Sign in
Categories
Your Saved List Become a Channel Partner Sell in AWS Marketplace Amazon Web Services Home Help

UiPath Robot

UiPath Inc.

Reviews from AWS customer

25 AWS reviews

External reviews

309 reviews
from and

External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.


3-star reviews ( Show all reviews )

    Sanobar Khan

Building automations in UiPath is done through simple activities

  • October 06, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

I have automated finance use cases, as well as banking, NOC, and call-center use cases. I have also done email and Excel automations.

How has it helped my organization?

It has definitely reduced the cost of the process I have automated. It has reduced the number of employees required for some processes and improved process efficiency. It has improved accuracy and error rates. All of these factors reduce the cost of the processes.

Because there is no human involvement and there is a fixed flow that bots follow, it has minimized the human errors that occurred before.

What is most valuable?

The Excel automation in UiPath is very easy to use. Even for complex scenarios, we can easily automate the process. And that is true for email automation as well.

Building automations in UiPath is done through simple activities. We just drag and drop into a workflow, build the flow, and execute it. It's that simple.

We use UiPath Academy courses as well, and they give us an idea of how we can use it professionally. They have given us a complete idea of how to use the solution.

What needs improvement?

When it comes to web automation, a change order should be able to be handled more easily.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for almost three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Compared to other tools, UiPath is very stable, as well as easy to install, manage, and upgrade.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is more scalable than Automation Anywhere.

How are customer service and support?

I have not contacted their technical support.

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

UiPath has more costly licenses than Automation Anywhere and, of course, Power Automate.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

There are multiple differences between UiPath and Automation Anywhere. Automation Anywhere has a good handle on desktop automation as well as its IQ Bots for document understanding.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath at seven out of 10 overall.


    Muhammad Shaf Mairaj

It's handy for tasks like scraping and manipulating data

  • October 06, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

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

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

How has it helped my organization?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is most valuable?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What needs improvement?

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

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

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used UiPath for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

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

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

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

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

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

How was the initial setup?

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

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

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

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

What was our ROI?

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

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

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

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

What other advice do I have?

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


    reviewer2286168

Has multiple features, many connectors, and good support, but the debugging process takes longer and could be improved

  • September 29, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

I've worked on many use cases for UiPath, primarily automation use cases, but the most recent one was for the HTS sector.

The customer was inquiring about payments, whether the payment was fully paid, partially paid, or whether there was an outstanding balance or payment discrepancy.

It was for a US client, and based on some validations, checks, and settings, I needed to identify if the payment was on time, delayed, or never paid. I had to commit to determining the information or data for my customer, which included many validation business rules. I had to consider the checkpoints before replying to the customer's query.

The query used to come through email, and I needed to extract the emails, identify what the query was for, and then go ahead and provide the solution.

How has it helped my organization?

Many new improvements in UiPath after 2018 have helped end users stay competitive in the market, such as document understanding and process mining. UiPath has also helped significantly in documenting scanned invoices and restructuring processes. UiPath is continually growing and updating, and that is a big help to organizations.

What is most valuable?

What I like best about UiPath is that it's undoubtedly the leader in the market.

I like that the solution makes life easier through its multiple features. It's easy to use UiPath through its Excel functionality, a basic application you need. UiPath also has many connectors available, so using the solution is easier.

I also found the document understanding feature of UiPath helpful in automating data from PDFs, whether it's to classify or extract information from documents. The document understanding feature also has many extractors, making data extraction easy to apply to the existing company processes, one of the best features of UiPath.

Compared to other RPA tools, such as Blue Prism and Power Automate, UiPath stands out in terms of the scalability of automation that you can do on the platform. UiPath is more reliable and has many actions available for almost every application, which is why the solution stands out.

Building automation using UiPath is simple, but it would still depend on the developer or designer. If you do not plan the process correctly, it will be messy. Regarding the actions for building automation, you can pull and drop into boxes, so it's easy.

My company used UiPath to automate processes dealing with a good cause, mainly giving people more free time to focus on learning new skills and growing professionally rather than spending all the time working on repetitive, mundane tasks. My company automated a process for the customer and delivered that to the customer.

UiPath enabled my company to implement end-to-end automation. Still, there may be a few requirements that would make the solution not feasible, for example, applications where it would be challenging to use UiPath, even with plug-ins.

The UiPath User Community is the biggest out of all communities by other platforms, and I found the community helpful. Many experts in the UiPath User Community are ready to help.

I've used UiPath Academy. Its courses helped me in understanding UiPath in detail. I started learning the solution from the academy itself. It is great because it covers all the basics and advanced topics. UiPath Academy is a one-stop solution for learning UiPath and its products, services, and offerings.

The solution has also helped in speeding up digital transformation.

Uipath has helped reduce human error in any process or task that is rule-based, which doesn't need any human interference or judgment. My company developed tasks on the platform and created code to handle specific situations or scenarios that completely took care of manual intervention or manual efforts plus, the deployment was easy, and the solution saved a lot of manual effort. UiPath reduced human error by up to ninety percent.

The solution helped free up employee time by up to forty percent after the automation by reducing the need for employees to work on repetitive tasks so employees could focus on other, more challenging tasks, including learning new skills.

What needs improvement?

One area for improvement in UiPath is that the orientation could be better.

Debugging also needs improvement because I need to do it from scratch whenever I have to debug a code. I have to run the entire code from the start and then check the pointers. If a specific action can be developed in UiPath, instead of running the code from the beginning, it would allow you to debug the code from the point that needs debugging, saving a significant amount of time.

My company has tested the AI functionality of UiPath, and for complex processes, it takes a lot of time to develop the processes from a development point. When a process is complex, it depends on the end users or developers on how to break the requirement into small pieces. Suppose you do not break it into small pieces and create a single push out of it. In that case, it will become a lengthy code inside UiPath Studio, making maintaining and monitoring that code difficult inside UiPath Studio. Locating the error or actual information would also take more work, so UiPath could be challenging to use in complex process automation.

Pricing for UiPath also needs improvement as it becomes expensive in large-scale implementations.

For how long have I used the solution?

I started working with UiPath in 2018, so from that time, it's been five years of working with the platform.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is a stable tool.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath is a scalable tool.

How are customer service and support?

I found UiPath Support good.

UiPath consultants provide good support and are readily available via email.

It takes about ten to twelve hours to receive a response from UiPath Support.

I'd rate support as eight out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

My company used Blue Prism before UiPath. I work for a service-based company, with clients choosing the tools based on priorities. UiPath was cheaper than Blue Prism, but when you use it for a large-scale RPA implementation where you deploy hundreds of robots, UiPath becomes more expensive than Blue Prism. However, development on UiPath was significantly faster and more reliable compared to Blue Prism. UiPath also has a larger community offering support versus Blue Prism and even has free training on UiPath Academy. UiPath also offered a free trial, which Blue Prism didn't offer. These are the reasons for switching to UiPath.

How was the initial setup?

Setting up the UiPath infrastructure was a little tricky, but the deployment was much easier. It usually takes one month to complete the deployment if the process is simple, but it could take up to three months for a complex process. Compared to other tools, the deployment and development of UiPath was faster.

What was our ROI?

In terms of manual efforts, realizing the benefits of UiPath was immediate, but for the financial benefits or ROI, it took some time, as the solution has a huge cost. It required you to purchase the UiPath Studio, Robot, and Architectural licenses. You also have to pay for the development costs, so the monetary benefits took time to reflect in the cash flow.

My company did notice between sixty to seventy percent ROI from UiPath, which was calculated around the number of FTEs, mainly how many FTEs were released from a specific task. For example, there was a big project with sixteen FTEs released from a repetitive task.

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

When there's a massive deployment of robots, pricing for UiPath becomes costly, as you must purchase different licenses for UiPath Studio, Orchestrator, etc. I noticed that it would solely depend on how service-based companies negotiate with UiPath and that each client could have a pricing disparity. A client with a more significant implementation could get more discount, pricing-wise.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I had the chance to work with Blue Prism and Power Automate.

What other advice do I have?

UiPath does not require extensive or complex application upgrades and support, at least not for every application. Sometimes, support is needed depending on the project or application, but the chance of it would be very slim.

UiPath was deployed on-premises. In terms of environments or locations, the solution was deployed in three different environments: in the Studio, Orchestrator, and Testing.

The number of users of the solution varies per project, but the maximum number of users I've worked with on a single project is about thirteen or fourteen.

My company has worked with small, medium, and large enterprises using UiPath.

The solution doesn't require maintenance. It just requires license renewal.

My rating for UiPath is seven out of ten. I'd make it a ten if UiPath improves the appearance of the Studio. Its debugging process could also be improved, as it's currently complex. It could be easier.

My company is a UiPath partner.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises


    reviewer2284653

Is easy to use and manage, but more documentation is needed

  • September 27, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use UiPath to automate routine tasks using bots.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath has helped improve our organization by automating routine tasks that can now run 24/7, error-free, and without the need for a salary.

Building automation using UiPath is moderate.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation, but the amount of automation possible depends on the process. We can typically automate up to 70 percent of a process using UiPath, but some processes can be fully automated. In my company, we have been able to fully automate medium-sized processes, but only if the data is in a good format.

UiPath's user community is extremely helpful. Whenever I have an issue while developing a process, I can go to the user community and find a solution.

I completed both the UiPath Associate and Advanced Certificates using UiPath Academy. The Academy is helpful in segregating each topic so that we can find the corresponding data.

UiPath has helped accelerate our digital transformation and reduce its cost. No expensive or complex upgrades are required to speed up our digital transformation.

UiPath has helped reduce human errors by 30 percent and helps save our staff time.

What is most valuable?

UiPath is easy to use and easy to manage.

What needs improvement?

We can not exceed ten records in the UiPath database because the UiPath architecture will become extremely slow and not respond.

I would like easy-to-understand and follow documentation for different scenarios.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

UiPath is stable, and each version comes with new advantages. UiPath supports .NET versions, Windows Legacy, and current versions of Windows.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

UiPath is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support has been good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We previously used Blue Prism, but the control room is much more difficult to manage than in UiPath, which is very easy. The same is true for process development, which is much more comfortable in UiPath.

The only drawback of UiPath is that it is not possible to provide a value during debugging, as we can do in Blue Prism. This is the main difference between the two platforms.

How was the initial setup?

Some of the process deployments were difficult. The deployment takes a few hours. We used five people for the deployment.

What was our ROI?

Our profit has increased by around 50 percent using UiPath.

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

UiPath is somewhat expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath seven out of ten.

We have 70 percent of our footprint on-premises.

Maintenance is required for patching.


    Praveen Pallapothu

Great user community and Academy courses but the AI functionality is still immature

  • September 25, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

Most of my use cases are spread across all the business units. It's used in accounts payable or for receiving reconciliations. It is also used in directory management and the banking finance sector. 

What is most valuable?

UiPath has a lot of features and they have added a lot of things. The apps and document understanding are good. We use document understanding a lot, even though they may not be common for day-to-day processes.

The Orchestrator is amazing. It provides a huge benefit including data security and data storage.

We can add a huge number of activities and can input code right into the platform.

While there might be companies that use the product to do automation for good cause, however, so far, in my experience, I have yet to do much of those use cases. I’m more on the business process side.

The product enables us to implement end-to-end automation. When they first launched, people used to have some sort of hiccups, however, now you don’t need different tools to manage your entire automation journey. With UiPath, from the discovery phase on, you have everything you need. We can understand the ROI clearly and can see what we’ve invested and what we’ve received.

The user community is valuable. It has the biggest community. Everyone knows it. One of the reasons UiPath is so successful is the UiPath community. We have tremendous people in the community supporting each other in terms of development or community events. People from different organizations can explain different pain point areas or explain good use cases and share learning and feedback.

We use both cloud and on-prem services. Most companies prefer on-prem over the cloud. From our perspective, we’re working to convert users to the cloud to reduce the footprint. Still, many want to maintain that on-prem segment.

We use the UiPath Academy courses. Since the beginning of my career, I’ve used it. Whenever there are new products that are launched, they will release certain courses for training purposes. I've gone through training at the Academy. I found a certified trainer also to provide training. Overall, having the training available really helps new people who want to kick-start their careers using the app.

They've also implemented community collaboration. If someone from the community has developed something, they will add training based on the community. The user has larger visual data now, compared to what happened previously.

The solution has allowed us to manage digital transformation and reduce the cost around it. Automation really helps boost digital transformation. We've seen cost reduction around resource use and the cost of operations as well. 

We've been able to reduce human error using UiPath. Of course, it depends on the people developing it. However, as long as the people have good implementation experience, we can really minimize errors.

It's helped free up employee time. However, it is not a major amount across every project. Comparatively, it can save a number of hours versus manual labor. 

We have saved money and that's calculated on the number of hours saved in terms of man hours. We haven't cut staff; they are now working on different tasks instead.  

What needs improvement?

We've used AI functionality. On a real-time basis, we haven't seen many benefits from the AI center. It's not cost-effective to run models on it as of now. We haven't been able to automate more processes. Some projects don't require AI at all. If it gets more cost-effective and has more use cases, that might change. 

The tool continuously redefines itself. They release three major versions every year and target one major feature once a year, like AI, et cetera. However, there are a few features at an early stage and not quite mature yet.

The initial tools are good enough compared to other vendors, however, they are still refining and need to change a lot of things, especially in the AI center, which is not that flexible when it comes to deployment. This is the same for UiPath apps. In most cases, nobody wants to invest a lot of money in attended bots. They need to work on that.

We'd like to see them work towards more stable outcomes to minimize hiccups. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for more than six years. I started in 2017.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Previously, we haven't noticed stability issues. In the past year, we have noted issues with stability. There have been some hiccups. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability depends on the way a company implements it. From a cloud perspective, the scalability is good. That said, the flexibility is there to scale.

How are customer service and support?

We've had issues in the past where products were not working as expected and we've reached out to support. The experience has been mixed. Sometimes it is good. Sometimes solutions are delayed. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

I did not use a different solution previously. However, I have used Automation Anywhere, Power Automate, recently, and also Intellibot and Blue Prism.

Power Automate is still quite young. There are still items missing as it's new. 

UiPath excels in the Orchestrator. The flexibility is great as well.

How was the initial setup?

We've worked with both cloud and on-prem deployments. However, people seem to prefer on-prem. Almost all of our clients are maintaining their own cloud and then running UiPath into the cloud from on-prem.

I was involved with the deployment. The setup is straightforward. For the governance and audit security principles, we do need to add in a bit more. We might add, for example, a CI/CD pipeline. 

We tend to have three to five people, part of the support team, to help with the deployment.

There is some maintenance required. We need to monitor our VMs and understand if the robot is failing and if so what is the root cause. We have an interior support team for maintenance services.  

What about the implementation team?

We did not use an outside vendor for the setup. Only people in the department are allowed to handle the deployments due to compliance. 

What was our ROI?

We cannot calculate an overall ROI. However, if something isn't getting 150% or more, people tend to not want to implement it. So far, we've seen a very good ROI. 

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

The costs have gone up recently. The pricing seems to be a bit higher for the end user. 

What other advice do I have?

We are UiPath partners. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. The most recent tools are not as impressive compared to what is happening in the market. 

As long as others don't need additional tools like Apps or document understanding, I'd recommend it. There are a lot of features and functionality to try. However, if you need document understanding and apps, I'd advise users to look at their use case, do a POC, and figure out if it's a perfect fit. 

From the perspective of pure automation, UiPath is excellent. However, if a company is looking for AI functionality, they really need to see what else is out there and what is best for them. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises


    Roger Yu

Saves us money and time, but the support needs improvement

  • September 22, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use UiPath to automate some of our financial and HR workflows and to send emails to clients.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath helps automate end-to-end processes.

It helps reduce the speed and cost of our digital transformation.

We do not require expensive or complex application upgrades to speed up and save costs in our digital transformation.

UiPath helps reduce human error, reducing our labor.

It saves me three hours per week.

UiPath saves us costs.

What is most valuable?

UiPath is a strong brand.

What needs improvement?

I would like UiPath to work more with our local partners, to provide us with lower prices, localized functionality, and support.

For how long have I used the solution?

I currently use UiPath once a week. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability of Uipath eight out of ten. We have had some stability issues with our VMware.

How are customer service and support?

The local UiPath partner we are working with provides very slow responses to our technical issues.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

UiPath is priced 50 percent higher than our local RPA solutions.

I would rate the pricing of UiPath eight out of ten with ten being the most expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises


    reviewer2281758

Easy to build automations, and has helpful Academy courses, but can be expensive

  • September 22, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for automation.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath has been quite useful for the organization. It's helped reduce workloads.

What is most valuable?

The processing time is the best aspect of the solution. There are also fewer coding requirements. It takes less time to develop and implement projects using UiPath for this reason. 

It's easy to build automation. The organization has a variety of projects and we can complete the projects faster using automation using UiPath.

The product enables us to implement end-to-end automation.

We use the UiPath user community. If you have any doubts about what you are doing, you can turn to the community and they'll answer your questions - which is very helpful. 

The Academy courses are very useful. If you want to do any certifications, it's very simple.

We use the AI functionality. It helps automate processes that are more involved. However, it's something the team works on; I don't know much about it. 

The solution helps us reduce human error as we can run many projects without much human involvement. Once we reduce human interactions, we can reduce human error quite significantly.

It's also helped us free up employee time thanks to the automation. It's freed up maybe 30% to 40% of our time since we started implementing automation.

What needs improvement?

We've tried to use test automation, however, I'm not sure how well it works.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for one year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable. 

How was the initial setup?

We took about three or four months to deploy the solution. The process itself is moderate. We were able to manage the process ourselves. While it's rather easy, it does take some time.

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

The licensing cost is quite high. It could be reduced. 

What other advice do I have?

I'm an end-user of UiPath. I'm an RPA developer. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. There should still be more opportunities to make the solution less expensive. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises


    Jayraj Patil

Excel automation and document understanding are valuable features, but the documentation portal is difficult to navigate

  • September 13, 2023
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

We use a feature called Document Understanding to extract data from invoices and generate reports. It uses the invoice number, amount, line amount, description, addresses, remit address, and other fields. This is the current project I'm working on. I'm using all the features available in UiPath to train the invoices to identify all the fields. Then, I deploy the training, create a pipeline, and use that ML skill in my coding while developing a project.

We are doing this for our team talent payments team. They usually receive different invoices from vendors for various reasons. My company currently has 700 vendors listed. These vendors send invoices for their services, and the talent payment team used to fetch and extract the data manually before we started working on this project. Whenever they received an invoice, they would open it and write down the data.

We have now completed phase one of the project and are in phase two. For this process, the bot will receive all the invoices and extract all the data needed by the team. We will then create a consolidated report in Excel for each vendor and present it to the talent team. This automation saves the talent team time. In addition, I have used email automation, Excel automation, API calls, and UI automation in this project.

We deploy UiPath on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments depending on the organization's requirements.

How has it helped my organization?

Building automation using UiPath is really easy. Studio is a drag-and-drop environment with different palettes, search options, and simple properties, inputs, and outputs. It doesn't take much effort to develop a workflow in UiPath, even complex ones. UiPath also has recorders, so we can perform our actions and start recording before we perform them. UiPath will then develop the workflow for us based on our screen actions.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation, which is important to me from an analytics perspective. It makes it easier for us to provide solutions to businesses, regardless of their requirements. With UiPath, we can keep manual interaction to a minimum, from providing input to getting output. UiPath apps and interactions also make it easier to automate processes. In the past, people would develop scripts to automate tasks, but they had to keep in mind that there would still be some manual work involved, such as preparing an input file. With UiPath, we can minimize this manual intervention and prerequisites. This is a significant advantage.

Everyone on our team uses the Academy Courses when they start using UiPath, and whenever a new feature is added, we search the course list for the updated courses. The biggest benefit is being able to learn UiPath directly from the developers, rather than from a third party. When we learn from a third party, they have to learn UiPath first, and then try to explain it to us based on their own understanding. But when we learn from UiPath, it's like a personal experience, because they developed the product and know how it's supposed to be used. The other great thing about the Academy is that it's very interactive, with question-and-answer sections and plenty of resources. For example, they provide input files so we can try out new features. All in all, the Academy makes it really easy to learn UiPath. We just have to take the startup course, and they explain everything through videos, interactive sections, questions, tests, and data flows.

UiPath helps speed up and reduce the cost of our digital transformation.

It also helps reduce human errors in the normal processes that we develop.

UiPath has freed up our employee time. For example, in the onboarding and interview processes, our organization may have many people applying on any given day. Sorting through applications was done manually, but with UiPath, the process has been significantly sped up. UiPath now performs all of the tasks, such as getting candidate details and making consolidation reports for the hiring team. Overall, UiPath has saved us a lot of time and effort, and it has been a great return on investment.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the document understanding feature of this current project, which is better than ABBYY FlexiCapture or Automation Anywhere. It can learn on its own, given enough instructions and data. With training, we can actually train it to recognize the specific fields on invoices that we want. For example, UiPath can still provide information from a few of the invoice fields without training, such as the invoice number and date, which are present on every invoice. However, some vendors have specific fields on their invoices, such as the candidate name, job location, or start date, which we can train UiPath to recognize. This gives us the ability to train UiPath beyond the common things, if we are looking for any specific information or if we want to personalize it for a vendor. We are then able to use this trained model in our code, which is very helpful.

I also like the Excel automation feature. UiPath has recently updated the Excel activities package, which gives us more options with a more modern look and feel.

What needs improvement?

I find the features UiPath provides to be excellent, but the documentation is difficult to maintain. I have noticed that it can be difficult to find information on some features in the UiPath documentation portal. The document portal needs to be kept more up-to-date. UiPath will release the new feature, but the document portal will still have the older version information. The documentation portal could be easier to navigate if it were redesigned to make it easier to find information about a particular feature. It would be great if the portal were updated as soon as new features are released.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for almost three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have occasionally observed some abnormalities, but we have not yet found the cause. For one of the processes, we are running macros and triggering them with UiPath. These macros can take ten to eleven hours to run. Sometimes, UiPath stops while a macro is still running. Once the macro is completed, UiPath is supposed to perform another task, but the macro takes so long to run that this does not happen. I believe this is a problem with our program, as it is taking too long to complete. These kinds of delays can occur, and that is understandable.

How are customer service and support?

There are many areas where support can improve. However, it is not that bad. In terms of sticking to schedules, they are available quickly and listen to all of the problems. Sometimes, we have hit roadblocks because the people assigned to solve a particular support ticket did not have any idea about the feature. This has caused problems for us, as we have had to spend time filling in another person who actually had the knowledge about that feature. We have run into this problem a few times. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

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

Our organization previously used Automation Anywhere, a script-based RPA tool. The fact that we moved to UiPath suggests that we wanted to change products for a reason. We must have heard that UiPath is better than Automation Anywhere in some way, which is why we made the switch.

What was our ROI?

We have seen a good return on investment.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath seven out of ten. UiPath has a lot of features they are working on but they take a long time to enter production.

Maintenance for UiPath is minimal. Small things such as changing the passwords because of the password rotation policy. We maintain our bots through VMs that run on AWS.

I recommend UiPath because it is a low-code/no-code solution that can be used by non-technical people. The Academy courses, which train users specifically on how to use the tool, make it easy to develop and automate processes. UiPath also offers a community version that includes most of the features of the paid version. Earlier in my career, I learned to use Blue Prism, which is a closed-source solution that only had basic courses available in its academy. It was difficult to use compared to UiPath, and it was hard to get any information on any forum or from its academy on how to use the tool and update it. In terms of learning, use, and understanding, UiPath is much easier than other solutions.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

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

Amazon Web Services (AWS)


    reviewer1237107

Provides us with the key to digital transformation, but development life cycle could be shorter

  • August 03, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We have many use cases, but the primary ones are on the finance side for intelligent automation. We use it for system updates and system manipulations.

How has it helped my organization?

UiPath has improved our organization in terms of 

  • quality
  • accuracy
  • reduction in headcount
  • working around the clock
  • consistency.

It is the primary key to our digital transformation. And we have been able to do so without expensive or complex application upgrades or IT application support.

Our accuracy and compliance have improved manyfold. And in terms of employee time, our benchmark is to save three employees per bot, but we have achieved something around 2.1 employees per bot.

We are a consortium with multi-discipline businesses, and we are able to use UiPath automation across all our sectors, but it has mainly helped us with shared services.

What is most valuable?

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation, and that is something that is important to us.

Of course, we have used the UiPath Academy courses, and that has been very handy and very useful. That is what we have used to significantly build up our capabilities. They are our entire training platform. We brought people who are not IT-savvy, complete laymen who were not in IT at all, into our platform of technology. To do that conversion, the Academy had to be very strong. It was not only the UiPath Academy that helped with their training, it was Microsoft PowerApps as well. The two of them together created this magic.

What needs improvement?

One functionality we would like to see is OCR.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for the last three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

We have not had technical support from UiPath.

How was the initial setup?

It's a very straightforward deployment, but any time we update the deployment, it becomes a bit complex.

We have a few VMs on-premises that we use for Orchestrator and the machines to run the bots, but the queue to run the bots is in the cloud. Most of our applications are on the cloud.

Implementing the first set of activities took us about nine weeks. We engaged a consulting party to identify the platform we should use. While we were doing that, we did opportunity assessments across the organization, to identify the processes that would be most valuable to automate.

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

UiPath is slightly more expensive than Automation Anywhere, from what I understand. But the pricing comparison is a mix between the two because UiPath attended bots are quite cheap compared to Automation Anywhere. If you bring in UiPath's unattended bots, that's expensive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have used Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and now UiPath. We had to decide among the three, but ultimately, there was no choice for us because Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism did not respond to some of our systems. This was especially true when doing screen grabs, specifically on the AS400. So it was a no-brainer for us.

I don't see a major problem with UiPath's ease of use, but I'm not a developer, I'm a decision-maker. But honestly, the development life cycle using Automation Anywhere is shorter. With UiPath, the development life cycle is slightly longer, but it is not a major issue.

What other advice do I have?

The most important thing is to follow the best practices from UiPath in building the bot processes. What happens is, when application upgrades happen, if you haven't done it in the right way, your applications will fall apart. You have to make sure that the screen-grabbing methodology and referencing are done according to the best practices of UiPath.


    GiovanaReis

Is easy to automate tasks and saves us time, but is expensive

  • August 01, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use UiPath for developing and implementing technical applications that provide data solutions.

How has it helped my organization?

Building automation with UiPath is straightforward. The API tool enables us to automate tasks such as receiving orders, booking travel, and reading emails with ease.

UiPath enables us to implement end-to-end automation, which is important for me as I frequently travel for business. The solution aids in conducting interviews with customers, handling documentation, and facilitating development.

UiPath saves us around 100 hours per week through automation.

I have completed the UiPath Academy introduction courses. In Brazil, it is the sole method available for us to learn about UiPath.

UiPath saves us approximately $200 per week towards the expenses of digital transformation.

UiPath helps to reduce the number of human errors.

UiPath helps our organization save costs by accelerating our tasks through automation.

What is most valuable?

UiPath's most valuable feature is Orchestrator.

What needs improvement?

UiPath's price has room for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using UiPath for five years.

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

UiPath is expensive. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the most expensive, I would rate the price an eight out of ten.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate UiPath a seven out of ten, mainly because of its high cost.