Blue Prism Reviews

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.

We've primarily used the solution for financial purposes. We have payroll management and a lot of manual processes. With this, we can run automated reports. There are about 15 to 18 interfaces where we get the information. We can consolidate emails, PDFs, and Excel. There's automation to pick everything up and understand all the sources and different kinds of data. We can input raw data, consolidate it and then handle calculations. We can download data and save it in folders.

The solution offers very good accuracy.

The automation on offer is great.

Whenever we used to have issues, the developers used to follow up with the technical team. They're good.

The initial setup is simple and straightforward. 

The solution can scale.

We have found the product to be stable. 

Everything on offer is great. We could hardly find any procedural issues at all. All the processes are really quite good. 

They should come up with these open-ended certifications, like UiPath, where people can just go ahead and get the certification. That way, people can evaluate and pick up certifications easily to make it easy to learn.

Everyone uses Workday and Salesforce and all that stuff. If they had specific plugins to interact with these enterprise tools, that would be very helpful. 

We've used the solution over the last 12 months. 

The solution is stable and reliable. it's problem-free. there aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

It is scalable, it depends on the requirements. At this moment, it is scalable. In terms of enterprise scalability, I'm not sure. However, it does scale from one particular area to many areas, including accounting, treasury, payroll, et cetera.

Technical support is good. they are helpful and responsive.

From my understanding, the team never had issues in terms of reaching out to the Blue Prism support team and getting solutions. They were all fine.

The initial setup was not complex at all. It was very, very easy. Initially, there were very few hiccups. Once we got up and running, it's amazing, it's perfect. There's not a problem at all.

We have our own center of excellence. I hired employees and contractors to help as needed. We were the business architects and we got the requirements and came up with the process design.

We have definitely seen an ROI.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

The initial setup is simple. The deployment is pretty fast.

The stability is good. 

We've found the solution to be scalable. 

Technical support has been responsive when we have needed their assistance.

It's been our concern that we will be able to move more towards sustainability within our own company. We do rely a lot on third-party vendors, and we're hoping we can have more internal talent to actually manage all our projects. That's our number one goal and concern. We are looking into providing training to our business users that is similar to something like PowerBI, where you can basically configure and use less coding. That's what we want to leverage.

The license cost is a bit high. Being a finance guy, that's number one for me. 

Number two is that whatever bots that you put inside, they only can run a specific activity at a specific time. For example, let's say I want to do a bank reconciliation at 10:00 AM, and, at the same time, I want to do some kind of asset capitalization, I can't do both. I need to choose which I can run at 10:00 AM. With one, I may need to re-time it. I'd basically like the bot to work on multiple activities at once. 

The deployment of the bots should be much faster and more intuitive.

The stability has been good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. it performs well.

We are actually expanding into other centers of excellence, or what we call a COE.

Due to the fact that we are a COE, the group finance, the group tech, we have about a thousand plus users at this time, and that will grow.

Technical support is okay. They're quite responsive.

That said, in terms of support, we do have our own technical panel internal itself, and they are actually the first layer, or level one. Subsequently, for level two issues and onwards, the vendor comes to the picture.

This is the first RPA we've worked with. We did not use another solution previously.

The initial setup is quite straightforward, and the deployment is quite fast.

The cost of the solution is high. It should be lowered. They need to make it more affordable. 

We are currently looking into ServiceNow that also has RPA capabilities. 

I'm actually not a technical person, I'm actually more of a finance person. I'm a business user.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

I'd advise potential new users that they need to take an actual use case, an actual business point, and do a pilot on it first to visualize how the solution could potentially work. If they find that it's satisfactory, then perhaps they could work on other rollouts. The key is to develop more on the user experience side of things.

We like the reliability and robustness of Blue Prism. The object design way of implementing things actually brings a lot of reusability for us because you can design your objects once and leverage them in multiple automations. So, we use this extensively.

There are a lot of things that could be improved. The very first thing is their control room, and they are still sticking to the desktop version, which restricts access. You can't really access it from anywhere. The entire industry is moving towards cloud-based solutions. Blue Prism should make it RPA-as-a-Service cloud version. I would definitely like to see how they could really make it more accessible, going beyond desktop applications.

They have recently launched their web version, but that is still a read-only version of the control room. The web version of their control room could be accessible from anywhere so that I don't have to go and log into a specific machine.

Additionally, we tried integrating some of the applications to Blue Prism, and there was no REST API. It is still following the older mechanism using SOAP API, which again restricted quite a number of the integrations that we wanted to do. Exposing their artifacts through web APIs, REST APIs, would be good, which is normal nowadays.

It would be good to build more objects; they have very limited objects available, that is, implicit objects. If I need to connect to ServiceNow, I would need to build all those things. So they could really step up and create customized objects as an implicit feature that they could include.

I've been working with it for two years. We've been using versions 6.4, 6.9, and 6.10 and are currently evaluating 7 as well.

I think Blue Prism has the capability to scale its automations. In terms of handling a load, as well as extending the digital workforce for a single process, it supports multi-bot architecture.

However, as far as robustness in terms of when we scale robots, that is, when we want to extend the robots for a process where multiple bots are working, I think Blue Prism has a certain edge because of the maturity this tool has gained over the years.

I work very closely with the support team and their professional services teams, and I think that Blue Prism provides very good support.

I worked with Automation Anywhere before Blue Prism.

The initial setup is fairly okay in comparison. With Blue Prism, I could configure all of the types of configuration that Blue Prism supports. Whether it is single sign-on, app server-based, database, or single login, it was all quite simple.

Blue Prism has a higher cost with respect to RPA enablement, particularly if you are trying to start with RPA. If you are a middle-scale company, then the cost of robots and their overall infrastructure can become really huge. You would feel like this is really a costly affair to start with RPA.

So, Blue Prism has a higher cost if you are talking about middle-scale companies. However, if you're thinking of having more than 50 bots or 100 bots, perhaps this will have a lower impact on your cost. In general, Blue Prism is costly.

If an organization is more focused on internal automations which belong to their own infrastructure and they want to comply with their security requirements, then I would recommend Blue Prism.

If, however, an organization wants to really move forward towards the cloud and towards intelligent automation and integrations, then I would definitely recommend UiPath.

If you want to build your team, look for a person who has development background because of Blue Prism's implementation. It follows object-oriented concepts, where you create your object, which is like a reusable class or reusable artifact.

Even with regard to processes, you have to really think of developing them or writing your automation in such a way that it complies with what has been designed in the objects. I think a developer mindset is very much required for developing automation through Blue Prism.

Overall, I would rate Blue Prism at six on a scale from one to ten.

I'm working with an investment bank domain with multiple processes, both post-trade and marketing. I am trying to automate all of the operation work into an automation solution.  You can include a reconciliation process and invoice processing.

We use it for operations-related processes and other operational processes for analyzing and researching comments and reconciliation. These are all of the post-market trades we have. 

We find all features valuable.

I like the error handling, it's very good. The reuseable components are very helpful.

I am now analyzing the Decipher components, which is a new feature for me to use and utilize.

The OCR capability, along with the connectivity with some of the legacy tools, needs to be improved.

I found a few connection issues. I'm not sure whether it is a system issue or maybe the Blue Prism connectivity or connection string is not available there, but in some of the applications, we do face challenges to connect with another application. For example, the Chrome extension doesn't work on an unattended bot, which is why we have installed the upgraded version of Blue Prism.

In the next release, I would like to see the OCR capability increased, have a built-in solution to enhance the hyper capability itself. 

It should be compatible with all of the Internet Explorer options, such as Internet Explorer, along with Chrome and any others. 

Also, the cloud-based installation option, for example, there should be an option to set up in-house, along with cloud-based, that can be operated from anywhere.

I have been working with Blue Prism for a year and a half.

We are working with version 6.3, which is the latest upgraded version of Blue Prism.

We do follow good practice to create reusable components and at the same time, while being a part of COE. For a complex project, we target three months to complete any of the complex projects. So even in terms of scalability from the critical.

We have plans to increase our usage.

There have been a few complex issues, where we followed up with the support team. One example of that was the Chrome extension. We are still in the process of implementing the upgraded version to resolve that issue.

We have almost 80 to 90 percent of our issue resolved. But we have a few components that we are still not able to capture on Chrome. We are trying to analyze whether it is an issue with Blue Prism or is it with Chrome to upgrade.

So far, the technical support is good.

There might be issues with our legacy system, we are not sure what the cause is exactly, but the support has been there to help us.

I am working with UiPath and Automation Anywhere.

The initial setup is simple. We did not find any complexity.

We have an infer team to take care of the installation and deployment.

The licensing is approximately $1,100.

I provide a warranty period of one year to any of the profits as an automation solution, it gives me a little less profit, but for a long-term perspective for example two to three years, I would say it is much more affordable as compared to the other.

It is possible but I was not part of this process. We have a technical team who makes the decisions.

There is always room for improvement. I am expecting a lot.

I would rate Blue Prism a seven out of ten.

We have got the Blue Prism license for financial auditing purposes. 

The whole auditing activity is run at the backend without any screen scraping activity and other stuff that generally requires human involvement. It was deployed for this purpose, and it has been working perfectly well so far. There are certain hiccups that come in between, but our team is able to handle them. So, it is mainly being used for high-volume backend batch processing.

It works very well for batch processing at the backend. Scalability-wise, it is very robust. It is also stable.

Its front end is not very good for things like screen scraping. UiPath and AA are very good for that. Blue Prism's license is costlier than UiPath and AA. They should be improving its price.

Its artificial intelligence and cognitive features are not that strong enough. Cognitive automation should be their next area of improvement.

The decoding of the bot is a highly painful activity, and this is an area of improvement for Blue Prism. It is tough to find variables and get the code in place. You have to open the whole bonnet of the car to get things in place. 

Their training should also be improved. UiPath and AA have their learning communities. They provide free of cost basic certification. As a result, you get trained workforce in the market that can directly work on projects, but this is not the case with Blue Prism. It is costly to get the resources trained, which increases the overall cost of getting a resource for Blue Prism.

Their tech support can also be improved. Many times, the issues that should have been addressed by L1 have gone to L2.

I have been using this solution for one and a half years.

It is stable. There are no issues.

Scalability is not at all a problem. It works perfectly well for a batch operation.

In terms of usage, we have seven users who use this solution.

Their tech support is good but can be improved. Every ticket first goes to L1, and then it goes to L2. Many times, the issues that should have been addressed by L1 have gone to L2.

It was a bit complex because we were already using AA, and we were more habitual of that interface. That's why it took us some time with Blue Prism.

It took around two months to set it up and get the first use case in place from the development perspective.

Its license is costlier than UiPath and AA. They should improve its price.

We have a two-year contract with them.

Blue Prism is best for backend processing, but its artificial intelligence and cognitive features are not strong enough. It could be because we have not explored it that much. My experience with this solution is more related to backend processing. If you are looking for backend processing that is quite heavy in nature and you have a team that is trained in Blue Prism, you should go for it without any doubt.

I would rate Blue Prism a seven out of ten.

In our case, all use cases are relevant to the telecom industry. In the telecom industry, we are the service providers for various telecoms such as Vodafone, AT&T, et cetera. We are the service providers. We are doing some processes and we are doing support in the networks as well. In terms of the internet, when it comes to supporting the network, there are some processes that need to be completed manually. Therefore, we will take those processes from all the verticals. For example, we did this project for Telus, and we identified the processes to where we can implement automation. We sought out processes that were good areas for automation adoption.

We identify those areas for clients and map them out.

The solution's most valuable aspect is the fact that it is systematic. It's a very systematic tool. We can do all these things like array and cache. It's very useful.

We were able to create a few new processes which we automated. 

The mapping is very good. On mapping, we can order the tools required for automation.

The analysis itself is very good. We're able to say which areas can be improved and which are the easiest areas to automate. Typically, it's good at revealing which decision-making areas could be automated effectively.

The tool is very technically sound.

The product is very secure. 

The solution is not user-friendly. It has a very high learning curve. People should be able to learn it easily so that they will get interested in using it. 

While the solution is more secure, it's very hard to find people trained on that. I need different people, not only those who are trained on RPA tools. I cannot get people in Blue Prism. Without the resources, people just move to Automation Anywhere or UiPath which are more user-friendly. In comparison, UiPath is much easier to use and you can find people who are well-versed in it.

The product needs to put out more videos, similar to Automation Anywhere, which does that a lot. You can find a lot of videos online in relation to Automation Anywhere and UiPath, however, this is not the case with Blue Prism. There's just less information available. 

Blue Prism needs to provide better training. They need to start something similar to Automation Anywhere University or UiPath Academy. If they had some courses at different levels (basic, advanced, and master), there would be more educated personnel available.

The solution needs to provide a trial license - whether it is on cloud or on-premises. They need to provide a standard environment to work with. We need to have practice in installing the data center and connecting it to the database. 

We need to understand how we can migrate from one lesser version to the higher version and what is the load balance and how we can manage that. We need to understand better how our core system is managing that. Proper training would help with understanding.

I've been using the solution for about two years at this point.

The solution is quite stable. We haven't had any issues with it. It isn't buggy or glitchy. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

I'm strongly involved with Automation Anywhere. I've been working with Automation Anywhere since 2019.

While Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere are very similar to each other in terms of capabilities, Automation Anywhere is much easier to use. 

Even in Blue Prism or UiPath or Automation Anywhere, the attributes are very similar to each other. However, Blue Prism is got a larger barrier to entry due to its high learning curve and lack of strong training.

We prefer the fact that, for example, on Automation Anywhere, we can use trial versions and we can use that time to train employees on how to use it. With Blue Prison, there doesn't seem to be a trial option.

We are not very familiar with the Blue Prism installation or if it's easy or not. Those areas are a bit of a gray area for me as I'm not doing many installations. 

The setup and installation we didn't do ourselves. We did these projects in the client end roadmap. The client has the Blue Prism tool. They set up everything themselves. Our job is to go there and to be able to provide the roadmap.

Likely, the installation takes about two or three hours, I would estimate.

The product has its own database, such as an SQL server. We often install supporting tools, however. There are some coming out now, such as Python, Java, and VBScript editors. Certain items, such as Java Runtime Focus should be installed. There are different installations depending on the client. If it is not on the cloud, the installations definitely take some time. It might take two hours or more.

Our clients handle the initial setup themselves.

Unlike other options, you need to buy a license. You cannot do a trial. At least, that was always the case a few years ago. With UiPath or Automation Anywhere, there are trial versions. It's a drawback for clients if it is still true that no trial option is on the table.

I'm no longer using Blue Prism. I deal more with UiPath now. However, I am certified in Blue Prism. I tend to take care of the delivery part. We talk with the clients and understanding the clients' requirements, understand the project, then divide the project into activities and map them out. I will help to architect it. If there is any trouble in capturing those areas then I will analyze this in Blue Prism or Automation Anywhere. 

So far, in those Blue Prism projects, it's very straightforward with rule-based - straightforward in the process automation. We will concentrate on low-hanging areas first and we will identify only those areas that we can automate easily. I'm sorry. In terms of automating end-to-end process, we will concentrate only on to 60% to 70% for our automation.



Premarajan:
So come back to the courses, in that way, we are not much familiar with the Blue Prism installation, how this installation takes time, it's easy or not. Those areas are a little gray area for me because I'm not doing much in the installation. But if you ask us if in the installation of Automation Anywhere, definitely, I can say I'll answer that. I can see that screen by screen. When we install it, the watch screen will come first like that. I can say that because I personally did installation Automation Anywhere installation.

Premarajan:
I set up a lab system in Tata so that our employees can train. I did a lot of things. Like that, I installed a UiPath as well in my system. I installed even [inaudible 00:26:08] also they provided, Microsoft has. They also provided a trial license to me when I asked. They also provided.

Premarajan:
But Blue Prism, those days, didn't provide me the trial version and they didn't help me, how to install it. No idea. That is a shortfall I can say about Blue Prism. [crosstalk 00:26:29]-

Emma:
So you were-
Premarajan:
It's very limited when we needed the license or those who purchased the Blue Prism people can work on Blue Prism tool. Others had no chance to learn. That I can say one way it's good. In the other way, people were not aware of the tool. That is, I can say it's good except for one drawback.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

I use the tool for automation in various sectors like banking, telecommunication, and trading. 

We've automated web applications in the banking domain using Blue Prism. This involved automating long and complex banking processes. Every action we automate with the tool generates an audit log, which is safe within the LogRhythm environment. I do find the Decipher feature very useful when it comes to document automation. 

I would like to see a cloud version of Blue Prism available. Both cloud and on-premise options would be beneficial, as they would reduce maintenance costs. I'm using the Blue Prism desktop, which is still in the initial stages. I want enhancements in the Object Explorer and Application Model features to ensure stability in upcoming versions. I have suggested a few ideas, such as incorporating triggering mechanisms, but I haven't seen them implemented yet.

I have been using the product for the past six years. 

Earlier versions of Blue Prism, like version six, used to have a lot of issues with browser automation. Now, it has been fixed in version seven and onwards. Now, it looks good. 

Regarding scalability, we design processes very modularly with separate object and process layers for each application. This modular approach makes it highly scalable. 

The tool's installation is easier than that of other RPA tools. When deploying a process to production, we ensure that we work in a separate, unmonitored environment with restricted access. We install a centralized application server on a separate machine to avoid database load issues. Additionally, access restrictions are enforced so that only authorized personnel with restricted access can deploy packages in the production environment.

The deployment time for one process varies depending on its complexity. Complex processes could take one to two months or even longer. Testing and deployment typically take about two to three weeks for a single person working on a process from design to development.

A dedicated support team facilitates maintenance, especially when best practices are followed and a robust solution design is in place. However, the ease of maintenance also depends on the applications involved in the process.

The tool offers the best security compared to other automation tools. However, the lack of a cloud version can lead to higher maintenance costs when using Blue Prism.

Given the current market situation, I would recommend Blue Prism to other users, especially if a cloud version becomes available. Everyone has been running back behind the Gen AI and AI center. integrating it would be good. 

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.