UiPath Platform Reviews

My main use case for UiPath Platform is orchestrating the bots that we are automating and automating various functions in UiPath, meaning we are automating various solutions that customers are using with UiPath.

I can provide a specific example of a process we have automated with UiPath: we have automated monitoring of new invoices based on schedule-based triggers. Using interaction, we use an OCR-based system for accounts payable which interacts internally, reconciling purchase orders with invoices and disbursing payment based on the actions. Additionally, we are using UiPath Platform for updates where we hit CRMs such as Salesforce, Healthx, and an internal tool called FIAM.

We also have automated an address process for a company where UiPath Platform's OCR system reads and sends to UiPath Platform to update the CRM.

Apart from this, we have also automated accounts payable processes for a large institution, and we have also automated processes for the same institution.

The top-notch feature, which is the strength of UiPath Platform, is Orchestration, which provides fabulous coordination and end-to-end flow. Additionally, the integration, API integrations, and exception handling are exceptional.

UiPath Platform Orchestrator stands out for me because it is a central controller for all automations, managing, filtering, scheduling, and governing the flow as the Robot executes it. What stands out is the central management; I can manage all the Robot processes, queues, assets, and logs from one page. Moreover, scheduling and queue management are top-notch, and my scalability is huge—I can have multiple bots processing close to 20,000 invoices at a given time, with UiPath Platform Orchestrator distributing this workload automatically and evenly.

UiPath Platform has positively impacted my organization by reducing manual effort, enabling faster invoicing, improving accuracy, enhancing exception handling, increasing compliance, and providing scalability.

UiPath Platform is at its best currently, though there is always room for use improvement.

The integration part could be enhanced. In integration, it would be beneficial to use a central AI agent for smarter document understanding, improve the handling of unstructured documents, and provide better exception handling, including better categorization of business and system exceptions and implementing retries for transient failures.

I have been using UiPath Platform for close to two years now.

I consider UiPath Platform's AI accuracy and reliability of output to be 100%.

I feel that the accuracy and reliability of UiPath Platform's AI output have improved significantly.

My review rating for UiPath Platform is 9 out of 10.

On-premises

From time to time, I have been using UiPath Platform only for merging, filtering, and getting what I want from data tables, basically every now and then, only when I need to do small tasks, such as filter tables or do a quick win.

I used to be basically an integrator where I worked for a consultancy company where some other company would hire us to develop UiPath Platform products into their environments. When I'm using UiPath Platform, it's for my personal use, just to save me some time doing what I told you about tables and just easing my job.

From UiPath Platform, the positive side is it was easy to integrate. Now, they have been changing lots of things that I don't really prefer, and basically, it was easy. The Orchestrator and having the logs whenever an automation is running allows you to see the logs right away, even though it can be on debug or even in production.

The Orchestrator is one of the main things that UiPath Platform has. A disadvantage against Power Automate is that with Power Automate, you have the cloud flows that you can trigger based on a cloud flow connected to whatever you want, which is pretty nice. You can also run most of your automations depending on if you are using UI or not; if you are not, you can do everything cloud-based instead of actually needing a machine to do that, whereas with UiPath Platform, you always needed a machine before.

The installation procedure for UiPath Platform was straightforward.

I think they are turning too much into a business standpoint with UiPath Platform, meaning that the new stuff that they have been developing and operating has the most focus on business, so business can actually develop it within UiPath Platform, which they kind of never will. They have been disregarding the developer side of things by not keeping it simple and easy to use. I think they have been developing too much into the idea that anyone can build in UiPath Platform, but it's making things harder for people who actually understand UiPath Platform and how it should run. It's not about being too simplistic; it's about making things that for us don't make sense. Some changes even in the Excel activities have been making things harder and pointless in some regard.

I think UiPath Platform should focus more on developers and not on business because, in reality, business will never be doing automations. If they do, they will always need a developer to fix it because they messed up somewhere, and for the price, it went up too high.

I did use UiPath Platform. I haven't been using it lately. The last time I used UiPath Platform was a few months ago, but it's only to do small tasks, and I don't even use it in production that much because it's too expensive right now.

If I count every day use of UiPath Platform, I worked for two and a half years using it every day.

I have only used UiPath Platform. Automation Anywhere, I never used it, but I wanted to compare between automation tools. I have been mostly using Power Automate.

The installation procedure for UiPath Platform was straightforward.

Regarding ROI with UiPath Platform, it depends on how companies are actually using the automation and what use cases they have. But for it to be right now viable in terms of cost and everything, they must be using UiPath Platform almost all the time; otherwise, it won't be that good because it's too expensive. The good part is that you reduce human error, you don't give access to passwords, and you keep them safe in that regard, but then, I don't have a definitive answer because I haven't been touching UiPath Platform for too long and not dealing with customers with UiPath Platform for a long time.

Nowadays regarding UiPath Platform, there are both advantages and disadvantages because nowadays you can just go into an AI tool such as GPT, Claude, or whatever and ask it to do whatever you need, and it will be faster. UiPath Platform has the upside of the automation if you actually develop that into a customer, which will be time-saving for them. I used to have runtime for UiPath Platform.

My main use cases for UiPath Platform include bot automation, Agentic agents, and AI, with specific use cases that are healthcare-centric, while also leveraging technologies that the platform brings, such as RPA bots and agent orchestration.

Implementing these features from UiPath Platform has benefited my organization as we reduced DSO and improved clinical effectiveness and timeliness, leading to improved employee efficiency and accuracy.

The feature of UiPath Platform that I appreciate the most is the orchestration. 

UiPath Platform can be improved by being able to leverage what we have, and from an AI capability perspective, having a chat or voice capability on the platform would be beneficial. With Maestro and the concept of being able to orchestrate across other solutions is phenomenal and great, but I would also appreciate being able to just stick with one solution.

I have been using UiPath Platform for six years.

I have not experienced any downtime or performance issues.

UiPath Platform scales with the growing needs of our organization extremely efficiently.

I evaluate my customer service and technical support as top-notch. On a scale of one to ten, I rate my customer service/technical support as a ten. 

They have been highly responsive. In every cab meeting or conversation with senior leadership at UiPath, they have made things happen, and my account executive and solutions executive have also made things happen. I cannot say enough about how great the team that supports us is.

Positive

Before selecting UiPath Platform, we looked at some other vendors, and I have a background beyond the current relationship, as I have used UiPath Platform in other companies, which helped accelerate our decision-making.

My experience with deploying UiPath Platform is very positive.

We are seeing a return on investment with UiPath Platform.

My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of UiPath Platform is positive.

Prior to adopting UiPath Platform, we were considering other solutions, including purpose-built solutions from companies such as Tenor and also Blue Prism and OpenAI's ChatGPT.

My advice to another organization that's considering UiPath Platform is to understand your journey and what you're trying to accomplish. UiPath Platform can do it, and I don't have any concerns or questions around the technology or the capability or the organization to support. Another customer would need to be prepared and understand what they are doing and why. 

I rate UiPath Platform ten out of ten.

On-premises

Microsoft Azure

My main use case for UiPath Platform is for automation.

A specific example of the type of automation I'm doing with UiPath Platform is for report generation, and it is also used mainly for RPA, Robotic Process Automation, which automates repetitive rule-based tasks that humans normally perform on computers.

As a DevOps engineer, my use case for UiPath Platform is that it can trigger a CI/CD pipeline, monitor the deployment, check Kubernetes pod status, verify application health, collect logs and results, send a status failure report to the team, and perform other related functions.

UiPath Platform positively impacts our organization by helping to automate repetitive DevOps operational tasks through orchestrating deployments, validations, reporting, and ticket updates across different tools.

This has saved the team's time, significantly reduced the number of errors by analyzing the logs, and reduced the manual effort in deployments.

In my opinion, the best features UiPath Platform offers are mainly automation, AI plus automation, orchestration, integration, document understanding, monitoring, and analytics.

I find myself using the automation feature the most, and it has made the biggest difference in my day-to-day work.

I appreciate the low-code development feature, which is used to build automations quickly using visual workflows while still supporting custom code integrations.

Regarding UiPath Platform's AI capabilities, I find it to be governed and secure because we use AI with automation, and UiPath always assures that it governs and secures data by managing users, permissions, robots, credentials, and automation policies centrally.

Workflows that cross multiple systems normally require human interactions, and the value of UiPath Platform extends beyond automating clicks. The broader platform combines RPA, APIs, integration, and orchestration, making it very useful and helpful to our organization.

While UiPath Platform already has many features such as orchestration to centrally schedule, trigger, monitor, and manage automation bots and workflows, it would be beneficial if it could provide full end-to-end automation, making it possible to automate everything in one platform in a single effort.

The user interface is quite good and very easy to navigate through the different menus and navigation bars as of now, so I have no suggestions in that regard.

I gave it a nine because I would prefer to have an end-to-end automation platform, which is not yet currently supported. There are some things we have to migrate to other tools, and some UI aspects could be improved.

I have been working in my current field for three years.

My advice for others looking into using UiPath Platform is the same as my use case. Others can use it for automation as it is well-governed and supports low-code development. I would rate this product a nine out of ten.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

In Brazil, we have some standard processes. Some companies operate in similar ways. I cannot give all the details, but there is a process for financial invoices. We normally use UiPath to automate this process.

Using UiPath is very easy. Even for new users or developers who are just starting, it is easy to use. You just need to drag and drop the activity, so it is very easy to start using. We have UiPath Academy, which is very helpful when you need to learn something. When anyone is starting to use UiPath here in my company, we recommend starting with UiPath Academy. It helps a lot in every project that we have here. 

Also, there is the community, which is very helpful. We have lots of users, and for every question that we have, we can just Google it, and then we can find the answers in the community. Almost all the questions that we have can be found in the community, which is very helpful. We also have different integrations with different services, and this is very helpful as well.

I do not have any complaints about the tools themselves. They work very well. The only problem is the cost. It was more accessible initially, and we could have more resources with the same license. Now, the license is different, and we need a license for each tool that we have, so it is not very accessible to have all of the tools for installation.

I have used it for about six years.

The stability is very good. In the beginning, we depended on our infrastructure. However, now that we have services on the cloud, it is very stable.

Scalability depends on how you are automating and using resources like queue triggers. If you use queues, it is easy to scale. You just need to change the number of robots for the process, and then it works very fast.

Every time we need support, most questions can be answered by searching on the Internet or finding solutions in the community. When we require technical support, we contact UiPath. For instance, we had trouble with the database while using UiPath on-premise and connected to support. They were very helpful, addressing the issue in three hours. Therefore, I would rate customer service a ten. It's a very easy tool to use, so normally, we do not encounter many troubles. But when we do, the answers are either in the community, or we contact support.

Positive

It depends on the customer and project. Sometimes, I am involved in the deployment process. I might be a developer, and sometimes I need to deploy in a development tenant. Another team analyzes and deploys it to production, or we deploy it to a tenant for deployment. A global team, for example, analyzes, publishes to production, and ensures they have all the documents before publishing to production. We use the process to run through.

In the beginning, the return on investment is quick. As automation scales, requiring more licenses, it becomes more expensive. At first, processes save money, but eventually, automation without cost savings occurs due to licensing costs.

Besides using UiPath Academy, having expertise in the automation process is crucial because it is not just about setting up automation. Governance becomes critical as automation scales. Planning is essential before starting the process to avoid chaos as automated processes increase. For example, restricting developer access to production is crucial. Overall, I would rate UiPath an eight out of ten because, while it is the best tool regarding resources and integration, pricing is problematic.

Public Cloud

Other

I started with UiPath Platform for evaluation purposes and found it to be effective. We are now using it for processes and Intelligent Document Processing (IDP). These are the two main use cases that I have implemented using UiPath Platform. There are several different scenarios we can implement, and I have used it for both RPA and IDP.

I have used both attended and unattended automation options. The majority of my processes are unattended, but I have developed attended processes as well.

UiPath Platform is a low code solution. It offers a wide variety of activities and integrations with multiple applications, including CRM tools. At the same time, it provides us the flexibility to write our own custom code using features like Invoke Code or languages such as VBA and Python. This means we have the freedom to create our own code while also benefiting from a low code platform that allows us to build solutions based on existing activities.

One of the great things about UiPath Platform is its rapid evolution. This keeps people interested, especially when news breaks that new features are rolling out. Organizations become curious about potential use cases and how they can implement these updates. It’s impressive that they invest so much in improvement because it helps us enhance our offerings to business teams. With a single tool that encompasses a variety of functionalities, we can seamlessly integrate and address multiple problems simultaneously.

UiPath Platform is evolving and continuously adding new features. When I started, UiPath Platform was straightforward and easy to learn, even easy to implement because every function or predefined action, called an activity, was self-cleared and self-explanatory regarding its function, input, output format, and capabilities. They are currently implementing AI in every single product of theirs.

It is currently becoming somewhat complicated because AI is good, but too much of everything might spoil the dish. They are trying to evolve or include AI features everywhere, which could be challenging because I am not able to find proper use cases for each product having AI. Until we have specific use cases, we would not be able to use it effectively, and this also complicates the development and environment. This is one concern I have currently, though they might have other perspectives while developing this. My personal view is that involving AI in every product might be premature until we find actual use cases.

The AI integration is promising. We can utilize AI across various applications. We have autopilot functions, auto-healing capabilities, and now they’ve introduced IXP, which stands for Intelligent Access and Processing using AI. Additionally, we have communication mining for large language models (LLMs), which is a significant advancement. While it's good that we are leveraging AI to tackle problems, I do have concerns about relying too heavily on AI without fully understanding its actual usage. There’s a trend to incorporate AI into everything, even basic RPA tasks. That’s something to keep in mind.

My primary concern is related to the lack of clear use cases for AI technologies. I am a fan of AI and actively use it, but without proper use cases, its applications can seem unproductive. As we introduce these tools, their complexity tends to increase, and without defined scenarios for implementation, it becomes challenging to adapt to the technology effectively. Currently, new features are being rolled out, but we lack comprehensive insights into how to set them up and utilize them effectively. It would be helpful to understand the specific scenarios where we can apply these tools. If I had access to relevant use cases, I would be able to leverage AL tools more effectively. When new products are offered, it's essential that the providers also include use cases, training, and documentation to fill this information gap.

I have been using UiPath Platform for around seven to eight years.

The downtime for UiPath Platform is very minimal. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

For bugs, I would give a rating of around eight and a half. While they may not have many bugs, there could be better documentation. They offer a wide range of features, so having proper documentation and clear configurations is very important. 

Scalability is good for UiPath Platform. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

My organization works only on RPA solutions, so about 80% to 90% people are working with UiPath Platform. The client we are working with has a very small team of two to three developers.

Initially, their support was great, but now, since they are catering to a larger number of customers, I learned that they have different support plans. This means that support can be provided via email or phone, depending on the support plan you purchase from them. For resolving any issues, I believe it would be more effective to discuss matters over a call rather than through emails.

I am uncertain if they are fully aware of how this shift has affected their support quality. In the past, it seemed there were no different support plans, but now there are. I'm not sure about the cost differences either, but I would prefer comprehensive support for those who are paying for it.

There are instances where I encounter configuration issues that aren't well documented or where I face understanding gaps. Coming from a technical background, I often find that certain configurations need to be handled by the infrastructure team. In those situations, getting assistance from the support team would be much easier if we could arrange a call rather than relying on email exchanges.

Positive

With cloud infrastructure, they manage the entire application environment themselves. In contrast, on-premises setups are more complex, as we need to deploy multiple applications that require integration. This approach also comes with certain limitations, particularly regarding the use of large language models (LLMs) and AI technologies. Therefore, deploying solutions on the cloud is generally easier compared to managing them on-premises, which can be a bit more challenging.

I have been using their cloud solution for the last four to five years, but the Orchestrator is on-premises.

In terms of maintenance, an RPA solution requires ongoing maintenance, especially when applications are updated, formatting changes, or processes are modified. Various factors can necessitate upgrading or maintaining RPA systems. However, if there are no external impacts on the process, inputs, or outputs, the system can run smoothly for an extended period—possibly for a year or more—without issues or significant maintenance. Dependent applications, such as third-party applications, which are outside the control of RPA, can impact the process. Changes or updates to these external applications can indeed impact the overall process.

I'm not heavily involved in pricing, but I know that license prices are continuously increasing. The cost often depends on the organization and the number of licenses purchased, with larger purchases generally resulting in lower costs. This can lead to savings on extra expenses, especially since providers are now offering solutions as a service. For smaller organizations that may not have the infrastructure to support complex setups, using tools directly on UiPath Cloud can be a viable option. This strategic approach seems to be well thought out by the providers.

My experience with various tools leads me to believe that UiPath is significantly ahead of its competitors. They invest a lot of resources into continuously evolving and upgrading their products, especially with the incorporation of AI technology, which is a hot topic right now.

However, it's important to note that your choice of tools depends on your specific needs. For basic Robotic Process Automation (RPA), there are multiple vendors available that may offer more affordable options, including some open-source tools in the market.

When it comes to Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), there are also numerous vendors to consider. Ultimately, what matters most is your priorities and requirements. UiPath stands out in the market due to its comprehensive suite of solutions, which includes RPA, testing tools, IDP tools, Intelligent Process Automation (IPA), process mining tools, and communication mining tools. This wide range of offerings can greatly aid organizations in their digital transformation journeys. Therefore, UiPath is a leading choice for RPA products.

UiPath Insights is a valuable feature. Recently, they introduced UiPath Maestro, which I believe is focused on BPMN processes. For analytics, there are tools for communication mining and process mining. However, I haven't worked with any specific analytics tools yet. While UiPath does provide various insights, I wouldn't say there’s a dedicated analytics tool that I've used.

I would recommend it depending on the use case. If you are looking for an enterprise-level or full end-to-end solution for your automation journey, you should consider UiPath Platform. However, if you only need individual functionality like Robotic Process Automation (RPA), you can choose any other RPA vendor. If you have a significant pipeline of tasks to automate or a variety of processes that require automation, UiPath Platform is an excellent option. It provides robust integration capabilities and can handle multiple use cases. Conversely, if the focus is on a specific problem and there are budget constraints, opting for another vendor might be more suitable.

I would rate UiPath Platform an eight out of ten.

Public Cloud

Other

I initially used UiPath for repetitive and structured or mechanical types of automation. I was a software engineer, and I handled maintenance processes for applications, whether it involved starting up servers, generating reports, or conducting health checks. These repetitive operational maintenance tasks were handled with UiPath. It was a tool for creating workflows to handle such menial tasks. 

Automation must be present in an organization. Without it, you are stuck with manual processes that require lots of manpower for menial tasks. Automation allows large companies to scale their services efficiently, focus on more strategic tasks, and serve their customers efficiently. Its benefits can be seen immediately after the deployment. Your staff does not have to do repetitive tasks anymore.

Communications mining happens at the intake part of an internal process. It helps to classify information coming from various channels, such as an email or a ticketing system. It is useful for triaging and actionable insights. You can action that using a downstream automation. It can help with any process, whether it is a finance, IT, HR, logistics, or healthcare process. They also have IXP which combines Communications Mining with Generative Extraction. Tone or sentiment analysis in documents helps with better redirection or triaging. It goes hand in hand with the capability to classify documents.

Communications mining can help save time for your resources. If about 80% of your incoming communication is related to order management, with automation, the return will be direct. There will be hard savings in terms of people needed to work on the order entry processes. Instead of ten resources, you might need just three resources. The savings depend on the use case or the volume of a particular use case.

A key strength of UiPath is that you can easily and quickly build automation. If you are familiar with UiPath, you can automate simple to medium processes in a few hours. If you do not have any technical background, you can get started with UiPath and be up and running in one week with the help of a foundational course. I had a colleague with a background in political science. He did the foundational course and was able to build a project on his own in just one to two weeks. He is now a successful technical project manager working with UiPath.

UiPath helps to reduce human errors if the process, requirements, and exceptions are properly defined and the process is fully optimized before being automated. The ideal target is 100% accuracy, but that is usually not possible for most processes. About 90% or more accuracy is more realistic. 

We have started to gather use cases where we can leverage agenting automation. It opens up more capabilities or coverage on the existing use cases as compared to before where we could only automate an end-to-end process to a limit. For example, we could only automate entering an invoice into a system using UI or API automation and downloading a report. With Intelligent Automation, they have added the capability to read from structured and unstructured documents and then classify the content. 

Agentic automation now allows us to handle complex tasks like invoice dispute investigations, which wasn't possible with traditional RPA. Using UiPath Agent Builder and Agentic Orchestration, we can automate and manage end-to-end processes across applications and provide meaningful resolutions. This makes workflows more dynamic and flexible compared to rigid, structured automation.

From the early days, UiPath stood out because of its intuitive interface and ease of use, enabling the automation of complex processes without requiring technical knowledge related to development. UiPath has since expanded from simple automation to Intelligent Automation and Agentic Automation. The coverage of more complex use cases has increased, making it more robust. Processes not capable of automation five or six years back can now be automated easily. We can read from documents using Document Understanding or create complex workflows that require many decisions using agents. They are moving towards Agentic Automation.

The UiPath community offers a lot of value for sharing knowledge and networking. It helps you build knowledge and grow professionally within the same company or land your dream job in this space. Many large companies are using UiPath as the main automation tool.

UiPath Academy was my first point of entry when I started using UiPath. With its help, I was able to build my first robot. It has also helped me to be up to date with the latest and greatest features of UiPath.

Now that UiPath is moving towards BPMN as part of agentic orchestration on Maestro, there is a need to make it easier for newcomers in the BPMN space to understand the components of a BPMN workflow. More awareness is needed since even technically inclined individuals are not very familiar with BPMN.

I have probably used UiPath since 2017.

Our clients are large enterprises and small to medium businesses. We are both a partner and a customer. About 90% of our resources are working with UiPath. We are a small company with 200 to 300 employees.

Sometimes the technical support team gets repetitive with the questions they ask, and for complex issues, it drags on too long.

Neutral

Some of our customers are on-prem, and some of them are on the cloud.

If you are on the cloud, you do not need to worry about deployment. On-premise, it is similar to other software where you need to provision an infrastructure, either AWS or any of the hyperscalers. It might require more steps and effort, but it is doable.

For complex cases, it could take an average of three months. Simple ones can take less than a month.

In terms of maintenance, any solution requires some sort of support and maintenance.

UiPath Autopilot saves 20% of my time. Most of my time goes into building projects for customers and not for personal productivity. The only automations that I leverage are the prebuilt ones for my personal use, such as UiPath Autopilot.

There is always an opportunity to improve. They have been trying to improve pricing by consolidating some of these SKUs together. They are trying to bundle more capabilities with the same set of licenses, which is good. However, because things are always changing, it leads to some confusion. They can make it more streamlined and consistent.

Compared to Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere, UiPath is more user-friendly and constantly innovating to lead in agentic capabilities.

Overall, I would rate UiPath an eight out of ten.

Currently, we do not have any AI use cases. I work for a healthcare system. Our main use case is using UiPath to replicate what medical coders do. We input codes from certain medical systems into another, and it automates our billing cycle. This allows us to input the codes directly into the insurance billing cycle, speeding up our payment process.

Our hospital does not get paid if we are slow to get the codes to the payers. By automating this process with UiPath, we wanted to speed up the process of getting paid by the insurance companies. It has been amazing. Just this year, we probably saved 45 million dollars, and the next year, it will be upwards of 80 million.

In health care in America, many processes are still paper-based. Document processing is valuable as it allows doctors to have documents processed in advance, making it easier to access and ask questions. Additionally, UiPath has freed up staff time significantly, to the point where some staff had to be laid off. Our use of automation sped up the process of getting paid from insurance companies, saving us substantial amounts of money.

We're looking to add AI, specifically generative AI, but it's a matter of our organization implementing it. With autopilot features like Microsoft's Copilot or ChatGPT, users can start chatting immediately. However, with UiPath, one needs the UiPath Assistant installed on every machine, which is unrealistic as many people use the same machine in the hospital.

My enterprise has been using UiPath since 2021. My team inherited it in 2023, so it has been about 11 years.

The solution just went live yesterday, so I don't have feedback on its stability yet.

The solution is scalable. We previously had an older solution, and UiPath helped us revamp and upgrade our systems, making them more scalable.

The customer support from UiPath is amazing. We are part of the hypercare, and I would rate it as a nine out of ten.

Positive

We use Power Automate a lot and still incorporate it alongside UiPath. Some hospital systems require us to be all on-premises, so we use both UiPath and Power Automate to get our systems working as needed.

Some automations were built in-house by our team of developers. We also worked with an external partner and UiPath to implement some other solutions.

We have seen a 100% return on investment. The process is night and day when compared to paying employees over time for the same work.

It is more expensive than other automation services, but I don't deal with the financial details much.

As automation software, I would rate UiPath a ten out of ten.

We started using AI in Document Understanding by leveraging it against our models for different documents from our customers, primarily in the finance space. We have also used AI to train models for land management documents, helping them learn as we receive new document types. 

Recently, we've used it to analyze documents and articles online to understand sentiment toward our company. We analyze and summarize things people say in articles or posts elsewhere, which allows us to collect industry trend data. We are considering using Clipboard AI for smaller, ad-hoc data processing tasks because it can sometimes be more effective than Document Understanding.

We get a lot of projects that are on relatively short notice for the workload that comes with them. Historically, we would rely on leveraged services or contractors to do that work manually, which is costly. You can save tons of money by automating data entry, transcription, etc. Nowadays, as we get busier and busier, the work seems to bog people down more and more with tasks. UiPath gives them opportunities to free themselves up and focus on themselves.

We initially focused on time savings and how we could free people up more. We achieved that over time, but it took a while to get there in the first few years. We came in with some use cases that we later learned were not great fits for automation. We learned through trial and error and got better at identifying better use cases for automation. We've succeeded, and it's worked out for the better. 

But aside from saving people time, we also wanted to ensure that we brought in new technology to leverage some of those processes. UiPath forces you to look at the process from a high level and take a step back. You might have had the same person doing the same process for 10 years or more without thinking about how you can use new technologies to eliminate the process or make it more efficient. UiPath forces you to look at the process as a whole and the systems it's tied to. When you step back and look at it, especially with new people coming in, they start offering suggestions, like "Wait. You've been sending this email every time? That's something we can automate now. Oh, you've been trying to pull this information from a document and copy and paste it? That's something we can automate, too." 

If it's not automation, it's something else. We can look at other tools and applications our company brought in. There's usually some other solution they can use, automation or not. The natural way to work with it is by lining out a process and laying out all the steps on a workflow diagram. It allows you to rethink your process as you're doing it. 

Instead of just following step-by-step documentation or the way you've done it all the time, it gives you a chance to see it from a new perspective, and that's just part of working with the tool. As you build that out in UiPath using task capture or anything else, you will see that naturally and start thinking about ways to handle it better.  

Automation has freed up employees for other tasks. That's something that they like about it. The other thing it's done is build some excitement about IT and solutions in general. They're always looking at the new function that's coming out. They want to see what else we can do for them. Automation isn't always the answer, but we can get them to engage and talk to us during office hours to attempt to solve their problem with UiPath. We can also learn more about what they do. 

We're getting closer to our customers, talking more about their work, and they're feeling a closer bond with us. They're feeling like they trust us more in IT and are starting to see what other tools we have. Maybe automation wasn't the right fit, but we will always find better opportunities by building a report that sends an automatic email and an application for them in low-code software. UiPath has helped create a much better and fluid engagement process for us and our customers. 

Since it's a low-code tool that's easier for them to approach and understand, they're also more involved in the design process. The learning curve is shorter. When Studio first came out, it wasn't as user-friendly as they had hoped, but StudioX came out in 2020 and was approachable for most of our users. That's what our citizen developers use most of the time now. We have far more citizen developers with StudioX than unattended developers with Studio.

Within UiPath Cloud itself, UiPath Insights has been excellent. Insights is one of the newer features we were excited about because we built custom reports, captured all that data in one place, and leveraged it in different areas. That was a challenge for us and created a support burden. We're automation developers, not report developers. When leadership wanted a new metric or anything, figuring it out was always a pain. 

Insights has built-in mechanisms for tracking time savings, usage reports, and the overall health of your automation program. Having that functionality built in by default is critical. I click it and tell it the report that I want to generate. It'll build it for me automatically, and I can share it with people who need it. It has made a huge difference for people administrating the platform and reporting success to leadership over time. 

UiPath needs work on the governance side. For example, they released Studio Web this year and have started work on its governance, but it initially lacked control from an administration standpoint. You could not lock down third-party libraries or other applications and integrations it had built in.

For example, people could use a Google account, but we might have concerns about that from a security standpoint. Cybersecurity is taking a more significant place in IT, and we're mindful of that. Having explicit governance over what our users can do inside those technologies is essential. We hope to see that more over the next few years. We've given a lot of that feedback as customers to UiPath, and they've been working hard to get that into the pipeline and implement those changes.

I have been using UiPath for about six years now.

UiPath can grow with us, especially since they developed a cloud environment. When we started, we had to make many changes in Orchestrator and other areas as we scaled up. We scaled up fast and automated dozens of automations in the first few years. 

However, we found that the default setup for the UiPath Orchestrator in 2018 didn't have all the features we needed to administer it to our customers. We had to build custom solutions in-house, but they've released many new features in UiPath Cloud that simplify management. 

I rate UiPath 10 out of 10. The executive support team and customer success team have been great. All of them play a role, and they're super knowledgeable. If they can't solve your problem, they know who can and connect you with them quickly. We've leveraged them extensively and will use them more over the next couple of years as we finish our cloud implementation. 

There are still many features we don't use, and we constantly go to them for guidance and help on how to use them best and what they've done with other customers. They provide tons of great insight and have a solid network. 

Positive

We didn't have a low-code automation platform. We developed most of our automations using PowerShell. We didn't have citizen developers, but most business users would use Power Automate. Back then, it was known as Flow on the Power Platform. 

Our corporate leadership decided to bring in UiPath. It wasn't an IT decision.  They wanted something they could start using for their daily tasks. They didn't think we had something that could automate things well, and PowerShell is limited from a scripting and API standpoint. They wanted to automate things in SAP, and the APIs and other things are locked down in a custom shop like ours. We can't integrate with our environment in any way we want, so we need something that can interact through the interface. UiPath does that. It can click and type everything through the interface. 

The leadership started the process. IT got involved and supported it. Since then, we've helped it grow throughout the company. It's not just finance anymore. 

The initial setup was complex because UiPath didn't have many pipelines built in. We had to build custom pipelines for the technology we use. It was TFS at the time, and now we use Azure DevOps. I helped with the VDI setup. For unattended automations, you must have a platform or system they can run on. We had looked at doing HDRs—high-density robots—that UiPath. 

Due to applications such as SAP, it couldn't run on a server-side setup. It had to be on a desktop, so we used a VDI for every bot we created, and I helped create the user policies for our accounts and device policies for each VDI. I also set up all the installations and the presets. I helped set up a framework for that over the first year, from 2018 to 2019. We smoothed out the process from there. That was something we had to do on our side. It will be unique for a customer depending on their environment.

We used a partner during the initial setup.

The leadership is pleased with the outcomes. With Insights, we can show them how much time we're saving with each process.  We document savings in hours rather than monetary terms.

I rate UiPath 10 out of 10.

Public Cloud

We use UiPath to automate ERP and CRM portal processes, integrate them with SAP and various external applications, gather data, and perform functions to generate reports. UiPath enables us to carry out numerous activities, and its usage is not limited to a single variable but rather multiple ones.

UiPath's primary goal is to enhance the scalability and accuracy of daily tasks within any organization. The core concept behind UiPath is to boost productivity by mimicking human actions, automating repetitive tasks and freeing up time for individuals to focus on other activities.

Compared to other RPA tools in the market, such as Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, Worksoft Certify for automation testing, and Selenium, which uses high-level coding, UiPath is a low-to-no-code automation platform. This makes it user-friendly and provides a comprehensive library built into the tool, enabling developers to automate various tasks and processes efficiently.

UiPath enables end-to-end automation. A negative side of this automation is that it replaces a human already doing that specific job. A human previously did any automation implemented through UiPath. However, by automating through UiPath, we free up that employee's bandwidth, enabling them to focus on other tasks or housekeeping activities instead of repeatedly performing the same repetitive task.

The UiPath user community is extremely active and knowledgeable.

I recall a situation where a business had to generate quarterly reports. Before automation, they could only produce 200 to 300 reports per quarter. However, after implementing bots, productivity increased to around 900 reports. Additionally, UiPath's logic query feature allows for Excel calculations to be done in a fraction of a second, a task that would typically take a human around an hour. Many bots have reduced business processing times from one hour to five minutes, and tasks that used to take one to two hours are now completed in five to ten minutes with high accuracy.

To learn UiPath effectively, we need a reliable source that provides accurate information. UiPath Academy serves as the ideal platform for this purpose—additionally, companies value certification as proof of UiPath proficiency. If we aim to become UiPath certified, UiPath Academy is our best option, as its courses are specifically designed to help us succeed in the certification exam. While other platforms like Udemy or Coursera offer UiPath courses, we may need more preparation for the certification, which involves a mix of theoretical, conceptual, and practical questions. We can learn practical skills elsewhere, but UiPath Academy is the best resource for mastering the theoretical and conceptual knowledge required for certification.

UiPath helps reduce the cost of digital transformation by around 30 percent.

UiPath helps reduce human error by 95 to 99 percent. The bot doesn't make mistakes. Because of the high accuracy, we started with ten bots and now use 200 bots.

A UiPath bot can save one full-time employee's time per year.

UiPath is highly versatile, offering multiple automation options for various applications. For example, UiPath can automate email, PDF invoices, images, Excel documents, and websites. This flexibility extends to its OCR feature, enabling the automation of any invoice or PDF invoice. Secondly, UiPath's exception-handling capabilities greatly simplify the automation process. Lastly, UiPath utilizes minimal code, making it a low-code or no-code platform. Consequently, even individuals with limited programming knowledge can automate tasks using UiPath after completing a basic course.

The Excel operation needs some modifications. Image processing is also crucial. For example, if the image is clear, UiPath can easily read it. If the image needs clarification, UiPath can't read the object easily. To some extent, Excel automation, especially handling macros, needs improvement. UiPath needs a comprehensive feature set for automating Excel and has limited options. In some cases, we must use macro-enabled Excel files. Therefore, Excel automation and OCR require enhancements.

I have been using UiPath for four years.

Bots rely on numerous third-party applications, and several factors can impact their performance, including the virtual machine's capabilities and the responsiveness of the applications the bot interacts with. Therefore, UiPath isn't solely responsible for failures; issues could stem from your server or the third-party applications UiPath connects with. UiPath's stability is rated at eight point five out of ten.

I'm a delivery lead. As organizations grow, they add technology and features to their ERP applications. This requires frequent modifications to automation bots developed for specific functions. UiPath's scalability feature allows me to implement change requests easily at any time. Instead of extensive development, I can lift and test the desired changes within the existing code. UiPath also incorporates AI/ML features, which are in high demand in this generation. This addition of AI/ML capabilities will likely enhance UiPath's scalability.

I would rate the scalability of UiPath seven out of ten.

I used Worksoft Certify for automation testing, but it doesn't compare to UiPath due to its limited features. Exception handling is not well-defined in Worksoft Certify, and I find flowchart programming much more complex compared to UiPath. In many ways, UiPath is superior to Worksoft Certify, which has many limitations.

The initial deployment is straightforward because the UiPath team will be available throughout the process, participating in calls and meetings to provide comprehensive assistance with the deployment.

The deployment takes one to two days, provided all approvals are in place. Approximately 12 people are involved, including five from our team, as well as members of the server and networking teams.

We implemented it in-house with the help of UiPath.

I don't handle the costing aspect as it's not within my scope. However, I understand that initially, businesses or clients might perceive UiPath as expensive. While this is true to some extent, the features and flexibility UiPath provides often lead clients to realize its value in the long run.

I would rate UiPath seven out of ten.

We have 55 UiPath users in our organization.

Code maintenance is necessary for UiPath due to the bot's interaction with external applications and websites. The bot must be adjusted accordingly if any of these applications or websites are updated.

The primary challenge encountered during UiPath implementation is the disparity between development and production environments. Often, code is developed in a non-production system where access to certain applications, such as a client's portal, is limited. This necessitates dry runs in the non-production environment to ensure the bot functions correctly without making any unintended changes. Once the bot is moved to the production system, multiple controlled tests are required before it can be fully operational. The unavailability of a complete testing environment mirroring production conditions significantly hinders the development and deployment process.

I recommend UiPath to any user because it doesn't require a hard-code programmer to be an RPA developer. This makes it easier and more cost-effective to hire resources. Other tools on the market require good programming knowledge, which means you need to hire someone who knows both the tool and a programming language, making resource hiring expensive. Secondly, UiPath uses minimal coding, which makes debugging very easy. UiPath is also adding AI and ML features and upgrading the OCR features regularly.

Public Cloud