Senior Lead Developer at a leisure / travel company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Helpful support, good learning materials, and it saves our business time and money while reducing errors
Pros and Cons
  • "The biggest benefit that we have from UiPath comes from using the API."
  • "The first area that needs improvement is backward compatibility."

What is our primary use case?

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

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

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

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

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

How has it helped my organization?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is most valuable?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What needs improvement?

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

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

The licensing should be more flexible and more affordable.

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

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

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

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.
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For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

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

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

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

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

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

How are customer service and support?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How was the initial setup?

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

Our deployment is on-premises and entirely private.

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

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

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

What about the implementation team?

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

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

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

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

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

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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

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

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

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

What other advice do I have?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Sr Manager Operational Support at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
It has saved us tens of thousands of hours and the ROI was almost instant
Pros and Cons
  • "We are the first company to bring UiPath Academy in-house on the 30th of September. When we signed our licensing agreement, we added it in our own LMS. So, we have that connection and everything else. We love it. We've implemented all of their modules: RPA Starter, all three of the development courses, Solution Architect, Business Analyst, and Build a Bot. It's super exciting. It's one of the best things that we've done. I would rate it a five out of five."
  • "We now have a functionality that is being released for web forms. It's more for attended. I would like to have these web forms exposed in Orchestrator to be able to trigger a bot externally. I know we have partners that provide similar functionality. I would like to have that same functionality where you could deploy a form, but instead of having it pop up on somebody's desktop, they could go through a URL through Orchestrator and trigger the bots via a web interface. This is instead of having to be tied down to an attended bot."

What is our primary use case?

We have several use cases. We're a telecommunications company. We use it for anything from order entry, design, activation, and interactions with technicians within our field. We really have an end-to-end solution.

We are using Studio, Orchestrator, and unattended bots.

It is deployed on-premise but on our own cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

We had a long-time situation where we were sending technicians to the fields unnecessarily, because they couldn't install the service. So, we worked through a process to wake up devices. We used RPA to implement it. 

With downsizing, we have been able to automate a lot of this space, so we can downsize and still function as a company.

What is most valuable?

Capitalize on the unattended automation, as there are a lot of different methods to evoke and schedule it. You can email it, trigger it via API bots or Orchestrator. There are a lot of different methods you can use. We don't really do a whole lot of attended. Not that we wouldn't at some point, but unattended is nice because it's out of sight and out of mind. Set it up and let it go.

We are the first company to bring UiPath Academy in-house on the 30th of September. When we signed our licensing agreement, we added it in our own LMS. So, we have that connection and everything else. We love it. We've implemented all of their modules: RPA Starter, all three of the development courses, Solution Architect, Business Analyst, and Build a Bot. It's super exciting. It's one of the best things that we've done. I would rate it a five out of five.

What needs improvement?

We now have a functionality that is being released for web forms. It's more for attended. I would like to have these web forms exposed in Orchestrator to be able to trigger a bot externally. I know we have partners that provide similar functionality. I would like to have that same functionality where you could deploy a form, but instead of having it pop up on somebody's desktop, they could go through a URL through Orchestrator and trigger the bots via a web interface. This is instead of having to be tied down to an attended bot.

For some of the Insights stuff, we have found that you have to be flexible on measuring your ROI. You have to be able to customize some of that because it's not as cut and dry as you think it is. 

I would look for the audits on the back-end. Performance-wise, make sure that it is still performing. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability as a four (out of five), but some of it could have been us too. 

An overabundance of logging that we created crashed the SQL Server. We had to adjust and restructure the way we were doing all of our logging to prevent that from happening again. Ever since then, it has pretty much been fine. 

We have had issues with upgrades. However, from a normal day-to-day functionality perspective, it is pretty stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Right now, we have about 150 developers. Then, we have engineers and process analysts.

We have 400 automations on average and 1000 in the pipeline.

How are customer service and technical support?

It's been fantastic. It doesn't matter what time of day or anything else. We get top-notch service.

It has been about our contacts and support team. They look at us, and say, "You guys want to do what?" Then, they stand behind us and help us get it done.

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

We had merging companies coming together with a lot of integration going on. With integration, there are multiple teams, processes, and systems. To keep up for our reduced expenses, we had to do it. This was another tool in the toolbox for us: automation.

How was the initial setup?

It took us eight weeks from initial purchase to the first bot to be put into production. It took about two weeks for assessment and documentation, then another six weeks to develop and deploy it. The bot that we developed was complex. It wasn't super simple. We've done simpler, but that time frame was about average for us.

What about the implementation team?

We did the deployment ourselves, but we had the premium support. So, we did have some support from UiPath. However, everything that we did, we did on our own.

What was our ROI?

ROI was almost instant. We measured everything from deployment. We measured our successes. We do audits once a month. ROI was pretty much from deployment. We don't audit anything in the first 30 days because there is a lot of settling in, some bumps, and, "Oh, we missed this step." For the most part, within 30 days, we were realizing and managing expectations on benefits.

We're really only measuring handling time right now, which is defined by our business clients. They define what handling time we are trying to define, then the measure of success. That's what we measure ourselves on.

We're probably in the tens of thousands of hours that we have saved, easily.

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

Because we have so many agents, that's why we went unattended. Attended was very expensive for us because it's a per person license. Where we can take entire workflows, do the triggering and scheduling, etc. We never have to have any human interaction with unattended.

We have a cost model for operating expense savings. It is usually about $100,000 to $125,000 and takes us six weeks to develop and implement. That's development, testing, and implementation. We do code reviews on everything. That does not include all the documentation, assessment, etc.

We just signed a very large perpetual agreement. So, we had 125 Studios and 1200 unattended licenses. We paid $3.7 million. Then, we paid maintenance costs for the next three years, which was 15 percent of that.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, Pega, and UiPath.

Scalability was probably the number one that we went with UiPath. Scalability, the ease of use of the software, and the existing functionality that was there were the main reasons. There is a lot more out-of-the-box in terms of embedded functions that were there at the time when we did our analysis. It seemed like UiPath was really on the cutting edge. They were more proactively implementing good features, where others that we were talking with seemed like they were behind in that perspective. 

We'd rather stay on the cutting edge with technology instead of having to wait for our partner to get caught up.

Obviously, there are cheaper options than UiPath.

What other advice do I have?

I'm really excited about the new stuff. There is great new stuff. We wish we would've had this stuff a year ago because we had to build some of it in-house. We are really excited about the Explorer and process mining.

I would rate the ease of use of the platform for automating our company’s processes as a three and a half to four out of five (where five is the easiest). It depends on the skill set of the developer. If you are a developer with a .NET background, then it will be a lot easier for more of the customization. For the technology overall, it is easy to automate our processes.

We run our automations in the virtual environments, like Citrix. We struggled a bit with Citrix at first, because our infrastructure and systems are somewhat antiquated.

Nobody is perfect. I would rate UiPath as a nine (out of 10).

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

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.
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.
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
GHULAM-MUSTAFA - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager Digital Enablement at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 20
Can consume APIs directly from any application, reduce human error, and improve operational efficiency
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of UiPath is the ability to consume APIs directly from any application."
  • "UiPath is limited to one application at a time and cannot process two applications simultaneously."

What is our primary use case?

We use UiPath in various internal departments to automate our HR, financial, and IT operations, including access management and ISO compliance to control traffic.

We have UiPath deployed both on-premises and in the cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

Building automation with UiPath is easy. The solution is user-friendly, and we do not require technical knowledge or skills to use it. With a little training, we can start building automation with UiPath. Customer support is helpful if we get stuck at any step, and the dashboard is user-friendly and centralizes control in one place.

We use UiPath for multiple end-to-end processes.

The UiPath User Community is a good place to learn and get answers to questions we have related to UiPath.

The UiPath User Community edition is flexible and allows us to practice and learn for free before taking what we have learned to our enterprise edition of UiPath.

UiPath has improved our operational process efficiency, allowing us to schedule processes to run 24/7 and freeing our employees from repetitive tasks so they can focus on other work.

UiPath Academy courses are useful for our employees. We also have access to the enterprise learning portal, where materials are available.

UiPath has helped reduce human error. When all the prerequisites are met and the process is fully automated there is a zero percent chance for human error. For the processes that are not fully automated, UiPath was able to reduce human error by 60 to 80 percent.

Before UiPath we had one employee tied to one business process and after implementing UiPath we have one employee tied to multiple domains. Our staff now has time to work on other tasks.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of UiPath is the ability to consume APIs directly from any application.

What needs improvement?

UiPath is expensive, and its cost could be reduced to make it more accessible to small and medium-sized businesses that could benefit from it. The orchestrator and licensing cost should be flexible instead of hard-coded licensing.

UiPath is limited to one application at a time and cannot process two applications simultaneously. This functionality could be improved to support dual browsing, making it more efficient.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for almost four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have not experienced any crashes of UiPath. We have experienced some slowdowns three times this year, but this could be due to our internal network rather than UiPath.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good. We can adjust our workflows according to the conditions with no issues.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is extremely helpful. We contact support whenever we need to upgrade our volumes, and by following their guidelines and prerequisites, we can easily complete the upgrade ourselves. Once the support team responds to our call they are quick to resolve our issue.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

Before UiPath, we performed manual integrations, but the types of processes we could automate were limited. We faced challenges automating any process where humans needed to make decisions or where minor tweaking was required between the target and source applications. UiPath has removed these restrictions.

How was the initial setup?

UiPath is easy to install, and its representatives are flexible in supporting our installation. Upgrading our libraries and maintaining UiPath security protocols is also easy, which makes the overall installation process straightforward.

Two people are enough for the deployment.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented UiPath in-house.

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

UiPath is more expensive than other solutions on the market, such as Microsoft Power Automate.

The Flex license is around $11,000. It should cost at least half that price compared to other solutions. We must purchase an orchestrator for each platform, which is mandatory and adds to the cost. UiPath should consider this and offer a more economical license.

What other advice do I have?

I give UiPath eight out of ten. The cost brings down the overall rating.

Maintenance is required when running UiPath on-premises for the server, OS, and DB. On a bi-weekly and quarterly basis. We also have to implement tools for the firewall.

I recommend UiPath for large-scale and multinational organizations because they can afford the licensing costs. Organizations should explore UiPath before embarking on a transformation journey, as transformation requires significantly more cost than automating existing legacy applications. UiPath is flexible and can integrate with all applications.

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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Kapil Rampal - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at Ivory Education Private Limited
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Easy to use, excellent support, and cheap for the value you get
Pros and Cons
  • "One thing that we love about UiPath is that the pricing is very good. While we are developing, they have a free option. The Pro option is for just $420. Once we go live, we do not mind paying, so the price point is very good."
  • "We would like to see small modules that we can pick and use. Currently, we have to implement a lot of things. The platform is very good, but we would love to have some more templates that we can quickly implement."

What is our primary use case?

We are an EdTech company. We are working on a solution that allows us to customize our offering by reviewing the intelligence that we have about a person. For example, based on how a person learns, we can customize our offering. If a person is more tactile, we can give more quizzes and other things so that the person uses his or her hands to interact. It is a work in progress. We are still implementing it. It is a lot of work.

How has it helped my organization?

It is very easy to build automations with UiPath. It is completely visual. You can easily drag and drop and create a process. It is fairly easy. People who are not technical are also able to work very well. In education, we have to work with educators apart from techies. In EdTech, we have people who understand learning, so we are able to deploy them for this, and we are able to build a better solution. Techies will not be able to build it because they are not educators. We have educators with over 20 years of experience. If we train them to be techies, they will take 10 years, but if we ask techies to become educators, they might take 100 years. With UiPath, we are able to use the skills of our education specialists along with IT and other departments that are needed.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation. We can use AWS, Azure, or any other product. It is easy for us to integrate UiPath with our current offering. It is very easy to implement and go live.

We are working on using their AI functionality. We are trying to use the user data that we have to understand about a person and deliver a solution accordingly. For example, right now, in education, one size fits all, so there is one program that is directed at a hundred people. If you see Coursera, they have a completion ratio of around 3%. What we have observed is that when we use a solution like UiPath, for the test cases, the completion ratio is very good. It is close to 80%, which is very good. It is going in the right direction.

As far as our business is concerned, if a person does not complete the program, we do not get paid. There is a revenue leakage. By using UiPath, we are seeing a higher completion ratio. For example, if a person enrolls in a university and completes the program, he will pay up for four years. If he drops out in two months and finds that we are not useful, then obviously, we would lose the revenue for three years and ten months. It is helping us reduce wastage. It is helping us increase our revenues with minimal cost addition. The pricing of UiPath is negligible compared to the benefits. We can recover its monthly cost from the revenue that we get from just one student. We have close to 5,000 students. It is very good for us.

In terms of reduction in human error, when you are developing a program, initially, you will discover many errors that you have been missing out on, so human error will be reduced to minimal if your protocol is right. If you make a basic flaw in your design, then it is different, but otherwise, human error is more or less eliminated. There is close to 30% reduction in human error. Once we scale up, that percentage will go up and efficiency will go up.

We plan to automate all manual processes. Some of them are already automated using UiPath, some of them are in progress, and some of them will be automated in the future, but we will save a lot of human time. Human resources are very costly these days. It takes years and years of training for them to add to our business. UiPath has been good for a lot of things that we thought were not possible. We are able to do them after using UiPath. They are able to help us in finance. They are able to help us in HR. They are able to help us with contact centers. It is very good.

What is most valuable?

One thing that we love about UiPath is that the pricing is very good. While we are developing, they have a free option. The Pro option is for just $420. Once we go live, we do not mind paying, so the price point is very good.

The platform is robust. Particularly in process mining and task mining areas, it is very good. We are working on integrating it with our solution, and the API is fairly easy for us to work with. 

UiPath is very good. They have OpenAI integration. It is a free integration. They have something for extracting data. They have something for copying text from an image. These are all free and ready to be used in automation.

They have a UiPath community. They have a lot of activities to engage people, and the community is growing. It is not as wide as some of the older products such as PHP or Java, but for AI, it is a very good community. They have DevCons that are very popular as well. Their community is all over the world. They have developers in India. They have developers in the Philippines. It is very good.

What needs improvement?

We would like to see small modules that we can pick and use. Currently, we have to implement a lot of things. The platform is very good, but we would love to have some more templates that we can quickly implement. Other than that, it is very good. We do not require anything else. We are very happy with UiPath. It has been an eye-opener for us. We have discovered things that we thought were not possible earlier.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for 17 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is completely stable. I have not had a single downtime in our development journey and usage. It is a very stable solution. I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is easily scalable because of the way it is implemented. You start with a small license, and as your needs grow, you can keep taking more resources. UiPath also makes money as you grow. They scale it up for us, so we do not have to worry much about the product as such. It is quite scalable.

We have UiPath in multiple departments. We are an EdTech company, and we are using UiPath in the product department and the finance department. We are integrating some elements of HR. Customer support is the most vital component for us because you save a lot of manhours in customer support. Our tech teams are based out of India and the Philippines.

At the implementation stage, we have only 14 developers, but once implemented, it will be used for at least 5,000 customers.

How are customer service and support?

They have been very prompt and helpful. They pay attention to detail. They are available. Their support is a class apart. There are no issues. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We tried several products but did not implement any RPA. We tried Automation Anywhere and Microsoft Power Automate. We found UiPath to be the best in terms of features, community, and support. Some of the things that we tried did not work well for us.

UiPath is a class apart. Automation Anywhere is a standard solution. Overall, Automation Anywhere is very easy. It does not have a community. It does not have all the features. You are mostly platform-dependent when you are using Automation Anywhere, whereas UiPath has a community. You do not need UiPath to help you with everything. There is a lot of talent available. UiPath Academy is good. A lot of people get trained in UiPath. Pricing-wise also, UiPath is cheaper. It is also easy to implement. Automation Anywhere helps to get started very quickly, but we needed customization for our business. This is something where UiPath was better.

How was the initial setup?

It is deployed on the cloud. Everything is on the cloud. UiPath has helped to minimize our on-prem footprint. Ever since COVID, everyone has been moving to a phase where they can be completely remote. We have been transitioning from on-premises for the last few years, and this is a step in the right direction. Of course, we need to do more, but it is going in the right direction.

The number of people required depends on what you are using it for. We are using it for our own custom solution. We have 14 resources working on UiPath for our solution, but a small enterprise does not need that many people. A smaller team is good enough to implement because it has everything. For example, if you want to integrate Salesforce, you can easily integrate Salesforce. You can go and click on the marketplace and just use Salesforce.

It does not require any maintenance from our side. Everything is automatically maintained. The platform is continuously upgraded in the backend. We do not need much maintenance. It is a cloud solution, and everything is maintained at the backend. You do not need any intervention.

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

It is super cheap for the value you get. Their free version is good enough to implement. When you are building a solution, it takes months of effort, and sometimes, it takes years. Its free version is good enough for you to test out everything, so when you are developing, you do not need to pay. After that, there is a Pro version at $420. It is reasonable for the value it is offering. Their basic support is also very good, which comes with the Pro version. 

The Enterprise license is suitable when you need a hundred automation licenses. It is also reasonable. They give good pricing when you negotiate.

What other advice do I have?

I would highly recommend UiPath. You can definitely go for it. I would suggest being a little bit patient while implementing this solution initially because it can be overwhelming. There are so many options.

UiPath as a company is also good. They respond quickly. It has been a pleasure so far. Our product is not yet live. We are still working on it. It is a very big solution for us, and it will be a game changer for our business.

Overall, I would rate UiPath a ten out of ten.

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Avinash Nagamalla - PeerSpot reviewer
RPA Solution Architect / Lead Developer at Texas Capital Bank
Real User
Top 20
Great user community and Academy classes with an overall reduction in human error
Pros and Cons
  • "The community enables a lot of users to get involved with UiPath. There are many open forums where a number of users share their thoughts."
  • "The solution needs to offer more integrations."

What is our primary use case?

I'm currently working as a solutions architect as well as the lead developer for UiPath. I have a vast number of use cases in various sectors and with SAP enterprise applications. I worked in the insurance sector and health sector, accomplishing different use cases.

I've used the solution in manufacturing in terms of procurement. We deal with a lot of products that come in and out and everything is being tagged in the SAP Enterprise application. We use UiPath RPA in order to close all the purchase orders that are already accomplished - and this needs to be done in SAP. UiPath is completely responsible for interacting with SAP applications in order to close purchase orders. 

I have developed a process that handles around 500 to 600 invoices a day, purchase orders a day. I'm running through multiple bots simultaneously.

What is most valuable?

Whether it is easy or difficult to build automation completely depends upon the behavior of the applications and the complexity of the business process. That said, compared to many other tools, it is the most flexible, developer-friendly tool. We can build out automation more quickly and easily compared to the other tools.

We use UiPath to automate processes to deal with a good cause. However, since it is a commercial tool and enterprise tool, the company is always looking for some greater ROI. If we can gain ROI and help with a good cause, we will. It's possible. 

UiPath allows us to implement end-to-end automation. This is important to us as operations and technology change. Since it's end-to-end, we can let people focus on more creative tasks. They can move away from repetitive work. Human energy can be placed into building and thinking and UiPath can automate away manual processes.

The user community is growing every day. It grows in value thanks to its flexibility. It provides a lot of features. You can discover how to build automation and look into orchestration. There's help with machine learning as well. The community enables a lot of users to get involved with UiPath. There are many open forums where a number of users share their thoughts. People can work on issues collectively and collaborate easily.

We have managed to minimize our on-premises footprint. We can use on-prem and cloud deployments which makes the solution much more flexible for our current technology needs.

We've leveraged the Academy courses. Compared to many other automation platforms or software development tools, UiPath provides a very good training portal where every beginner, user, or developer can log in and complete different courses. There are different certificates for security, orchestration, development, et cetera. We can find detailed training sessions and certification courses. 

We use AI in our automation. We are still doing some research with our Central Acceptance team in terms of implementing artificial intelligence. However, we have not implemented it so far. We are in the research stage.

UiPath has helped speed up digital transformation. It plays a major role as part of the digital transformation within the organization and also saves a lot of money in the effort. It helps streamline many of the business processes inside the company. 

It's reduced human error. I cannot say RPA is completely error-free, however, compared to humans, the results are highly error-free. Many of the complex business processes have far fewer errors. Thanks to UiPath we can handle tasks quickly while maintaining the configurations of the project.

UiPath has saved employee time. For example, usually, we will also be developing some of our agenda reports alongside our inventories. With UiPath, we assign each and every employee a robot to do some short tasks to help reduce the burden on the employee.

What needs improvement?

Currently, we have a lot of data extraction models in UiPath. Still, sometimes the data extraction model needs improvement. For example, extracting the data from various kinds of complex documents. Still, compared to the other automation tools, this works way better. 

The solution needs to offer more integrations. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for seven or more years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We never have issues with UiPath's stability. While we have had issues with older versions, the tool continues to improve and it's in great shape now. 

How are customer service and support?

We've contacted support about a few use cases. We only contact them sometimes and have meetings around feasibility. They listen to our problems and they come back with solutions, however, sometimes it takes time.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I've worked with various products, including Automation Anywhere, Python Automation Frameworks, and Hyland RPA. UiPath is the best. It's more flexible and ready for developers to jump into business processes rather than focusing on more technical aspects. The product setup is easier too.

How was the initial setup?

Depending on the client, deployments can be on-premises, cloud, or hybrid. 

The setup is not complex compared to other tools. It's straightforward.

We typically have two to three people that help with the deployment process. However, for testing purposes, we have a huge team.

What about the implementation team?

I get a lot of help from different colleagues regarding different tools, however, with UiPath, the documentation is very good and the requirements are straightforward. 

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

I cannot say the solution is affordable. It is expensive compared to other tools. However, companies do not worry so much about this kind of thing. Before making a decision, business teams will always calculate the ROI.

What other advice do I have?

I'm a customer and end-user.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I'd advise people to try UiPath, depending on the size of the project and the business processes. It's important to calculate the expected ROI at the outset. Based on this calculation, you'll be able to gauge if it will be a product worth your time. If the volume of work is low, it may be better to go with an open-source option. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
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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Deepak M - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr RPA Uipath Lead Developer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Helps improve our patient experience, saves time, and organizational costs
Pros and Cons
  • "The OCR engine is a valuable feature."
  • "UiPath should lower its prices because many other RPA tools have reduced their prices, and Microsoft is a major competitor because it offers RPA services to its customers."

What is our primary use case?

Oracle has three broad categories: HCM, PPM, and finance. I have used UiPath to automate mainframe applications. I have automated all types of automation, including ServiceNow processes, PDFs, APIs, and web-based automation.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath has a large number of Java and Python developers. Its modularization of packages for different types of activities and automation is very well done. UiPath also collects suggestions from end users and developers, such as those using the free UiPath software. In fact, UiPath does not release its enterprise edition directly; instead, it releases a free edition for developers to use and provide feedback on the forums. This gives UiPath a significant advantage. Additionally, UiPath has made its tool flexible by building it on the .NET framework but allowing users to also use Java and Python. This gives UiPath another advantage over other tools. I am not sure if other tools offer this type of functionality, but I know that UiPath does because I have used it for a long time.

It can connect systems that don't communicate with each other, enabling us to share data between systems using bots, which is important in the healthcare industry.

The application that was built for our organization is not capable of handling millions of users because it is very old. We must consider the Citrix application, the mainframe applications, and the desktop applications, which are also old. They were not designed to handle millions of customers. For example, CVS Pharmacy has millions of people using its applications on a regular basis. Therefore, we cannot expose that application to customers. We need to build a new client-facing application, but we cannot discard our existing application, which has been in our organization for many years. UiPath helps our applications communicate which improves our patient experience.

It helps our staff easily share data between systems by saving the information in Excel or CSV files and connecting the files to new applications.

We use UiPath to consolidate patient data from multiple sources into a single dashboard, which helps our doctors keep track of patient histories in one place.

The single dashboard helps our patients a lot because we save patient information in the same way for all hospitals including doctors, nurses, and medicines. This means that if we need a doctor nearby, want to change doctors, or are moving to a new city and need medical help, our data can help us find the right resources.

UiPath automation has helped our staff save time, especially for invoicing insurance policies in healthcare organizations. UiPath automation has saved millions of dollars and thousands of hours by simplifying the process in both the healthcare and telecommunications industries.

UiPath has streamlined tasks for our healthcare staff, especially data viewing, enabling them to focus on higher-value activities.

We use UiPath's AI and machine learning capabilities to understand documents. The machine learning process has significantly improved the accuracy of the bot's ability to read data from PDF files.

What is most valuable?

In 2019, UiPath introduced Computer Vision activities for Citrix applications. This was a major turning point for the company, and the functionality was very useful; I had not seen it in any other tools.

The OCR engine is a valuable feature. 

What needs improvement?

UiPath should lower its prices because many other RPA tools have reduced their prices, and Microsoft is a major competitor because it offers RPA services to its customers.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for over five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is generally stable, but there are bugs in UiPath Studio that require fixing or restarting the application.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I previously used Blue Prism automation, but at the time, the functionality was limited and there were not many features.

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment is straightforward. We have some design methods. The dispatcher will handle input, the performer will perform the tasks. All processes will be transactional: our first module will create the transaction, the second will execute it, and the third will generate a report.

We use the CI/CD pipeline to deploy our software. After the software passes UAT testing, we need approval from the technical team before deploying it to production.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was completed in-house.

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

UiPath is expensive. Automation Anywhere is much cheaper, and it does not have the same AI and machine learning capabilities or features. However, for some industry cases, such as document understanding and computer vision, these features are not required.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I evaluated Automation Anywhere, which was not mature at the time but is now. I also evaluated Power Automate, which has the best price of all RPA tools and is capturing a large market share due to Microsoft's bundles and integrations.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath a nine out of ten.

We have thousands of people across the organization using the automation.

UiPath itself doesn't require maintenance but the infrastructure does at times.

UiPath offers a 60 to 90 day trial of its features so that users can try the solution before buying. We can also negotiate with UiPath sales to ensure that we see a return on our automation investment within the first year.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
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Technical Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Enables us to do complex end-to-end automation for multiple systems
Pros and Cons
  • "UiPath has helped us with compliance-related tasks. These tasks involve reviewing various systems and taking screenshots to get proof of compliance. It's a costly process that can be mostly automated. The employee doesn't need to collect all the proofs; they just have to check if they are correct. For example, they must verify that the referenced time stamp is correct."
  • "UiPath could gain a lot more customers if they lowered the price a little and improved the license model with some more affordable tiers."

What is our primary use case?

We use UiPath to automate back-office tasks.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath helped us with compliance-related tasks. These tasks involve reviewing various systems and taking screenshots to get proof of compliance. It's a costly process that can be mostly automated. The employee doesn't need to collect all the proofs; they just have to check if they are correct. For example, they must verify that the referenced time stamp is correct. 

They can focus on quality instead of doing all of the manual work, which requires a lot of time and effort from the specialist doing that auditing job. Automation frees up the auditor to do more critical tasks. A bot can handle repetitive, menial jobs. 

If you have some tasks that must be done at the start of the day, you can configure the bot to run first thing in the morning to retrieve all the details you need. You can get the report and start working on it. It's hard to estimate how much time it frees up because it varies from client to client, but if you plan well and use UiPath strategically, it can cut the time in half.  

UiPath enables us to do complex end-to-end automation for multiple systems. Some of our automated processes take input from the ERM software and enter data into various applications. UiPath can sit and listen to any SAP solution, depending on the requirements, and report to the business user, who can validate it. 

The user community is amazing. UiPath put a lot of effort into fostering a community, and now it is so mature that we can find a solution for 90 percent of our problems in the forum. 

UiPath has a small physical footprint. It's not like a typical enterprise application that requires multiple servers. You can run various automations on a field workstation. Numerous processes can be automated on a single machine. 

The UiPath Academy courses are helpful. It's a great way to learn queries and new techniques. I got my initial training from UiPath Academy, and we use it to onboard junior staff fresh out of college. We first direct them to the UiPath courses and follow up with one-on-one training. 

UiPath reduces the cost of digital transformation. For example, you can automate the process of extracting information from devices. If you aren't confident that the automation is accurate, send it to a human staffer to verify and make corrections. You can put a human in the loop if necessary. It may still require some labor, but it takes much of the burden off your employees. 

It reduces human error if you have fool-proof automation developed. If you have good rules that fit, it works smoothly without any help. With the proper ruleset, you can eliminate errors 100 percent. 

What is most valuable?

UiPath is a complete RPA product suite with machine learning packages and out-of-the-box processes. I'm a developer, so I primarily interact with UiPath Studio. It has a large set of activities ready to use, reducing the time we spend developing bots. The Orchestrator interface is thoughtful and easy to use. In Orchestrator, you can deploy processes and choose from various triggering options.   

Building simple automations is easy if you have a little technical knowledge. It takes more expertise to create complex automations. UiPath has a different product line for non-technical users, but it has some limitations. 

The more advanced developers use UiPath Studio, which allows you to enrich processes with Python and JavaScript. From a developer's perspective, it's almost a perfect 10.

What needs improvement?

UiPath could gain a lot more customers if they lowered the price a little and improved the license model with some more affordable tiers. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for nearly six years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

A few years ago, UiPath wasn't stable, but it matured a lot since then. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath has built-in features that help you scale your automation, and you can deploy automation on multiple machines simultaneously. 

How are customer service and support?

I rate UiPath support a nine out of ten. Their support is decent. I get a fast response when I have questions. I haven't had any issues with them.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I used Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere for learning purposes. UiPath is easier to use and has a more extensive user community. UiPath's constant improvement is outpacing other platforms. 

How was the initial setup?

Deploying UiPath is straightforward. It requires some maintenance in terms of modifying and updating your existing processes. You can reduce the overhead maintenance if you have a good developer interface in place. The maintenance is minimal compared to the benefits. 

What was our ROI?

A good consultant can help you implement automation and maximize your returns. Automation implementation can range from fifteen days to six months. You'll see a return in as little as one month. For that to happen, you need to implement it strategically. We see a 10-20 percent return, depending on the process.

What other advice do I have?

I rate UiPath a nine 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
Sushruth Ramesh - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Audit Associate at a government with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Provides good value for money, saves a lot of time, and allows non-technical people to easily build applications
Pros and Cons
  • "There is a feature called Build a New App in UiPath. I found that to be very good. It makes our job much easier to know how to build applications. There is also the Studio module. I am from a non-technical background. So, for me, designing and creating applications was very tough initially, but with the Studio module and the activity tab that they have, it's easy. Most of it is just drag and drop. I found that very valuable."
  • "There are some selector issues when it comes to web automation and desktop automation. There is a robot selector. When we feed the data, it tries to fetch the UI elements from that particular data, but that's not happening 100%. That could have some improvements."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case with UiPath is to create automation software for the HR and the accounting department. Some of the automations that we do are automated attendance tracking, billable hours calculation, work hours calculation, expense reimbursements, et cetera. We have also completely automated our sales processes, such as contract building, invoice creation, etc. We do all this through UiPath automation. Earlier, all this was done manually, and it consumed a lot of time for us, but now, with automation, it's super-quick and efficient.

We are using a public cloud model. We host it on AWS.

How has it helped my organization?

It helps us to do end-to-end automation. The accounts and the HR department have a lot of employees to manage and a lot of queries come up. Previously, most of the tasks that we had to do were very time-consuming. For example, just attendance tracking and expense management consumed two days of the entire week, but after the end-to-end automation with UiPath, we hardly spend four to five hours per week on the same tasks. That definitely helped us.

Time-saving is the main benefit that we have got. The Build a New App feature helps us create our applications in a very quick and efficient manner. We can also share them with multiple stakeholders, which has saved us a lot of time. We used to spend two days per week on a manual task, but now, it's just four or five hours a week. A lot of time has been saved, and efficiency-wise, by introducing automation, very less errors are happening. That's one of the biggest bonuses of using UiPath.

It has definitely reduced human errors. With the end-to-end automation that we are doing, in addition to a lot of time savings, efficiency has been improved in terms of the number of manual errors. It has reduced about 95% of the errors. There are still minor hiccups here and there, but that's expected. With fewer manual errors, we are able to do things in a much quicker and more reliable fashion. Earlier, unnecessary time was being wasted on this, but now, we are completely dependent on automation. Automation and robots take care of everything for us. We just need to oversee things. That has made our life much easier.

We use the platform on the cloud. It has definitely reduced the on-premise footprint. One benefit of having a cloud product is that we need to do very little maintenance from our side. We just need to do the regular updates and install the patches that they give. It's on the cloud, so it's very easy. We just have to keep our application updated. It's very useful, and it saves a lot of time. With an on-premise model, a lot of maintenance is required.

It definitely speeds up digital transformation. We deal with a lot of employees or internal customers, and with automation, we are able to design applications that are very user-friendly. They are able to give us the data we need in a much quicker fashion. It has definitely been on the positive side for us.

For this digital transformation, we did not require any third-party or costly applications. Everything was there in UiPath itself. We just needed to subscribe to UiPath. It's a one-stop solution.

It has freed up a lot of employee time. The tasks that previously required two days per week now require just five hours per week. It has saved us that much time.

It has definitely saved costs for our organization. With the saved time, we are able to concentrate on different aspects of our work, and we are able to clear up most of our pending tasks. So, the efficiency has improved, which has been good for our business. Around 30% of our overall expenditure has been reduced because we are able to put in that much more work.

What is most valuable?

There is a feature called Build a New App in UiPath. I found that to be very good. It makes our job much easier to know how to build applications. There is also the Studio module. I am from a non-technical background. So, for me, designing and creating applications was very tough initially, but with the Studio module and the activity tab that they have, it's easy. Most of it is just drag and drop. I found that very valuable.

It's straightforward to build automations. The UiPath Studio has a lot of in-built templates to choose from. Most of the functionality is just drag and drop, and it can't get easier than this. It's really straightforward.

UiPath's user community is very active and very useful. The answers to most of my queries are already in the community. It's very user-friendly, and we can also clarify our doubts and have conversations with the UiPath community.

UiPath's academic courses on academy.uipath.com are also very useful. In case you have any doubts or you want to do any certifications, you can just log in. It's free of cost. You can just log in there and do your certification. You'll learn a lot. Both UiPath Academy and the UiPath Community are very good.

I'm from a non-technical background. For me, getting my head around designing and understanding RPA processes was very tough. UiPath Academy basically dumbed it down to my level. It has made it very easy for me to know and understand RPA. I have started designing and developing applications with UiPath. So, even a person from a non-technical background, like me, can produce reliable and very useful applications with UiPath.

What needs improvement?

The reports could be improved. They could be much more in-depth. 

There are some selector issues when it comes to web automation and desktop automation. There is a robot selector. When we feed the data, it tries to fetch the UI elements from that particular data, but that's not happening 100%. That could have some improvements. Apart from that, everything else is fine. I have not faced any other major hiccups or issues with UiPath.

In terms of additional features, some integration and API connector services need to be added, especially with the CRM software. Currently, they have a limited set of API connector services. They could increase that for the CRM software.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for nine months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is a very stable application. We haven't faced any hiccups or any major downtimes. Being a cloud platform, it's very good. The only thing that we need to take care of is our internet and our system. Apart from that, I haven't faced any downtime issues or performance issues with UiPath. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's scalable. It definitely has all the capabilities for scaling up, but for our department, we most probably aren't going to scale it up because we currently have a sufficient number of users. We have been able to extract the best out of UiPath from the current usage, but it definitely has all the features to scale.

Currently, in our organization, it's deployed across multiple departments. There are 15 departments in our organization, and eight of those departments use UiPath. In our department, seven of us use this application. We have seven user logins for UiPath, but I am not sure about the number of users in other departments. The majority of users are non-technical staff and developers. There is a 50:50 ratio.

How are customer service and support?

I have been in touch with their technical support, but my involvement is very less. They are very friendly, and they are very knowledgeable. They could solve most of the queries within 24 hours, and for most of the queries, they also had help documents that they shared with us so that we could learn, and the next time it happens, we are able to resolve it ourselves. So far, their support has been very good. I would rate them a 10 out of 10. I don't have any complaints so far.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We did not explicitly use any other product for RPA. 

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in its deployment.

What about the implementation team?

We got some training from UiPath's third-party team on how to go about using the software because we didn't have any clue. For initial installation and deployment, we did not require anyone else. We did it ourselves. We just required some training on how to go about using the software.

In terms of maintenance, it requires minimal maintenance. It's a complete cloud product, and its maintenance involves downloading the latest release or updating to the latest release. That's it. We just have one person who takes care of all of these aspects. We don't have an extensive team to take care of the maintenance of the product. It's very easy for us to do maintenance. One thing that we like very much about UiPath is that it requires very little maintenance.

What was our ROI?

We have definitely seen a return on investments on UiPath. Basically, a lot of time was saved for us. We were able to concentrate on other aspects of our work. Tasks that previously required two days now just require four to five hours. There are about 30% cost savings with UiPath. 

The return on investment is quicker with UiPath. Earlier, the output that we wanted from a task took around 15 days, but now, it just takes around a week. That's the return on investment that we are getting from UiPath.

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

It's fairly priced. It's not too costly, and it's also not too cheap. When you bundle it with the UiPath Academy courses and the great community that they have, it is worth the price. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did try out Automation Anywhere. We did a trial of that software, but that was not reliable for us. We didn't like the performance that it offered. That's why we went for UiPath, and we have been using UiPath since.

What other advice do I have?

Non-technical people have this misconception that automation is only for people with a coding or development background. I would definitely suggest trying UiPath because it breaks that barrier. Anybody with a little bit of computer knowledge will be able to design simple-level applications.

You can try the community version of UiPath. It's a free version of UiPath. If you are interested, I would also recommend trying out the UiPath Academy courses that are being offered by UiPath.

I would rate UiPath a 9 out of 10. If they can bring the integrations and the API services, it would make the product the best in the market. All other aspects are very good.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
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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Buyer's Guide
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Updated: March 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free UiPath Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.