Sachin Vinay - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Administrator at Amrita
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Helped us reduce the number of people handling sensitive data, and saves us considerable time
Pros and Cons
  • "The option to record processes is the most important feature of UiPath. We can use it to record every action automatically and it is then converted to a workflow. This workflow defines the complete set of processes so that we can automate every requirement."
  • "We have used it with Windows and it has been perfect. But recently, we tried it with Linux and we faced some issues regarding this automation. The auto-recording didn't happen as much as in other operating systems. They need to add more user-friendly automation and templates for that. They don't have many templates for other operating systems."

What is our primary use case?

We were looking for robotic process automation and we have been trying the UiPath Community Edition. We mainly need to automate day-to-day activities related to wireless connections, such as our WiFi device registration process. We currently have three to four employees currently doing this process and it is really time-consuming. We want a bot to do these repetitive procedures.

We will be doing the same procedure for server-side configurations as well for repetitive Windows-based processes. We are looking to save most of the system admin headaches.

How has it helped my organization?

We have three system admins and had three to four data entry people. These people uploaded our WiFi registration information daily for the university. After this implementation, we saw a drastic change in the time this process takes. People were taking five to eight hours to do everything, but now, the task hardly takes one hour or less for a bot to do. We don't need dynamic data entry operators anymore because the robots are easily handling all the dynamic data, updating it to the server in minutes.

End-to-end automation also means a lot to us as an educational organization that is concerned about security. We prefer to have fewer people involved on the operations side. By using bots we can reduce the number of people handling sensitive data. With the implementation of the bot, it now takes only one person, the UiPath administrator, for these tasks to get done. He is the only one required. He just needs to review the activities. We have been able to considerably reduce our staff costs.

Also, RPA software does not need a break. It can operate 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. In most cases, a single RPA robot can replace two to five full-time workers. Robots can do the same amount of work in less time.

It's really a cost-effective solution. There are minimal operating costs and we can make more efficient use of IT resources. In that way, we are saving a considerable amount of our yearly budget. We can spend much more money on other productivity items, rather than giving tedious tasks to employees. Overall, UiPath has reduced our costs by about 40 percent.

Another important aspect is that it is highly secure. There is absolutely no risk of information leakage from one component to another, because each only performs a single task. Access is strictly monitored, making it highly secure.

We have been on the path of digital transformation for the last three or four years. We have purchased many new technologies to move forward. UiPath has significantly reduced the cost of this process. We don't require further hardware to automate something. It is completely a software-based solution. Even with Community Edition, we are able to use all the features of the product. The limitation is the bot count. We can only use three or four robots. Still, it is the best solution.

In addition, we were prone to many human errors and this resulted in complex issues with our clients. Regarding our WiFi infrastructure, we faced hundreds of issues daily with misconfigurations. With the UiPath implementation, these errors have been reduced considerably because everything is automated. We need much less human intervention. Errors are now negligible.

What is most valuable?

The option to record processes is the most important feature of UiPath. We can use it to record every action automatically and it is then converted to a workflow. This workflow defines the complete set of processes so that we can automate every requirement.

A related feature that is one of the highlights is the AI. We have used many other scraping solutions, but none of them was effective. UiPath, however, can easily scrape data from webpages and applications and it works flawlessly with any program including .NET, PDF, legacy, and SAP.

UiPath has three components, UiPath Studio, the robots, and UiPath Orchestrator. UiPath Orchestrator is a web-based application for deploying, monitoring, and scheduling bots. With Orchestrator we can manage everything regarding the bots. We can customize the actions, but there are also templates. For example, one of the templates enables you to upload to OneDrive from Excel sheets. We just add the parameters and the automations are done.

We have used a few of the UiPath Academy courses, basic classes, because we use the Community Edition. When we move to the more advanced version of UiPath we'll be doing more of the classes. The Academy is very user-friendly. We don't require any further lectures or other sources for learning. A user can watch these videos and start operating the next day. All the actions and features, everything, is clearly demonstrated in the videos. It has proved to be very informative for us.

What needs improvement?

We have used it with Windows and it has been perfect. But recently, we tried it with Linux and we faced some issues regarding this automation. The auto-recording didn't happen as much as in other operating systems. They need to add more user-friendly automation and templates for that. They don't have many templates for other operating systems.

Buyer's Guide
UiPath
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
767,847 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is extremely stable. We can actually trust the bots more than humans because it is completely error-free.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We currently have the Community Edition but we are moving to the other version so that we can deploy more bots. As a testing phase, we have limited it to only the IT department of the university. We have about 25 users of UiPath in that department.

The Community Edition is not that scalable, but the Enterprise Edition is completely scalable.

How are customer service and support?

We haven't had to contact them for technical help.

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

This is the first automation tool we are using.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very simple. It only required a few clicks. After the implementation, to configure it, we required more advanced help and guidance.

It doesn't require attention for maintenance or updates. The updates work flawlessly.

What was our ROI?

We have no other product with this much return on investment. We are able to save money and time. No other product guarantees saving both at the same time. Sometimes you need to compromise on money to save more time. But in the case of UiPath, we definitely save on both. 

And UiPath has features that can enhance our server team. They can actually move into becoming UiPath administrators after getting used to this product. So the return on investment is huge in terms of time, cost, and exposure.

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

The Community Edition is free for everyone and you get all the features, but there is a limitation on the number of bots. The Enterprise Edition is a bit costly for the advanced features.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not look at any other tools. We were not even planning on going for UiPath, but a friend, a peer from a different organization, suggested that I check into it. We became very interested in it after testing it.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend UiPath for IT-related implementations because it can save a huge amount of time. Whether you are a small business or a large enterprise, all kinds of companies can use it for automation. It reduces costs and helps with efficiency. If you are considering any other AI-based solutions, I would still prefer the UiPath Community Edition. It has a large set of features and is free. If you like it and it suits your organization, you can then go for the paid version.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Salah Rashwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Innovation Officer at Imbassy
Real User
Top 20
It has streamlined how we generate, use, and store business data, saving thousands of hours of manual work
Pros and Cons
  • "We like how UiPath is designed for low-code or no-code users. It's less complicated, enabling everyone to use it with only a basic knowledge of automation or data. Generally, I also like UiPath's ability to mine processes and analyze user interactions to generate analytics."
  • "A task capture feature enables you to capture the workflow from a process and record it. This feature isn't as specific as I would like. It should be able to capture every detail. The same goes for process mining when it comes to system loads. It's already the best, but I think it could be better."

What is our primary use case?

I implement UiPath for other companies. My specialization is software integration and digital transformation. I also manage UiPath for some organizations. We're a digital marketing agency that helps companies undergo a digital transformation for data and analytics. We help them automate marketing and data analysis for researchers and the organization itself.

The primary use case is to help the marketing department collect data about user experience and interaction. We also automate repetitive IT work and connect it with marketing. In other words, we extract data from the IT operations to use for marketing purposes. UiPath is also used in every department to reduce manual work.

UiPath has workflows and templates for every use case. We use nearly all of them in all departments with pre-configured templates and workflows, but we mainly use UiPath for IT operations, marketing, and finance. And the three are our primary use for it. We build the procedures and generate automation. We use public, private, and hybrid clouds, but we mainly use public and hybrid clouds for our services. It depends on the client, but sometimes it's private. 

How has it helped my organization?

We previously did everything by hand because we had no automation knowledge or experience before we started using this product. Before we started implementing it for others, we began using it ourselves, and we saw a 200 percent increase in performance in the first three months after launching UiPath automation. 

At that point, we realized we could do the work of twice as many employees without hiring more. With UiPath, we can build, monitor, manage, and do many things that used to take so much time and account for a lot of our operating costs. The most important benefit was a reduction in the risk of human error. In addition to saving time and money, we can grow much bigger daily. We can automate more as we gain more experience, collect more data, and amass more insight. The benefits are compounding as time goes on. 

We only had two or three clients when we started working as integrators and service providers two years ago, but we've grown significantly since then. It became harder to handle as we started getting more clients and revenue. That's why having an easy-to-use solution that allows end-to-end automation without much effort is crucial.

You need end-to-end control and easy management when doing this work for multiple clients or providing support to other teams. It's vital to have end-to-end capabilities without complications, making things harder for us. UiPath is helping the company grow faster and making our operations more efficient. We can automate the specifics of finding out how much everyone is working, enabling us to recognize and reward hard-working employees. Without automating the process of understanding every employee's impact, we could never find this out. For example, some employees may work longer than others, but they might be less effective. It's challenging to discover this without tools driven by AI and machine learning. 

Overall, it has streamlined how we generate, use, and store business data, saving thousands of hours of manual work. This Automation Cloud app feature doubles the benefits of UiPath by enabling us to generate apps from the data we collect and the automations we create. Ultimately, this translates into considerable savings in time and money.

Automation Cloud has helped tremendously by turning complicated, complex coding work into drag-and-drop templates, so we can build automated processes in minutes. It has enabled us to realize a lot of value from our employees who lack coding knowledge. They can now participate and create apps for us and our clients. 

Most other tools lack enough documentation, or the onboarding experience has a steep learning curve. It's hard for junior employees who lack coding or data experience. The fact that UiPath is accessible is crucial for our employees and those who work for the organizations we help monitor and manage. UiPath is an industry leader in enabling everyone to learn, and they provide rich visual courses that take you from A to Z. I usually don't have to hold a junior developer's hand and answer lots of questions. I only need to send the links.

The material UiPath provides is enough for them to get started. With other tools, we always have to turn to the community and YouTube videos or Google how to do something. They also don't get the complete picture of the use cases or what to do. After using UiPath Academy courses, they have a comprehensive understanding of everything and can easily find whatever they are searching for in the documentation or the academic studies. So it's a very mastering point for them to provide these courses and enable it for everyone.

What is most valuable?

We like how UiPath is designed for low-code or no-code users. It's less complicated, enabling everyone to use it with only a basic knowledge of automation or data. Generally, I also like UiPath's ability to mine processes and analyze user interactions to generate analytics.

Through task mining, UiPath can generate AI-powered analysis, and it has a Document Understanding feature that enables it to extract information from submitted images and data. We also appreciate the added value UiPath provides for customer service and user experience. It can automate ticket handling and responses. This has saved thousands of hours. Document Understanding has made a massive difference by analyzing and extracting everything from user submissions, then putting it into tickets and generating customer satisfaction scores. 

What needs improvement?

A task capture feature enables you to capture the workflow from a process and record it. This feature isn't as specific as I would like. It should be able to capture every detail. The same goes for process mining when it comes to system loads. It's already the best, but I think it could be better. 

I need all details of a log file from every software and ERP to discover the pain points and bottlenecks. It usually understands where the most automation value is delivered but could generate more valuable information. Sometimes it's the same data from a different ERP, but it doesn't generate the same insight from it 100 percent. There's a slight difference, whereas they are supposed to be practically the same.

I also think the UiPath community needs more attention in terms of how they engage with the community and what they recommend. I find that they hardly engage with the community compared to others. To be clear, I think they are doing well, but they could do better at engaging with the community and encouraging community members to engage with one another. I feel like it's not the most active community with the most active management. At the same time, there's also much information in the community, and they're always sharing information with us. Still, I think UiPath could achieve a better experience by putting a little more effort into the forums. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for about four years.

How are customer service and support?

I rate UiPath support a seven out of ten. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

I have previously tried IBM Process Mining, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism. I think the ease of building automations is the main thing that differentiates UiPath from the rest. There's a single-user interface that gives you the ability to create automated processes without much advanced data or logical knowledge. We can find pre-configured commissions for specific use cases for our clients, but we also build custom services for specific users. 

Compared to other automation tools, it's much easier to build and manage workflows and find an opportunity for more automation within the interactions. And I barely plan for automation by myself. UiPath's end-to-end automation also separates it from its competitors, which tend to have separate tools for each operation. Mining is separated from RPA, but UiPath provides an all-in-one end-to-end automation tool. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate UiPath an eight out of ten.

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
Buyer's Guide
UiPath
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about UiPath. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
767,847 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Application Developer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Greatly reduces human error and time expenditure in a user-friendly solution, providing a robust ROI
Pros and Cons
  • "Human error was greatly reduced and the solution saves a significant amount of time, these are the two main reasons we started using UiPath."
  • "Technical support could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

We are a financial services company, and our primary use is to increase daily efficiency and create automated solutions for our operations team. Our primary concern is time. By implementing a robotic solution for mundane tasks, it frees up our teams to focus elsewhere. For example, going to a website, extracting data, putting the data somewhere, and manipulating it can all be automated, freeing up the team to focus on data analysis. This makes us more time and cost-efficient. 

As a smaller company, it was very important to us that scale automation would be taken care of by the vendor. It was one of our key points in choosing a solution.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution saved us a great deal of time and money, while teams have been freed up to focus on more important work.

What is most valuable?

Human error has been greatly reduced and the solution saves a significant amount of time, these are the two main reasons we started to use UiPath.

The solution helps us to keep track of tickets and send notifications used within our department. It helped a lot with our back and front-end offices. Our main operations team normally had a lot of data manipulation, which is now taken care of. They can now focus on market analysis.

This product is very user-friendly, it only requires knowledge of the most basic coding and how to work with logic. They are quick to respond to software issues. They either fix them quickly or provide a workaround if there is one. Overall, UiPath makes building automation very easy.

We do use the solution's Automation Cloud offering. Sometimes we aren't informed of software updates, meaning we have to figure that out for ourselves, especially when there are issues. We mentioned this to support, as figuring out solutions to issues brought in by updates sometimes increases our workload. Overall though, I would say the solution does save a lot of time for our IT department.

The solution has increased our TTV significantly.

The Automation Cloud offering decreased the solution's TCO by taking care of infrastructure, maintenance, and updates. 

We used the Automation Cloud to build out our own pipeline and connected it to Azure. This has really solidified our SDLC, which in turn allows us to quickly put out automations whenever we need to. 

My team and I used the vendor's UiPath Academy course. The course was very effective, as none of the team had prior UiPath experience. We trained using UiPath Academy for around a month, which got us to a point where we could start to use the solution for projects, which helped us learn even more.

The community is much larger than I expected. I'm regularly on the forum or the community blog, which says a lot about how good it is, because almost any information you need can be found there. Everything is well documented, there's always UI path support, and people answer questions on there, so it's very useful.

Since UiPath is one of the bigger vendors in the RPA industry, there's a larger global community. Everyone is really helpful and I think that's great.

What needs improvement?

Technical support could be improved.

The setup documentation could be improved to make that process easier. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution for two years now. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I'd say the solutions are around 80 to 85% stable. There are some areas that we have to reach out to support for, and they work to improve these areas for the newer versions. For that reason, I can't say the solution is 100% stable all the time. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The features provided by UiPath make it very easy to reuse, so it's very scalable.

We haven't deployed the solution to its full potential at our company yet. It's used by nine to ten teams out of a total of around 200 teams. We have a lot more to do, as we only started two years ago. We are working towards implementing for more of our teams, but we need a bigger team to push out solutions faster. 

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is inconsistent, it can be good or bad, this depends on who you get connected to. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

It was before my time at the company, but I believe they previously used Nintex RPA.

How was the initial setup?

I wasn't there for the initial setup, but I do know quite a bit because we did have to set up more bots later. I'd say it's a little complex if you don't already know what to do, but once you do know, it's very easy to set up. I would say the documentation wasn't that clear.

We're a small team that consists of two developers, one tester, and a manager. This is sufficient for the deployment and maintenance of the solution.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented the solution ourselves.

What was our ROI?

I would say the cost of the software is around 10K and we've had around 50 projects, with probably $500,000 saved per project. That's a lot of money saved that can be diverted to other areas.

The solution has sped up and reduced the cost of digital transformation without requiring expensive upgrades or support. The product has greatly reduced the incidence of human error.

The solution has saved us a lot of time. I would say it saves us an average of 900 to 1000 hours per month. The additional time has enabled employees to focus on more high-value work.

Overall, the solution has reduced the costs of our automation operations.

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

The cost of the software was around $10,000.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

The solution builds robots and monitors automation. There is a product called UiPath Task Capture which can do process analysis or business analysis, but I would say it's always better for a human to take care of this. For that reason, I wouldn't say the solution is end-to-end, though we could configure it to be. I would say it works very well from building to the end, and in the testing and monitoring that comes after that. 

We used unattended automation and quickly realized we need attended, because with unattended automation projects take up a lot of time. With unattended automation, we can't run two project processes simultaneously, but with attended automation, we can take out another server and give access to the UiPath cloud to our business partners to run whatever projects they need. We can do this at any time, which is very helpful.

RPA generally isn't widely used, and some people overlook it, but it can transform a business. I would say it's an essential part of any digital transformation, and UiPath is a vast vendor with a user-friendly product. 

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Prateek Agarwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at Indian Institute of Management Visakhapatnam
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Enables us to automate day-to-day manual tasks involving millions of documents, saving time and money
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath handles the infrastructure, maintenance, and updates as a managed service, and that means we don't have to take care of those things. All future updates and enhancements are managed by them."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are handling millions of users' data that comes in via raw formats, like PDFs, invoices, hard copies, et cetera, and we have to capture that data into our applications so that it can be transformed into usable data for the users. We use UiPath to develop bots to analyze and capture the information in the required format, and to automatically upload and enter the data into Excel.

    How has it helped my organization?

    It is a very highly efficient and time-saving solution for us because processing millions of records on a monthly or even a daily basis would take too much time. It also saves our organization human effort and cost. When we had to do these processes manually, we had to hire 10 to 12 resources just to enter the records from the invoices and PDFs into Excel and other tools. Those 10 to 12 people were a cost for our organization, on the order of 20,000 to 25,000 Indian rupees per month. On the other hand, the solution is a one-time cost for the organization, unless any customization is required.

    The solution's Automation Cloud has helped to decrease time-to-value. Our day-to-day manual tasks have been automated and we are gradually deploying solutions for our help desk and our customer services.

    Attended automation has helped to scale RPA benefits in our organization. We have been able to automate two departments, marketing and sales, and that has improved our efficiency by 42 percent.

    And using UiPath to automate processes has reduced human error by 92 percent. We still have to do the other 8 percent manually. Sometimes a PIN or a zipcode is not understood by the bots.

    What is most valuable?

    The bots and OCR functionality for reading documents are the most valuable and helpful features within UiPath. You can create bots on your own after doing some formal training with UiPath people and consultants. You can create and develop workflows for your own purposes—for capturing, entering, and exporting data—and then deploy the bots accordingly.

    OCR is important because if we were using human effort to read and capture the data, it would take so much time.

    In addition, UiPath handles the infrastructure, maintenance, and updates as a managed service, and that means we don't have to take care of those things. All future updates and enhancements are managed by them. We don't have to worry about the infrastructure resources—compute and network, et cetera—that are required for our applications and use cases to run.

    Another nice feature is that UiPath notifies us when a process has been completed, as well as if there are any flags or issues related to it.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using UiPath for more than two years.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    We are looking at UiPath's AI functionality. It is in the pipeline although there are additional costs for that subscription. Gradually, we have seen that there have been some issues with the automations, miscommunications or misguided invoices, coming into our databases. We need to capture and manipulate that kind of data with the help of UiPath's AI. We are hoping that within two or three months we will be able to introduce that.

    How are customer service and support?

    If there are any flags or issues related to a process, we can easily communicate with their customer services and support. Their staff in these areas, and the consulting, are fabulous. They provide resolutions on time.

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Positive

    How was the initial setup?

    The whole setup process was fine. It took one or two months to complete the deployment.

    Our deployment plan was to work with the vendor, and not with third-party consultants.

    We have done about 35 to 40 percent of the UiPath Academy courses, but we learned the rest from the training documentation and the user manuals. The UiPath Academy is a great place to learn at any time, from anywhere, at your convenience. You can learn about the UiPath products and services, tools, and workflows. And the training documentation is wonderful. It is written in a very easy-to-understand language that a non-technical person can follow. During the pandemic situation, in 2020 and 2021, we encouraged our employees to learn from the Academy courses because at that moment some of the courses were absolutely free. They learned a lot from them.

    We are also part of the UiPath community. When you are part of a community like that, you empower other customers and prospective buyers by providing meaningful information to them about how UiPath works and how it can be valuable. And by sharing our ideas, our outcomes and benefits, in the community, we help spread knowledge to other users.

    What was our ROI?

    Our ROI is positive. It has saved time and human effort.

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

    The cost is better than that of other solutions in the market, like Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism.

    Still, I would like to see them improve the pricing for small and mid-sized organizations. If you are working in a large corporation, adoption is not a challenge. But if you're working in a small or mid-sized company, there are financial constraints. UiPath has to introduce flexible plans and pricing so that smaller companies can also use the solution. In some cases, if you compare the overall cost of the solution and the cost of human effort, the human effort is cheaper.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We evaluated Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism.

    The factors you have to consider when looking at solutions are the 

    • flexibility of the vendor
    • cost
    • overall training and support—do they offer 24/7 customer service and do they interact with users via telephone, email, SMS, et cetera
    • flexibility of the solution itself and how complex it is. 

    Those are the factors that led us to go with UiPath.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would highly recommend this solution to prospective buyers. If you are looking to fully automate manual tasks and save your organization time and cost, go with this solution.

    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
    RPA Program Lead at Mercy Health Corporation (Data)
    Real User
    Intuitive with excellent partnerships with other vendors for built-in integrations
    Pros and Cons
    • "My impression of UiPath's stability is good. Compared to some other automation vendors that I've used, I would say that UiPath is more stable and better."
    • "UiPath could work towards more engagement on the community practice side. Some of our people are having a hard time understanding how to make sense of the data that UiPath puts out."

    What is our primary use case?

    Our primary use cases are within the financing and HR teams right now. But of course, there's a lot of opportunities in the clinical space and with MB services. We have use cases in all of those departments throughout the organization, but right now we are engaged primarily with the HR and finance team.

    We have two automations in production right now. We just started our COE and it's been exciting so far. We are building things and have identified quite big end-to-end opportunities. 

    How has it helped my organization?

    I'm not new to the automation world. I've been in this field since late 2015 and I've seen the ROI you can get with it. Some things you can quantify and others you can't. However, we are very new to UiPath so I can not comment on improvements just yet. We will know within a year. 

    We have seen savings in time. One of the automations that we have in place with our finance team is a monthly reconciliation process. The first three to five days of the month are critical in finance. So, if you're able to save as little as half an hour every day in those five days, that adds up to a full day of work. This automation has helped our accountants and the finance team do their closing and be on time and have extra time to analyze things. They're not fighting fires anymore.

    What is most valuable?

    The partnerships that UiPath has with other vendors are excellent. Some of the applications that we rely on heavily, like DocuSign for Workday, already have built-in integrations with UiPath. This will help us scale and go to market quickly. 

    I am happy that they are always listening to us and doing as much as they can to include more features. 

    What needs improvement?

    UiPath could work towards more engagement on the community practice side. Some of our people are having a hard time understanding how to make sense of the data that UiPath puts out. 

    There could be some guidance as well on how to calculate ROI. ROI is how much money you have spent and how much you are getting back. But, how can I know how much money I've spent? Do I calculate the cost of infrastructure? Do I calculate the cost of the team I have? Where do I begin? What is the right way to look at ROI? What are some of the analytics I should be looking at?  

    Utilization, the success rate, business value, and ROI have to go hand-in-hand. You cannot tell a whole story with just ROI. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using UiPath since March of this year. 

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    My impression of UiPath's stability is good. Compared to some other automation vendors that I've used, I would say that UiPath is more stable and better. 

    How are customer service and support?

    We do not have a lot of experience with them but whenever we reached out to them they helped and directed us. 

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup was straightforward. It was on-premise and run-of-the-mill. Our team is very knowledgeable and had already done similar implementations. 

    What about the implementation team?

    We had four people engaged in the implementation from our side. We partnered with EmiTech for the deployment and they brought in their expert and helped guide us through the installation process. 

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

    I do not fully understand our pricing model yet, but I would say that it is fair. I cannot tell at the moment how it is going to affect us. Right now we have only six unattended bots and maybe two attended ones, so we will see how it goes as we grow. 

    What other advice do I have?

    The ease of building the automations depends on the process, but overall I would say that UiPath is intuitive. If you understand some basic functions of logical expressions or loop functions, UiPath is intuitive enough to help you build some impressive automations. It is easy to pick up.

    We have a few people who have completed UiPath Academy courses and are now going for advanced certification. I'm not planning on building any bots on an enterprise scale myself, but I am going through the training as well. 

    UiPath Academy is excellent because it is intuitive. Of course, you have to have some development or SDLC knowledge, but it helps tremendously. You get so much insight on the features. You also get to build a small automation. I dedicated 30 to 40 hours to the trainings and was able to get some knowledge from it. 

    The trainings are even easier for people from accounting, for example. They are used to macros, automations, and file transfers. Conceptually, they are already there and with a tool like UiPath Academy, they can start using the solution. It's important to just stick with it.

    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
    Robotic and Intelligent Automation Lead at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    A user-friendly solution with good training and is easy for people with C# experience
    Pros and Cons
    • "The most valuable feature of this solution is that it is user-friendly."
    • "I would like to see more machine learning features and capabilities for more accurate OCR."

    What is our primary use case?

    I have used UiPath Orchestrator, and we have created both attended and unattended robots for our clients.

    We have been using the new AI and OCR technologies with UiPath, and we are currently trying to implement the Citrix log capability that was recently introduced.

    We are not running our automations in a virtual environment. When we automate any Citrix-based application, it's all email-based. There is a Citrix receiver and we communicate with that, which helps automate Citrix applications much faster.

    Most of the clients I had seen have been running in virtual environments, although I have seen some of our clients running on the desktop. We have also seen hybrid scenarios.

    One thing is that virtual environments can be standardized pretty quickly. So, that's an advantage. Normally, the companies, which are leaning towards more cloud now, will be happy with this. So, I think that is one factor. As you move virtual machines to the cloud you can migrate your bots to the cloud faster.

    I have worked on various different domains including the public sector, commercial, healthcare, energy, utility, and federal. These are the different customers for which we are implementing solutions. Now, the customers are moving towards AI and natural language processing. They are more into chatbots, how they can use artificial intelligence, making use of data science, and putting more machine learning on board.

    With respect to how easy it is to automate our company's processes, on a scale of one to five, I would rate it two and a half. I'd say it is about marketing. You can develop anything. There are very small processes that you can develop with having minimal experience. However, when you start implementing complex processes, I would say you need to be a background developer.

    On a scale of one to five, judging how beneficial it is, I would rate the training a five. All of my team members have been using UiPath Academy for training and certification. It's not just with the U.S., but outside the U.S. as well.

    From the point that a UiPath license is purchased until the first robot is ready totally depends upon what use case we are implementing. There are different methodologies that people use. Some build the bot without exceptions and it can go to production. Like a very simple process can go to production in two to three weeks. A more complex bot will take eight to ten weeks, and depending upon the process, it can go longer. I have seen tasks when a human is performing the job and it takes him around twenty minutes per transaction. But, when the bot comes in, it actually completed that same transaction in five minutes. But, to develop that five minutes of processing, it was understanding system availability and testing. Then you have to do load testing. It takes ten weeks or so.

    Our clients decide to implement RPA for several reasons. The first reason, of course, is to have work completed faster. Second, when there is a workload, you can work on it more efficiently and with fewer people. Consider an open enrollment in October, where the open enrollment starts at 10:00 AM and there are a lot of transactions flowing in. Now you have to hire a human and train them. With the bot, we can just scale up instead. Finally, the bots are errorless.

    How has it helped my organization?

    In terms of eliminating human errors, it is a one hundred percent reduction. When you implement bots, it's error-free, as long as you have implemented it properly. The robot does not get tired, so the error rate is actually zero.

    I would say, more important than saving money, it's more about business growth and client satisfaction. Our clients all serve someone, so it's more about customer satisfaction. The employees benefit because sometimes they have to do repetitive jobs, and they get bored with them. So, they can use automation and apply their brains somewhere fruitful.

    Overall, automation is always improving customer satisfaction. Response time is improved, errors are reduced, and productivity increases because work is being done around the clock.

    What is most valuable?

    The most valuable feature of this solution is that it is user-friendly. I was a coding developer, so I know how to write code, and I've also used other RPA tools. This solution is workflow-driven, where you can easily relay what you had written. If someone has to read the code, it is very readable.

    Second, I've always been a Microsoft technology guy, and they have provided the facility where we can implement any of the C# code into it. We have .NET code, and that's why I like it. We say it's a tool, but I would say it can also be leveraged as a custom coding tool. We can actually do whatever custom code you want.

    What needs improvement?

    I would like to see more machine learning features and capabilities for more accurate OCR.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    With respect to the stability, on a scale from one to five, I would rate this solution a five. It's stable. The thing is, with the software, we have a few glitches here and there, but what I like is that we have the right support. When we actually reach out to verify, we get a faster response and also a faster solution. The responses are effective and fast.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    The responses are effective and fast.

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

    I have seen some cases where there is backend automation, but it was a series of processes. With this solution, they combine all of it into one. There were few human-interactive automations. Rather, it was batch-job processing of databases, etc.

    How was the initial setup?

    The complexity of the initial setup depends upon the client.

    There is admin access and a whole lot involved. There are safety concerns from client to client with their security policies, and it may take time. I have hardly seen any clients where it's easy to set up, within a week or two. It takes longer because of the client's own security policies. You have to get a lot of clearance because there is a lot of admin access that UiPath needs. If I had to rate the setup, I would give it three out of five.

    A dedicated person is required to maintain this solution. The same way humans get sick and need doctors, the bots get sick and you need a maintenance person.

    What was our ROI?

    I would estimate that our clients see ROI, on average, in one year. It depends on what they are trying to save. If it is FTE then eventually you'll be getting everything. If you are trying to have a faster experience, it totally depends. There is a development cost and a tool cost that have to be considered. It also depends on the complexity of the processes and how long they take to code.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We have clients who use almost all of the RPA solutions. The most common ones are Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and WorkFusion. We don't recommend. We advise. We can implement regardless of the solution.

    The choice is dependent on various factors. What we have seen is that most companies have a technology stack. Some have a Java shop, while others have a Microsoft shop, or others will use a different technology stack again. People tend to choose what best matches their technology.

    What other advice do I have?

    When we started initially, most of the business users were afraid that the bot was going to take their job. That is not the case. The bot is actually helping them with their substantive, day-to-day work, by handing the repetitive work. So, after seeing the benefits, I've seen a lot of users now leaning towards bots, and they are very happy with RPA.

    I am looking forward to the new version where they have implemented libraries. One thing they have done is merged the media packages into one. 

    From a cost perspective, there is a difference between attended and unattended bots. I have implemented both, but most of the plans are moving towards unattended. The unattended bots come at a higher cost. For an attended bot, it is being used while the user is at the machine, and is more like an interactive bot. While there is a huge difference in cost, I still prefer unattended bots. I see less benefit in using attended bots and say that I would use unattended eighty percent of the time.

    When I'm implementing an unattended bot, I am actually putting it on a machine. I can run as many unattended bots as I need on that one machine. I can do this with attended bots, but the thing is, you need user interactions. Now think in this way, if the user is not there, the attended bot is waiting for that user. Secondly, I see some of the use cases that are really helpful and suitable for attended, but I would rather go with unattended because it's going to show that I don't need a physical machine and it will be more efficient.

    My advice to anybody who is considering this solution is to start with the UiPath Academy and do the training. Then, look through some videos, implement a process or two and see how comfortable you are. At this point, you can move forward with it. I would say that it is pretty easy to understand.

    This is a good solution, but I'm a hardcore custom developer. I still want that flexibility in my hand to do whatever I can do. With a tool, there are always limitations in terms of policy and rules.

    I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

    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.
    PeerSpot user
    Akshay Gosika - PeerSpot reviewer
    RPA Developer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    It's user-friendly and doesn't take long to learn
    Pros and Cons
    • "UiPath is user-friendly."
    • "I have fewer issues with the user interface when I'm using Blue Prism or Automation Anywhere. For example, if you want to perform an action in UiPath, it's a little tricky because you must click on a particular icon. When you click on that, some selectors are generated. That will change whenever the application updates, so you must change the selector again after the update. When we are dealing with Automation Anywhere, we'll not get any selectors if we are using that action once."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are primarily automating business processes from SAP applications and a few from a web-based application. 

    How has it helped my organization?

    UiPath reduces the number of human employees needed to do repetitive tasks. A person can only work during normal business hours, whereas a bot can work 24/7 without making mistakes.

    What is most valuable?

    UiPath is user-friendly. Building automations isn't complex, and it doesn't take many days to learn. If you have basic knowledge of any programming language, you can start building small projects in 30 to 45 days. 

    If it is a fixed process instead of a dynamic process, we can do end-to-end automation. Automating this kind of process is easier. If it's a dynamic process, we need some kind of external integration. 

    UiPath's community forums were helpful in my early stages, when I was learning the product. When I got errors, I was sometimes unsure what they meant, so I could go onto the forum and find answers easily. 

    They also have these UiPath Academy courses. I've taken the foundational course and the advanced courses on Document Understanding and data manipulation. I still haven't had a chance to work on Document Understanding, but the data manipulation course has been helpful. I learned to do some queries that simplify the workflow and make it faster. 

    What needs improvement?

    I have fewer issues with the user interface when I'm using Blue Prism or Automation Anywhere. For example, if you want to perform an action in  UiPath, it's a little tricky because you must click on a particular icon. When you click on that, some selectors are generated. That will change whenever the application updates, so you must change the selector again after the update. When we are dealing with Automation Anywhere, we'll not get any selectors if we are using that action once. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have used UiPath for more than two years. 

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    I had an activity crash once when the permissions failed. When we were using that activity, it automatically created multiple activities. Even though we dragged it and used it only once, it created multiple activities. That only happened once.

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

    I have tried Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere. 

    How was the initial setup?

    UiPath is deployed on-premises. We only needed to download UiPath Studio off the website and install it. It took about 30 minutes. 

    What other advice do I have?

    I rate UiPath eight out of ten. I recommend taking the UiPath Academy courses first. Take the foundational course. It has some hands-on exercises with small automation processes. Later, they can complete the advanced course. 

    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.
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    PeerSpot user
    SabraSmari - PeerSpot reviewer
    RPA consultant at Sofrecom
    Consultant
    Top 20
    Automates many manual processes, reduces human error and saves human resources
    Pros and Cons
    • "It is the most suitable tool for big beginners in RPA. It is simple to manipulate. I found it comfortable because it has ML, AI, and OCR. It is great."
    • "It should have better integration with Microsoft applications such as Excel, SharePoint, Outlook, etc. Power Automate is better for communicating with Microsoft Office applications. With UiPath, we have some difficulty communicating with the Microsoft Office applications. This is the only weakness that I have come across."

    What is our primary use case?

    We are using UiPath to automate many processes. In my first job, I worked on billing and ticketing. We were automating the process for ticketing and billing for audit. The robot was responsible for auditing the process of an application. It was responsible for calculating the difference between the amount deposited by the visitors and the amount calculated and predicted by the application. It would then decide if it was the correct currency or not.

    Currently, I am working on many applications, but the classic ones are where we are reading data from Excel or databases and then clarifying the data or closing some billings. I am also working on the process of taking some reservations on some sites.

    I also sometimes use it to automate something on my personal laptop.

    How has it helped my organization?

    UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation. It is not only about developing robots or putting the code. You must also monitor and implement the whole solution. It is not just a robot.

    UiPath provides more flexibility because you can use other languages such as C#. This opportunity is not there with Power Automate or Blue Prism because you are working with graphical tools. For me, it was an opportunity to learn C# and how to code.

    UiPath provides the opportunity to work with the conceptual aspects. There are flow charts to help you design the workflow.

    UiPath has helped to automate many manual processes. We can see the difference with automation.

    UiPath reduces human error. It is one of the main benefits. UiPath also optimizes the time. It is helpful. For one of the processes, the time taken was reduced from seven minutes to one minute.

    UiPath saves human resources. For example, we had a process that was done by four to five people, and we automated that process. The robot could do one day's work in 10 to 15 minutes. We have automated almost 15 processes so far, so there have been a lot of savings on human resources. These resources can now be utilized for other tasks. The manual and repetitive tasks were annoying for them, and now, they can work on other things that are more interesting and require human decisions, not just copying and pasting.

    What is most valuable?

    It is the most suitable tool for big beginners in RPA. It is simple to manipulate. I found it comfortable because it has ML, AI, and OCR. It is great.

    It is easy for me to build automation using UiPath. I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of ease of use. It is easy, and I enjoy making robots. It is not just for the sake of working. I enjoy it when I finish making a robot. I feel I did something.

    I did not work much on it, but I like the OCR part. I found OCR interesting because we can work with unstructured data from a paper or handwritten text. It is something new for automation.

    The Community edition and UiPath Academy are two powerful features of UiPath. The Community edition of UiPath gives hands-on experience. People who want to learn about UiPath can download it for free and use it. It is a solution for everyone. Anyone can use it to learn about UiPath and practice it.

    What needs improvement?

    It should have better integration with Microsoft applications such as Excel, SharePoint, Outlook, etc. Power Automate is better for communicating with Microsoft Office applications. With UiPath, we have some difficulty communicating with the Microsoft Office applications. This is the only weakness that I have come across.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been working with UiPath for about two years. I also worked with it during my internship.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It is stable. I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of stability. 

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    For scalability, I would rate it an eight out of ten because it gives you methods to be scalable. You can scale many processes.

    How are customer service and support?

    I have not interacted with their support, but the UiPath Community is there. It is a very big community now. When we have some questions or want some clarification, we can find resources on their site or in their community. When I started working with it initially, it was not easy to find solutions related to UiPath. Compared to Automation Anywhere, it was a bit harder to find solutions.

    I have also used UiPath Academy for certifications. It helps to learn from scratch. UiPath Academy makes it easy to learn for someone who has not worked with UiPath. There are different levels. You can find your level and begin from there.

    How was the initial setup?

    We have our private setup. We have our own Orchestrator. We have a platform that communicates with the Orchestrator. We put the robots on Orchestrator and we monitor them using Orchestrator and some VMs. 

    The deployment complexity depends on each project. Some projects are easy. You just need to put the robots. In terms of maintenance, robots do require maintenance. You need to monitor them to ensure that they are meeting the business requirements. If the code is good, one person can maintain the robots.

    What about the implementation team?

    We are working in a team, and we have our own resources. We have experienced team members who know how to do the deployment.

    We have teams working in multiple locations such as Tunisia, Morocco, Romania, and France.

    What was our ROI?

    There is a significant ROI with process automation.

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

    It is reasonable considering the benefits of automating the processes.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would recommend starting with some simple or classic processes, such as reading data from an Excel sheet and a database. You will find it easy. My advice is to not start with something difficult.

    I would rate UiPath an eight out of ten.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free UiPath Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: March 2024
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free UiPath Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.