Blue Prism Cloud Reviews

We were involved in implementing this product in many network branches of the Bank of Raiffeisen. It is used for transaction monitoring, automating invoicing, sending documents to customers, and other types of banking transactions.  

I would say that the most valuable feature in Blue Prism's Virtual Workforce is that it is quite stable and this is imperative to the industry we serve.  

One area that the product can be improved is the ease-of-use because it is not easy to work with.  

Another area where it could improve is adding more automation features that it does not yet have like tended robots. Right now this solution only has unattended RPAs (Robotic Process Automation).  

One of the additional features which I would like to see included in the next release is process recording. It is a feature that can actually record some process and convert the processes to code. This can save time so that development could be much more rapid. That would be a very valuable addition.  

The interface is pretty user-friendly as it is, but I think it is also an area of Thoughtonomy which could be much better. So it is not bad now but there is quite a bit of room for improvement.  

We have been using it since some time in 2016, so it has been three to four years.  

The stability of the product is very good, which again is very important to our clients.  

I think that the scalability of the product is very good. It is actually very easy to scale.  

Group-wide, I think that our organization has somewhere between 70 to 100 developers. That is over 13 countries. We also have plans to increase the usage of automation in the future. We are trying to get our services into every single network bank. I don't know how that will happen and I don't know how long it will take. It is a big undertaking.  

I do not know exactly what the pricing is that we get on the product but I know that we get a pretty good deal because we are a huge group. We have over 50,000 employees with good clients and plans for growth, so we were able to negotiate a fairly good price. In general, I am also aware that our organization is satisfied with the cost of the product.  

I was not involved in the process of selecting Blue Prism. I have some experience with it and it works, but right now, I'm exploring other options. Specifically, I would like to make a strong comparison with UiPath. There may be other products to explore as well that can improve on our current RPA capabilities.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Blue Prism as an eight out of ten.  

I do have some other reservations about the product. Personally, I would recommend using something else for automation projects, but I'm not in a position to make that choice in my company. I mean, it is a very good product for doing what it does. It is very stable and does its job. Somehow, even if automation of this type are fairly modern, I feel like Thoughtonomy was created for people who learned to code 30 years ago and not for the developers of today. It may not be taking full advantage of advancement in technology.  

It works well. There is nothing to really highlight.

It allowed for easy access.

The usability is good.

It’s scalable.

The solution was stable.

How we basically integrate any AI models, I’d like to see something which I could do more of a transfer share with. It could be more flexible.

We used the solution just for proof of concept. We used it for maybe three months, a couple of months, only.

We are no longer running it anymore. We just tried it out for a POC. During the time we were using it, we found it to be stable. There were no bugs or glitches.

The solution is scalable. We could expand it if we needed to.

We didn’t have to contact technical support as we worked closely with an integrator. They handled everything for us.

We also tried some internal use cases using Robocorp.

The initial setup was okay. We had help with the process.

We worked with an integrator. They had a setup running already, so it didn't take long for us to start working on it. The process was okay.

It's good. If the pricing model works for you, it's not a bad solution. You just have to figure out whether the pricing model works for your type of use case and for your needs. There are a lot of automation vendors, and depending on your use case, you can decide which is worth investing in. If you have the required budget that can sustain Blue Prism, then it's a good solution.

I’d rate the solution seven out of ten.

We were a customer and an end-user.

Our primary use case for Blue Prism Cloud depends on what our client's needs are. If they want something that is cloud-based but they do not have their own cloud infrastructure — like Azure or something like that — they need additional support. If they want the features that come with Blue Prism Cloud, like OCR (Optical Character Recognition) functionality or anything in particular on the service desk, that is usually when clients would choose Blue Prism Cloud as an option for automating processes.  

We deliver RPA (Robotic Process Automation) solutions for our clients. We go out to them and do the discovery and identify processes that are candidates for automation with them. Then we deliver that for them by building out the processes and deploying Blue Prism. We do the whole thing up to that point.  

I have not had much direct feedback from clients about what they find the most valuable in Blue Prism. I guess I would say probably the additional functionality over and above Blue Prism Enterprise and the fact that it is cloud-based are things that would attract them to the product. Additionally, it will be secure on secured cloud servers. There is a lot less to worry about.   

I think some of the issues we have experienced have been more painful because of the support. In the past, support was a bit weak. It would take a while to get a response and it could take a while to get an issue resolved. If we had a client that wanted Blue Prism Cloud Thoughtonomy, then it could take a little while to get that up and running. In comparison, getting Enterprise up and running is much quicker. I suppose the cost of Enterprise is quite a lot in comparison as there is an investment in the hardware.  

I do not really develop in Blue Prism Cloud, so I do not really know what can be improved on the development side. I do not really have any level of detail about it or feedback from appropriate users.  

We were working with Blue Prism Cloud before it was Blue Prism Cloud. It was still Thoughtonomy (acquisition announced July 17, 2019). So we have got a fair bit of experience with it throughout the product's history.  

I think Blue Prism Cloud has been fairly stable.  

This product is quite scalable. I mean we have not done scaling to huge numbers by percentage. We have done a reasonable volume up to about 50 processes at a time. It has been fine from that standpoint. It does not seem most people using it will make huge jumps in the number of processes that they use all at once.  

I have not personally had to contact technical support, but I know my colleagues have. We do deploy the product for our clients as part of the process of delivery in creating automated solutions for them. That is where it stops as we are not providing maintenance for the product to customers. But during the installations and development, there has been some contact with support. There have not been any notable complaints beyond the level of difficulty sometimes encountered during the setup and installation.  

In our experience setup and installation for Blue Prism has been relatively complex, but it is getting better. The deployment used to take somewhere around anywhere up to a month before. I would say it could be as little as a few days now.  

Typically the value of Blue Prism Cloud depends on the user's needs. Most people would only really need Blue Prism Enterprise on-premises but people like the additional functionality of being on the cloud. Both products are good solutions. I do think that a lot of our clients going for Blue Prism Cloud when in reality they could probably get away with the Enterprise version — or even something else. We often deal with people who are early in their RPA journey, so they are just starting out and getting to know the advantages of the products and automation. So I would typically recommend that they go with Enterprise and if they feel like they need to move on to Cloud then they can do that later. But a lot of people like that functionality, they want the OCR and they want the AI capability that comes with the cloud. So often they choose cloud but they may just be doing that because it either seems new or it is progressive and advanced or whatever.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate Blue Prism Cloud as a seven-out-of-ten. I am no expert on using it first-hand, but I think reducing the costs, speeding up the deployment, maybe adding a few other product package offerings in order to make it a little bit easier to adopt — those things might make it more attractive to a broader range of users. Right now you have to buy into it all in one go and that might be daunting to people who hardly know what they are getting into. I think improving support and making it less complex to sort of get up and running could be key areas to focus on.  

We primarily use the solution due to the cost. It lowers the cost of maintenance for the organization.

Last year that Blue Prism introduced a community version, and have really opened up their services. It's been really great for the company.

Over the last six or seven months, there have been a lot of new developments on the product.

It is very secure if you are going for complex implementations. I've not done it, but in terms of our feasibility studies and POCs, I find Blue Prism more secure than others, even Automation Anywhere and UiPath. I've not studied that area, however, Blue Prism seems more secure if you go for very complex areas.

There isn't much of a difference between UiPath and Blue Prism. However, if we want to customize, Blue Prism is not that developer-friendly. 

UiPath is much more flexible and easier for people (who are not in IT) to use. I wouldn't call Blue Prism user-friendly. It's one of its downfalls. They would benefit from having drag and drop functionality, for example. It would make them a strong competitor in the space. There needs to be less reliance on coding for customization, similar to Microsoft's Power Automate.

UiPath also has a stronger community presence. Blue Prism is new to community versions and they're still building their user base. They came pretty late to the game.

The solution needs to make it easier in terms of maintaining the bots.

It's a bit hard to maintain the product. UiPath is much easier in that sense.

OCR tends to work better with UiPath, as opposed to Blue Prism.

During COVID, people have realized that they do want a more secure solution, and one with good AI and OCR capabilities. All of these items are things Blue Prism should continue to develop.

I've been using the solution since I came to this company, which was already using it. I've been using Blue Prism for about a year and a half now. 

Our customers have been generally happy with the stability of Blue Prism.

Mostly, the solution can scale, however, we do find that if customers want to upgrade or get more options, UiPath makes for a more user-friendly option. It's not as complicated to adjust things when you need to.

Technical support is okay. It's good as long as you are signed into a maintenance agreement and you're paying. Our customers have been satisfied with their level of service.

We also use UiPath. We use the two solutions together, although the organization is moving towards UiPath and away form Blue Prism, as UiPath is more user friendly and easier to handle on may levels.

The solution is more or less the same to set up, whether you choose the cloud or on-premises. It's not exactly straightforward. You need some know-how.

The deployment depends upon the scale of the company and the environment. We started with a really small automation of small workflows. RPA generally doesn't take too long. Otherwise, it'll not solve the real purpose. With Blue Prism, if you take a small hypothetical example of trade operations, if they want to automate a work flow, it would take a little over one to two weeks at most. 

If you include the testing, everything more or less can be done within three weeks to one month, if you're not going to worry about too many complex items like OCR, etc. If you include those things, then it will definitely take more time because testing takes a while. When there are users involved, you need to give them a lot of instructions. It could get pretty complex.

You do need to pay extra for customer service.

I previously used Kofax, at my other company. The previous organization never went to the cloud, so it was pretty small scale.

I used both Blue Prism and UiPath in tandem. The organization is moving more towards UiPath, due to some sort of service agreement, so Blue Prism isn't being used as much as it used to be. We don't have a partnership with Blue Prism.

Blue Prism is the pioneer in RPA. They came early to it. Automation is there, and other features came later.  

The only thing is that they were not that flexible. In terms of people getting to know the product well, it takes a lot of time. That's the only thing that Blue Prism failed to do initially, was make it user friendly. As a product, personally, I like Blue Prism. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. Blue Prism just isn't as flexible compared to other solutions, which is why I didn't mark it quite so high. The security is quite good, though. If it relied on less code customization, more drag and drop functionality, and was more user friendly, I'd rate it much higher.

We are a consulting firm and we provide consultancy services to our clients. Part of our service is the recommendation of products and solutions to fit the requirements of our customers.

The most valuable feature is security.

The vendor does not make their pricing clear when you are searching for it, which is something that needs to be improved. When we are researching solutions for our clients, it is important for us to be able to give them at least some generic prices or the cost of licenses. It would help in the decision-making process.

This particular product from Blue Prism is new for us and we have only been working with it for about a month.

Stability is one of the ingrained qualities. Where it is deployed, it has to work smoothly.

It is important that when updates are released, they are easily manageable. That is one of the important things.

This is the type of solution that has to be scalable.

We have not had a need to contact technical support at this point.

The initial setup and deployment are complex. It is being deployed over multiple locations in the public sector. There are a number of branch offices and the different units have to be able to work together. It is also important that we minimize disturbance and interference with their operations during the deployment.

The deployment takes place over months.

We are in the process of evaluating several solutions for our clients. One problem with Blue Prism is that compared to Automation Anywhere, it is lacking in publically available information that describes it. This makes it more difficult for our customers to make an informed decision about implementing it.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

The user-friendliness needs improvement. It's still a bit more IT-minded. I'm personally looking for a more business-minded RPA. It's the two big ways of using RPA in my experience. You can implement that RPA from an IT perspective, and then it's just one of the many tools, and it's not really a revolution, it's just a small state, or you can see it as really a business tool.

Business people use it and automate their own business processes and it's really revolutionary because you don't need any IT knowledge. You just need a good app for processes. Those are the two ways of approaching RPAs, and for my part, I'm interested in the business parts.

We have been using Blue Prism for two years. 

Scalability all depends on what kind of processes. If it's a process that goes to the whole enterprise, adopt the RPA goal, it will be of strong importance. All the IT tools are much more powerful, fast and reliable.

If it's the business side and it's all small tasks and processes that can be automated. That's the interesting part. That's the scalability of RPA on the business side, but it's all small tasks and processes. The scalability will be how many processes you perform, and which structure you put in place so that everything runs smoothly, and you can do proper maintenance and change management.

I haven't had any issues with technical support. From the UiPath side, they're not really responsive when we ask things. It can be months before they answer. With UiPath, you are all on your own. There's no real support. I haven't experienced any support, but that's also because it's a free tool, until a certain level.

I also use the free UiPath platform. It's a very strong go-to-market proposition. You can't have that with Blue Prism. UiPath is also user-friendly. I found UiPath much easier to use and more straightforward than Blue Prism. 

I haven't seen any technical differences between both products. Everything I could do with Blue Prism, I can do with UiPath.

Blue Prism is able to scale up at an enterprise-level. It's what I used when I was working for a big bank in Belgium. UiPath is better for smaller companies and SMBs because of its user-friendliness.

If a product is offered for free, just to step in, instead of directly paying heavy investments, I think a lot of enterprises, especially in the SME, SMB business, will have much more interest in such kind of products.

I would rate Blue Prism a seven out of ten.

They should improve the user-friendliness and they should change their business model. Because companies need to become a partner and have to pay €60,000 upfront, or be a member upfront, to be partners. So, it's a bit of a waste of money. I don't understand their business model.

The tool is there but it should be a self-service tool where people just buy the program and use it. Why make it so complicated? 

It is really a program for business users, so why make it so complicated with implementers and partnerships et cetera? 

We primarily use the solution in the banking and telecom sectors. We implement the solution for our clients.

The reusability of the solution is excellent. It's a superior feature - far superior to any other tool on the market.

The ease of use is excellent. You don't need to be a technical person to use it. You don't need to have a programming background. If you compare it with other tools they would require you to have a basic understanding of at least one programming language. That's not required here. If you are good at algorithms, if you can write flow charts, you can run this tool easily. 

The solution has the best documentation on the market. It makes it super-easy to install and operate.

There are a lot of things that can be improved. I know most of the things are in the pipeline. They've now admitted, for example, a web-based control room would be much more beneficial. They're working on building that.

The solution needs a more out-of-the-box connector with leading applications around the world. There should be more flexibility to do some calculations on the goals from the studio itself. 

I personally would like the solution to be supporting more languages. 

There should be a digital exchange where users can download functions to incorporate into their existing processes.

I've been using the solution for five years.

The solution is very stable. It has fewer bugs than other products.

The solution is very scalable and easily expands as necessary.

How often the solution is used, be it daily or weekly, depends on the company and its pipeline.

We've contacted technical support. 

Blue Prism support is very accessible. The access to the web portal and the support section takes a bit of time. I do not like the web-based support model they have. However, when they include the personal touch, it's just amazing. You can contact them easily anytime and they can reply back to you anytime. I like that.

We also have experience with UiPath. In comparison to UiPath, Blue Prism is more resilient and reusable, however, UiPath is faster when it comes to building a process.

The initial setup was very easy. It's not complex at all. There are instructions that you have to follow to install the software and they are very easy. You just go step by step by step and then you are done. The documentation provided is thorough and excellent.

There are two parts to installation. One part is the tool setup and the second part is actually building the processes. If you talk about the tool setup aspect it can be done in a day. In total, it will take about one or two days to set it up completely.

One person can deploy the solution.

The licensing cost and the cost of ownership is lower than the competition if you are looking to scale to 20+ licenses.

We are a Platinum Blue Prism partner.

The solution offers a trial version now, so it's super easy, now, compared to six months back when there was no free version. It used to be hard to know if the solution was right and companies would have to risk spending money to find out. Now, the solution is similar to UiPath, which has been offering free trials since the beginning. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our primary use cases are fairly generic and relate to any type of use case where there is a lot of repetitive activity, what we call "swivel seat" processing, where you might be looking at one application and then you swivel around and enter information from the first application into the second application. A company doesn't necessarily have the manpower or money to integrate the two applications programming-wise, so they hire people to look up information in one application and enter it into another. It's applicable to insurance companies where claim information is transferred from one application into another, or quotes for customers that come in via one system and then needs to be manually entered into another system. We see a lot of financial application type use cases, whether it's vendor creation, vendor invoicing, bank reconciliations or general ledger end-of-month reconciliations. 

The most valuable feature would be the ability to see the blueprint of the design executed alongside the actual process.

Improvement could be made with training and access to an ecosystem and developer's forum. I would suggest building out the ecosystem for developers to obtain training on the tool without having to make a heavy investment in licenses. For additional features, there's always a huge need to deal with unstructured input with RPA and I'd love to see built-in intelligence automation tools to deal with unstructured inputs.

It's a pretty stable solution. 

I think the scalability capabilities are quite high. 

The technical support is average. 

Initial setup was quite complex, it's not a simple installation and takes a fair amount of high-level infrastructure and architectural knowledge to be able to complete the installation. Deployment took a couple of days. 

Implementation usually requires at least one developer, one BA, an infrastructure engineer, a solution architect, and some assistance during deployment. Then you'd need somebody monitoring the virtual workforce. There are probably seven or eight different roles, some with heavier reliance, throughout the implementation cycle.

Annual licensing costs were somewhere between $5,000 - $10,000 for the development tool. For the control tower, I think fees were about $50,000 annually.

In terms of advice, I'd say that if you have the technical expertise, it's a good tool, however, it's difficult to get training without being involved in a project. So it's kind of hard to break into it, as opposed to some of the competitors' tools where anybody can download the tool and get working and learning without having to actually be on a project. It helps to have access to free training and tools and community additions of the tool which unfortunately doesn't really come from Blue Prism. 

It's a very sound tool with a good reputation for having a good security model, which is important to a lot of companies and it's got more of an object-oriented design flavor to it. Deployment is a mix of private, public and hybrid cloud. There is about a 50/50 split between Azure and AWS.

I would rate the product an eight out of 10. I will likely give it a higher rating when there is easier access for people who want to learn how to use the tool. I think that's what's holding us back.