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Nikhil Arya - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Developer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Significantly reduced the amount of employee labor needed while cutting down on human error
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath has a simple, creative UI, where you can check on all the automated tools. Everything is well documented, and you can easily get support from the UiPath team. Whenever we were stuck, their team was always there to support us. The community is huge and powerful."
  • "We aren't scaling up UiPath because it doesn't provide a satisfactory way to log and monitor data. Instead, we use other tools like Automation Anywhere for large-scale operations in our production environment. We're building solutions that can handle a huge amount of data so we can monitor real-time issues. I don't think UiPath solves that case for us."

What is our primary use case?

Initially, we had some manual test cases running in the background, where we tried to call our UI and do end-to-end testing of the login, checkout, etc. We now automate end-to-end testing using UiPath to reduce the workload. We use UiPath for process analysis and making robots, but not for monitoring. We already have other tools in our system to monitor each and every step of our process

We work in a hybrid environment, but we're increasingly cloud-based. We are not driving as much traffic to our on-premises system. 

How has it helped my organization?

We were hiring developers to write test cases and perform automation for us. UiPath significantly reduced the amount of employee labor needed while cutting down on human error. The error count in our system dropped by around 10 to 15 percent. 

This is a considerable win for us. Our clients are happier because they see fewer errors in production. End-to-end automation helps us deliver quality work to our customers. UiPath helps us analyze every connected case with automated robot testing. 

What is most valuable?

UiPath has a simple, creative UI, where you can check on all the automated tools. Everything is well documented, and you can easily get support from the UiPath team. Whenever we were stuck, their team was always there to support us. The community is huge and powerful. 

The entire process of setting up automations is smooth. We could easily deploy each case on our cloud platform and make things work.

What needs improvement?

We aren't scaling up UiPath because it doesn't provide a satisfactory way to log and monitor data. Instead, we use other tools like Automation Anywhere for large-scale operations in our production environment. We're building solutions that can handle a huge amount of data so we can monitor real-time issues. I don't think UiPath solves that case for us.

Buyer's Guide
UiPath
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
830,526 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using UiPath for around a year.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We faced some issues with scalability, so we use another RPA in production. 

How are customer service and support?

I rate UiPath's support nine out of ten. We always get a response within six hours. UiPath also has a massive user community, so you can get instant support from anyone. We faced some issues when we built our first robots, so we got help from the community. When someone else has problems, we try to help them. 

Working in the community, you are recognized for your support, and you can learn a lot from others. There are some complex things about using UiPath that we don't understand. 

The UiPath community is friendly, and they respond quickly. At most, it takes around six hours to get an answer from the community, based on our experience. I believe that anyone who adopts UiPath will learn so much from the community.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

We deployed UiPath through a vendor provider who helped us through the entire installation and everything in our cloud environment. Initially, we tried UiPath in our testing environment. Once we saw that it was stable and improved our productivity, we moved it to our production environment with excellent results. It took 10 months for us to deploy UiPath fully. 

We had two people working on the deployment. One managed the installation, while the second person handled monitoring and other development areas. 

What was our ROI?

We had two developers working 20 hours a week writing test cases manually, so UiPath saves us 40 hours of labor costs. However, we spend about that much on UiPath when you factor in licensing, infrastructure costs, and other expenses. The value we see is from the reduction in human error. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate UiPath eight out of ten. I deduct two points because of the shortcomings in terms of scalability and logging. It's a nice-to-have solution in our case. I recommend trying UiPath out and seeing if it's suitable for your use case. You should go for it if it fits. It's not too costly and it will reduce human error while improving the quality of your product.  

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Mayank Arya - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Developer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
The AI functionality saves time and reduces the number of errors
Pros and Cons
  • "The AI functionality saves time and reduces the number of errors. It also reduces our costs in terms of human resources. It has reduced our costs by thousands of dollars."
  • "The community can be increased and enhanced. That way, if we are facing an issue and need an easy solution, we can then use the community."

What is our primary use case?

Our use case for this solution is for hosting and deployment purposes of web applications.

We are using the latest version.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath is a good solution for automation. Our time management has improved by using the UiPath solution. On a monthly basis, it reduces one week of a developer's time.

It helps reduce human error. 99% of errors can be avoided by using this solution.

What is most valuable?

It has a very good, user-friendly user interface. This is its best feature - it is very easy to use. There is not much complexity when using it. For the beginners, this is also good.

For building automations, we can use a task manager because we also have job management or support in the development phase. We can apply first-in, first-out with work in UiPath.

For the automation, we do not require anything to be manual. We only need to set up the configuration. UiPath follows the instructions given by the developer or engineer. It automatically follows the instructions from end-to-end given in a set of files. 

The unattended automation helps improve our time management.

We are using the solution's AI functionality, which helps us automate more things. Now, nothing is complex. We just need to drag and drop things to create a flow. Everything is done automatically by the automation. It reduces our effort on these types of things.

What needs improvement?

They could make the solution better by improving the latency.

The community can be increased and enhanced. That way, if we are facing an issue and need an easy solution, we can then use the community.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is capable of doing various tasks at the same time.

We have not experienced any downtime or issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. We can add any number of users. This is the most scalable solution that we are using.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good. I would rate them as eight out of 10.

We would like them to increase the community. That way, if we need 24/7 tech support due to an error or issue, we can resolve it as soon as possible.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not previously use another solution.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment was neither straightforward nor complex. Some skills are required, i.e., basic courses are required for a developer or engineer using this solution. For a person who has hands-on experience with it, the deployment will be simple for them.

What was our ROI?

The AI functionality saves time and reduces the number of errors. It also reduces our costs in terms of human resources. It has reduced our costs by thousands of dollars.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have a team who decides the software that we use. They chose UiPath because it was better than the other competitors. They conclude that UiPath was the best one, which is why we use it.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath as nine out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
UiPath
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
830,526 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1828371 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Development Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Enabled us to develop a chatbot for our website via drag-and-drop, without language-specific coding skills
Pros and Cons
  • "Designing a chatbot would usually require some language coding and it would have to be deployed with certain front-end languages. But UiPath gives us the ability to automate this functionality with drag-and-drop features. That is the very best part, where UiPath is doing an amazing job."
  • "One thing I don't like about UiPath is that it does not have a very good user interface for a newbie. It's not that the user interface itself is bad, but when I started using it, it was very difficult for me to understand the tool and how to use it... The user interface should be a little simpler than it is right now, as it is very complex."

What is our primary use case?

We have deployed a chatbot in our system.

How has it helped my organization?

Designing a chatbot would usually require some language coding and it would have to be deployed with certain front-end languages. But UiPath gives us the ability to automate this functionality with drag-and-drop features. That is the very best part, where UiPath is doing an amazing job. It doesn't require any language coding or front-end coding to create the user interface.

Because it is easy to use, it saves a lot of time for the developer. When it comes to programming, UiPath has made all the manual work, such as verifying and correcting errors, and even repeating processes, less complex and less time-consuming. If you were to try to choose a coding language and use it to streamline things and design a bot for automation, it would take more time. Doing that would take 15 days to learn the language and to code with it. There would be a certain number of errors that you would have to deal with, as well. There might also be a backend required. UiPath can easily save you 10 to 15 days, automating in two to three days, maximum.

It gives you the ability to automate workflows and large processes that would take a long time to do manually. With the help of UiPath, the time it takes to get those tasks done is reduced and it reduces human error. In addition, it saves you money because you don't need to hire people for the tasks that have been automated.

There is also the benefit of not having to hire an engineer to program things. If you had to hire an engineer there would be the expectation of a payment package. There would also be the time spent on dealing with errors the engineer makes, and this person might also require mentors. UiPath decreases the spending of time, energy, and money, especially.

UiPath also saves our organization time because the automation cloud handles infrastructure, maintenance, and updates.

What is most valuable?

One of the most valuable features is that it provides you with the ability to learn the system and understand the concepts through specific demos. UiPath provides you with education, through the UiPath Academy, on the basics of how to use the software and for what purposes you can use it. It is a very good thing that they provide education with it. That makes it easy for us, as developers, to gain the knowledge we need.

Another good feature is that it comes with an embedded recording functionality. You didn't require an external screen recorder. The embedded screen recorder enables you to record things so that you can remember them over time.

In general, it is easy to build automations using UiPath. You just drag and drop according to your needs, and you can automate things in a single go.

What needs improvement?

One thing I don't like about UiPath is that it does not have a very good user interface for a newbie. It's not that the user interface itself is bad, but when I started using it, it was very difficult for me to understand the tool and how to use it. It has N functionalities and a user has to learn the particular things that these functionalities are used for.

The user interface should be a little simpler than it is right now, as it is very complex.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for more than a year.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In terms of scalability, this software can grow with the industry, especially since more companies are focusing on automation. Here in India, for example, there are many companies, like KPMG, focusing on the field of automation. Software like this can help them to scale more and more in building their automations. The software can really scale up well, as long as the user interface is improved.

How are customer service and support?

Their support system is very good. If you have a problem and you reach out to their support system, they are quick to reply. Problems are solved within 24 hours of reaching out to them.

Also, you can use the UiPath user community instead of contacting support. There is value to the user community because people help each other there. Because we are concentrating on development in my company, we tend to not be as active on the community side, but whenever we do use it we get help from them.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have only been exposed to this software. I graduated and started working in the RPA domain by using this software.

How was the initial setup?

It wasn't that complicated to set up. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing and licensing are pretty decent. If you are using it as an automation developer, it comes in at under $500 a month. Still, the pricing can be reduced, but the service and functionality are solid. 

I have heard from some of my colleagues that there are many subdivisions of the pricing and some of them are between $1,500 and $2,000 a month. That is expensive. But overall, my colleagues say it is a cost-effective program in the long run.

What other advice do I have?

If you are working in the RPA domain as an automation developer, you should look at UiPath because it gives you many functionalities. Also, the education aspect of UiPath is a very cool feature because you don't need to rely on other software to learn it. Thirdly, the bot-building process is very smooth. 

UiPath is a fast, time-saving, money-saving, energy-saving solution. Using UiPath has been the best experience. I would recommend it. You can choose this software without any second thoughts. It can provide a good return on investment to your business.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Automation Tech Resource Lead at Kelly Services, Inc.
Real User
Solution helped us scale faster, evolve as an organization
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath has enabled us as an organization to perform an array of tasks with more proficiency and efficiency. Automation is very important to our organization now and UiPath has played an immense role."
  • "The pricing structure is very complicated."

What is our primary use case?

Our use cases have evolved over time. We have use cases for screening and onboarding candidates, feeding new hires into the payroll system, and timekeeping. Right now, we are working on a document understanding use case. It is going to help us read supplier insurance forms.  

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath has enabled us as an organization to perform an array of tasks with more proficiency and efficiency. Automation is very important to our organization now and UiPath has played an immense role.

UiPath makes building automations incredibly easy. The platform is very robust and it is scalable. UiPath also has a strong community, which has helped democratize RPA in a true sense. The community and expertise can be leveraged quickly to meet a common goal.

The UiPath Academy has helped us move forward more efficiently. It is a great source of information and knowledge for both new users and those taking the advanced courses. I see the UiPath Academy evolving in the future.

What is most valuable?

One of the features I've found valuable is UiPath Studio. We have a huge development team of about eight to ten people and they are currently working with it. We also have a citizen developer program that is leveraging StudioX. 

Orchestrator is important for us as well. 

These features are valuable because they allow different groups of people to complete their tasks. UiPath is a robust platform. It helps us cater to different audiences. 

What needs improvement?

The licensing model is sometimes very confusing and could be simplified for customers. That would help us understand, gauge the offer, and work it into our existing infrastructure. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We started using UiPath in 2017. We have had a great journey with it. UiPath has helped us scale faster, especially with RPA implementations. It also helped us evolve through our automation journey. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

My impression of the stability is that it's like any other software. We have never had a problem with UiPath and the platform has been stable enough to enable us to scale a lot. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have been happy with UiPath's scalability so far. I would give it a nine out of 10. We are currently deploying about 95% of our automations through UiPath. We are very into it and plan to expand from there. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Yes, we did use a different solution but I cannot disclose which. However, I can say this much: we decided to switch because of the community UiPath has built. Also, the platform and product are packaged correctly. Everything is laid out well and it seems like UiPath understands what businesses need. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward and easy. UiPath has an incredible team in place. They help us every now and then. It did not take us much time to go through the initial setup and get the solution deployed. 

What was our ROI?

We have realized savings in the millions of dollars overall.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing structure is very complicated. Someone from the organization has to sit down and set aside some time to fully understand it. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes, we did evaluate other options but I cannot disclose which. 

What other advice do I have?

Start your journey with UiPath. Engage someone from UiPath and have them go through the journey with you. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1695096 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Data & Analytics, Intelligent Automation, ASSA ABLOY Americas at a construction company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Straightforward setup; saves hours
Pros and Cons
  • "We are seeing many hours saved with respect to automation. Automation should be on every project's agenda."
  • "One way to improve the UiPath Academy, I think, would be to add some real life use cases and take the students through the automation process. These would be good for citizen developers to start with."

What is our primary use case?

We have multiple accounts sellable, accounts payable, corporate finance, and supply chain use cases. We have started some use cases at the factory floor automation as well.

How has it helped my organization?

There are so many benefits to using UiPath, but getting the buy-in is very important from the end users. We are seeing many hours saved with respect to automation. Automation should be on every project's agenda. 

What is most valuable?

Scaling at pace with regards to the industry has been the most valuable UiPath feature for us. I would also add that there are so many features in RPA. 

What needs improvement?

We are leveraging the UiPath Academy for our citizen developer program. We are asking them to train at their own pace. The courses are straightforward.

The adoption rate for this program is low, however. Out of the 150 citizen developers that started, only 10 decided to continue the process.

One way to improve the UiPath Academy, I think, would be to add some real-life use cases and take the students through the automation process. These would be good for citizen developers to start with.

For how long have I used the solution?

We started our UiPath journey early last year. It has been a year and six months. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is stable. The automations we have in place right now are stable. 

How are customer service and support?

Over the past two years, I've reached out to them maybe twice. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. When we started this automation journey, instead of going with complex use cases, we picked three simple ones. We started with the accounts receivable processes. 

Deployment took us six weeks. 

What was our ROI?

As of now, we have automated 160 processes using UiPath and saved many hours. We have saved around 60,000 hours. Although we are not directly reducing costs, we are avoiding the cost of hiring new people.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is very expensive. It's getting harder for me to convince my management about licensing costs. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes, we considered Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere. We created an automation using both of these and UiPath and ultimately decided on the latter. UiPath is more compatible with the other applications we were already using. Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is our ERP and they partner with UiPath, so that was a major plus for us. Also, UiPath has very straightforward coding courses.

What other advice do I have?

It is usually not easy to build a complex automation. The whole process takes about four to six weeks for a complex automation. Most of the time is spent on gathering the requirements. The development itself does not take much time.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
RPA Developer Manager at First Horizon Bank
Real User
Added the ability to do jobs without having to worry about error handling
Pros and Cons
  • "The Academy courses are good. That's usually what I start new developers with; to do those and then kind of have them go and try to do courses periodically to kind of stay up to date and especially when a new release is coming out. The hands-on training is the most valuable part of it."
  • "We could use a little more interaction with users, like with UiPath, the vendor, and support."

What is our primary use case?

We do product downloads, accounts, updates, maintenance, a lot of operation stuff, reading emails, responding, organizing stuff to send, etc.

How has it helped my organization?

It's definitely added some efficiencies. It's added the ability to do jobs without having to worry about error handling and process tasks on a daily basis without having somebody having to be responsible for it.

We see UiPath as a money-saving solution. It also saves us man-hours and human error. It affected our ability to automate processes that are more complex.

The Academy courses are good. That's usually what I start new developers with; to do those and then have them try to do courses periodically to stay up to date and especially when a new release is coming out. The hands-on training is the most valuable part of it. 

What is most valuable?

We use the solution's error functionality. 

What needs improvement?

There's a little bit of a learning curve to build automations, especially in the citizen developer world. Usually, the technical people are busy a lot of times, so it's hard to get them trained. But as far as developers, they usually come along pretty well, from my experience.

We could use a little more interaction with users, like with UiPath, the vendor, and support.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for two and a half years. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We had a vendor that kind of offered to do a few, like bring you the UiPath and do some automations for us. We dipped our toes into that and liked what UiPath has, so we kept them.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath an eight out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1521363 - PeerSpot reviewer
Digital Strategy Manager at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
We have saved dozens of FTEs annually and increased the quality of processes where automation has been deployed
Pros and Cons
  • "The most important and valuable feature of UiPath is the ease of creating automations. It's a workflow-based model. End-to-end coverage is, no doubt, very important, because when you use a fragmented solution, the overall process flow becomes shaky. UiPath has the required capabilities to create an end-to-end solution for a business case."
  • "The cognitive area is one where there is room for improvement. Automation Anywhere has grown in that area, whereas UiPath still is more dependent on third-party integration. That is something which they should be focusing on more. They should acquire a product and get it integrated."

What is our primary use case?

We use UiPath for cases where we have to do a workflow-related mechanism. Most of these use cases are small, Excel-based solutions and desktop-solution-related workflows, where one or two applications have to be connected, along with the Excel operation, for the end-to-end workflow creation.

We use both attended and unattended automation.

How has it helped my organization?

We have created 10-plus solutions using UiPath, and the savings that have been generated from these solutions are around $1 million. They are very cost-effective solutions: finance, order-to-cash, and protocol-to-pay processes. It has created value on the higher end, because the processes were quite cumbersome. We re-engineered the processes and started using UiPath for workflow automation.

We have saved roughly 50 FTEs on a yearly basis. It also enables us to use a lower skillset workforce, which is a cost-effective measure.

Quality, no doubt, is one of the key parameters of automation. UiPath has resulted in quality improvement for the overall processes where it's deployed.

It's on the OCR side and the workflow side where UiPath creates value to us.

What is most valuable?

The most important and valuable feature of UiPath is the ease of creating automations. It's a workflow-based model. End-to-end coverage is, no doubt, very important, because when you use a fragmented solution, the overall process flow becomes shaky. UiPath has the required capabilities to create an end-to-end solution for a business case. For our scenario, the business cases are quite small. That way, the turnaround time to create a solution is short and it becomes very easy to deploy, which is quite helpful for us.

Another important feature is the OCR capability, which integrates quite easily with other kinds of tools. We have integrated with ABBYY and we have even used the Amazon OCR engine. From an integration perspective, it is scalable enough to integrate with third-party solutions, whereas that kind of thing becomes a bit of challenge when we use Automation Anywhere.

We are able to use Python scripting and Python libraries for data extraction.

We also use the solution in creating attended automations. They are very much division-specific and are currently used by the procurement and the finance teams. These are on-demand, data reconciliation activities that are performed once a week. The bot is clicked by the person who is attending, which is generally a procurement or a finance guy. These are tedious activities so that's why we have the dedicated license for the attended format.

It is quite user-friendly with the drag-and-drop functionality. It has connectors which are quite suitable and industry-standard for basic applications that we use on the desktop, like for the Microsoft suite. From an integration perspective, it has done well.

We have also used its selector technology to automate processes with dynamic interfaces for one of the finance applications, where the UI screen is changing.

What needs improvement?

The cognitive area is one where there is room for improvement. Automation Anywhere has grown in that area, whereas UiPath still is more dependent on third-party integration. That is something which they should be focusing on more. They should acquire a product and get it integrated.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for around two and a half years. I have used both Automation Anywhere and UiPath. We have both tools.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath Robots are quite robust, and from a maintenance perspective it has become easy, if you create logs. It's pretty good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In terms of scalability, as I mentioned, it has certain challenges, but with the minimal capacity which we are running, it becomes easy to maintain the bots.

We have 10 to 12 automations already in place, and there are around five to six more in the pipeline, which are still being rolled out. The RPA tool we used is determined on a case-by-case basis.

How are customer service and technical support?

UiPath technical support is pretty good. Most of the answers are provided by the community forum. If you raise a ticket, they are proactive in getting back to you and addressing the point. It's good.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was okay. I was involved in the setup of Automation Anywhere four years ago, and with UiPath. Compared to Automation Anywhere, it was much smoother because the community side is quite good with UiPath. In the early days when we were facing issues, we had the UiPath community support to find answers. We did not have to raise a ticket with UiPath because we were able to get our answers in the community forums.

The first case took us around seven to eight months to put in place. The first one is, obviously, always a tricky one. We also picked a use case of medium complexity and it took a bit of time. Later on, we started building more of a workflow solution using our low-cost workforce and, after that, the journey was quite smooth. Initially there were some hiccups, but once the team understood the tool itself it became easy.

We deploy developers who require a lower level of skill sets, developers who do not have that much training. They are normal .NET developers whom we train for one and a half months on UiPath and they start developing UiPath solutions. We have a center of excellence with our developers who work on UiPath. We recently hired two more, so we now have around 11 developers who are working on UiPath.

Taking UiPath courses to get up to speed has been very helpful. I am certified for the tool because of the courses. The curriculum is at least on par with that of Automation Anywhere, although I would say it is much better. The only issue is that the courses are very limited. The AA University has increased to a vast number of courses, and most of them have become free for the end-user. The UiPath course material is good, but there are notably fewer courses and less certification available for people like us, who are more on the business side. AA has a business analyst program and a program manager certification, but I was not able to find anything specific like that in the UiPath Academy.

Our strategy with UiPath is that we generally go for unattended automation because that doesn't lock up our licenses for the bots. We prefer solutions which require unattended automation, because of a lack of budget and other constraints. From the deployment perspective, we have a dedicated server and we're following the minimum guidelines which are required to conform to the deployment standards.

What was our ROI?

The ROI generated is quite high because of the cost factor.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is much much cheaper than the Automation Anywhere. That is a key differentiator. It is targeted at mid-level enterprises. It is cost-effective.

There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees. We have taken few of the training-related services from them. Once we move to the cloud version we may require some consulting services to move from on-prem to cloud. That would be the only other cost associated with UiPath.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

When it comes to the main differences between UiPath and Automation Anywhere, UiPath is cost-effective. It is quite a lot cheaper than Automation Anywhere. It is also drag-and-drop, a fact which makes basic automation very easy compared to Automation Anywhere. It's quite user-friendly. In addition, the OCR functionality is quite robust in UiPath because it also provides a third-party integration. Python scripting becomes easy and that means our OCR solutions are quite good. These are the pros of UiPath. 

Regarding the cons of UiPath when compared to AA, the first one is the level of scripting details. Custom scripting is quite lacking in UiPath. It's more a drag-and-drop functionality which doesn't allow that higher level of customized scripting when compared to AA. Secondly, the scalability is quite robust in AA as compared to UiPath. Even though we are not pushing the limit, the general opinion out there is that UiPath fails quite visibly when you try to scale solutions that involve operations plus a new product rollout. That's a challenge with UiPath. And, as I mentioned, AA has improved a lot in the cognitive area and UiPath has not reached that level. It relies more on the third parties.

What other advice do I have?

Even if you are a large enterprise and you're trying to start your RPA journey, UiPath is the answer. It sits in the top one or two solutions, along with Automation Anywhere. It's one of the leaders in RPA, and with the low cost model of the license structure, it is very easy to start with UiPath rather than with Automation Anywhere.

If you are looking for a strategic approach, where you have projected that within five to six years you will roll out 250 to 300 bots, scalability is something you have to factor in when starting your journey.

We haven't used the solution's artificial intelligence. We tried to run a PoC using a chat bot, but it didn't do well. I don't think UiPath has its own AI engine. They provide an API-level integration with other AI tools. We had a challenge there because most of the AI functionalities had to work on the cloud. We had to integrate with the Google Cloud and Amazon cloud, but both are in the public domain and transferring data from our office to the cloud was a challenge. We hit a wall. For that scenario, we moved on to Automation Anywhere, which provides us an on-prem solution.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Technical Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Attended automation enables us to verify scanned fields in our invoices
Pros and Cons
  • "They have also recently added a feature for attended automation, Picture in Picture, which is also nice to have. It's helpful because you don't want to just sit back and let the bot run and not work during that attended automation. Using the PiP feature, you can have it running on your desktop without having to interrupt it to your work."
  • "One area that needs improvement is monitoring. I know there are tools that let us see what a bot is actually doing on the virtual machines. If we could get that kind of offering from UiPath that would be great, because when a bot is running on the machine, we don't know what it's doing."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use it to reduce manual effort and to increase accuracy and on-time implementation. We perform end-to-end automation, since we are a company where SAP is used very widely. We use UiPath for SAP automation.

We develop both attended and unattended solutions. We're using the platform as a service and it's hosted on-premises.

How has it helped my organization?

So far, we have 15 bots in production. As a result, we are saving a lot of time, although I don't have a figure right now, as well as a lot of effort. We are also able to provide timely delivery to our customers, so the automations have been generating a lot of buzz here.

Attended automation has helped to scale RPA in our organization by automating processes that require human-robot collaboration. An example is our invoices that have data that needs to be scanned. The scans we were receiving did not have the accuracy that we were looking for. We also had a hard time getting the results through OCR. With the help of attended automation, we are able to have users verify data when the bot is running. Once the verification is done, the bot will perform the rest of the actions.

UiPath also definitely helps us with process analysis.

What is most valuable?

Although I have not used it yet, they have recently introduced a feature which brings more accuracy to the selectors, using the image and the selectors themselves. I feel that will be good. When we are creating selectors, there are elements that it's hard to get at, or there are times when the selectors get changed for some reason. The new feature should make it easier to work with in these situations.

They have also recently added a feature for attended automation, Picture in Picture, which is also nice to have. It's helpful because you don't want to just sit back and let the bot run and not work during that attended automation. Using the PiP feature, you can have it running on your desktop without having to interrupt it to your work.

I would also compliment them on the UiPath Academy, the learning platform that they have built. It contains everything that a developer or architect or tester or, anyone who is looking to benefit from an RPA, would need. It's all there on their platform. It helps speed up onboarding employees to UiPath. When I joined this company, I had prior experience with the RPA and UiPath. But two of my colleagues, who were working on test automation, didn't have that kind of experience. The Academy helped them to get started. We aligned quickly, once their fundamental developer training was done through the Academy. The Academy helped them align with the current practices of UiPath and RPA.

What needs improvement?

One area that needs improvement is monitoring. I know there are tools that let us see what a bot is actually doing on the virtual machines. If we could get that kind of offering from UiPath that would be great, because when a bot is running on the machine, we don't know what it's doing. Although we have programmed it, there are times when something causes a bot to fail. During such instances, the bot behaves differently when we run it in attended mode than it does in unattended mode. It would be great to have a feature where we could see, on a screen, what the bot is currently doing.

For how long have I used the solution?

We started this UiPath journey two years back. 

I act as a UiPath lead because I joined early and I have some prior experience with it. There are three other people in India, and one more in the U.S, who use it in our company. The one in the U.S. does the managerial stuff and it's the developers who are in India. Then we have the business users for each of the bots and they also use UiPath. And we have a set of about 20 users who use the attended solution that we have provided to them.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Robots on the SAP system seem stable, but on the web they sometimes lack stability. Still, it's not a very common occurrence and I have overcome any issues with the help of the Trilogic. For example, we had an issue while getting an email from Outlook. A UiPath robot is not able to do that. It will time out. With the help of the Trilogic, we were able to overcome that.

Initially you have to put some effort in to obtain stability and then it is mostly stable. Some maintenance is required, but that's most probably when requirements change, or to add to the stability, but it's not a lot overhead right now for us.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's highly scalable, in both development terms as well as business terms. We have the capability to add on robots. We can add to the VDI or machine anytime we want. They have put some serious thought into the scalability, when it comes to giving support to developers as well as the business.

We plan to increase our usage of UiPath. We have a lot of things in the pipeline. We have almost finalized on providing RPA as a service, something that we will offer internally. Right now, we are giving this free of cost to our customers who are the business people. We did so to get some attention and to create some interest in the tool. Now that we have almost finalized this as a service, we are going to involve business analysts who will be helping us to find more RPA use cases and finalize more RPA solutions. That means our usage will increase. We're still in an early phase.

How are customer service and technical support?

I haven't had the chance to interact much with the technical support because the forum has so much information. If I browse through the forum, I will most probably get an answer. So I haven't needed to go to the technical support for any answers.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have both test automation and UiPath working in parallel. Test automation has been here for the long-term, something like 10 or 15 years. The two guys who work with me, who didn't have prior UIPath experience, are working on that. That part mostly requires maintenance, and they now mostly work on UiPath development. So although we had a test automation solution, we didn't have a business automation solution. That is why we went with UiPath. It gives us an edge in business automation.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of UiPath was pretty straightforward. I didn't find anything unusual or complex.

We went through an upgrade recently. We have dedicated cloud architects who helped us do it. We got instructions how to do it from UiPath support and we conveyed those instructions to our cloud architects and they performed it at their end to get UiPath cloud upgraded. Upgrading didn't take much time. It was done within half an hour.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

One more feature that is useful is that earlier, we didn't have the option for a concurrent-user license. With the help of the concurrent-user license, we can save on licensing costs while running multiple bots under the same license.

What other advice do I have?

If you are going to implement UiPath, my advice would be to look at how you are going to gather the requirements and how you're going to manage the requests for UiPath. 

Also, get some low-hanging fruit first, before going into the complex automations. That way, if you are new, the low-hanging fruits will generate confidence in the solution. Once that kind of confidence is generated, you can move ahead with the complex automations and complex solutions.

Go through the UiPath Academy extensively. They provide good training materials that I don't believe are available elsewhere. So I really recommend that. I recently attended a dev conference and I learned a lot about this stuff. I work in a closed environment where I don't have much of an idea of what's going on in RPA. This conference helped me keep in touch with the current trends in RPA and UiPath.

I rate UiPath at eight out of 10. For me, that's a very good mark. The two missing points are because there is scope for improvement. Overall, I'm pretty happy with UiPath.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
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Updated: December 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free UiPath Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.