UiPath Reviews

I am an automation consultant and most of the robots that I work on are unattended.

Some of our use cases involve end-to-end automation. One of them is an SAP system where the transaction data, material numbers, and other things are used for T-codes. Based on the value of data in the T-code, it opens other T-codes in the process and updates those registries accordingly. This may include, for example, T-codes one and two. Then, from T-code one, I need to get input with regard to my material numbers. This might be a materials invoice or the invoice numbers of material orders. With those, you have to put it in one T-code and get output.

Based on the output of the T-code one, you need to do the rest of the operations in T-code two and T-code three. Once the job is completed, update all the information about the different T-codes in an Excel sheet and then update it back to the system.

UiPath saves time both from the perspective of a developer and an end-user. I can talk about the two positions because I have been involved in both roles. On the development side, the features make it very easy and tasks that normally take half an hour can be completed in a minute or two.

With respect to the end-user, assume that a process normally takes an hour a day to complete. Once the automation is in place, the whole process will be done in a minute or two. Importantly, the user does not have to monitor the process because it runs in the back end or on a server in a remote location. The entire process will run without monitoring.

At the same time, the user will be informed. Let's say that you have to get some data out of it; most of the time, the data available every few days. Personally, given that I am not normally in the role of the end-user, I have to log in to all of the systems and look for the data. However, if UiPath is configured and developed properly then it will inform you in an email that the data is now available. Similarly, if there is no data available then it can be configured in such a way that the user will be informed of that. This would give the user the opportunity to save and plan to utilize their time for other purposes.

In our company, we have a lot of use cases where we were able to implement unattended automation. This meant that we saved a lot of time and we were able to reutilize the employees for more useful engagements. 

An additional thing that we are able to achieve through using an RPA like UiPath is a reduction in errors. When we are performing any kind of activity, such as a recalculation in Excel, or calculations in a step-by-step process that involves manually copying data between two places, there is a high chance that an error will occur. This is a human error that can be avoided once we implement the automation and move it to production. Ultimately, all of these types of errors will be eliminated.

It is difficult to estimate the total number of errors that we avoid, but I can say that we were able to save time and with each process, the number of errors is reduced.

The most valuable feature is the set of data scraping tools. You can scrape data into your tables, then easily transform it or convert it between formats. If UiPath or another similar automation tool was not there, it would be very difficult to automate something that is a UI- based application. There is no other option to get that back-end data out of it. If we were not able to convert the formatting, or if for whatever reasons we cannot extract the data into a table format, it would be very difficult for us to convert and get the data that we want. The data would be difficult to format and we would spend a lot of time on it.

UiPath provides the data in a table format and in a structured manner, which means that we are able to get the required value from the table and do the necessary calculations on it. It saves us a lot of time in this process.

We have started using the AI functionality but so far, not to any great extent. For example, we were able to identify different types of images while reading an invoice. Prior to using the AI capabilities, we were not able to read them. This is our only use case for AI at the moment, but we plan to explore other activities and possibilities.

We have used the UiPath Academy courses and by doing so, we were able to learn a lot of things. They had examples of use cases that can occur in different scenarios and instead of getting that from a live environment, or during development, we were able to learn it from the Academy and a live example.

With the Studio, we can do basic troubleshooting in the production machine or VM, in case any error occurs. This is helpful because we don't have to move the data back to the development machine.

The integration with APA should be improved with respect to adding data from external sources and being able to bring in data from third-party applications. Also, it should be better the other way around, where UiPath is providing APA data to other applications.

I have been using UiPath for the past four years.

If the application is working fine, without making any updates or changes, then the bot will work as expected about 95% of the time. However, if there are any changes to the end-application made by the developers, or there is a content change, then we definitely have to align to those changes and it will take time.

Generally speaking, we move a process to production once it is stable.

We can easily scale this solution so the scalability is quite good.

We have between 15 and 20 developers in my team who work with UiPath. I am not sure about the number of people on the other teams. In terms of end-users, there are more than 100.

I have developed 30 processes personally, and my team has created more than 200. We plan to continue using UiPath in the future.

We have used technical support and the UiPath technical team is good. Whenever there is help required, and we are not able to find the solution for that from the UiPath documentation, we get a ticket with the support team. Based on the criticality of the process, they help us.

We did not use another RPA solution prior to UiPath.

The initial setup is straightforward and very easy. The main component is called Orchestrator and then there are two more components called Studio and Development Robot. These two are connected to Orchestrator, and once the development is complete, you can do the unit testing on the same machine. After this, you publish the package.

Once the item is published, it will be pushed to the Orchestrator and then connected to the bot. This is where you're going to run the process. Once it is complete the bot will start running. The whole process will take approximately 10 minutes and you can move the data to production.

When the process is running in production, Studio allows you to troubleshoot from there, without having to move it back to the development machine.

I deployed UiPath on my own. They have provided enough documentation.

The pricing and licensing costs seem okay to me, although it is a little bit on the high side.

In the past, you needed to install the Studio license if you wanted to be able to troubleshoot in production. However, that has changed and you no longer need to buy it separately.

My advice for others who are implementing or using UiPath is to ensure that they test the robots and processes thoroughly before moving them to production.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use Studio, attended robots, and Orchestrator.

Our primary use case is automating support services for accounts payable and accounts receivable. We are still implementing and our robots are not live in a production environment yet. For the time being, we are using attended robots but we are looking into unattended robots as well.

We run automations in a virtual environment using VMware, and the implementation was straightforward. It was easy to set up.

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. You don't need any programming skills to be able to leverage the tools. We have used other tools such as Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere, and this solution was easier than those.

On a scale of one to five, judging how beneficial it is, I would rate the training a five. It is very simple and can be easily demonstrated.

From the point that we purchased our UiPath license until we had our first robot was approximately six months. 

In terms of eliminating human errors, this is the expectation once our robots are live in production.

Once our robots are live, we expect to see a fifty percent reduction in time for certain tasks. It will save thousands of hours.

We leverage all of the components in this solution.

The most valuable feature is Studio, which is a very powerful tool.

I am looking forward to new cognitive and artificial intelligence capabilities.

I would like to see voice recognition and better OCR capabilities. Today, we have to leverage other tools for this, so we are hoping that UiPath matures in this area.

This product is very stable, but we have some issues with security.

We have about five people working on automation in our organization.

We have a CSM and they are awesome. On a scale of one to five, I would rate our support from the CSM a five.

Before using this solution, we used to leverage our internal tools.

The initial setup of this application was straightforward. It was easy, and like other applications that use a Windows installer.

We used an integrator to assist us with deployment. I would rate them a three out of five.

We have not seen any ROI because our bots are not yet live. However, we have done a calculation and expect fifty percent savings in time.

The licensing fees for this solution are approximately $100,000 USD annually.

Before choosing this solution we evaluated Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere. UiPath seemed to be the easiest one to implement.

Blue Prism seemed to be too technical for some of our business users, while Automation Anywhere did not have attractive pricing.

This is definitely a solution that I would recommend. From my experience, this is a technology that is easy to leverage among users that do not have a technical background.

This is a good solution, but there are still gaps and the product could be more mature. The OCR capabilities definitely need to be improved.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are using Studio, Orchestrator, attended and unattended robots.

Our primary use for this solution started with automating processes in finance, procurement, and HR. Now, we are researching various directions in logistics.

We do not run our automations in a virtual environment. This is something that we are trying to avoid.

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. I'm an IT-based person, and for IT people it is easy to learn. UiPath claims that it is easy to learn and it's for everybody, but it's not true. For business people, it is hard to learn and hard to understand how to code to make things work. They need a lot of help with things like exception handling. If somebody lacks technical or programming skills then it makes it much more difficult to use. Although UiPath is getting closer to business users, there are still some basic skills that they need to have to make it work.

On a scale of one to five, judging how beneficial it is, I would rate the training a five. When I get new hires it doesn't matter whether they have previous experience in RPA or development, they have to go through all of the basic training from the Academy. This includes the Orchestrator and I've been recommending SAP training because we are experiencing growth in the use of SAP. Going to my team, this is the base, and then we have created our internal framework and standards that also require training. Some people may already have experience with UiPath or Blue Prism, but they still need to take the training from the Academy.

Before I arrived at the company, there were already some automations running. However, fifteen months ago we shut down a couple of robots because they were failing terribly. From that time, it took us five months to create the first robot.

We have a project that combines UiPath with OCR and our integration tool. This allows us to automate processes we use in different projects that are coming from different vendors in different countries. Apart from gathering the information, we are template invoicing. The robots take invoice information and post the results into our SAP and other systems. It is much faster than our original process. This has been implemented in Spain, and we are now releasing it to other countries, one by one.

Using this solution is not just about saving time or reducing the number of staff. It is also for improving stability and decreasing the number of errors that we have. In Spain, where we were implementing a pilot project for purchase orders, we saw a decrease in the number of human errors. When they started, there was an error rate of ten percent. After three months in production, the error rate decreased to five or six percent, and after six months it was one or two percent. Also, even though there was still an error rate, it was consistent and it is something that we can account for.

In terms of money savings, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

The most valuable feature is Studio, which allows developers to specifically focus on development. Orchestrator allows us to connect those things together.

I would like to see some use cases and additional information on the process mining and the OCR features that are being released. There are other products that offer OCR features, and at this point, it is hard for me to determine the benefit of using UiPath for OCR rather than integrating it with another solution. This is not just from a business perspective, but from a development perspective as well. For example, I would like to see how you can connect UiPath to all of the applications to collect the logs and the data. Then, how we can put that information together. If there is a thirty-minute delay then how do you identify whether it was because the person went to lunch, or rather that they were working and thinking.

With respect to the stability, on a scale from one to five, I would rate this solution a three.

The stability of this solution really depends on the developer or the execution. It's not always a UiPath issue. If the process is unstable, it's the issue of the business case and not the actual execution of any development. So it really depends on how you use the platform and how you understand it. We will use a more stable technology, such as alerting through an API, before we go to the UI path.

We have about one hundred licenses for production and four Orchestrators.

Both customer support and technical support are really good. Whenever I have a question, whether it is business, Studio, or Orchestrator related, I usually get an answer. We have our own customer success manager who helps us on a daily basis. I also have connections to the lab and to the production team so I can ask questions there as well.

At this company, they did not have an RPA solution in place before this one.

Personally, I have also used Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism. From my perspective, it's about how you use the tool, and not about which tool you use. Personally, I don't like Automation Anywhere, and I used to be a Blue Prism guy.

I feel that Blue Prism is easier to learn because you can do things in terms of processes or objects. Logically, it is easier. In UiPath there are more options, but it's also harder to learn because you need to create a logical structure on your own. It doesn't show you how to do that in an easier way. UiPath has more connections and more inbuilt stuff than Blue Prism, but on the other hand, the navigation between the types of variables is slightly different. It's not a disadvantage, but it is something that takes time to learn.

I find that Automation Anywhere is not that user-friendly. For example, in Blue Prism you have loops that you can put a component into. In Automation Anywhere, you have to copy all of those stages, one-by-one. You cannot create a loop, which is basic.

We have not been tracking ROI yet, although we are working on it. It is difficult to calculate because to collect the information for each process it requires a logging system. Each project will require a specific logging system so that we can collect the same information to compare and evaluate it. We have to consider our development costs, maintenance costs, licensing costs, etc. At this point, we do not have enough people to work on this, so it is a work in progress.

They ran a selection process here and my understanding is that Blue Prism was not able to provide a free Studio license, unlike the policy they now have in place. This is the reason that UiPath was selected. 

The majority of our use cases are unattended, and that is the way that you should go. We do use attended bots as digital assistants, where you have small automations that are triggered by the users on their own to direct the robot. These are two separate products.

My advice to anybody who is researching this solution is not to be scared to use it. Play with it as much as possible and see if it brings value. There are different applications that can bring more value in certain cases.

Overall, this is a good solution, but there are always ways to improve a product.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

At Forest Service, we have a massive onboarding season. Because our primary mission is to combat forest fires, we have a huge intake of firefighters that we hire every season. Because of that, there's a lot of onboarding material that needs to be processed through HR, literally tens of thousands of people in such a short amount of time. I can see, potentially, RPA being able to help with some of the manual work that we do.

It's probably the best bang for our buck, but there are certainly other use cases potentially. That is the area that I'm more familiar with, though.

UiPath can batch process a lot of the hands-on manual work that nobody wants to do. I think that's probably its best value. That said, it does kind of highlight the need for standardized processes, which can be challenging at times, specifically in our space. Just having formalized documentation about what the end-to-end process should be is key. Once that's standardized, then it's a lot easier to leverage UiPath for automation.

Having looked at other RPA software, I think UiPath is the most user-friendly. At the same time, it's robust enough to customize and get into the source code. It's accessible, but also has enough features for more hands-on developers to be able to do what they need to do. From the two that I've seen, it was the more user-friendly one.

I have used UiPath's Academy for some of the foundational level training, not the more advanced ones. I think I had some feedback at the time. It's been a few months since I've taken it. Overall it was pretty good.

I feel like it's pretty good as it is. One thing I would change is when you're nesting certain workflows, it can get a little complicated as you start getting deeper. For example, if you have multiple blocks that need to live inside each other, and you're using a library to drag stuff or just insert it, it can be very challenging from a visual level to see what level it's in or how deeply nested it is. It's hard to roll it up into a parent level display. So, that's a little confusing sometimes. I guess, if there's any way to improve that, I think that would be helpful.

I think UiPath uses VBScript. If there were some kind of library of common things that developers could use, that would be helpful, but it's not a big deal. You can just Google that stuff. Making something like that accessible would be nice, but I don't think it's crucial.

The big question on my end is just how to scale and keep things stabilized. This is such a new technology for us, that there's a lot of questions around it. I think, being able to answer that would be helpful. I don't really know the answer.

I don't know about technical support. We were talking to a developer that was helping us at the time just to walk us through. Our experience with the developer was good. They have a very knowledgeable staff. They're very eager to help us figure stuff out. All in all, it was a positive experience.

The setup, at least from the local side, makes sense. This could be just more of my experience since my expertise in UiPath is not as high as it could be. I'm not super familiar with how Orchestrator is deployed and managed, in terms of multiple bots and scheduling, but that's probably a limitation more on my end then with UiPath.

We are currently in the research stage. It's more like proof of concept work. Right now, it's really about convincing people that this is a technology to look at and pay attention to. We are trying to convince the people with the authority that this is a good way to invest.

I have local test environments that I've used personally. At Forest Service, they're very visually oriented. If you talk to them about it, they won't get it. They need to see it to believe it. So, I've been trying to do that locally in my own environment. I have been building use cases that I think are parallel to what we're trying to do, to demonstrate the value.

We looked at a couple of alternatives. Automation Anywhere was one of them. I haven't looked at the other ones, since we chose UiPath pretty early on, having heard about them previously. We also considered some others like Pega and a few others.

Automation technology is non-existent in our company currently, but definitely something that should be leveraged for. I think there's a lot of value in being able to free up people from doing small repetitive tasks and just be more strategic focused. The challenge, really, is just convincing people that they're not going to lose their jobs. We need to show them that we're freeing up their time to be more valuable. The challenge is just educating people about what it actually is.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. I think it's going a lot of places. It's definitely more advanced than some of the other ones that I've seen. UiPath is probably the best one that we've seen so far.

My advice is to make sure you have your processes documented before you try to fix something that can't be fixed through robotic process automation. At a fundamental level, your organization needs to be ready for it. It's not a magic bullet to fix stuff that's confusing at your organization level. But, if you have it straight and documented and you're doing high volume amounts of it then you should use this to free up people's time and make them do better work. I think it would be useful.

Primary use case is to find the highest value add processes and automate them to allow people to work on other things, which are of higher value and more strategic.

I currently have a team of about 15 people on my team, as a central team. We are at 35 licenses, so we have about 35 developers across the company.

We are still in the process of maturing to the point where people think about RPA first. We're still running around looking for the processes, teaching and helping people to get there. Our culture shift hasn't happened yet.

The solutions has meet our expectations, even a bit more than that.

• Rapid development: If we can develop something in four weeks, then see value back, that is big for us.
• The quick delivery is good.
• The solution is easy to use.

Managing the infrastructure UiPath is running on is a lot harder than it seems. In the app development world, there's things called Docker containers that sort of help you containerize what your thing is running on, then it is in code. If we could get that, it would go a long way. Otherwise, I will have trouble scaling, because every time I scale, it's another manual setup of the infrastructure. I could automate that too, but the right solution is to have this working in containers, not a bot running around getting rid of pop-ups, and installing and uninstalling Chrome.

Working at an enterprise is harder, because we have security concerns, infrastructure, and governance. So, how do you create these virtual users? Because now someone has to own the credentials, but that's an anonymous user who has access to the credentials, and they have access to systems. All of this stuff is hard.

The stability is not that good yet for whatever reasons. We have a lot of safety critical things that have to be 99.999% availability, so we're struggling a little bit with those. For the non-critical processes, it does a great job.

As a product, UiPath is very scalable. UiPath has to run on some infrastructure, and that infrastructure and security is not scalable yet. I'm not sure what the best practices are to avoid that. 

How do you leverage a scalable infrastructures? Let's say a Windows Server 2016 version, because I know UiPath supports it. However, in an enterprise environment, there are security concerns when I have anonymous users with internet access and interactive logins to a Windows Server. As a matter of fact, my security team says, "No." 

In these areas, there is a lot of opportunity. Because, in reality, this is what is keeping me from scaling. I have the business cases. My business users want it. I have the development talent to do it. My issue is with the infrastructure. 

Their customer support is very responsive. Sometimes it can be hard to communicate, because we are going back and forth in a forum type of environment. After three back-and-forths, it should just be a phone call. 

We put everyone through the UiPath Academy RPA training courses: The foundation and advanced framework. Some people struggle with the questions being asked which aren't on the videos. 

The advanced framework is a difficult course. People take it and they don't get the concepts yet, so it needs to be thought through again. 

We haven't actualized the value. We save people time, but then they're doing something else, and you have to quantify that into the value, which gets really grey and hard to do. As far as a head count reduction, we haven't done any of that.

The performance benefits are good. Everyone is happy. When the thing is working and it's working great, they love it because we are getting value.

There is a lot of focus on new features going forward, integrating more with AI, and that's great.

Get started using the product yesterday. You're already too late.

Currently, we use UiPath in multiple types of use cases and build innovations for our clients to improve their system operations. We don't plan to implement AI in our automations in the near future. We're interested in that market, but it's a long journey, and it's a little advanced for us right now.

UiPath is helping our organization with its environmental, social, and governance automation space. Though it's currently at a beginner stage, it is progressing, and we expect to see improvements. UiPath has helped us free up staff for other projects. We have engaged our employees in working with UiPath through presentations. 

UiPath's integration features are highly valuable to us. We are able to achieve a lot with them.

For the moment, I don't see any explicit areas for improvement. However, having UiPath come up with unique features or advancements would be beneficial.

I have used UiPath for five years.

I don't see any drawbacks because our content is not down over time. We keep it updated consistently.

As our environment has grown, I haven’t encountered any specific issues or limitations.

I rate UiPath support nine out of 10. It's great, but sometimes we see delays. We ask a question, and they have to get back to us later with an answer. Otherwise, I don't see any drawbacks.

Positive

We previously tried out another automation app, but it didn't meet our expectations for handling exceptions and managing complex workflows.

Deploying UiPath was straightforward.

UiPath is the best tool, but the price is challenging from a management perspective. The cost-benefit equation might not work out favorably for some smaller organizations.

I rate UiPath 10 out of 10.

Our primary use case involves the democratization of software through the Sysen Lever and Power User Program. Essentially, we are trying to automate complex processes that can be easily rules-based, eliminating the need for repetitive motions.

UiPath helped relieve some of the burden related to paperwork and regulation, making people happy and excited about new opportunities.

The drag-and-drop features are useful, and having the ability to integrate technical scripting is beneficial. It speeds up development while offering additional flexibility.

Scaling efficiently and supporting people with technical information has been challenging.

We have encountered scalability issues trying to figure out how to make the operations work with different setups. My particular employee group is all remote.

I did not evaluate other options before choosing iMac.

I rate UiPath an eight out of ten.

We use it mostly for the banking and insurance domains. We are a service-based company and the tools we use depend on our clients' requirements.

UiPath provides scalability, quality, and a high level of accuracy. It has definitely reduced human error.

It also helps minimize the on-premises footprint, which is important for our clients' environments.

The most valuable features include

• multi-bot architecture
• UiPath Studio
• Test Manager.

It is easy to build automations with this solution as well. We are able to implement end-to-end automation.

There are also build connectors for Salesforce and SAP. Before the connectors, we could only automate the GUI. Now, it is very easy to integrate on the back end as well.

The UiPath Academy courses are also helpful. When a feature or release comes out, they demonstrate them in the Academy.

And if there are any issues, the UiPath community forum helps us to check whether others are also facing these issues. There are a lot of benefits from that.

For some of the cognitive features we have to learn the integration side. Other than that, everything is fine.

I have been using UiPath for nearly three years.

The LTS version is very stable.

It is also definitely scalable. I would recommend it for any size of company, from small to large. For example, if a small company only needs UiPath Studio, they can have it. They don't need UiPath Orchestrator. They can run things with Studio only. There are a lot of options with UiPath.

Their support is good to have, especially for priority issues. 

One thing that would be helpful is if the support team could quickly help us when we raise a ticket. It takes them at least one or two hours to get back to us. With Automation Anywhere, if there is a Severity 1 issue, their support responds within 15 minutes.

Positive

Setting it up is very easy.

The amount of time it takes depends on the client's security requirements. Some teams have restrictions and documentation on how things should be done. But once everything has been verified, deployment will take one to two hours.

Once it's deployed, it's the validation checks that take some time but it depends upon the project: the supporting files and checking that all the integrations are correctly mapped.

In terms of project deployment, we generally have three people involved. One of them will completely handle monitoring and supporting, as well as the Control Room and any logs or administrative tasks. The other two handle change requests.

As for maintenance, our setup is on-premises and we have an internal team that takes care of situations when the server is down. They will restart it and do patch updates, which they will inform us about.

We are using the Enterprise version. We are exploring using it in the cloud, but some of our banking clients do not accept the cloud because of security issues so we go for on-prem only in those cases.

We are not fully using UiPath's AI functionality but we are doing some PoCs, based on our clients' requirements, to check the feasibility. For that, we are using the Community Edition. As for UiPath speeding up digital transformation, I'm not sure. It depends on the process involved.

Overall, I don't see a need for any additional features. I don't have any difficulty using UiPath.