business analysts, and a couple of PMs.

The pricing could be a little bit better for document understanding. I ran the pricing scheme for intelligent documents. With understanding at Automation Anywhere, there's room to maneuver. They can do a little bit better in making it easier for customers to dive in. I know it's available, however, it is what it is.

The organization evaluated Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, and UiPath. 

We went with UiPath due to the fact that they gave us a good deal and we wanted to try it out. We started little. At the hedge fund, we're actually now at over three bots in production. Automation Anywhere's a little bit pricey at the moment. We just kind of pulled the trigger on UiPath and it was a blessing. 

We're just customers and end-users.

While we are on-premises, we're starting to use the cloud including some of the modules from the cloud, document understanding, task minding, et cetera. We're using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd advise those considering the solution that there's a secret sauce to it. It's not just the technology. People need process systems and a really good partner. That's how you get it done.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

We have robots and we have Orchestrator and we are exploring the new analytics model over the next few months. Right now, our primary use is mostly operational processes and deploying apps for the global operations team. We have multiple automation processes in place for them already.

The product has improved the way our organization functions in a lot of ways. Mostly, I would say it improves our processing efficiency. When you have one person working eight to five to take care of tasks and can replace that, instead, with a bot that can work 24 hours a day to onboard customers or entering information to a form, that drives a lot of value for the organization. With that benefit and decreasing human error as well, that turns into a lot of value for a global organization like us.

The most valuable feature in UiPath is different from one process that we build to the next. I would say that the ease of configuring new processes may be one of the most consistently valuable features for our robot production. Creating a process is just a drag-and-drop solution most of the time. With this automated feature for process creation, it is very easy to make what we need, and that ease-of-use is valuable.

There are a few areas where the product can be improved for our use. Invoice processing, for us, is a major use case. I saw some examples in our research that mentioned machine learning models and how to implement that in the new, upcoming version. It seems that the machine learning would solve some of our current issues in processing. That is one feature that I would like to see and experiment with when it is released. I want to explore that to see not only what it can do, but how efficient it is and how it affects the performance of invoice processing models. The other feature we are interested in that is promised to be in the next release is the VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) desktop. 

Those two features, for us, are critical. But we also need them to be fast and efficient for us to be able to use it in practice. Otherwise, we are going to continue struggling with the solutions we already have. The solutions are kind of already there in UiPath, and I think they need to work hard on the performance of anything they release. This is especially true for those two solutions. For us to have a good business case for deploying them for use, we need them to be efficient.

A feature that we tried to use that clearly has room for improvement is the UiPath Computer Vision component. We have tried to use that but it was not efficient enough for our planned applications. It was a little disappointing. It needs to be improved in performance and in the design of the machine learning models. It is pretty easy to use for people considering the technology. I just don't think it is quite to the point where it should be.

On a scale from one to five with one being the least stable and five being the most, I would rate the stability of UiPath as pretty stable. For us, it has really been a five.

We have 35 employees involved in the automation program doing configuration. We also have three platform administrators and a bunch of automation champions right now — there are quite a few of the latter.

Customer support, in general, is pretty good. They are very responsive. We have one dedicated support person in New York and we always get support right away. But there are other facets to UiPath technical support.

The classroom and Academy training are both easy to use and beneficial. On a scale of one to five where five is the best, I would rate these resources as a five-out-of-five. It was and is beneficial and it is available to help the staff get oriented to the product and resolve production issues.

We have 35 configurators. Of those 35, I will say that only five or ten of them were formally and personally trained by a trainer at our site in Costa Rica. The rest — and really most of the configurators — have been trained only using the UIPath Academy suite. So, with some senior resources available and the Academy, you can establish a team of proficient configurators in a very short time.

The reason why we choose UiPath was because they let us play with the tool before we bought into it. We were looking at many vendors for an RPA solution, but the other vendors wanted us to pay first before they would let us explore the products and what they could do. With UiPath we were able to play first without paying and that's something that was attractive and showed that the company was forward-thinking and confident. We explored the product and saw that it was something that could help us to solve some of our problems. So that is why we identified it as a solution and eventually selected it as the product that was going to cover our processing needs.

The initial setup was pretty easy because we had the assistance of UiPath experts on-site. They helped us with the first deployment. They did a lot to help make it pretty easy. It might be more accurate to say it was not easy, but that because of them it went smoothly. That's what their group was there to do: sort out modeling problems pretty quickly and get the product to production.

We used a consultant and our experience with them on a scale from one to five where five is the best, I would say they were a five-out-of-five. They knew what they were doing and were excellent in promoting the deployment. We have no complaints about their services or the result.

We have automated a lot of things and realized about a million-dollar return on investment in about a year-and-a-half. There is still a lot more to do in our company. We are big, so we have a lot of opportunities for automation and we are expected to be producing even more benefits than we already have. But a million-dollar return on investment is pretty good and is only the beginning of what we will eventually realize.

Right now we have around 200 licenses in terms of the bots we have in production. I know the cost is about $200,000 or $300,000 per year. I am not sure about additional costs.

From what I understand UiPath is cheap when you compare the costs to other vendors in the same market. In any case, the price seems to be good in comparison to the actual benefit. We also have some type of special agreement for pricing discounts because we are one of the early adopters who engaged with UiPath for use of the product. I feel we have some very special treatment and the price, for us, is reasonable and convenient.

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as an eight out of ten. The reason why it is an eight and not a ten is because there are some specific considerations — especially in performance and machine learning — that we believe has a lot of room for improvement. They are starting to introduce the functionality, they are doing a good thing in introducing it, but there could be a lot of improvement.

If I would make a recommendation for people considering automation options, I would say that they should take advantage of manufacturers that let you play with their product to evaluate if a particular solution is convenient for you. This is the reason why UiPath became the more convenient option for our company when we were looking to start with process automation.

For us, the virtual implementation has been working well because we have deployed everything that we automated in our Citrix environment. Now the new question is how easy it will be to interact with target applications through our VDI desktop. Resolving that to this point has been pretty tough for us and it is actually one of our constraints in making processes work efficiently.

Robotic processing has helped to eliminate human errors and reducing human error is definitely one of the basic benefits that those moving into robotics should expect — if they are approaching automation correctly.

The solution also saved our organization time. For example, we had the one case where we had to onboard around 2 million customers. What that would take in terms of manual hours is about a month and a half. Instead, using RPAs, we were able to complete the task in one week. That is just one example. We have multiple examples in three years of automation. 

We use Studio, Orchestrator, attended and unattended robots.

We use this solution to solve the things that people don't want to do. They spend a lot of time and there is a high potential to make manual errors. Quality suffers because it takes too long and users can get fatigued. There are the things that we are targeting and we have already seen some of the benefits.

We do not run our automations in a virtual environment.

With respect to how easy it is to automate our company's processes, on a scale of one to five, I would rate this solution a four. It is easy, but there are some improvements that can be made.

On a scale of one to five, judging how beneficial it is, I would rate the training a five. It is my lifeline. 

From the point that we purchased our UiPath license until we had our first robot was approximately six to eight months. I felt that the process was complicated, in part because of UiPath but also partly because of internal things.

Internally, in order to get set up, the entire infrastructure needs to be in place. All of the servers have to be set up and you need the right permissions because the bots need their own security. You have to explain to people that this is going to be a service account, and you have to explain the need for it. These are all internal, but necessary issues.

This solution has saved our organization time. I would estimate that the bots save us four weeks every month.

In terms of eliminating human errors, this solution absolutely helps in that regard. The bots don't make any mistakes. Rather, they point out the mistakes that have been made by humans so far.

The ability that this solution has to work with Excel is really good.

The SAP feature looks helpful and we are going to explore that functionality in our next project. 

We don't like the attended bot experience, where it requires the user to be hands-off. We installed it on the user's machine, and the user should not touch the mouse or keyboard because the moment they do, it crashes. It takes over the machine and cannot work in the background. For this reason, it is difficult to work out scenarios that are purely attended. 

For example, we have a process that downloads two files and then does some massaging of the data. Now, the data needs to be looked at by the user. An email is sent and the files are deposited into a common folder, and the user will address the task when they have time. After the user manipulates some of the data or makes decisions, it can proceed to the next step.

They drop the modified files into the common folder, but the bot doesn't react because there is no feature in Orchestrator to trigger based on the arrival of a new file. Instead, we have to put in a call to check periodically, whether it be five minutes, fifteen minutes or some other interval. This is something that we don't find desirable.

Creating a trigger that is based on either the arrival of a file or the arrival of an email is a common scenario and it should be built into the platform so that I don't have to code for it every time. As it is now, there are only two ways to trigger a bot.

Orchestrator does not have a good filtering mechanism to look for jobs, and the table view needs to be improved.

From the UiPath side, one thing that irritates me is that you cannot find the downloads to upgrade to the new version. I'm a paid customer and I log in with my credentials, but I cannot download it. I need to create a ticket, tell them who I am, and I have to give them a long list of things that I don't remember. They will address the ticket maybe today or tomorrow, and then finally I get a response. When I use other tools like Microsoft and SAP, as a customer or subscriber of the tool, I just download the latest versions and install them on my servers. When I have a mandate to do work, I want to be able to do it. However, when I can't download the file and have to wait for a ticket to be answered, this wastes my time.

The integration with Elasticsearch and Kibana is a struggle. They are not UiPath products, but they are recommended by UiPath. Some documentation is provided, but it is an Orchestrator installer package the just installs itself. I had to do a lot of experimentation on Windows machines because the configuration is different for Linux machines, and this gave me some trouble. There is a lot of information about this in the UiPath forums and I spent a lot of time on it.

Right now, I have a set of configuration data that I put into an Excel file. The users can change the file and my app will run using the configuration variables. A problem occurs if the Excel file is not closed properly because there are locking issues. This is a pain because the bot crashes when opening a locked file. There is something in Orchestrator called Assets, but it is kind of limited. It only accepts text and a credential. It would be nice if it had a simple database table, say to be able to create a couple of columns that I want to set up for a bot-related task. Rather than a single piece of text, there is a whole table of information. My users will be able to edit it, based on the permission that I assign. Then the bot will look at it and work according to what is specified. This would be a great feature to have.

I would like to see the Studio web-based so that we don't have to install it on everybody's desktop. 

With respect to the stability, on a scale from one to five, I would rate this solution a five. I have never had any problems with the platform itself. I haven't had to restart the servers or anything like that.

We have three people in the organization who work with the bots.

We did not use another RPA solution prior to this one.

In deciding whether and RPA would benefit us, we followed the guidelines that UiPath provided, which is a twelve-step validation process. If processes are unchanging, there is a lot of manual work, there is the potential for errors, and it's simple to automate, etc, then RPA may be suitable. Based on this assessment, we made the investment in RPA.

Our own team was responsible for the implementation.

We have recognized ROI through savings in employee hours. For our PoC, with two projects, we saved one full-time employee.

It took us one year to see ROI, although I don't think that we have saved any money yet because of the development time. If we negate the development cost then it might be $60,000 USD, as a developer's salary, but we're not there yet. One of the things that I am trying to do is motivate people to look at more processes that we can automate because right now, my bots are sleeping and I want to put them to work.

Our licensing fees are approximately $140,000 USD annually, which includes all of the bots, Orchestrator, and the Studio.

In our company, there is another group that had already implemented UiPath, and they have had good success. We followed their lead, but in addition, we reviewed other sources such as the Gartner ranking. The features set was also considered during the evaluation.

I feel that the cost of the bot is worth it, provided that we make use of it. The unattended bot is cheaper, but it is useless for us right now because there is no use case. We think that Studio X might change that, and I've heard that the Studio X license includes the attended bot. So, if we swap the attended bot license that we currently have then we could take them away and then get the Studio X license, and that will motivate more people to make their own automations.

No organization has unlimited resources, but the business is changing around us and we are always tasked with new things to do. In that aspect, you have to make room for innovation, and you have to automate.

UiPath has shown tremendous gains with this solution. They're sitting on the shoulders of Microsoft .NET, and they've shown some initiative on what you can do with a generic platform. They offer free training and a Community Edition for people to experiment with, and it can do wonders for the world. We have seen that happening and I love that.

This is a company that is listening to customers' feedback and I think that they should keep doing that.

My advice for anybody who is considering this solution is to start by watching all of the videos. Go through the UiPath Academy and get a feel of what it can do. Read all of the case studies and see what other people have done. You will get a feeling for the ROI. Then download the Community Edition and play with it to see for yourself what gain you can get from this tool. Finally, start small and just keep adding to it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is IP invoice automation.

We are currently using Orchestrator and bots.

It gives you a technology or ability to build a solution on any legacy system.

I love Orchestrator: 

• The configuration part
• The amount of keys
• Transaction reporting
• Logs
• Accessibility on the iPhone.

VM was on the service for high density. It is finicky at times. The latest release is a lot more stable. However, I've had a two week production outage where DLLs weren't registered and someone from Vegas had to login for eight hours onto the fraud service to work it out. Even though they uninstalled and re-installed it, all the different apps still wasn't working. So, I  have lost a bit of faith in it to be honest.

I would like to have cloud stuff back in Australia and hosted there. I want everything in SaaS, bots included.

While it has eliminated human errors, it has created other errors.

I would like something that better identifies the processes. If it could watch the computer, then work it out for me, that would be good.

Now that I've done an upgrade, it seems to be a lot better. Because I was running high density on the 2016.2 or 2016.3. I had a lot of problems, but I couldn't work out whether or not it was just UiPath or our client app that was timing out. But, we noticed that if you login as console, you have far less issues than if you run high density.

These days, the stability is a four out of five. Back in the day, it wasn't.

In my old organization, 50 to 100 people were involved.

I have a bit of a different issue because at my old company that I just left, I was only paying $3,600 USD per bot. I turned up at my new company, and because of our size, we are paying $8,000 per bot.  

The support is not good. I had a two week production outage.

There was a business problem, and we needed to work at how to solve it. The partner was a big driver in this process.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

It took two weeks from the time we purchased our UiPath license until we had our first robot in production.

We used Blackbook.ai, and our experience with them was awesome.

We have seen ROI. The last company that I work for was trying to get 1000 FTEs out the door, and I think that they are already at 60. In Australia, at my current company, we are already at 10 FTEs. Just in Australia, we have save a million dollars, and maybe five million in India.

The reduction of 10 FTEs has saved us time.

At the last place that I worked, it was $700,000 USD.

Everything that I read about Blue Prism suggest that it is too heavy and takes too much development to ramp up.

I looked at Automation Anywhere for the price point, especially for a PoC. Between Blackbook.ai and what I saw already with UiPath, I just thought UiPath was the better option.

Scout it out. I am going to try to work with this company a different way than what I did than last time, e.g., federated.

I would rate the overall product as a nine out of 10. It's an enabler. It seems pretty good. There is a lot of investment and new things.

I would rate the ease of use of the platform as a four out of five. It is pretty easy to use but it is not doing everything for me. I still have to do stuff.

I would rate the UiPath Academy as a four out of five.

We are automating back office business processes focusing on business finance and tax, specifically. We are just recently starting our implementation, but we have been doing a proof of concept for the last year or so on the community edition. We recently signed the license agreement will be moving forward with implementing it full-time.

I am functioning as a lead developer. 

We just started the implementation. 

I foresee as we automated mundane tasks, it will free up time for the existing workforce that we already have to do more tasks where they can use their brain to make decisions. Then, they can think things through and work on the more complex processes that we currently can't automate.

• Its flexibility
• Anything you can do on a computer with enough effort, you can get the robot to do it.
• It is ease to use and user-friendly.
• The Academy training is well put together.

Once we've taken the data that the robot has done something with, we want to send it over to a human a lot of times. However, they need it formatted in a fashion that makes it a little more readable. It would be nice to have some activities without the developer having to do a lot of effort to make the spreadsheet look prettier. 

Instead, we should receive a list every time transactions are performed, and it would be nice if we wouldn't have to format it every time the robot sent us a spreadsheet.

This one area is lacking, but I attribute this to the constantly evolving platform. However, while there is some stability issues, they are quick to respond to them with updates. They are also very receptive to listening to feedback from the community, which is great.

The robots work where you can scale additional servers. They just need a place to work and process to perform, then you can add-on. 10 bots can easily turn into a 100 bots, then those can turn into a 1000 bots. From a scalability aspect, it's great.

I have not yet used customer or technical support.

I have interacted with the community a whole lot, and if the amount of responses that they give in the community is any indication about how fast they would be with the enterprise technical support, then I can only imagine that it would be top-notch.

UiPath Academy RPA training is well put together. It paces well, not too fast nor too slow. You are constantly given new things to experiment with and things to learn which keep you interested, engaged, and moving forward.

Our Director of Tax heard from word of mouth about RPA and decided with tax being what it is, we have a lot of areas of mundane, monotonous, repetitive tasks, return filings, etc.

It's a complex environment with all its moving pieces. However, it is well-documented, everything is, and as long as you're willing to spend a bit of time reviewing the documentation, it's not so complex that you can't figure it out. It's clearly there documented, and it tells you what to do, you have to take the time to read through it.

My supervisor and I were the implementation team. We were heavily involved with figuring out Orchestrator, how to connect the robots, how to build the process, then put all those pieces together. Eventually, we figured it out.

With the current implementation, we are a skeleton crew. My group consists of four people, who are in the financial systems group within the business, not in IT.  I hope that that will grow as the implementation grows, if for no other reason than the more bodies that we can throw at it within reason, the more benefit we can get out of it. To maximize gains, we are going to need to be more than four people, sooner rather than later. However, I am not the decision-maker, so I can only cross my fingers and hope. Right now, we have a laundry list of things that could be automated. We have to prioritize those, then figure out where the bodies are who can do the automating

One of the processes that we first implemented was simply monitoring an e-mail mailbox and pulling out the invoices from there that needed to be manipulated. The robot is not actually doing anything with the invoices yet, as much as just pulling them out and handing them off to the human. Because previously, there was a group of people who were spending quite a lot of time just looking through that mailbox trying to make sure that they caught everything and items still get missed and overlooked. 

I've been told that quite a large amount of savings has happened in the discounts from paying those invoices on time, because someone didn't just overlook something and forget to send it on. As long as it meets the criteria, the robot always catches it. So, that's great. We've definitely seen a return already, and we're just scratching the surface.

I don't see any end in sight for opportunities to leverage it, increasing our efficiency and revenues. It may not necessarily reduce headcounts, but it should cap growing headcounts. Because, as our markets expand, we traditionally increase headcounts in the back office, but we are trying to move away from that.

I would rate the performance benefits as a nine out of ten. The robots can move faster than you can keep track of what you are doing. It's astronomical the levels of magnitude the increase in efficiency that you can get. We have had humans who were taking, according to best estimates, eight hours to accomplish something that the robot can do in minutes.

They give it away in the community edition for free, so I use it at home.

I've only dabbled with the other products, but the UiPath software is easier to dive into and start working with.

We looked a bit at Automation Anywhere. I tried a trial of it. 

We looked into Blue Prism, but I've not interacted with it firsthand.

I have the most experience with UiPath. 

We did do our due diligence in investigating, if not firsthand, by at least reading about what the other offerings were from Pega to some of the other competitors.

What helped us make the decision to choose UiPath was how available the community edition is and how engaged the actual community is. I don't know for certain that some of the competitors don't have something similar, but I was blown away because they got us hooked on it. They gave it to us for free, then we used it, tried it, and fell in love with it seeing what it could do.

As long as upper management says it's okay, we're going to keep buying more of it and utilizing it until something else comes along that replaces what it can do, which I don't see happening anytime soon.

Try it out for yourself. Just go and download the community edition, install it on a computer, and within a few minutes you can have simple automation up and running using the recording tools, etc. Anyone really can do something just to see what it's capable of and see what RPA is. Try it out for yourself.

It has exceeded my expectations. Early on, I didn't have high of hopes for anything I could do which is rule based and have the robot to do it. Yet, I keep trying to come up with anything can't be done with a little bit of effort or through some other activities, especially with the availability of the community, which can leverage someone else smarter than me, who has figured out how to get it done.

UiPath can do pretty much everything another tool can do plus a whole bunch of extra things.

We're an insurance company, so we use UiPath to enter customer and policy data. Four of us work on the data side of bot development, which is our department's priority. We have multiple inflows of different ideas and use cases coming from various departments that ensure the company runs smoothly and efficiently. 

Implementations and updates allow for frequent email communications on Monday mornings weekly. Our team sends out email notifications if anything significant is urgent. We're still working on some of the aspects that we're looking to solve by attending this event. We've got some integrations that UiPath provides.

We have a limited staff and a lot of work. UiPath tackles repetitive jobs that people don't want to do but must do them daily. We've saved on reporting, and that has mitigated costs, so we've seen revenue advantages. 

Our customers and employees are happier. Employees' menial labor is reduced, and they can spend more time interacting with customers. Our customers like this because they can talk to a real person who will follow up on their issues. It's generated a lot of buzz in the community. Customers can talk to our agents faster and get the information they need quicker

We like the RPA style and constant data flow. It keeps working when our employees aren't. 

It would help if UiPath fixed bugs in the software before they updated.

We've used UiPath for a year and a half. 

UiPath is stable and mature. They've been around for a while and are constantly improving. 

UiPath has kept up with our growth, as we do five to 10 acquisitions annually.

UiPath support has been tremendous. They're responsive and ready to hop on a call with you to solve problems live.

Positive

The initial deployment was fairly straightforward, but we have to build automations before we could solve problems. 

We've saved over a thousand hours of labor this year alone in various forms, such as reporting that was previously generated manually and sent out or forms that were filled out and put into the system. Those are now automated through various methods. It has saved double the standard employee's salary.

I rate UiPath 10 out of 10.

We are developing processes with UiPath for clients in the government and banking sectors. 

UiPath is flexible and has various automation capabilities. I like PDF automation, and we have multiple other tools, such as the AI Center and Document Understanding. There is more than one way to automate the same process. We can broaden our experience and use our imagination.

UiPath facilitates our digital transformation. We have an auditing team for our client that was manually collecting data every month from eight websites across different Indian states. We also have to validate the files we get. It takes a person three days to do that manually, but UiPath automation allows us to complete the process in a day, and it's more accurate. There were no errors, which is what the audit team requires. The banking sector is undergoing changes, and by using automation, the banks are improving.

The solution reduces human error in cases where we have Excel automation invovling some formula that needs to be copy-pasted, or we need to fetch the data from PDF to Excel in a particular column. It's easy to make a mistake when both keys are next to each other.  For example, we may make an error while writing "S is equal to A," and we might ignore it. A UiPath bot will perform that without making an error. If the process is properly designed and trained, we'll get the correct output. 

I appreciate UiPath's ability to automate complex processes. It's the best thing. The Action Center, Document Understanding, AI Center, and all the other components of UI Path are also good. I prefer UiPath over other automation tools.

It's easy to build processes in UiPath. I am from an engineering background, but UiPath is a low-code solution, so it's easy for a user with a nontechnical background to understand.  It's simple to explain things to business users. If I need to explain things to my clients, it's easier for them to understand how UiPath works. 

I have developed multiple end-to-end processes, including SAP, web automation, Excel, Outlook, PDF, and directory automation. For example, we might extract the information from the PDFs in a folder. A recent one involved invoice process automation. Invoices for rent and expenses needed to be processed for nine websites, which were automated in UiPath. It included SAP, web, and Excel automation.

The UiPath community has been helpul in cases involving clomplex logic. By getting in touch with the UiPath community, we could see all the new things that have been developed or released in the latest versions. We have community meetings. 

I've also obtained multiple certificates through the UiPath Academy. There are foundational and advanced courses. I was certified in solution architecture, fundamentals and methodology, SAP automation, administrator automation, AI Center, and Document Understanding

The time needed to learn UiPath depends on how much time you're willing to spend practicing. I completed the UiPath foundational and advanced courses in a month because I was working on it day and night, practicing with the different tasks we got online. Some of my colleagues took three or four months.

We use UiPath's AI features for Document Understanding. We have to train the AI model repeatedly so that it extracts the data correctly from the PDF. We correct it when there are mistakes so that it trains the model. Similarly, we have the AI Center, where we can choose from different models available from the UiPath or create our own.

A lot of the UiPath processes are capturing information from government websites. It's difficult to capture the correct format, so we need to use a third-party application to capture the information correctly. It would be better to have that capacity with UiPath, so we don't need another product. 

I have used UiPath for more than two years. 

I rate UiPath seven out of ten for stability. The stability varies from machine to machine. If you have enough RAM and CPU, it should be fine. Sometimes it lags on computers with older processors. I'm using an i7 11th generation, and it works perfectly fine. Also, sometimes there are issues in new versions, but it runs smoothly in the latest stable version. 

I rate UiPath support seven out of 10. The response speeds and the solutions they provide are excellent. I have contacted them multiple times to open up cases. Recently, a URL was not working due to some architecture issues, and they responded within two hours. 

Neutral

I have done one process on Automation Anywhere, but it was only an Excel automation.

The implementation varies from process to process and the availability of the process team. I have done processes on various timelines. It sometimes takes a week if the process is small. A few took around three or four months because the scope was larger. It covered 10 to 12 human steps and involved manipulating data in SAP and Excel. It doesn't take as long if it's a simple process that involves moving a PDF, copy-pasting, or bulk emails. It depends on the process length and the testing needed before we can move the process into production.

I handle the deployment because the infrastructure team does all the installation and orchestration. I have admin access, so I can publish and upgrade packages and maintain the licenses, machines, bots, queues, etc. It is all published in the Orchestrator and run on the production machine. Maintenance is required of ther are changes in a URL or some input. 

I rate UiPath nine out of 10. UiPath's license costs more than other tools, but once it is all set up, it's easy to use and is effective at multiple types of automation. If you don't have experienced developers, you can learn to use the UiPath Studio to develop some basic code.