UiPath Reviews

We use UiPath to automate some of our financial and HR workflows and to send emails to clients.

UiPath helps automate end-to-end processes.

It helps reduce the speed and cost of our digital transformation.

We do not require expensive or complex application upgrades to speed up and save costs in our digital transformation.

UiPath helps reduce human error, reducing our labor.

It saves me three hours per week.

UiPath saves us costs.

UiPath is a strong brand.

I would like UiPath to work more with our local partners, to provide us with lower prices, localized functionality, and support.

I currently use UiPath once a week. 

I would rate the stability of Uipath eight out of ten. We have had some stability issues with our VMware.

The local UiPath partner we are working with provides very slow responses to our technical issues.

Neutral

UiPath is priced 50 percent higher than our local RPA solutions.

I would rate the pricing of UiPath eight out of ten with ten being the most expensive.

I would rate UiPath seven out of ten.

We have many use cases, but the primary ones are on the finance side for intelligent automation. We use it for system updates and system manipulations.

UiPath has improved our organization in terms of 

• quality
• accuracy
• reduction in headcount
• working around the clock
• consistency.

It is the primary key to our digital transformation. And we have been able to do so without expensive or complex application upgrades or IT application support.

Our accuracy and compliance have improved manyfold. And in terms of employee time, our benchmark is to save three employees per bot, but we have achieved something around 2.1 employees per bot.

We are a consortium with multi-discipline businesses, and we are able to use UiPath automation across all our sectors, but it has mainly helped us with shared services.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation, and that is something that is important to us.

Of course, we have used the UiPath Academy courses, and that has been very handy and very useful. That is what we have used to significantly build up our capabilities. They are our entire training platform. We brought people who are not IT-savvy, complete laymen who were not in IT at all, into our platform of technology. To do that conversion, the Academy had to be very strong. It was not only the UiPath Academy that helped with their training, it was Microsoft PowerApps as well. The two of them together created this magic.

One functionality we would like to see is OCR.

I have been using UiPath for the last three years.

It's very stable.

It is scalable.

We have not had technical support from UiPath.

It's a very straightforward deployment, but any time we update the deployment, it becomes a bit complex.

We have a few VMs on-premises that we use for Orchestrator and the machines to run the bots, but the queue to run the bots is in the cloud. Most of our applications are on the cloud.

Implementing the first set of activities took us about nine weeks. We engaged a consulting party to identify the platform we should use. While we were doing that, we did opportunity assessments across the organization, to identify the processes that would be most valuable to automate.

UiPath is slightly more expensive than Automation Anywhere, from what I understand. But the pricing comparison is a mix between the two because UiPath attended bots are quite cheap compared to Automation Anywhere. If you bring in UiPath's unattended bots, that's expensive.

We have used Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and now UiPath. We had to decide among the three, but ultimately, there was no choice for us because Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism did not respond to some of our systems. This was especially true when doing screen grabs, specifically on the AS400. So it was a no-brainer for us.

I don't see a major problem with UiPath's ease of use, but I'm not a developer, I'm a decision-maker. But honestly, the development life cycle using Automation Anywhere is shorter. With UiPath, the development life cycle is slightly longer, but it is not a major issue.

The most important thing is to follow the best practices from UiPath in building the bot processes. What happens is, when application upgrades happen, if you haven't done it in the right way, your applications will fall apart. You have to make sure that the screen-grabbing methodology and referencing are done according to the best practices of UiPath.

I utilize UiPath to automate the majority of tasks that we previously had to implement manually.

Building automation with UiPath is a simple task that does not require any coding knowledge, making it accessible even for beginners.

UiPath has helped our organization accelerate performance and increase production across our entire enterprise. We are now able to service our clients within the shortest time possible.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation. The processes we engage with UiPath help us monitor the entire implementation process and show us where there are downtimes and challenges within the workflow.

We have benefited from being part of UiPath's user community. We are able to connect with the customer support team and receive prompt answers to our questions through video calls.

UiPath has enabled us to transition from manual work processes to automation, thereby reducing the cost of human labor and effectively minimizing our on-premises footprint.

Our team utilized UiPath Academy courses to integrate UiPath with our applications, aiming to achieve optimal performance and expedite our vendor network infrastructure. This integration ensures comprehensive monitoring and security throughout the entire workflow process.

We utilize the AI functionality within our automation program to ensure the acceleration of program implementations.

AI has simplified the majority of complex processes and has reduced the cost and time required to implement most tasks by 40 percent.

UiPath has expedited our digital transformation by assuming control of all manual logs. We have automated all processes related to information processing and task implementation.

UiPath has reduced human errors by 80 percent.

The automation and speed of the platform are the most valuable features of UiPath.

The cost of full deployment is high and there is room for improvement.

I have been using UiPath for three months.

UiPath is a stable solution.

UiPath is scalable.

The technical support team is cooperative in assisting us with challenges related to our operations and security configurations. It is easy to obtain support for critical issues.

Positive

We had previously utilized IBM Robotic Process Automation; however, the organization's management faced challenges with IBM's lack of cooperation. Consequently, we sought a more advanced and reliable solution.

The initial setup was simple. The deployment lasted for two days and necessitated the presence of three individuals.

We have observed approximately a 30 percent return on investment by utilizing UiPath.

UiPath is priced to accommodate large enterprises, but it is expensive for small and medium-sized enterprises.

I would rate UiPath eight out of ten. UiPath exhibits scalability and flexibility in terms of integrations.

UiPath is utilized by four people in our department.

Maintenance is required for upgrades.

I recommend UiPath to any enterprise that is seeking suitable tools for robotic process automation.

Our primary use case is creating automation for day-to-day activities for our internal use, especially for performance management and reporting. Apart from that, we create some automation applications for our clients as they're using UiPath. That's another use case.

We prepare database reports where a lot of product data is consumed. Creating reports or reporting used to take a lot of time and effort for us. UiPath has been very helpful for us in quickening this process and making it efficient.

It enables us to implement end-to-end automation. With our data and reporting tasks, there were a lot of repetitive tasks that needed to be done, which sometimes can be irritating. UiPath has completely taken over this process. So, right from the input of data to the extraction of reports, the complete end-to-end process is covered by UiPath. I don't have any complaints.

With UiPath, our automations are getting better and better. UiPath is driving performance, innovation, and growth across our entire organization. With report automation being our main use case, we saved a lot of hours, and we have also reduced a lot of overhead costs with UiPath. With automated data processing, errors are minimal. The error rate is almost zero, and the time taken is pretty quick. Our efficiency has improved, and that has been a major benefit for us.

We have been using the cloud version of UiPath. So, our on-premises footprint has definitely been reduced.

It has helped us move a lot closer to 100% digital transformation. Our reporting is automated, and we are almost 100% digital now. There is also an overall reduction in the cost and employee time.

It has reduced human error. The error rate is minimal or nearly zero. It's 100% smooth for us. In the past, we would have overlooked or missed certain data points, and during our final report collaboration, a mismatch would happen, but that is completely reduced with UiPath. 

It has freed up a lot of employee time. It has also made our work much more efficient. Earlier, if seven employees were doing a particular task, only three employees are required now to do that task. So, other employees can focus on something else now. 

It has saved about two working days or 16 hours a week. With the amount of data that we work with for reporting, it was a very hectic task for us. We had a lot of data sheets, Excel files, etc. UiPath has saved us two days of manual work per week.

It has saved costs. We were a team of seven who were handling reporting. We were taking reports and consolidating everything, whereas now, only three of us are required to do that. The remaining four can focus on something else. That much time and cost have been saved. This has resulted in us focusing on some other aspects of our business and bringing in more revenue for us. These are some of the overheads that have been completely saved by UiPath.

One feature that is particularly very likable is the My Workspace option under the Orchestrator menu. We can easily arrange and/or segregate all the folders there. The My Workspace option has been a very big positive for me. I've been able to streamline my work and do structured work with this My Workspace option. It's one of my favorite features. Apart from that, I like the integration services offered by UiPath. There is also the Studio option with good features, but I have used Studio very less. It's basically used to design specific automations and applications.

UiPath is very straightforward for creating automation. Especially in the UiPath Orchestrator and UiPath Studio, you can just drag and drop items to create an automation flow. It's that easy. For example, for the reporting automation, I designed the automation flow by using the in-built features. I did not type any command or code. I just picked a feature and dragged and dropped it to create and implement the flow. It was that easy for me.

The UiPath community is very vast, which is a very major plus for us. Whatever doubts we have and whatever knowledge transfer needs to happen can happen pretty quickly with the UiPath community. I find it very useful. Apart from the UiPath community, there is an Academy option where we can take up some courses, and we can do some certifications. That is also very good. I have personally not taken any courses, but I'm aware there are courses because my teammates did the certification courses. So, in terms of value, UiPath is an all-rounder for us because apart from doing automation, we get a whole lot of other things. It's very good.

They can improve the in-app guides and in-app tutorials. One instance where I faced a challenge with UiPath was during the initial week of using UiPath. It can be a little complex to understand at first. The in-app guides or the in-app tutorials could be much more elaborate and detailed. That would have made my entire journey smooth, but that did not happen.

The AI functionality could be improved. We used its AI functionality as a base for our reporting automation. It's not 100% perfect. It's still evolving. We used AI to predict the data modeling and report structure, but it wasn't accurate all the time. It's an evolving functionality, and I hope that it gets corrected over the course of time. The basic functionality is on par with any other software in the market, but it's not helpful for simplifying complex workflows and modules. The AI functionality has also not been helpful in increasing the number of automation, but UiPath, in general, has been very easy to use and helpful for doing more automation.

I have been using UiPath for about eight or nine months.

I haven't faced any issues so far. It has been smooth. I would rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of stability.

I believe that any automation software, including UiPath, is scalable. It's a cloud-based solution, so it's definitely scalable for us. With UiPath, we have been able to do more automation and reduce our overall manual work. Our manual work now is very limited. It has definitely helped us scale up in terms of revenue, efficiency, and performance.

They're definitely very knowledgeable. Until now, I haven't had any complaints about them. Whenever we have any doubts, we just email them our queries with certain documentation, if needed. They get back to us immediately. They are also patient. It's not like they're in a hurry. They're very patient. They make sure that our query is completely resolved before moving on. I would rate them a 9 out of 10.

Positive

In my previous organization, they used a software called Freshworks. It was for automating our reports and sales processes, but I personally did not like that software because it was a little bit complex for me, and it was also costly. There were very few integrations that were offered in that particular software. We were not able to get the results that we needed. So, we looked into different solutions, and that's when I recommended UiPath to my team.

In terms of performance, UiPath has been very reliable. It's a complete cloud solution. The Freshworks software was not a cloud solution. We used it on-premises, but UiPath is a complete cloud solution for us. It's a very reliable and stable solution. We hardly face any downtime, server errors, or something like that with UiPath. That has been a very noticeable difference for me. Apart from that, in terms of complexity, UiPath is not at all complex. It's a structured solution. You choose A, and you can come to B, and you can come to C. It's very structured, which is something that was lacking in Freshworks.

I was involved in its implementation. It was not a complex process. It just required me to sit with the UiPath team and get it implemented. We did not need an elaborate team or effort. Within 15 to 20 days approximately, we were able to set up everything and get it running completely. The implementation process was very smooth.

Its maintenance is also very easy because it's a cloud-based solution. We just need to keep it updated all the time. That's the only thing. We have employed just one person to take care of the maintenance.

It was a combination of the in-house team and UiPath specialists. Their initial training team was very knowledgeable, and they were very pleasant in addressing all our queries with respect to how to design applications, how to create automation, and things like that.

We have definitely seen an ROI. Four employees are now not needed to do reporting. We have been able to transfer them to other projects. It has given some returns within four to five months. We have reduced our overall work time by around 30%. We have been able to use that saved time for other things helpful to bring in more sales, automation, etc.

Our inbound revenue is going up. We have seen a 20% increase in our overall revenue after the introduction of UiPath, but I cannot directly pinpoint that to UiPath because there are other factors as well.

I was not involved in the pricing negotiations, but as far as I understand, my team was happy with the pricing. So, I assume that its price is moderate and competitive. It isn't highly-priced.

To anyone looking into getting this solution, I would advise getting UiPath instantly and integrating it with your business to proceed further. If not UiPath, I would definitely recommend trying any other automation solution because that is the need of the hour. We are humans after all. Manual work is prone to error and less efficient. An automation solution can definitely help you scale your business quickly. UiPath is one of the top ones when it comes to automation. It's a tried, tested, and trusted solution. So, I would suggest going with UiPath, but if you have any concerns about it, you can definitely try other solutions.

Considering the UiPath community, UiPath Academy, and UiPath's all-around capabilities, I would rate it a 9 out of 10.

We started using it to automate manual processes from other departments. We service other departments, to begin with, including the media between the business and the IT departments. 

We started automating very repetitive manual tasks that the business side typically had. For example, if they had to open an application early in the morning to try to process transactions. Then, late in the afternoon, they would have to do the same thing as well. Now we have a robot that does that in the morning and the afternoon, which saves a lot of overtime since it has to be done at six or seven at night, and previously sometimes people would be forced to stay. Therefore, this way, we save that time and overtime. 

Another example would be we use it to download ATM transactions from a webpage. The robot downloads those transactions and then uploads them into our data warehouse, which reports for them. Normally, we don't have that information there.

Another use case would be in a department that would print a bunch of wires late in the afternoon. The department would print them out physically and store them somewhere where they review everything later. Now, with UiPath, we scan the transactions from the Fed, and we just print in PDF and send it to them via email, and it saves a lot of time.

The solution has saved us not just in automating but also in updates. For example, all these service charge codes for these particular lists of credit card accounts. We let the bot run. It ran for a really long time. I can only imagine how much longer it would've taken with humans.

I'm not sure of the exact cost savings. We just started asking about time savers. Some customers have told us it saves about 45 minutes a day. There's another process that only runs once a month. To put it in general terms, it reviews all of our credit card accounts and itemizes them, and makes them into a lot of reports. That saves about eight hours a month. Also, when it comes to helping us avoid overtime, there are 15 minutes of actions to be done, yet we are saving an hour or two of pay every time. 

The ease of automation is great.

The unintended robots are very useful. Just letting it run and having visibility, and controlling how everything works is definitely helpful. Sometimes they want it to run a certain way. Sometimes they'll tell us, "Oh can we tweak it a certain way?" And they do that more often than would I thought they would. It's simple to handle.

I really like the user community. When I go online to search for help or anything else, it's very valuable. Everyone's so helpful online. Whenever I'm stuck, and I'm basically self-taught when it comes to UiPath, I turn to the community. I've learned everything through the community. It is easy to learn.

While we haven't really taken any UiPath Academy classes, we were basically given the platform and just told to learn it ourselves. I did start doing the academy courses however, right off the bat, we had to develop already. I kind of had to do both at the same time, and that's where the online community comes in handy. The courses definitely taught me the basics, at least. And they helped me expand on that.

While UiPath works super well with other applications and browsers and app pages that we use in the RedLINK wires, when it comes to experience, sometimes it doesn't detect what it's supposed to be doing as easily. I have to do a workaround and so sometimes it can be tedious.

We've been using it for about two years.

We've never had an issue with performance stability.

We currently have 20 to 30 processes, and less than ten are via developers. We initially hired developers to help, and then they left, and now we are working on it ourselves. 

I see the potential of its scalability. We're still at a very small scale with it. 

I've used technical support once. They helped me. When the developers set up UiPath for us, it ended up being kind of faulty. What we really needed was the enterprise edition, and some other settings weren't configured for our purposes. I contacted them for help, and we had a Zoom call. They were very friendly. They helped me set it up correctly in the way we needed it. While there were some communication issues, they helped us in the end. 

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution.

I was not directly involved in the initial setup. However, the setup was not exactly right, and I contacted support for help. It seemed pretty straightforward in the end.

We had third-party developers from Peru that helped us to install it and then they just left. We were just given the platform, and we had to teach ourselves how to use it.

We have witnessed an ROI. The company has mentioned the hours saved, and I'm not sure about the money saved.

We did not evaluate other options. 

While we could use UiPath for good causes, like sustainability or the environment, we do not use it in that capacity yet.

We do not use the AI functionality just yet.

I'd advise other potential users to get a partner. We didn't have one. That's what we're doing right now. We're shopping for a partner so we can learn as we develop. Again, we were self-taught and it would've been much easier to dive in with a partner.

I would rate it ten out of ten as it does have massive potential. 

We are a service-based development company and we implement automation for our clients. UiPath is one of the RPA solutions that we use for this.

A recent use case that we implemented for a client involved a macro in an Excel sheet. The macro contained approximately 1,000 lines, and it was being used in an Excel spreadsheet about 10 pages long. They had dropdowns within the sheet that had to be set, depending on the action. They also had to work with some of the logic themselves.

With UiPath, we implemented a solution where the bot will create a task. It first checks to see if all of the necessary conditions are there. If they are, then the bot will automatically run the macro. If instead, some of the values are missing and user input is required, then the bot will create a new task to request the missing items from the user. It uses the UiPath forms and the client will receive an email to say that a task has been created and that it will be completed once the necessary values are selected.

Finally, once all of the values have been selected, the bot will run, use the input, and complete the execution of the macro.

A second use case for us was done using the Action Center. In this case, our clients send emails, and we have API calls that are done in response. Once an email comes in, a message ID is created and assigned to it, then it is turned into a Queue item. At that point, the user is presented with different actions that are dictated by the content of the email.

Depending on the user's selection, there are three or four paths that it can take. Ultimately, the bot will send an ETA and some request data to the appropriate parties, which is controlled by yet another process.

Using UiPath for automation is a little bit costly but it saves a lot of time, and it also reduces human error. When humans perform tasks, there are a lot of errors that come about. However, when a bot performs the same task, the number of errors is significantly reduced. This is the reason that companies are implementing UiPath and undergoing a digital transformation.

In our experience, bots run with minimal errors, in the one or two percentage point range. Of the thousands of items that they process, very few will result in an error. Humans, by contrast, normally have an error rate of 5% or 6%.

It is very easy to develop automation using UiPath, and I would rate it a four out of five in this regard. This is true whether it is IT automation, UI automation, desktop automation, or otherwise. We have even performed Citrix Automation recently, where we used remote runtime. In that case, we had access to a lot of features and this made our work very easy to do.

This product enables us to implement end-to-end automation. Some of our clients use the process mining feature, which includes task capture. Then, based on that, they generate the process design document (PDD). After they have the PDD, the bot is designed using Studio, and then it is ready for deployment. Deploying a bot includes publishing it using Orchestrator, and once it is running, Orchestrator monitors it. From end to end, UiPath is part of the process.

This is important to us because some of our clients are not very technical. They have ideas of what they want to do, so they walk us through the steps in a process. During that time, we will begin using the task capture capability to record what they do, making it easier for us to gather ideas and requirements. The whole process is an easy way to capture good use cases for the client.

Most of our clients are now opting for cloud-based deployment. This is important to them because they don't have to store everything on their on-premises servers. Essentially, they don't have to waste any space.

One of the features that I like is that the bot will continue to work on other tasks, even if one task is blocked because it is waiting for user input. For example, it's very good because whenever we need to have user input, we don't need to use the attended automation. Just because the user is not available to select the actions, it will not break the bot. Rather, the bot will work on other tasks. Once the person manually completes the required action, the bot will resume the pending task.

It is very easy for us to get selectors by using the UI Launch Explorer. I have used other tools that require we visit the webpage and get the selectors manually. This means that we have to inspect the page and find the elements. However, with UiPath, we have the selectors readily available using UI Launch Explorer.

Another good feature is the UiPath Academy. Whenever a new feature is released, we learn about it from the Academy. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of helpfulness for getting employees up to speed. When we review the new courses that they release, we can quickly get a complete idea of the feature that they are presenting.

The UiPath forum is very helpful. It is the best forum available for any of the tools that we have. I would rate the UiPath forum a five out of five.

One of our clients is using the UiPath Apps feature, and although it is easy to use, they are having some issues with it. For example, when they deploy an update, it is pushed to the cloud and then it will break an hour later. There have been two or three such issues and ultimately, they result in a high priority ticket to fix the problem.

I have been working with UiPath for approximately four years.

With respect to stability, the general system is stable. This includes the robots, Automation Cloud, and the Action Center. However, we have had a lot of downtime with UiPath Apps. It had been one or two days per month when our processes were getting blocked and although many of these issues are resolved, last month we had recurring issues with downtime.

The technical support team is very helpful. For anybody with a license, there is an option to raise a ticket based on priority. The support team tries to fix such problems very quickly.

Overall, the support team is very good and I would rate them an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have explored two or more other RPA solutions. One of them is Automation Anywhere, and another is Microsoft Power Automate.

When I explored Power Automate, it didn't have many features. It is a product that is still growing but when I looked at it, UiPath had more features.

In the case of Automation Anywhere, it's a little bit more difficult to work on. As an example, Automation Anywhere does not have ready-made selectors. There is no equivalent to the Ui Launch Explorer so we have to go to the webpage and find the elements by ourselves.

One advantage to Automation Anywhere is that it's a little bit less costly.

Using the Apps feature for one or two of our clients has sped up the time required to develop bots for them. Also, because it is a drag-and-drop interface that only requires a small amount of coding, making it work is much easier.

Our clients dictate the deployment model, whether it is on-premises or cloud-based. One of our clients uses Amazon but the majority of them work using virtual machines that are running on their in-house servers.

The automation saves time and money for our clients, although the amounts vary and are based on the specific solution. As an example, in an email task that we automated, the bots replaced a team of people. On average, the automation saved 28 hours per day for that task.

In general, several hours can be saved per day for each automation.

Due to the reduced costs and other benefits, our clients are ready to create more bots.

UiPath is a little more costly than competing solutions such as Automation Anywhere. 

The cost for licensing is handled by our customers that use the bots.

I have not personally used the AI functionality when creating automations, although some of our clients use features such as Document Understanding for invoice processing. They also use the ML Trainer. These features help them to automate processes that are more complex. For example, when they have 20 or 30 invoices coming in each day, the bot is trained to look at them and it makes the job very easy to do. Also, when the accuracy drops, the bot can wait for input in an attended fashion. This has helped a lot of our clients.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We have two use cases.

One is for our claim accessing process, for which I have developed a process for logging into the client's application. It includes launching the browser and getting logged into the application by entering the username and password and handling two-step verification. Handling that requires some logic. Once logged in, it navigates to the claim status feed and selects the organization's and payer's details. It then enters the required details of the patients. These details are given by the client in an Excel document that the process reads. It searches for the values, one-by-one. If there is no record for the patient whose details are entered, it will throw an error stating that there are no claims present. It captures such exceptions and records them in a separate Excel file.

If that person's claim is present, it fetches 25 to 35 key details from that record and they are written to an Excel document. Once the process is done, the Excels will be sent as email attachments to the client.

The second process that I am currently developing is one where I need to get the data from Google Sheets. This process involves four or five practice management systems. It has to log into each practice management system and, for each one, it needs to schedule appointments based on the data present in the Google Sheet. The process involves navigating to the respective screens, filtering the details, and entering them in a CSV file. Based on that file, we have all the data related to patients' records. The process checks the patients' payment records. There are exception-handling routines and any errors are noted in an Excel sheet. Once all the patients' records have been completed, it closes the application and sends the data to the respective clients. It produces a log file in Excel as an attachment, as well.

Automation has definitely saved us time and money. For example, for data entry, if a person takes around eight hours per day to complete and upload about 200 sets of data, a bot can easily upload around 3,000 to 4,000 sets per day. It reduces the amount of time to get data uploaded. If a person uploads one record in three minutes, the bot can upload the same data in about 30 to 40 seconds. The bot provides much greater time- and cost-efficiency. It speeds up digital transformation.

It has also reduced human error. Among those 200 records that a person can upload per day, mistakes may happen in 10 to 15 records. Bots don't do things incorrectly at any point in time. Values are entered correctly in each field.

As a result, it frees up employee time. If a bot runs for eight hours, a person only has to look at it for a little while, because a bot will definitely do the process perfectly. That means we don't need a human to dedicate much time watching something run end-to-end. If the bot does the process properly for four records, it will definitely do the next 4000 records correctly as well. So there is not much time required of a human to watch the bot.

On the basis of costs in India, where I work, if a person earns 30,000 per month, the cost of the process they work on is 360,000 per year. A bot for the same process may cost 150,000 or 200,000 only. Automating is more cost-efficient than hiring a person to work on the process.

Among the most valuable features is the ability to read Excel and Word documents with API calls.

In the Google platform, I need to generate security-related things like an API key and an API secure code. That enables me to get the data into UiPath. The product is built such that only if all the security requirements are properly done am I able to get the required data.

UiPath is also the best tool for a beginner or someone who has no knowledge of programming. It is easy to learn quickly and to understand. You can get working in it much more quickly than if you had to acquire a programming background.

I would rate the ease of building an automation at 3.8 out of five, as I have only been working in UiPath for the past 11 months. I am now able to understand everything and can design the kinds of processes I need to build. There are many courses available on their website in the UiPath Academy where they completely show you how to do things. Within a short period of time—I spent the first three months in the UiPath Academy—I was able to understand things clearly, including descriptions of the Properties panels and every field. I understand the uses of these Properties.

Also, many of the Activities are pre-built, but if any activities or logical processes are not available, I can get them through third-party packages that are in the UiPath Marketplace. I am able to build automations quickly. In the worst-case scenario, if it's a large project, I can develop that project within two months.

I have used the AI functionality for PDF automations. In these processes, the bot is able to capture the data properly about 70 to 80 percent of the time. But if a document is not proper or it isn't handled the right way, the bot struggles to get the required data. UiPath has to work on this aspect so that the bot will be able to completely capture the data.

There is also room for improvement in the area of third-party integrations. In the last week I have gone through a video for an integration service, but it did not show things end-to-end. Rather, they just explained the connection details only. After performing the steps they showed, I was not able to get things working properly in my process.

I have been using UiPath for around 11 months.

The stability of UiPath is quite good. In some particular areas, the bot struggles a bit and we have to implement Human in the Loop. Those cases are where the bot can't do certain validations. But overall, the solution is stable and accurate in the results.

The scalability is a four out of five. 

At a certain point, we needed support from UiPath. The solution can be integrated with ABBYY. Getting an AABBYY license doesn't happen just like that. You need to get a trial license and it's a long process. We needed support from the UiPath team to get it done.

You can try to get a solution from the UiPath forum or from the documentation sections, but the UiPath support is the best. I have raised three or four support tickets over the year and they have helped me through each issue, completely, to the end. They respond within 24 hours. When you explain your issue to them, they create a step-by-step process to sort it out. And once I solved the issues, they inspected what I had done.

Positive

I used Microsoft Power Automate. I switched because Power Automate is not very user-friendly when compared with UiPath. And when it comes to integrations in the Microsoft product, most of the connectors are still in the preview state. In UiPath, all the integrations are active and enable you to get the desired result. Also, the Microsoft community does not have many active people handling it. With the UiPath community, you get an immediate response for any issue you have posted.

I use the UiPath forums if I have an issue and I'm unable to find a solution or develop my process. If I post it on the forum, in a maximum of two minutes I'll get an email response from other UiPath users, as well as from senior users who may have two or three years' experience. They politely answer my issues. I have also provided solutions to questions in the forum over the past two months. UiPath's user community is absolutely the best one.

The initial setup is completely easy and straightforward. It is just like installing software in a system by clicking "next, next, next." At the end of it, you have Studio in your system. 

If you need to allocate a particular system to Orchestrator, even that is a very simple process and there are videos available on the internet that show you how to set up the process quickly.

Instead of giving a monthly salary to a person, you can get a bot on a yearly basis. It is cost-efficient and will save you money. You'll also get a more accurate and stable result than if you had a human work on it.

Pricing is based on your process. If your process is fairly simple, it will not cost much.

UiPath has enabled me to build automations much more quickly when compared to other tools. If you go with Blue Prism or Automation Anywhere, you need to have some programming language skills to implement things. But UiPath is completely drag-and-drop.

I looked online at which is the best tool. I looked at many details, what each product provides, and decided that UiPath is a better solution as an automation tool.

Overall, UiPath has the best user community and the best, detailed videos. It is easy to understand, there is no coding at all, and even a beginner can create a process in a short period of time. It is also easily integratable. These are the points where it stands out against any other tools.

For us, in some use cases, end-to-end automation means a need for Human in the Loop. There are certain points where the bot is not able to validate things and a human is needed to verify whether the bot has done things properly or not. But bots are able to process 90 percent of an end-to-end process. For monitoring, UiPath has Orchestrator. If any error occurs, the data is immediately updated in Orchestrator and you can easily see the error and the cause, and you can easily resolve it.

In the UiPath Academy, UiPath offers the best content for each module and, after each video, there is a quiz so that we can show we have understood what we have learned from the video. There are also activities and a practice session where we can implement the use cases by practicing them in Studio. If we are stuck at any point after the practice, they have a solution area where they explain the steps you need to implement in Studio to get the desired results. They give sample workflows as well. I don't think any other software tool does this. They even provide detailed, step-by-step videos for third-party integrations.