UiPath Reviews

We use UiPath for a lot of different scenarios including recording daily time capture, ordering meals for teams, and more technical work related to tax and audit. The most common uses for me personally are for drafting and sending emails. This has saved a countless hours of time. Basically, if it can be automated then we are automating it.

UiPath has opened up a lot of opportunities in our organization to save time through automation, but maybe even more importantly, it has created jobs and opportunities for many who want to work in the tech space. This work is highly satisfying and makes a real impact on the quality of life for those involved.

My favorite features and upgrades that I have found the most valuable are the ability to create custom activities specific to our organization's needs. This ability to customize what we need has really opened up opportunities to automate programs that otherwise would not work properly. Legacy systems can be finicky, but this feature makes it possible to use APIs and get the work done that we need.

I work in a highly regulated field and so many of the features offered by UiPath are not allowed because of one reason or another. I would definitely appreciate efforts to be made to build useful tools that meet regulatory standards in different fields so that we can all get the most out of automation.

We have been using this solution for two and a half years.

We use many different solutions, but I am personally most familiar with UiPath

If you are a smaller organization, use the free community version of the software to get a feel for its features and abilities. Then, once you are comfortable with how it can be applied, work with UiPath to implement it. It will take sacrifice, but the returns are great.

We evaluated all options and decided on different tools for different scenarios. These tools include Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, etc. 

One use is in our corporate tax accounting group. Our environment includes systems such as SAP, Vertex, several homegrown, and of course Excel. Other use cases include automating a timekeeping system and performing cell phone bill analysis. Environmentally, all use cases involve different systems.

For corporate tax accounting, we use UiPath to pull data from multiple sources (i.e. SAP, Vertex, etc), and then use multiple pivot tables in Excel. They were doing this manually, and it consumed about 40 man-hours per month. With UiPath, we have that down to about five hours per month.  

The most valuable feature is the ability to stop the process after it has been started by an individual user. This allows for some dynamic events, but still gain the automation. The underlying architecture (i.e. Elastic stack) is decent, but there probably needs to be better ties there to maintain at least an n-1 version on the Elastic stack.

Improvement should definitely be made in the area of screen capture, where Adobe Flash is still being used. Trying to 'read' a screenshot (vs looking at HTML) was a challenge, and even when Flash goes away, there will always be a need to do a screenshot and then get data from it.

We have been using the product for about two and a half years.

In general, at least for us, product has been very stable, but we are not doing extremes with it.

It will scale somewhat both vertically and horizontally. The basic solution for that will be to add more servers.

No other solutions were tried.  

The actual UiPath install was somewhat complex. We did have a learning curve on the elastic stack.

We implemented this solution in-house.

You need IT support in installation and operations. This is not the job of 'just' plug and run.  Costing and licensing were generally in line with expectations of this type of software.

We looked at the top three providers in this space, including Blue Prism.

Overall, the product is good, and we are happy with it. There is always a concern about the company's business viability, but that is a risk with any software company

We use Orchestrator, Studio, and of course the bots for indexing documents received from outside providers.

The best example of the way this product has improved how our organization functions is by the increase in efficiency it has helped us achieve.

The most valuable features are the ability to schedule tasks and using Orchestrator to centrally manage our bots.

Areas of this solution that have room for improvement are a couple of activities that have issues. We would like to incorporate machine learning so that we can do some of the quality checks that we do automatically instead of relying 100% on manual quality review by humans.

Additional features that we would like to see included in the next release are those they seem to already have planned. I am very intrigued by the AI capabilities that we saw in demonstrations. Having that capability would be absolutely fantastic.

On a scale from one to five where one is not stable and five is very stable, I would rate the stability of UiPath platform as about a four. There are two activities that we use that fail about 5% of the time. UiPath is fixing that — as far as we understand — and so we should get a solution very soon.

We currently have just two people in our organization involved in the automation program. That could potentially expand under the right circumstances.

Our team has had the opportunity to use the UiPath Academy RPA training. On a scale from one to five where one is the least beneficial and five is very beneficial, I would rate the UiPath Academy in training our team as a five-out-of-five. We literally started at ground zero with UiPath software, and, without the training, I don't think we would know exactly what it can do.

I also think the source support and technical support for this solution are both very good.

From the time we purchased our UK UiPath license until we had your first robot in production was really before purchase. We had a proof of concept opportunity prior to purchasing the product, so we could make sure it worked for our purposes.

The initial setup process was straightforward. We started with just Studio, and not Orchestrator. Our deployment was just a simple matter of installing Studio. It was very simple to install.

We have not seen a return on investment in a way that we can account for exactly because we have not done that evaluation. At this point, we have projected some ROI numbers but we don't have the final ROI. I think it did not take long to see the ROI as it didn't take months. It probably just took a few days to see a difference.

The performance benefits we have seen at this stage of our deployment is in the form of increased productivity. So, in our development processes, we have at least doubled the performance of the process we have automated.

The solution also helped to eliminate human errors. I really don't know the percentages we have not done that evaluation, but I know it does eliminate them as it is evident in the results.

On top of that, the solution saves our organization time which is also evident in the fact that the staff members who are using the bots can double their performance.

On a scale from one to five with one being the most difficult and five being very easy, I would rate the interface of the UiPath platform as a four-out-of-five. I chose that rating only because our legacy software is a bit difficult to automate. The selectors end up not always being accurate.

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate the product overall as a nine. I don't think I have enough understanding to give it a ten. However, it seems from our investigation of other platforms, that UiPath is one of the easiest RPA systems to learn and use.

My advice to anyone considering RPA as a solution is to do your homework upfront. Learn what the platforms can do before you just pick one and start trying to automate.

We are using UiPath Studio, Orchestrator, and attended bots.

We are automating 12 shared services processes. They are from the finance, HR, and procurement areas. These processes are run at a high frequency and are required to be captured on two different platforms. We have implemented this solution to stop entry clerks from having to do the same job twice, on two different platforms.

We run automations in a virtual environment and it is successful. The implementation was fast and we realized the benefits quickly. Currently, we have deployed three processes and we are going to roll out more processes in patches.

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. Some of these processes have difficult exceptions that had to be handled, which is why we opted for the attended robots.

On a scale of one to five, judging how beneficial it is, I would rate the training a five. The training is rich in content and the material, products, and methodologies are explained well. The concept of automation can be very easily digested by anyone, even if they are non-technical.

From the point that we purchased our UiPath license until we had our first robot was approximately a month and a half. I was not the person doing the configuration, but I managed the process through interaction with the technical team. It was a straightforward and easy process.

We have realized performance benefits through the use of this solution. We were able to decrease the processing time of one of the processes from 15 minutes, under certain assumptions, to one minute and four seconds.

One of the calculations that we have done to determine the time we have saved is for one type of process. It used to take 7,000 person-days each year but now takes only 160 person-days a year.

Using this solution has eliminated a lot of human errors. It is now done based on preset values, activities, and rules. Exceptions are properly handled and the robot will take the information from the source system, which is fundamentally correct all of the time. The robot only needs to capture the data as it is from the source, and copy it to the destination, and this eliminates the errors. When humans are in the middle of the process, mistakes can happen.

The design capability in Studio is great.

The way that you can monitor the robots within Orchestrator is helpful.

Together, the aggregated features add value to the day-to-day operations of the business.

I would like to see more options in terms of configuration.

More information should be made available on the AI Fabric features, and how it can be used as part of a larger ecosystem.

Unattended robots could be cheaper.

So far, we have not noticed any crashes or any issues with the platform itself.

In total with the partner that we are working with, we have 12 team members.

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

RPA was on the strategic roadmap for the transformation of the organization. When we came across this plan for the shared service teams and operations, we started to build a use case and try to see how RPA can help us. Basically, it's a strategic thing for my organization and we will continue scaling it up to other business areas.

We had assistance from a local partner in Saudi Arabia. I would rate our experience with them five out of five. They have the right capabilities and the right knowledge. They were committed and dedicated to the successful completion of this project.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this solution. The capabilities of the platform are good, as is their presence in the market. They have a very qualified team that gives you all the possible support, can answer your questions, collaborate with you, and ensure that you are on the right path to completing your automation projects. They try as much as possible to make your story a success.

They handled the PoC for us, and we implemented the full solution as soon as it was successful.

The time freed up for our employees allows us to enhance and scale up their competencies and capabilities.

This solution is very good. The team is effective and they are constantly focusing on the product's roadmap and enhancements. As a platform in the ecosystem, this is a promising product for anyone who is considering automation projects in any organization.

My advice to anybody who is researching this type of solution is to have a look at UiPath. Take an in-depth look at their fabulous knowledge base that is available on the product.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for the financial processes. 

In our company, we are freeing up 14,000 hours per month.

All of the UiPath's components, meaning Studio, Orchestrator, and Unattended Robotics, are really important for us because they offer really clean processes. The one that generates more value for us is the Orchestrator because we are planning to really scale up the factory. It helps us to have an overview and control. With the insights that they announced recently, I hope we have really great control over it in the company.

In terms of ease of use, I would rate the solution five out of five. It's really intuitive and any people that have the basics of coding can handle it. 

In the next release, they need enterprise connect. That's something we were wondering about. 

The solution could maybe use more artificial intelligence components or stuff we can start to use in the AI field. 

It could use an easy integration with SAP. Most of the processes of our company are in SAP. Sometimes it's kind of tricky to automate it.

I'd rate the stability four out of five. We haven't presented problems but sometimes with the UiPath robot, the robot attended license breaks.

We have reached out to technical support. We are in Columbia so sometimes there are slow responses because they don't have too much capacity to attend to us in Latin America. It could be better.

Our time to market in implementing our first robot was four months because it was new for everyone in the company. We started too many processes at the same time and we were preparing everything around the company. It was slow. It was four or five months.

The initial setup was easy. We didn't have any problems.

We implemented the solution ourselves. Our IT department and our robotics architect handled it. We also had UiPath help us with the set up as well.

I'd rate their assistance five out of five. They helped us a lot.

Unattended robot costs are high.

For our company, we have money to buy the solution and we have a huge contract with UiPath, but for companies that are smaller, the costs are too high. For example, a company that is not too big, because they have to pay in dollars, may suffer because conversion rates are high.

When we started we started with UiPath and Blue Prism. We made 14 processes with each and we decided to stay with UiPath. Mostly because of the IT architecture. We really like the Orchestrator, for example. It was like a huge consideration we had because Blue Prism is like a closed book and we didn't like it too much.

We utilize the full UiPath package. We are all on the cloud using the Microsoft Azure platform. 

We also use it within the virtual environment. It has been tough implementing it. Sometimes it doesn't identify the selectors or the images. It has a higher risk of failure. It's risky to have a centralized process.

We plan on automating the drilling process, the upstream and midstream process of the company, and the transportation of oil and gas for the company. Those are the main areas for us that we are aiming to automate. We started with back processes such as financial processes, logistic processes, and HR processes because they are not the core. As we continue learning about it, we will focus on the back-office processes.

A prerequisite for us in the company is to go through the UiPath RPA Training Academy. They have many courses, including foundations and advanced certifications. I'd rate the Training Academy four out of five. If they didn't explain too many things that would be great. They do basic stuff that will help people have a different mindset about it. They need more of an overview. Use cases, examples and more explanations about the activities in the UiPath would be useful. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We are using the attended, unattended, and Orchestrator components of this solution.

Our primary use case is developing automation around revenue cycle management in the healthcare space.

We run automations in a virtual environment and we are very happy with that ability. It is much more time-consuming when compared to running it directly on the server, but it is very reliable and it is a great way to create automations that you wouldn't otherwise be able to create. Of course, we prefer to go directly to the same environment.

With respect to how easy it is to automate our company's processes, on a scale of one to five, I would rate it a four. In order for me to give it a five, it would have to be such that a user could go in and develop it easily with a point and a click. I think it would be extremely difficult to build a platform that was that simple for the end-user, but I think UiPath has come a long way and is very good at making it easier and easier as we go along.

We have at least ten developers who have gone through the certification training with the UiPath Academy. On a scale of one to five, judging how beneficial it is, I would rate the training four and a half. The training is wonderful. There are certain elements of the training platform that are not keeping up with the product though. Also, some of the things that are in the documentation are not up to date. Being a little outdated, it can be kind of frustrating for the people that are going through it. But, it's a great way for people to get a good understanding of how to use all of the elements of the process.

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

In terms of eliminating human errors, they are one hundred percent gone. When we build the bots we build them right, and there are no more human errors.

With respect to saving time, for the processes that we have built, it saves at least ninety percent of the time that humans were taking. We have to have somebody that monitors the bots. In case they stop, they have to start them up again.

We are a development shop for UiPath, so we use the Studio all day long.

We really like the Orchestrator and how I'm able to see what's going on with all of the different automations.

On the development side, more documentation on how to structure the setup for different environments would be helpful. Our biggest struggle had to do with questions like:

• Do I need to have fifty monitors to run fifty different bots?
• Do I need to have fifty separate computers around fifty different processes at the same time?

There was no really good documentation to teach us how to do that, so there was a bunch of trial and error involved in figuring it out.

We know that we didn't want on-premises computers, but we didn't have any documentation to explain how to set them up in the cloud. We went through several different iterations before we finally got that right.

Ultimately, it took us about three months before we decided on the structure that we wanted, so better documentation on infrastructure would be very helpful.

The product, itself, is generally very stable. On a scale from one to five, I would rate the stability a four. We do have situations where we've run some updates and then ended up with some OCR things breaking on us. But overall, we build automations for our customers and they don't really know that there are any problems whatsoever, because they're generally pretty easy to resolve.

We have approximately twenty people involved in the automation side of the business, but it's growing rapidly.

I have not used technical support other than the online forum.

This was our first RPA implementation.

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward. It just works. You download it from the cloud and install it on your computer. You might have to update your .NET framework, so make sure that it works. It is very visual and very intuitive, so you're up and running in no time with Studio. With Orchestrator, it takes a little bit of getting used to in terms of matching up Orchestrator with the computers that it's linked to but it took hardly any time for us.

We deployed the solution ourselves.

We have seen benefits, but I would say that it took us longer than most because initially, we were building through an RDP connection. We were also connecting to a software platform that is inherently slow. Between these two things, it took a lot of extra work to get it running and recognizing all of the images and stuff like that.

I can say for sure that we've seen savings on efficiency and labor for performing the tasks that we've automated. As a result of that, we've invested a lot more in training developers and building their skills. We're cash negative on the deal, but it's because we believe in the product. For the processes that we are actually doing, we are seeing savings right away, which is why we're investing more in UiPath.

For people who are researching this type of solution, I would suggest that they test all of them out. All of them give you an opportunity to try them. We initially made our decision to go with UiPath after looking at Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism. One of the primary factors that drove us to UiPath was developer feedback. Asking developers what platform they would choose to develop on, all of them said UiPath because it's very flexible and very intuitive. A lot of people are familiar with the .NET framework, so it's easy.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to first speak with people who have already deployed it in a similar type of target environment. Once you know how to set it up, it's easy. It depends on the infrastructure that you want, or need, for your organization. Otherwise, it's just going to be a bunch of trial and error.

From a cost perspective, the unattended bots are obviously much cheaper than the attended bots. However, to build a bot to automate a process where an unattended bot can run it is also more costly for the end-user. For us, it makes more sense to have attended bots. We also have access to a very low-cost labor pool. Because of that, it's cheaper for me to just have somebody monitoring the bots, running them manually.

Overall, this solution is awesome. I'm very excited about all of the new things. We've been doing automations for about eighteen months, and with the product from that time, to where we are today, many new things have come in. I mentioned the problems that we had with the RDP connection but Computer Vision comes out, and it makes things much easier and much more reliable. Fortunately, all those have now switched over to running directly on the servers where we're running the software, so the need for us has gone way. At the same time, I have used Computer Vision and it's great.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

RPA overall is about routine, mundane, structured tasks. We use a number of them at my client's work in terms of how do we do back office reporting for general deliverables, contract compliance, etc. 

We had a few different reports that we had to do every month. We have to hand-jam them into a very poorly-formatted database which had weird drop-downs. Instead of entering them manually, and spending a day or month just punching in titles and numbers, we compile it onto an Excel sheet and have a bot run and dump all that information. 

All I have to do is tweak what information has changed from month to month. This has made my life a lot easier.

When I was first introduced to UiPath, I stated that I am very adamantly not a coder. I hate code, lines, and missing that semicolon somewhere in there. Being able to understand that your path is structured as a process flow, you are still able to declare variables, and ensure the background logic is sound. You are also able to really visualize what the process needs to do and the paths that it needs to take: true, false, etc. So, it has been very useful in terms of crafting it.

To exceed the expectations, it needs to be easy to debug, not only easy to craft. You need to be able to make it truly do what you want it to do. As a user, you have an idea of what you want it to do. However, when you hit run, it doesn't always do it, then you have to figure out why. That ends up being the majority of your development time. UiPath does pose a bit of a challenge in terms of easy to understand errors, where it's getting stuck, or what was the logic behind the process that we were trying to do from a UiPath standpoint. Making improvements to these would help out a more in terms of being able to make it more user-friendly.

Looking to go from structured to unstructured data, then UiPath needs to be able to handle understanding natural language and scanning of documents which are not well-written or visible, in terms scanning quality. These are probably the easiest target areas to improve on first.

If I'm using it as an attended bot, it's pretty stable. When you discussing unattended bots, anything could go wrong in the entire stack. We have found times, if I run UiPath for a week, and it needs to simply loop a PowerPoint presentation, come back in a week, then sometimes the PowerPoint will be dead. It is harder to understand if it was UiPath's fault or if it was because the device decided to do a random Windows update and restart itself. It could be a litany reasons, but even then, I can't be 100% confident that the unattended bot is going to run forever.

It would have been hard to set up without some basic training and basic use cases to practice through first. After some familiarity with the product, it is not hard to set up.

We have seen ROI across the board.

It has limited human errors within the confines of how bots were constructed on what we needed them to do.

My specific process that I use it on went from a day to about 15 minutes (time savings).

All the RPA tools are good for different things. For my very simple process, I didn't go with Automation Anywhere because setting up the Orchestrator and turning on the server is a pain. I have had any experience dealing with Blue Prism.

The primary use case of UiPath, with every organization that I've worked with as a consultant, has been to make business processes more efficient and the work of their employees more enjoyable. 

By utilizing this technology, you're able to get value through your value streams quicker. When you realize value, that means you can work with your customers more quickly, as well as build customer loyalty and employer loyalty. These have definitely been some of the byproducts of using the software.

When I was working as an RPA manager, managing a program for an insurance company which supported insurance lifecycle processing, one of the components was that they had to review insurance policies annually. It was very cumbersome. We were talking anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 daily. It was almost a 20-FTE process. We were able to automate that completely.

However, the real value came when the organization understood how to apply RPA and it actually began creating brand-new business processes specifically for RPA. So instead of hiring new people, they said, "Hey, we've always wanted to do this, we don't have the budget to bring on and train people, so let's build bots to do it from day zero." Once they were able to understand that I could do more than just automate processes, that I could build new business lines with bots, that was an incredibly valuable result of using this software.

The benefits are very high when you automate business processes. Before using RPA, I was working in technology, building macros and things of that nature. But the way we're able to build sustainable, functional bots that really work well in the long-term makes the benefit a ten out of ten.

This is going to be an interesting answer, but the most valuable feature of the software is not the software itself, but the community that supports it. When I first started learning the software to support a program, I had to self-teach; there wasn't a budget for training. But going through their learning platform and then connecting with the community when I didn't understand how to utilize some of the functionality, that was far more powerful than the product itself. The network around the product is amazing.

The great thing about the UiPath RPA Academy is that it's not stagnant. Even though my first go at getting certified as a developer was three years ago, I literally have to go back the Academy and learn it every year because there are new features and new functionality. An example is the RE Framework they've incorporated. The living nature of the Academy gives a lot of value. But hands-down, the way that they give practical exercises, the fact that they give you applications you can download to learn how to interact with bots by simulating an actual operational environment, makes it a very impactful learning experience.

In addition, I find the solution easy to use. I have personal experience using all three of the major software vendors that are in this space right now, including Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, and I would put UiPath as number-one, specifically from a learning perspective. I've been able to take people with absolutely zero technical background and quickly scale them up in a matter of weeks so they're building bots. I haven't been able to accomplish that same feat with the other platforms.

Being a person who has held every RPA role from developer to analyst, architect, and executive, one feature I think it needs - from a documentation perspective - is the ability to easily extract variable details and data. They do have a Variables panel that you frequently interact with, but I constantly have situations where those need to be adjusted or I want to be able to present those to a business. Sometimes it's difficult to extract those, and if you're not tracking them while you build, you can quickly get into 200 to 300 variables in use, especially using the RE Framework where you're passing workflow arguments in and out. I would like to see something like that.

In addition - and obviously UiPath is aware of this - we have to continue to improve the OCR capability. Computer Vision is excellent. I've used it on Azure. I've created PeopleSoft environments and worked through the Computer Vision feature. It works amazingly in a Citrix environment. But I speak with multiple organizations and a lot of them have the same problem of processing documentation from the mail room or from vendors, etc. That's a huge component. If we can get that embedded in UiPath, so we don't have to rely solely on OCR vendors like Captiva or ABBYY, that would be a huge step forward in being able to service all organizations.

There could be improved logging and functionality. But if you truly understand the software, adding logging to what the bot is already doing is as simple as typing on the right line. It's incredibly easy and you can embed it. Even though what it currently logs is limited, it's easy enough to create logs or reporting without a lot of effort.

Outside of that, it's really hard to come up with other recommendations. The software is solid.

I was recently reading about the document processing framework that they just implemented. I gave a demo two weeks ago on the Computer Vision functionality that was in beta. So the sustainability is there. They're focused not on just how good RPA is and on making it better, but they're also integrating it with future-tech. That is where the stability comes in.

UiPath's scalability and stability are exceptional. They are constantly releasing new versions.

Scalability is all in the delivery. I've definitely run into multiple organizational roadblocks with my clients because they get six months down their delivery timeline and they're not meeting their OI, they're not scaling. That generally comes down to how it's being delivered. If you have experience, you're working with a partner, you're working with people who have used this solution at scale, you can generally bypass a lot of those roadblocks. It's definitely scalable if you have the right expertise.

I have used both technical and customer support. When I was going through training, trying to learn some of the software, I had issues when I finally purchased licenses. The issues were related to putting them in Orchestrator and installing them. Support was definitely very supportive, very responsive when trying to get feedback.

Even when it comes to the community, as well, if you're just trying to learn the software, to learn the features and functionality, the community network is there to quickly respond and support you so you can get back to getting value, instead of getting hung up on one piece of functionality.

I have seen cases where an organization moves from a different automation solution to UiPath. At one point, we were transitioning from Automation Anywhere. There were very basic bots, these weren't complex processes, but we built a bot in UiPath that read the XAML of the Automation Anywhere script, converted it into activities in UiPath, and built a bot. We had a bot that builds a bot.

An example of why people move to UiPath is that when I was the director of RPA for a finance company, when I set up the program I had to go to EVP and pitch the prices and the costs. When I gave him the cost for all the software, to bring a vendor on, he told me "no." It was way too expensive. But UiPath has this amazing option called the Community Edition. What I was able to do was download the software, teach myself how to use it in about 45 days and, within two months, I had automated a pilot process, completely on my own. I was able to walk it into the EVP and say, "Look what I was able to complete. You told me no money, no funding, but now can I get funding?" Then I got funding and was able to bring on a team. That's one perfect example. They said "no," so I got a free version that cost me nothing.

In terms of how companies know that they need to invest in automation, in this day and age, with the speed at which information and technology move, it's at the point where this is not a new topic. A lot of organizations, through word-of-mouth, internet searches, or conferences, or events such UiPath 2019 here in DC, realize it as soon as they hear the success stories. It's impossible to ignore. Most organizations are like that. They hear about it, they realize that it's something they should consider, it's something they have to do, and they take the next step.

The initial setup is absolutely straightforward; it provides a quick and easy installation. Given that you may have to go through some technical hurdles to get permission to download it, I'm not talking about that. But if you have all the permissions and you're allowed to download and install it, it's absolutely simple. It shouldn't take more than ten minutes.

Technical prerequisites are not needed to use the software, but technical resources can speed up the ease with which you deploy. Given that you're generally not interacting with UiPath in isolation but with other business applications as well, you want to make sure that there's technical support in case you have some issues. Or, if there's something that you didn't experience in UAT but that comes up once you get into production, it's good to have some additional support. It's not a requirement but I would recommend it.

ROI is one of the most frequent questions I get from organizations. You should be seeing ROI in less than six months. If you're not returning your cost and more, from a licensing and personnel standpoint, in the first six months, then it is not a software issue and it is not a delivery issue. In that case, it is a scoping issue. You're probably looking at processes that shouldn't have been automated in the first place.

Every organization that is successful with the software is reaching their ROI in six months or under.

The amount of time saved with bots is an interesting question but it's hard to answer with a pinpoint response because it depends on an organization's strategy. I've seen multiple organizations that use attended bots, so they're just saving a fraction of the time. But then I've been in organizations where they've automated a process end-to-end. A process that previously required 20 FTEs went from having 40,000 hours of manual work to zero.

For pricing there is a variable at play, and that's scale. Depending on how you want to scale - whether working with a partner or directly with UiPath - there's a specific cost per license. But then it's all about optimizing a process, and what we call "license utilization." We try to maximize each license, and we'll have it running three or four processes.

The cost is nothing, it's peanuts, when you see the capabilities. When you're talking about one license supporting what was previously done by 14 people, what is $1,500, or whatever the licensing cost is for unattended bots?

Even more importantly, as a technology expert, I know that I could do some additional coding and automate the running of the bots. But why would I spend that extra time when they have Orchestrator. I could have a person running them as well, but the Orchestrator license is far cheaper than a resource; just click "run." When you compare the results that you get, the price is a moot point.

If I was going to give any advice to someone who was just about to utilize the software, I would say that the most successful organizations that apply this technology make it an entire team effort. It's not started in one business unit. And if it is, it's socialized across the enterprise. That's the quickest way to scale: getting everybody onboard. The second-biggest thing is that the most impactful projects you will get will come from your people, your internal workers. And until you get them to understand what the software can do and its capabilities, it's going to take you longer to scale your program. So make sure everybody's socialized, and make sure everybody truly understands what the software can truly do. They're going to give you the best opportunities to benefit from it.

Deployment should definitely be done using the support of experts. Even when I owned my own RPA program, and I wasn't in a consulting capacity, I still reached out to a third-party to get support. While setting it up is something that you can do internally, given that most objectives include speed-to-market and quick scaling - wanting to see results in 60 days instead of six months - it's going to be very difficult to do alone, especially if your goal is to have 100 bots in a year. If your goal is ten, you can probably manage it. It's important to use experts if you are looking to rapidly scale.

I have implemented UiPath in virtual environments, including on-prem, Azure VMs and servers, SQL-based data storage, as well as AWS. I've never had any issues with the responsiveness or the application having any problems operating. The biggest consideration that you have when trying to deploy robots in a virtual environment is making sure that your architecture is sound. You have to integrate through severs and you have to take into consideration firewall updates. And then there's interacting from the cloud if your applications are on-prem. You have to make sure that the bot doesn't have any issues. But if your architecture is solid and your infrastructure is set to support the applications in a cloud environment, there shouldn't be any issues. You wouldn't notice any difference compared to having them on a desktop on-premise.

I would agree that UiPath eliminates human error, but I would add the caveat that good code eliminates human error. I've been doing this for a while and I've seen bots that mess up. It's in your delivery methodology. If you have a sound delivery methodology - you're going through a rigorous UAT cycle and are having outputs audited by the subject matter experts - you should literally get to zero errors. Maybe you will have five percent exception cases, but your error percentage should be zero.

Having worked with all the tools, they all have little niche components. As long as UiPath continues to focus on knowing what the next wave of technology is that businesses really need to use to be efficient, and they start embedding that skillset in their software, that's all you could ask for. They need to stay in front of the power curve of technology, which is impossible, but they're trying.

I've never had a bad issue with UiPath. My experience with them has always been pleasant and engaging. They're never stuck at just giving you software, showing you how to use it, and then walking out. They're always focused on improving your business. If you focus on that, and focus on generating value, you can't lose.

Automation technology is the number-one driver across an organization now. Trying to find ways to do more with less has been the going mantra for organizations for years now. It's no longer feasible to simply run operational efficiency or Six Sigma projects to try to get gains. The only way that you're going to get significant gains is going with an automation-first approach. That's where I see a lot of organizations headed, even spending more on RPA software than on cloud implementation. It's a very big focus, and I don't see that slowing down any time soon.

On a scale from one to ten, I would you rate UiPath as an eleven. It's excellent software.