UiPath Platform Reviews

UiPath is our platform for automating tasks and processes within our manufacturing environment, to boost productivity and streamline overall operations.

UiPath utilizes a hybrid deployment model, where our virtual machines reside in a federated cloud environment, while the UiPath orchestration engine itself remains on-premises.

UiPath stands out for its user-friendly development environment and minimal programming requirements. Building automation with UiPath is a breeze, making it a strong selling point for those looking for an easy-to-use RPA tool.

UiPath offers end-to-end automation, but there's a catch: it requires full access and control within the target environment. This means UiPath needs security permissions to interact with and potentially run other applications, which can be a challenge to set up. While achieving end-to-end automation is valuable, this access requirement can be a hurdle.

UiPath has reduced our on-prem footprint, freeing up resources that were previously dedicated to maintaining that infrastructure. These resources can now be used for other tasks.

We saw the benefits of UiPath immediately upon deployment.

The UiPath user community has been a valuable resource for quickly solving problems. By interacting with other users, we've been able to share insights and find solutions to specific programming issues.

We leverage UiPath Academy courses to prepare developers for certification exams. These courses serve a dual purpose: getting new developers acclimated to the platform and providing foundational knowledge for citizen developers who want to learn UiPath quickly.

UiPath accelerates our digital transformation, but integrating legacy systems can be a hurdle. While UiPath excels once deployed, the process of granting it access to legacy data for proper functioning can be time-consuming in our environment. This may be specific to our setup, but it's worth considering nonetheless.

UiPath significantly reduces human error by automating tasks and allowing for faster turnaround. This means that even if users make mistakes in their submissions, UiPath can quickly catch them and provide feedback so the user can fix the error and resubmit the issue.

UiPath has helped free up our employee's time for other projects.

UiPath significantly reduces our transaction processing costs. Previously, transactions took days to complete, but now they're done in minutes. This efficiency translates directly to cost savings, and it's just one example of how UiPath can optimize internet-based processes by streamlining workflows and minimizing processing time.

A key feature of this solution is its built-in VM orchestration capabilities, allowing us to manage virtual machines without additional setup. This includes basic functionalities like starting and stopping VMs, as well as integrating queues into our orchestration workflows. Additionally, we can leverage built-in Insight reports to extract transaction and volume data for analysis.

The biggest hurdle in UiPath Academy courses has been completing projects, especially for advanced certifications like RPA developer. With everyone juggling work and deadlines, dedicating significant time to capstone projects becomes difficult, leading to course completion struggles for many.

UiPath could improve its services and account management. Specifically, greater interaction with the services team would be beneficial to understand their capabilities better. This could involve trial runs where the services team demonstrates the value they can provide before being engaged. Additionally, providing sample automation, such as starter automation for SAP workflows, would give users and teams a starting point to build upon instead of starting from scratch.

I have been using UiPath for two and a half years.

Our daily automation runs smoothly, and weekly ones seem stable for users. However, I get frequent alerts about downtime, potentially due to VM configuration issues. Since we have multiple VMs and I might receive alerts for others, some get unintentionally ignored without impacting functionality.

We've found UiPath easy to scale by adding virtual machines to handle more automation. As we expand our automation to support more users and environments, we anticipate needing another bot. Adding a new bot to UiPath is straightforward - we can simply assign an existing automation to the new bot and keep it running. The only additional cost is for the new VM. Overall, UiPath scalability has been positive for us.

The quality and speed of the answers from UiPath technical support are good. We have a good support-level contract with UiPath that gives us enterprise-level support. 

Positive

I would rate UiPath eight out of ten. It is a good solution but it wasn't made for ambiguity.

We primarily focused on UiPath for automating desk-level processes without initially considering other solutions. However, before implementing any automation, we assess its suitability for UiPath and whether a workflow tool like ServiceNow might be a better fit. In essence, we compare these two technologies for workflow automation needs.

UiPath took longer to use at first due to the learning curve, but now we're more experienced with the software, so creating automation is a breeze.

UiPath requires annual maintenance, which involves upgrading to the latest version. This process includes migrating virtual machines and thoroughly testing existing automation to confirm their functionality after the upgrade.

New UiPath users should consider two main factors: process type and system compatibility. UiPath excels at automating well-defined, repeatable processes that can be observed and coded. It's ideal for desk-level tasks and works well with Microsoft applications and many browser-based systems like SAP. However, custom systems may require additional effort as pre-built UiPath packages might not be available. By focusing on deterministic processes and compatible systems, new users can identify the best use cases for UiPath.

We use UiPath Studio, specifically the enterprise version, for developing projects per organizational requirements.

UiPath makes building automation processes easy and accurate. It allows us to create a wide variety of feasible automations. Even complex processes can be tackled using UiPath's features, such as object repositories and document understanding.

UiPath offers end-to-end automation, which is crucial for our work. This allows me to handle various tasks. I can efficiently open any web application required by the organization or our clients. I can download documents from web applications and fill in the necessary details within them. I can extract important metadata from documents or web portals. I can store the extracted data in a designated data queue. I would rate the process a ten out of ten.

By automating tasks through the use of robots, we can achieve significant time and manpower savings. This, in turn, leads to reduced costs for the company. Additionally, automation improves accuracy, as robots are less prone to errors compared to humans performing repetitive tasks daily.

I use the UiPath Academy courses in my free time to get some diploma-level certifications.

UiPath reduces the cost of digital transformation.

UiPath helps reduce human error.

UiPath helps to save staff 70 percent of their time through automation. 

The community version of UiPath has a limited feature set, which can make it challenging for users to fully explore its capabilities without purchasing the enterprise version. Offering a trial period for all features could provide a more comprehensive evaluation experience for potential users.

I have been using UiPath for four years.

While UiPath has disconnected on a few rare occasions, it has generally been stable.

UiPath is scalable 80 percent of the time.

The initial deployment is moderate. 

The implementation was completed in-house.

UiPath is expensive.

I would rate UiPath nine out of ten. There are many RPA tools and UiPath is at the top of the list.

UiPath requires maintenance for any changes that are made.

I recommend reviewing the documentation and completing the UiPath Academy courses before using the solution to automate processes.

We are using UiPath to automate many processes. In my first job, I worked on billing and ticketing. We were automating the process for ticketing and billing for audit. The robot was responsible for auditing the process of an application. It was responsible for calculating the difference between the amount deposited by the visitors and the amount calculated and predicted by the application. It would then decide if it was the correct currency or not.

Currently, I am working on many applications, but the classic ones are where we are reading data from Excel or databases and then clarifying the data or closing some billings. I am also working on the process of taking some reservations on some sites.

I also sometimes use it to automate something on my personal laptop.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation. It is not only about developing robots or putting the code. You must also monitor and implement the whole solution. It is not just a robot.

UiPath provides more flexibility because you can use other languages such as C#. This opportunity is not there with Power Automate or Blue Prism because you are working with graphical tools. For me, it was an opportunity to learn C# and how to code.

UiPath provides the opportunity to work with the conceptual aspects. There are flow charts to help you design the workflow.

UiPath has helped to automate many manual processes. We can see the difference with automation.

UiPath reduces human error. It is one of the main benefits. UiPath also optimizes the time. It is helpful. For one of the processes, the time taken was reduced from seven minutes to one minute.

UiPath saves human resources. For example, we had a process that was done by four to five people, and we automated that process. The robot could do one day's work in 10 to 15 minutes. We have automated almost 15 processes so far, so there have been a lot of savings on human resources. These resources can now be utilized for other tasks. The manual and repetitive tasks were annoying for them, and now, they can work on other things that are more interesting and require human decisions, not just copying and pasting.

It is the most suitable tool for big beginners in RPA. It is simple to manipulate. I found it comfortable because it has ML, AI, and OCR. It is great.

It is easy for me to build automation using UiPath. I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of ease of use. It is easy, and I enjoy making robots. It is not just for the sake of working. I enjoy it when I finish making a robot. I feel I did something.

I did not work much on it, but I like the OCR part. I found OCR interesting because we can work with unstructured data from a paper or handwritten text. It is something new for automation.

The Community edition and UiPath Academy are two powerful features of UiPath. The Community edition of UiPath gives hands-on experience. People who want to learn about UiPath can download it for free and use it. It is a solution for everyone. Anyone can use it to learn about UiPath and practice it.

It should have better integration with Microsoft applications such as Excel, SharePoint, Outlook, etc. Power Automate is better for communicating with Microsoft Office applications. With UiPath, we have some difficulty communicating with the Microsoft Office applications. This is the only weakness that I have come across.

I have been working with UiPath for about two years. I also worked with it during my internship.

It is stable. I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of stability. 

For scalability, I would rate it an eight out of ten because it gives you methods to be scalable. You can scale many processes.

I have not interacted with their support, but the UiPath Community is there. It is a very big community now. When we have some questions or want some clarification, we can find resources on their site or in their community. When I started working with it initially, it was not easy to find solutions related to UiPath. Compared to Automation Anywhere, it was a bit harder to find solutions.

I have also used UiPath Academy for certifications. It helps to learn from scratch. UiPath Academy makes it easy to learn for someone who has not worked with UiPath. There are different levels. You can find your level and begin from there.

We have our private setup. We have our own Orchestrator. We have a platform that communicates with the Orchestrator. We put the robots on Orchestrator and we monitor them using Orchestrator and some VMs. 

The deployment complexity depends on each project. Some projects are easy. You just need to put the robots. In terms of maintenance, robots do require maintenance. You need to monitor them to ensure that they are meeting the business requirements. If the code is good, one person can maintain the robots.

We are working in a team, and we have our own resources. We have experienced team members who know how to do the deployment.

We have teams working in multiple locations such as Tunisia, Morocco, Romania, and France.

There is a significant ROI with process automation.

It is reasonable considering the benefits of automating the processes.

I would recommend starting with some simple or classic processes, such as reading data from an Excel sheet and a database. You will find it easy. My advice is to not start with something difficult.

I would rate UiPath an eight out of ten.

We have a lot of SAP Extract, transform, and load (ETL). We have human resources and time management. We have a very diverse tool landscape due to natural growth. We are in a very early stage of transformation, so we use it to bring information into multiple systems at the same time.

We also have a good few financial use cases related to tax. We work in Europe. Within the EU, there are different regulations, and sometimes, we have very short deadlines. On the third or first business day, we have to get information out of 16 or 17 SAP systems and format them. We have to get them out to Italy and Spain for government stuff.

The objective that we were trying to achieve by implementing UiPath was hard cost savings, but I changed that a little bit. It is not the right technology for hard cost savings. We have now changed it to quality and efficiency, and what they do with quality and efficiency is up to them.

Currently, we only use the core RPA. We joined the company only eight months ago. We worked for another company before, and that company is at a very early stage. We are setting up our CVs and our citizen development program, so currently, we only use core RPA and core automation services.

We are not using AI yet, but we are about to change that with Document Understanding. In the company where I worked before, we used Document Understanding, and it helped us a lot.

UiPath automations have increased the accuracy of our operations. We have a lot of peak sessions with finance and techs. There are quite high penalties if we get something wrong. For example, if we calculate our tax incorrectly and we pay too much, that does not mean we get the money back. If we pay too little, we also have to pay a penalty fee. We have reduced the error rate by over 25%. We saved 1.24 million last year. That is one aspect. The other aspect is the peak time work. We had a team of people coming in on the third business day at 5 am. I had to download all the reports and things like that because they had to get the report out by 12 pm. If they were not out by 12 pm, we had to pay a penalty. After automation, people came in at 8 am, and the reports went out by 10 am. 

I like the low-code/no-code approach and the graphical interface. Among all the RPA tools, UiPath is the one with the easiest interface.

Orchestrator needs an overhaul. They have added so many functions that it is sometimes quite hard to find the right settings. They have a tree hierarchy with the host and the tenant. Some settings you do on the host, and some settings you do on the tenant. You need to know at which level you are to find what you need. It all looks very same.

The other thing that I have been telling them for years is the width of the activity. You cannot change the width. I do a lot of training to show something, and I constantly have to go into the advanced editor to show what is in there, but the big thing right now is Orchestrator.

I have been using UiPath for 12 or 13 years.

I have not had any issues. If something happened, it happened because of the human network.

It is very scalable.

The USA support is okay. I would rate them a seven out of ten.

Their support in Europe is good or very good if you get the right people. I would rate them between six to nine out of ten.

Their support in Asia needs improvement. I would rate them a four out of ten.

I have worked with Blue Prism. I have worked with Automation Anywhere. I have worked with what I call the Microsoft suite, which includes Power Apps, Power Automate, and Azure Logic. I worked very shortly with OpenSpan, later known as Pega. I trained at a university. I trained others in automation as part of the robotics lab at the University of Hanover. We looked at several tools there. 

In terms of comparison between UiPath and Microsoft Power Automate, given the use cases for which I normally use them, they both have areas where they are good. If Microsoft could get their documentation right, the attended series of UiPath would be in a lot of trouble. Given the whole unattended and hyper automation or intelligent automation, which is the main focus of UiPath, you need orchestration. That is where the big bucks and the big savings are, but to get the technology out with the attended bots or shadow IT, Microsoft Power Apps and Power Automate are important because they help people understand what technology can do. What we see very often is that people start with Power Apps, sometimes even with a macro, and then they realize that they have hit a certain barrier very quickly. They come to us. Initially, we take what they have and just enhance it with UiPath, and then over time, we bring the functionality from the macro, Power Apps, or Selenium and migrate them into our things.

Currently, we are on-prem, but we are migrating to the cloud in November. We are currently not using the latest version, but with the migration, we will be.

I was involved in its setup. The Orchestrator setup could be easier. There are a few loopholes that you need to understand. UiPath Studio is straightforward, but the setup of Orchestrator has become a little bit more complicated over time. You need to connect them to bots, and you need to know what type of user you need for what type of robot, which has become more tricky. Overall, the setup of Orchestrator and certificates can be a bit challenging.

In terms of the implementation strategy, we took a test server and put it on. We did some testing with our network and information security team, and once they were happy, we moved it out to production.

For the current implementation, we did not take any help. The first one was done by a partner, but they did not do a good job. I did the second installation on my own because I knew how to do it.

In the previous company, they had a partner system. 

I do not like the enormous jumps that they have had in the past. The ROI has become a lot harder because of the pricing changes. When you have time to plan for it, the ROI is there. If it was cheaper, it would make my life easier, but on the other hand, it is worth it. These jumps year after year are a problem for me because then I have to go back and say that prices have increased by 30% percent, and I get asked, "For what?" It takes a lot of time.

In this company, UiPath was already chosen. In the company before, I looked at all the big ones. I chose UiPath for the ease of use. 

I would advise finishing UiPath Academy courses. After you have finished them the first time, finish them the second time.

I would rate UiPath a strong eight out of ten.

In the past, we have used UiPath to automate repetitive manual processes for companies in the finance and banking sectors, but healthcare is our current focus. This industry involves processing tons of data from patients, customers, and doctors, so it's a huge field. 

Previously, I developed bots for compliance at financial companies. I've also created processes for reading PDFs, sending emails, Excel automation, logging, and exception handling. We have also contracted with insurance companies that need to pull data from emails into their main enterprise application.

The healthcare companies cannot provide us with direct access to their systems for security reasons. We are currently accessing their network through a middleware system so it doesn't compromise their security. UiPath doesn't work on that third machine and cannot retrieve the values as it should. If we scrape data from the web, it will get to the HTML that is behind the site. 

When we are accessing the third PC, we cannot get to it because it is a desktop machine. We are using the completed version activity, which is working mainly on the image image-based activity. This capability is available in UiPath, but I don't think Power Automate or Automation Anywhere can do this. It helps because we don't need to do any coding. 

UiPath tends to be deployed on the cloud, so clients can minimize their on-premise footprint. We deploy on-premise and cloud-based UiPath depending on what our clients want. For some companies, uploading data to the Orchestrator on the cloud is potentially a security concern that hasn't been resolved by the UiPath developers. Power Automate has an advantage in that regard. 

Our employees use the company's credentials to get training from the UiPath Academy and obtain certifications. I have a personal account on UiPath Academy, but it has some license issues. The academy is helpful because UiPath is implementing new features every three months or so. It's all about the documentation. We can learn about new features and do more. With more knowledge, we can develop something bigger.

UiPath reduces costs by eliminating human labor. Let's use an insurance company as an example. Let's say they have employees who are responsible for reading emails. Every day, they receive information via email from the customers, and their job is to retrieve the details and enter them into the main database. The average insurance company receives 400-500 emails daily. These people will spend the whole day completing the task of manually transferring data to their main application. 

We have a bot in pre-production that can handle 1,100 emails daily for the company. It has a significant impact on the efficiency of the operation because the bot can input the details into the database quickly and without any errors. The employees who were responsible for this work are now monitoring it and also learning about UiPath at the same time. It is a great tool for increasing productivity, thereby proportionally increasing the company's profits.

The first company I worked with had 20 employees in their compliance department working on some PDFs. The company had to send emails to around 6 million customers. We deployed the bots, and five bots could do the work of 10 employees. The company kept the other 10 employees but reassigned them to monitor the bots and fix errors. They also learned to develop their own bots. They could cut 10 positions and save money while improving productivity. Those employees weren't working as fast as the bots and cost more money.

The solution also greatly reduces human error. In the financial compliance use case, they were dealing with upwards of a million rows. That was labor-intensive work, and no human could complete the task in under three days manually. Sometimes, we would have some errors in which the values were reversed by accident because humans make mistakes when they are tired. In this kind of work, we're working with digital amounts and currencies, and we are applying mathematical formulas to the amounts, like credit, debit, or some business calculations. 

UiPath doesn't have large hardware or software requirements. We only need one physical PC on the client's premises. That computer requires some minimum specifications, such as a 1 terabyte hard drive and an i5 processor. We need that computer hardware and a license for the client. 

If the client doesn't want to purchase an enterprise license, UiPath offers a community version. There are no restrictions on the features, but it can only run one bot at a time. The enterprise version can run multiple bots. If our client only needs one process, we can provide them with the community version and deploy it on their PC. 

UiPath can free up employees to work on more important things. One of my colleagues was doing some tedious work manually, but once the bot was in place, he only needed to click one button to run UiPath, which extracts all the data and updates the Excel spreadsheet in 10 or 15 minutes. Previously, he spent up to six hours preparing the data before he could complete the other tasks. The important work was being delayed every time. It increases productivity, which benefits the company. 

UiPath's most valuable features are its UI automation activities like scraping and manipulating data. We need to scrape the data before we can manipulate it or save it in another application. I think that part is very valuable and important.

Having worked with other tools like Microsoft Power Automate and Automation Anywhere, I find UiPath to be the most user-friendly because it provides all the actions on the side, and we can just drag and drop them. It's a simple interface that we can easily understand. Automation Anywhere has a more complex interface. UiPath is straightforward enough that our junior employees can easily pick it up. 

UiPath's ability to offer end-to-end automation is critical. We typically provide our clients with a simple demo of what UiPath can do. After that, they provide us with details about their end-to-end processes, which we use to determine what can be implemented through UiPath.

For our healthcare client, the initial assignment was to scrape the data from the website and put it into Excel. Later, they decided that they wanted the data in another application, so it could be stored in the main database. We constructed an end-to-end process for maintaining a million records in their primary database.

I also like the UiPath Community forum. I go there when I get stuck with anything. When I run into an error, it's easy to find the answer. The community is highly active. If I post a question, I can usually get a response from community members in an hour or two. 

I have tried a bot that uses UiPath's AI capabilities, but I didn't develop it. It's a portal for patients to make appointments and check into reception at the hospital. We implemented ChatGPT on an Android device, so customers can ask questions and get information. 

We also developed a bot that can derive the same types of data from PDFs with different structures and formats. For example, let's say the patient's name is on the first row on one form, but on the third row on another. We can configure a bot to extract the name regardless of where it is. We can train our ML module by telling it when the data is wrong and running it again. Now, it's mostly accurate.

I would like UiPath to improve its screenshot feature. It should have the option not to take screenshots unless the user specifically allows it. Sometimes, it is a security issue for companies that do not want to share screenshots of the main application. Another thing I want to see is a standalone mobile application that we can run anywhere. I would like more cross-platform application support.

UiPath can get unwieldy if the process becomes too big and complex. I had one client based in Saudi Arabia that had an application with 1,500 pages. Once the bot we were developing got much bigger, the application started having stability issues. It performs well in typical cases, but once we exceed that average, the application starts to crash or behave abnormally. 

I have used UiPath for four years.

Overall, UiPath is stable for most processes, but Power Automate is better at handling large, complex projects.

I have worked with Microsoft Power Automate and Automation Anywhere. The primary advantage of UiPath is that it's more accessible than the other solutions. You can learn UiPath without any knowledge of programming or computer science. It takes only about a month to learn the tool, even if you have no skills. For example, if you're a blogger and you want to automate posting to the website, you can do that through UiPath, so it is beneficial for personal use and commercial use. 

The other advantage is cost savings. UiPath saves organizations some money, and it's more accurate than Power Automate or Automation Anywhere. Automation Anywhere is my third choice. Power Automate comes in second place because It was developed by Microsoft, and most enterprise companies have a Microsoft subscription. If their license includes Power Automate, they prefer to use that instead of buying a separate subscription for UiPath. 

Many companies are switching to Power Automate because of this bundled licensing. The UiPath enterprise subscription is somewhat expensive. Microsoft can provide the same functionality, and it integrates with tools like Excel and Outlook. Companies can get all those tools within the same license, so that's an advantage Power Automate offers over UiPath.

Another advantage of UiPath is that you can also work with image-based processes. If we cannot get any selectors or access the HTML code behind the application, we can use image-based processes. This feature isn't available in Automation Anywhere. UiPath has the AI center, and Microsoft also implements AI in Power Automate processes.  However, Automation Anywhere cannot use AI in their product.

My current company is smaller, so I'm responsible for multiple tasks. I am the requirement gatherer, developer, and deployer. At my previous company, they had a business analyst who talked to the client and made an inventory of their requirements that he provided to us. Then, my only task was to develop the bot. It was the other team's duty to deploy the bot on the client's physical machine. 

The process involves three steps. We need to connect UiPath and provide the logs. Our client can access the Orchestrator to see logs of what the bot is doing online. He doesn't need to physically access the machine. There is also middleware called the UiPath Assistant that we use to connect UiPath to the Orchestrator. 

The number of staff needed for deployment depends on the complexity of the processes. If it is a single process, we don't need a deployment person or team. The developers can deploy the bots. My company has five developers, so everyone is developing their own bots and handing them over to the deployment team. For every five developers, we have two deployers. If the five developers are developing automated bots daily, we need only two deployers to deploy them on the machine. Also, if we want to have a backup version, we can deploy it on GitHub to make the repository and organize everything.

The maintenance aspect can sometimes be difficult. Exceptional cases can arise during the process. When we initiate some processes, we need to monitor them for about 30 days. We don't monitor some processes because we're not seeing any errors or exceptions. We have to monitor other bots, stop them as needed, handle the exception, and run them again. After 30 days, the bot should be mature enough to handle the exceptions without intervention. 

UiPath offers an excellent return. For example, a recent client in Pakistan was scraping data from a website with 349 products. His job was to scrape the title, price, and variants and place the data in an Excel spreadsheet. He was working all week alone, so I proposed UiPath. I told him UiPath has a function called "Extract Data Table" that can scrape all the details of the products and just dump it into Excel in five or ten minutes. He was impressed, and I developed the bot in front of him. 

Now, he's running my bot and dumping all the results in his Excel sheet. He's also working on other projects, and his routine has become very stable. He has more time to spend with his family. It has surely made an impact and yielded a positive ROI.

I don't know the exact cost, but UiPath is more expensive than Power Automate and Automation Anywhere. 

I rate UiPath seven out of 10. Learning a little JavaScript coding is helpful because there are some scenarios in which UiPath doesn't help you. In some cases, you may need to write a little code to perform some actions or call some functions. I would also take advantage of the UiPath Academy so you can stay up to date on the latest news and features. 

We leverage UiPath for customer service use cases and process automation to improve employee productivity and reduce time spent on repetitive work. UiPath is mainly used for financial processes like automated invoicing, but we also use the solution for IT processes. 

UiPath is deployed on-prem on a private cloud, and all our BFSI customers are on-prem. BFSI customers tend to use fully on-prem environments. UiPath offers cloud and on-prem versions, but the functionality is the same. A few technical aspects are a little different. 

UiPath makes our employees' jobs easier by eliminating repetitive tasks. The solution has reduced the time spent on these tasks by around 35 to 40 percent. They can use bots and spend more time on more productive work. We've improved process efficiency and employee productivity using automation. 

It's helped us discover better ways to make each process more stable. Our productivity has increased from 20 percent to almost 45 percent. That's what the change we have seen using you about. Using UiPath has reduced human error by 99 percent. I can't say 100 percent because nothing is fully automated. 

UiPath's automation features are all equally valuable, but we use the unattended bots the most. UiPath is easier to handle than most RPA technologies, and it's easy to install, so it's a competitive solution. 

The UiPath community has helped us troubleshoot issues. For example, if a bot isn't working properly, we can go to the forums to find the root cause of the problem. My technical team uses the UiPath Academy to get certifications and gain a better understanding of the product, but I haven't used it. 

We use some of UiPath's AI functionality, which makes it easy for us. Predictive analysis suggests the next logical step and what could be the possible solution for that. It tells you the possibilities and the pros and cons of each step.

The OCR technology has room for improvement. UiPath accurately reads about 85 percent of the fields in a scanned document, but that needs to be somewhere around 90 to 95 percent.

I have worked with UiPath for nearly three to four years.

The uptime for our bots is almost 99.9 percent.

UiPath is highly scalable. We plan to increase our usage because we aren't using it internally. It's something we deploy for our customers, so the usage will increase as our business grows. 

I rate UiPath support 10 out of 10. There are many ways to get support, including the knowledge base, live assistance, UiPath Academy, and UiPath support center. 

Positive

I was not involved with the setup. I sell the licenses, and the technical team handles the deployment. UiPath requires some maintenance, such as platform updates, updating the bots, and adding workloads. 

UiPath has reduced our employees' processing time and our expenses. UiPath has cut costs by about 18 to 20 percent. You can start realizing the ROI within six months to a year.

UiPath is affordable compared to Blue Prism or AutomationEdge. A basic license covers the cost of implementation and recurring fees that depend on the complexity of the processes and workflows. 

I looked at Automation Anywhere and AutomationEdge. UiPath is easier to implement and use. Cost is the primary factor. Indian customers tend to consider the cost of a solution more than the features.

I rate UiPath 10 out of 10. The solution can't give you 100 percent automation for complex processes, but it gives you up to 90 percent. However, once you optimize a bot, you can reuse it for other processes.

I have worked with most of the UiPath use cases. From 2017 to now, I have delivered more than 400 bots. I have worked in healthcare, energy, shipping, and other industries.

When it comes to manual processes, especially IDP and the combination of IDP and automation, the journey has been a bit difficult and challenging, but it has been worth it. Most other automation is straightforward. We take input from multiple platforms, put it into another platform, and so on. But with IDP, we have to read the document, validate the data, and then integrate it with the automation tool in UiPath.

I started integrating IDP and automation before UiPath Document Understanding and the Action Center were available. What I used to do was automate the process and then create a layout in ABBYY. I would then integrate the ABBYY layout into UiPath, evaluate the data, and then automate the rest. I did this in 2018 and 2019.

Now that we have our own Document Understanding and Action Center platform, I don't have to rely on any third-party tools for IDP. The combination of automation and IDP within a single platform has made a big impact on many businesses. It has helped them to reduce their annual efforts in data entry, reading documents, and correcting small errors in data extraction and copy-pasting.

I have seen the best results when IDP is combined with automation. It has reduced manual efforts by at least 80 percent. Automation is always helpful, but the combination of IDP and automation is even more effective.

In one example, we were able to deploy more than 700 bots for a single organization in the manufacturing industry. They had around 25 servers just to run the bots, but now they are running multiple bots on a single server. They are saving millions of dollars per month by using UiPath.

Overall, I think the combination of IDP and automation is a huge game-changer for businesses. It is helping them to save time, money, and resources.

Most of the elements we have right now as activities with this do not require us to work with the norm of 100 lines of code or anything like that. It is just drag and drop, so anyone can use UiPath from scratch and be approved within a couple of months. The platform itself is very easy to learn and use. I don't think there were any challenges at any point with respect to this.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation. We have many back-end processes that run without any manual intervention. We simply schedule the bots, and they run flawlessly. We also have a bot that generates reports for us. As a result, we have had end-to-end automation in place for almost a year now. We are very pleased with how it is working, and we believe it is a valuable feature.

The UiPath User Community is great. I am proud to be a part of the community, where I have earned the Community Moderator badge, the Bylaw badge, and the MM VPA badge. I have witnessed the incredible journey of the community, from a group of people who didn't know each other to a community that meets in person at least once a month. The quality of the answers in the forum is amazing. I have seen a few companies create internal competitions to see who can answer the most questions in the forums and receive prizes. These small gestures from the community make a big impact. I would say that the community has played a major role in the growth and deployment of UiPath. UiPath has never failed to surprise and value the community members. The company has never disappointed us, and it continues to support our efforts.

When we join the UiPath Community and become an MVP, we gain direct access to the company's product engineers. We can provide our feedback and reviews for every product and release, and we also have beta access to all products when we are eligible as an MVP. Every review, opinion, and idea that we provide to the product managers is taken seriously and reviewed. If it is valid, the product managers implement it. I think this is the best thing about being a part of the UiPath team, both as a team member and as an individual. I really like the core UiPath team very much.

We have UiPath both on-premises and in the cloud. I think we were able to make significant savings when we upgraded to the cloud, especially in terms of infrastructure costs, deployment, and upgrades. The dynamic nature of cloud computing has helped us to reduce costs and save time.

We often use the UiPath Academy courses. I believe that 80 to 90 percent of my team uses the Academy, and it is the main platform where we have learned to use UiPath. I recommend that everyone take the Academy courses. For anyone who wants to learn UiPath, the Academy is the best place because it has everything we need to know.

UiPath accelerates our digital transformation and reduces costs. We did not need to upgrade to expensive or complex applications to accelerate our digital transformation.

UiPath has reduced up to 70 percent of the human errors.

UiPath has helped free up staff time. We have citizen developers from UiPath who are using UiPath Studio X to save almost 70 percent of their daily time on email automation. Especially when it comes to process mining, they don't have to do the same update task; the processing is ready, and everything is ready to be given to the developers. Even the developers are saving time when using the RA framework for SAP or ERP applications, such as by creating and using libraries of common screens, selectors, and steps. This saves them at least 50 percent of their time, so they can focus more on research and development and new features.

Document Understanding and Action Center have added significant value to UiPath, especially for the IDP process.

There are a few businesses that are failing to generate their ROI. I think that's where UiPath needs to educate businesses so that they can choose the right product for them, whether that's the entire automation solution suite or just the individual products that they need. I think that educating businesses about this will help them a lot and make it easier for them to succeed.

When integrating with third-party tools, UiPath gives us the freedom to write our own code and integrate it. However, if we could get a repository of at least a few of the layouts for the GUI or AI Center, where we would only need to make minor changes, that would be helpful. For example, the files have a template that extracts all the information. I would just like to change a few things, but I don't want all of that. I know we can just hide it, but that won't help because processing the whole document extraction will still take the same amount of time. If we could get those codes in any of the repositories where we could make small changes to the existing code and then import them into our processes, that would be helpful. We do have all the code. We do have all the activities, but none of them are accessible or modifiable. We have to use them as is, or we have to create our own. Those are the only two options we have. If we could get the codes in the report that we want, and then we could make the changes and use them in our own code, I think that would help us more.

I have been using UiPath for seven years. I started my journey in December 2016 and we started delivering projects to clients in 2017. I have been impressed with the evaluation of the UiPath products from 2017 to 2023. The features that we have been receiving in recent years are very good.

When I started as an automation engineer in 2017, people at companies like Sony and other networks and large companies were scared to share their processes and credentials due to security concerns. I have seen this challenge firsthand. However, now, companies of all sizes, including national banks, are looking at automation.

I have seen an incredible journey from 2017 to 2023. I am happy to have been a part of it.

UiPath is stable.

UiPath is scalable. We are able to upgrade anything.

Whenever we have a challenge or similar issue, in rare cases, such as when there are multiple questions assigned to a support ticket, there may be a slight delay in technical support responding.

Positive

The initial deployment is straightforward.

The deployment time depends on the complexity of the project, ranging from six weeks to four months. For a very simple UiPath automation project with multiple applications, we can complete the development, UAT, and deployment within six weeks. However, if the project involves IDP, validation, and other complex features, it may take three to four months to complete.

The number of people required for deployment depends on the complexity. I always suggest having proper planning. I would not let any of the junior developers deploy to production at any time. I would always have two different teams. This is my preference. Instead of having junior developers deploy to production with only one person, even if they are capable of doing it, I would suggest not giving access to everyone to deploy to production. Instead, they should reach out to the production support team, and the production support team should do a code review before the deployment. Once the code is reviewed, the production support team can publish the package to production.

I have seen organizations that have been able to generate an ROI of almost 100 percent, as well as organizations that have struggled to generate even a 10 percent ROI. Some companies are very good at knowing what licenses they have bought and how to use them, but I have also seen companies that have a whole suite of automation tools that they are not using, including process mining and test suites. They are still paying for all of these tools, but they are struggling to generate an ROI.

The main complaint I receive about UiPath is the pricing. Many people purchase the entire suite, which can be expensive, even though they don't need all of the features. The pricing is also somewhat opaque for businesses of all sizes. Unless a company is a UiPath partner, it is difficult to customize the solution to pay only for the features that are needed.

I would rate UiPath eight out of ten. We have experienced some automation processes that did not turn out as expected, especially with legacy applications, which can be challenging.

I have not seen any challenges with UiPath upgrades, but there are a few things to keep in mind. Consider a client with an on-premise deployment. The developers have returned their code, which is very old. After two or three years, the client is finally upgrading. During this time, a few activities may have changed drastically or been removed from UiPath because they have been merged into other activities. In these cases, we need to do some maintenance to ensure that the upgrade is successful. We need to check that everything is ready and that the upgrade looks good. This may take some time, but it is the only maintenance that is required.

I've worked in two organizations where I have used UiPath. The first organization was in banking and we used UiPath to help automate banking and financial forms. The second organization, the one I am currently working for, is a technology company with several sub-companies that include banking/financial, the hotel sector, and some overseas organizations. In this organization, we automate tasks that are repetitive, as well as reconciliations.

The main advantage is that we've synchronized our process across 70 sub-branches covering the entire island of Sri Lanka. Previously, we had three or four employees manually inputting the user entries for the various branches. We eliminated those positions so that data entry is now done by robots and performed in the head office.

We have multiple robots directing all of the data to the robot platform in the head office. We saw value within six months. That's how long it took to eliminate the positions. We stopped recruiting people who had previously done that task. More tasks remain, but the main use case was realized within six months.

The APIs are helpful in our workflow. We have a separate application for the government sector, and the Sri Lankan government provides that API. It's a matter of due diligence because we get the customer information, like the national identity card number. We use the API to exchange that information.

We get quick information about existing loans, including how they perform and whether the borrower is paying on time. If they are red, it means that the payments aren't being made in that period of time. That is the kind of information that is exchanged with the API. We can process 20 or 30 users every minute through the API on average.

Previously, our staff onboarding involved a large number of hard-copy documents—around 50. We have automated what was a long manual process, using automation to go through the documents to create a customized onboarding process, one that includes the government regulatory platforms that we are required to use. We used to have to store those documents in an archive, taking up our storage capacity. With UiPath's OCR platform, we get the information we need to do the task. That has resulted in huge savings for the organization, including environmental savings in terms of trees used for paper. It has also saved a lot of the human effort involved in verifying data in those documents.

In our previous process, the documentation was written entirely by humans, including data entry. That data entry was a critical point but there was a lot of human error. That has been reduced by 85 to 90 percent. In my current organization, we have automated about 70 processes and the amount of employee time saved depends on the process. For example, one of our automated processes has saved eight hours for one FTE, while another has saved 10 FTEs two hours each.

And we have done an end-to-end automation for an insurance platform, for renewals. There is no human touch at all.

UiPath has also helped us to reduce our on-prem footprint, compared to our previous platform. In our previous model, we worried a lot about our data. But with UiPath in the cloud, could our entire database be somewhere else, meaning not in our custody? A few years back, UiPath introduced governance and audit platforms, and that's when we felt that it was okay and that we didn't need on-prem platforms anymore. It was okay, at that point, to go for a cloud platform. We are migrating our on-prem platform to the cloud now.

UiPath Orchestrator is incredibly useful. It's the main dashboard platform we use. Orchestrator provides a single platform where we can connect with legacy systems and manage all the bots. 

Orchestrator lets us see the entire process across various department units so that they can see the separate tenants and units. The application can multi-task to handle processes even when we have a long queue. If the queue is piling up, we can assign multiple robots to clear the queue quickly. We can find the ETA for the queues and everything inside Orchestrator.

The Studio and development boards are also helpful.

The UiPath community staff is the best I have ever seen. I have worked in several communities, not only in RPA platforms but for other tools, but the UiPath community is the best. I am an active member of the community. If someone has a question, we always look after it there and are very happy to help them.

The UiPath Academy is very useful as well. My colleagues and I are always going through the new features that are available for our automation and new developments. We always keep in touch with the Academy.

Previous Orchestrator versions were very user-friendly for the admins and the users, but the new Orchestrator is a bit advanced. If they could reduce its complexity, to something more like what it used to be like, it would be better.

Also, if they can improve the performance of robots, that would be good. 

I have been using UiPath for more than five years.

There are no issues with the stability.

It is scalable and very easy to scale but, again, that comes back to the pricing.

UiPath scales easily, but scaling for the cloud and on-premises versions is different. For the on-premises solution, we need to add new licenses to scale up. But it's easy in terms of scalability on our end.

Support can be divided into two tiers: enterprise users and community users. Enterprise users like us get high priority because we are dealing with live operations and customers. When we raise a ticket, we have options like critical and onsite support. They reply in one or two hours, or in less than 30 minutes if it's critical. Their technical support is very helpful and the ticketing platform is very good.

We also get a fast response for non-technical customer service issues.

I hope their support can be developed because when there is a difficult case, sometimes it seems that it's a new issue for them as well. I have experienced that. That should be improved a bit. Overall, support is very good, but there is room for a bit of improvement.

Positive

We didn't have an automation solution previously. As a developer, there are lots of costs in our country associated with switching to automation. There weren't other solutions that could integrate our entire operation like UiPath. I don't think it was possible to select another one.

As a user and an administrator, I can manage the entire server from the main controller. I know everything that UiPath is doing. I also can't think of another solution that has the same broad user community.

UiPath runs Orchestrator and the application in the cloud, but our robots work on-prem in our data center.

In my previous organization, I deployed UiPath, but when I got there I didn't even know what UiPath was. Fortunately, they have nice documentation on the UiPath website, step-by-step. I followed that and was able to deploy things. Since then, I have helped several organizations, via the UiPath community, to deploy Orchestrator within two or three hours. If they have completed the relevant prerequisites, it can be done in that amount of time for a standard installation.

We had a detailed plan in place that progressed in phases. In phase one, we eliminated the data entry function in the main office and the branches. In phase two we would optimize our existing processes. Once all the automation is finished in the head office, we optimize those head office processes.

We have seen significant cost savings throughout the company. Before we started to use UiPath in 2019, we had three or four people doing data entry in every branch. It has eliminated human data entry and also frees up our cashiers because the cashier cannot go anywhere when the queue is long.

We calculated what we have spent for our entire RPA platform and what our ROI is. Our calculations showed that after one and a half years, we had recouped our entire spend on the RPA platform. That included the entire robot cost, servers, the software license, et cetera. That means we had ROI after 18 months.

When it comes to unattended robots, the cost for us in Sri Lanka is huge. It's tricky for us to convince management when they think about the price. We have to prove the value with evidence. We explain that we will save this or that amount, so please help us with this tool. 

Maybe for Middle Eastern or other countries, the price of that robot is not a big deal, but roughly $10,000 for an unattended robot is a very big deal for us. 

They are switching their licensing from a legacy mode to flex licensing. With that kind of license, they have given up a certain fee, which is okay, but the robot cost is high. Orchestrator is now free on the cloud platform, but we need UiPath Studio, the developer platform, as well as attended and unattended robots, and those are the things we pay for. The unattended robots are the highest priced. On a scale where one represents the most expensive and 10 is cheapest, I would rate UiPath at about two.

We have looked at several automation platforms. We have done several demos and looked at the price of Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism. But they are more complex than UiPath.

If you consider other applications, like Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere, the UiPath platform is better because it's user-friendly, making it easy to get tasks done. Even for a beginning developer, it's easy to catch up with all the stuff in UiPath.

UiPath has noticed that I'm an active contributor, so they contacted me to get feedback and invite me to build the community. If I check my LinkedIn profile, I can see all the things I've done in the UiPath community. I don't see that with the Automation Anywhere platform.

If I don't know how to do something, I can watch one video and learn everything I need to know. If we post a question on the forum, we get an answer in one or two minutes from another user.