WHITE PAPER
UiPath Versus Au A utomati tio on An Anyywhere: An RPA RPA Buyin ying g Gui uid de
Introduction The maturation of robotic process automation (RPA) has led to the emergence of a number of market leaders. This comparison is based on Arrow Digital’s experience with two of the three leading vendors: UiPath and Automation Anywhere.
oth platforms possess the potential to boost productivity through the automation of knowledge work, but businesses can only select one. Making the right choice requires a thorough assessment of your current level of RPA maturity and circumspect consideration of strategic RPA plans. This white paper provides detailed comparisons of UiPath and Automation Anywhere, highlights specific features that make each suitable for different stages of RPA maturity and concludes by identifying the stronger of the two solutions.
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Placement on the RPA Maturity Curve efore making any decisions, a business must define RPA’s desired role in the organization. This requires a clear set of business objectives and a complete understanding of the resources necessary to achieve them. Most businesses will hereby fall into one of four levels along the RPA maturity curve:
Level 1: Personal Assistant Bots — Self-service automation of a specific repetitive task. — Limited IT involvement; focused on individual desktops. Level 2: Personal Multiplication Bots — Users leverage bots in variable use cases by adding in configurability through branching logic and variables or run a single bot in parallel multiple times to manage processes which need to be done multiple times. — IT is necessary to train and enable users so they can reuse their bots. Level 3: Organization Scaling — Business users support organization-wide automation efforts to reduce manual tasks for mission-critical scenarios. Bots are designed to automate a task for a given process, function or discipline rather than a specific person. — IT heavily involved in providing the infrastructure for bots to run at scale. Additional support and monitoring requirements will apply for unattended processing. Level 4: Innovation Enablement — Leadership identifies costly or tedious tasks and guide developers as they automate those tasks. — IT builds the bots and infrastructure (APIs and development) between processes and workflows that can be automated. — RPA is leveraged to enable innovation without having to take on the entire landscape’s technological uplift.
Once a business identifies with a level on this curve, it can begin evaluating UiPath and Automation Anywhere according to their associated strengths and weaknesses. ARROW DIGITAL
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Getting Started UiPath and Automation Anywhere can be divided into three primary parts: the designer, back-end automation (bots) and central management server (Orchestrator for UiPath, Control Room for Automation Anywhere). The combined licensing fee for all three parts is comparable between the two solutions. However, there are critical distinctions in the initial procurement of each.
UiPath UiPath offers businesses free access to its workflow designer through its downloadable Community Edition. Users will also be able to access the back office and a public Orchestrator demo so they can test the solution prior to buy-in. Additionally, trial or novice users can access free RPA Developer Foundation Training complete with lessons, video tutorials, testing, exams and certification. Advanced training courses will also be made available in the future.
Automation Anywhere
WINNER: UiPath
Automation Anywhere requires a sales contract and NDA before business users can perform a hands-on evaluation of the software. This barrier to entry makes it more difficult for users to interface with the tool.
The ability to interface with the Community Edition and access online self-learning tools lets u sers familiarize themselves with the solution before buy-in. This benefit is universally applicable regardless of an organization’s position on the RPA maturity curve. Additionally, access to the demo and to comprehensive training material makes it possible to scale an entire team of users in less time.
Like UiPath, Automation Anywhere also features some training materials, but these are not self-learning tools. Users will still require live classroom training for proficient interfacing.
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Ease of Use for Business Users UiPath and Automation Anywhere both have learning curves, but familiar functions may come more naturally to business users of one platform than the other.
UiPath UiPath’s workflow design tool is more developeroriented and may not be as intuitive for a business user out of the box. The tool was designed with technologists in mind, and this is implicitly expressed through the interface. UiPath’s workflow design tool typically requires a higher degree of customization to work seamlessly with pre-existing, familiar business functions.
Automation Anywhere Automation Anywhere’s default capabilities tend to be more supportive of data manipulation in tools that are native to a user’s business function. For example, Automation Anywhere’s data-processing behaves in a way that makes it intuitive for a business user to iterate with spreadsheets and create lists in Excel.
WINNER: Automation Anywhere Business users can operate Automation Anywhere for simple, repetitive workflows with less need for technology support once the solution has been properly installed. This makes Automation Anywhere especially suitable for level-one and -two businesses that are primarily interested in immediate automation of knowledge work.
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Ease of Use for IT Users Technologists must also be considered in the decision-making process, particularly in organizations that lean heavily on robust in-house tech support.
UiPath UiPath’s developer-friendly interface allows for greater dev control. This makes it easier to leverage bots that require variations or looping. UiPath’s rich extensibility model also makes it easier to engineer custom activities and subsequently scale process automation.
Automation Anywhere Automation Anywhere’s Control Room allows for some complex functions, scheduling and triggers, but its primary strength is that it takes l ess time to configure than Orchestrator. However, from the point of view of a technologist, Automation Anywhere’s business-user-friendly UI can be somewhat limiting.
WINNER: UiPath The flexibility and intuitive customization are ideal for organizations structured in such a manner that programmers are the stewards of workflows, seeking to scale RPA (levels three and four) across missioncritical workflows. Technologists will feel more enabled through UiPath, and can use their existing tech-support resources to provide training for users as needed.
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Product Features UiPath and Automation Anywhere supply many of the same features, but critical distinctions can be made in how these features enable certain capabilities.
UiPath
Automation Anywhere
— Bot Dev Functions: UiPath is extensible, robust and Rest API-capable. These qualities make it ideal for customization and scalability.
— Bot Dev Functions: Automation Anywhere features strong data-processing functions for CSV, Excel and other core business-user functions.
— Screen Recorder: UiPath has a strong screen recorder, but it may require more assistance than Automation Anywhere’s at launch.
— Screen Recorder: A precise, accurate screen recorder helps users acclimate quickly to running workflows.
— Security/Governance: UiPath provides the control over security and governance that is needed to use bots securely and compliantly. Additionally, UiPath supports multi-tenancy.
— Security/Governance: Automation Anywhere also provides the control over security and governance that is needed to enable bots securely and compliantly. However, it does not support multi-tenancy.
— Flexibility: Orchestrator is more flexible and can publish out to more environments. This is partly because it leverages NuGet packages. NuGet infrastructure already exists in many organizations, making UiPath readily conducive to those ecosystems. Iterating is therefore faster.
— Flexibility: Simple UI makes Automation Anywhere easy to configure for the business user, but also means pared-down customization options through the interface.
WINNER: UiPath As the newer of the two platforms, and with a rich set of educational tools and features that are added to on a monthly basis, UiPath currently has greater momentum. Additionally, UiPath has greater potential for longer-term customization. Automation Anywhere’s feature set is comprehensive. Both tools enable fine-tuning of security configurations and both provide analytics detailing success rates and logging. However, UiPath’s features sustain greater utilization further along the RPA maturity curve.
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The Winner Overall: UiPath he cumulative value of UiPath’s elemental benefits make it the stronger solution for organizations targeting level four of the maturity curve for RPA: — — — — — —
Rapid platform innovation. Extensible capability model. Accessible software. Accessible training. Accessible community support. Available certification.
UiPath’s extensible interface enables flexibility and scalability for organizations with ample tech support that are ready to scale RPA across mission-critical processes. This makes it more conducive to RPA development deeper into the maturity model. Organizations that identify more closely with levels one and two of the maturity curve can still realize significant value in Automation Anywhere. Business users will find its UI slightly less intimidating in the early phases of deployment, and the solution is perfectly capable of executing powerful automation workflows within Excel and other staple business tools. Nevertheless, UiPath ultimately scores better than Automation Anywhere. It can match Automation Anywhere’s feature set, but its qualities (flexibility, scalability, quick on-boarding) provide maximum value by going all the way through the maturity model, facilitating potential for longer-term innovation.
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