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it_user1648707 - PeerSpot reviewer
RPA Solution Architect / Project Manager at a non-profit with 1-10 employees
Real User
Sep 24, 2021
Quick to develop automations, with great parallel processing and a simple implementation process
Pros and Cons
  • "The speed of development in UiPath is very fast."
  • "There are minor bugs. Every major software has bugs. That said, all are solvable, all are resolvable, and it's not a very bad thing."

What is our primary use case?

There are lots of use cases. Mostly, there are many gaps in organizations that buy a lot of software and a lot of automation platforms like ERPs, however, they don't know how to actually create an end-to-end process and connect those systems. In those cases, they end up like small islands in a big organization. What I started doing was filling those gaps. After that, we use the RPA to fulfill that. For me, a lot of processing in Excel or some processes that needed multiple users to interact is what we use the solution for. We just capture those tasks and convert them to RPA bots. Basically, we've automated a lot of manual tasks.

We do not use UiPath in the contact center environment. In our case, contact centers here are really dependent on CRMs. Even using chatbots in contact centers is still very new in Iran. These foreign branches, these foreign companies that are in Iran, do not see any potential to use RPA in this scenario. 

How has it helped my organization?

Mostly, UiPath has improved my career. I am an RPA Developer, and without UiPath my job wouldn’t exist. UiPath changed my career. Due to UiPath (not Automation Anywhere or not Blue Prism), there’s a noticeable increase in the speed of development. I was a C# Developer and it's helped me a lot. Generally, UiPath is in the top 10 and has offered a lot of new technological shifts and people are talking about it more. When people are talking, there are great opportunities. There are now new voices that can be heard. 

UiPath is constantly listening. That's a good point for UiPath - it's always listening from its community to its top customers and interacting with comments. Due to the fact that it listens, it integrates new software, goes into end-to-end automation, and changes for the better. Someday they will have Autonomous RPA, a real Autonomous RPA that can actually decide like a true robot, not just a robot that works on a script. One day they will offer a true robot that can finally decide what to do in certain situations, not by just using something like document understanding that we call Machine Learning. UiPath is very, very good at giving true innovation to people. It’s a win-win for everyone.

What is most valuable?

RPA is actually something that can be executed, that can be used side by side with many programming technologies.

The speed of development in UiPath is very fast. For example, sometimes you want to do many frameworks and the budget is low, with the timeline being very crucial. With UiPath Studio and with the whole UiPath platform, it can be very fast to develop and deploy. That's the main advantage for me personally - that the speed of development is great.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation starting with process analysis, then robot building, and finally monitoring. They are all there. The one exception I’ve noticed is that end-to-end automation is still lagging, I have reasons for that. However, the monitoring of the robots or even using insights is there. They are the prerequisites for an RPA platform. They are great suites. They are necessities.

I like parallel processing. I like that a robot can do some parallel stuff while the user continues to do their own thing. If it needs interaction, we can just pop up a clear window or apps, for example, or through email, in order to inform the user about the robot's request.

AI Automation overall has enabled us to automate more processes. However, when we go forward and move forward, we see that we can digitalize those documents before it needs to be processed by an image machine-like OCR or even Machine Learning. For example, there are still handwritten documents. We’ve convinced many organizations to drop those handwritten documents and use digital products for us. Those are immediate time savings for the process. We are not using document processing anymore, for example, in a specific organization. For processes that still need to have handwritten or printed out documents, document understanding could be fine. I really hope, however, that they shift to AI, which is what RPA lacks. RPA lacks Autonomous Automation, that's something that everyone is waiting for. We’d like to have a robot that's actually using the computer with its own mind, not just the workflow we give it.

What needs improvement?

For end-to-end scenarios, UiPath is still growing. I'm not saying that UiPath isn’t good. There is a lot of potential. They're using UiPath Actions or Apps, for example. Dashboards ensure that end users can interact in a new way with robots or with the whole end-to-end automation. RPA is a technology that hasn't maxed out yet.

Someday, there will be no legacy software or very intelligent processes that will use APIs. It’s my understanding that UiPath bought some company that specializes in API Automation. For end-to-end automation, UiPath needs to integrate all those components, rather than task automation to process automation, real process automation. With RPA, if you read the HFS report, you see that the process version is actually not a process. It's tasks. Perhaps in their next LTS release, UiPath will actually gain to that point.

There are minor bugs. Every major software has bugs. That said, all are solvable, all are resolvable, and it's not a very bad thing.

Mostly, licensing must be improved somehow. Licensing is very expensive. Even in many industrial countries such as the USA or UK, UiPath is still very expensive. For example, Microsoft now owns its own RPA, Power Automate, and the pricing is much more reasonable than UiPath. UiPath licensing is very vague and expensive. There are some ways that they can reduce the cost to make everyone benefit from an RPA.

UiPath needs a lot of maintenance. Every RPA vendor, every RPA on-premise software, needs a lot of maintenance. The cloud version has reduced that, as far as I know. It’s resolved the maintenance issue so that users can focus more on other things. Every new feature will be first on the cloud version and eventually, we can benefit from that.

We use document understanding. For English documents, it helps, however, for Persian documents, due to the fact that the models, the Machine Learning models, that are pre-built, are based on English or other common languages. If we want to actually use Persian, we need to use AI Fabric and build our own models. It's now out of our budget to do something like that here.

Buyer's Guide
UiPath Platform
January 2026
Learn what your peers think about UiPath Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
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For how long have I used the solution?

It's almost been three years since I first started using UiPath.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I don't like the stability very much as it has minor bugs.

You see that processes break without any reason. When you check the system, check every log, even view robot logs or logs in the network level and you see that it has, it's only then that you realize the issue was a bug from the UiPath platform. Once that happens, you must go to the community and explain the situation to each other. The good thing is, there is a community right there and you can learn from each other. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is great. UiPath has many capabilities. Anyone, via a simple search, can go through UiPath and even try the enterprise version and just see for themselves that there are many, many, many capabilities. You can use .NET and there are many NuGet packages that you can use or you can even design your own custom package. There are many great platforms, such as Insights, Action Center, UiPath platforms, and so many different types of robots.

How are customer service and support?

In terms of technical support, I do not have the opportunity to speak with them, as we are in Iran, and, due to sanctions, we do not have a direct opportunity to speak directly to UiPath's support. Therefore, I cannot have an opinion on their services.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I'm familiar with other RPA solutions such as Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism.  

I saw a lot of people that are going to RPA. I put myself in their shoes. However, from my perspective, UiPath has a great community. The UiPath forum is very good compared to Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism. Every technology can be learned, sooner or later. That said, the first thing that any kind of technological software needs to have is a good community to facilitate that learning. Without community, you cannot spread the word, you cannot spread the knowledge. It's the first thing that UiPath has over both of these other solutions. 

And the second thing is, as a technological matter, UiPath is much better. The other two lack the connection, lack the integration. The user interfaces of both Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism are terrible. I do not like them. They're not very intuitive and they are not easy to learn. UiPath is using Workflow Hosting Foundation from Microsoft and great integrations with .NET, which is so much better than the other ways that other vendors are approaching things.

How was the initial setup?

I'm typically involved in the setup. I'm involved in every phase of the process. 

The setup is straightforward. They're using .NET Core now and before that, they were using ASP.NET's Standard Framework. The company has relied on default application configuration as far as, for example, in web.config or .JSONs. Most configuration must be done in the UI itself. I don't really like to just manipulate files at the system level just to do something. I believe that's the way now, however, that can be improved. It could be just in the UI and the certainty would be much better.

The length of time it takes to set up a robot deployment depends on the project itself, however, for a small project, it can be in one month to 45 days.

The initial deployment of UiPath is not more than three days.

Setting up UiPath doesn't have any standard process. There's just documentation. We are always using its documentation.

What other advice do I have?

We do not have any relationship with UiPath directly. We are just a contractor doing RPA for foreign companies that are based in Iran.

Iran has sanctions against it, and there are a few companies that are local branches of foreign companies, and those that have licenses from UiPath all use on-premise deployments. We're always using the latest versions of the solution. Right now, we are on version 19 and it's in the 2010 LTS.

I didn't have the opportunity to use UiPath Cloud. I'm in Iran and I don’t have access. There are some capabilities that are still in the cloud version, like Apps.

While it depends on the project requirements, much of our work is on attended automation. I see attended automation as a gateway to an RPA solution as users are very busy and we cannot just pop-up in some programs, random programs, and stuff so they end up having to wait. I do not believe that attended automation helps users as much as an unattended version can help. This is due to the fact that at some point, someone still has to be involved in the process.

RPA is a new technology and a new shift that there's no good book on how to manage. Maybe there are some, however, they can be obsolete rather quickly, as the technology is changing and with every new version. That's why hands-on experience is the best way to learn. Even for UiPath, without any practice, without any hands-on experience, and without any good community, you cannot do anything.

If someone wants to learn UiPath, first they must sign up within the community and then go to UiPath Academy. Start there. Practice. Get in touch with people in the community, and then create a small use case and do some hands-on work. Practice is very crucial in RPA. Don't forget to review official documentation as well, as it will save you lots of time. 

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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it_user1642611 - PeerSpot reviewer
RPA UIPath Trainee at a non-profit with 11-50 employees
Real User
Sep 15, 2021
Easy to use, easy to set up, and offers good Document Understanding
Pros and Cons
  • "It's low code/no code which makes it very easy to work with."
  • "More videos are required. There are basic videos that can help you learn about the product, however, there need to be more in-depth videos to help you through certain tasks."

What is our primary use case?

I've created an app for conversions and exchange rates. Every day I need the exchange rate of a certain currency and I use the API free exchange and UiPath.

It's also used for the reconciliation of invoices.

I've used it for the creation of an onboarding bot for employees to be onboarded onto a website with a remote system. I used AWS and a virtual machine and created a Google Form from there, and used UiPath's computer vision to do onboarding activities and extract data from files. PDF files can then be entered into the remote system. UiPath can be used to fill the forms.

It can be used for web extraction tasks as well, for example, for booking flights, where you can extract the flight details for particular search criteria and place them into an Excel sheet.

It can also be used to extract data from invoices in order to populate an Excel sheet, for a portable format. I've created a process that used documents as a learning model and extracted the invoices, using logic to output the transactions. 

Another use case I tried was extracting data from Amazon based on exact data. The same can be done on Linkedin using the Linkedin API. I'm fine-tuning and extracting data, putting the outputs on Google Sheets.

I've experimented with many use cases and automated many processes. 

What is most valuable?

It's low code/no code which makes it very easy to work with. 

Building automation using UiPath is easy. If I see a video or some instructions, I can do it. Things are doable. You learn. If there are use cases or there is information online, you can replicate the process.

Adding activities is easy. All of these partners are integrated into UiPath now - including AWS and G-suite. You have activities already built right into UiPath and they are working to make everything as low-cost as possible.

Then you have OCRs which offer the Document Understanding. I can do a PDF extraction using just OCR in a normal way.

I love the Document Understanding. You can see whether a document is valid or not. You can accept or reject. I came up with a .NET background. I used to write so many lines of code for doing a certain thing. Here, you have a for a loop. You don’t need so much code.

I remember when I used to work for a UK client, a gas utility, and at that time we used a read-through data driver, and got the Excel data, and again validated everything. However, for that, we used to write around two, three pages of code. Now, using UiPath, you just do a real Excel activity and you get the entire sheet. Automation has made our lives easier.

I can scale automation without having to pay attention to infrastructure. Now, since the cloud has come into the picture, everyone is going to the cloud and everything is easier but with the new cloud partners like Google, AWS, Azure, and Oracle. A company may not have its own on-premise orchestrator.

Earlier, you needed three servers for production, testing, and development. Since UiPath has both cloud orchestrated and on-premise, it's easier for organizations to use less physical space. For smaller organizations, they can go to the cloud. For larger they can have their on-premise orchestrator. It’s flexible.

UiPath enables me to implement end-to-end automation starting with process analysis and then robot building and finally monitoring of automation. There are many process mining tasks, capture tasks, mining, et cetera. More things have to be automated - such as deploying, managing, and enhancing for continual improvement. It has all the components.

For a beginner, end-to-end coverage may not be essential. When we talk about automation, we should know what can be automated so that we ease our lives and that doesn't mean we have to remove the resources. You don’t have to involve the employees. You just need to simplify the task so that there is continual improvement. Users should consider not only, how to automate but what needs to be automated. If it is automated, how it can be improved gradually and what are the returns? Sometimes that doesn’t necessarily mean you need end-to-end. You just need simplicity.

I do use the attended automation. For some processes, I use the attended automation for testing purposes. I use the attended if I'm using UiPath assistant, otherwise, it's normally background processes that are unattended.

Attended automation will be for Document Understanding when I'm training a robot, for example, for what is the format or validating the time I'm using attended one. If I'm asking a user for particular search criteria, or for currency exchange it's mixed but mostly unattended.

Both attended and unattended work together - the human as well as the robot. However, it depends on the scenario. Unattended means you are not dependent on any human resources.

The orchestrated cloud, which is a SaaS, it's quite helpful. If I just want to install UiPath studio in my system and I'm least bothered about what environment it should be, what infrastructure should be, where I'm going to deploy, it is quite useful and quite easy when there is a SaaS option available.

I’ve used the AI functionality for sentiment analysis such as getting reviews from the websites about a particular product or service.

UiPath offers great object detection where you have a magistrate and you can detect whether you want to detect the people. If you want to extract how many people are there in that image, for example, during a social distancing sort of event, that can be used for object detection. I've used object detection for images in terms of extracting a number of people.

I’ve trained the system to read different types of invoice formats. I've used the email or Document Understanding that can read separate invoices, receipts, utilities, et cetera. I’ve used the solution to create processes for invoice reconciliation.

The AI functionality is quite easy to use. For tollgates, for example, when they charge for tolls, the solution can be utilized for seeing the number plate, and through the image, get the data, extract the number of data from the numbers plate, use the driver information from the number plate of the car, et cetera. It becomes a very easy AI model. Without any type of knowledge in AI, you can use those out-of-the-box functionalities.

The more training you do with machine learning, the better results you get in the end.

I use the automation cloud feature.

We are not bothered about any patches or any work that has to be done to maintain the infrastructure; the vendor does it.

The automation cloud offering has helped decrease time to value, however, since I have not deployed real-time projects, I cannot give exact numbers on the decrease. That said, from my experience, I feel that it is true.

It’s my understanding that the automation cloud offering helps to decrease UiPath's overall cost of ownership, however, at this time, I just use the free version.

The solution enables you to be better and better with cloud features that are quite accessible.

In terms of UiPath Apps, I have used them, however, just for my own purposes, for my own training purposes, as I was learning. It is easy to use and pretty much drag and drop. For the basic things, the user can do a lot with minimal training. You can do everything with low code and less coding knowledge as well. A person may not be technically sound, however, even with minimum knowledge, they can create apps using UiPath apps. That's the interesting part of UiPath apps.

UiPath reduces the cost of digital transformation. It does not require expensive or complex application upgrades or IT support.

UiPath has reduced human error. For example, let's say I'm filling a form using a document. Typos, errors, spelling mismatches, et cetera, are reduced when it is handled by automation. When we automate this process, the robot minimizes the error since a human is not involved in this case of data entry. It will extract whatever data there is in that document and it will fill in the form. Similarly, for calculating Excel data, we can avoid calculation errors.

What needs improvement?

More videos are required. There are basic videos that can help you learn about the product, however, there need to be more in-depth videos to help you through certain tasks. For example, I was trying to use an API for conversion. I was doing it for a single transaction, one by one. There can be cases where it will not go for a simple conversion or simple transaction, and it will be a bulk action. In that case, I may need to upload a file. I was searching for an upload control however, I could not find anything to assist me.  It would have been helpful to find some sort of instructional video for this task. The file upload, where you upload a file and select a file so that you can extract data all those things based on that file is a commonly used feature - and yet, that was missing. 

UiPath apps may be able to increase the number of automation I can create while reducing the time it takes to create them. However, they need to elaborate on the process. I need more articles on that. From the point of view of the person developing the automation, I need more details on writing the correct code or doing the automation, which I hope will be coming in the next releases.

They require an improvement in the IEP. I don't know whether it's a bug or something. I find that, with drag and drop, you have to drag it in a particular fashion. 

When they add new features, they should offer some in-depth sessions on them to help people get comfortable with the changes. 

It would always be helpful to have new partnerships between UiPath and different cloud vendors. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I started using the solution in February of this year.

I am on a gap year. I used to work for an IT company, and I have taken a gap. To re-skill myself I started learning UiPath. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is quite good. You have other options, such as Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism. UiPath will be like coming out with new revisions in the coming years that will continue to compete with those.

Even now, it's quite stable and quite reliable, even if the changes which are coming, in the much of the deployment, are felt good. There are frequent revisions. I have no experience in other automation, however, from what I've seen, even as it changes, it's stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is quite good. It has alliances with different cloud vendors so that you can scale your robots. You can have different instances, different new virtual machines, and in the cloud. You're not concerned about what to install and you just pay as you use. The cloud vendors make it very scalable. 

Once I am employed, I do plan to increase usage.

How are customer service and support?

I use the forum for any queries. I didn't face user technical problems for any robots that I am using. I have not been in direct contact with technical support.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. 

You just go to UiPath.com and register with your user ID or any email ID. From there, you install the UiPath Studio and you set your workflows. Once you publish, you get it in your orchestrator, attach the process, create a job. And then you run it. 

It's quite easy to create a workflow, publish it, and deploy it in the orchestrator. Next, you have to tag the correct robot, the correct machine, and the correct sponsor. In any environment you want.

For small processes, the deployment would hardly take a few minutes to deploy.

Maintenance is light for the cloud instances and really does not need much. The cloud vendors do the work, however, users need to pay for the services which they use.

What about the implementation team?

I handled the initial setup myself. I did not need an integrator or consultant. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I can't speak to the exact pricing of the product as I am using a free version of it right now. I'm not paying any licensing fees to UiPath.

I shouldn't say you need licenses for many things for today, however, for working on Visual Studio, if you want to automate something, you need a license, which costs you around 5,000 to 6,000 Rupees. If you want to do some extra Microsoft office activities. You need the maximum office license, which is 70,000 Rupees. That said, with UiPath, you need not have Microsoft Office installed. You can still read the data and extract the data in an Excel format. You can then share the data from those automation activities with no third-party license cost and no software licenses.

UiPath can help save costs in an organization. There are so many legacy systems wherein you have so much data migration, and many things which are done manually can be automated and you can save resources while doing something new. 

What other advice do I have?

I'm just an end-user. 

My first experience with automation was, "Okay, which product to learn?". After all the reviews and reading, I decided to start with UiPath. My previous background was .NET web development. I was a full-stack web developer with seven-plus years of experience and I found that I really like when a product is built on a .NET framework. I realized that "Okay, it's better to do something, learn something and I have a background of the platform so let's start from there".

When I started using this product, I found the academy was quite open, and in the forum, there were people who were training as well. I found that while I may not get 100% of the answers I need, 85% to 90% of the time the answer is there if you search. 

Many people do not know RP automation, and it's great that they have these free resources - which is rare for such a product. Each region has a chapter where people working in this area come and share their knowledge and experiences.

Currently, I'm using the 2019 version of the solution. It's not the latest, however, it's not much older. I'm using the enterprise as well, which is free for 60 days. I started using UiPath apps as well. I'm learning so I use the cloud orchestrator to deploy my processors. 

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
UiPath Platform
January 2026
Learn what your peers think about UiPath Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1647894 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior RPA Developer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Sep 15, 2021
Easy for people without a coding background to use
Pros and Cons
  • "There's a monthly upload process in my order management team. Every month, this team uploads a bunch of files to SAP. Now they don't need to do that because the bot does that for them at a given time period. The team members need to just upload a file to SharePoint and then the bot will pick it up."
  • "Capturing ROI needs improvement. I would also like for it to have more logging mechanisms in Orchestrator."

What is our primary use case?

My use case is to automate a bunch of office processes. It helps my team and finance organization save time and money.

How has it helped my organization?

There's a monthly upload process in my order management team. Every month, this team uploads a bunch of files to SAP. Now they don't need to do that because the bot does that for them at a given time period. The team members need to just upload a file to SharePoint and then the bot will pick it up.

It reduced human error. It saves us time redoing work and allows our humans to do other stuff.

It has freed up a couple of hours in a month. If you scale it, I'd say there are some processes that are daily. It has been at least 2,000 hours so far. This additional time enabled employees to focus on higher-value work. Bots can be tricky to debug. So, sometimes employees get frustrated there but overall they're happy it's there in the first place.

UiPath reduced the cost of our automation operations. Right now it's breaking even, but over time there'll be more. It has also reduced overall costs. 

What is most valuable?

The Studio and Orchestrator are pretty valuable. They seem to have a lot of connectivity and usability. It's pretty easy for people without a coding background to use it.

It's pretty easy to build automation using UiPath. It's a little hard for some activities because there's not enough support. There's not a lot of adoption with that activity, but the ones that are commonly used have pretty good support.

Its end-to-end coverage is important to us. If we have it all on one platform, we don't have to bounce around other software. But, we ended up doing a little bit of both.

What needs improvement?

Capturing ROI needs improvement. I would also like for it to have more logging mechanisms in Orchestrator.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for about two years now. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable now. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We mainly use Unattended Automation but it has helped to scale RPA benefits by automating departments for the very few Attended Automations we have. It's important to me because my job pretty much depends on this software. Changing from this product to another RPA product is going to be extremely costly and time-consuming.

It is scalable. We have about 30 users on it now that are entry-level/senior associate-level people.

It requires four developers to maintain. 

We plan to increase usage in the long term. But right not we still have enough capacity in our existing Orchestrator.

How are customer service and technical support?

I would rate their tech support a six out of ten. Most of them don't work in U.S. time and they're not always very responsive. Sometimes they give an answer that is pretty generic and can be found in the online article, even though I referenced the article already.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We also use Automation Anywhere. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was not too hard and not too easy. Some documentation wasn't very clear, and for basic features it handled it pretty well. But, if you wanted to go more granular and customize your deployment, it would be a little hard to find out the answer.

The deployment took about a month. We involved the UiPath support to help us implement it and upgrade our systems. Other than that, we got our PAM software lead that uses CyberArk to configure the Orchestrator with us.

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI. I don't know the max number of hours but I'd say we've saved around 2,000 hours so far.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I think pricing could be better. I think it should be more visible.

The license system with Studio licenses seemed a bit redundant and not necessary.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at other solutions but went with UiPath because of the cost. Another reason was that we have more developers that are specialized in UiPath, as well as management, who seemed to like UiPath more.

What other advice do I have?

I still have to pay attention to the infrastructure a little bit because it's still On-premises. I'm using the On-premises products more so, but the support has been pretty decent. And then, there are community forums to look up how to debug some stuff.

The upfront cost is always going to be more than trying to keep it to the human process, but over time we'll realize more return.

My advice would be get UiPath support to do this for you and involve all your IT firewall security team.

You need to know more about security and cybersecurity in order to fully deploy your automations. Some of that is kind of missing in the Academy where they focus mainly on building automations, but not really securing it.

I would rate UiPath an eight out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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it_user1633143 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior software engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Sep 10, 2021
Helps to minimize our on-premises footprint and makes it easy to build processes
Pros and Cons
  • "Previously, nobody could automate the process. The design and implementation allowed clients to handle their own data, for example, for transfers and items like that. We were able to digitize entirely from end to end. Now, the customer doesn't have to come to the bank and they don't need a pen and paper. They just have to log on and fill out the details of their request."
  • "While the solution speeds up the cost of digital transformation, doing so requires expensive or complex application upgrades or IT app support."

What is our primary use case?

I work for a banking company. We use UiPath for tracing and collecting customer's credit information.

We also use it to deploy a bot when clients have specific requests for changes to their information or accounts. We're able to change their service via these requests. We can also remove some processes of manual intervention.

We've deployed bots across various processes. We have been able to remove human intervention for multiple processes and have seen a general improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness.

We used to handle dashboards manually. Now we've turned customers into kind of specialists in that, whenever they want to change something, such as adding debit, or opening/closing accounts, changing addresses, et cetera, they can handle it. They no longer have to push that request through us and have us intervene. They can do it themselves using the bots. 

How has it helped my organization?

Previously, nobody could automate the process. The design and implementation allowed clients to handle their own data, for example, for transfers and items like that. We were able to digitize entirely from end to end. Now, the customer doesn't have to come to the bank and they don't need a pen and paper. They just have to log on and fill out the details of their request. Being able to share this new data is important. If there are manual aspects, we can now handle them for the customer. We don't have to have them worry about doing tasks manually.

What is most valuable?

We can use browsers like Internet Explorer for our automation. However, we've been able to use Excel as well with just a few hiccups in the beginning. UiPath really helped us with this change by disabling some elements at the managerial level. It was a big learning experience for us.

We are able to use codes to do a lot of checking to see that we are getting enough data and that we are able to filter it correctly.

The ease of building a process is pretty good and simplifies things. Normally it takes three to four hours to complete a process. That includes everything, including generating reports and sending the data. There are, of course, multiple steps involved in the process. We've gotten that down to about six minutes. We're able to better focus the work and, at the same time, we're able to use a lot of bots to get things done. 

We can scale the solution well. We've already deployed four more bots for various processes. We're actually able to have good control of each bot. We're able to put things into a proper standard format and then send the information where it needs to go without having to handle the process manually. It would go so much slower without the bots in place without having to go back to the customer. There's no longer a needs to do anything manually here. There was a concern that customers would not be able to manage the process that's automated by the bots, however, in the end, everything was clear and it was easily handled. 

The solution enables us to implement end-to-end automation, starting with process analysis, then robot building, and finally monitoring automation. We're involved from the very beginning to design the process from step one. We're able to test everything out before moving to production and that allows us to make sure everything works. End-to-end coverage is first and foremost. The visibility we have is really powerful. 

We were able to deploy in parts, as we didn't have global production. At first, we didn't know how to manage everything. Once we went live, however, we were able to monitor it all. We could send reports to show what was happening, and if there were any concerns, we could go and directly look at those areas.

The solution helped to minimize our on-premises footprint. I always look for capabilities to deploy from the cloud. It changes as the customer needs to decide how to ultimately deploy. However, the cloud is able to handle anything an on-prem option would. We are able to handle the entire volume using one cloud. Our bots are able to be on the cloud and online. 

Attended automation has helped to scale RPA benefits in our organization by automating department roles and specific processes that require human/robot collaboration. Previously, we were concerned with data loss and not being able to attend to the browser. We were not able to do even the simpler stuff.

We were able to upgrade to an updated version, from 19.4 to 20.4 which had some more UI and automation. We were able to upscale our entire quota. We're able to do workarounds if we need to.

We can speed up our automation processes and automate faster with UiPath.

The automation cloud offering helps to decrease the solution's total cost of ownership by taking care of items such as infrastructure maintenance and updates.

The solution speeds up the cost of digital transformation.

The solution has reduced human error. We've been able to reduce errors and have gotten more quality data instead of just more data. That way, if there is a mistake or something goes wrong, we can check the error against the quality data and resolve issues more effectively.

It has also freed up our employee's time. They can better deliver on big and innovative processes. We used to handle a lot of high volume tasks at the end of the month mostly and that's since tapered off. We'll have to see at the end of this month how much time savings we've accumulated. 

Our employees can now focus on more high-value work. Employee satisfaction is high as well. In a bank, we do have a high volume of transactions every month, and previously, each would have to be checked and verified and balanced by someone manually - even if most would be dismissed as canceled transactions, et cetera. With automation, our employees no longer have to look at everything themselves. They can be wiser about what interventions they have to make every month.

Overall, the solution has reduced the cost of our automation operations. As a developer, I cannot speak to exact amounts, however, as that's handled more by project managers. 

So far, the solution has saved the company costs. We're very customer-focused in our organization. Deploying these kinds of innovative solutions allows us to better serve while offering our customers better services as well. It's become like their personal service manager. We've done this without ballooning costs. 

What needs improvement?

While the solution speeds up the cost of digital transformation, doing so requires expensive or complex application upgrades or IT app support. You will need IT. That said, I haven't had a chance to explore mine in any detail.

There need to be more warnings for when there are issues within the automation especially when it comes to exceptions. We're not easily made aware of problems. The sooner we understand what the exception is, the sooner we can adjust things.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution going on 25 years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

For the most part, the solution is stable. We did encounter one problem when we were testing. Apart from that, we did not encounter any issues. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution has helped us to scale. For example, if we have no idea from where to start, but we know the process test and know the application is involved, we're able to start building. We can go and test and try out options without having to put anything into production right away, so we can refine and validate the data.

The solution itself is highly scalable. We have three worker bots running at the same time. Users, however, can scale it up however they want to.

I'm not sure if the company has any plans to increase usage or put more bots into production.

How are customer service and support?

We have a team that lets us know if there are any changes coming up in relation to the infrastructure. If there are any changes that will affect the bots, it will not be done suddenly. We'll be able to ensure nothing is overly affected. 

In terms of technical support, if something is not working as it should, they do need to review it. They do help us with technical validation.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not use a different solution before we adopted UiPath.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was complex to a certain degree. The documentation was unclear. In the beginning, we weren't really comfortable with the approach or the process. 

There were two types of processes happening at once during the deployment. We did each process twice, and each took two or three hours, so it was about one day to get everything going for each deployment, and then we did a final run-though. Likely, in total, it took us about 12 days or so. 

We tend to have a specific process that we go through for every implementation we do. We'll go through how many bots are needed and what to do. We also do testing for all types of situations. We have a process designer who is involved and assists with the setup.

In terms of maintenance, we don't need anyone to run the operation. We have three to five people that after a month of production, have a good enough understanding to handle any outstanding tasks, whatever they may be. If there are issues, such as, for example, if Internet Explorer is not working, they are able to troubleshoot and manage the solution.

What about the implementation team?

We did not use an integrator or installer to assist in the deployment process.

What was our ROI?

We have seen an ROI.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I always work to design my solution in such a way that is the most cost-effective.

You do need to pay the full license cost in order to use UiPath, so you need to be strategic to get the most out of it.

Our company handles costs internally as we do not directly deal with a vendor.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did evaluate other options for data capture before we chose UiPath.

What other advice do I have?

We are customers and end-users.

At this time, we do not use the AI functionality within UiPath. Our solution is not impacted by anything generating artificial intelligence.

The automation speeds up the time to value and we see very quickly how much the solution is able to positively affect the business aspects. It's been really helpful for us overall. The processes have been profitable. 

I'd advise users to really focus on their input and output size. You'll be able to validate your data. It will help you transform your processes. You just need to figure out where you want to simplify and where you want to maximize value.

We've learned how to standardize processes. We've realized how important it is to always try to be very clear when creating automation.

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
it_user1629528 - PeerSpot reviewer
RPA Developer at a engineering company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Aug 12, 2021
Reduces human error, while offering end-to-end automation and easy development
Pros and Cons
  • "The easy development process is very useful for us."
  • "I had a problem with one thing, and that was exporting activities packages between the test server and the production server."

What is our primary use case?

Currently, I'm dedicated to working within a finance organization. It develops processes in the scope of five months. I do not use the solution in a contact center environment. I work on projects for shared services.

How has it helped my organization?

It's FTE-saving. Since the beginning of this year, I have covered more than four FTEs. That means that for half a year, I saved three FTEs. That's a huge benefit.

What is most valuable?

The easy development process is very useful for us. I know how to use it, and I'm able to prepare and add to a solution in one or one and half weeks. It depends, of course, on the process, however, largely, if it's a simple process, it could be developed from the beginning very quickly.

It's very important that I can create end-to-end automation using UiPath. Thanks to that, the business is free to do more advanced processes and is not overloaded by less important, repetitive tasks.

I've noticed that UiPath has reduced human error. The first benefit is FTE saving, however, the second is quality of work. Human work, if it's repetitive, it's very often related to human errors. That said, if something is programmed really well and automated it works without the need for human intervention.

What needs improvement?

I had a problem with one thing and that was exporting activities packages between the test server and the production server. I'm not sure that it's my own issue, or a general problem from the global perspective of UiPath, however, I have a lot of problems with packages, using the test server and production server.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for quite a long time. I started using UiPath at the beginning of 2017. It has been more than four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. Everything works well and I don't have any production bugs. I only have positive feedback, It works and there are no unexpected errors.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability  depends on the developer. If we have an advanced developer, it is really easy to scale. If someone's preparing, for example, components, it is quite easy. From UiPath's perspective, it is easy to scale, however, that said, everything depends on the person who uses it and how familiar they are with the product.

How are customer service and technical support?

I had a chance to contact UiPath when UiPath licenses needed updating. I had close contact. I wrote a ticket and I had contact with them in less than an hour. I was quite pleased with their response time. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I made the right decision to go with a solution that can scale automation without having to pay attention to the infrastructure and to develop my skills in terms of RPA.

I had to do tests with Blue Prism and UiPath. Currently, I use UiPath, as I find it's much easier to use than other RPA tools. For example, I really like Orchestrator, from a user perspective. The control of both is really easy as it's centralized in NonProduction Orchestrator, and it's really easy to operate it. There's general ease of development. In Blue Prism, for example, if you want to develop something, first you need to prepare the object layer, and after that, you can go to the business layer and connect it in one solution. In UiPath, we create just a component and connect components together which is more logical.

How was the initial setup?

I was not exactly involved in the initial setup as when I joined the company, UiPath had already been set up. Therefore, everything was prepared to start development. That said, for a few months, I worked in UI as a consultant for external clients. During that time I had the chance to install UiPath for external clients. In that sense, I've been involved in the installation of UiPath previously.

The initial setup's level of difficulty depends on a client's needs. At first, we need to think about the strategy of the client. In general, UiPath provides different types of architecture and it's generally straightforward.

The setup could take weeks if you need, for example, to order servers. However, if servers are already on-site, we can begin the installation. As I recall, I set up Orchestrator in a few hours.

What was our ROI?

We have calculations for that and we are on the right path. There is an ROI when using UiPath, however, I thought it would be higher. That said, we can calculate costs related to the UiPath environment and compare it to the automated processes created and we can see we are on a good path. It's hard, however, to provide exact numbers at this time. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I'm not sure if UiPath has sped up or reduced the cost of digital transformation. It's a tough question, as the license for the solution is too expensive right now. In Western Europe, it may be okay to pay such money for a license, however, where I work now, in Poland, the license cost is too high for the local market.

What other advice do I have?

We have a connection to ServiceNow. In ServiceNow, there is an approval process to publish UiPath processes on the Production Orchestrator, and that's easy. I'm able to set schedules or run a process model from our Production Orchestrator.

We have different servers for development, including a different server for Orchestrator and a different server for production. However, everything is in my company environment.

At this point, I only use unattended automation. Currently, there are no projects for attended automation as it's more for the business side. I am just a developer from the IT side. I am not involved in any business department.

I'd advise those considering the solution to find a really good developer and maybe a solution architect. Some time ago, UiPath had marketing such as, "everyone could be a developer," and so on. That said, it does not work like that. UiPath developers should have a large IT background. During my career, I've seen a lot of projects fail due to developers' lack of skills.

My biggest takeaway from the solution is that automation is a process that doesn't have a start and end point. It's an ongoing process.

Overall, I'd rate the product at an eight out of ten. If the licensing price matched the local market's capabilities, I'd give it higher marks. I would like to start deploying the UiPath solution in Polish companies, and there is huge scope to do it, however, for now, it's too expensive.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
it_user1624404 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior RPA Consultant at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Consultant
Aug 10, 2021
Easy to grasp the basics and to get started; has a very low learning curve
Pros and Cons
  • "The automation Cloud Platform has definitely helped reduce the time it takes to create automation. It brings a lot of things together. It's easy to use for clients and customers. It makes it easy to bring different disciplines together, so I don't need to think about how to reuse my code, or how to explain to the customer, and I don't need to share the processes to be able to release, run, and monitor and to get reports on the results."
  • "I'm trying not to sound negative about it as I like them a lot, however, the process mining and the process mining features stem further away from the development of the robots and the monitoring. The development, run, and monitoring are really closely knit, or really close together, and then process discovery is starting to get there. It's on its way, however, I don't see that it's as closely connected as the other three parts."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use UiPath for outsourcing. Customers call us when they need extra people to fill positions, on a temporary or permanent basis, similar to a temp agency.

The biggest use case that is running right now is that we get job openings or requests from a lot of different third-party brokerages, customers, clients, vendors, et cetera. They all arrive through different platforms. We get an email saying there's a request, please check it out and let us know if you have someone to fulfill the position, and the request is implemented through UiPath. It's automated. We've created all of the mailbox folders based on the sender and the subject, so we know which customer or which broker it is. Then, we make the email follow a link to the information for the job opening or the inquiry and we put it into our Salesforce system.

There are a couple of smaller use cases as well, where we have task operations that have to be done weekly or daily. Mostly it's reading emails or reading schedules and making changes in files.

How has it helped my organization?

The automation of job inquiries has a lot of sufficiency on how we operate as we used to have multiple people need to be available throughout the day to manually check if an email with an inquiry came in, and that would require them to drop work and open the email, check it out and maybe take action immediately. Now that the robot is running and taking care of the need for filtering through all the results for them, employees can stay focused on the other tasks that they have. They don't have to keep an eye on a second monitor every time and drop everything they're doing to read an email only to decide what is relevant or not.

I understand work has to be tested. It hasn't impacted the entire company yet as I've been here a little short of a year now and we haven't made that big of an impact just yet. 

What is most valuable?

The most valuable aspect of UiPath is the community in terms of the way they open up their platform to the community and make it freely available for people to try and to practice. The amount of feedback from that community makes it very easy for us to get into UiPath and if you're trying something that you've never done before, you at least have some insights. There's almost always someone who has done it before or who has asked the question. I would say the community is one of the biggest extra treats for UiPath. 

From a technical perspective, I like the learning curve in the Studio and in the orchestrator - or the Cloud Platform as they call it now - due to the fact that it's easy to get into. It's easy to grasp the basics and to get started. You can scale up as fast and as far as you'd like or need to for your customer. It can do everything. You don't have to learn everything in advance to be able to work with it. It makes it really approachable.

Building automation can be really easy. The biggest challenge is to find the easy use cases as the use cases in the company can get quite complicated quite fast. That said, using the recorder in the Studio and then converting that to work in a mobile office is quite easy. I started in 2016 or 2017, and between then and now there's been a lot of changes. It's always been easy for developer-minded people to get started. However, now with the introduction of StudioX, it is even more focused on the different users and they have a different entry point for them. What I like about UiPath is that the training is really comprehensive. You can almost just record what you do by hand and then StudioX will translate that into a robot and then you can fine-tune it to make it more robust. Smaller costs can be easier steps. Just press record, do what you do, and then you're able to work with teams. 

Scaling automation without having to pay attention to infrastructure does make my job a lot easier for now. What I do see in companies is when they've taken the first steps and they start to scale up, a lot of them have policies or ways of working in place where they want to stick to the ways that they know. A lot of time I see customers will, in the end, do it by themselves anyway, so they use all of the upscaling functions that are available as they want to do it the way that they always did. 

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation starting with process analysis, then robot building, and finally monitoring of automation. However, while it does facilitate end-to-end automation, it does take a lot of the development and running and monitoring of the robots on itself. That is something that is facilitated really well by UiPath. The process discovery and the analysis is rather newish within UiPath. Maybe it's not as well integrated into the community platform.

At this time, UiPath has helped to minimize our on-premises footprint as it is a cloud-based solution. It's important that the on-premise footprint has been minimized as it makes it easier for us being a small company. We have 160 people working for us in the Netherlands and then a couple in the Caribbean. Bringing new technology in like robotic process automation and then asking from the IT department to get me free service and results of my configuring and have all the discussions about what goes where, how the security works, how to find the work, who gets access, et cetera is easy. This is due to the fact that UiPath is offered on a cloud basis and I don't have to do all that on-site work, which allows me to get to building and talking about RPA quicker. 

The fact that the vendor handles infrastructure, maintenance, and updates saves time for our IT department. It helps us to implement a lot faster. The client companies can have a reliable cloud solution to help them do at least the first steps to get them acquainted with the product. It makes it a lot easier. It helps me a lot, and it helps our customers in starting out as well.

UiPath has decreased the time to value in that since it's cloud-based, I can deliver faster than I would be able to do on-prem. If we have an idea, or if we want to scale up, we can do so faster in the cloud solution than I could on-prem.

The product lowers the overall total cost of ownership by taking care of things such as infrastructure, maintenance, and updates, however, I'm not sure what would happen if we scale up.

The automation Cloud Platform has definitely helped reduce the time it takes to create automation. It brings a lot of things together. It's easy to use for clients and customers. It makes it easy to bring different disciplines together, so I don't need to think about how to reuse my code, or how to explain to the customer, and I don't need to share the processes to be able to release, run, and monitor and to get reports on the results. 

UiPath has reduced human error. There are fewer errors and the processes are less error-prone and once the technology has proven itself within the company, within the customers, people start to trust the robots to do what they do. Employees don't need to check the work that had been done as they know that if the robot reported that it was done correctly, then it was done correctly. In that way, it has saved a lot of time by not having to check anything. 

It has also freed up employee time. It's a three-person team and it saved them a couple of hours a week doing the work that they used to do. It saved them a lot more focus as they didn't have to monitor the email inbox all the time. They were able to apply more focus to the other things that they were doing. That said, it's hard to quantify the gains. However, overall, it has made them happy. That's one guarantee. They absolutely love that they gave the mundane work away to the robot because it was bothering them to be monitoring an email inbox all the time. It's given them the time to focus on cases that match the right people to the right inquiries or openings. I don't have any metrics on it, however, anecdotally, they tell me that it helped them to do the rest of their work better as they could apply more focus to more important tasks and placements are better attended to. There's much more focus and attention and better matches being made.

The solution has saved costs for our organization.

What needs improvement?

I'm trying not to sound negative about it as I like them a lot, however, the process mining and the process mining features stem further away from the development of the robots and the monitoring. The development, run, and monitoring are really closely knit, or really close together, and then process discovery is starting to get there. It's on its way, however, I don't see that it's as closely connected as the other three parts.

The automation operations have not brought down any company costs. Automation operations have gotten more expensive due to the fact that we added UiPath to them. That said, you do get gains at a different branch of the company. We didn't replace anything with UiPath. We weren't able to skip a step or program or tool, which makes it an added cost.

More documentation would be helpful, as they change rather quickly. There are two yearly stable releases and then a couple of community releases and data releases in between. Sometimes not all documentation is changed as quickly as the features are. Sometimes you can find something in the documentation that is not the answer, or not available in the product anymore. That's simply a side effect of how fast they develop the product. 

Sometimes it's not entirely clear what features are, for example, available in their community edition, or in the on-prem, or in the cloud. The difference between the on-prem and the cloud has become clearer in the past few weeks, however.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for three years now. 

I started out at my previous company with systems integration. We started out with discovering robotic operations, discovering the tools, and suppliers. We chose UiPath and one of the competitors, as we found them to have the best suit with our customers. That was the end of 2016. That's when I started doing training in UiPath and started doing some custom integrations.

Now, I switched to a new job at a different company where they want to start an RPA practice as well and they chose UiPath solely for RPA.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

From the operations standpoint, the stability of the cloud it's very good. I haven't had any issues with stability. The Studio will crash at random times. I've identified two scenarios where I'm able to make the Studio crash every time by just doing the same actions.

However, other than that, the automation was really stable, and I haven't had any issues or incidents. In Studio, I'd say it is good enough, however, there is some room for growth there.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scaling automation without having to pay attention to infrastructure is a bit pro for UiPath as I'm starting an RPA practice. We don't have a lot of infrastructure engineers to build the project yet. Therefore, a lot of the time, with new customers as well, it will be a bit of a one-man show. Yet, what we can do is communicate to the platform and then make sure the infrastructure is there and then implement the platform and build a business analysis basically in an un-built realm. I have to do a lot of things by myself, so the fact that UiPath brings in the Cloud Platform and the Studio and it's all integrated and you can scale up without having to have too much. You need to know something about infrastructure to understand what it does for you, however, you don't have to do it all by hand. I don't need like three or four DP-trained individuals to be able to scale up or scale out. It's helped me get further faster.

Once you build the infrastructure and you know what you're doing and you know where you want to go with your platform and scaling, it's rather easy.

The only people really using it at this time are me and six trainees. There are a couple of ops people as well that are able to log in. We might have a total of ten people on the solution.

It's not being used too extensively now, however, that's for a large part due to the fact that most of my colleagues are working with our customers, so there are not too many internal processes or tasks. However, we do have plans to increase its priority as the tasks that we do have are at some points largely repetitive. We do a lot of operations and maintenance for our customers as well in different fields, so we are mainly looking at that for further automation opportunities.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support has been pretty good. 

I get a quick response and it's usually constructive. I manage to fix my own problems a lot of the time using the community forums and information from there. I haven't had too much interaction with UiPath tech support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We did not previously use a different solution. 

How was the initial setup?

I personally implemented the solution at my company. 

We currently have it running, so some internal processes. And, we're looking to expand that into the customer landscape.

The setup is simple. They deliver it in a cloud environment, I didn't need to do any installs or make any arrangements.

You need to make an account and get started and watch a couple of training videos that will help you through it. The adding of the robots is very well documented in the forum, in the community, and in the training sessions. They have made it really easy to get started and to get the information you need to take the first step.

The deployment question is a tough one as I started out at this company while already having a communicators subscription on my own account. Therefore, I started out using that one and then gradually shifted toward using more automated resources. I don't have a clear overview of how much time it took to deploy. It might have been a couple of weeks overall, however, I was doing different things at the same time, and I never took a metric of how much time it took. I'd say starting out if the prerequisites are in place at the company, it could be a matter of days.

Tasks such as setting up an account, getting some service, et cetera, if you know what you're doing and you know what to ask a few questions before starting, it's a couple of minutes or hours. That said, in reality, there are always things you forget or things that they didn't do, so it always takes a little extra time.  

My implementation strategy was basically to figure it out as I went, which is not the best strategy, however, it was the best we could do due to the fact that the company didn't really know what they wanted to do with RPA. I was figuring out my own place in the company and then their wishes with robotics with RPA. There were a lot of things at the same time, so there was not a closed strategy other than to start up quickly, as soon as possible, get feedback, and then try again.

For now, I alone handle deployment and maintenance tasks. That will be the case until our trainees finish training.

What about the implementation team?

We did not use a third-party service such as an integrator or a consultant.

What was our ROI?

We have not yet seen an ROI and have no concrete plans for any in the near future.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

While I have one or two sheets from old presentations that have pricing information, they are over a half year old. I have no current insights. I wasn't included in discussions between the company and UiPath in relation to licensing. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The company might have looked at other options. However, they did this before I was hired. Ultimately, they did want to choose UiPath, and I was hired based on my experience with the product. They chose UiPath at that time as they were working together with Oracle and that company has always been very Oracle-minded.

What other advice do I have?

I use the community Studio and the Cloud Platform. I take the cloud from UiPath. I'm not sure where they host their solutions. I use the automation cloud from UiPath.

End-to-end coverage is not too important to my work at this time. Maybe if they were more closely integrated, I would be able to offer it more easily to my customers. However, now, due to the fact that I often go in at the first interaction with a customer or at a company, I have to introduce the concept of RPA, I have to introduce the product of UiPath, and I have to introduce or orchestrate the Cloud Platform and Studio. What I've seen is that that's enough for the first steps, usually, the company will have a pretty clear vision of what they want to start out with in terms of automation. However, introducing the process mining capabilities would add an extra step to the start-up that we have to do and what they want to see is faster results in the early phase. It's short the time from when I come in to initiate the first value, so they can appreciate the value and start the business cases and go from there. Maybe, once they are a couple of steps further on and they have a couple of automations, then they go look at the process of task mining as they have the infrastructure, they understand what the process automation is about, and then they start to see the value process or task mining. Therefore, the end-to-end factor, for my job, for now, is not too important as I don't truly use the end-to-end approach. I do the start by myself with the customer and then we go from there. Then, in the next phase, I will build them practices and they will start to automate the beginning of the process discovery as well. There is not something that I have initially do. Once companies start beyond that first phase and the first steps, then process discovery and process mining can be really important in automation. In a later stage, it becomes more important. However, in my case, I work a lot in the early phases and haven't seen too much of the process discovery products in that phase.

Attended automation hasn't really helped us scale RPA benefits as we are a rather small company and there's only a small group that works with the product, and therefore, we haven't been able to use the assistance in the same way a larger organization such as a bank or insurance company might use it.

We don't use the staff solution yet and we have not taken advantage of the AI functionality. While I have played with AI, I haven't had any use cases to implement the AI sensor.

Overall, I am quite satisfied with the product.

I'd advise new users to start by doing instead of only reading. Start small, like finding small processes or if you're an individual, look at your own work. Find something you could do and automate that as it gives you the best appreciation of the value. Try it out in your own environment and just explore how it goes as that gives you the best insights. For me, when I started, it was a great feeling to watch your screen and watch your cursor follow the screen without doing anything. 

Keep asking questions when talking to users. When translating the biggest use case into other processes, spend more and more time talking to the users and going through the processes, and defining and understanding what happens. Otherwise, it's going to cost you a lot of extra time figuring out why you've got all these weird exceptions that you didn't expect. Everyone always talks about how easy robotic process automation is. However, only once you understand your processes from a user's perspective, you'll run into a wall. It's never standardized. It's never the same. I need to warn my customers more frequently about this pitfall, due to the fact that, yes ultimately, it's very fast, but it only is once you know exactly what you want to automate and that's why most of the time it's time-consuming.

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Sr. Software Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
MSP
Aug 10, 2021
Easy to use and simple to build automation processes with helpful integration capabilities
Pros and Cons
  • "Stability-wise, it's really good. When it comes to backend automation, it's amazing."
  • "The Orchestrator portion can be difficult. Previously, the Orchestrator which everyone was using, was quite simple to use. However, the new one is quite complex to understand."

What is our primary use case?

We do not directly use UiPath in our organization but we do have some use cases. One of those is sending bulletins. These are the notification emails that go to users on their birthdays, on their work anniversaries, sometimes they are sent after some sort of achievement, like if they have a baby. These notifications go via UiPath

The way it works is that the data is maintained within our tracking sheet, which is sometimes on SharePoint, and UiPath uses this tracking sheet to check the data in addition to the user and will cc everyone within the organization. For example, when we receive birthday emails, it goes to the person whose birthday it is on that day and cc's in everyone within the organization or within the relevant department. 

How has it helped my organization?

In the case of one of the clients I've worked with, they're working on a process where they need to provide students with a student visa pass. It's within Singapore and every student that has joined this institute needs to apply over a website. 5000 applications are received every year. These applications need to be manually added to the government website.

We automated this process, starting from the beginning to the end. There's a lot of interaction required. The team worked on an Excel sheet. In fact, a number of people work on these Excel sheets. With many people, there's always a chance of misleading data, as I might at one point be doing some more revision on the sheet, and someone at the other point might be doing more revisions. There is the chance that data will clash. In order to make sure that this won't happen, we came up with a SharePoint list where we could add the data, and if anyone changes anything, there's a simple and clear record of who made the changes, and what the change was.

At the same time, the bot can work on the SharePoint list as well - and there is no chance of a clash occurring. We can create a process and a number of steps that involve reading the data and extracting data from an application while swapping or extracting data between two forms. 

There's a lot of swapping. We extracted the data via the backend, via the database, and directly put that into the IC application. The processing time for this application previously was somewhere around 20 minutes. Per record now, the time has been reduced to three minutes. Previously, there were 18 people working on any particular application. Right now, there are only two bots working on this website, and they are doing work like magic. 

What is most valuable?

If we look at the development part, UiPath Studio has been great due to its ease of use and its UI. The availability of the UI store helps us understand the complete pre-hierarchy of the UI elements that's available on the browser or website. It's easy to use and it can be manipulated in the way we want it to. It allows us to do more work on the browsers. 

The integration aspect is very useful. Right now, I'm working on SharePoint and that integrates nicely with UiPath. The integration model is really, really great, and 99.9% of the time it works. While technology can fail occasionally, UiPath has a great track record. 

The ease of building automation using UiPath is quite good. The kind of projects or processes we have been able to automate has been helpful. We need to determine if it's a complex process, which is dictated by the number of steps. We look at the number of steps and work to determine if we can improvise and reduce the number of steps, and, if so, how. We look at if the process ever requires human intervention and where. The type of human intervention might dictate the complexity of the process, as well, for example, the number of applications we are working on. We might have to write some code on the backend or maybe we are working with an API. Everything needs to be assessed before going into an automation process.

UiPath has reduced human errors. Previously, everything was manually tracked with changes noted on the tracking sheet and we would do a copy/paste from one place to another. There was always a chance of human error. However, when this process is automated, there was zero chance for mistakes. While there may be exceptions, it would be only in rare instances the automation itself would make an error.

The product definitely reduces cost. If a company deploys automation within their organization, they need to understand that automation needs some time. One process will not necessarily reduce the cost. They need to see there will be results in the long run. It just takes time and they have to understand automation. They have to implement automation within the organization. Often, organizations will start the automation process, and then they leave it as they believe the cost is going up. They perceive this due to the fact that they need a separate system for development, a separate system for testing, and a separate system for operation, plus they need three servers for the Orchestrator. However, in the long run, automation actually lowers costs. It's just a hard up-front number to look at.

What needs improvement?

Whether or not the solution has freed an employee's time depends. If you talk about the business level, definitely not, due to the fact that, for them, it might be a burden. To the business, it might be a burden. However, if you talk to the IT department or IT level people who are working differently from users they would say that the best thing is that deployment is easy, debugging is easy, logging is very easy, and tracking is very easy. Anyone from IT can easily track how things are going. Yet, if we are talking about it from the point of view of business, for them it's not their cup of tea.

For example, if the system freezes on a person, they just close the browser, however, if the system freezes on a bot, from that moment everything must be manually re-initiated. For a regular business user, doing that process may go above their head and they may not understand how to fix it.

The Orchestrator portion can be difficult. Previously, the Orchestrator which everyone was using, was quite simple to use. However, the new one is quite complex to understand. Even with developers, they sometimes don't understand it either. 

There's a lot of things coming up that need to be learned. They need to put some more information into the academy to help others understand the Orchestrator end-to-end, especially for the new version. The previous one was quite easy. The new one is very inefficient in terms of the user interface. That's the area that I find still needs improvement.

I would suggest that they should provide a more disciplined document where users can see what exactly needs to be done in case of failure. For example, there's a very clever document on the deployment of the setup, but there's no documentation on what happens if there is a failure. Users need to be made aware of what to do if exceptions happen. 

UiPath is already aware of these exception scenarios, and when you call support they know what needs to be done. These details need to be on documents somewhere, maybe in the form of knowledge articles. That way, if someone has some issue, they can go to an article and see what's going on. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for about four years now. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, it's really good. When it comes to backend automation, it's amazing. With the UI automation in mind, I would say it's quite stable. However, there is a chance of errors. I would say, if you're doing a process based on a UI interaction, the stability it gives is somewhere around 5% to 10% on each process. Again, it depends on a number of things, such as the start-up package you are working with and/or what is the response of that individual. It's something that somewhat falls outside of UiPath, in terms of stability, however, when it comes to the process, everything counts. Even, for example, electricity counts. If there's system slowness or a system crash, it can affect everything, even if it's not necessarily caused by UiPath.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Attended automation has helped to scale RPA benefits. It is scalable, as, moving forward, there are multiple processes in relation to the same person, and right now it's done manually by a number of users. Probably, in the future, we can help develop a direction for that. Right now, the client is happy with what they got.

The solution is quite scalable. It's easy to scale a process or a UI. With big automation, it depends on the number of people who are going to utilize it. In those cases, we need to make sure that that network is available to scale. If you don't take into account the number of users, or if there are a lot of people using it, then the chances of failure can go up. That said, it depends on how big the organization is and what sort of licenses were bought from UiPath. 

How are customer service and technical support?

I have not really used technical support, and therefore cannot comment. With Studio, we've had maybe a few minor interactions. It's the same with Orchestrator.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have worked with a number of tools including Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, WorkFusion, Kryon, and Kofax. I have knowledge of a lot of other tools. 

Kryon, for example, has a process discovery feature, and UiPath also started up with this process development. However, what Kryon provides is amazing. The way they capture everything, the way output comes, the way each step is explained with the process, et cetera, makes discovery on Kryon amazing. In comparison to UiPath, UiPath just isn't as good in this area.

WorkFusion integrates well with the part where we have to read documents, especially bot scanned reading. UiPath does not have these capabilities, as of now, on its own. You can integrate Abbyy with UiPath, however, that's a different tool altogether. With Fusion and with Kofax, these features are amazing. On top of that, their invoice capabilities are amazing. There's a vast difference between UiPath and Kofax and Fusion when it comes to reading documents. 

That said, when it comes to working on the backend automation, when it comes to working with the UI automation, UiPath stands out from the crowd. It's amazing. The way it writes, the way it provides precision handling, the way it works with the queue, et cetera, is amazing. There is no other tool on the market that offers these capabilities. 

The one feature that I believe should be better with UiPath, however, is storing data in an independent manner. With UiPath, even though you store your password on the Orchestrator with the credentials, or even with any credential manager if you get at the end of the day and somebody has not reviewed your quote, you can tell your boss to send his password in a simple text format. This is where the UiPath lacks, and this is where Blue Prism comes into the picture. It's just better at securing data. People prefer Blue Prism for this reason over UiPath. 

How was the initial setup?

With my current organization, the department model is quite simple. We have three different environments for this: development, testing (what we call acuity), and production models. We have these three stages of deployment that we deploy robots and the Orchestrator based on the requirement of clients.

The deployment took a maximum of one to two hours from one machine to another machine. A complete department deployment, however, depends on the process type we are working on, as there are some features we need to develop. Apart from publishing these packages, the deployment of the server, or of the Orchestrator, or the deployment of Studio, will take a day or two to do the complete setup on one machine.

In terms of the implementation strategy, the first thing to do is the pre-checks. We need to figure out what sort of system we need. Therefore, we need to first confirm the prerequisites. Once that is done, we need to download a package and install it, and then apply the license. After all of that, we just need to create one small robot just to check that everything is working fine. There are some tools that need to be installed with that. For example, if we are working on UI automation, in that case, we need to install an extension. If we need to install the network load balancer as well, we need to install some of the prerequisite packages on the machine, on the server, to make sure that this runs smoothly.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

While the licensing models are quite simple, as a developer, I don't handle details about pricing or cost.

What other advice do I have?

My company does not directly partner with UiPath, however, it's a partner via a client. If anything happens with the client, it goes from my company via one of those stakeholders who take care of these things.

Currently, we use attended automation. The reason being is, it's more about password prediction, as the company does not want to store the passwords. There are a number of options that we have given to users where they can store their passwords in the credential manager. However, the company does not want to do that. The only reason we are using attended is for this, which is that the user has to manually go and insert the credentials.

I have not yet used UiPath's AI functionality in any automation programs. I have done some POCs for this, for documents in this setting. However, we've never practically implemented it within the organization.

With the current organization and with the current client we are not using Orchestrator at all. We only use attended robots and not Studio and Orchestrator. However, with other clients, we have used the cloud-based enterprise Orchestrator and have had the Orchestrator installed within the premises of the organization. I've used both.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
it_user1630491 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Developer - II at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
MSP
Aug 10, 2021
Reduces human error and minimizes our on-premises footprint
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution has reduced costs overall via automation. However, I cannot speak to exact cost savings. As a whole, it's saved our organization money."
  • "With artificial intelligence or natural language processing, we need to get in touch with the servers, however, we cannot do it without getting a proper license. Maybe a mode of artificial intelligence and natural language processing should be included without needing a different license."

How has it helped my organization?

Earlier, there was no integration of PagerDuty. In any process, we had been working with many stakeholders and many other clients, however, sometimes if any process needed to be done at a particular time, for example, 8:00 AM in the morning, and was not running at that time, we would get a failure message. Now, we instantly get an alert on our phone, or we get an alert on Teams or Slack. This UiPath integration, with all the features, is very beneficial as it is keeping us up to date and on schedule. If there are any failures the production support team can know and handle them immediately.

What is most valuable?

All the features, all the packages, everything, have been great. All of the artificial intelligence which we are getting is super-useful, as are all the needed updates.

All the features are valuable as, much like any application, it cannot work without just one feature. For example, we have PDF automation, we have Excel automation, Citrix, SAP, and we have SharePoint automation - which makes it so that we can automate anything. All the features combined allow us to work on multiple projects or one specific project. 

The ease of building automation using this solution is good. I really enjoy the flexibility. It's also very easy. We do need a few coding skills with languages like C# or Power Automate. However, it's got a good UI, with drag and drop functionality. That makes it easy compared to other tools, like Prism automation. UiPath is much better and it's highly recommended.

Scaling automation without worrying about the infrastructure was easy. I simply did some googling and looked to see which automation tools were out there and which was the leader. There were multiple training portals - including UiPath Academy, where I was able to pull all of these tutorials and insights. There's also a free forum where queries are answered. It made everything quite easy. 

The solution enables us to implement end-to-end automation starting with process analysis, and robot building. This end-to-end coverage is important to me as we follow an agile methodology. We have an RPA development life cycle. This product gives us all the tools and everything we need. The requirement gathering and document preparation come as standard models. We have UiPath Studio for testing and UiPath test features for maintenance. We have the Orchestrator where we can maintain everything as well. We can see where things are working or not. In fact, we have integration with PagerDuty that gives alerts if something is failing or not working. It's really important that UiPath has integrated across all the life cycles, and that all the phases are working properly.

UiPath has helped to minimize our on-premises footprint, which has been very important to me. It's very important due to the fact that we can build a robust and scalable solution for an enterprise and have security in UiPath. It's very important that customer satisfaction is there, no matter what we are developing. It's very important to our organization.

It's a very fast solution. It can provide a result or automation to a business process within seconds. If we have an API, we can integrate EPS as well instead of using the UI. Basically, we can get any solution we need within seconds. It's very fast.

I have noticed that the solution reduces the cost of digital transformation as we are saving on manual hours. It's reducing them. We don't have to hire more people to do these manual jobs, which has helped us reduce the cost.

We did require application upgrades and IT application support. We wanted to update and get all the latest features that UiPath often releases. I've seen every month or every year we get all of these new packages. It's better to include the latest version to get all the latest features.

With UiPath, we have reduced human error. Humans are prone to making errors that they can make at any time. The bot does not. It's continuously given proper feedback. The lack of human errors has affected business a lot. The bot allows for complete confidence that perfect work is being done. It has also freed up employee time. We've saved thousands of hours. We have ten processes that are running in production. Up to this point, with those running, we have saved up to 1,918 hours from the automation. On top of that, employees can now focus on higher-value work. It has improved work satisfaction. There is more self-motivation that boosts the work, which we are doing.

The solution has reduced costs overall via automation. However, I cannot speak to exact cost savings. As a whole, it's saved our organization money.

What needs improvement?

Right now, we don't have many use cases in the field of NLP, natural language processing, or artificial intelligence. There are not many tutorials or any videos or enough insights shared by the UiPath Academy. If we could get more insights, that would be great.

With artificial intelligence or natural language processing, we need to get in touch with the servers, however, we cannot do it without getting a proper license. Maybe a mode of artificial intelligence and natural language processing should be included without needing a different license.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for the past three years. I am currently working in Rackspace Technology. It's been two years looking at it now and one year in my previous organization, which was essential.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is very stable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. So far it's not been getting into trouble, and we haven't tested the boundaries, however, it's scalable.

I've been using the solution for the past three years myself. We also have a developer and some bigger production staff. There might be a few people who use it here and there. 

It's been extensively used in our organization. We are getting in touch with many internal clients, internal business units, and getting more projects. We are in the process of expanding it. Right now, we have five to 10 business units, such as accounting, et cetera, and we are trying to expand further out to other departments. 

How are customer service and support?

I've never used UiPath technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I did not previously use a different solution. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was easy. We basically had to install UiPath Studio and the tool, as well as the orchestrator. It was quite straightforward and easy.

The deployment process was just a couple of minutes. It was maybe five minutes. Not more than that.

We didn't have much of an implementation strategy beyond setting it up and working with a model via the deployment team. 

What about the implementation team?

We handled the implementation ourselves. 

What was our ROI?

While I have noted an ROI, I cannot share specific data points.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I don't know much about the buying, the pricing, and other cost-related details. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I did evaluate other options, such as Automation Anywhere, however, I have found that UiPath has a better interface and all the activities can be seen more visibly on the screen.

What other advice do I have?

We are just a customer. 

At this time, we have not automated departments or role-specific processes that require human-robot collaboration. Mostly, we have unattended automation such as NOMA inclusion. We do not use the AI functionality in our automation process just yet and we do not use the solution's automation cloud offering. We also have not used the UiPath apps feature.

I would advise users considering the solution to try it once. The community edition is free. You can explore and download the community edition and take note of all the features which UiPath offers. If it suits the company, I would advise users to go contact the UiPath technical team or support team and get more information on how to implement UiPath.

The more you explore, the more you'll learn. It's not just the straightforward drag and drop functionality. Many people say that UiPath is just for a person with no technical knowledge. However, the more knowledge you have of the technical side, with an understanding of languages like Java, Python, C#, the more you'll excel as it's based on a .NET framework. 

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free UiPath Platform Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: January 2026
Buyer's Guide
Download our free UiPath Platform Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.