What is our primary use case?
We have two customers. One is in the insurance industry. We are implementing it within our own company to automate HR and finance processes: back office. This is the same thing with the customer: back office. That's the focus.
We are using Studio, Orchestrator, and attended bots. We are not using unattended bots yet.
How has it helped my organization?
For one of our clients, their intent is to create a bot because one of their key folks was retiring. This person had a lot of knowledge of the processes and how things happen. So, the idea was to create a bot that helps. They want it to do 25 percent of most of the work, and this person would just validate instead of training somebody new to do the job. Their idea was to not hire for that position anymore. Instead, if the person is just doing validation, 25 percent of that load is then spread across their current staff.
What is most valuable?
It is easy to use. That is definitely one thing that attracts people.
I really like the feature that you get to record actions. I wish that feature was a bit more advanced where I could build more automation. Sometimes, you have to stop the robot because the robot doesn't get the level of detail that I am expecting to see in the automation. Then, you have to stop the bot, and stop or break the recording. While it's nice in creating a first sort of brush off your automation, I wish it would just go a step further.
I really like the new products that were announced here. The apps have a lot of potential. I'm interested in learning more about that in the next few months. The same thing with StudioX. Although, it would be interesting to see if they're more business-friendly or not. While UiPath is advertised as a low code platform, you can't put it in the hands of a business user. They have no idea what some of the features are. Some things, they need to have extensive training and be tech savvy in several things before they can go there.
Several of us took training using the UiPath Academy. I thought the UiPath Academy was very intuitive and easy to use. I would give it a five out of five rating.
What needs improvement?
When you are tech savvy and been trained, it is a four out of five for ease of use. Having that automation recording feature operate better and capture more of the automation that you're trying to build would make it a five.
With the new products that were announced, UiPath closed a few of the gaps. I can see how they could expand the products into other areas. There is potential there for some workflow capability. I know this would be going beyond RPA at that point, but having one platform that does a lot of things would be nice. Because as it stands, when you need to do a workflow or approval process, you need to send this out somewhere else. There are things the bot can do, but I can see some of that functionality already showing up though with the tasks and apps. However, I would like to see more. That would be good.
Moving bots to the cloud would be the next good step. The new product has Orchestrator in the cloud. I think moving to bots to the cloud could also be next along with having Studio in the cloud where you can do everything in the cloud: Deploy and run your bots from the cloud.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is pretty stable. I would rate it a five out of five.
How are customer service and technical support?
I haven't used the technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We learned about this stuff about two years and a half ago. We started exploring it, then we decided to take the plunge and try it out. That's how it came about.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was pretty straightforward.
It took us about four months from the initial purchase of UiPath to putting the robots in production. With our first deployment, we made a lot of mistakes. For us, it was like the first time you do something, you don't know exactly what you're doing, you just do it. Then, the second time, you're like, "Oh, now, I can go back and do other things differently." With us, it was very much like that. We learned sort of on the job.
What about the implementation team?
We did the installation ourselves.
I didn't do it, but I know that the people that did the installation didn't have any issues with it. They didn't need to open a ticket in particular or anything like that. This tells me that it was fairly easy.
What was our ROI?
We have saved steps and time from people doing their jobs because they're not doing all this crazy validation anymore.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated the top three. UiPath at the time was number three, Blue Prism was number number two, and Automation Anywhere was number one. So, we weighed them out.
I liked some of the functionality from Automation Anywhere. The recording feature of Automation Anywhere was much better and easier to use than UiPath. Although, I haven't seen the new Studio. In 2019, maybe they changed some things in there. Regardless, the Automation Anywhere tool seemed easier to use. But, in terms of partnership, they were not a good fit for the values of the company. Those things all go into account when trying to partner with somebody. That's why we decided to go with UiPath.
Some of the features in the software looked the same between Automation Anywhere and UiPath. Blue Prism seems very hard to use. That one we kind of killed on the spot. Between like Automation Anywhere and UiPath, it was more about how the company's vision, and where things were headed. All of that sort of helped. So, we were at that point that we were not really looking at the software anymore. We were looking at other things. That's how we ended up here.
What other advice do I have?
With the new additions that were announced yesterday, I'd probably give it an eight (out of 10). I still would like to see some other features, which I know UiPath would start crossing into BPM a bit when you start talking workflows and things like that. However, that would be a good next step given their market share, customers outreach, and beyond API and some partners that they have today.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner.