We are accountants and consultants and there are many mundane processes in auditing. Using RPA to automate not only allows us to be more precise, but we can also audit a larger population of material. We get accuracy and speed, and those are our main goals.
Director of Business Systems at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Implementation was quicker than we expected and it integrates well with our analysis tools
Pros and Cons
- "Valuable features include the OCR capabilities, to take somewhat structures data and put them into more structured data so that we can do our analysis. Another is screen scraping and, finally, the overall process of integrating it with other applications that we use in our analysis. It has also exceeded our expectations in the fact that it's a lot faster to implement than we thought it would be."
- "I would like them to continue to build and make Studio easier to use for non-technical people."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
We have been able to do our work in a more timely fashion, more accurately, and it opens up other paths of customer use cases which will enable us to expand our business as well.
In terms of performance benefits, I would rate it a nine out of ten.
What is most valuable?
- The OCR capabilities, to take somewhat structured data and put them into more structured data so that we can do our analysis.
- Screen scraping.
- The overall process of integrating it with other applications that we use in our analysis.
- It has also exceeded our expectations in the fact that it's a lot quicker to implement than we thought it would be.
What needs improvement?
It's easy to use but I think it will be a lot easier as it continues to develop. Right now, we do need some development capabilities, to understand certain computer languages, to put in the bots. They're on the right roadmap to make this even easier to engage so that anyone, even people without programming language experience, will be able to use it.
I would like them to continue to build and make Studio easier to use for non-technical people.
Buyer's Guide
UiPath
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
830,455 professionals have used our research since 2012.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Looking at it as a marketplace, I think it's very stable.
How are customer service and support?
We have used their customer support. It has been good for us, although it hasn't been perfect because they're growing so fast that there are a lot of new employees coming on board. That's a challenge to manage for any company. Certainly, the online tools, the Academy training, allow for a nice implementation. It's more an issue when it comes to getting in touch with someone, where we need something customized and we have questions.
I have used UiPath RPA Academy training. It's been great. I think it is developing as well. They continue to add training, change and modify some of it, which is great. You can feel that it is evolving.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
With most of our clients, generally, it's humans who are doing manual, mundane tasks - what I refer to as the "low-hanging fruit" side of it. They see right away, when we take their current process that they're doing, how the automation can handle it and be more accurate than what the human employee is doing right now.
The important criteria for our clients in selecting an RPA solution are price, that is always one, but also accuracy and security are factors they're most interested in.
How was the initial setup?
I was involved in the initial set up of UiPath in my company. On a relative basis, it's straightforward. There are certainly some complexities to it, but it is definitely less complex than I expected it to be.
What was our ROI?
Our clients have seen considerable ROI from using UiPath. Once our customers get their heads around it, and then we implement it, they see the benefits of using it straight away.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Scalability is there. There are so many use cases, certainly for our company. There are many opportunities. We're essentially automating what I would consider to be the low-hanging fruit, and there are so many things to build on top of that, as we get that foundation.
UiPath absolutely is capable of scaling.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Usually, it's Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere.
One of the main reasons that clients go with UiPath is the Academy, where they can get free training, where they can send their internal people to get the training. Having access to it and learning about it is a big hurdle a lot of times. Having access to the learning is a great thing.
What other advice do I have?
I think it's the best RPA solution that I've looked at and I would suggest that you take a hard look. It's easy to start working with it. You can get it stood up pretty quickly and you're going to reap benefits right away.
This is a fast-growing industry, so staying on top of, and executing, plans is important. So far, from what I've heard regarding the roadmap, UiPath is certainly on their way to doing that.
Right now, we're in an interesting spot where a discussion point is how much our customer will own of what we sell to them. We're developing bots right now. The infrastructure, in our use case, typically, is owned by the customer. For us, it's about educating our customers on what we can help them with in terms of infrastructure: We can run it ourselves or they can own it. A lot of our customers want to own that infrastructure.
I think of all of the things it can do - the integration with different applications, solving what are important problems, and saving many labor hours for those who are using it - and they are the main reasons I rate it a nine out of ten. The only reason it's not a ten is it's not totally done by someone that doesn't know technology and programing. I think they'll get there but you still need some skill sets in your organization.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
Managing RPA Practice & Solution Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
We've reduced employee time spent on data processing, but the license is too costly
Pros and Cons
- "The processes are accurate. We see very few errors once they are implemented."
- "UiPath support should be more accessible. We should be able to connect to support faster and resolve the issues sooner. When we open a ticket, we would prefer to get a call instead of an email. A priority issue is easier to resolve over the phone, so that would be preferable."
What is our primary use case?
I have used UiPath for multiple use cases, such as data entry processes or extracting information from emails to certain applications. I have also used it for financial processes like invoicing and analytics, and there are IT applications like user onboarding.
How has it helped my organization?
We can implement processes quickly with UiPath. It doesn't take us long to fix issues and develop a new process. It has enabled us to reduce our on-premise resources by automating around 30 to 40 percent of processes. We cut costs through digital transformation and managing model processes.
UiPath freed up the time of some of our data staff. Some processes that would normally require three or four hours can be completed in under an hour. We can also utilize UiPath to get some tasks done on the weekends or after hours.
What is most valuable?
UiPath is user-friendly, so new users find it easy to understand. The processes are accurate. We see very few errors once they are implemented. The processes are reusable. We can create multiple components that we can use repeatedly and combine them with other processes. It's flexible.
We used UiPath Academy when we were learning the tool, but we haven't used it that much since. It takes time to do the courses. I finished the initial tutorials in one or two days, but some courses can take an entire day. They last much longer than I need.
UiPath allows end-to-end automation. We work with stakeholders to learn about their requirements, and UiPath has a thousand automation tools that can capture many kinds of processes.
What needs improvement?
It isn't clear how to use UiPath to implement some use cases like chatbots, so we need to spend a lot of time searching for documentation on the web. To discover how to do these automations, you need to read and figure things out through trial and error.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used UiPath for a year.
How are customer service and support?
I rate UiPath support an eight out of ten. There's some room for improvement. UiPath support should be more accessible. We should be able to connect to support faster and resolve the issues sooner. When we open a ticket, we would prefer to get a call instead of an email. A priority issue is easier to resolve over the phone, so that would be preferable.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The UiPath license is costly. It would be helpful if we could get a bulk discount or any reduction, so we could use UiPath on a much larger scale.
What other advice do I have?
I rate UiPath a seven out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
UiPath
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
830,455 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Head Of Delivery at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Scalable, easy to learn, and straightforward to set up
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is very scalable."
- "The studio design is a little different. If you go from one tool to the next, you might be a little shocked at how things are organized."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily use the solution for our clients.
How has it helped my organization?
One interesting use case we've seen is that the product team leveraged UiPath to expose an API for their customers to then fulfill a service request.
It was part of their deal that, for them to sign this large contract with one of their clients, they needed this functionality. The product team has a huge backlog, and it wasn't going to make it based on everything else they had to deliver, so they actually leveraged UiPath to expose this and give them a service they just didn't have before.
What is most valuable?
When comparing it to, for example, Blue Prism, one of the key value points is, other than the full platform in general, the ability to trigger automation on demand. Basically, when the work gets loaded into the queue, the work can then be started without having to run things on a schedule.
The solution has improved the way an organization functions. For example, in general, in the context of RPAs, it's really about the focus of picking those tasks out of people's daily efforts so they can spend more time with the customers. What you get off the back of that is dollar for dollar savings. You invest in this tool, and you get back dollars by hours, however, beyond that, there are these peripheral benefits that you get that are a little harder to measure. You’ve got to have good guys out there to capture this.
In terms of endpoint satisfaction, customer satisfaction, you have to look at it within the business and their measurements before and after you've done something to actually see what is happening and attribute it to what you've done with UiPath.
We haven't done anything that hasn't saved money yet.
At the beginning of a journey, we were looking to get maybe 1X our money back in that first year. We try to get that at least. Depending on the size of the organization and complexity, it’s possible. As you go into year two, year three, you're almost looking at a multiplier reflecting that year. For example, a four-year-old program might get a company around 4X, if not more, in return. Of course, that also depends on how far you've implemented this product. You need to put money in to get money out, in a sense.
If you've got a pipeline of X and you only have three developers, you can only chew through that pipeline at a certain current rate. You want to look at the value and say, "Well, what if we doubled our staff?"
I have a calculator that shows, for example, if you have $10 million of savings sitting on the table through 20 things in the pipeline. If I put one developer on that, it will take me three years to go through that and build that out. At the end of that $10 million of value, imagine if instead, you had everything all automated on day one. That's a total max value, and you would get somewhere around 23% to 30% of that value returned.
If you double that or if you put a staff of three developers on that same pipeline, you finish earlier and you get about 75% of the total value. If you go to four developers or five, you get closer to 83%. Now, if you put 20 developers on there, you're only going to increment it to 95%, however, then you’ve just increased your total cost as you have to try managing 25 at the same time. The main idea being, based upon your pipeline and the size of your team, you can potentially increase your total return value within a fixed time.
The ease of the use of creating the building automation is actually improving year over year. For example, there are some training programs for UiPath, and it generally takes about a week to get through it. That’s on UiPath Academy.
If you actually use it with modern design, modern objects, and all the new things that have been released recently, you actually save time on training. If that shaves 20% of your training, you can also shave 20% off of your building capability or the requirements. BY using UiPath Academy, you save time on your projects.
It's fairly easy to learn, as a solution. However, it’s not that easy where you're just going to throw non-developers into it. Your first three days of UiPath training are actually doing .net. That's the one thing the market puts out there incorrectly is that your operations team can just jump on this. You still need a developer mentality as you're still dealing with exceptions and things that aren't the way humans think.
That said, in terms of usability, it's highly useful.
UiPath Academy helps streamline and keeps employees up to speed in the solution.
The biggest value of the Academy is that it's free. That's a major piece. It's fairly well organized, and they put things into channels based upon what your role is within your RPA program or your business, and that helps you stay focused in terms of what you need to learn.
What needs improvement?
The solution needs resource locking. This kind of leads toward scaling which is one challenge. It's not major. However, it is when you have multiple bots running the same process and they need to access the same piece of information to read and write. There's not a strong capability to manage the lock and have the capability to say "I have ownership of this file. No one else can touch it" and then release it, allowing the next one to pick it up. That's a key differentiator that I see between them and Blue Prism. That one feature is lacking.
The studio design is a little different. If you go from one tool to the next, you might be a little shocked at how things are organized. I don't see them changing that any time soon. However, the design could be improved upon.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for about four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution seems to be stable. I haven't had any issues yet.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is very scalable. I haven't pushed it to 100 plus or anything like that. However, based upon scheduling and triggers and SLA management, it's much easier to scale.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did work with other RPA solutions in the past. The differentiation comes from the triggers, and the attended automation. The platform now is a big part of this.
For example, Blue Prism is one of the tools that we work with as well. If you want new functions, new features, say, process mining, you have to go to Celonis or someone else, whereas UiPath is providing this platform with new capabilities almost daily.
It also depends on what kind of COE you want to build. Looking at Blue Prism, they have a nice UI as well. It's very business-focused. With UiPath, you need to have some developer capacity. There's .net in there, and some people just might not get that. However, at the end of the day, if they don't get that, should they be building processors? There's a bit of a challenge there.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is not that complex. It's more about the client's setup. For example, the domain, entries, things like that, would add to the complexity you face.
If everything goes well, you can get things set up probably in a few weeks. I would say a month or so is needed for deployment and implementors should set expectations. For example, security depends on how much the organization is ready to take it on as well. If you don't get their buy-in right away, then you're just going to get delays.
What was our ROI?
Most of the companies see a good ROI from the solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing and licensing get a little complex. There are so many different options that you can choose from, and practice adds to the time to figure these things out. Whereas, with, for example, Blue Prism. It's a pretty standard basic model. UiPath gets a little hectic at times.
What other advice do I have?
The customers that use the on-premises version tend to use the latest version of the solution.
While those using the cloud version of the UiPath apps feature are in the UK, the US users are not using that functionality. Mainly most of our focus has always been on RPA and then expansion. From what I've seen, we've mainly been using UiPath. At least on the North American side, it's been relatively new. That's why they aren't using apps yet.
We don’t have any clients that are using the solution's AI functionality in their automation program yet. I’ve only played around with it myself.
From a road mapping perspective, I'd advise potential new users that your key is the business case. If there's no business case, then this solution doesn't make sense for you to get involved or do anything else. The first part is to really understand the business case. Just to substantiate getting it into the company. Once you have that, that's basically your low-hanging fruit.
That said, the key is not to hang everything on one process, not to sit there and bank it, as the concept is a program approach. Over time, it is going to sustain itself. Companies need to be ready to look at a process and think if it's a good idea first. And as you move through the steps, you're basically doing additional checks. As you learn about the process, you're also learning what it's like behind each process and what the value add is. At each stage, users need to ensure that it makes sense to continue.
I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. While there's always room for improvement, market-wise they are at the top of their game.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner and reseller
Senior Director, Enterprise Technology at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Was easy to spin up a concept, prototype a demo with stakeholders, and demonstrate value add right away
Pros and Cons
- "It should be less focused on the howtos and more on demonstrating business value add. A business outcome should be that I was able to approve something in however many days or hours compared to my peers when I benchmark across my peers. That would be a business outcome as opposed to a technical outcome,"
- "It should be less focused on the howtos and more on demonstrating business value add. A business outcome should be that I was able to approve something in however many days or hours compared to my peers when I benchmark across my peers. That would be a business outcome as opposed to a technical outcome."
What is our primary use case?
We used it to orchestrate the transfer of data across authorized systems of record, such as Salesforce and we use it to authorize systems or artifacts like Google Sheets and Spreadsheets. We also use it to have a dashboard view and to automate manual user behavior to cut down the time it takes to process specific transactions.
How has it helped my organization?
UiPath has reduced human error. With the very manual nature of formulas in Google Sheets and Excel that now can be performed using UiPath and so Spreadsheet controls have been tightened.
The automation cloud offering helps to decrease the solution's total cost of ownership by taking care of things such as infrastructure maintenance and updates.
We were able to significantly cut down time and hours on some of the key processes which then frees up people to focus on their day jobs as opposed to manual routines with predictable processes. We see 75% time savings.
The use cases revolve around polling data from multiple systems, but when that has been automated using a bot then that takes that time away. You spend less time gathering the data points and more time doing exception management and reviewing the data.
Those manual hours translate to cost savings and that definitely can help us scale and grow. We were able to see at least one full-time employee equivalent savings.
Saving employees' time has allowed for employees to focus on higher-value work. Rather than spend 80% of their time looking for data, they are now spending 80% of their time really addressing the nature of the data, like what went wrong and trying to gain actionable insights as opposed to trying to figure out whether the data was complete, to begin with.
This has impacted employee satisfaction. One of the key challenges with remote, work from home has been the higher probability of employee turnover and burnout. Also, as part of job satisfaction, working on the right things at the right time and marrying professional and personal endeavors and aspirations, from that respect, UiPath has freed up a lot of employee hours spent on manual routine tasks. That really gave them a human element in everyday work, which revolves around getting value as opposed to merely collecting data.
AI helps to automate processes that are more complex. Part of it is that it is very precise with attended versus unattended elements and it also really understands that the key is not to give everything away to the bots, but it's almost always trading off and achieving a balancing act. Where human intervention is still needed by only at the right time and looking at a small sample as opposed to the entire population.
The AI functionality enabled us to automate more processes overall. We've been able to venture from beyond regular G&A processes to more HR processes. From applicant to hire, it elevates the employee experience and does not just look at scaling.
I'm a big fan of the Academy because it has let me self-serve in a way that I was quite accustomed to.
What is most valuable?
The point-and-click approach is a great sell. I'm not proficient with Studio but I found it easy to spin up a concept, prototype a demo with stakeholders, and be able to demonstrate value add right away.
What needs improvement?
Venturing more outside of our Windows environment and more towards OS will help.
It should be less focused on the howtos and more on demonstrating business value add. A business outcome should be that I was able to approve something in however many days or hours compared to my peers when I benchmark across my peers. That would be a business outcome as opposed to a technical outcome, which is all about how many hours did you save? What were the exceptions you saw? Were you able to shut the bot down? They're very different paradigms. UiPath needs to flush out that business element because a lot of us make decisions on ROI. It's hard to convince executives and management if we only focus on the technical.
It's a hard place to balance because there are people who are business savvy, who are looking for ROI, and then there are other people who are just getting into these programs and these solutions. I need to understand the technical aspect of it.
The other part of it is understanding how UiPath plays out in the ecosystem of available cloud applications and other enterprise software used. A lot of the software out there in the market, such as Workday, has native automation, point and click customization, and automation, potential, and capability. UiPath may want to think about how it plays with these other products as opposed to in place of. We have built teams that have developers who are really proficient, including me in NetSuite and other products. Every day we want to make sure we're using UiPath the right way so that we're not squandering or wasting resources because the same time spent on UiPath could be spent redirecting UiPath elsewhere. That application is inherently not sophisticated enough to handle customization.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using UiPath for one and a half years.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was fairly straightforward for us. We actually worked with a partner. We ultimately put it on AWS just for continuity and it was pretty straightforward for us. We don't really have too many bots going anyway.
The actual deployment didn't take a lot of time. A lot of work was spent only because a lot of work was already invested in building out the prototype which mirrored all of the manual processes. We recorded the manual processes and attempted to replicate as much as we could. We did the proof of concept demo without key stakeholders. So by the time we came to building out the actual work in production, it was just replicating what we already had in the prototype.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We are fine with licensing and pricing. We just need to see where we are in our adoption. I don't have enough of a sense of what the different levels of usage could be.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated other solutions. Back then the community platform was easy to download and it had a couple of ways of gaining access to software from having access credentials to tokens which is a lot more secure for us. There were also managed packages in UiPath that were readily available that spoke to NetSuite, Salesforce, and Excel. It was a no-brainer.
What other advice do I have?
We only have two developers on it, they support it. We don't have citizen developers. The plan is to continue to see if we can get value add and go beyond the processes that we've addressed and maybe put out a team.
My advice would be to be open; it doesn't have to be all or nothing. I've seen users get tripped up over the fact that every time they think that providing value add through manual intervention, through exceptions, they almost always think it's 100% unattended.
At the end of the day, we are not taking away anyone's jobs. Almost always, there will be an attended piece. It's like driving the car on a freeway. You have the ability to put it on cruise control and the ability to put your foot on the brakes. That's what most users forget. They ask about audit internal controls and on our end, UiPath recently attained SOC 2 type two certification in June of this year, which is great. The reality is there's always a manual human compensating review element, so there shouldn't be a risk if it's built right.
I would rate UiPath a seven 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
Senior RPA Developer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Easy for people without a coding background to use
Pros and Cons
- "There's a monthly upload process in my order management team. Every month, this team uploads a bunch of files to SAP. Now they don't need to do that because the bot does that for them at a given time period. The team members need to just upload a file to SharePoint and then the bot will pick it up."
- "Capturing ROI needs improvement. I would also like for it to have more logging mechanisms in Orchestrator."
What is our primary use case?
My use case is to automate a bunch of office processes. It helps my team and finance organization save time and money.
How has it helped my organization?
There's a monthly upload process in my order management team. Every month, this team uploads a bunch of files to SAP. Now they don't need to do that because the bot does that for them at a given time period. The team members need to just upload a file to SharePoint and then the bot will pick it up.
It reduced human error. It saves us time redoing work and allows our humans to do other stuff.
It has freed up a couple of hours in a month. If you scale it, I'd say there are some processes that are daily. It has been at least 2,000 hours so far. This additional time enabled employees to focus on higher-value work. Bots can be tricky to debug. So, sometimes employees get frustrated there but overall they're happy it's there in the first place.
UiPath reduced the cost of our automation operations. Right now it's breaking even, but over time there'll be more. It has also reduced overall costs.
What is most valuable?
The Studio and Orchestrator are pretty valuable. They seem to have a lot of connectivity and usability. It's pretty easy for people without a coding background to use it.
It's pretty easy to build automation using UiPath. It's a little hard for some activities because there's not enough support. There's not a lot of adoption with that activity, but the ones that are commonly used have pretty good support.
Its end-to-end coverage is important to us. If we have it all on one platform, we don't have to bounce around other software. But, we ended up doing a little bit of both.
What needs improvement?
Capturing ROI needs improvement. I would also like for it to have more logging mechanisms in Orchestrator.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using UiPath for about two years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's stable now.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We mainly use Unattended Automation but it has helped to scale RPA benefits by automating departments for the very few Attended Automations we have. It's important to me because my job pretty much depends on this software. Changing from this product to another RPA product is going to be extremely costly and time-consuming.
It is scalable. We have about 30 users on it now that are entry-level/senior associate-level people.
It requires four developers to maintain.
We plan to increase usage in the long term. But right not we still have enough capacity in our existing Orchestrator.
How are customer service and technical support?
I would rate their tech support a six out of ten. Most of them don't work in U.S. time and they're not always very responsive. Sometimes they give an answer that is pretty generic and can be found in the online article, even though I referenced the article already.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We also use Automation Anywhere.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was not too hard and not too easy. Some documentation wasn't very clear, and for basic features it handled it pretty well. But, if you wanted to go more granular and customize your deployment, it would be a little hard to find out the answer.
The deployment took about a month. We involved the UiPath support to help us implement it and upgrade our systems. Other than that, we got our PAM software lead that uses CyberArk to configure the Orchestrator with us.
What was our ROI?
We have seen ROI. I don't know the max number of hours but I'd say we've saved around 2,000 hours so far.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I think pricing could be better. I think it should be more visible.
The license system with Studio licenses seemed a bit redundant and not necessary.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at other solutions but went with UiPath because of the cost. Another reason was that we have more developers that are specialized in UiPath, as well as management, who seemed to like UiPath more.
What other advice do I have?
I still have to pay attention to the infrastructure a little bit because it's still On-premises. I'm using the On-premises products more so, but the support has been pretty decent. And then, there are community forums to look up how to debug some stuff.
The upfront cost is always going to be more than trying to keep it to the human process, but over time we'll realize more return.
My advice would be get UiPath support to do this for you and involve all your IT firewall security team.
You need to know more about security and cybersecurity in order to fully deploy your automations. Some of that is kind of missing in the Academy where they focus mainly on building automations, but not really securing it.
I would rate UiPath an eight out of ten.
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.
Senior Automation Developer at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees
Customizable, user-friendly, and great for automating tasks
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is user-friendly and has great training materials available."
- "At this point, debugging, for me, is lacking the ability to edit on the go."
What is our primary use case?
I'm using the product primarily for building automation projects for shared services users. It's for internal customers. It's a shared services center for finance, HR, IT, and all processes like that.
UiPath enables you to implement end-to-end automation starting with process analysis, then robot building, and finally the monitoring of automation.
I use UiPath mainly for building a robot. I always use unattended bots. However, I also use it for task capture. I use the Task Capture feature a lot. It's pretty much a game-changer since Task Capture has become available, as creating documentation takes a lot less time than before. As for UiPath, I'm using it for building a solution and then testing using not only UiPath but also Orchestrator. In the end, we also use some document templates from UiPath. It's pretty much present all the way through the life of a project.
How has it helped my organization?
UiPath has sped up or reduced the cost of digital transformation in our organization.
For me as a professional developer, this is an obvious fact, however, people can notice that the robot can do their job a lot faster and they can concentrate on completely different things. They don't have to do simple tasks, repetitive tasks, and that's when they realize that this transformation is happening. Some people did not believe that it would happen so fast, yet, by using UiPath, we can prove to user that a process can be transformed into an automated one in a really short time.
It's reduced human errors in our company as well. I can use an example as a VAT declaration. That's one error that would cause some financial consequence for our business. After creating an automated project process, it is impossible for a declaration to be submitted with an error. It's basically eliminated typos or human errors in the case of VAT declarations and financial consequences.
The solution has freed up employee time. It's difficult to estimate how much as there are a lot of projects and I'm not the only developer on. However, thanks to my bots, we could free up, so far in half a year in this company, two FTEs, two full-time employees. Obviously, it doesn't mean that these people were let off. They are doing their job, however, they've just got different tasks, more complex tasks to do.
What is most valuable?
Mostly I'm using Studio. This is my main tool for work, and, for Studio, I can say that this is my favorite out of all the automation platforms.
I like the fact that you can use and customize activities from the marketplace. The fact that even though the built-in activity sometimes cannot cope with some tasks, you can still find solutions outside of UiPath, internal kinds of built-in functions. You can use the third-party package marketplace.
I like the way it handles debugging as it's very comfortable and it keeps the project under control.
I'm also using Orchestrator. The newer version of Orchestrator is really very user-friendly and it's easy to manage projects there.
For basic automation, it's very easy to learn and it's easy to use. It's intuitive for basic functions. However, for more complicated automation, it gets more complicated. This is expected. The more advanced the project, the more advanced the skills you need. That said, as a basic product for simple automation, it's very easy to use.
The solution is user-friendly and has great training materials available.
I use the solution for automating my own work sometimes. I work at building small robots to make work go faster. For example, I'll create a robot that will help to create documentation. For example, analyzing arguments and workflows inside a project and outputting them in a DXC file or things like that. It's small ad hoc automation that makes life easier.
What needs improvement?
At the moment, I'm pretty satisfied with it. Thinking about UiPath, I can't see any downsides and the downsides are in like companies' infrastructure.
At this point, debugging, for me, is lacking the ability to edit on the go. It lacks the ability to stop the process on a breakpoint and being able to edit or even go a step back. At the moment when I'm debugging I'm only able to stop the process, check the locals etc. It is not possible to change anything in the code, go step back and try the changed code. You have to start the debugging process from the beginning. It is just slightly annoying and it was there since I started with version 2016. It's not a showstopper at all, just adds some time to development. I'm not even sure it could be done technically, it's just a wish.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using the solution for about four years at this point. I've used it for a while.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There are occasional errors happening, which cause the software to freeze up. However, this is not more than once every two weeks and I'm always able to recover the project. I would say it's stable. Regarding working automation, I also have no problems as the errors that we have on ready robots never result from UiPath's issues. They result more often from infrastructure issues or robot problems.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Regarding UiPath scalability, it's great. It's one of the biggest advantages. Over the years, you're able to build a library of modules that sometimes make your work a lot faster. You can use a few modules and you will have 70% of the project done. Every module that you work on, which is new and can be reusable, is very easy to make into libraries and to reuse.
In my organization, closest to me, there are only about five or six people on the solution. However, we also use external contractors and consultants who use UiPath and there are even UiPath MVPs there. That said, in my company, it's only developers, operators, and a project manager.
We have plans to employ more developers and to increase usage.
We have an RPA department, which is using it and it's cooperating with all other departments in terms of creating automation. We have specialists that are specializing in using UiPath for automation. We create automation projects for every department that requires it. The people who are using UiPath are using it pretty much full-time. It's a full-time development. We are planning to increase the size of the development team as the projects are flowing and the backlog is growing. From the business side of our company, the satisfaction is high. The demand is growing.
How are customer service and technical support?
The solution has exceeded my expectations over the last few months and technical support overall has been great. The way they approach customer service and help us through issues has been great.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is pretty straightforward. I'm not a system admin or anything like that and I was able to set up UiPath on the server. It's pretty good.
How long it takes depends on the database that I'm working on. That said, last time it was not even the one full working day. It depends on how much data you have to back up. Usually, it's a few hours.
What was our ROI?
While I'm not the correct person to ask about ROI, I can say that UiPath has reduced the cost of our automation operations by making it 30% faster.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I don't know the exact prices, however, I know that compared to other companies, other solutions, it's the best value for money, at least in our country.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I tried Automation Anywhere and also Blue Prism. At that time, there were only these three available for us. That was four years ago.
What other advice do I have?
We are customers and end-users of the solution.
We use the enterprise edition of the solution.
At the moment we are not using the newest version. It's 2019.
It was not my choice to use UiPath. At the beginning of my automation career, it was chosen for me. However, I was able to test other automation software and give my feedback to the employer and UiPath was the winner for me. At that time I was a finance worker. I was not a developer, a professional developer yet. For me, it was the user-friendliness and the way that you could very easily start your adventure with it, and then learn as you go. I have to say that the training packages for UiPath were very good and are enough to make you start working with it.
In my experience, I would say that it is the best platform for people who are willing to learn to automate. Also, if you want to use automation software, you have to consider hiring someone who has experience in it. Even though UiPath is so user-friendly and so intuitive, you still need to have a professional who has some experience.
It's very important to educate people to make them aware of what the RPA is. To be honest, from my experience, humans are the weakest link here, and people who are submitting, for example, input data for robots, cause the most problems. It is important to invest in the education of people and to raise awareness about RPA.
I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.
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.
Director at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees
A flexible tool that is easy to learn and use, saves us time spent on financial administration
Pros and Cons
- "Our consultants have been able to go through the training videos and pick up the ability to build their own automations."
- "I would like more incorporation of AI features to allow for intelligent character recognition."
What is our primary use case?
We primarily assist clients in deploying UiPath within Finance/Accounting and Internal Audit but have also realized the benefits of deploying it within our accounting function to assist with expense reporting and invoice processing.
We have also successfully complemented our technology solutions practice, which deploys ERP systems such as Workday and Coupa, where we have built some specific automations to accelerate deployment and assist with normal processing.
How has it helped my organization?
We have been able to save several hours each month allowing our staff to focus on more value-added efforts. For just downloading expense reports, a staff accountant can save between four and five hours each month. A lot of the prep work needed to send out invoices to clients is now being completed through automation.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features are the flexibility of the tool, ease of use, and training. We spend more time documenting the process and exceptions, wherein the build component doesn't take too long. Our consultants have been able to go through the training videos and pick up the ability to build their own automations.
What needs improvement?
I would like more incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) features to allow for intelligent character recognition which can account for different formats and unstructured data. Specifically, the ability to not have to create templates for various formats to account for variation and rather intelligently extract key data regardless. There are some AI-like features in beta, but we are very interested in deploying now.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using UiPath over two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
If built and deployed correctly, the solution is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is great! There are several use cases already and an endless possibility of areas where UiPath/RPA can be leveraged.
How are customer service and technical support?
I haven't had to interact with technical support, as of yet.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not use another solution prior to this one.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward, both from interaction with systems and security.
What about the implementation team?
We deployed this solution in-house.
What was our ROI?
We have been able to avoid hiring more staff accountants, so more cost avoidance.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Plan for the future! Don't just focus on trying to buy a license to meet your current need, but look to have the right infrastructure in place to help you scale. The investment is relatively small compared to the potential in qualitative and quantitative benefits that can be achieved.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We do have past experience, but when it came to deploying in our internal operations team, we focused on UiPath. We have found UiPath to be the most flexible to deploy.
What other advice do I have?
We are excited to see the new game-changing features with UiPath!
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are an implementation partner and also a customer (using it with our internal operations).
Consulting Specialist at Goodwill Consulting
Helpful Academy for learning the product, good support, and saves our business time on repetitive tasks
Pros and Cons
- "I found the UiPath Academy very valuable and it has helped us to understand the product we are working with."
- "The platform that shows the reports and errors is not too transparent."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use of this solution, as a company, was to eliminate or at least simplify and reduce the number of boring, repetitive administrative tasks that take our precious time.
We are a business consulting company and lots of clients try to contact us on multiple channels that we are available on. Our company, in partnership with UiPath, implemented an unattended robot that saves our time and energy. We call it our colleague that works independently, full time and helps us without requiring emotional support.
How has it helped my organization?
As employees, we no longer have to waste a significant period of time each day by copying data from one part to another. Instead of that, we can focus on more important things like customer satisfaction, consulting our partners, delivering business plans, etc.
This product improved our employee satisfaction rate, improved the sales department performance in general, and created a gap in the marketing department that can be covered by more complex projects like website updates, social networking with customers, etc.
What is most valuable?
I found the UiPath Academy very valuable and it has helped us to understand the product we are working with. I attended the course and I am about to complete more courses so that I can benefit from this brilliant opportunity. It is free for everyone who is interested.
UiPath Community Forum and UI Connect are free and can be accessed by anyone as well. There, I could find all of the information that I needed. The most interesting part was accessing UiPath Studio, where you can try to improve your technical skills and try building a robot.
What needs improvement?
The platform that shows the reports and errors is not too transparent. I experienced it at my workplace when showing the reports, where the platform looks unfriendly and it is not very transparent, especially compared to the other features of the product.
The monitoring period should be shortened as soon as possible, as most companies won't have one to two months available to implement and test the RPA. People want results instantly when talking about an investment.
I would also like fewer errors, please.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using UiPath for between four and five months in the company I work for.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support has been responsive and helpful.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
This is my first experience with RPA software.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was as transparent as it could be.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented through a vendor team and they were pure experts.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
This solution is worth the investment.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not evaluate other options before choosing UiPath.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Updated: December 2024
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