UiPath Platform Reviews

We are trying to focus on using UiPath for our mission. A lot of people use RPA for things that happen everywhere, such as in financial or HR. We are a bit different. We are trying to focus on things which will improve what our customer are doing.

For example, one of our customers is a bank. Therefore, we are focusing on improving their relationship with the bank's customers by using RPA. While there are use cases everywhere, we are focusing on trying a company better and more streamlined at their core.

The robot (in the bank example) focuses on improving the way a customer interacts with the bank. The robot facilitates the monthly interaction that customer the bank by providing information to the bank, processing information much more quickly, helping the customer and bank at the same time. The bank doesn't need to spend a lot of time or resources looking at the information coming in. The robot can process the incoming information, validate it, and do lot of the work which had been done before. It is a win-win on both sides of the relationship.

We are seeing RPA use cases everywhere. Pretty much every one of our customers has some type of RPA that we are talking about as turning into a pilot or have already moved forward with as an RPA solution.

One example is we created a robot to use with DocuSign, which is fairly industry standard.

It has a core tool set of things in use to quickly put together an automation, whether it's interacting with an application or website. It gives you the tool kit that you need to quickly put something together. Very often, we can create something in a very short time frame, like in less than a day, and show it to someone. Then, they can see the immediate value of the solution.

UiPath was easy to use when I first came into it. Though, I have a software developer background, so a lot of the concepts were very easy for me.

UiPath has a whole bunch of online courses in the UiPath Academy. These are very helpful on understanding the capabilities of the tool and some of the nuisances of it. 

It takes a bit of thought to find the right thing that fits into RPA at this point. However, with the things that we are branching into with natural language processing and imaging things, there will be more possibilities and opportunities.

UiPath should continue to grow and integrate with things that we can interact with, particularly with other enterprise solutions out there. They should continue to have out-of-the-box things that we can just take and work with.

I have seen a lot of improvement in the stability and scalability in UiPath over the last year or so. There have continued to be new releases with new updates, along with new technologies that help. Therefore, the maturity of the product has gone a long way in getting to a stable, scalable product.

Going forward, I would like to see more stability in the robots. When I create a robot, then I want it to work for quite some period of time. I've had some situations, where things will update, change, and the robot is broken. Part of this is making a more stable implementation easier.

We have put together a couple installations using Orchestrator. We haven't had the need for huge scalability yet, but it seems that the platform is there and has the capability for it.

One of our customers is a very large financial institution that has a lot of automation, because they have millions of customers. Then, some of them are smaller who are just trying to put their toes in. Even at our very large customers, there are still opportunities for improved, additional automation. However, the maturity across our customers is very diverse.

UiPath has always been there to answer the questions that we have or help staff when we need it.

Our customers ask us about the solution because of the government mandates.

Compared to the other RPA platforms, like Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, UiPath is much easier to set up. This is the value that a lot of our customers have seen, because it is so easy to set up, you can set up and install something on your own computer, use it, then run with it, and finally, play with it.

That is a huge advantage: You don't have to set up a large infrastructure just to do RPA now. Of course, Orchestrator is a little bit more complicated, but then I've had a much easier time setting up Orchestrator than I have had with some of the other leading RPA products previously mentioned.

The biggest thing for a lot of our customers is ROI. It takes about a year to see ROI, but it does vary based on use case.

One of the use cases that we are looking at is for a large government agency. They are taking people out of doing reports and putting them back in the field. In a cost constraint environment that we are in, this is critically important.

Some of the things that we've done have cut down tasks that took four hours to 30 seconds. So, there is a lot of benefit. Our customer are experiencing very large benefits from automation.

Go download it, install it, and play with it. You can't do this with any of the other platforms.

There is an easier level of entry for UiPath.

While you can easily automate with RPA, the tasks someone does repetitively and is likely to make mistakes, thus eliminating human errors on a lot of things, but at the same time automation is only as good as you make it. So, humans are creating the robots at this point, and obviously there is still a possibility for errors. However, in processing workload, you will definitely cut down on the errors happening there.

I work for the financial management office. We do a lot of manual processes. Our use case right now is that we look at all of our financial business processes, break them down, and identify the subprocesses that we can use UiPath to automate. This is very manually, so we try to find some efficiencies which have the most the value for our organization.

The most valuable feature of UiPath is we have direct access to read and write data in our applications, so we don't need to build a back-end interface.

The security needs improvement, especially in regards to managing the credentials.

I would also like to see better integration with Microsoft products.

We still have to test the final product. UiPath's recommendation is build another bot to validate the other bot's work. That is the scary part: If you make a mistake creating the bot, how can you recover from that mistake?

A lot of Elastic is not working, which is why the solution is not integrated.

While the commercial solution is successful, the government solution needs improvement. Government has so many regulation and requirements that still need to be address by the product.

It's a bit choppy, so people need to find workarounds.

We haven't deployed our first bot yet, so we are unable to gauge bot stability.

We tried to set it up in the virtual environment because we want to leverage a lot of the Microsoft features. They need to include all the API features going forward to make the virtual environment effective.

We are working closely with the UiPath technical team because we are pioneering putting this infrastructure on the cloud. 

The technical support team is responsive.

There is a big community.

We rely on our partner to identify a solution and give us a recommendation.

We set it up in Studio and Orchestrator. We are also ready to put the bot on our Amazon Cloud environment.

We had contractors, a consultancy company, help us build the system. They are a really good team, who also help deploy the solution for government agencies (DHS and DoD).

There are a couple options on market, like Automation Anywhere. UiPath is one of the leaders, so we picked UiPath.

Automation Anywhere is not on the DHS approved vendor list, so we couldn't pick them, as the approval process would take longer for them than UiPath.

Use UiPath in a more process-driven way, instead of BI-driven way.

We put everything on Amazon Cloud, even our development is cloud-based.

We haven't had a change to use UiPath Academy for RPA training yet.

The primary use case is data management.

The object cloning in UiPath is a lot more consistent than Automation Anywhere. The consistency with which it captures the information that it's supposed to in order to do the rest of the process is probably the most useful component of the tool package.

1. Navigating the directory of objects needs improvement. I would like a better way of finding the command which allows you do the thing that you're trying to do. This would help. For example, there was this one command that I was wrongly using for months. Then, someone told me, "You can do that by just using this one command instead of three jerry-rigged together." Therefore, I would like to be able to put in keywords that would allow me to figure out what command will allow me to do the task that I am trying to do.
2. The testing could be a bit easier. There are error handling steps in the platform tool, but it's not super robust. It's very user friendly from a development perspective. However, from a testing perspective, it is unclear what I am looking at. Maybe, they could add more commenting. 

When the complexity increases, the bug related issues go up. There are limitations to utilizing RPA software, in general, where sometimes you have business leaders who think something is a good process. Then, they ignore the technical advice to not move forward, or choose to. Thus, you're left in a situation where you're trying to automate a process that isn't great for automation.

One of the easiest things about UiPath is you click one link, it downloads, then you are done. With Automation Anywhere, we have a whole days worth of setting up that needs to be done. This is another component that UiPath is leading the industry in.

UiPath works best when there is a strong understanding of the capabilities and limitations of RPA. I have seen it work best when you have an experienced practitioner who has seen what an implementation looks like. Therefore, they know the right questions to ask as you are determining which process to automate. It is better to have skilled developers, who are more technically capability, to develop solutions using the tools which come with the package to make sure it is working correctly. 

There is the upfront work of talking to clients. There is a middle part of developing it, then the maintenance and operations post-implementation. You have to manage the bot after it's built, and it works best when you have someone who comes in and knows all three of the step components are equally important to a quality end product.

The ROI on all of our RPA use cases is from a throughput perspective. Processing time improvement is anywhere between 70 percent faster to 300 to 400 percent faster. For the right processes, there is even up to 7X to 10X improvement from a throughput perspective, even though it works through the UI. 

The most impressive use case that I've heard of was about saving a year's worth of FTE time in a month's worth of development, testing, and deployment, then doing the processing.

I have used all of the major RPA platforms: primarily Automation Anywhere, UiPath, and Kofax.

UiPath is the most open in getting people to use their software. I think they understand that the most successful relationships in sales come from people playing with the solution.

I started out as an Automation Anywhere person and will always be better at Automation Anywhere because of my affinity with it. Where Automation Anywhere might have UiPath beat is the speed at which you can automate simple processes, like being able to create and automate simple processes. Automation Anywhere is a better point of departure because the way you look at the script in it, there is almost like a sentence that you can read. Being able to understand what a process is supposed to do, you can just replicate the steps in your head. A non-technical person can open this web browser, type here, and press enter.

With UiPath, it's more from a process perspective, which is more useful if you're looking at automating a process. Instead of something simple, like for training, we'll have people look up the weather in five, ten, or a 100 cities. From that perspective, it's easier to start up than Automation Anywhere. 

UiPath makes up for its steeper learning curve by being a more reliable product. 

If you are looking on the spectrum of which is most to least technical and most to least scalable, UiPath is a happy medium compared to Kofax, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism. UiPath is less technical and not so hard, but it's also scalable, so it's a happy medium.

UiPath Academy is by far the best online training resource. From an online content training perspective, their videos and training modules are leading the industry.

We have multiple primary use cases for UiPath. We have already implemented three, but I foresee many use cases in the future. For example, I am working on one which will automate the gathering of information to comply with subpoenas.

The automation of repetitive tasks that eliminate human error. 

The speed: It is so fast when it replaces a human, you become much more efficient.

I would like to see some integration, or ease of integration, with APIs, so we can automate stuff faster. E.g., we go through a co-op, which is a card processor, and they have a very powerful API.

I haven't had any issues with the architecture at all.

We are starting small and have three bots.

I'm already engaging in conversations with UiPath consultants to ensure that I have the right structure. I know I will need Orchestrator soon as we continue to develop more.

I introduced automation with UiPath. This was our first introduction into what is robotic process automation.

The setup is straightforward. We did the complete setup in a week, which includes the server, the virtual machine that it would be running on, and a developing environment, because I wanted that to be separate from our production environment. This is for a small environment. I am expecting the bigger environment to take us longer.

For our service test department, we created a bot to automate the reset of pins and passwords for our users. This was the number one call for our service desk. The bot now takes care of it, and we freed resources. Now, we don't have any calls to that service desk team, and they are doing other things.

It was easier to use than I expected. We started with a very small bot. It took us three to four weeks to develop, then put in production.

My staff is using the UiPath Academy. I manage the development department. My staff has gone through the Academy's training, and it's awesome. It's a great resource, because now that I'm hiring more people, I'm having them go through it. Then, I onboard them on what is it that we need them to do.

In general, we use it for automating monotonous, manual processes which a lot of our clients have. We also use it for internal employees in our company.

We had a use case where there were a lot of documents that had to processed to give access to certain systems. With UiPath, we were able to really streamline that. Instead of having an end-user go through these documents manually, do reconciliation, and send emails back and forth, we were able to automate that solution from beginning to end, with very little human interaction. In the end, over the entire process, it saved hours out of their day, when you compound how many times they run this. It has really freed them up to do other more important tasks. That was my first foray into the client side, and seeing how happy they were to have this bot was great. At first, they were skeptical, but once they saw what it allowed them to do and what it's capable of, they were really happy with the software and what we were able to develop for them.

In this use case, UiPath reduced human error by 100 percent because we completely removed the human element from the data reconciliation for those documents. Through automation, along with some fine-tuning, we were able to get the data reconciled between the two files with 100 percent accuracy, and inputted into the system. Not every use case is going to be that straightforward, but in this use case we were able to get that result, which was wonderful.

The number-one valuable feature is the ease of use. I come from a development background where I wrote a lot of code. The fact that you have these activities with pre-built functionality is great. You can drag them in and use them as shortcuts to get to an end result faster than if you had to do it in a programming language. UiPath exceeded my expectations in this area.

Also, the training that's available through the UiPath RPA Academy, as well as the community - the forums, where you can ask questions - both are helpful. The community is a good way to see what others are doing and learn tips and tricks for the platform. That's very useful in comparison to other companies that do RPA but don't have robust training.

A lot of the features that I had been asking for have actually been released. We were using an older version of UiPath and we were having issues with Computer Vision and the OCR engine with UiPath. But now that we see that there's a whole Computer Vision activity suite available, I'm excited to use that. I haven't gotten to get my hands on it yet.

But in terms of additional features, I can't think of anything that I would request. I see that they have the AI functionality, as well as the Computer Vision. They have a lot available that I haven't even been able to get my hands on yet. I think once I get some more time to explore the tool and exhaust its capabilities I can look for additions from there.

There is some room for improvement in the area of error handling. I had to create a custom approach to error handling. If there were some sort of activity or workflow that could be easily dropped in to help support that, it would be good. Error handling and logging, as well as process logging, would be a big help.

I can't speak about its scalability too much because we haven't gotten there, even as far as using Orchestrator. Most of the automations that we have done have been one-offs which are done locally on someone's laptop.

But from what I've read in the training and what I've seen in the demos, it seems like a very robust platform that can definitely scale, when designed properly. I'm looking forward to the next phase of the development journeys that we have, where we are actually doing things to scale and thinking long-term about how we can share bots across an entire enterprise. It does appear that they have a pretty robust toolset.

I have had to reach out a few times to support, especially when I started and was trying to find my way around the tools and some issues that I was having. The response was great. I was able to get on a video call and actually show my use case and show the kinds of issues I was having and they were able to walk me through the process and suggest ideas about how I could approach them. My overall experience with technical support has been very good.

Our company is always looking at the latest digital trends and what we can do to offer our clients new solutions which keep them at the forefront of IT. We were aware of RPA and it was just a case of narrowing down which solution was the best to deliver to the clients.

The initial setup is straightforward. I've used other tools where there are components that you have to install prior to installing the software. You have to create a database and things like that. Whereas, with UiPath, it was a very light install. You just have an executable. It is able to install the components that it needs on its own. There was no other configuration that I had to do on top of that to get rolling. That's a major plus to me and, especially, to our clients. If we don't have to spend as much time getting them configured and set up, it's better for them.

We did the installs ourselves. We have a test lab that we built. We set up an Orchestrator lab so we can get more familiar with the tool. That was all done in-house as part of our training to get familiar with the tools. Essentially, if we want to sell this capability to clients, we want to at least have some knowledge of how to do it ourselves and not have to rely on a third-party.

Unfortunately, a lot of what we've been delivering right now are pilots. A lot of our clients are still in the "show me" phase of what RPA can do. We don't really have any data to say what the return on investment is. But they do see the potential. I definitely see the potential. Once we get past that pilot phase and into something that we can actually deploy in a production environment, we'll have a better sense of the ROI.

I did work with Blue Prism initially. I found it hard to get support and training on their platform. Whereas, when I transitioned over to UiPath it was much easier. I knew where to go to get assistance. Also, the "Welcome" documentation really helped me in developing and creating solutions for clients.

We also worked with Automation Anywhere.

The decision to go with UiPath was due to the ease of use and the training. Having that available, that we could train our employees internally and our clients as well, is invaluable. That allowed us to really get through the initial phase of familiarity and get right into development. Those other tools required a lot of learning on the job and on the project, which is not always available, especially when there are tight budgets.

Start small. Don't try to automate the most complex use case you can find. And definitely go through the training. There's a wealth of information on the Academy site as well as in the forums to get you that foundational knowledge, to really be able to do some cool stuff with UiPath. I know a lot of people don't read the manual, they like to jump right into things, but there is a benefit to going through some of the training courses to get yourself familiarized before you dive in.

I've been working in automation for a couple of years and have used quite a few tools. I do find that the overall approach that UiPath takes toward RPA is really good for getting people in and developing and delivering in a much more efficient manner than with some of the other tools I've used.

Automation technology is something that's needed, although I don't think it is known enough yet. People know that it's out there but they don't know in what capacity it can be used and how it can help them. It's definitely something that needs to be pushed and communicated. But I see it as a technology that can assist in all facets of an organization. It's something that all people within a company can benefit from, whether internally in our company or externally for our clients.

I would give UiPath a nine out of ten. There are always things that can be improved.

We automate processes across a number of different agencies. We automate whatever use case they determine. We tend to focus on the financial management side, but we have other areas that we've delved into such as HR and general data pulls for executive dashboards.

Oddly enough, a lot of our clients have not focused on work where there are people actively doing the process already. They've chosen to focus their efforts on processes for which they haven't had the manpower. It has been a little bit of a challenge in that the use cases tend to be coupled with a lot of process-development stuff. We have to figure out what the process is before we can even begin to automate it.

But over time, we plan on trying to shift that focus back to areas where they have a large number of people doing a process all the time and getting them to shift those people into doing the complex processes where there isn't a structure already determined.

The differentiation between unattended and attended bots is valuable, as well as being able to do portions of a process that are unattended coupled with portions that are attended. We can get human interaction, all within the same product.

The product is easy to use and definitely exceeded my expectations in that context. I have an IT enterprise architecture background with some computer programming experience. This was very easy to grasp.

The additional plugins and different partner programs have been a huge help.

My only complaint is that I hate VB.NET. If I had to pick a language, it would not be VB.NET. That whole .NET framework is just overly complicated. But I can understand why it's necessary for the use case of RPA.

We haven't had any problems with the stability. In comparison, we do use Blue Prism and that solution often runs into memory issues. That's one thing that we have not had to deal with, with UiPath.

I haven't had a lot of chances to test out the scalability firsthand, but the documentation is all there and it makes sense. It seems relatively simple, which is a big help. Once again, this is in contrast to Blue Prism whose documentation is not good. It's very confusing to figure out how you take it from a single-bot use case to multiple bots and more.

It's an easy setup. It's a single install which is pretty simple. Connecting to Orchestrator does get a little complex in some cases. It is what you make of it. Certainly, installing Studio on a single desktop for proof of concept is easy. It takes five minutes. When you start to get into enterprise-level setups, where everything's a different server and everything has to be connected, that's necessarily complex.

Blue Prism definitely has a simpler licensing structure, but I feel like that's almost a shot in the foot at certain points. It also gets kind of deceptive. There's a crossover point at which, if you're scaling up to a high number of bots, UiPath path definitely does come out cheaper. But the initial implementation has a higher cost.

We've been working on RPA, in general, for about two years. We're at different points in the process for different clients. We have some that have grasped onto it quite quickly and others that are still in the proof-of-concept/pilot realm, and we're trying to push it past that. We've been doing it for a fair amount of time, given the relatively young age of RPA as a whole.

I've done a number of different training sessions through the UiPath RPA Academy. The introductory ones are fine, but I really found a lot of value from the ones that focus on solution architecture, the courses that were more on the general infrastructure of how you would implement UiPath.

I would give the solution a solid eight. The first big thing with software is, if you're not running into bug issues all the time, that's an easy five right there. If it's easier to use, that's a six or seven. And it's just been consistently good. I haven't really run into any areas where I've had any trouble. The only real issue is that, from a consulting perspective, I can't really go out there and say, "We're going to use UiPath," all the time. We really have to leave it up to the client.

We are a system integrator. We work with clients such as the US Federal Government and help them automate whatever their processes are. We have two entities. I work as part of the government solutions unit, and then we have the commercial side which is a global organization. On the global side, there have been some internal implementations as well.

In terms of savings, a task like taking data from one artifact and transferring it into another one, is common. The most frequent example, and the one that I worked on directly, involves a PDF invoice and taking whatever the amount due is and either copying and pasting it into an internal accounting tool or actually typing it. The process goes: Open email, open the attachment, read the data, verify it is accurate, and then manually transfer it into an internal system.

Depending on how big the invoice is, I've seen a person spend as much as 20 minutes on one invoice or as little as 30 seconds. That whole process of going through each and every email, opening the attachment, transferring the data, closing all the windows, and then moving on to the next email - the bot will do it because the bot is scheduled to run every hour to look for the unread emails. I can't give you an exact number in terms of how many minutes or hours are saved, but it's quite significant.

The graphical user interface of the UiPath Studio is fantastic. For someone who is not a computer science major, or for someone who doesn't know how to code but is really good with visual flows, Studio makes it very easy for those individuals to build robots. That's one of the best features that I've seen. There are other features that add different values, but Studio, in my opinion, is definitely one of the best.

Overall, UiPath is really easy to use. For example, if somebody is an automated tester, they spent a lot of time trying to identify selectors, and UiPath makes it really easy to find those selectors. You will run into instances where you have to do some manual manipulation to make sure that the correct selectors are identified. But if it's a pretty straightforward instance and you are using something like Selenium, it is very tedious. Whereas, if you use something like UiPath, it is really easy.

I was providing feedback to one of the UiPath guys here at the UiPath 2019 conference. It relates to Studio, that it only works on Windows. It doesn't work on other platforms. I'm a techie by background. I don't hate Windows but I don't love it. It comes with the limitation that it is completely dependent on Windows. I would have loved if it were available on Mac or Linux or Unix. If it were a little bit more operating system agnostic, that would be great. I'm pretty sure they could be working on that.

I used the UiPath RPA Academy. I definitely had issues with it. The quizzes were outdated. Some of the responses that are being rated aren't accurate. I've griped on the community forums as well with a few UiPath folks. That was about five to six months ago. I don't know if they have enhanced it or made any changes since. If it's still in the same state, there is plenty of room for improvement.

I think it's stable. I haven't had a chance to build a bot that runs 24/7. For the bots that I have built, it takes under two minutes for the process to run and it runs every hour. At the end of the day, if I look at the logs, I don't see any issues. If a bot fails for whatever reason, it's most likely due to a process that changed.

From a bot-development standpoint, we use all kind of best practices so that the bot will not crash. At least, if the execution stops or terminates, it will be graceful, versus a rash termination.

It's fairly stable.

From an ROI standpoint, you could be saving somebody's hours and map that back to their hourly pay. But the pricing definitely deters some people.

I can't say whether their licensing structure is complicated or easy. I'd like to say it's complicated, but I try to stay away from the whole licensing issue. I tell my clients, "You buy the license. It's your tool. I'll come and build the bot for you." I don't want to have anything to do with the licensing. That deters some of the clients because it's a bit pricey.

In the government sector, where I work, "free" is looked at skeptically: "Why are you giving this to me for free? If I download it what is it going to do on my laptop?" from a security standpoint. Some of the agencies get the approval to download and install but others don't.

You can do a task like pulling the invoice total from a PDF invoice with the free Community Edition. The Enterprise license is definitely helpful though. The Community Edition expires about every three months and then you have to re-register. But you can still do it in Community Edition.

A pretty mundane use case I came up with is due to the fact that I have plenty of friends on Facebook. It's hard to keep up with everybody. I've got a bot running that literally opens up my Facebook every morning and checks if there is anybody listed in Today's Birthdays section. It will click on them, type "Happy Birthday", click "enter," and be done. And then I get a response from my friends: "Hey, long time, haven't heard from you." I've injected a machine to reconnect and have that human interaction.

For the most part, for the use cases that I've seen, it does the job.

The primary use case of UiPath, with every organization that I've worked with as a consultant, has been to make business processes more efficient and the work of their employees more enjoyable. 

By utilizing this technology, you're able to get value through your value streams quicker. When you realize value, that means you can work with your customers more quickly, as well as build customer loyalty and employer loyalty. These have definitely been some of the byproducts of using the software.

When I was working as an RPA manager, managing a program for an insurance company which supported insurance lifecycle processing, one of the components was that they had to review insurance policies annually. It was very cumbersome. We were talking anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 daily. It was almost a 20-FTE process. We were able to automate that completely.

However, the real value came when the organization understood how to apply RPA and it actually began creating brand-new business processes specifically for RPA. So instead of hiring new people, they said, "Hey, we've always wanted to do this, we don't have the budget to bring on and train people, so let's build bots to do it from day zero." Once they were able to understand that I could do more than just automate processes, that I could build new business lines with bots, that was an incredibly valuable result of using this software.

The benefits are very high when you automate business processes. Before using RPA, I was working in technology, building macros and things of that nature. But the way we're able to build sustainable, functional bots that really work well in the long-term makes the benefit a ten out of ten.

This is going to be an interesting answer, but the most valuable feature of the software is not the software itself, but the community that supports it. When I first started learning the software to support a program, I had to self-teach; there wasn't a budget for training. But going through their learning platform and then connecting with the community when I didn't understand how to utilize some of the functionality, that was far more powerful than the product itself. The network around the product is amazing.

The great thing about the UiPath RPA Academy is that it's not stagnant. Even though my first go at getting certified as a developer was three years ago, I literally have to go back the Academy and learn it every year because there are new features and new functionality. An example is the RE Framework they've incorporated. The living nature of the Academy gives a lot of value. But hands-down, the way that they give practical exercises, the fact that they give you applications you can download to learn how to interact with bots by simulating an actual operational environment, makes it a very impactful learning experience.

In addition, I find the solution easy to use. I have personal experience using all three of the major software vendors that are in this space right now, including Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism, and I would put UiPath as number-one, specifically from a learning perspective. I've been able to take people with absolutely zero technical background and quickly scale them up in a matter of weeks so they're building bots. I haven't been able to accomplish that same feat with the other platforms.

Being a person who has held every RPA role from developer to analyst, architect, and executive, one feature I think it needs - from a documentation perspective - is the ability to easily extract variable details and data. They do have a Variables panel that you frequently interact with, but I constantly have situations where those need to be adjusted or I want to be able to present those to a business. Sometimes it's difficult to extract those, and if you're not tracking them while you build, you can quickly get into 200 to 300 variables in use, especially using the RE Framework where you're passing workflow arguments in and out. I would like to see something like that.

In addition - and obviously UiPath is aware of this - we have to continue to improve the OCR capability. Computer Vision is excellent. I've used it on Azure. I've created PeopleSoft environments and worked through the Computer Vision feature. It works amazingly in a Citrix environment. But I speak with multiple organizations and a lot of them have the same problem of processing documentation from the mail room or from vendors, etc. That's a huge component. If we can get that embedded in UiPath, so we don't have to rely solely on OCR vendors like Captiva or ABBYY, that would be a huge step forward in being able to service all organizations.

There could be improved logging and functionality. But if you truly understand the software, adding logging to what the bot is already doing is as simple as typing on the right line. It's incredibly easy and you can embed it. Even though what it currently logs is limited, it's easy enough to create logs or reporting without a lot of effort.

Outside of that, it's really hard to come up with other recommendations. The software is solid.

I was recently reading about the document processing framework that they just implemented. I gave a demo two weeks ago on the Computer Vision functionality that was in beta. So the sustainability is there. They're focused not on just how good RPA is and on making it better, but they're also integrating it with future-tech. That is where the stability comes in.

UiPath's scalability and stability are exceptional. They are constantly releasing new versions.

Scalability is all in the delivery. I've definitely run into multiple organizational roadblocks with my clients because they get six months down their delivery timeline and they're not meeting their OI, they're not scaling. That generally comes down to how it's being delivered. If you have experience, you're working with a partner, you're working with people who have used this solution at scale, you can generally bypass a lot of those roadblocks. It's definitely scalable if you have the right expertise.

I have used both technical and customer support. When I was going through training, trying to learn some of the software, I had issues when I finally purchased licenses. The issues were related to putting them in Orchestrator and installing them. Support was definitely very supportive, very responsive when trying to get feedback.

Even when it comes to the community, as well, if you're just trying to learn the software, to learn the features and functionality, the community network is there to quickly respond and support you so you can get back to getting value, instead of getting hung up on one piece of functionality.

I have seen cases where an organization moves from a different automation solution to UiPath. At one point, we were transitioning from Automation Anywhere. There were very basic bots, these weren't complex processes, but we built a bot in UiPath that read the XAML of the Automation Anywhere script, converted it into activities in UiPath, and built a bot. We had a bot that builds a bot.

An example of why people move to UiPath is that when I was the director of RPA for a finance company, when I set up the program I had to go to EVP and pitch the prices and the costs. When I gave him the cost for all the software, to bring a vendor on, he told me "no." It was way too expensive. But UiPath has this amazing option called the Community Edition. What I was able to do was download the software, teach myself how to use it in about 45 days and, within two months, I had automated a pilot process, completely on my own. I was able to walk it into the EVP and say, "Look what I was able to complete. You told me no money, no funding, but now can I get funding?" Then I got funding and was able to bring on a team. That's one perfect example. They said "no," so I got a free version that cost me nothing.

In terms of how companies know that they need to invest in automation, in this day and age, with the speed at which information and technology move, it's at the point where this is not a new topic. A lot of organizations, through word-of-mouth, internet searches, or conferences, or events such UiPath 2019 here in DC, realize it as soon as they hear the success stories. It's impossible to ignore. Most organizations are like that. They hear about it, they realize that it's something they should consider, it's something they have to do, and they take the next step.

The initial setup is absolutely straightforward; it provides a quick and easy installation. Given that you may have to go through some technical hurdles to get permission to download it, I'm not talking about that. But if you have all the permissions and you're allowed to download and install it, it's absolutely simple. It shouldn't take more than ten minutes.

Technical prerequisites are not needed to use the software, but technical resources can speed up the ease with which you deploy. Given that you're generally not interacting with UiPath in isolation but with other business applications as well, you want to make sure that there's technical support in case you have some issues. Or, if there's something that you didn't experience in UAT but that comes up once you get into production, it's good to have some additional support. It's not a requirement but I would recommend it.

ROI is one of the most frequent questions I get from organizations. You should be seeing ROI in less than six months. If you're not returning your cost and more, from a licensing and personnel standpoint, in the first six months, then it is not a software issue and it is not a delivery issue. In that case, it is a scoping issue. You're probably looking at processes that shouldn't have been automated in the first place.

Every organization that is successful with the software is reaching their ROI in six months or under.

The amount of time saved with bots is an interesting question but it's hard to answer with a pinpoint response because it depends on an organization's strategy. I've seen multiple organizations that use attended bots, so they're just saving a fraction of the time. But then I've been in organizations where they've automated a process end-to-end. A process that previously required 20 FTEs went from having 40,000 hours of manual work to zero.

For pricing there is a variable at play, and that's scale. Depending on how you want to scale - whether working with a partner or directly with UiPath - there's a specific cost per license. But then it's all about optimizing a process, and what we call "license utilization." We try to maximize each license, and we'll have it running three or four processes.

The cost is nothing, it's peanuts, when you see the capabilities. When you're talking about one license supporting what was previously done by 14 people, what is $1,500, or whatever the licensing cost is for unattended bots?

Even more importantly, as a technology expert, I know that I could do some additional coding and automate the running of the bots. But why would I spend that extra time when they have Orchestrator. I could have a person running them as well, but the Orchestrator license is far cheaper than a resource; just click "run." When you compare the results that you get, the price is a moot point.

If I was going to give any advice to someone who was just about to utilize the software, I would say that the most successful organizations that apply this technology make it an entire team effort. It's not started in one business unit. And if it is, it's socialized across the enterprise. That's the quickest way to scale: getting everybody onboard. The second-biggest thing is that the most impactful projects you will get will come from your people, your internal workers. And until you get them to understand what the software can do and its capabilities, it's going to take you longer to scale your program. So make sure everybody's socialized, and make sure everybody truly understands what the software can truly do. They're going to give you the best opportunities to benefit from it.

Deployment should definitely be done using the support of experts. Even when I owned my own RPA program, and I wasn't in a consulting capacity, I still reached out to a third-party to get support. While setting it up is something that you can do internally, given that most objectives include speed-to-market and quick scaling - wanting to see results in 60 days instead of six months - it's going to be very difficult to do alone, especially if your goal is to have 100 bots in a year. If your goal is ten, you can probably manage it. It's important to use experts if you are looking to rapidly scale.

I have implemented UiPath in virtual environments, including on-prem, Azure VMs and servers, SQL-based data storage, as well as AWS. I've never had any issues with the responsiveness or the application having any problems operating. The biggest consideration that you have when trying to deploy robots in a virtual environment is making sure that your architecture is sound. You have to integrate through severs and you have to take into consideration firewall updates. And then there's interacting from the cloud if your applications are on-prem. You have to make sure that the bot doesn't have any issues. But if your architecture is solid and your infrastructure is set to support the applications in a cloud environment, there shouldn't be any issues. You wouldn't notice any difference compared to having them on a desktop on-premise.

I would agree that UiPath eliminates human error, but I would add the caveat that good code eliminates human error. I've been doing this for a while and I've seen bots that mess up. It's in your delivery methodology. If you have a sound delivery methodology - you're going through a rigorous UAT cycle and are having outputs audited by the subject matter experts - you should literally get to zero errors. Maybe you will have five percent exception cases, but your error percentage should be zero.

Having worked with all the tools, they all have little niche components. As long as UiPath continues to focus on knowing what the next wave of technology is that businesses really need to use to be efficient, and they start embedding that skillset in their software, that's all you could ask for. They need to stay in front of the power curve of technology, which is impossible, but they're trying.

I've never had a bad issue with UiPath. My experience with them has always been pleasant and engaging. They're never stuck at just giving you software, showing you how to use it, and then walking out. They're always focused on improving your business. If you focus on that, and focus on generating value, you can't lose.

Automation technology is the number-one driver across an organization now. Trying to find ways to do more with less has been the going mantra for organizations for years now. It's no longer feasible to simply run operational efficiency or Six Sigma projects to try to get gains. The only way that you're going to get significant gains is going with an automation-first approach. That's where I see a lot of organizations headed, even spending more on RPA software than on cloud implementation. It's a very big focus, and I don't see that slowing down any time soon.

On a scale from one to ten, I would you rate UiPath as an eleven. It's excellent software.