Blue Prism Reviews

We have various use cases for the solution and deploy it on AWS Cloud.

When we need specific reports, the default reports posted in the interactive clients are not helpful but can be useful. However, this means we can utilize only the minimum level, but we want to use more input data from the Blue Prism tool, which means we need to fetch more of the data from the table side, and for this, we need to integrate many tables for this integrating of data. So it becomes difficult to get a BP database onwards.

We are additionally migrating the Blue Prism database to different clouds. Blue Prism currently supports SQL Servers, and structured data, it is stored as an income performer. When we migrate to a process from a different environment, we either need to go with the complete restoration of the GP or we need to lose the data. This is because if you have ten processes, five processes may complete the testing. Other processes may still depend on the current environment when we move to live production. So since it can take weeks or months, we may lose the data while waiting, and we cannot integrate both from different clouds. 

Hence, the solution can be improved by enhancing the process's data storage and by including a common check. Sometimes, if the developer fails to identify a timetable directly, it will impact other processes. Currently, all processes are stored on the various tables in the Blue Prism, and the pre-check can ensure the developer is notified.

The solution can be improved by switching off data DB and including a report section with a morphing feature, like more reporting waste.

We have been using the solution for a year and a half, and we are recently migrated to version 6.10.2.

The solution is stable. I rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

I rate scalability an eight out of ten, but when we interact with different environments, it is difficult to communicate, and DB synchronization is problematic. We currently have approximately 50 people utilizing the solution in our organization.

Technical support is often delayed as it takes four to five days to resolve issues since some people work across different time zones under constraints. Additionally, they are not traceable when we need to forward the case to a high level, and it takes another week to escalate to a higher level, which is unacceptable.

Deployment depends on the process' complexity level. It depends on if you want a straightforward process or gradual deployment over two weeks. For example, one week for the UIT testing and another week for SIT testing, four days for UIT testing and working at the QI level, and the following week for production, and in one month, we can take up hyper care. This is the best practice.

We did light scale mode for the deployment process, so when one process came into the picture, we ensured that the production environment would be ready for that process. So far from size, without any delays in the project deadlines and once the process is developed and code reviews are completed, we take internal approval to move the code to the following environments. So we can use duplicate and use different tools for pushing this code in the CIPD environment level or move this cycle management, like import and export processes.

We implemented it in-house.

The license is expensive, however, I cannot share the exact cost.

I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We are using Blue Prism mainly for the finance and IT automation processes.

The most valuable feature of Blue Prism is the control and development of the processes from one location.

The solution can improve by having a free license for evaluation purposes.

I have been using Blue Prism for approximately one year.

Blue Prism is a stable solution.

The scalability of the solution is good.

The solution can be suitable for all sized businesses, but it depends on the use case.

The support from Blue Prism is very good.

I have used UiPath and Robocorp. Blue Prism is more stable and provides good support, and a monitoring and development perspective.

Robocorp provides Python as a programming license and the cost is very low. All the features are available, but coding knowledge is required.

The initial setup of Blue Prism is of a moderate difficulty level.

I do the implementation of the solution with my clients.

The price of Blue Prism is high compared to others solutions. It would be helpful if they could provide a trial version for new users to try. Other vendors provide a community or trial version. There are not any hidden costs.

There are three different packages Blue Prism provides.

We are completely satisfied with the solution.

From a monitoring perspective, we have various stages and phases in RPA that enable us to perform monitoring, scheduling, and management simultaneously, which is a significant advantage. As a result, I can recommend to my colleagues that they utilize this capability and obtain certification.

I rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten.

We have a partnership with Blue Prism and I'm a software engineer. 

This is a good solution. I like working with multi-bot architecture, it's very flexible. 

In the object section, there are certain things such as the navigation in the UI that could be improved. It would be helpful for developers. I'd like to see more technical support for the team and the provision of some community versions for people to learn the product. I believe it would also benefit Blue Prism to better understand the requirements of those using the product.

I've been using this solution for almost four years. 

The solution is generally stable although we have had some inconsistencies. 

The solution is definitely scalable. 

The value of this product could be greatly improved if we could get satisfactory answers from the technical support. The last time I opted for a learning license from one of my colleagues, I never received a response from the company.

The initial setup wasn't too complex and didn't take a long time. 

The use cases range from document ingestion, process enablement, and data management, including financial records cleanup.

So it's essentially the arms and legs for digital processes. So the clients have processes that have tech enablement, but there's stuff that needs to orchestrate the different tools and bring them all together into an end-to-end automated process.

There is room for improvement in the pricing. 

I have been working with this solution since 2017. So, we have a mix in our portfolio. So, some of them still have the older versions, but some of the newer clients are on the latest versions.

I would rate the stability a seven out of ten. Because a lot of times, there are specific versions of things that you have to use. So browsers, plugins, all that good stuff. 

For example, some of our clients had their clients on auto-update. And what happened was it was updated during the auto-update, and then the bots would fail because there were plugins or features that were specific to versions of Chrome that we included in the solution. But on the upgrade, they would then fail. On some of the older versions, some of the challenges were around the actual configuring of the virtual machines and their allocation of memory.

In essence, you had the physical memory on the machines, but virtual machines weren't configured properly, so they would run out of memory.

The scalability of the solution is a two-factor thing. 

The ability to scale up and scale out of the Blue Prism portfolio, meaning the agent server monitors all that good stuff, is pretty straightforward. I would rate the scalability for on-prem a seven out of ten and about eight out of ten for the cloud. 

But the second factor is a lot of the scalability has to do with the latency of what you're connecting to. And so if you're connecting to something that isn't particularly scalable, it doesn't matter how many robots you scale out. You're constrained by the latency and the size of the application or solution or service that the robot is using. 

Therefore, scaling is normally an organizational issue such as procurement.

We have around nine customers using this solution. 

The customer service and support depend on your customer level. So, if you're a platinum implementation partner or a platinum client, you obviously get better support than if you're just using the standard features. But we've been involved with Blue Prism from the beginning, so we have a bit of a privilege for this.

The difference is UiPath, you are part of the community, and getting support from within the user community is actually quite effective. But it's just because of a significantly larger install base.

Positive

The biggest challenge is at the infrastructure layer, especially if you're doing on-prem. Getting all the network and firewalls and all of that sorted out because many clients want you to use the robot on the production systems, but the production systems are in tightly controlled network environments. It normally means opening a firewall, subnetting, and all that kind of stuff. But getting the software up and running and getting the agents up and running, all that type of stuff, that's pretty straightforward. 

On the cloud side of things, it's providing access from the cloud platform to on-prem data. So it's more client-specific security and networking issues that are the challenge versus installing the software if you do on-prem or configuring it if you do it in the cloud.

We provide the maintenance for the solution for some of our customers. We are the solution provider. That's a full-stack contract, meaning that we run it, manage it, maintain it. 

And then, for some of our customers, we are an enablement partner that's really about providing design and build and training. And for some of them, we provide secondary or second-level support.

I've considered other options because of how Blue Prism's product and its acquisition by ACM have shaped its direction. Blue Prism seems to be moving into a more confined space and may not be as open as UiPath. 

In UiPath, the ecosystem just feels a lot broader, and there's a lot more innovation and commercial models. 

With Blue Prism, everyone wants to charge for everything, whereas in UiPath, you know, the community guard. There's a lot of really good stuff and useful stuff coming out of the community guard that are solving problems because they need to be solved, not necessarily because there's a business model or a commercial model sitting behind it. 

Blue Prism is definitely more about the seats and tires, whereas UiPath is for the sneakers and jeans guys.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. The only reason that I'd rate it as a seven is because of the commercial model. Blue Prism has some great features from a technology point of view, but they're more on the pricier side compared to UiPath. The difference in technology and the solution doesn't warrant the difference in pricing.

The solution has cross-application features where it can be set up with SAP, email, or SharePoint.

The solution could be more user-friendly. I would like the see the inclusion of a recording feature as in Microsoft, SAP, and other legacy systems. Users can play the recording and use it for future use cases. The recording can help with the automation and configuration. I would rate the tool’s interface a seven out of ten. It needs to improve.

We have been using the solution for around two to three years.

The product is quite stable.

The solution is scalable. We have around 100 users for it in our company and we intend to scale up the numbers.

We have never contacted the tech support team since we have our own internal technical team.

The solution is enterprise software so we will try to maximize our usage during the available slots. We will get ROI with the high price since there will be some value added with automation. I think that after doing a cost-benefit analysis, we are on the positive side.

I would rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

I'm one of the senior consultants in the company I work for, we are a service provider and we provide IT services to our customers. One of these services we provide is automation, using tools, such as Blue Prism.

We are upgrading to version 7.01 of Blue Prism in a few months.

We are using Blue Prism recently for statistics processes, which is the automation of SAP transactions for our logistics departments. Additionally, it is being used for SAP transactions within our IT finance service department. We do many things with it, such as partial reset and ticket re-keying. We have incident tickets logs from the IT department, which can be from emails, and we do re-keying exercises.

Blue Prism can improve a lot. The interaction with Google Chrome can be massively improved. I know in the next version there are slight improvements. We don't know how much, but we are comparing them. At this moment, Google Chrome is a massive issue within the toolset, due to the way Google Chrome receives updates regularly but Blue Prism is unable to cope. The spy method of Google Chrome is not as user-friendly as Internet Explorer is. However, Internet Explorer is being discontinued from their support, therefore it's not the best browser to be using. This has caused us major issues in the last six months. 

Our customers go through platforms, such as CyberArk and Citrix. The way that Blue Prism interacts with these applications could improve. There are a few other issues, such as memory, but these are the key problems that have offered issues in the past six months or so.

I have used Blue Prism within the past 12 months.

We have had a mixed experience of the stability of the solution. The problem that we have faced might be our infrastructure. The application itself can't be completely blamed. I think some of the issues are down to our VM infrastructure, the application service that we use, and the host that the servers are hosted on. In terms of the application, we have not seen many issues.

The technical support is very good.

I have used UiPath previously.

You don't need to be a technical developer to develop in Blue Prism, you follow the natural way you have developed. Whilst with UiPath, you need some development background to be able to develop in it.

We have been using Blue Prism for approximately eight years and when we first set it up it was a bit complex, but we always had support from the license of Blue Prism and other providers that we have within our organization. The whole process was fairly easy because of the support we had.

My advice to others would be to make sure they fully understand the use cases. If they are implementing it for customers, you're going to come across connectivity issues and make sure that you fully understand that it's not going to work right away. You're going to have to have a few releases into production, be mindful of Google Chrome and the issues that you may come across.

I rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten.

As for primary use cases, we have done purchase order processing for close to five countries, and we also do non-compliance in terms of the field assets deployed by a company to hospitals. That is, we use it as an asset tracking solution.

From technical perspective, Blue Prism is pretty good.

Overall, it's a stable and scalable solution. Installation is straightforward as well. 

Blue Prism could be compatible with Oracle's suite of ERPs. We have seen some issues related to this.

They could do much better with their intelligent document processing solution. They're pretty behind and don't have attended bots.

I would also prefer a better UI in the administration screens The user interface is pretty bad from an administration perspective.

I would like to see a lot of features like process mining.

I would also like to see a lot of different innovative solutions like human-bot interaction, handover managerial systems, and collaboration systems for process capturing, storing, and evaluating and getting discussions done within businesses.

We have been providing Blue Prism to customers for more than three years now.

From a platform perspective, we see compatibility issues with Oracle's JD Edwards software sometimes, but overall, to my knowledge, the solution is stable.

It's a scalable solution, and scalability is not a problem.

With regard to the initial setup, it's a pretty straightforward from Blue Prism's perspective. It's not as complicated as the installation of a WorkFusion solution, for example.

The actual installation, that is, setting up of the environment, can be done in less than a week from scratch.

We have four or five customers using this solution, and I have close to 50 or so people working across these customers. We have a combination of staff, such as architects, developers, managers, infrastructure engineers, etc.

Our customers pay for an annual license.

The product is good even though there are a lot of shortcomings. Also, the access to the company itself is very difficult. Obtaining a partnership is difficult, and getting support is difficult as well. So, I'd rate them at seven on a scale from one to ten.

In one of the use cases, we import Excel tables. We extract the Excel data from the output of a proprietary application. This application produces Excel tables as an output, and we then create PDFs for certificates for the people who are flying. They have to do training, flying hours, and things like this. In this project, we closed the gap between the proprietary application, provided by a different team, and the HR application.

It is deployed on-premises. Due to security issues, we are not allowed to use cloud services. We only have centralized application servers that are operated by the central operations team. It is not on users' desktops, which is possible, but it is not our focus.

RPA processes are helpful when we need interaction with different applications and close the technical gaps between them. In one of the use cases that we evaluated, there was a single Excel template from a vendor. The Excel file has 7,000 objects, and it included information about the part numbers, prices, and some of the details about each object of a complex maschine. This file had to be input to SAP, so a human had to enter these 7,000 objects one by one, which is a pretty mechanical and uninteresting task. The RPA bot was easily able to import this file. Without RPA, this import had to be done by a person who had to do the same task 7,000 times just to import one contract. This is where RPA processes and RPA tools are very helpful. RPA tools have the possibility to close media gaps. RPA tools are like macros on steroids. They now have got the maturity level for big data centers.

We see some security issues in Blue Prism. The German vendor Servicetrace is better at this point. This is also reflected in the Gartner report where Servicetrace is mentioned as the tool of choice in high-security environments. So, security, particularly in terms of administration, needs to be improved. We must have the possibility to prevent the administration from taking a look at the ongoing process. When we have restricted data flow, the operations team should not be able to take a look at the data that is processed.

I have been using this solution for about three years.

It has been pretty stable. Most errors are human errors in the input files. When we have issues, they are usually because of the content of the input file. There are no technical issues with the product.

It is not currently an issue on our side because the company has pretty strong and fast machines. Because these machines do only RPA and nothing else, they can handle the work of a lot of employees and do a great job with that.

I'm not sure if our contractor has many tasks to handle with the vendor itself. During the software evaluation, we had discussions with the vendor about product details, but the support is taken care of by the contractors, and I'm not sure how often it is required.

The installation itself was pretty straightforward. The installation of the software is pretty easy, but it can get tricky when you go into bot development and have to close the gaps between different applications. The most complex use case took us about two and a half years.

We have a project team of five to six people for implementation. Operations are handled by three people. The project team is extended by external persons or contractors. The basic operations are done internally.

We definitely save money by using RPA.

Due to our financial structure, we need fixed costs. So, a license based on the usage would not be feasible. If we have a license model that is based on tasks per year or something else, it could create a very dynamic range of costs. Due to our public financial input, we have to know what it will cost. So, we have licenses per server. This helps us in planning, and we know exactly when we need additional servers. We can then request additional money for them.

It is a pretty good solution. I would rate it an eight out of 10.