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What is UiPath? | What is UiPath Used For? | Who Uses UiPath? | Why Should I Care?
What is RPA? What is UiPath?
Business Answer:
RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation. The goal of RPA software is for “robots” or “bots” to take on repeatable, time-consuming, mundane tasks so people don’t have to do them. Similar to robots in manufacturing, they can be trained to do almost anything a human can do, but they aren’t very creative! An RPA bot can take over a computer’s keyboard and mouse and complete a variety of tasks you’ve instructed it to perform, just like a human would.
For example, you may train a bot to do the following:
- Every night at midnight
- Open our vendor’s website and log in
- Click 10 links to download the prior day’s Excel reports
- Move the reports SharePoint.
- Email operations to let them know the reports are available and include a link.
We often say, if you can train an intern to perform a process, you can probably train an RPA bot to do the same process.
So what is UiPath? UiPath is a company that makes the most robust, flexible, and easy-to-use RPA software. We aren’t the only ones who think that! Gartner and Forrester compare RPA tools constantly, and UiPath has been on top for years.
UiPath “robots” can be taught to copy, paste, type, drag-and-drop, click buttons, launch/log in to applications, run reports, access/read your email, read PDF documents, and almost anything else a user does with a keyboard or mouse.
We have seen users in accounting, HR, marketing, sales operations, engineering, legal, audit, supply chain, and operations automate processes across their departments using UiPath. With UiPath they’ve automated running reports, sending emails, moving data from PDF documents to Excel, retrieving data from portals, entering data into multiple systems, orchestrating multiple software programs that need to run in order, and hundreds of processes.
Every industry, organization, and department has processes that can be automated. Most of the processes we automate with UiPath are processes that users hate doing. They are usually critical processes, but they must be done at inconvenient times and are mindless and repetitive, but if they aren’t done (or are done incorrectly), it can cause major problems for the business. If you’ve ever filled out the same information ten times on ten forms at the doctor’s office, it will be upsetting to learn that a bot could have taken your first set of answers and typed it into every one of their systems, and it would never “fat finger” your name, address, or SSN!
If done correctly, UiPath/RPA are an extension of your team. They don’t require a salary, sleep, food, water, or breaks. They are also just “robots” and are only as valuable as the processes you’ve taught them to perform. Luckily, UiPath has developed a robust set of tools that streamlines training and monitoring your robot team members.
Technical Answer:
UiPath is a robotic process automation (RPA) platform to create software robots that can interact with your existing IT systems such as legacy applications, databases, and cloud-based services. UiPath enables the automation of manual processes by providing a workflow designer, recording capabilities, and visual programming tools. UiPath also provides access to third-party APIs, allowing users to integrate multiple systems into their automated workflows. Users can build complex automated workflows using drag-and-drop actions in a visual editor, enabling them to quickly design detailed automations without having coding experience. Additionally, UiPath offers tools for machine learning and artificial intelligence that allow users to develop more sophisticated automations through the incorporation of various models for natural language processing (NLP), intelligent document processing (IDP), and more.
What is UiPath Used For?
Business Answer:
UiPath is used to streamline business processes that are time-consuming, manual, error-prone, repetitive, and mundane. UiPath can be used to automate your monotonous processes (saving, moving, and renaming files; exporting data from a website; inputting data into legacy software such as SAP), extract data from documents retrieve data from PDFs, scrape information from websites, digitize scanned documents and receipts), and integrate with other systems to create powerful workflows. While other tools make the same claims, UiPath is one of the only RPA tools that enable business users and analysts instead of only the IT teams.
Technical Answer:
UiPath can be used to build, deploy, and manage software robots that perform automated activities such as data extraction and scraping from various sources, system integration, and file transfer between systems. People typically use UiPath to free their time from repetitive tasks to complete more strategic or valuable work. Customers have also leveraged UiPath’s AI to extract data from structured, semi-structured, and unstructured or low-quality documents – like W2 tax forms, invoices, or contracts, respectively.
- Data Extraction from Difficult Sources
Through its many automation features, UiPath can extract data from numerous sources. By combining scraping, crawling, and structured content extraction tools, it can systematize the extraction procedure. Furthermore, it has the ability to scrape dynamic websites and utilize optical character recognition (OCR) technology to extract data from papers like PDFs and images.
- Document Understanding
As part of its document understanding capabilities, UiPath can also use artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to categorize and extract data from sources of unstructured text. The Document Understanding module of UiPath employs machine learning to categorize and extract data from documents automatically. It can handle both organized and unstructured data, processing images, PDFs, and other document formats. The following are examples of paper comprehension abilities:
- Automated Classification: Using UiPath, it is possible to determine the sort of document (such as an invoice, receipt, or purchase order) and its general layout (e.g., table).
- Data Extraction: Based on preset templates or personalized rules, UiPath can recognize and extract particular things such as text, numbers, and dates.
- Validation & Verification: UiPath can validate information against defined business standards or compare it to databases that are already in existence to ensure that the information is accurate.
- System Integration
UiPath is a powerful platform for system integration. With UiPath, you can quickly and easily connect different systems, applications, and software components together to create automated workflows. This enables businesses to realize the full potential of their technology investments by streamlining processes and improving efficiency across their entire organization. UiPath offers an intuitive graphical interface that makes it easy to set up integrations without any coding or technical knowledge required. Customers regularly integrate with systems such as Microsoft Office Suite, SAP ERP systems, Oracle, and Salesforce CRM.
- File Transfer Between Systems
UiPath is the best option for streamlining workflows because it makes it simple for users to move files between platforms. Data can be moved between systems swiftly and easily thanks to UiPath’s user-friendly interface and strong automation features. By ensuring that all information is current across all platforms, this increases efficiency while saving time and effort.
- Website Navigation
UiPath’s web navigation capability makes it easy for users to quickly access web pages and automate routine web-based tasks, like entering data into web forms, extracting text or images, scraping data from websites, and much more. With UiPath’s powerful automation tools, navigating the web becomes easier than ever before – allowing you to quickly find the information you need and complete tasks faster than ever.
- Automated Recording
The Recording Tool in UiPath is a feature that allows users to quickly create automation workflows by recording each action performed by the user as they interact with it. With this tool, users can start creating their own automations without having to learn how to write scripts or study coding. The recorded actions are then stored as activities which can be refined or added onto later for further customization and optimization.
Who Uses UiPath?
Business Answer:
UiPath enables organizations to streamline operations, improve efficiency, reduce costs, increase accuracy, and gain insights from their data. For that reason, it can be used by anyone in the organization who needs to automate manual workflows or standardize processes such as HR departments for onboarding new employees, finance teams for accounts payable processing, or IT teams for system integrations. It is also popular among customer service departments that use it to respond quickly and accurately to customer inquiries.
Your organization likely loses hundreds or thousands of hours per year repeating the same tasks over and over. Anyone who enters data into systems like SAP or anyone who spends time pulling data from the same websites could probably save enough time with UiPath to justify the purchase. When you begin saving 20 hours per person, per month, per department, you can see how the results compound. When the time savings are combined with fewer errors, processes that are easier to support, and complete documentation, the value increases substantially. UiPath is a no-brainer for nearly any organization.
Technical Answer:
UiPath is used by businesses to automate manual and repetitive tasks. UiPath is designed for users of all skill levels and can be tailored to fit the specific needs of different types of organizations. Users who employ UiPath include IT professionals, system administrators, software developers, business analysts, and other staff members responsible for creating automated workflows. These users are able to take advantage of UiPath’s visual interface to quickly develop robots that can interact with applications on their computer systems in order to execute tasks without any human intervention.
Most customers utilize a hybrid strategy with UiPath. Organizations will assign their business users to automate small tasks they are responsible for, while the technical team automates complex and high-value processes. Using this approach enables a company to create automations on all levels while not burdening their technical team with projects with low ROIs.
Why Should I Care?
Business Answer:
No matter what your company does, there are processes that are repetitive, take too long, and burden your business end users with low value tasks. In this digital age, we should no longer rely on manual processes to run a business. Internal teams are still responsible for mundane tasks required by their needs. Markets are more competitive, and margins are smaller than ever, so we need to enable users to complete high value work while automation handles dull processes. Everyone expects immediate responses and minimal errors. If your team is not embracing technology and is not working on continuous improvement, you are probably in trouble. UiPath is not a magic bullet, but if your company is spending time, money, and resources on manual processes as we have seen in every industry and functional area across the globe, you should at least give it some strong consideration.
Technical Answer:
IT cannot support every request from every team in the company. The IT organization isn’t resourced for it, and never will be. Business users operate in a fast-paced, ever-changing world and constantly develop new processes to support the company. They need to get things done quickly, and you can help them tremendously by helping them level up. Not everyone will become an expert at automation, but anyone with some technical capacity can utilize the recording tool for generating an automated process in minutes. Teach people to fish and be open to their feedback. Some tools are too difficult, and users won’t adopt them. Some tools are too slow, and users won’t adopt them. Some tools are too simple and won’t work, so users won’t adopt them. Don’t give up on your users. There are tools out there that users will adopt, and we believe it is IT’s job to find them and evangelize them. If you agree with this, you should explore UiPath with your business users.
Why Is Capitalize So Jazzed About UiPath?
UiPath fills a need that no other tool has been able to touch. It empowers users to leverage software robots for repetitive tasks so they can focus on more strategic and value-added work items. More importantly, users adopt the tool eagerly and empower their organizations like nothing else we see on the market.
Capitalize Consulting is here to help organizations through digital transformation and process automation. Contact us at info@capitalizeconsulting.com to learn more about how UiPath can benefit your team.