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Commercial Manager at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Real User
Has great document understanding, offers helpful training, and is reducing human error
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution has helped our organization save costs. It’s likely saved us about $10 million."
  • "The graphics could always be improved."

What is our primary use case?

In terms of product testing, I use it in the product with the test suite to mount the test manager and then follow with the requirements. After that, I create the test cases and I'm running them on different platforms on the web so that I can proof back from the web with test suites.

How has it helped my organization?

I use the different tools of UiPath. However, in the future, I’m hopeful UiPath will help us to expand into different countries. right now, I use it personally. Soon, the entire company will be using it as well.

What is most valuable?

The automation of the cloud offering helps to decrease the solution's total cost of ownership.

The document understanding is great. I interact with different documents of people. The IDs of one are different from a document or a PDF. For example, our contracts, et cetera. It can understand the differences.

I’m not quite sure about the ease of building automation using the solution just yet. It seems to be moderate. Not too easy or difficult.

The solution has helped our organization save costs. It’s likely saved us about $10 million.

UiPath has helped us reduce human error. That’s had a partial impact on our business. Our techs understand the different types of processes and competencies it can help with. Regular users cannot see this just yet.

It has freed up employee time. It’s allowed for a focus on higher-value work. Employees seem happier. It’s an easy tool to use and deploy.

We’ve used the UiPath Academy courses. All employees take the course and learn about it. You still need more education afterward, however, the biggest value of the Academy is the knowledge. I've got people who are new in the company and I can just say "take these courses." It's accepted by everyone as part of the process.

What needs improvement?

The graphics could always be improved.

Buyer's Guide
UiPath
August 2024
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2024.
801,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for three years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the solution is good. UiPath has a different release each year at the moment.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is great. You have a manual so you don't have to do the courses. You can read through it.

We have about 200 users at this time. We have different areas in the company that uses UiPath. For example, the administration uses that tool. You have a test suite and you can have development using the UiPath Studio as well.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support has been great. Whatever my query is, they are able to answer it.

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

We did not use another RPA solution before UiPath.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward and simple.

The deployment took about one month.

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

The pricing and licensing have been great.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did look at different automation tools before choosing UiPath. We looked at Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere, however, we ultimately chose UiPath.

The UiPath Academy courses were a big selling point. Also, its ease of use. Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism were so difficult to understand. UiPath is more interactive and it's more visual.

What other advice do I have?

We're a UiPath partner. 

I've used both cloud and on-premise deployment. Right now, I am using the cloud. 

At this point, we do not use UiPath's apps feature.

We have not used the solution's AI functionality in our automation program yet.

If I were to advise anyone on using UiPath, I'd let them know it's easy to use. You have manuals and courses to help you navigate the solution. The new releases make it so that it continuously gets easier. 

I would rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
VP - Information Technology at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Real User
Users can do more tasks that should have been done all along but weren't getting done
Pros and Cons
  • "We see time savings for our users in the sense that they now can do more tasks that should have been done all along but weren't getting done. That's more where the gains have been this far."
  • "The API integrations need improvement. They should build a better framework for the ability to integrate with other external APIs."

What is our primary use case?

We're still building up the program, but right now our primary use case is for report review. We're looking to branch that out more.

It's reviewing reports. I worked for a bank and there are reports of transactions from the previous day. UiPath was looking for anomalies for fraud and things like that.

How has it helped my organization?

It's still very early on but we have caught a few instances of fraud that we would not have if we weren't using UiPath. 

UiPath has reduced human error. We're very early, so it's not a big impact, but we did find a few instances of fraud that we would not have found without it. 

We see time savings for our users in the sense that they now can do more tasks that should have been done all along but weren't getting done. That's more where the gains have been this far.

What is most valuable?

I like the whole ecosystem. They're not just looking at the automation tool, they're looking at automation from end to end. 

It's pretty easy to build automations. I have a coding background so it's not particularly challenging for me to use Studio, but for a person who does not have that coding background, I think that the Visual Builder guides you through the process pretty easy.

UiPath Academy is a good training program for people without that coding background. It's good to get them into the mindset of how exactly flows works of automation.

The Academy offers us familiarization with Studio and how it functions.

What needs improvement?

The API integrations need improvement. They should build a better framework for the ability to integrate with other external APIs.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for less than a year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. 

It's pretty straightforward. It either runs or it doesn't. Occasionally it does crash and we've had to restart services and whatnot to get it going again.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven't been using it enough to see how it can scale. 

There are two ITs who use it in my company.

We have plans to increase usage. 

We don't really see our staff as being good candidates for citizen development. There are a few that could, but we do plan to expand out into other departments as far as gathering ideas and implementing processes for other departments.

How are customer service and support?

Their support is pretty average. It's not good or bad. It's off-shored. There are always difficulties with cultural differences and language barriers. They know what they're doing but sometimes it takes a while going around in circles to get the question that you're asking across. That's pretty normal. Most companies are the same way. I would say all companies have huge room for improvement there.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It was easy. The installation instructions walk you through the process. We didn't run into any problems. It took less than a week. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also looked at AntWorks and Blue Prism. We went with UiPath because of the maturity of the product that seemed far more mature than its competitors. The product seemed more thought out.

What other advice do I have?

Based on our experiences, I would say you have to have employees that are dedicated to doing this. This can't be done as a side project.

I would rate UiPath a nine out of ten. Nothing is completely perfect. The stability of it could use a little bit of improvement. The support is not great. UiPath is very good, but no one is perfect.

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
Buyer's Guide
UiPath
August 2024
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2024.
801,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Tech Project Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Frees up employee time, reduces human error, and offers UiPath Academy to help with onboarding
Pros and Cons
  • "Our stability is great. You rarely have any downtime, once you build it."
  • "While I like the Academy a lot, it could maybe go deeper into some of the topics."

What is our primary use case?

We've got mostly finance use cases including a lot of accounts receivable and stuff like that. Then, there is a lot of work where I do trading settlements, so a lot of settlements as well. The back office automation's there, too. We're still getting used to it and still getting started.

How has it helped my organization?

We've been able to expand up to citizen developers, and have been able to show them how to do various things. It's easy to pick up, so a lot of citizen developers are learning it now, and with little to no coding experience. It's been great.

What is most valuable?

The recorder has been great. Just being able to really start your automation there, and just modifying them a little bit and then getting them really in production has been helpful.

The solution has saved costs for the organization. For example, I used to do back-office stuff, and I was able to move to more of an IT role. That was definitely a savings there, and obviously, no one had to automate it after me or do it manually after me.

We have found that the solution has reduced human error as now it's a bot doing it. It's really reduced errors due to the fact that no one has to check each time to ensure the work is error-free, and, in general, there are a lot fewer errors. 

The solution has freed up employee time. For example, as I mentioned, I myself have moved off of back-office tasks and, in doing so, the company did not have to hire someone after me. We've likely saved 10,000 hours in a year. We're really happy with that result. The additional time has enabled employees to focus on higher-value work. People can now just quickly audit it and then move on to something more important.

The Academy is great to use. We've been able to learn a lot from there. That's what our citizen developers will look at as they get more familiar with the product, and as we show them how to develop items. It has positively affected the process of getting employees up to speed on the solution. A lot of them have little to no coding experience and the Academy has helped by showing them what they need to learn. The biggest value is if they have little to no coding experience, it'll really start from the basics and teach them from there. You don't have to teach them all the variables and stuff like that.

What needs improvement?

While I like the Academy a lot, it could maybe go deeper into some of the topics. The basic ones, such as Excel, which is already a decent course, could maybe go into more specifics. My issue is that, while the basics are good, getting into the weeds a little more could be very helpful. It's hard to specify exactly what is needed, however.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've used the solution for about a year now. We're still getting used to it. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Our stability is great. You rarely have any downtime, once you build it. There's obviously the support, however, I'd say it's pretty minimal.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We're trying to work on scalability at the moment. It's there, however, we have a lot of different departments that do a lot of different things and that's where we need to really work on scaling. It has nothing to do with UiPath. It's just about getting everybody trained up on everything on our side. That said, we can see how it is possible to scale in the future. We do plan to increase usage.

Currently, we have about ten users who are familiar with UiPath. It's not too many. They are either developers or just everyday users that support it.

How are customer service and support?

In terms of technical support, from the perspective of tickets, et cetera, I would say they are pretty good. We've only done a few upgrades so far. We've only had it for a year, and so far, in that time, support seems great. They have been helping us out on everything.

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

We did not previously use a different RPA solution.

How was the initial setup?

I can't speak to the initial setup, as we had an outside party handle pretty much everything. I actually joined after they onboarded us and everything, and therefore wasn't a part of the process at all.

We have two to three people that handle maintenance tasks, on top of the AI.

What about the implementation team?

We had an outside party do the deployment. It was a consultant. They did it for us.

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

I don't have any insights into the licensing process. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

While I joined after UiPath was implemented, my understanding is the company did look into a couple of other options, just to see their capabilities.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise potential new users to go for it. The Academy offers a great starting point. It's a great tool. I would recommend UiPath.

I'd rate the solution at a seven 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
Senior RPA Consultant at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Consultant
Easy to grasp the basics and to get started; has a very low learning curve
Pros and Cons
  • "The automation Cloud Platform has definitely helped reduce the time it takes to create automation. It brings a lot of things together. It's easy to use for clients and customers. It makes it easy to bring different disciplines together, so I don't need to think about how to reuse my code, or how to explain to the customer, and I don't need to share the processes to be able to release, run, and monitor and to get reports on the results."
  • "I'm trying not to sound negative about it as I like them a lot, however, the process mining and the process mining features stem further away from the development of the robots and the monitoring. The development, run, and monitoring are really closely knit, or really close together, and then process discovery is starting to get there. It's on its way, however, I don't see that it's as closely connected as the other three parts."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use UiPath for outsourcing. Customers call us when they need extra people to fill positions, on a temporary or permanent basis, similar to a temp agency.

The biggest use case that is running right now is that we get job openings or requests from a lot of different third-party brokerages, customers, clients, vendors, et cetera. They all arrive through different platforms. We get an email saying there's a request, please check it out and let us know if you have someone to fulfill the position, and the request is implemented through UiPath. It's automated. We've created all of the mailbox folders based on the sender and the subject, so we know which customer or which broker it is. Then, we make the email follow a link to the information for the job opening or the inquiry and we put it into our Salesforce system.

There are a couple of smaller use cases as well, where we have task operations that have to be done weekly or daily. Mostly it's reading emails or reading schedules and making changes in files.

How has it helped my organization?

The automation of job inquiries has a lot of sufficiency on how we operate as we used to have multiple people need to be available throughout the day to manually check if an email with an inquiry came in, and that would require them to drop work and open the email, check it out and maybe take action immediately. Now that the robot is running and taking care of the need for filtering through all the results for them, employees can stay focused on the other tasks that they have. They don't have to keep an eye on a second monitor every time and drop everything they're doing to read an email only to decide what is relevant or not.

I understand work has to be tested. It hasn't impacted the entire company yet as I've been here a little short of a year now and we haven't made that big of an impact just yet. 

What is most valuable?

The most valuable aspect of UiPath is the community in terms of the way they open up their platform to the community and make it freely available for people to try and to practice. The amount of feedback from that community makes it very easy for us to get into UiPath and if you're trying something that you've never done before, you at least have some insights. There's almost always someone who has done it before or who has asked the question. I would say the community is one of the biggest extra treats for UiPath. 

From a technical perspective, I like the learning curve in the Studio and in the orchestrator - or the Cloud Platform as they call it now - due to the fact that it's easy to get into. It's easy to grasp the basics and to get started. You can scale up as fast and as far as you'd like or need to for your customer. It can do everything. You don't have to learn everything in advance to be able to work with it. It makes it really approachable.

Building automation can be really easy. The biggest challenge is to find the easy use cases as the use cases in the company can get quite complicated quite fast. That said, using the recorder in the Studio and then converting that to work in a mobile office is quite easy. I started in 2016 or 2017, and between then and now there's been a lot of changes. It's always been easy for developer-minded people to get started. However, now with the introduction of StudioX, it is even more focused on the different users and they have a different entry point for them. What I like about UiPath is that the training is really comprehensive. You can almost just record what you do by hand and then StudioX will translate that into a robot and then you can fine-tune it to make it more robust. Smaller costs can be easier steps. Just press record, do what you do, and then you're able to work with teams. 

Scaling automation without having to pay attention to infrastructure does make my job a lot easier for now. What I do see in companies is when they've taken the first steps and they start to scale up, a lot of them have policies or ways of working in place where they want to stick to the ways that they know. A lot of time I see customers will, in the end, do it by themselves anyway, so they use all of the upscaling functions that are available as they want to do it the way that they always did. 

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation starting with process analysis, then robot building, and finally monitoring of automation. However, while it does facilitate end-to-end automation, it does take a lot of the development and running and monitoring of the robots on itself. That is something that is facilitated really well by UiPath. The process discovery and the analysis is rather newish within UiPath. Maybe it's not as well integrated into the community platform.

At this time, UiPath has helped to minimize our on-premises footprint as it is a cloud-based solution. It's important that the on-premise footprint has been minimized as it makes it easier for us being a small company. We have 160 people working for us in the Netherlands and then a couple in the Caribbean. Bringing new technology in like robotic process automation and then asking from the IT department to get me free service and results of my configuring and have all the discussions about what goes where, how the security works, how to find the work, who gets access, et cetera is easy. This is due to the fact that UiPath is offered on a cloud basis and I don't have to do all that on-site work, which allows me to get to building and talking about RPA quicker. 

The fact that the vendor handles infrastructure, maintenance, and updates saves time for our IT department. It helps us to implement a lot faster. The client companies can have a reliable cloud solution to help them do at least the first steps to get them acquainted with the product. It makes it a lot easier. It helps me a lot, and it helps our customers in starting out as well.

UiPath has decreased the time to value in that since it's cloud-based, I can deliver faster than I would be able to do on-prem. If we have an idea, or if we want to scale up, we can do so faster in the cloud solution than I could on-prem.

The product lowers the overall total cost of ownership by taking care of things such as infrastructure, maintenance, and updates, however, I'm not sure what would happen if we scale up.

The automation Cloud Platform has definitely helped reduce the time it takes to create automation. It brings a lot of things together. It's easy to use for clients and customers. It makes it easy to bring different disciplines together, so I don't need to think about how to reuse my code, or how to explain to the customer, and I don't need to share the processes to be able to release, run, and monitor and to get reports on the results. 

UiPath has reduced human error. There are fewer errors and the processes are less error-prone and once the technology has proven itself within the company, within the customers, people start to trust the robots to do what they do. Employees don't need to check the work that had been done as they know that if the robot reported that it was done correctly, then it was done correctly. In that way, it has saved a lot of time by not having to check anything. 

It has also freed up employee time. It's a three-person team and it saved them a couple of hours a week doing the work that they used to do. It saved them a lot more focus as they didn't have to monitor the email inbox all the time. They were able to apply more focus to the other things that they were doing. That said, it's hard to quantify the gains. However, overall, it has made them happy. That's one guarantee. They absolutely love that they gave the mundane work away to the robot because it was bothering them to be monitoring an email inbox all the time. It's given them the time to focus on cases that match the right people to the right inquiries or openings. I don't have any metrics on it, however, anecdotally, they tell me that it helped them to do the rest of their work better as they could apply more focus to more important tasks and placements are better attended to. There's much more focus and attention and better matches being made.

The solution has saved costs for our organization.

What needs improvement?

I'm trying not to sound negative about it as I like them a lot, however, the process mining and the process mining features stem further away from the development of the robots and the monitoring. The development, run, and monitoring are really closely knit, or really close together, and then process discovery is starting to get there. It's on its way, however, I don't see that it's as closely connected as the other three parts.

The automation operations have not brought down any company costs. Automation operations have gotten more expensive due to the fact that we added UiPath to them. That said, you do get gains at a different branch of the company. We didn't replace anything with UiPath. We weren't able to skip a step or program or tool, which makes it an added cost.

More documentation would be helpful, as they change rather quickly. There are two yearly stable releases and then a couple of community releases and data releases in between. Sometimes not all documentation is changed as quickly as the features are. Sometimes you can find something in the documentation that is not the answer, or not available in the product anymore. That's simply a side effect of how fast they develop the product. 

Sometimes it's not entirely clear what features are, for example, available in their community edition, or in the on-prem, or in the cloud. The difference between the on-prem and the cloud has become clearer in the past few weeks, however.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for three years now. 

I started out at my previous company with systems integration. We started out with discovering robotic operations, discovering the tools, and suppliers. We chose UiPath and one of the competitors, as we found them to have the best suit with our customers. That was the end of 2016. That's when I started doing training in UiPath and started doing some custom integrations.

Now, I switched to a new job at a different company where they want to start an RPA practice as well and they chose UiPath solely for RPA.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

From the operations standpoint, the stability of the cloud it's very good. I haven't had any issues with stability. The Studio will crash at random times. I've identified two scenarios where I'm able to make the Studio crash every time by just doing the same actions.

However, other than that, the automation was really stable, and I haven't had any issues or incidents. In Studio, I'd say it is good enough, however, there is some room for growth there.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scaling automation without having to pay attention to infrastructure is a bit pro for UiPath as I'm starting an RPA practice. We don't have a lot of infrastructure engineers to build the project yet. Therefore, a lot of the time, with new customers as well, it will be a bit of a one-man show. Yet, what we can do is communicate to the platform and then make sure the infrastructure is there and then implement the platform and build a business analysis basically in an un-built realm. I have to do a lot of things by myself, so the fact that UiPath brings in the Cloud Platform and the Studio and it's all integrated and you can scale up without having to have too much. You need to know something about infrastructure to understand what it does for you, however, you don't have to do it all by hand. I don't need like three or four DP-trained individuals to be able to scale up or scale out. It's helped me get further faster.

Once you build the infrastructure and you know what you're doing and you know where you want to go with your platform and scaling, it's rather easy.

The only people really using it at this time are me and six trainees. There are a couple of ops people as well that are able to log in. We might have a total of ten people on the solution.

It's not being used too extensively now, however, that's for a large part due to the fact that most of my colleagues are working with our customers, so there are not too many internal processes or tasks. However, we do have plans to increase its priority as the tasks that we do have are at some points largely repetitive. We do a lot of operations and maintenance for our customers as well in different fields, so we are mainly looking at that for further automation opportunities.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support has been pretty good. 

I get a quick response and it's usually constructive. I manage to fix my own problems a lot of the time using the community forums and information from there. I haven't had too much interaction with UiPath tech support.

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

We did not previously use a different solution. 

How was the initial setup?

I personally implemented the solution at my company. 

We currently have it running, so some internal processes. And, we're looking to expand that into the customer landscape.

The setup is simple. They deliver it in a cloud environment, I didn't need to do any installs or make any arrangements.

You need to make an account and get started and watch a couple of training videos that will help you through it. The adding of the robots is very well documented in the forum, in the community, and in the training sessions. They have made it really easy to get started and to get the information you need to take the first step.

The deployment question is a tough one as I started out at this company while already having a communicators subscription on my own account. Therefore, I started out using that one and then gradually shifted toward using more automated resources. I don't have a clear overview of how much time it took to deploy. It might have been a couple of weeks overall, however, I was doing different things at the same time, and I never took a metric of how much time it took. I'd say starting out if the prerequisites are in place at the company, it could be a matter of days.

Tasks such as setting up an account, getting some service, et cetera, if you know what you're doing and you know what to ask a few questions before starting, it's a couple of minutes or hours. That said, in reality, there are always things you forget or things that they didn't do, so it always takes a little extra time.  

My implementation strategy was basically to figure it out as I went, which is not the best strategy, however, it was the best we could do due to the fact that the company didn't really know what they wanted to do with RPA. I was figuring out my own place in the company and then their wishes with robotics with RPA. There were a lot of things at the same time, so there was not a closed strategy other than to start up quickly, as soon as possible, get feedback, and then try again.

For now, I alone handle deployment and maintenance tasks. That will be the case until our trainees finish training.

What about the implementation team?

We did not use a third-party service such as an integrator or a consultant.

What was our ROI?

We have not yet seen an ROI and have no concrete plans for any in the near future.

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

While I have one or two sheets from old presentations that have pricing information, they are over a half year old. I have no current insights. I wasn't included in discussions between the company and UiPath in relation to licensing. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The company might have looked at other options. However, they did this before I was hired. Ultimately, they did want to choose UiPath, and I was hired based on my experience with the product. They chose UiPath at that time as they were working together with Oracle and that company has always been very Oracle-minded.

What other advice do I have?

I use the community Studio and the Cloud Platform. I take the cloud from UiPath. I'm not sure where they host their solutions. I use the automation cloud from UiPath.

End-to-end coverage is not too important to my work at this time. Maybe if they were more closely integrated, I would be able to offer it more easily to my customers. However, now, due to the fact that I often go in at the first interaction with a customer or at a company, I have to introduce the concept of RPA, I have to introduce the product of UiPath, and I have to introduce or orchestrate the Cloud Platform and Studio. What I've seen is that that's enough for the first steps, usually, the company will have a pretty clear vision of what they want to start out with in terms of automation. However, introducing the process mining capabilities would add an extra step to the start-up that we have to do and what they want to see is faster results in the early phase. It's short the time from when I come in to initiate the first value, so they can appreciate the value and start the business cases and go from there. Maybe, once they are a couple of steps further on and they have a couple of automations, then they go look at the process of task mining as they have the infrastructure, they understand what the process automation is about, and then they start to see the value process or task mining. Therefore, the end-to-end factor, for my job, for now, is not too important as I don't truly use the end-to-end approach. I do the start by myself with the customer and then we go from there. Then, in the next phase, I will build them practices and they will start to automate the beginning of the process discovery as well. There is not something that I have initially do. Once companies start beyond that first phase and the first steps, then process discovery and process mining can be really important in automation. In a later stage, it becomes more important. However, in my case, I work a lot in the early phases and haven't seen too much of the process discovery products in that phase.

Attended automation hasn't really helped us scale RPA benefits as we are a rather small company and there's only a small group that works with the product, and therefore, we haven't been able to use the assistance in the same way a larger organization such as a bank or insurance company might use it.

We don't use the staff solution yet and we have not taken advantage of the AI functionality. While I have played with AI, I haven't had any use cases to implement the AI sensor.

Overall, I am quite satisfied with the product.

I'd advise new users to start by doing instead of only reading. Start small, like finding small processes or if you're an individual, look at your own work. Find something you could do and automate that as it gives you the best appreciation of the value. Try it out in your own environment and just explore how it goes as that gives you the best insights. For me, when I started, it was a great feeling to watch your screen and watch your cursor follow the screen without doing anything. 

Keep asking questions when talking to users. When translating the biggest use case into other processes, spend more and more time talking to the users and going through the processes, and defining and understanding what happens. Otherwise, it's going to cost you a lot of extra time figuring out why you've got all these weird exceptions that you didn't expect. Everyone always talks about how easy robotic process automation is. However, only once you understand your processes from a user's perspective, you'll run into a wall. It's never standardized. It's never the same. I need to warn my customers more frequently about this pitfall, due to the fact that, yes ultimately, it's very fast, but it only is once you know exactly what you want to automate and that's why most of the time it's time-consuming.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

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?

Other
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. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
RPA Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Consultant
The end-to-end coverage is important, as our clients prefer one tool to meet their needs and plans
Pros and Cons
  • "The fact that you can scale automations without having to pay attention to the infrastructure for doing so is quite critical. The infrastructure could require a lot of maintenance resources and affect costs, so that feature is quite important."
  • "The only thing missing is something to track the development cycle. We use third-party tools to do that."

What is our primary use case?

I am a service provider and developer who implements UiPath for our clients. But in the company that I work for, we also use UiPath to make invoices for ourselves and, mainly, for payroll activities.

We need to get reports from our HR tool and combine them with another source of information where employees are recording the hours they spent with various clients. We then create the documents needed for the IRS. In our case, all the users of UiPath are data entry specialists in different departments, such as HR, finances, and marketing.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath definitely helps reduce the cost of digital transformation.

It also reduces human error. We can be sure, given that our test case is successful, that there are no errors when none are reported. This definitely helps businesses. Errors generally lead to work being postponed. When errors come back to someone at a given point in time, they can rapidly overwhelm that person. With automation working, this is no longer the case because everything is smooth. And if there are errors, they will resolve them one by one.

In addition, it definitely frees up employee time. That is the purpose of automation. Unfortunately, I can't share metrics about this. But the additional time enables employees to focus on more important work and that affects employee satisfaction. Repetitive tasks make people irritated about the nature of their work. When they can work on new tasks that are more complex and creative, it makes an impact on their job satisfaction.

UiPath saves costs in our organization because we don't have errors where it is deployed and because it has reduced the number of FTEs who do repetitive tasks. On average, within a small company, it can save up to 10 FTEs.

What is most valuable?

One of the most valuable features is that UiPath is easy to deploy, especially for medium-sized companies. It is also easy to scale.

Also, the fact that you can scale automations without having to pay attention to the infrastructure for doing so is quite critical. The infrastructure could require a lot of maintenance resources and affect costs, so that feature is quite important.

UiPath enables you to implement end-to-end automation, with its full range of tools, starting from Automation Hub, which is the initial point for gathering your processes from business lines. It's driven from employees or a center of excellence, and goes on to include implementation, and the reporting in Orchestrator is quite powerful as well. The end-to-end coverage is important, as clients always like one tool that covers their needs and plans.

What needs improvement?

The only thing missing is something to track the development cycle. We use third-party tools to do that. That is the only gap in UiPath.

Also, scheduling of UiPath robots could be improved. Scheduling is a feature for defining in what sequence, and on what machines, you want your automations to be launched. That area could be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for more than three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Overall, the stability of UiPath is about average. We do have some instability, because of workloads that are too massive for Orchestrator, but it could be that it was not installed in the right way.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is connected to the stability. The situation I noted when talking about the stability of UiPath happened for our largest client, where they already have 160 processes running. There are problems with the maintenance of such a large number of bots.

But in terms of increasing our usage, we are in a phase with our clients in which we are constantly enlarging the automation within their companies.

How are customer service and technical support?

UiPath support is definitely willing to help. They will usually propose a call, if they think that will be easier for solving an issue. Their services are quite good.

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

We did not have a previous solution, except for Excel macros.

How was the initial setup?

It is relatively easy to deploy. Of course, it's not as straightforward as a simple application installation, but with the help of UiPath, in particular, or with the help of the UiPath Community Forum, which is quite enhanced with answers about installation, it's not a big deal to install it.

Taking into consideration internal IT restriction and internal IT resources, deployment can take up to two weeks.

Our deployment strategy usually involves convincing clients that they need to start setting up a center of excellence for automation and then there are lots of initiatives that need to be undertaken within the center of excellence. Among the most critical are awareness, dealing with IT stakeholders, and of course, the capabilities of developers. Taking care of those things will lead you to a smooth path for digitizing the first processes, which are low-hanging fruit. The further you go, the more you can then enhance your automation with the more advanced capabilities, like AI, Document Understanding, or chat bots, et cetera.

Deployment of one robot takes about three months and up to five people. We need an SME who knows the process that is being automated. In addition, there is usually a business analyst who tries to help optimize the process so that it will work better with robots. We need a developer, of course, and we usually have a data solution architect who helps to ensure that overall infrastructure is functioning. It also helps to have an automation evangelist on the business side.

We have two roles for UiPath maintenance. One is the IT maintenance guy who makes sure the VM is working correctly, and that we can easily scale from the infrastructure perspective. The second role is the operator, whose day-to-day tasks include scheduling the bots correctly, implementing quick deployments by creating assets in Orchestrator, and maintaining things from an RPA perspective.

What was our ROI?

ROI usually takes six to 12 months.

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

Licensing is quite complex, and sometimes that's true even when we have to explain it to our customers. There may not be a way to do it more simply.

The only potential additional cost when implementing UiPath involves the third-party tools. It can be a quite big portion, of course, so you should consider that aspect. Examples would be integrating different systems within a company, systems such as Salesforce, SAP, or ServiceNow; all of the main CRMs that businesses use.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at the main competitors, Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere. The decision to go with UiPath was based on contacts we have, clients who had already implemented RPA. We got better feedback about UiPath from them.

What other advice do I have?

The first thing to consider within your organization is whether it's easier to deploy it on-prem or via the cloud version. Then focus on how to structure your development team. It can be either entirely a third-party service provider, or in-house developers, or it could be a hybrid. The third thing to consider is what the cost center will be for RPA implementation in your company.

The marketing side of how easily you can build automations with UiPath is a bit exaggerated. You definitely need some programming skills to do very powerful automations with it. But it still provides various levels of development tools, meaning that you could have zero programming experience and still automate some processes in your company.

UiPath is definitely the market leader in RPA. The biggest lesson I have learned from using it is to start with the low-hanging fruit, and then go on to more complex stuff.

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. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Principal Solicitor at Consortium Legal
Real User
If a human had to do what this robot does it would be impossible; the digital transformation is quite dramatic
Pros and Cons
  • "Regarding the ease of building automations, I'm not sure how it's done because I'm not a programmer myself, but it's great. Just looking at how fast they moved once we had the program settled in — it was quite fast. For this particular process, which is assembling a document, talking to DocuSign, sending out emails, and so on, the deployment of production was like "today." It was quite quick."
  • "I could use more standardized features, retail-style, things that I could use off-the-shelf. Right now, all this requires quite a bit of adaptation in bespoke work with UiPath, which they've done very well. But looking at it after having used it, I would get stuff that is prepackaged from them, if they were any."

What is our primary use case?

We have developed a product for a court of arbitration. UiPath provides the automation engine behind it. Our product is a platform that is live online. It allows a party to provide some contract information, and the robot assembles a document and communicates with DocuSign, our signature provider. It then sends out a correspondence to the other party and manages the signature process for a bespoke contract for an arbitration agreement.

This is a service that we provide to the world, pro bono, as it were, to promote arbitration and the adoption of a particular arbitration clause. It's accessible to all. Parties can log in and it helps them to negotiate and conclude an arbitration agreement in a mediated fashion. The robot sends out email on behalf of a third-party, a court of arbitration, and it helps the parties get that agreement done.

It's about concluding an arbitration agreement before the dispute goes any further.

How has it helped my organization?

It helps us in providing added value to the clients and to the community at large. It's a marketing thing for us, in the widest possible sense, rather than something that we use in our practice.

But in terms of reducing the cost of digital transformation, if a person had to do what the robot does, it would probably be impossible. It would be impossibly costly. If one person had to handle the communication, instead of the robot, and try to negotiate each addendum, nobody would do it because it would take days or weeks for a lawyer to manage, and it would be prohibitive. Yet, all of a sudden, we have this service that is so cheap in many ways that it can even be provided for nominal user fees. It's quite dramatic.

I would also imagine that processing time is reduced by many orders of magnitude. As a professional, if I had to manage an addendum like that, it would take me weeks. And it takes about seven minutes or so, if all goes well.

What is most valuable?

What I have found interesting is that our product acts as a human would but it's not intrusive. It doesn't require any real integration or interface with one's own systems, in any meaningful way. Obviously, you need access, an account to log in, but it otherwise acts as a human, and that makes deployment quite smooth. It doesn't require you to change anything in your system. I found that very useful.

Regarding the ease of building automations, I'm not sure how it's done because I'm not a programmer myself, but it's great. Just looking at how fast they moved once we had the program settled in — it was quite fast. For this particular process, which is assembling a document, talking to DocuSign, sending out emails, and so on, the deployment of production was like "today." It was quite quick.

In terms of the ease of management of automations using UiPath, I don't dare poke into it, as a non-technical person, but it looks manageable. I have someone who does not do RPA normally, who doesn't do this type of programming at all, but that person knows where to look for errors and doesn't get lost. It's reasonably accessible.

What needs improvement?

I could use more standardized features, retail-style, things that I could use off-the-shelf. Right now, all this requires quite a bit of adaptation in bespoke work with UiPath, which they've done very well. But looking at it after having used it, I would get stuff that is prepackaged from them, if they were any.

For how long have I used the solution?

We launched with UiPath in June.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the solution is okay. 

The downside of the upside, when I said that it works like a human, is that in some cases, if it interacts with a website that is changing, then it's like a human. You need to adapt it to the changing environment in which it works. That's an inevitable fact of life, that it interacts with other apps. It can also interact through APIs, but you want it to be very flexible, you want it to be an agent, like a human. The downside of that is that if something changes with a website, then of course, you have to change the robot and tweak it a little bit. But that's the only issue that has required our attention so far.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Our product is a public-facing instrument and we have had no problem with the number of users, so we have not seen any issues with scalability.

In terms of potentially increasing our use of UiPath, we're exploring a number of solutions actually, for practice management and actual lawyer work. These would be in-house solutions, rather than public-facing. We have a few ideas that we have run by them and we are waiting for feedback.

How are customer service and technical support?

We've had no problem with the customer support. We were in direct contact with the whole team. They have always been quick to respond. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

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

We would use regular Microsoft automation features. I would have a flag on a particular correspondence, or a particular rule for attachments. We would use little bits and bobs of automation that are available, but we did not have any bespoke solution.

We went with UiPath because they made themselves known in the sector and it was a question of the vision that they communicated. There was a modest vision of providing solutions to very discrete problems, not revolutionary solutions to everything. Rather, they focused on whatever helps in a particular organization. We liked that. It matched our understanding of legal tech as well. It needs to be supportive of whatever little bit of help you need, rather than providing you with an environment that engulfs you with everything. We liked that approach, and when we approached them they were very receptive.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup process was okay. I'm a non-technical person, but I was able to manage it. 

It took quite a bit to figure out what we wanted from it, the flow and the logic of it. After we agreed on that, on the concept, actual production took two or three days. Of course, somebody had already done a proof of concept, although that was not based on a final brief. We danced around and changed it a bit.

For maintenance, we have somebody in tech that we pop questions to, and our maintenance of the server is done in-house as well.

What was our ROI?

We have realized return on our investment. It was a joint project with UiPath so we had special arrangements in terms of licensing, but it was very well received in the market. It was very beneficial for us.

Our product is something that we launched in June, and the robot has been featured in general business publications, in the Kluwer Arbitration Blog, and the Resolver, which is the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators magazine, as well as the Romanian Arbitration Journal. Essentially, everybody knows about it. It is one of the most popular UiPath robots out there; the most featured and interviewed robot in the wild. We were quite pleased with the publicity.

What other advice do I have?

My advice is to think about it very carefully and know exactly what everybody is doing every day in the office, the little bits and pieces. Really look at that seriously, because there are so many things that we do in a software environment that are very amenable to automation, and it saves a lot of time. Think very carefully about the particular needs of your office and look into it, because it can save you a lot of money.

It's clear that this is the future.

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
PeerSpot user
Oracle ERP Consultant at Al-Falak Electronic Equipment & Supplies Company
Real User
Saves time and reduces errors for invoicing and bank reconciliation
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features are the UiPath studio tools with the recording feature to capture the navigation of the process on the screen."
  • "In most cases, the results from the software are the same and not variable. This means that we have to define the variable by editing the flow chart."

What is our primary use case?

We use robotic process automation to automate the business process of the company.

We are using the Oracle JD Edwards. We have automated the HR process for the payroll and payslips.

We used UiPath for the scanning of attachments and uploading/attaching them in the Oracle system automatically. Previously, we used to take a day or two in doing so. Most of the daily human errors are minimized.

We used this for automated internal requests including automatic reconciliation instead of several clicks from the user and automatic correction of the master records or any change required.

How has it helped my organization?

It has improved the work process of a task that used to take two days and is now done during the breaks of the employees. This means employees can do other tasks.

It has improved the time it takes to do the bank reconciliation from the system. It now matches the value based on the common transaction number and the reconciliation is done.

Secondly, the attachment of documents to the invoice, which is sometimes missed, is a very basic process to do. It used to take a lot of time, so instead, employees can now do productive work rather than attaching the PDF file to the transactions.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are the UiPath studio tools with the recording feature to capture the navigation of the process on the screen.

The Excel data, which takes a lot of time to upload in software like Oracle and SAP, can be done through the screen instead of the back end.

I personally use the features of uploading the massive records from the front end through the UiPath studio instead of uploading them through the interface table, which sometimes gives an error resulting in having to troubleshoot and check the logs of the application. It has benefits of its own but sometimes in such cases, UiPath is very handy.

What needs improvement?

It's a very powerful tool but it can still be improved in many ways. In most cases, the results from the software are the same and not variable. This means that we have to define the variable by editing the flow chart. This case happens when we are recording the navigation from the web. Moreover, sometimes there are lots of screens in the process and decision making is required.

I believe in the future this process will be handled by the click of a button or automated in a better way, with minimum human intervention.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have almost one year of hands-on experience with the product.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath studio and orchestrator are pretty stable unless some human intervention is required within the process workflow.You might face hang or freeze but very minimal.

It can be case to case for the system you are using while i did install it i faced.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is fantastic.

How are customer service and technical support?

The customer support is amazing.

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

We did not have such a process in place before this.

How was the initial setup?

Coming from an ERP background, I did not find the initial setup to be very complicated.

The configuration is easy to do.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented this solution using our in-house team.

What was our ROI?

We have not calculated ROI to this point.

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

UiPath is not very pricey. If you purchase an Orchestrator then it's pricey but you receive the benefit that it runs many processes simultaneously.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I did not evaluate other options before choosing UiPath.

What other advice do I have?

I can't wait to have automation with every human in portable devices. It will automate not just the business process but daily life activities.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1249302 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a consumer goods company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Saves time by helping to bridge process gaps between software applications
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the simplicity of the Studio software."
  • "Overall, it should be a much simpler process to move a process from Studio to production, specifically as an attended Robot."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use UiPath to bridge process gaps between various pieces of software. Overall, it is a cost-effective tool to quickly move data and reduce repetitious tasks. For example, we use UiPath to produce SAP reports, format the data and then enter it into reporting tools.

How has it helped my organization?

In the departments that use UiPath, they've been able to reduce man-hours spent doing manual processes. This allows our team members to provide value through analytical thought, direct customer interaction, and reduced errors. Overall, it has allowed us to reduce FTE costs while also improving the quality of work the team produces. 

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the simplicity of the Studio software. It has allowed us to quickly rollout processes. For example, we've been able to train users in as short as one or two weeks and have them produce a usable process within two additional weeks. While many of these processes have been simple "quick wins", they still show the value. 

What needs improvement?

The setup and licensing process are somewhat cumbersome. Additionally, the Studio publishing is somewhat antiquated within Orchestrator. Overall, it should be a much simpler process to move a process from Studio to production, specifically as an attended Robot. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using UiPath for more than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability isn't a concern with UiPath.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

This solution is very easy to scale.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer service has been FANTASTIC. Very quick.

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

We did not use another RPA solution prior to UiPath.

How was the initial setup?

Setup was complex and we had to outsource the IT portion. This may just be because our internal IT team was somewhat unfamiliar.

What about the implementation team?

Our in-house team was assisted through outsourcing.

What was our ROI?

With our proof of concept, we had already doubled our ROI from the initial year-one cost.

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

The cost is small compared to the benefit. Licensing can be cumbersome and makes overall pricing needs somewhat hard to forecast, but not too difficult once the tool is scaled. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did look at Automation Anywhere but chose UiPath due to it's better Studio software.

What other advice do I have?

We're confident that we chose the best RPA tool.

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
Buyer's Guide
Download our free UiPath Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: August 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free UiPath Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.