What is our primary use case?
UiPath is a robotic process automation software that helps enterprises automate their workflow.
How has it helped my organization?
RPA can improve enterprises' work flow by automating repetitive tasks, time consuming tasks, and basically a value add that can be automated.
We are a partner of UiPath, and we are a consulting company.
We sell knowledge, but we also have other offerings like managed services, everything that is included in an RPA. We are a pure play company meaning that we only do RPA and we are specialized in that.
I am personally very supportive of the new trend, which is the attended automation. I think that the new strategy of UiPath path, the automation for strategy, is very promising because currently what RPA is doing, it is starting from the process, a business process to automate repetitive tasks to bring ROI. Right now, I can see clearly the strategy of UiPath to start from people and to improve them, to augment them, to augment the efficiency. This is totally new, and it's very exciting.
What is most valuable?
UiPath is bringing into the table a totally new way to automate things. Automation is not something new, but UiPath allows you to automate very easily and without many technical skill requirements.
What needs improvement?
I met a lot of customers that didn't have big business processes. Some of our customers are rather small. They have fragmented processes, and they need to automate some tasks. Sometimes they are not big enough to justify the investment of the infrastructure and everything around it.
Attended automation will allow them to target smaller opportunities. This is something which is very appreciated by the customer, to do something small, to grow incrementally. Then you can scale.
Attended automation is definitely something that the customer wanted. I think UiPath understood that. Attended automation was possible before but was reduced and not focused on.
If you look, even on the academy content of UiPath, there is not much attended content. If you look on the Advanced Training, the Advanced Training is about having back office robots,
I really looking forward to seeing enterprise grade attended content. I think this will be really something interesting. The feature was existing, but I think now it will explode.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The product itself is relatable. UiPath is a fast growing company. It's incredible how they have grown over time. I remember starting two years ago with UiPath, and it was maybe 400 employees, and now it's very big. The product is stable. They have really improved it. They are very quick on resolving any issue. They are very helped by their community. On the other hand, RPA is not necessarily something easy. You need expertise to do it properly, but UiPath is giving all the resources to make this happen with the Academy, notably, and soon with their academic program.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
If today, I'm automating a process in my laptop, I can publish it to the Orchestrator or propagate it in several desktop, for example, in terms of attended automation. We have another way to scale. You might have a process. We developed a robot which will consume transactions, and the UiPath product is scalable because you can have more robots. For example, in accounting closing period. You might need to scale. You might not need all the resources during the month, but at the end of the month, you will need to do the closing for accounting. You can scale for those few days that are critical to your business.
How is customer service and technical support?
It is a great technologic company, but they are also customer focused. I just drop an email, and during the day, I have an answer and a meeting invitation to help our customer, to help us understand, to show us new features. They always been very exceptional on that.
If you compare this to coding, this is much easier to get into it. For example, I am today rather technical person, but what if I told you five years ago, I was working in a call center? I discovered that I could automate things with Excel VBA. Today, I know how to code a little bit and i'm using UiPath. I'm automating many companies in the Fortune 1000.
What was our ROI?
Yes, we have seen ROI. We have seen very big ROI going from one to 10 FTEs even with a very strong solution, with short amount of time. I remember doing a project in Denmark which would be equivalent of about five FTEs in less than a month of development. It is more important to support the solution correctly, to handle change management. You might have saved something, but you need to wait and to maintain the solution. Your customer must not underestimate the cost of the maintenance. RPA is not a silver bullet.
What other advice do I have?
Citrix automation is something complicated. This is something that is a little bit volatile, but UiPath, I think, is one of the best, if not the best in the market to resolve that.
UiPath allowed with database activity to get the SQL to obtain the data directly. Just getting the data we weren analyzing was taking the end user several minutes and 10 seconds for a SQL query to get all the data. Then you can do the checks. This was incredible. Actually, the task was estimated at about 10 minutes, and the robot was doing it in 10 seconds.
I think what makes UiPath so great is not only technology. For me, they have better tech. It's not only about that. The first thing is they are a very open company. They are very open to customers. They have a community version that you can download for free. You can go home and try UiPath yourself. I don't think is as easy to do it with other vendors, other tools.
Most of the competitors did not take the web approach. If you are familiar with the technology, you know you would rather use a web application. Now on my phone, I can go to the Orchestrator and start a job. This is not possible for other competitors as far as I know.
I would give it nine because perfection does not exist, but they can still try to do it, to reach it.
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.