Our primary use case is identifying complex reports, such as monthly reports that take more than seven to eight hours to execute, and working with clients for automation. It is particularly used for discovery in other processes in SAP, including utility and entertainment clients.
We are able to identify which processes can be automated more easily, and then work with teams, thus saving a significant amount of time. Process Mining has helped avoid the need to sit with different clients to understand processes as it allows us to see via dashboards where automation is feasible.
The most valuable feature of Process Mining is its ability to highlight the points where automation is required and where decisions are needed. It allows us to clearly identify automation opportunities for complicated processes and displays the output in a simple manner.
The tool could be improved by making integration simpler with most applications. There are challenges with browser and legacy applications that need to be addressed.
I have been working with UiPath Process Mining for around six months.
I would rate the stability of the solution around eight out of ten.
Integration is the biggest scalability issue, especially with older applications. Overall, the scalability rating would be affected by integration challenges.
The customer service and support provided by UiPath is quite good, with some room for improvement. They typically provide the necessary details when a high-priority ticket is raised, but technical support could be improved by having more skilled resources available.
There was a separate team within our organization that handled the installation on the server, so I was not directly involved with the deployment.
Process Mining saves time in implementing automation, with an estimated twenty to thirty percent time savings. The overall cost reduction might be around ten percent.
The licensing costs for Process Mining are considered expensive. They are dependent on orchestrator and bot licenses, and even with negotiation, the approximate cost could be around fifty thousand dollars per year.
For organizations with complex applications and a need for extensive automation, Process Mining is a helpful tool to identify areas that can be automated.
I worked on a use case for a pharmaceutical client. Their goal was to understand their current processes and identify automation opportunities to improve their day-to-day operations. I focused on a couple of quality-related processes within their quality stream. This was the primary use case for UiPath Process Mining in this project.
Our client lacked clarity in understanding their processes. They were unsure of the exact workflow and the stakeholders involved. While they had a general idea, they were unfamiliar with specific key performance indicators such as throughput time and the various hand-offs that occurred throughout the process. Therefore, they sought to gain visibility into their day-to-day operations.
Our initial deployment was cloud-based, taking advantage of the POC's flexibility. Given that the data provided was solely in CSV flat files, cloud implementation was feasible. However, the actual live connection was established on-premise due to client skepticism regarding cloud data storage. For live data, most clients still prefer on-premises. However, cloud deployment remains an option for POCs where flat files are provided.
Since the process I worked on was quality control-oriented, it primarily involved a significant number of required approvals. This allowed us to identify which approvals were essential, which were less so, and which could be eliminated. Additionally, the manual nature of the approvals presented an opportunity to streamline the process and establish workflows for approvals. We were also able to automate the assignment of approvals to the appropriate stakeholders, which was previously done manually, sometimes leading to errors or excessive time consumption. By comprehending their business case, we were able to automate this process for them. These are just a few of the outcomes that UiPath Process Mining helped us achieve.
The end-to-end visibility provided by the Uipath Process Mining dashboards is good.
In comparison to other BI tools like Tableau or Power BI, UiPath Process Mining has proven to be more effective in providing business users with the specific information they require. It readily delivers key performance indicators and registries, along with actionable insights into process execution, identifying potential gaps, understanding the various steps involved in the process, and uncovering compliance issues related to time. These valuable insights can be extracted from process planning data, a capability that traditional BI tools lack.
UiPath Process Mining is an excellent tool for identifying process bottlenecks and devising solutions to address them. The tool itself is highly effective, but implementing the proposed solutions to eliminate bottlenecks can be challenging, particularly during migrations. This is often due to a lack of expertise to implement the solutions or a reluctance to embrace change. While providing these solutions is beneficial, I acknowledge that implementing them and realizing their full value can be challenging.
UiPath Process Mining is a transparent tool that provides valuable insights. However, its effectiveness is contingent upon the availability of live data connections. While it is an excellent tool for understanding and optimizing processes, some organizations, particularly those in sensitive industries like banking or pharma, may hesitate to upload their entire data set to a cloud platform for process mining. Therefore, the tool's efficacy hinges on the organization's comfort level with data sharing and access.
Most process mining tools, including UiPath, are versatile in connecting to a variety of source systems. Even if we use SAP as our ERP system and have additional applications running on Oracle or Salesforce CRM, there are numerous integrators available to connect to these source systems. Therefore, connecting to various source systems is not a challenge at all. The available connectors are generally very good. However, connecting to legacy or heritage systems, particularly in the banking industry, may pose some challenges due to their custom environments. For mainstream processes, however, connecting is generally straightforward.
They have been able to automate many of their day-to-day processes, leading to increased efficiency and the introduction of numerous checks and balances. Previously, these issues were undetected within the company. They have also streamlined their processes for clients by identifying areas where approvals were missing or incorrect. Automation and additional checks have replaced many manual tasks, resulting in a significant reduction in processing time. By understanding which areas of their processes were time-consuming, they have been able to implement solutions and improve overall efficiency.
The insights provided by UiPath Process Mining are invaluable. It provides a deep understanding of our operational tasks and processes. When we interact with operations managers or members of the leadership team, they are consistently impressed by the depth of insights we can extract. For example, we can provide detailed profit planning compared to our traditional dashboards. Additionally, while some operations managers may not have access to complete sales or key player data, we can leverage customer data to provide them with more comprehensive insights and KPIs related to their respective offices. This has already assisted them in making informed decisions about aligning their workforce in the backend and enhancing their productivity.
UiPath Process Mining helps to save employees time to spend on other projects. We approach all of our process planning problems with the goal of reducing employee time or helping them identify repetitive tasks that can be easily automated. This has been one of the main use cases we've worked on for most of our processes.
I find the root cause analysis and the reference models to be valuable features of UiPath Process Mining.
UiPath Process Mining is not as user-friendly as Celonis. While Celonis offers a drag-and-drop functionality for building dashboards, UiPath requires some coding expertise. Additionally, the navigation in UiPath Process Mining can be confusing for beginners. This makes the learning curve steeper and the time it takes to build a process mining project longer, especially for those who are just starting. However, once users get the hang of it, the tool becomes easier to use. Nevertheless, for non-technical users or those who have not worked with process mining tools before, the learning curve can be significant. While a technical background helped me pick up the tool quickly, others may find it more challenging.
I have been using UiPath Process Mining for one year.
I would rate the stability of UiPath Process Mining seven out of ten. When we first started using it we experienced minor bugs.
Regarding scalability, we can connect to major SOAR systems like SAP and Oracle, which are quite scalable in our experience. However, we are less certain about the scalability of UiPath Process Mining with other platforms or SOAR systems. That said, the major SOAR systems and major processes, such as CP2P and hire-to-retire, are generally scalable.
I have not had to contact the technical support team of UiPath because I can find all the answers I need in the helpful discussion forums.
Regarding features, Celonis stands out with its extensive array of capabilities, including object-oriented process mining, and its continuous release of new features. UiPath Process Mining excels in reference model generation and root cause analysis. While UiPath Process Mining also offers these features, Celonis' advancements in newer features and innovations place it at the forefront of the process mining landscape. UiPath could benefit from further innovation and enhanced feature development to keep pace with Celonis.
The initial deployment time depends on the size of the data and the dashboards required. It can take about one week, but for a simple data upload and dashboard, it can be done in a couple of days.
UiPath Process Mining pricing is comparable to other tools in the market. I believe Celonis offers a three-month licensing option, but I think it's on par with the other tools. I'm not entirely sure about the field licensing as I primarily work as a partner. I'm not certain about the specific pricing tiers, but I'm confident that it's in line with other market offerings.
I would rate UiPath Process Mining seven out of ten.
If someone believes that streamlining processes and automation are not cost-effective, I would suggest that their approach may not be optimal. Perhaps their implementation strategy was flawed, their chosen processes were not suitable, or their contract was overly expensive. In my experience, I have consistently achieved positive or highly satisfactory outcomes for clients. Therefore, it is likely that they need to refine their approach to address the issue effectively.
Our clients are enterprise-level.
UiPath Process Mining requires ongoing maintenance due to the dynamic nature of data and evolving business requirements. While the initial implementation may involve comprehensive requirements gathering and a robust solution, ongoing maintenance may be necessary to accommodate new data sources, data analysis perspectives, or additional tables and dashboards. However, these maintenance efforts are typically routine updates and dashboard refinements rather than major overhauls.
I would rate the UiPath Community eight out of ten.
I recommend implementing UiPath Process Mining, but it's crucial to have a well-defined strategy in place beforehand. Since it's a relatively new technology, it's often misconstrued as reporting. Therefore, we must carefully select the use cases we pursue and how we present them to the business or clients. Process Mining is distinct from traditional reporting and KPI dashboards, which often leads to confusion. It's essential to clearly articulate the distinction and emphasize that Process Mining delves into the intricacies of their processes, not merely providing KPI data.
I was in the working group of my firm, and we were onboarding UiPath Process Mining as a product. The use cases for the solution were sometimes driven by the management and sometimes by us. Three to four systems were involved in a team's daily tasks. The performance of these systems had been decreasing down the line. They were not performing as expected, causing delays in client deliverables.
We analyzed two of the applications in which we found major issues. We did some groundwork research and shortlisted two in-house applications developed by our firm's team. It was a hard journey to get the logs for those applications. We did some groundwork again to understand how the application is supposed to work and how it was designed.
We considered the efficiency points of UiPath Process Mining, which we can grab quickly. We generated the logs, linked the process graph, and understood three loopholes related to the log-in part and the user's behavior on the first attempt. There were some issues with the accuracy as well. For the login, there is a chain in which the prerequisites should be completed, and then the next task will be processed. However, the person processing the next task is logged in already.
When two people log in, as soon as the mail is ready, they'll process it. You should log in when required because of the load-balancing team. More than 20,000 people use one application. You should keep in mind that not everyone is supposed to log in and click somewhere to stay logged and avoid the time delay. Login will take time, according to human behavior, but that is not supposed to be the ideal behavior. The teams were educated to log in whenever required and sign off. This was one of the behavior changes, which may seem small. However, when more than 1,000 people do it, it would cause a considerable impact.
There were other issues related to the login. Sometimes, we have seen in the process graph that without going to the credential screen, the system would go to the main home page and log out. There was some bug, which was taken as a crucial security breach, and a build change was suggested to the application team. More than 100 instances in the last six months have been observed. After the user enters the username, it should ask for a password, but there is no linkage between them.
Team behavior regarding login was analyzed in the process graph, and then the teams were educated that they should log in when required. The major thing was to understand if there was any security loophole. It has been the case with a few other applications for which we have the logs. We understood that as soon as an application is open, it opens the whole screen sometimes for a few of the applications, which is again a security breach and a very deep concern for someone working in the banking sector.
We observed that the login part, which we had designed with all the security and vigilant behavior taken into consideration, was not performing well, had a loophole, or had some abnormal behavior that needed to be corrected. This is one of the examples where UiPath Process Mining has improved your organization.
The most valuable feature of UiPath Process Mining is the comparison feature. When we got to know that reading OCR was taking time, we altered the lock and uploaded it again by making some adjustments at that stage. If we reduce three to four minutes to five to six seconds on average, what will the graph look like, and what will be the increased overall efficiency? There is a comparison feature that is very, very helpful for people to understand and visualize the impact of a particular task.
For the Instabase solution, we first visualized, made some adjustments for logs, and uploaded it again. Then, the people were able to see that if we did this, the timeline would be met beforehand, and there wouldn't be any delays. Honestly, that was the first thing we did after the security breach related to a login issue. Some other actions were done, but as a solution, this was the first solution that was implemented. It was successfully implemented, and it had a good impact.
UiPath Process Mining is as lightweight a tool as it is new. It's not able to handle a lot of logs in one go at high speed. The solution's speed is fairly good, but it should be further increased to make it more powerful to process large amounts of logs. Logs should be as much as possible. We have taken one year's and sometimes two years' logs to understand the behavior.
We are not here solving small problems because a lot of money is invested. I have observed that handling a large amount of logs slows down the solution's performance. This area is improving because we are now observing a new version of UiPath Process Mining with improved speed. As a developer, I'll be happy to see that happening more quickly, and I am sure the solution is heading there.
I have been using UiPath Process Mining for one year and four to five months.
UiPath Process Mining is quite a stable solution. We have never seen a loss of data, breakage, or hang issues. We have also not seen data suddenly changed or loaded incorrectly. The solution's stability is very, very good. It's a bit slow, but the stability and robustness of data and the visual aid we have to understand things better is very, very good.
Since we have a direct connection to the cloud, UiPath Process Mining is quite easily scalable. We have to follow a very definite set of steps already mentioned by UiPath if we want to scale the solution. It is quite easy to follow those steps.
Around 75 users use UiPath Process Mining in our organization. Out of these 75 users, only 25 are developers, and the rest are SMEs with different views.
The solution's technical support is great. We were sometimes confused because it's a fairly new product with no information on the internet. It was very helpful of UiPath to come into the picture and help us with proper information, training, and guidance, which they have also recently got because it's a new product for them. It has been very fruitful for us to engage with the solution's technical support to understand the solution better.
Positive
I've used other process mining tools to analyze which tool is better to onboard. I analyzed two tools that had their own pros and cons. However, I have always preferred and suggested UiPath Process Mining because it has a link with automation, and I'm from the automation sector. I better understand automation-related capabilities of process mining in UiPath Process Mining.
The solution's deployment was done by COE, which is native to our firm and the presales department of UiPath. I was not actively involved in the deployment but was updated with that call. I'm not deeply into infrastructure, but I was involved in it just for information. Currently, UiPath Process Mining is centralized in our firm.
I have seen a decent return on investment with UiPath Process Mining. There were timelines related to multiple processes, and we have reduced around two to three hours of the timeline. Overall, two to three hours were saved when the processing was done for 21 days a month. That has impacted the overall SLA.
Secondly, although not quantifiable, it has reduced the risk of the application. We have lowered the risk of security breaches by guiding the users and considering the change for the login part. It may not be quantifiable, but the security has been handled.
In my opinion, UiPath Process Mining is a bit overpriced. Maybe I'm saying this because I've never seen the actual end-to-end ROI calculation. I've seen the solution to be fruitful. I've been in discussions with managers willing to have UiPath Process Mining, but they want to see whether it is fruitful.
UiPath Process Mining is a bit overpriced for someone considering the solution without knowing for sure whether it will help them. If its price is lowered, people will consider UiPath Process Mining more.
Before choosing UiPath Process Mining, I evaluated the Celonis and Percipere tools.
UiPath Process Mining does require maintenance because there are a couple of instances where you try to change or delete the environment. Sometimes, you mess up some of the information or steps and need to create a new environment or repository.
The solution requires some maintenance so that its dashboard and workflow list are always clean and have no redundant or unnecessary values and workspaces. It's just a cleaning activity, and the developer should do it in the first go. It is a best practice to have maintenance for UiPath Process Mining. Our firm deployed the solution to have an evaluation every two weeks.
I advise users to get the right people involved, get the right logs analyzed, and then decide as soon as possible. Don't have a timeline of two to three weeks. It should be done quickly so that you can go ahead and have a fruitful result.
Overall, I rate UiPath Process Mining an eight out of ten.
We leverage UiPath Process Mining to uncover and map the workflows for our diverse clientele.
Most of our processes mining is invoicing related.
UiPath Process Mining makes it easy to streamline processes.
The visibility provided by the process mining dashboards is great.
UiPath Process Mining does a good job of removing bottlenecks from a wide range of processes.
The overall transparency offered with process mining into our end-to-end processes is good. I would rate it nine out of ten.
Integrating UiPath Process Mining with our existing systems and environment was easy.
The ability to help empower employee decision-making is good.
Up to 20 to 30 percent of staff time has been freed up for other projects.
UiPath Process Mining helps reduce our customer's TCO.
The time to value varies for each business. Some of our customers saw value within the first three months.
The ability to transform raw data into actionable information can be challenging due to the variability in our customers' processes. While online, in-system data is readily accessible, offline or manually processed data presents significant hurdles.
The pricing can be improved.
I have been using UiPath Process Mining for six months.
I would rate the stability of UiPath Process Mining a nine out of ten.
I would rate the scalability of UiPath Process Mining a seven out of ten because it is costly to scale up.
UiPath Process Mining is priced high compared to other solutions.
I would rate UiPath Process Mining an eight out of ten.
While automating mining processes may incur higher costs in the short term, it offers numerous long-term benefits.
As a developer, I manage a process mining team and have a development team reporting to me.
We use UiPath Process Mining for over-the-counter, code-to-invoice, and purchase-to-pay processes.
In over-the-counter processing, there is a process called accounts payable. Within accounts payable, there is a process called three-way matching. Three-way matching involves matching three things: the purchase order number, quantity, and price; the goods receipt quantity and price; and the invoice quantity and price. These three things must be matched based on a set of rules. We were able to identify areas where all three-way matching could be automated using process mining. This significantly reduced our lead time by around four to five hours.
We wanted transparency in our development process. Our large organization is spread across 18 different regions, and each region performs the same process in its own way. UiPath Process Mining gives us transparency into how these processes perform. We can also compare each region to the others. The level of transparency is very high with this tool. This helps us to identify and implement best practices. For example, if EMEA performs better than APAC one week, we can replicate its practices in APAC. UiPath Process Mining can help us achieve transparency and identify best practices.
From a development perspective, UiPath provides connectors that allow us to connect to source systems, such as SAP and Salesforce. UiPath Process Mining also provides certain connectors, which are essentially customized API configurations. Once we connect a source system directly to UiPath Process Mining, all of the necessary configuration is automatically imported, so minimal development is required.
The end-to-end visibility is great. When we connect to UiPath Process Mining, we can use the dashboards to see a process map that is readily available. We have multiple data sets that are actually stored in another room. Once we connect all of the digital footprints to UiPath Process Mining, provided they have the necessary connectors, we can see the complete process map in a list format. We can also immediately see certain analyses that have been automatically generated, such as the lead time, where the lead time is high, which vendors are causing the high lead time, and which customers are using the process. This information is populated automatically when we connect to UiPath Process Mining. This is one of the strengths of UiPath Process Mining.
UiPath Process Mining can help us turn raw data into actionable information for standard systems. However, it can be difficult to use for systems that require customization, due to the lack of connectors.
It helps us identify and remove bottlenecks in a wide range of processes. Its transparency gives us visibility into where bottlenecks occur in the process, and we can see the lead times for each step. This allows us to immediately focus our efforts on reducing lead times, whether at the auto management stage, factory, warehouse, or last-mile delivery. Once we have a complete process map, we can clearly see where our efforts need to be directed to reduce overall lead times. We can achieve this through automation, following best practices, or training users to follow certain protocols to prevent spills or core leakage in the process. UiPath Process Mining makes all of this possible to some extent.
We have actually achieved hard savings of approximately two million euros this year, exclusively using UiPath Process Mining for the O2C process alone. However, this is just for O2C. There is still a lot of room for improvement. We could actually save much more. The technology itself is great, so there is a lot of potential for savings, both hard savings and soft savings. As of now, we have actually saved two million euros for O2C. For B2B, the approval process is still ongoing, so I cannot provide an update on the numbers. I really don't know the numbers right now, but it will also be close to one million euros. So we can conservatively estimate that we have saved around three million euros using UiPath Process Mining this year alone.
UiPath Process Mining empowers employee decision-making based on each person's role. For example, it gives other managers access to data so they can clearly understand what is going wrong. We also talk to them and provide them with information on the hub feed, allowing them to see which hubs are performing much better than theirs. They have the same data, regardless of their management group or product. We also provide them with the product category, and we bucket products together. For example, we bucket MR machines and CD machines together. We do this by setting criteria. We also see how well the computers are performing and how well we are giving orders at the right time. UiPath Process Mining helps us make informed decisions based on this data.
The savings we predicted of three million euros were primarily in FTEs. We were able to reduce a large number of FTEs using UiPath Process Mining. This is a double-edged sword because we can either free up FTEs for other tasks or remove employees from the organization altogether. In our organization, we have chosen to free up approximately 200 FTEs in the Latin America region. None of these FTEs were terminated; they were instead reassigned to other useful tasks. UiPath Process Mining has therefore been very helpful.
UiPath Process Mining's conformance feature allows us to upload our standard processes and compare how well our actual processes deviate from them. This reveals all of the variants in our processes. UiPath Process Mining also has a feature called tags, which allows us to create our own tags or filters to identify violations in the process. I haven't seen any other process mining tool on the market that does this. Other tools have their own ways of identifying violations, but UiPath's conformance feature with its Tag Analysis Console provides a better user interface. We can immediately click on violations to see all of the instances of those violations in the process.
UiPath Process Mining should focus more on developing connectors to source systems. In fact, I worked on an interesting consulting project for UiPath Process Mining when I was in another service industry. This was when they acquired the process mining tool Process Code in 2019 and rebranded it as Way Beyond Process Mining. They came to us because they wanted to compare their tool to the top five process mining tools on the market. We conducted a consolidation project and presented our findings on the strengths and weaknesses of UiPath Process Mining. UiPath Process Mining has come a long way since then, but I believe there is still room for significant improvement.
UiPath Process Mining has not been adding new API connectors as frequently in recent years. As of now, there are only around ten to twelve source connectors available. In contrast, other market tools, such as Celonis, offer much more extensive connector libraries. This means that UiPath Process Mining can only connect to a limited number of systems, even though it can connect to standard systems like SAP and Salesforce. If we need to connect to a new or less common system, we will need to develop a connector from scratch, which can be time-consuming.
UiPath's UI and assets could be improved. Celonis performs better in terms of UI, even though it uses fewer colors. However, UiPath's process maps are congested. While I understand that organizational reasons may require complex processes, I believe that Celonis provides better visibility in this regard. Therefore, I recommend that UiPath improve its process maps along these lines.
The number of file formats that can be uploaded should be increased. For example, the BPMN file format is very important, but it is not currently supported by UiPath Process Mining.
Multiple users with different access levels need to use UiPath Process Mining. For example, if I develop a UiPath Process Mining dashboard for the leadership team, they need a certain level of access that allows them to view the dashboard without seeing all of the details. I also need to provide access to end users who are auto managers, but who may not be technically proficient enough to navigate the tool. Therefore, the current number and types of user profiles available in UiPath are not sufficient. We need more flexibility in providing user profiles to meet the needs of different users.
I have been using UiPath Process Mining for four years.
UiPath Process Mining is generally stable. We rarely experience issues. If there is any downtime, we are notified well in advance. Downtime is very rare, perhaps once every six months, which is equivalent to two or three times per year at most.
UiPath Process Mining is scalable.
The technical support is good.
Positive
I use a variety of other process mining tools in my team. If we take a single process and mine it using Celonis Process Mining, which is the current market leader, I always rate Celonis better than UiPath. In 2019, 2020, and 2021, I would have ranked UiPath second, but SAP Signavio Process Intelligence has since surpassed it. According to Gartner reports, a number of other tools have also surpassed UiPath Process Mining, which was previously ranked second. As a result, I believe UiPath will need to step up its game to compete with these rivals.
We have two servers. We have the UiPath Process Mining server deployed for us, and we make sure that we have different instances of it: one for acceptance testing and one for production. We ask the owner of the request to test any development in the acceptance instance before we deploy it to production. We use Azure DevOps to log issues and complaints, and we then take action on them.
The initial deployment was complex, but the complexity was in the process, not in the tool. The tool is good, and of course, it has the standard connectors for the source systems that we already had. This is why our UiPath Process Mining is top-notch.
From a development perspective, the implementation strategy was to start with a small part of the process and then gradually add more processes. The initial setup of UiPath Process Mining involved a project manager from UiPath, who still has a dedicated team for our organization. UiPath's team consisted of three people, and our team consisted of four or five people. We also needed experts from UiPath who had already connected to our source systems. We all came together to work on the project. Once we received all the necessary approvals, it took us about four months to get the bandwidth we needed. Once we had the bandwidth, we began connecting to the systems one by one and adding the different layers of the process. There are six layers to the process, so we added one layer at a time. We then expanded the implementation to two more processes.
We implemented the solution in-house.
The return on investment of process mining depends on the size of the process. For very large processes with high cardinality and granularity, the ROI can take significantly longer to realize. However, in pilot projects with small processes, the ROI can typically be realized within two to three months. For larger processes, the ROI will depend on the specific size and complexity of the process. In general, it can take one to two years to realize the ROI for large processes.
Licensing costs for UiPath are very reasonable, in my opinion. This is because most companies already have a UiPath ecosystem in place, meaning they have deployed UiPath bots. UiPath offers both process mining and task mining capabilities, which are relevant to any automation team that uses UiPath RPA bots. Compared to other players in the market, UiPath's licensing costs are very reasonable. I would not say that UiPath is very cheap, but it is a good value for the price.
We tried comparing the top five market leaders and ended up choosing UiPath since our automation ecosystem is heavily dependent on UiPath. They provide us with the capability to connect process mining with an automation hub.
I would rate UiPath Process Mining a seven out of ten.
Before automating any processes, they must perform process mining. If a process is inefficient and we try to automate it on top of that inefficiency, our automation will obviously be inefficient as well. We will not realize the return on investment. This is why we need to start with process mining. We can use UiPath Process Mining or any other tool on the market, but we need to understand what our process really is, see it end-to-end, visualize it, and then decide which areas to automate. This is the best way to do it, and if we do it this way, we will definitely realize the value.
For maintenance, we have an agreement with UiPath. We have monthly calls with UiPath, where they discuss new features and initiatives, and we discuss the challenges we faced that month. They also have quarterly calls to share their vision for the quarter and how we can leverage their offerings. There is a maintenance cost associated with this support, but I am not aware of it. I think it is low because the licensing cost is also low. We also have a bandwidth for acceptance and protection services. We own, maintain, and deploy these services on a monthly basis, loading the full data each month. We do all maintenance in-house. However, if we encounter any issues with the cloud-hosted services, we go to the UiPath team for assistance, and they try to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
First, we need to ensure that UiPath has connectors available for all of the source systems. Before starting the process mining exercise with UiPath, we need to sit down with UiPath and understand the process itself. Then, we need to define the process using certain metrics before proceeding with the mining process. Finally, we may not see a good return on investment because there could be multiple challenges in the process. We may need to stay with the process for other reasons. Therefore, we need to decide whether the process is suitable for mining. If the process is suitable, we need to get the potential return on assets from UiPath and verify the process.
We are a UiPath partner and we work for manufacturing companies. There are a lot of processes out there with deviations. The Process Mining tool will let us know the exact deviation. Once we find the potential for a bot, we will do process automation using UiPath.
Wherever we find processes that are having problems, we run this tool to see where the bottlenecks are and where, exactly, Process Mining can help us.
Many of the manual processes within manufacturing take a lot of time. We leverage Process Mining and UiPath so that decision-making will be done quickly by robots.
Its ability to help empower employee decision-making is a four out of five. It provides a graphical representation. Whenever there is a bottleneck, a deviation in the process, we can easily see it on the dashboard.
The solution has also helped free up people's time for other projects. It depends on the use case, but the time it has saved me is around 20 percent.
And it has helped reduce our total cost of ownership.
Once you understand the flow, using Process Mining to streamline processes is easy. It has drag-and-drop abilities that make it very easy to operate.
The transparency offered by Process Mining into end-to-end processes is a four out of five.
Within UiPath, AI Fabric is a valuable feature, but Process Mining can be further improved with AI. AI is booming. Once they improve the AI capabilities, more and more customers will come to UiPath. There are a lot of tools with AI capabilities.
I have been working with UiPath for almost five years.
The stability is improving. When we were using it four or five years back, it was not mature enough, but now it's becoming smoother. The stability is an eight out of 10.
It is scalable.
For technical support there are a lot of forums, and there is also the UiPath Academy. There is also the actual support.
Positive
I did not use another solution previously.
The initial setup is very simple when you compare it with other tools like Celonis or IBM Process Mining. We require proper licenses, but the tool is a plug-in.
It can take time to realize the benefits of the solution. The minimum is two years.
The price depends on the number of bots you take. There are a lot of open-source tools that are free. When you go for UiPath, it will cost more. But if you compare it with Blue Prism, that solution is more secure and more costly. UiPath is average in terms of price.
My advice is to get used to the product first. Install the free version and play with the tool and the data. Then things will go smoothly.
Every process has its own ups and downs. We identify the correct processes, and sometimes it is feasible and sometimes it is not feasible to automate them. This is a new technology, and when you use any new technology, there will be limits. Overall, it's a very good tool, and we have improved our revenue with it because a lot of manual tasks have been eliminated.
I'm using UiPath Process Mining for research and development. I belong to an IT company with many market leaders as clients who belong to the manufacturing industry. I wanted to look into processes you can automate for each service area. I wanted to explore and see which area may be a pain, and I use UiPath Process Mining for that purpose.
The best feature of UiPath Process Mining, compared to a process discovery tool or mining tool I forgot the name of, is that UiPath Process Mining supplies more details about your current workflow and how it influences the business, including what's the delay or roadblock.
The other tool doesn't give you detailed information, so UiPath Process Mining has a significant advantage.
What needs improvement in UiPath Process Mining is manual delay support. For example, I have a pending workflow, and I've not taken action in the last five or ten days, and because of this, the whole process gets delayed, but UiPath Process Mining doesn't provide any manual delay insights. It gives about seventy to seventy-five percent detail on end-to-end process delays, the scope of automation, or the gap, but not about the manual delay, so what would make the solution better is if it communicates manual delay information.
Every business process relies on human activity, with either approval or review, so UiPath Process Mining should capture that area and provide a workflow or diagram that shows more details, such as the impact of the delay, the workflow time without the human delay, etc. That could be too difficult, but it's what I'm expecting as a customer. More automation in UiPath Process Mining would be great.
I've been using UiPath Process Mining since the preview period last year, August.
UiPath Process Mining has become more stable in its latest release, but in terms of ability or what it can do, there's still a lot of room for improvement.
I haven't tried scaling UiPath Process Mining, so I cannot comment on its scalability.
As there's good documentation in the UiPath academy, I didn't need to contact the technical support for UiPath Process Mining. The available documentation helped me a lot.
As UiPath Process Mining is a lightweight tool, its configuration is simple. It's an excellent tool to work with, specifically on the cloud provided by UiPath.
Complete deployment of UiPath Process Mining would take six to eight months.
You can get ROI from UiPath Process Mining because it offers good value for your money.
UiPath Process Mining has different licensing types for users, developers, end-users, or designers. I don't have the figures, price-wise, but because my company is a UiPath partner, there's some discount offered when you buy in bulk. UiPath provides a good deal if you're a bulk user.
UiPath Process Mining gives you value for money compared to some of its competitors in the market.
I'm using UiPath solutions end-to-end, so UiPath Process Mining, UiPath Task Mining, Automation Hub, and UiPath Studio.
I don't remember which version of UiPath Process Mining I'm currently using.
UiPath Process Mining is a hybrid architecture. The software is installed on my private cloud, and the data and analysis go on the public cloud. It's on the UiPath Cloud.
The number of users of UiPath Process Mining depends on the number of clients, so I don't have this figure.
My rating for UiPath Process Mining is a six out of ten because it still needs much improvement in scope. On the other hand, my rating for UiPath overall is eight because it's stable and a market leader. UiPath Process Mining is just a tiny part of UiPath.
There are multiple use cases. For example, we have automated shipping process for the operations department, including shipping repairs, production line assembly, and line automation using attended robots.
Using unattended bots, we have done Engineering, finance, accounts receivable, invoicing, invoice validations, and reconciliations. For sales, we have automated order management and order inquiries. We also have proactive monitoring bots for IT. So daily IT jobs are monitored, and the robot automatically takes action by triggering tickets in ServiceNow.
Every human-dependent task has been automated and is now entirely done by a robot. Still, the people who formerly did the job are part of the process. They check if the robot is doing it right or wrong. And then, we keep on retraining the robot for any new exceptions that come up, so we are fully equipped to handle new scenarios. So this has fostered a culture change within the organization where people are coming up with ways to automate what they were spending several hours a day doing. Once these tasks are automated, they can focus more on the company's strategic initiatives. And that's a win-win for the company as well as the employees.
With UiPath in place, we are moving away from training people on the core applications, which are pretty complex. We've built a headless frontend (Touchless ERP), so it's really easy for anybody to join our company and be productive. A robot handles shipping, repair, and the assembly line instead of a human. Plus, these processes are executed with high accuraccy, removing human error from the equation. That's how we are mitigating a lot of our human-related problems.
Furthermore, the culture that we've built has helped in terms of the principle of retire, recruit or resign. So when someone quits, retires, or we need to recruit, we first determine if we can automate their job functions. The RPA governance team tries to digitize the person's tasks as well as their knowledge and experience in the organization.
The attended bots have helped a lot, and we have a leveraged concept of touch-less ERP. We can build a UI or a headless frontend, like a popup, that interacts with a human, and then the robot carries out its function. So the person doesn't need to be trained on any core applications like Oracle ERP or customer applications, which would entail additional screening responsibilities and the normal human tendency to make mistakes.
So we have built a headless frontend that is technology agnostic. And it interacts with the end-user in a user-friendly, straightforward fashion. So it's only four or five steps, whereas it was formerly 30 or 40 steps. And that's how this way of implementing RPA has helped the customer heavily.
Process mining is something that we are doing, but I think it needs to be more mature. UiPath is still new to process mining. They are decent in SAP ERP when it comes to process mining. But compared to Oracle's E-Business Suite and all, they are still pretty new. And they need to come up with some model templates for how to adopt process mining within your organization. For example, they could use some accelerators to help onboard customers. Right now, it's not that easy. So process mining is something that they need to improve on for Oracle ERP.
UiPath has an excellent strategic roadmap when it comes to features. So if it's not already in the works, one thing they could add is AI fabric, and if UiPath could bundle it into the primary licensing with Orchestrator, that would be great. Concerning artificial intelligence and NLP machine learning, we are getting rid of the requirement where a chatbot can integrate and synchronously interact with the robot in real-time.
The ability to listen to and reply things in real-time would be good to have. They are already doing it, but the ease of implementation and options to integrates needs to be flexible, and the license should be bundled into their current offering so that it's more cost-effective.
Another thing is UiPath's OCR we hope it has the same quality as FlexiCapture, a separate solution by ABBYY. That would be awesome if the UiPath had native OCR functions that were the same level of maturity as FlexiCapture.
I've been using UiPath for three years now.
UiPath Cloud Orchestrator and on premise bots has 100% stability in last 3 years we have faced zero Product related issues. the Platform is rock solid stable robust also upgrades have been very easy to do with zero impact on existing running processes.
We have around 34 RPA Processes built using UiPath have a very good execution success rate of 94-96% , rest 4-6% failures/exceptions are only due to data or network issues.
Scalability is great with UiPath. We have a distributed load for robots, so the long-running ones run on a different unattended bot while the fast-running and business-critical bots run on a dedicated VM. So that's how we have distributed the scalability. But if you want to add a new bot, it should take less than 30 minutes to host or create a new machine. And then, the deployment or deployment of the package or the code takes less than 30 seconds. So It's hardly 30 minutes.
So about 20 attended bots are deployed. Some of them are in two or three shifts. In total, around 40 people are using attended bots, and there are only two unattended bots. So UiPath is running more than 30 processes for 30 different people. We also have around eight business analysts spread out across various departments who use this too. So you're talking about 50 plus people at least connected right now. And these are purely business analysts or staff on the shop floor, like operators and repair technicians. But the processes that we have developed are helping around 60-plus business users that we use to do something.
So technically, with the deployment that we have done — around 24 robots—the utilization for the unattended robots is approximately 52 percent. So technically, what we have is sufficient for the next year, at least. We can develop more processes with the existing licenses that we hold. So definitely expansion-wise, we'll expand more on the process side.
UiPath technical support is excellent. They have a good knowledge base, and the support team resolves issues fast. Once you create a ticket on cloud technical support, it's pretty easy. You get an email, start communicating, and then it is solved in a day or so.
The UiPath licensing and product teams have been beneficial. They gave us an option of a free trial where you can download it free and use it for 60 or 90 days. And that trial is extendable. So we got six months of free usage for UiPath Enterprise Edition. And that's how we were able to do things confidently. We could implement things to show to businesses and get funding. UiPath has been flexible when it comes to licensing costs, including free trials. Their e-Team comes in, helps you deploy, implement stuff, and solve technical challenges you have on the ground.
We hadn't used any automation solutions before. It was always a human.
Out of all the automation solutions we tried, UiPath was the easiest to install and configure. Within less than 20 minutes, you can set up a machine with the robot and make it functional. For the initial setup, if the Windows machine is ready, you only need to install and set up the robot.
UiPath also has the simplest deployment versus all the other vendors. Deployment takes less than 30 seconds. It's just a click of the button from Orchestrator, where the packages are available to download for the robot. In addition, there is an auto-download feature that automatically installs the packages remotely on several machines.
So the implementation strategy includes unattended bots in data centers, which run on their own. They are in a secure facility and are very hardened machines. They only communicate certain out-call to Orchestrator in the cloud. There are also attended bots sitting all over the warehouses and people using them on their own laptops. So implementation strategy for the attended bots isn't complex because they are overseen by daily users on their laptops and desktops. So it's deployed on those machines. Additional security and hardening will be required on the unattended bots installed on the data center level.
For implementation, we used some outside consultants to set up the governance framework for RPAs and the discovery mechanism. They also helped us identify hotspots, determine ROI, establish the recovery cost in months, and do value realization.
So after going live, they helped us look at things like cost and time savings as well as the actual recovery costs incurred in the process. They also helped evaluate the solution in terms of automatability index, productivity, efficiency, and quality. So, we analyzed all of these factors, which helped to prioritize the processes selected. We did all of this first and then converted everything into a factory model. What we call the digital factory team is responsible for development. And then, the governance and architecture teams orchestrate the development by going out there and doing task mining and process mining. For maintenance, we have five or six people for 32 processes.
Level of expertise with SI which is LTI is excellent
We have an Novigo automation framework that helps us to calculate ROI from UiPath. It calculates ROI based on the time a human would take to perform the task manually versus the time needed for a bot to do it. Then the hours are converted into dollars. Finally, we can get the cost per transaction per hour per dollar spent per record. That helps you calculate an accurate ROI when identifying RPA case, and we can see the value realized every month. We calculate the amount of records and hours saved through automation and convert that into a dollar amount per process. That's how we have been able to do a very accurate value realization based on the number of transactions processed by the robot.
The license is around $40,000 yearly. Technically, that's the lease price. But UiPath told us to go through our distributor, and by doing so, we've saved at least 50 percent of the costs. So it's now around $24,000. That is pretty cheap compared to Blue Prism or any other vendor out there that offers a combination of the same features.
You do need to purchase an additional license to get Insight licenses. We were the beta testers of UiPath's Insight application, which is purely on the analytics side. A lighter version of insights should be embedded into Orchestrator itself inside the standard offering of the UI without the extra license costs. So that way, we could track the number of processes, exceptions, success rate, and calculations in a single platform without buying any additional licenses.
Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, WinAutomation, and UiPath were four we considered. We used Novigo Automation Framework Reports to test and evaluate each solution to see which one best suits our requirements. That's how we chose UiPath over the rest. It included deep-dive reports from Gartner, Forrester, Nelson Hall, and many other third-party analysts. These reports featured a highly detailed heat map as well as information about the cost-effectiveness of the deployment model, the development roadmap, and the maturity of the product. So that helped us to easily compare UiPath to the others.
I rate UiPath nine out of 10 because it's easy to develop, manage, and maintain. That's what sets it apart from Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, or Power Automate. It's a simple drag-and-drop interface, which allows for low code automation development. And that makes it pretty much different from other options that we have. For example, developing basic automation can take few hours in UiPath versus a few days in Automation Anywhere. Implementation-wise, this is a pretty easy model when it comes to having a cloud orchestrator versus on-premise. Going on the cloud has reduced the burden of needing dedicated administrators to manage and maintain the platform. Minimal administration is required to manage and maintain Orchestrator in the cloud.
So that's the fastest way to onboard UiPath. But there is a lot of groundwork on the governance piece. So before even investing in UiPath or any other RPA platform, you need a solid governance framework and a foundation that will help you do the correct automation at the right time. Versus just doing anything using the tool. The tool is designed to do all types of automation but they need to be beneficial for the organization with good ROI and value realization.
UiPath is deployed when there are large numbers of processes.
We currently get no benefits from process mining because our team has been shut down.
We haven't automated processes based on UiPath Process Mining, but we've used it to gain insight into our processes. It also helps us refine and speed up our standard operating procedures. I rate UiPath Process Mining seven out of 10 for transparency.
Unlike scan.ai, UiPath Process Mining doesn't provide high-level insights. It isn't easy to integrate. They should stop selling and try to bring more value into the system. A person can have only 10 UiPath Process Mining licenses, but nobody uses them, so in hindsight, everybody feels like UiPath is a failed product.
We have used UiPath Process Mining for three years.
I rate UiPath support five out of 10.
Neutral
Celonis and Scan.ai are 1000 percent better than UiPath Process Mining.
Deploying Process Mining is a complex process. We hired a consultant, but they also failed. Four people are needed for maintenance.
UiPath Process Mining is expensive. Celonis is cheaper and offers more value. It's highly effective, but they need to use the right tool in the right way. If everyone buys a Ford but no one drives it, people will feel that Ford isn't a good car. However, if everyone is driving a Honda, it may be a less well-known car, but everyone thinks it's great because they see it on the road.
I rate UiPath Process Mining five out of 10. Process mining is an excellent tool, but if the support and implementation are weak, no one will appreciate it, or they will say the wrong things about it. UiPath can improve because no one is perfect in this world. If you go to the server, you will find nobody is using UiPath. All the numbers are fuzzy. No case studies are coming in, so nobody is using it.
I used the solution for one of our pharmaceutical clients based in Japan. It was a typical process mining project. They gave us their data, and we fed the data to UiPath. We then prepared dashboards and provided the clients with valuable insights, like the bottleneck for the process and where they could save money.
Our clients were quite shocked at the issues in their processes. They realized that there was a lot of time consumption on approvals. They were very happy with the outcome of the project. They decided to make the changes and observe whether they saw any benefits. If they see any benefits, they will implement it as a live project. It was a typical process mining project.
We use both BasicConnector and AppOne features. We dump our data in the server data and create files in it. In BasicConnector, we do the necessary transformations. In AppOne, we prepare the dashboard based on the best way to represent it.
UiPath has an in-built feature that calculates rework. In most cases, this calculation by UiPath is wrong. UiPath intelligence does not consider that the definition of rework varies for every process and firm. It just considers the normal definition that if a step is repeated twice, it will be a rework. Sometimes, repetition might be necessary for the process.
When we understood the issue was with UiPath intelligence, we deleted it and created our own single-value KPI for rework. The intelligence KPIs offered by the solution are not up to the mark. I don't know if this feature was changed. I am not sure about the current situation.
I have been using the solution for almost a year.
We haven't had any downtime. The product was highly stable, and the data flow was very smooth. It was very fast, too. Even though we were working on virtual machines, the solution was very smooth and fast. I rate its performance a ten out of ten.
The technical support is amazing. If I'm stuck anywhere, I can get the solution within 24 hours. I can totally rely on UiPath's support team.
Positive
We access everything through our Superadmin access. We use the SaaS version. The initial setup is quite easy. It's just a URL. You can contact the vendor and get the credentials. It's very straightforward. It's just like logging into a portal. It's as easy as that. We just have to enter our username and password and start working.
Two business value architects and two data engineers, including me, worked on the solution. All four of us had Superadmin access. We shared the business view link with the clients.
Celonis is a market leader. Celonis does not offer anything outside process mining. If I have identified a bottleneck that can be solved through automation, I cannot do that using Celonis even if I know how to do the automation. I would have to rely on another RPA tool. If I use UiPath, it will be an end-to-end solution for me. If a bottleneck can be solved through automation, I can use UiPath RPA to implement the automation.
The product is very compatible with other UiPath tools. It is the biggest pro. In process mining, the main objective is to determine and identify automation possibilities because we can save money only by doing automation. UiPath RPA is one of the best RPA tools in the market. Getting all these features with one license is beneficial for the people who license the solution and the developers.
I worked as a functional guide and data engineer for our client. The client's team was not sure about what they were lacking. Every process has some bottlenecks, variations, and inefficiencies. The client wanted to understand the flaws in their processes and streamline them. We also helped them understand how they can save money by streamlining the process through automation capabilities.
It's not cheap to implement process mining. We suggested to our clients that they could automate certain processes, but we did not implement them. We only gave them suggestions. We told them about the projected savings they could achieve if they implemented them according to our recommendations. It was a POC. The clients didn't know the concept of process mining. They were just exploring what process mining generally offers and whether it would be wise to implement process mining in all their processes. At the core, it was a typical incident management process. Most of their processes were very closely related to ITSM. They might have other processes like supply chain management and order to cash, but we were not exposed to those processes.
If someone has enough budget, they should choose Celonis because UiPath's process mining is not up to the mark. It's a bit difficult to get data in UiPath. When I used UiPath, there were no connectors to extract data from databases or data warehouses. We were using Databricks. We had to extract data from Databricks in Excel file format manually. Then, we dumped the data into UiPath's server. There are better tools when it comes to process mining. However, if we use UiPath RPA along with UiPath Process Mining, it could be used to its full potential. If someone is not using UiPath RPA, they should choose a different process mining tool.
The end-to-end visibility offered by the Process Mining dashboards was good. Whatever we were trying to build was quite straightforward. If we are comfortable with HTML, then it is quite straightforward. If we are uncomfortable with HTML, we'll face some initial hiccups. However, we will get a hang of it eventually. It won't be a huge roadblock. I have used other process mining and visualization tools. Initially, it was a bit difficult for me.
If we are using UiPath Process Mining in addition to AI Fabric and UiPath RPA, it will deliver the most value. UiPath Process Mining is not a good standalone solution. It is a good solution when we use the whole package. Data visualization tools like Power BI, Tableau, Celonis, and Signavio have drag-and-drop facilities. We just have to mark our dimensions, and the dashboard is complete. In UiPath, we have to do everything by ourselves. We will have to write proper HTML codes. There is a positive aspect to it, too. UiPath allows users to do white labeling. It is a unique feature of the tool. No other product allows users to put a client's logo or change the color scheme.
The ability of the product to remove bottlenecks from a wide range of processes depends on how we mine the processes. It depends on the dashboards we prepare and the analysis we build. It totally depends on the capability of a business value architect. As a data engineer, it doesn't matter to me which tool I'm using. I just do the transformation. It is up to the business value architect and how they derive information from the visualized data to deduce the business cases, values, and bottlenecks. At its core, every data visualization tool is the same.
The overall transparency offered by the solution in our end-to-end processes was great. It was a new experience for us. We also got continuous support from the product's technical team. UiPath generally offers the UiPath Forum. The process mining tool was new last year. Certain questions were not posted on the forum. So we had to read all the documents. Most solutions are available in the documents. We can raise a ticket in the support portal when we face issues. The support team is very helpful. The team helped us with everything, so the project went smoothly.
We didn't integrate the tool with anything. We just dumped the data in the form of flat files. We did all the transformations in SQL Server before dumping the data. Before we feed to our visualization tool, we need to do a basic transformation like handling duplicates. All the other process mining solutions provide users with a space to do the transformation. However, UiPath does not give us that liberty. We must have the final files to start process mining in UiPath. It is a big disadvantage. To overcome this, we must put additional cost for another transformation space like SQL Server.
The project went on for almost two months. There were many hiccups, and the client was new to UiPath Process Mining. In the end, it went smoothly. It took some time because it was a new experience for all of us. The documentation was very helpful. The support team and the people training us in the product were also very helpful. They helped us with all our doubts.
Someone who thinks that streamlining processes with automation is not cost-effective might be someone who doesn't know how processes work. Streamlining processes is the best thing we can do with the processes. Otherwise, we will lose money and won't even notice. We'll just be frustrated and wonder where we are losing the money. We won't earn anything. Every time we receive a project, we focus more on automation because it helps us save money and resources and reduces the risk of human error.
If the process is a standard ERP process, like O2C, AP, AR, or P2P, there are live data connections in UiPath. However, we still cannot do transformations. We must look for a different tool for transformation. People considering using the solution must have some knowledge of HTML and JSON. Certain things do not make sense in UiPath, like the data flow between the backend and frontend. It does not make any sense, and we won't be able to figure it out by looking at the tool. We'll definitely need someone's guidance. If someone is working on traditional process mining tools, UiPath could seem different to them.
All in all, it is a great solution. Every product has some drawbacks. If someone is looking for a full end-to-end solution that includes automation, they should use UiPath. Otherwise, there are better tools in the market.
Overall, I rate the solution an eight and a half out of ten.
