What is our primary use case?
We use it in our robotics lab to deliver front and back office solutions for the clients. We're a BPO CRM organization, so there is a huge amount of opportunity, not just internally as an organization, but for our clients as well. We use UiPath as a delivery method to find reductions in costs and the like, year on year.
How has it helped my organization?
I would rate the performance benefits a very strong eight out of ten. You have to make sure that you pick the right processes that you're looking to automate.
What is most valuable?
For me, the biggest feature is that my developers love it. And if my developers are happy, then I'm happy. We're totally agnostic and we use multiple providers. But the developers definitely absolutely adore the product.
The speed that in which it can be deployed is something I really like as well because that cuts down on delivery times. I also like the ease of use.
I like the fact that we can program our own .NET to plug into it and there are APIs for multiple different solutions, and the convenience of artificial intelligence and machine-learning and those types of capabilities as well.
What needs improvement?
The new release broke everything, so I'd like to see that not happen next time. All of our automations broke. It happened to one of our centers of excellence. They just upgraded, pressed next, next, next, and probably didn't really go for the due diligence that we put in place, which is to do a controlled release.
I'd also like to see more machine-learning functionality. I'm really excited to see what's actually on the agenda. There's some really strong stuff about machine-learning being adopted. Unstructured data, robotics being able to read unstructured data, is really one of the strong cases for us. That's likely where we'll be going.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's phenomenal. The stability is really good but some of the releases have been a little shaky.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
To scale it is very easy. But you need to know how to scale robotics, it's not just deploying one on a PC somewhere. We do it on VMs in a data center which is fully monitored by a help desk. We know how to scale bots. It is very easy to scale, if you know what you're doing.
How are customer service and technical support?
Support has been very good. One thing that the developers are always talking about is the social networking side of it, whereby the blogs and things like that are ongoing. They really like that, that we can actually find a lot of problems already solved within the community and take solutions from there. And the ticketing system is very quick as well.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We've been involved in RPA since early 2014. In 2014 we were using one provider and then we moved into another provider as well. But then we started to look at UiPath and the way it was performing in our proofs of concept. We felt that with those three providers, and our bespoke solutions as well, we were able to pretty much handle any project that came at us, depending on the infrastructure type, and the applications that are interacted with.
When selecting an RPA vendor, our criteria include ease of use, adoption, skillsets in the country, and the relationship with the vendor. I won't name them, but I have challenges with certain providers out there and the way they actually manage relationships. If I were to look again, relationship would be a very strong indicator. And that was one of the things that attracted us to UiPath in the first place, that relationship, that ease. They are very involved in listening to us.
How was the initial setup?
Two things that attracted me to UiPath when we were doing the evaluation were: First, we'd done a proof of concept and we could not understand - I have some very smart architects and they could not understand - how fast UiPath was performing the tasks. The other factor was the interaction with the client side, the relationship side, with UiPath. Considering some of the challenges I've had with other providers, I think this is a refreshing approach. I'm just hoping that UiPath doesn't outgrow itself and leave that phenomenal customer service behind.
What was our ROI?
We see ROI all the time. We also see performance benefits all the time. We haven't delivered a project where we haven't seen a return on investment using UiPath. The return on investment is normally six to nine months, maybe a little bit less. But we've never not actually been able to achieve a return on investment.
Sometimes it's actually about setting the expectations as well, regarding what you're trying to do. Sometimes it's not about headcount reduction, it's about quality. It can be about looking at what the customer is actually really wanting, and then being able to deliver on what the customer requires for it be a success.
There are some outliers out there, but there is normally a very strong return on investment.
What other advice do I have?
Look at what it is you're trying to achieve. Do due diligence on the assistance that you're going to interact with, the infrastructure that you're going to be managing, and then actually go out and have a look at a few providers. One of the really strong things about UiPath is that they provide evaluation licenses. There's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't try it before you actually start doing it in anger.
We have solution architects, senior developers, developers, business analysts, consultants, help desk, help desk supervisors, infrastructure, and a data center involved. For maintaining and developing UiPath there are 15 people who report directly to me, but the entire support structure is probably closer to 35 people, maybe a little bit more.
In terms of Academy training, we've done the basic and we've done the advanced training as well. The basic training is phenomenal. I think it's groundbreaking. The online university, in my opinion, is revolutionary in this area, when you look at some of the offerings that other providers have.
The advanced training was a little bit of a let down for us. We just didn't get out of it what we were expecting to get out of it. It just didn't achieve what we thought it would, especially for the price. Our expectations were that we would actually be able to sit all our developers in a room and do a process that we had already done, re-engineer it, and make it better. And that never materialized. It was just a little bit of a letdown. But the university piece is absolutely phenomenal.
Overall, UiPath is a very strong nine out of ten. I'm one of these people who doesn't ever leave a five-star review, there's always room to improve. Still, the nine is a very strong nine. This has become our weapon of choice. That speaks volumes.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.