Blue Prism Reviews

I work for the healthcare industry, and I use it for claims orders. We have claims orders, and we have integrated service manager tickets to bring tickets from different locations or websites and update them to the SharePoint tracker. From there, we send any notifications to the concerned person.

I am currently working with an on-premise solution that is connected to the cloud UI.

We are trying to speed up the process for our client because, being in the healthcare industry, they do have a lot of defects and issues. They are working on the latest products, which have different defects and issues. Being able to speed up this process, provide information to different business people, and make things easy is the value add. These tickets are also related to claims audits, so it would also speed up the claim process.

Blue Prism supports the multi-bot architecture, which is really good. It is also really good at OCR. Blue Prism is integrated with Abbey OCR, and it provides at least 90% right information on period documents. This is something that is really good in Blue Prism.

Blue Prism can deal with a huge amount of data. We can track each and every record, and then we can see the data. If you don't have much coding experience, it makes it easy to build automations and deploy them. It is also easy to learn and easy to work with. It has a lot of features, which makes it reliable for any sort of automation.

The activities that we do are a bit difficult to do in Blue Prism as compared to UiPath. UiPath provides create activities and create packages related to AI analytical skills. This is something that Blue Prism doesn't have.

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

We don't interact with their technical support. I work in an environment where we implement use cases and give them to the clients. We build use cases, do UAT for these use cases, and then deploy them for our clients. The clients already have their production support team for support. If there is any issue in the production, we do support the clients.

All these use cases are something on which we work with a fixed scope. These are not things that can be built on long-term projects. We just focus on trying to get the use cases from them, and we then build, implement, and deploy them.

I also use UiPath. When comparing Blue Prism and UiPath, there are some pros and cons in both tools. UiPath does some of the things really well but lags behind in some aspects and vice versa. Blue Prism is really good at something like multi-bot architecture and tracking of the tickets for the records. UiPath provides create activities and create packages related to AI analytical skills, which is where Blue Prism lags behind.

It was a bit complex because when I started with RPA in 2018, Blue Prism was not a free source tool for us, which is where I found difficulty in learning things and becoming familiar with all the products in Blue Prism. UiPath was a free source tool, and they provided most of the training and made it easy for us. They also provided a free community version for us, which was helpful in learning it.

I don't have an idea about Blue Prism, but I have an idea about UiPath. UiPath is scaling its business in different products. It has got products for intelligent document processing (IDP) to test or log integrations for chatbots. If you want to work on something like a true test automation, you have to buy a test book. In such cases, they have a predefined way of working with, implementing, or running things. This is where I see that UiPath might be a bit costly or expensive when compared to Blue Prism because UiPath charges for each and every product.

I would rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten. It is a good tool. 

We were trying to integrate Blue Prism for an insurance solutions company. Without manual intervention, they wanted some bots to qualify and make some selection procedures easier for certain customers and integrate them with the CTI, which is a computer technology exchange. This means that when somebody calls up, they will go to a bot and CTI. They run a bot, and the bot will guide them about how they can answer some queries for the insurance customer.

It has a centrally managed infrastructure, and it is secure. Our client was using it because of its ease of use. They had already identified some workflows that were trained on Blue Prism RPAs. It was much more convenient for them to preselect Blue Prism as compared to other vendors.

Its pricing is sometimes higher. Its price can be better.

Its presale support should be increased. Currently, its presale support is very less. System integrators generally position Blue Prism in front of customers. Though they have an ecosystem, they don't have people who can train for the partner ecosystem. They have to increase the presales consultants for partners. In addition, their L1 and L2 support can also be improved. 

Its stability is pretty good. That's the reason why they have 98% of renewals.

It depends on how you code this.

People find it difficult to get L1 and L2 support. They're pretty weak at L1 and L2 support, so you have to have your own people for that. They don't have people to answer the queries. They want system integrators to do that for them.

It depends on the use case. Some use cases are pretty simple, and some use cases are pretty complex. It also depends on how the consultant would choose to configure it, but generally, it is pretty okay in terms of configuration. 

Its price is sometimes higher.

I would rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten.

Our use cases are account receivables and account payable. In insurance, our use cases are for vetting beneficiaries, upgrading client portfolios, and updating customer's policies.

The entire tool is valuable because it is an enterprise tool. It is on par with other tools like Automation Anywhere or UiPath with the OCR/ICR facilities, analytics, and the entire package for enterprise-level security. It has the highest level of security as compared to any other tool. 

There are a lot of things coming up, such as Discovery Bot and Process Discovery. A lot of other aspects are also maturing. We have definitely started using it for our clients, and it is maturing as a solution, but it is all about how you integrate the enterprise with all the automation projects, such as your chatbot, Conversational AI, and robotics. How they are integrated and talk to each other creates a very good business case with all three aspects. The next level should be about integrating it with other automation tools as well. It can have integration with other tools or automation projects, such as your chatbot, Conversational AI, and robotics.

I am in robotics for the last seven to eight years, and I have been using Blue Prism for about three to four years.

Stability-wise, it is a good tool. 

It is definitely scalable. The whole market of RPA is definitely scalable, but it again depends on your feasibility and complexity when you study a particular environment and process. It also depends on whether you want to scale in the whole organization or different departments or you want to scale up into different areas. All RPA solutions are on par in terms of scalability. There is no difference between them.

I don't have any direct experience with them. My solution architect used to handle that. I haven't seen many technical issues because if you are going to deploy the solution and if you've studied enough about the organization and the architecture, then something major is not going to come up. Anything minor, such as securities, passwords, or anything else, can be easily managed.

It is completely run by the solution architects, which is the support team from the RPA side. All technical issues definitely involve the IT team, which is your internal architecture support team and the application support team. You need the support team from the architecture and the IT perspective to manage the technical follow-ups.

I have also used UiPath and Automation Anywhere. All these three solutions stand out because they are at the enterprise level. As compared to UiPath and Automation Anywhere, to use Blue Prism, you need developers who have hardcore development experience. It requires quite a bit on the development side. In Blue Prism, you can also code separately and write a script, which adds more value to it.

Blue Prism came too late into the market with its analytics and process discovery features, whereas Automation Anywhere and UiPath were the first ones in the market. Blue Prism is catching up, and it is in the Gartner quadrant, Forrester, etc. It is not lagging far behind.

In Europe, Blue Prism has captured a lot of markets. In the US and Asia, you will see Automation Anywhere and UiPath in the front race. Microsoft, WorkFusion, and Pega are also catching up now.

It is not that complex. It is about how you study an organization and how an organization's architecture runs through. If it is a big organization or an enterprise, then you have to have solution architects from the customer side and also from our side. Solution architects will go and study the customer's architecture. Based on that, we can select which tools are going to be used and how complex it is going to be. It is very much dependent on how the architecture of an organization is because you are going to place the automation tool into that particular organization. Therefore, the initial feasibility and study play a major role in defining the complexity of your design and the entire format or automation.

Initially, the deployment used to take quite long. Now, it is not client-based; it is web-based, and the installation process has been reduced. You just download, and there is no starting a client and all that kind of stuff. It is much easier now than it was before.

In terms of the staff required for the deployment and maintenance of Blue Prism, it depends on what kind of process you're managing. It is not about the tools; it is about the processes. You need to know:

• How complex they are?
• What is the risk factor for these processes?
• How do they impact the entire automation in terms of cost? That is a very important aspect of support because it is in production, and it is going to have a straight impact on the client's revenue.
  

Generally, one person can easily support around five processes if they fall into the simple category. If the processes fall into the complex category, then you need at least two people managing five processes. By complex, I mean when you have applications that are lengthy and the number of steps of the process are more than 500 or so, and you have to monitor the bots very closely. When the bot or the process breaks, the support team needs to take over and act accordingly. 

The roles and responsibilities and the kind of people needed for maintaining the solution vary based on whether you have agile project management or a lot of projects going on. Typically, you will need a solution architect. You would require an analyst only in the first two or three months or whatever is the period for taking care of the process you want to deploy. After that, you don't require the analysts because it only needs to be overseen from the business side, which will begin with SMEs and the production support team.

Any changes or optimization after 90 days, six months, or a year, due to multiple factors such as legislation changes or anything else, have to be done in the process that is robotized. At this stage, the SMEs and the support team play a very vital role. There should definitely be a very good support function because a lot of follow-ups happen in the process and the production in robotics. To manage them, there should be a very good ticketing system in place. The Agile methodology works perfectly fine, and it adds great value to run your process effectively and having an efficient process, but you definitely need the solution architect, application owner, project management team, and the COE team to manage the entire workflow, work items, or backlog items coming into the support function.

It is a bit higher in cost as compared to Automation Anywhere and UiPath. The rate also differs from client to client. Margins are also important when it comes to costing and licensing. There are some additional costs involved besides the standard licensing costs. You have the development team cost, which includes the project manager, development team, analyst, and testers. You also need a team manager. You also have the tools cost, architecture cost, platform cost, and the licensing cost of each bot.

You should suggest a tool only after you study the architecture of an enterprise. Every tool has its own features, upside, and downside. It is not about necessarily going for Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, or UiPath. For implementing a solution, you definitely need to look in the market to find out what suits you. You can then go for it.  

Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, or UiPath are on par. There is not much difference in those tools at an enterprise level. The early development cost and the cost of the platform differ in these three tools. There are some clients who say that "We want only Blue Prism. We don't want to look at anything else." In such a scenario, you can definitely go for Blue Prism because it is on par with other competitors. 

The biggest lesson that we have learned from using Blue Prism is that it is important to choose the right processes and the right complexity of the processes. You can't choose highly complex processes where you have around 800,000 steps or very volatile processes where the team is involved in the application layer or at the process level very frequently. These kinds of things could be avoided.

I would rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten because it is a very old tool. It has been around in the market for quite a while, and they have their own learnings. It is a complete package at an enterprise level, where you can have analytics and attended and unattended automation. You can run your scripts, and at an enterprise level, even security aspects are very strong as compared to what is generally required by a client. There is room for improvement. All the new features that are coming up are not being used by many clients, and a lot of learning has to happen.

The only feature that stands out in Blue Prism, as compared to other tools, is security. This is the only reason for still having Blue Prism in our bucket. It is very secure and reliable, and it has also been in the market for a very long time. We automated a lot of federal and government automation processes very recently with this solution.

There are many reasons why many companies don't go for Blue Prism. It is not open, and the community addition is not available. Blue Prism provides support through partnership. You need to do a partnership with them, which is a major disadvantage. You contact a Blue Prism team, and they will schedule a meeting with you. They will give you a demo and help you set up everything, whereas with UiPath and Automation Anywhere, you can try the community edition, and if it fits your needs, you simply buy a license for that.

The initial setup of Blue Prism is complex. They simply provide a PDF or documentation for you to go through it, whereas, if you go with UiPath or Automation Anywhere, they have several videos and community support to guide you.

The documentation of Blue Prism is static. They don't have any sort of videos or open forums. Other tools have got a lot of community support, but Blue Prism doesn't have that. Its training is also hard to attain, and they also don't provide any certification.

Stability-wise, it is a good solution.

It has good scalability.

I never got a chance to contact their technical support.

Its initial setup is complex. It is not easy. 

They work on a big partnership kind of program with our organization, and they also give us a lot of discounts. Its price is pretty much comparable to the other solutions like UiPath and Automation Anywhere.

We primarily use UiPath, and we also use Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere. UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere are the three leaders in RPA. We kind of make sure that we include all the pros and cons. Blue Prism provides a lot more reliability and security as compared to others. That's the reason it is still in the game.

I would rate Blue Prism a seven out of ten.

We have about 20 use cases in production. Probably half of them are related to finance, monthly closures in our company, invoices, and bank reconciliations. On the IT side, use cases are about audit requirements with user attestations, user reviews, and schedules.

We're currently using the on-premises version, but we're internally moving to Azure cloud rather than moving to Blue Prism cloud.

The ease of development is the most valuable. Standard VBOs are pretty useful there with Excel and different things. Our custom developments for SAP and things like that are pretty easy to set up and quick to get going.

The control room is its worst feature. It can be laggy, and it is not as user-friendly.

We're with staying Blue Prism, but we're moving it from on-premises to Microsoft cloud for cost savings. We looked into Blue Prism cloud. It has a lot of features, but it comes with a lot of costs. Right now, we have six spots, and we're only at 13% utilization. The cost didn't really weigh out for us for moving to Blue Prism cloud, but on-premises, it is working for what we need.

Once it is set up and gets the steamroll, it seems pretty good to stay. It is self-sufficient in many ways with the processes. Change control and password are a bit of a struggle sometimes, but that's general with automation and trying to be fast-moving. Overall, it is pretty stable and self-sustaining.

It is scalable. We are using some central objects.

We probably haven't gone through their standard support channels, but we reach out to our contact there when needed, and he gets us in touch with somebody right away. So, within a week, we're talking to an expert and getting some assistance.

We just started with Blue Prism. We didn't deploy anything else previously.

I'm more on the production side. I didn't really do any of the setup functions.

I don't recall what it was. Initially, we had our licensing through the consultant, and when we stopped using them, we renegotiated licensing. Blue Prism gave us temporary licenses during the negotiation. When all things were said and done, it came out to a decent price even without the vendor. So, our management has been happy with that.

Try to think of standard automation questions related to security, change control, and things like that before you get started because once you get developing, it is hard to go back and implement those things.

I would rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten.

We use it to automate various backend processes in our company, such as PO processes and finance processes. We are using the latest version. It is deployed on the cloud as well as on-premises.

It is good for transactions that are very straightforward. It works very nicely with the structured data. 

It is user-friendly. It is easy to implement and easy to understand.

We didn't find it much useful for unstructured data. It is not easy to do the automation with Blue Prism if you have unstructured data. It should have better automation processes or connectors for unstructured data such as PDFs or pictures.

It has a connector for different applications, such as SAP, but we use a few other applications for which it doesn't have a connector.

It should have a more comprehensive dashboard that we can use to see the processes that are running and control the parameters.

I have been using Blue Prism for almost two years.

There are some issues with its stability. On a scale of five, I would give it a four.

There is a partner who is doing the automation for us, and they contact the technical support. We don't have any visibility on that.

I wasn't there when we did the initial setup at the company, but from what I know, it was not that painful. We were able to set it up quickly.

I would recommend this solution to others. I would rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten. 

We are a relatively new company, which specializes primarily in finance. I believe roughly 5% of our company uses this solution, which is quite low.

Some fields in our company require the use of this solution daily, but other fields use it only monthly. So, we use it on-demand.

When we initially started using Bue Prism, it was actually acquired by the financial department in our company, but soon after, it was put across as a legacy to IT. We then expanded our use cases to other areas of IT throughout our company, but primarily, our major footprint in Baxter has been in finance. Blue Prism dominates in finance at the moment. We also have a few use cases relating to HR.

Blue Prism was our first automation platform. Originally, we used version 6.2, which was very geared toward core development. You need to have some development background to develop the bots, and they were pretty much heavy in terms of the monolithic way of the solution. But from version 6.4 onwards, there became a feature known as an API call. Technically speaking, they have actually increased their capability in API calls, which means that Blue Prism has a lot of flexibility to integrate with other enterprise applications. This API feature, which is available in version 6.4, has made our lives a lot easier compared to version 6.2.

I have been speaking directly with Blue Prism's engagement manager about making the solution more web-based. It's not quite there yet. Currently, the latest version is still under the beta version, so, as a customer, we don't have access to it. They are making it much more web-based, but for now, everything you have to log into requires an enterprise server — It's still more client-based than web-based. They are aware of these issues, but it's not available yet. If they would have done this earlier, it would have helped them occupy the market space better.

In the next release of Blue Prism, they are bringing in some great features, like deployment. I believe it's really going to focus on centralized monitoring. They are making it web-based. I think the scalability and the ease of installation are also going to get an upgrade in the new version. They are working on merging technology, like OCR capabilities — they are bringing everything under one banner. That's definitely going to help. This reboot of Blue Prism is definitely required. It's a little late, but at least they're doing it.

We have been using Blue Prism for roughly three years.

We used to have some issues with the older version of Blue Prism, which required technical support, but this has been addressed in the newer versions. Overall, after the upgrade, I'd say it's very stable.

Is it scalable? Yes and no. From Blue Prism's perspective, it's easy: you spin up a server and start deploying your blocked runners, making sure to keep them running; but from an organization's point of view, there is a lot to do on the infrastructure side — you have to pay special attention to the infrastructure where you can run your bots. So, it's scalable, but there is a cost associated with it. Every organization needs to be very careful in regard to how they're scaling it: are you going to scale it horizontally? Are you going to scale it vertically? Are you going to scale out? These are the questions that must be carefully considered when scaling it up. Otherwise, your cost will be exponentially higher if you don't pay attention to these factors.

As I mentioned earlier, we get our support from a third-party vendor and our partner — they log the tickets with Blue Prism. They engage all of the support that we are entitled to, for example, tier one, two, and three. Also, we have client engagement from Blue Prism who is constantly in touch with us, and they are always open to our feedback surrounding areas of improvement. Overall, I would say our relationship has been good with Blue Prism.

We also have experience with Automation Anywhere. From a marketing perspective, Automation Anywhere has done a lot, but since we have just started using Automation Anywhere, our lower environments are built, but our higher environment is yet to be built. 

So, why did we make the choice to use Automation Anywhere when we have Blue Prism? The simple answer is because the marketing of Automation Anywhere is better. They were offering IQ bots and attended bot runners; Blue Prism wasn't really offering these. These were big areas of consideration between the two, because when we were actually evaluating, Blue Prism didn't have a similar offering for IQ bots or attended bots that Automation Anywhere had.

The initial setup sounded simple when we started, but when we were upgrading to version 6.4, we needed our vendor partner and Blue Prism to come together. Originally, the upgrading process was estimated to take eight weeks, but we almost spent four to five months getting it set up. I think there's still a lot of complexity involved, It's not that simple. They are not very lightweight yet. There is a lot of heavy software involved, which makes the set up a little complex.

The maintenance is primarily done by us. We do have a complete license, including support, and we are in a tough IT agreement with the vendors, so we do have premium support with Blue Prism. If we require assistance, we write a ticket on the vendor platform and they will eventually hook up the Blue Prism guide. In short, we do have content enterprise support with them.

We got a discounted price after negotiating with Blue Prism, as well as Automation Anywhere through our procurement. From a list-price perspective (due to the marketing strategy of Automation Anywhere), Automation Anywhere appears to be much cheaper compared to Blue Prism; however, if you do a detailed analysis in regards to the total pricing, I think both are pretty much at war with each other. Automation Anywhere has broken down the licensing costs into multiple factors, whereas Blue Prism is very straightforward — you purchase a production license, that's it. This looks much more expensive compared to Automation Anywhere prices, but with Automation Anywhere, you have to start from scratch. I'd say they are pretty much head-to-head with each other. 

With Blue Prism, there are no additional fees. The price depends on the number of processes that you run in production and you get a license for that. Also, the lower environments are free of cost. It's pretty straightforward.

I think it's very important for an organization to evaluate what kind of use cases they have: what's their roadmap and how long is the journey that they're looking at. As the market says, most organizations are looking for this digital transformation, and Blue RP is only part of it. For any organization that needs to adapt to a digital transformation, automation RP does play a good role. They need to evaluate what exactly they want to do and then engage with Blue Prism about how to go about doing it. Remember to always bring in the experts in the market at the beginning of your journey, and work together. That helps a lot.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Blue Prism a rating of seven.

Blue Prism takes good security measures and is user friendly.

The domain in regards to cognitive abilities and the use of processing activity needs improvement. They have added this capability, but that's not really big in the public. It is more also available for gold partners. So they should improve the user activity for the public or even the regular customer. It can add a good amount of scalability.

I have been using Blue Prism since 2014.

It is stable.

We have 300 resources that are using Blue Prism at different levels.

It can be maintained by three people and it can be done by our IT team as well. It is not hard to maintain

If you are a customer or a gold partner, you'll be aligned with a customer success manager who can escalate the case quickly and you'll receive a resolution in no time.

After I started using Blue Prism, I also started working with Automation Anywhere and Ui Path.

Blue Prism has its own market share. The large three or four organizations use Blue Prism's security and scalability features, which can be applied at an enterprise level. Some things need to be improved. These are things that are lacking in other tools as well, so it is a fair competition.

The initial setup was straightforward. 

If everything is set up well like the restrictions that are on the PCs are up to mark, it will take 20 to 25 minutes for the complete installation.

My advice is that not all activities can be automated by using Blue Prism. There are certain levels of criteria that need to be calculated before choosing a particular RPA tool. There are things that need to be considered before choosing economically.

In the next release, I would like to see improvement in cognitive abilities, AI, and document processing.

I would rate Blue Prism an eight out of ten.