UiPath Reviews

UiPath is a software tool used in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) that allows you to build automated workflows to handle repetitive manual tasks in your daily work. It can automate tasks across various environments including Windows, Citrix, and using image recognition. Additionally, UiPath is incorporating artificial intelligence and machine learning, with generative AI specifically enabling you to develop automation in a wider range of fields like healthcare, telecommunication, and manufacturing.

UiPath offers deployment flexibility: we can install it on our servers on-premises or choose their cloud service, UiPath Automation Cloud. While they provide their option, UiPath is also compatible with other cloud platforms for deployment.

Building automation is easier with UiPath than with Automation Anywhere or Blue Prism. UiPath's centralized platform offers a more intuitive user experience, and its extensive online community provides readily available answers to your questions.

It allows for the creation of end-to-end automation workflows, even for tasks with imperfect results. For instance, if an AI extracts data from a PDF with a low confidence level, UiPath can trigger the creation of a ticket in an action center. This ticket would then be assigned to a human for review, who can confirm the data's accuracy or return the document to the AI model for improvement.

Over the past nine years as a UiPath user, I've witnessed a wealth of new features emerge. The UiPath user community has been an invaluable resource throughout this journey, providing both learning opportunities and solutions to our automation challenges.

UiPath has been a game-changer for us, reducing costs, improving scalability, minimizing human error, and saving significant time. Their user-friendly platform allows us to automate processes in as little as 15 days, and with the free UiPath Academy courses and community edition, we have everything we need to learn and practice at no cost.

UiPath Academy offers beginner-friendly courses with step-by-step instructions and video tutorials, making it a great resource for those new to the world of UiPath and automation.

UiPath speeds up and reduces the cost of digital transformation andreduces human errors by automating repetitive tasks where errors can be caused due to fatigue or illness.

UiPath helps free up our staff time to work on other tasks. What would take a human, for example, ten minutes to complete, takes the robot seconds. Ithelps save our organization money.

It is easy to learn.

UiPath takes the complexity out of automation by using a low-code approach. Instead of writing intricate macro scripts, we simply drag and drop pre-built elements to create our automation, making it accessible even for those without extensive coding experience.

UiPath's extensive built-in features, like communication mining, can be overwhelming to learn due to the sheer volume. This learning curve applies across platforms; switching to another company would require mastering new skills like business analysis and product management. Additionally, the modern analysis process demands deep dives into code and solution levels, making it a complex task to achieve.

There's a need for greater emphasis on applying AI and machine learning to enhance technologies like Optical Character Recognition, fingerprint scanners, and facial recognition systems.

I have been using UiPath for almost nine years.

If one of our machines goes down, UiPath will resolve the issue within 24 hours.

The technical support is good.

Positive

While we've experimented with Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and Microsoft Power Automate, they lacked UiPath's ability to centralize all our automation initiatives. Choosing the right RPA tool requires careful consideration of cost, functionalities, and the specific features each platform offers.

The cloud deployment is straightforward. The logs are all maintained in the orchestrator. 

The return on investment from automation grows with the number of processes automated. This translates to greater cost and time savings, freeing up resources to tackle new projects that can generate additional revenue.

UiPath is expensive. The license types depend on the deployment method and the number of bots required.

I would rate UiPath eight out of ten. UiPath is user-friendly, easy to learn, and manage.

UiPath introduced communication mining in the last two years. We do use it but the use cases are primarily for the health sector and insurance sector but they have been steadily declining.

UiPath's cloud deployment offers a hassle-free experience – they manage the infrastructure and maintenance, so we don't need to worry about any hardware or upkeep on our side.

Six people in our organization use UiPath.

While running UiPath on-premises with a high volume of bots might involve some minor maintenance tasks for us, the cloud-based option takes care of everything – UiPath handles all the maintenance on their end.

UiPath offers a multifaceted platform, requiring users to learn distinct aspects based on their roles. Developers will delve into coding and automation creation, IT business analysts will focus on process design and optimization, product managers will manage the automation lifecycle, and salespeople will highlight the product's capabilities to potential clients.

I've used it to automate different types of processes. My first project was to automate PDF documents. The process was a bit lengthy for the client. The client actually used to enter the information into the PDF templates and get them submitted to the government websites. And once they submitted their documents, the government released grant payments or other stuff. Previously, they hired people to do the data entry. However, it was taking too long, and some crazy errors. They had to have a pretty formatted, clean Excel sheet.

With UiPath, the bot would choose the data, get the data from there, and then put it into PDF files, save them with the sort of renaming schemes, and then upload them to the drive and then to the portal. That's the first use case I got. I built up workflows in it and automated the whole process. 

I keep exploring it and now have other use cases coming in as well. There are more than 150 or 200 use cases for different types of projects. 

The process management is great.

The orchestrator is helpful. And they have something called live monitoring. If you have an unattended bot set up on someone's system or in a virtual private server, when the bot gets executed, you can actually monitor it in the live stream. You can open up the live stream, keep checking it, and look at the automation, and how the board progresses, and you can take control of the live stream in between as well if you want to. 

The ease of building automation is relatively very good. Most of the programmers and developers get hectic while writing scripts. However, they get bored. Now we can just create a sequence of processes. That way, we can train some colleagues, and it's pretty easy.

I've used the solution for a good cause, for a client trying to gather information from the Internet in Switzerland to reduce carbon emissions. They were trying to get a lot of information to raise awareness regarding emissions and businesses. I helped the organization implement a use case.

The product enables us to implement end-to-end automation. There are certain scenarios in cases where integration is required. It is important based on certain scenarios or use cases.

The user community is great. When I was starting out, I really got a lot of help from the forum. The community is very good. The most common questions are already being answered there, and everyone is engaged. The community is pretty strong. You can just post your question in theory and get a reply real quick.

The solution has helped to minimize our on-premises footprint. You can just get it all done on the cloud. They have recent updates coming in in which you don't need to install any tool on your system. You can just develop your workflow on the cloud as well. 

It really helps non-technical people. I don't need to go through the hassle of installation. I just go to the cloud and start developing the basic workflow.

The UiPath Academy is good. I didn't have a chance to do a lot of the Academy yet. I have had one or two trainings for the implementation methodologies. That said, mostly I've learned through real-time projects or through my self-learning, plus the content we have on the Internet. 

The AI functionality is used in our automation programs. It has documented understanding. It has built-in trained models that help understand the document. You simply go to the document, scan, install the package, and just train your invoices and the data you have with similar invoices. It helps you to identify the invoices and extract information from the structured data. 

UiPath has helped speed up digital transformation and significantly reduced the cost of digital transformation.

It's helped reduce human error. Being able to have RPA enter information again and again really helps solve the problem of dealing with random errors. 

UiPath frees up employee time for other stuff. It helps optimize time and make everything efficient. Whether it's attended or unattended mode, it really helps employees. We can save a lot of hours. The automation hub that they offer can upload all the stats. It will take a process and tell you how many hours you could save. The cost savings are directly proportional to the time savings.

I used to have some workflows that were a bit lengthy, and I just see that some of the time, they crash. It's unstable if the workflow is long. Sometimes you'll run an update, and it will make a workflow crash. 

They could make it more user-friendly. 

I've been using the solution for around four years.

The solution does crash sometimes. 

In one instance, I was trying to read a file, and the file itself was a bit larger. It's hard to read a large number of files.

The scalability is good. I would rate it eight out of ten. 

I haven't contacted technical support that often. I only reached out to get more information on a certain case. 

Positive

I did not use any alternative previously. However, since using UiPath, I've also used Power Automate and Selenium. Selenium is not a direct competitor. However, I have used it a lot. Power Automate doesn't have the robust community or forums that UiPath has. That said, it costs less. 

I'm an implementor. I deploy solutions for my clients. 

The cloud implementation of UiPath is straightforward. If you are knowledgeable of the process and you're good in tech technology, you can handle it. If you are non-technical, then it could be a bit of a lengthy process to learn first and then go ahead and do it.

The deployment can be handled by a single person, depending on the use case. If it's more complex, you may need a team to deploy.

There is maintenance required. If there's a change to the website, process, platform, or data point then you have to go in and adjust. 

The licensing cost is pretty expensive compared to competitors. 

The community edition, however, is pretty good for developing automation. You can have one unattended product as well, which you can utilize. 

A developer license may be around $420 or $450 a month, which is really expensive. 

I'm a reseller.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

I would advise others, if they mean to use the product, to be specific and look at the cost structure. A small business will always need to be mindful of the cost structure. For a smaller business, the community version might be an option. 

Overall, the orchestrator, the cloud management, and a lot of their features are great. 

We do a lot of claims processing for healthcare providers. We handled the billing, and it was very beneficial for us to use automation to perform those claims management and submit the claims for those various providers.

We utilize Orchestrator, the robots, both attended and unattended, and team sites.

Our organization was trying to achieve better accuracy and better throughput with this AI-powered automation initiative. We were just getting all the claims processed that we needed to because we just couldn't keep up with the workload. Using automation was a requirement.

It is very important that UiPath has orchestration. Without Orchestration, we wouldn't be able to do anything we do. My team specifically manages the Orchestration, and after the automation goes live, they come to my team to manage. 

Without Orchestration, I couldn't comprehend how we could do it. We have 360 machines running over a hundred processes with thousands of transactions a day. Without Orchestration, I don't see how we would be able to use the function.

Unattended robots with Orchestrator are our bread and butter. We don't do very many attended automations. It just seems that they are much more resilient when we run a program in a way that doesn't involve any users. 

We did have insights at one point, but that was prior to it being re-engineered by UiPath. We have to pick that back up because it didn't really work for us back in the day, but I've been told that they've changed the vendors that they've used for that product. We've re-licensed it, and we're in the midst of reimplementing it.

We are working with a vendor, Namica, the UiPath vendor and we are starting with task discovery processes. We're just touching more on task capture instead of process mining.  

We would like to see better connectivity with different technologies. We found credential management to be something that is a real problem for us, especially working with third-party systems. 

Being able to manage those credentials and have a product that could help us with that would be nice to have. We've ended up using CyberArk WPM for this purpose. But it's not something that's prepackaged; we've had to do it ourselves.

I have been using this solution for five years.

I have no issues with stability. UiPath improves how the infrastructure works and how stable everything is. I haven't had many problems. There are a couple of quirks that different product levels will address or resolve, but it's documented pretty well on the support side.

Scalability is pretty good. We did scale. Our initial rollout was 65 machines within Orchestrator, and we have since gone to 360 with one Orchestrator and one tenant. It's pretty good—I don't have any complaints about the scalability.

When I need support, I need them to respond. I actually had an instance last week where Orchestrator was not performing well. There were a lot of locks on the database, and it was bringing the Orchestrator trigger down. 

I opened a ticket and marked the criticality level as high. There's only one above that, and I didn't get a response back for a few hours. 

I had to go back to my sales personnel and explain to them that it was unacceptable. There was a problem with support.

In that particular instance, it was pretty poor, but I hope they saw that it was a problem and are working to address it.

Negative

We used Microsoft Power Automate very briefly because it's just part of our Office 365 package. We've used it very sparingly. It was more of a means to an end than a plan. 

We're actually looking to use it with a UiPath automation that we've created because it's Microsoft-centric, and it'll work quicker and do what we need it to do without having to invest a lot of time in the development. It might just be a subset of what we do.

We're currently on-prem, but we're looking to change that. We're up for renewal in January and are already discussing that shift over to the cloud. We can utilize AI better if we shift to the cloud. 

I manage the infrastructure and the deployment of all the processes. I have a pretty solid background in infrastructure, so it seemed pretty straightforward.

We have a lot of departments within our organization that can do the implementations. But personally, I'd rather just do it myself and make sure it works.

We have an admin team that makes sure that the ROI is there before we even start.

The pricing is competitive. I like the solution's pricing structure. However, the development tools can have a better discount because we'd like to have more developers be able to do the work. 

In the long term, running the product and running the automation unattended, I completely understand the pricing structure there, but on the Studio side of it, UiPath can come down a little bit on the pricing.

The product is leading the way toward AI, and there's some onus to make sure that we stay current with what UiPath is doing. It's the other way around too, where they need to understand where we are and help support us and our program. It's a two-way street. They need to make sure we understand where they're going, and they need to understand where we are. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

I would recommend making sure your process discovery is done correctly because no matter how many automations you can put in place if you don't have a good understanding of your processes, it's not going to do anybody any good. 

Process discovery and getting buy-in from management are key.

We have licenses for 15 robots and they are running internal processes. We develop them using UiPath Studio and we only use unattended automation.

Our primary use case, which is 70% of what we have automated, is related to our booking system. Instead of having 10 agents who handle the booking or creating the reservations, the work is done by the robots. Sometimes, bookings are very simple where you have just airfare or the hotel, but in our case, it's quite complex. We call it dynamic packaging, which will have a flight component, you can have a hotel component, different attractions, meal options, a rental car, and more. Instead of entering all of the options manually, which can take up to 10 minutes or 15 minutes just to create a single booking. It is similar when we perform other tasks, such as making a payment. These things are normally done in our target system. I have created robots and workflows in UiPath that are triggered by the database, and they complete these tasks automatically. We have 15 robots conducting the job.

The second use case replaces the agent when once we get all information from the outside system using a .NET application and store it in the database, it creates parameters for the robots to make a booking or reservation at Universal Studios for attractions.

The third use case covers all of Europe and it is a completely automated car booking system. 

Basically, our use cases are all about travel and booking systems for Universal Studios, general dynamic packaging, and car rentals.

UiPath has definitely improved the way our organization functions. It normally takes one agent approximately six hours to create reservations in the booking system manually, and now the job is left to RPA with UiPath workflows. It saves between 40% and 50% of the agent's time, leaving them time to work on something different.

The accuracy of tasks has been improved because everything is data-driven, and there is no problem that comes from human error. The system is almost bulletproof; if you send garbage in then you get garbage out but definitely, there are no human mistakes. For example, instead of entering the name of the customer, it comes straight from the database. The same is true for options like the times of picking up and dropping off your car. The only problem that we have is not related to RPA; it's the case where the target system is not responsive. For example, if you're moving from one screen to another and the system doesn't respond, then we are notified via an alert. 

The improved accuracy and shorter time to complete tasks, freeing up resources for other jobs, translate to money saved. Given that our processes are complex, the automation of them takes a load off of our end-users. In some cases, they have to perform data entry in several different systems. For example, in order to make a booking, they have to use three different systems with three different interfaces.

With RPA, in general, there is also a fear that jobs will be lost but when you're always swamped at work, including overtime, night shifts, and working on weekends, RPA is a big help. 

UiPath has helped to reduce our hardware footprint by between 20% and 30%. We now have only 15 virtual machines running instead of 15 physical desktops. The amount of hardware required to operate the business is directly correlated to the number of human operators and the software that is running.

UiPath has saved us significantly in terms of costs, primarily because of the manpower we used to have for the booking reservation system. It frees up resources for the agents, IT staff, and people from various departments. For example, we have group reservation systems for car booking, flight booking, and others. UiPath has made an impact in all of these places and the cost saving is very beneficial. In the first year, we saved over $100,000 on the booking systems. After the initial project in the first year, two or three more systems were built, for a savings of $300,000 annually before COVID.

In terms of the time we are saving, it is quite low these days because of the COVID-19 travel restrictions. Pre-COVID, we were saving approximately 80 hours per day. The reclaimed time for our employees is now available for them to work on higher-value work. The savings is not only from the data entry but for troubleshooting errors, which no longer needs to be done.

We have offices in Montreal, Vancouver, and Toronto, and the majority of agents are stationed in Montreal. I am working in the Toronto location, so I cannot comment on the majority in terms of how employee satisfaction has improved. What I have heard from the executive management is that more people are happy because they are able to better focus on what they want to do. This is especially true because they do not have to spend many hours troubleshooting trivial issues. Instead, they are concentrating on higher-value work.

We are using approximately 70% of all of the activities that are available in UiPath. These include web scraping and data entry, where the information is stored in a database. We also perform database queries.

The biggest benefit that we have from UiPath comes from using the API.

The features that we use most often are database communication, scraping, and PDF functions. The only features that we don't use are those related to Excel, for spreadsheets.

For smaller projects, we are only passing parameters from .NET applications but in the newer projects, we are using features such as database communication and data scraping.

The ease of building automations is great. When I talk about UiPath, I am usually referring to Studio, which has a very intuitive and easy-to-use interface, yet it is very powerful. This is something that has improved with the help of forums and tutorials. In 2016, it was more difficult because there were really no forums so we had to contact the head office in Bucharest, Romania when we needed help. Getting a demo had to be done in the very early hours and there was lots of communication back and forth. It was a struggle to find solutions, although to be fair, they've been very helpful. These days, it is very easy to use because there are numerous examples, and UiPath Academy is available, along with other resources.

We have been using the UiPath Apps feature and it has helped with the ease and time required for creating automation. Everything has improved over the past several years, as in the past, there were no examples or tutorials available. There was no manual and it was very technical. At the time, you definitely needed programming knowledge in order to handle some of the scenarios. It was at times like this that we relied on support from Bucharest.

Even today, there are only a couple of programmers in the company who develop the bots. Even with the Apps feature, I don't think that the end-users are ready, although this may be because of the way that our organization is structured. Everything is given to the IT department because our scenarios are very complex, and not a simple case of data entry or something like that. With such complex solutions, it is definitely too difficult for our end-users.

There are a few areas that need to be improved, one of which we have already raised with the salesperson and technical team.

The first area that needs improvement is backward compatibility. If you have a newer version of the UiPath Studio or any product, then quite often, if you're a year behind or so, you cannot compile the whole project. This means that you have to rebuild system modules. It's not like a Microsoft product that is always backward compatible. For us, that is a huge obstacle because sometimes, we have to rewrite entire workflows. In our case, this is a massive undertaking that will take three or four months to complete. This is the main issue for us and it doesn't happen with minor release updates, but with major ones, we have to rewrite the entire project because it doesn't compile.

The licensing should be more flexible and more affordable.

We used to be able to integrate with .NET applications, where all of the business rules reside, and then invoke robots or workflows from there. Now, that capability has been removed, so we have to use Orchestrator. Converting our projects requires a lot of work because we have to move all of the business logic to the UiPath workflow. It is not an ideal situation for us because keeping the business logic inside our .NET applications is more flexible and more scalable.

When I was taking some UiPath Academy courses, I noticed that they gave us more complex tasks. There were expert-level examples, but the junior examples are missing. Furthermore, they give you high-end, very technical guides, but there are not really any examples. This means that you really have to dig and use the forums and ask people questions. Essentially, you have to try and find the solutions by yourself.

In general, if you have very large and complex solutions as we do, the overall workflow layout could be improved because navigating through the network components can be very inconvenient. You can still see the high-level of the workflow, but not a detailed one. It may take you several minutes to get to the component you were looking for. In terms of navigation, the mapping solution could definitely be improved. There are always workarounds. What you can do in this case is use the flow charts with the sequencing module to break it down to a more general view. This makes it faster to get to the module that you want to improve or fix.

I am a Senior Lead Developer in my company, and I have been using UiPath since 2016. I was one of the very early UiPath users.

Stability-wise, we haven't really found any issues lately.

In the earlier versions, from 2016 and 2017, there were some issues that were never resolved by the UiPath team. The newer versions, especially while performing web scraping, are much more stable. Once it was deployed, we haven't seen any issues with the .NET applications.

Instability in our use case is the result of the target system; for example, the one that is operated by Universal Studios. If they are unresponsive for perhaps 20 or 30 seconds and the robot is expecting to see a certain screen, especially when it normally only takes two or three seconds to move from one screen to the other after submitting a request, it is going to cause a problem. However, that's not the fault of UiPath or RPA in general, but a fault of the source or target system.

I estimate that with all things considered, UiPath is 99.9% stable.

UiPath is very scalable. We are a mid-sized company with approximately 200 to 250 employees.

There are three or four of us who have hands-on experience with the product, and there are between 100 and 110 end-users. This includes four or five departments spread across three different locations. Our end-users are primarily business users.

Our goal is to increase our usage of UiPath but we are currently downsizing due to the COVID situation. We have some projects in mind, but we have to wait to see what happens with the travel industry. With approximately 50% of our employees laid off, no progress will be made. However, down the road when we get back on track, we plan to use other areas of the system. That will include manipulating spreadsheets, data entry, interoperability with other systems, and interfacing with it.

The technical support is definitely good, although there were some issues that never got resolved. The situation is that we are based in Canada and our salesperson from Toronto organizes the meeting with the technical staff from New York in the US. There were times when they couldn't help us because the majority of them had been with UiPath for two to three years. They didn't understand how things were working back in 2016, '17, or '18, well enough. Ultimately, they never found a person who could help us and to me, that is not really acceptable in terms of finding a workaround or the fastest approach to resolve the backward compatibility and .NET Integration.

What we needed was somebody with five or six years of experience and they could simply not find one.

We had some basic automation running prior to UiPath, but it was native SQL and .NET applications. An example is that we were using scaping options available in Microsoft applications, but it wasn't really RPA. UiPath has definitely helped us to reduce the costs of our automation operations. Everything is now run from one application, and you can use the workflows to collaborate between databases, spreadsheets, and booking reservations. Basically, it's end-to-end in terms of the development lifecycle because originally, our tasks were only partly automated.

If you consider automated testing solutions then we were using Selenium for things such as load-testing, in a previous company. I had no experience with a full RPA solution before UiPath in 2016.

In our early stages of automation, the task would start and then only get to a certain point before a different application had to pick it up. We had a scheduler that was responsible for this. The scheduler would see the partly completed task, then take it and put it somewhere else for a third application to take over. Now, all of this is done using the UiPath API.

Specifically, in terms of overhead operations, UiPath has saved us approximately 80 hours a day, which translates to between $4,000 and $5,000 per day, just in one department. If you multiply this by 30 days then it is a lot of money. Given that it is a ballpark figure for just a single department, it could be even more.

Back when we first installed UiPath, it was complex. But now, it is much easier because they have grown. It is much easier than it was five years ago, although, at the same time, we haven't had many issues in the process of implementing and rolling out our solutions.

Our deployment is on-premises and entirely private.

These days, it takes less than a day to deploy. In 2016, it took us almost a week for much simpler deployments because there was no proper documentation. Fortunately, at the time, we got lots of help from the technical staff in Romania.

When we first started with UiPath, it was not even close to what it's today. It was much difficult to create a strategy because it more or less was a black box. We purchased the product and there was only UiPath Studio, nothing else. There was virtually no documentation and more or less, everything was left to us, our team, to develop this strategy.

Implementing it was more of a trial and error process than it is today. Finally, we did it. We moved our automations from the development environment to the staging environment, and then finally into the production environment. Now, it's pretty stable. At the time, however, it was pretty cumbersome and difficult because there was no proper documentation or guidance from UiPath. Nowadays, it's pretty simple.

There are three of us in the company who are responsible for deployment and maintenance. We also handle the monitoring, implementation, troubleshooting, and updating of the product and robots.

We also have an infrastructure team that is outsourced from a company in Toronto, Canada, called Carbon60. Our experience with them has been a little shaky, but we are handling it okay. They could not really help us as much with the initial setup of UiPath because they did not have experience with RPA. We gave them the specs required for our infrastructure, and they set it up. Overall, approximately 90% of the setup was our responsibility.

Compared to four or five years ago, the licensing in terms of price is less flexible and less affordable. Recently, because of the COVID situation, we need 15 robots. Ideally, we could use five robots and Orchestrator instead, and pay the difference, but the vendor refused to take this offer.

We are currently using the Community Version of Orchestrator for training purposes.

When we started looking at UiPath, they had less than 100 customers in the world. We had been looking at three different options that included UiPath, Blue Prism, and one other one. In our case, we were using a legacy application that was Java applet-based, and the other products were not able to handle that well.

From what I recall, back in 2016, UiPath was the only option that supported Java applet-based automation. We needed the functionality because one of our internal applications was not web-based, but Java applet-based, and depended on it. It did not work immediately and there were some workarounds, but with some help from the UiPath technical staff, we were able to handle it. This is the main reason that we ultimately chose UiPath.

Essentially, UiPath was the only option that was able to handle Java applet automation. With that covering the front end, we automated the whole process.

In the future, because UiPath was not able to handle the legacy projects that we developed in RPA, we might consider another product like Blue Prism. We would assess potential solutions based on backward compatibility.

We have been thinking about using the Orchestrator with the cloud option, but because of the current world situation, especially because we are in the travel industry, our income has been significantly reduced. At this point, we are more or less in survival mode, so we decided to stay as-is.

We were also supposed to get Orchestrator, the latest web developer, and a production license but we gave up because we cannot afford it at the moment. Travel may be idle right now but post-COVID, which hopefully is next year or by end of this year, we're going to get the official Orchestrator license.

Originally, we were using .NET applications, which is the technology that has driven the business. It's huge, and with the newer versions of UiPath, it is no longer possible because we have to use Orchestrator. At this time, we are more or less working on a workaround and it's a massive project that is probably going to take six or seven months to complete.

We are not using the AI functionality yet, although it is something that we're planning to look into, eventually.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using UiPath is how much time was consumed by our manual processes. Definitely, we have freed up resources for our business team. In terms of accuracy, there are no human errors anymore. Consequently, we can free up between 30% and 40% of our agents' time in terms of analysis and billing. In summary, the biggest thing that I have learned is that using RPA is about improving accuracy and reliability.

My advice for anybody who is implementing UiPath is to start with the training. These days, especially younger developers, people are very keen to jump on developing RPA and they're doing this stuff without using Academy or other training. Rather than do that, I suggest people get familiar with the product and use the training material first. Use the examples that are provided because the UiPath Academy is amazing in terms of that.

In summary, this product has a very intuitive and powerful interface. There are very good examples and scenarios on the UiPath Academy website, and technical support is very helpful. You can also find lots of good examples in the community forums. There used to be only one OCR option, and now there are two different flavors of OCR, which is definitely one of the pros. However, the major cons are backward compatibility and licensing in terms of flexibility and affordability. We also lost some of the functionality for .NET integration, which was a problem for us because the capabilities are simply gone.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

It is looking externally at how we can enable the government to identify efficiencies and improve effectiveness. The other is, internally, how can we drive efficiencies within HR and finance, with everything that a big corporation can do. 

1. How do we help the government realize these benefits? 
   
2. How do we help our internal workforce benefit?

It is two different things, and they are similar, but they're not the same thing.

A lot of people externally are worried about the elimination of jobs, but at the same time, they still want that efficiency, and they are looking for it. We want to drive the effectiveness of the workforce, whomever we're working with. 

There are plenty of automation opportunities out there: DoD, the federal government, and commercial space. There are all sorts of stuff that we can do. Internally, we feel the same way. There are lot of things that we can do to make ourselves run more efficiently. If we are preaching to the government that they need to be using this, it's beneficial for us to say, "This is what we have done as a company."

Our company is 25,000 people across the globe. There are certain opportunities for us to include automation in what we do every day. We are doing it now by instituting RPA, specifically, and the tools that the UiPath bring to the table. It will be a game changer for us, if we can get it done at scale.

Automation is growing at our company. A lot of what we do is focused on AI. Going from zero to AI is a Herculean task. It's extremely difficult. However, there are many steps in-between zero and AI that we can do now to help realize the benefit to the company or the federal government, such as the benefits of the efficiencies that we can identify. That intermediate, non-threatening first step can be RPA, which ultimately will lead to enabling AI, but is not AI. 

Within our company, we are looking to identify what those pre-AI steps are, with the goal in mind that we know that the federal government is asking for AI. What we do in the interim is a type of level set, where you can build an algorithm, AI, or machine learning algorithm. This ultimately is what they want, but what they need right now is to aggregate their data in a structured way to be able to feed into those algorithms. That's step one. This is the first step to getting all your data right. It's not easy, because you have to take people out of the mindset of AI.

A lot of times, in the government, people say, "I'm wearing two hats." It's an idiom. The question I have in response is, "What if we could take one of those hats away?" We can take one of those responsibilities that someone finds cumbersome, or annoying, and remove that from their task list. We have them tell us the steps of their process, so we can automate it, if not pieces, but all of it. That is our starting point with a lot of people, "We can take this off your plate," which is definitely exciting for a lot of people. It scares some people too, but we're working on that.

The most valuable features are the unattended bots. Initially, we are going to be looking at a number of attended bots in a pilot phase for our HR internal operations personnel. We are going to come in and try to remove tasks from their daily lives, such as ten minute tasks brought down to five seconds, or we could just completely eliminate them, making them unattended.

The training and certification online is very helpful.

The software is easy to use, as a drag and drop function. Even if it wasn't, the type of support that we get from the people who work for UiPath is paramount to the capability of the tool. The ease of use has exceeded our expectations.

The Academy Live that I took was only a half a day course. There needs to be diverse set of courses for those introduced to RPA for the first time. There are different people who show up to this course: 

• The developer who is interested in automation and automating different facets of the tasks that they have, either at work or for their clients. 
• Business managers who want to know more about what RPA can do for my business or company. They want the operational and strategic level versus the tactical level of how do I get automation to do the thing I want it to do?

The course was only a half a day, and although we were able to provide two automations and build two bots, it would be helpful if that was extended to include the RPA story and pitch. E.g., What's the story that we need to tell in order to get people to say, "How do I get into the pilot phase now."

I would like to have the course do an introduction, "Welcome to the course. This is what RPA is. Now, let us build your first bot." 

The sales elements of why RPA should be there too:

• What is the value proposition that RPA brings to the table.
• Here is the expected ROI for a menial task, saving an hour a week equals this in the long term. Even if you can cut a 25 minute task out of somebody's daily routine, this is the benefit in the long term.
  

That wasn't there as much. I wasn't really expecting it to be there, but in the long term, if there are a number of different types of training courses which are offered, people will have different breadths of understandings of RPA can really do, e.g., it needs a hardcore developing training and a capture manager. It needs to explain what sort of things a capture manager needs to know. Maybe not necessarily how to develop the architecture for it, but what does that even mean? For example, how easy is it for me to get Orchestrator onto a server? How do I become a reseller of the software? These are the capture manager responsibilities, and it would be helpful if they were explained. While this is probably more of a day two of a training rather than day one. 

I would like to see a UiPath user group to discuss issues. I am unaware of all the activities and features, and this would help. Right now, there is just the user's guide and UiPath GO! It would be great if this feedback went back to the UiPath development team. We should also be notified of new features through an alerting system on UiPath GO!

With our focus on the federal government, they're looking at dozens of bots: Scaling of five instances of Studio, 10 bots of Orchestrator, and three unattended bots. That is far easier to scale than in the commercial world, where they are asking for 1000 instances of Studio and 500 unattended bots, touching 100 different processes. We haven't had that experience yet.

The current staff at UiPath won't let you fail (the customer support and customer success managers). They are not going to leave you hanging.

They are an honest broker. They told us when things aren't going to work. They've been upfront and transparent about everything with us.

Our developers have found that it is relatively straightforward. With any installation issues that have come up, we have always had somebody just be able to pick up the phone and call.

ROI depends on the complexity the project. Unattended bots tend to see ROI immediately, where attended bots take longer. The savings starts as soon as a bot is deployed.

Getting licenses has been relatively easy.

We have all the prices for the software. Every project is up for a negotiation on how it's going to be done. A lot of times, with the federal government, it will be necessary to put it on contract. When we are bidding for something, we need to know, how many bots are we talking about? The tricky part is when the government is unsure what they actually want. A lot of times when contracts or proposals are put on the street, the government wants something that can support 100 bots. That's not really helpful given that the price points for unattended and attended are different. So, clarification is often necessary when we're asking, what ratio of attended to unattended are you really asking for?

There is some initial sticker shock from a lot of people regarding cost, until you show them what the actual benefit is. Initially, people are just going, "Why?" So, the retort for that is, "Look how much you will save, time, and budget-wise with one bot. If one bot costs X, this is how much it will save you over one year. This alleviates the "Oh my gosh" face, when it's 1200 dollars for a bot. 

Getting clients, and our own people internally, to recognize that this is an investment in efficiency to drive effectiveness. If you can do that, and you can get past any initial sticker shock, thinking strategically and long term, then you've got them. But if they say, "Look, my budget this year is only 10,000 dollars. Why would I put that into bots?" That becomes a different type of discussion. It's mostly focused on, you're thinking about today. We need you to be thinking about three years from now.

If you look around at the other software systems, we have chose to go with UiPath because of the ease of the interface and also the customer support that we get from their people. There are a lot of tools out there. The reason why we have gone with UiPath is because of the relationships that we have built and the type of success that we are going to get working with their account leads.

We looked at Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, and briefly at a couple of the start ups. However, we figured that they didn't have the ATOs that we needed to go within the federal space. There are a lot of people who say they can do this, or they say that they have an offering that can do this. In many cases, that is absolutely true. We wanted to be with a company that we feel is up and coming and will be around in the next decade. We want to use software that is going to be recognized by the federal government as number one, or at least very close.

Be prepared, because you are going to be asked a hundred question. This product takes a team. Your senior management needs to want this product and sign onto training. You will need developers capable of using the UiPath software.

UiPath is not just a technology business. It really comes down to a people business. The people and culture that UiPath provides us leads us to use their software more often.

The NextGen workforce is not going to be cutting and pasting for eight hours a day. That is not a function that a human should be doing anyway. Therefore, we treat RPA as a digital assistant, because who would not want a digital assistant.

People are finding ways to automate the reporting functions that Workday can really provide. This is not at an individual level. At the individual level, you can go in and check your benefits and check your 401K. However, at a macro level, we need people to run Workday reports pretty much daily, and that gets updated in the systems that we have. Therefore, our HR and finance people are all working with Workday, as people of incorporate these big management systems, trying to find new ways to automate them.

It is now on us and our team to be able to implement automation with the Workday, and have it work more efficiently. That will be our next challenge moving forward, automating Workday.

We are a diagnostic laboratory that receives tissue samples from all over the country daily. To manage these, we implement UiPath for Document Understanding to process requisitions from clinical providers. This information is then loaded into our laboratory information system, enabling us to carry out the diagnostic process. We have a dozen bots operating across various functions, assisting in tasks such as screening resumes in HR and data entry on patient information.

Automation has increased our productivity. In my three years at the company, the number of employees working on data entry has grown from 15 to more than 50. We needed an alternative because we couldn't have 150 employees in one room doing data entry. UiPath has improved our efficiency by 60 percent and reduced errors by 87 percent in the assessment process. 

In healthcare, our top priority is to eliminate as many mistakes as possible. A mistake in our business can kill someone. Our second objective is to build better security measures to protect patient privacy and the sensitive information we handle. We also hope to improve efficiency and help our employees work better. It has helped take people away from mundane tasks and allowed them to focus on what truly needs their expertise.

We've achieved some of these outcomes so far, but we've only been automating for a year. I came to this event last year knowing nothing about UiPath, but I met some people and hooked up with a partner to get started. I met some people. We got hooked up with a partner who could help us get started. Then, I started hiring developers. We're still early on in this relationship, but we've already seen tremendous gains in efficiency and error reductions. 

Document Understanding has been particularly helpful, and so has UiPath's ability to interface with other applications. AI is the next phase. Document Understanding can only process about half the documents that come in. We need the AI component to start helping so that the half we can't process has a methodology on what needs to be done with it. 

AI automation is a high priority. A year ago, I was the chief operating officer, and now I'm the chief innovation officer. Our CEO saw that we needed to have a dedicated technology group looking for solutions, and he asked me to move into this role. I have seven full-time developers on my team who are specifically looking for things to automate. When I saw the demonstration this morning, my mind was blown. They're doing so many things that we could do that will take us to the next level. We can have AI interact with our pathologists and assist them in diagnostic research. We can apply UiPath across our billing processes and everywhere.

While not a negative remark toward UiPath itself, our initial partner was limited in helping us achieve our goals. We are now directly working with UiPath support, which has been exceptional.

We have been using UiPath for about a year.

The solution is very stable.

I think it's we I think we we I think I don't have any barriers in my head of what we can do do or not do with it.

I rate UiPath support 10 out of 10. It's outstanding. Working with them has been a game-changer. 

Positive

We did not use any different solution before adopting UiPath.

We initially worked with a partner who was limited in aiding our objectives, leading us to work directly with UiPath support.

We saw a 60 percent improvement in efficiency and significantly reduced errors.

I rate UiPath 10 out of 10.

For two years, I have focused on automating workflows related to processing documents in formats like PDF, Excel, and CSV. Using the document understanding feature, we have handled forecast orders and purchase order invoices. 

If you use input files like Excel, PDF, and CSV, we can automate file validation, such as checking data accuracy, format compliance, or missing information. It's integrated with Boomi, so after the files are validated, they're sent to Boomi for further processing. 

Boomi provides us with the RTF file, and we use UiPath to validate its contents and correctness. It automates the process of converting the RTF file into an Excel file. Another process is remittance, where we can get files from clients, validate them, and submit them to the credit managers for correction.

UiPath reduces human error by eliminating manual work and intervention. Some human intervention is still necessary, but it has been reduced. Realizing UiPath's benefits takes some time because you may have some issues after the initial deployment. The UiPath Academy was helpful. I took some courses and achieved developer certificates. I'm still learning. 

It hasn't saved time in my work because I'm still spending a lot of time learning the software. It was new, so learning and implementing those things in my work takes time.

My favorite feature is Document Understanding. I haven't used most of the new features, such as AI-enhanced document processing and process mining. The document understanding feature is especially valuable because I can use it to extract and process invoice data efficiently. It enables the quick and accurate handling of structured and unstructured data. 

The flexibility to work with templates and machine learning models for document extraction has been helpful when dealing with various invoice formats and forecast orders. Data extraction from PDF has been smooth, especially with UiPath's capability to handle scanned documents using OCR and AI-based models. 

The taxonomy manager lets you define the structure and categorize data from multiple document types. AI center integration allows continuous improvement in document extraction accuracy by training models based on historical data. I have utilized AI and machine learning models in UiPath specifically for processing complex PDF and Excel documents. 

UiPath's AI capabilities, such as pre-trained invoices and receipts models, have effectively extracted structured and unstructured documents. For example, when processing purchase orders, the AI model identified key fields, such as invoice numbers, dates, line items, and currency details, with high accuracy. I have found the machine learning models to be especially useful when working with documents that have different formats. In some cases, additional training or validation was required to fine-tune the models for complex or irregular documents. Overall, AI models and document understanding are my favorite features.

UiPath is highly user-friendly because it has drag-and-drop functionality to design and develop complex workflows without much coding knowledge. This has been particularly beneficial when working with different document formats. UiPath's built-in tools and integration capabilities simplify the automation process, leading to greater efficiency.

We have end-to-end automation and integration with other applications. For example, we have portal automation that's end-to-end. We use it to log in to the website and sign in to different accounts. It enters the CAPTCHA, downloads the files, and logs out. It can complete the automation without human intervention. 

UiPath has many resources online. We use its academy and online documentation. If we face any challenges, we can find an answer on the forum or one of these resources. I've never had a problem finding solutions to problems. They have the best resources.

I would love more integration with Third-Party applications. Expanding the library of pre-built, plug-and-play connectors to include more industry-specific applications.

I have worked with UiPath for two years. 

I've never experienced lagging or crashing with UiPath. The app has never given me trouble. 

Installing the community version of UiPath was easy and only took five to ten minutes. 

I am using the free community version. The enterprise version is obviously a little expensive. 

We use UiPath to automate ERP and CRM portal processes, integrate them with SAP and various external applications, gather data, and perform functions to generate reports. UiPath enables us to carry out numerous activities, and its usage is not limited to a single variable but rather multiple ones.

UiPath's primary goal is to enhance the scalability and accuracy of daily tasks within any organization. The core concept behind UiPath is to boost productivity by mimicking human actions, automating repetitive tasks and freeing up time for individuals to focus on other activities.

Compared to other RPA tools in the market, such as Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, Worksoft Certify for automation testing, and Selenium, which uses high-level coding, UiPath is a low-to-no-code automation platform. This makes it user-friendly and provides a comprehensive library built into the tool, enabling developers to automate various tasks and processes efficiently.

UiPath enables end-to-end automation. A negative side of this automation is that it replaces a human already doing that specific job. A human previously did any automation implemented through UiPath. However, by automating through UiPath, we free up that employee's bandwidth, enabling them to focus on other tasks or housekeeping activities instead of repeatedly performing the same repetitive task.

The UiPath user community is extremely active and knowledgeable.

I recall a situation where a business had to generate quarterly reports. Before automation, they could only produce 200 to 300 reports per quarter. However, after implementing bots, productivity increased to around 900 reports. Additionally, UiPath's logic query feature allows for Excel calculations to be done in a fraction of a second, a task that would typically take a human around an hour. Many bots have reduced business processing times from one hour to five minutes, and tasks that used to take one to two hours are now completed in five to ten minutes with high accuracy.

To learn UiPath effectively, we need a reliable source that provides accurate information. UiPath Academy serves as the ideal platform for this purpose—additionally, companies value certification as proof of UiPath proficiency. If we aim to become UiPath certified, UiPath Academy is our best option, as its courses are specifically designed to help us succeed in the certification exam. While other platforms like Udemy or Coursera offer UiPath courses, we may need more preparation for the certification, which involves a mix of theoretical, conceptual, and practical questions. We can learn practical skills elsewhere, but UiPath Academy is the best resource for mastering the theoretical and conceptual knowledge required for certification.

UiPath helps reduce the cost of digital transformation by around 30 percent.

UiPath helps reduce human error by 95 to 99 percent. The bot doesn't make mistakes. Because of the high accuracy, we started with ten bots and now use 200 bots.

A UiPath bot can save one full-time employee's time per year.

UiPath is highly versatile, offering multiple automation options for various applications. For example, UiPath can automate email, PDF invoices, images, Excel documents, and websites. This flexibility extends to its OCR feature, enabling the automation of any invoice or PDF invoice. Secondly, UiPath's exception-handling capabilities greatly simplify the automation process. Lastly, UiPath utilizes minimal code, making it a low-code or no-code platform. Consequently, even individuals with limited programming knowledge can automate tasks using UiPath after completing a basic course.

The Excel operation needs some modifications. Image processing is also crucial. For example, if the image is clear, UiPath can easily read it. If the image needs clarification, UiPath can't read the object easily. To some extent, Excel automation, especially handling macros, needs improvement. UiPath needs a comprehensive feature set for automating Excel and has limited options. In some cases, we must use macro-enabled Excel files. Therefore, Excel automation and OCR require enhancements.

I have been using UiPath for four years.

Bots rely on numerous third-party applications, and several factors can impact their performance, including the virtual machine's capabilities and the responsiveness of the applications the bot interacts with. Therefore, UiPath isn't solely responsible for failures; issues could stem from your server or the third-party applications UiPath connects with. UiPath's stability is rated at eight point five out of ten.

I'm a delivery lead. As organizations grow, they add technology and features to their ERP applications. This requires frequent modifications to automation bots developed for specific functions. UiPath's scalability feature allows me to implement change requests easily at any time. Instead of extensive development, I can lift and test the desired changes within the existing code. UiPath also incorporates AI/ML features, which are in high demand in this generation. This addition of AI/ML capabilities will likely enhance UiPath's scalability.

I would rate the scalability of UiPath seven out of ten.

I used Worksoft Certify for automation testing, but it doesn't compare to UiPath due to its limited features. Exception handling is not well-defined in Worksoft Certify, and I find flowchart programming much more complex compared to UiPath. In many ways, UiPath is superior to Worksoft Certify, which has many limitations.

The initial deployment is straightforward because the UiPath team will be available throughout the process, participating in calls and meetings to provide comprehensive assistance with the deployment.

The deployment takes one to two days, provided all approvals are in place. Approximately 12 people are involved, including five from our team, as well as members of the server and networking teams.

We implemented it in-house with the help of UiPath.

I don't handle the costing aspect as it's not within my scope. However, I understand that initially, businesses or clients might perceive UiPath as expensive. While this is true to some extent, the features and flexibility UiPath provides often lead clients to realize its value in the long run.

I would rate UiPath seven out of ten.

We have 55 UiPath users in our organization.

Code maintenance is necessary for UiPath due to the bot's interaction with external applications and websites. The bot must be adjusted accordingly if any of these applications or websites are updated.

The primary challenge encountered during UiPath implementation is the disparity between development and production environments. Often, code is developed in a non-production system where access to certain applications, such as a client's portal, is limited. This necessitates dry runs in the non-production environment to ensure the bot functions correctly without making any unintended changes. Once the bot is moved to the production system, multiple controlled tests are required before it can be fully operational. The unavailability of a complete testing environment mirroring production conditions significantly hinders the development and deployment process.

I recommend UiPath to any user because it doesn't require a hard-code programmer to be an RPA developer. This makes it easier and more cost-effective to hire resources. Other tools on the market require good programming knowledge, which means you need to hire someone who knows both the tool and a programming language, making resource hiring expensive. Secondly, UiPath uses minimal coding, which makes debugging very easy. UiPath is also adding AI and ML features and upgrading the OCR features regularly.