Hi guys, and welcome to this comparative analysis of RPA tools by Intellipaat.
Today, we will be comparing and contrasting the top RPA tools which
are Automation Anywhere, blueprism. and UiPath, but before we get into all of
that, please subscribe to our channel to never miss an update from Intellipaat. So,
let's talk about today's agenda. Today, we start off by answering what is RPA
with the help of an example. Then, we move on to see the various features which are
common across various RPA tools, and then we compare and contrast these tools based
on parameters like prerequisites to learn macro recorders and availability
of community editions. After that, based on these comparisons, we try to conclude
which RPA tool is probably the best for you. Then, we'll have a quiz session to
test your understanding of today's session.
Also guys, Intellipaat does provide certification training for various RPA
tools. So, if you are interested to get certified, please check out the course
details given in the description below. Now, without wasting any further time,
let's get into the session. So, let's begin. So, what is RPA? We will try to
understand RPA with the help of an example. What we will do is we will take
an example of a process, see how we do it manually, and then what difference does
RPA bring to the table. So, the example we are taking here is a data processing
case study. So, the data is coming from the documents, it is being manually
processed, and then we have a processed data. So, how is this
happening? What basically is happening is let's assume that we are a restaurant.
Now, we get invoices every day which is brought about to a manual processor. The person
looks at the data and extracts the relevant data that is the customer ID,
cost, date, etc., and then he puts it to an excel sheet, and it started growing. So,
what happened is, we have been getting a lot of invoices. Now it was very
tedious and difficult to process all of these manually, so we decided to switch to
RPA. Now what happens in the case of RPA is data is automated by robots and the data
is processed. Now, how does this happen? The idea is very simple. What you do is
basically design a program with the help of an RPA tool using some logic, some
sequence, and what you have to do basically is just click the button once
you have designed the program. The RPA tools initialize a bot which will go
through your data, look at the relevant data, extract it,
and paste it to the excel file. It is that simple. So, let's look at the
definition of RPA. So, RPA stands for robotic process automation. Let's look at
this term word by word and try to understand what it is. So, robotic stands
for anything that mimics human actions, process is a set of sequential actions
which lead to a desired result, and automation is anything which is done
without human intervention. So, in a nutshell, RPA is a technology that
automates repetative tasks by mimicking human actions. In our cases of invoices,
what we were doing is we trained our program to basically go to the invoice
repository and extract the data from there and just paste it to the excel
file. This was a manual process which we were doing. We trained our robot to do it.
So basically that's mimicking human actions. Now doing all of these were a set
of sequential actions. So that is the process, and all you had to do was to click
the Run button. So you were not involved anywhere, so, that
gives you the automation because there was no human intervention. Now, let's look
at the common features among the various RPA tools that we have. First of all, most
of these RPA tools are built on the .net framework provided by Microsoft.
Most of these tools follow a client-server architecture. Many
prominent tools provide certifications. Now the advantage of having a
certification is the fact that basically the company that provides you the tool
is certifying you and stating that you have certain kind of expertise on these
tools. So what happens is when you go for a job, that company hiring
you knows that you have worked with it and you know your way around the tool, so
you will basically be able to do the tasks that they want you to do. Finally
Citrix automation is offered by many tools. Now Citrix automation allows you
to do automation on a remote server. This is a very good advantage to have when
you are trying to automate things. So as I mentioned before, RPA is a technology.
There are various tools that help you achieve this technology. Now let's look
at this graph by Gartner to see the different tools and where they stand in
terms of the market. As you can see clearly, there are a lot of tools here,
and the ones in the dark blue shade are the market leaders right now. So, the
market leaders as we can see here is uipath, automation anywhere, and blueprism,
which brings us to the top three tools of RPA which is uipath, blueprism,
and automation anywhere. Now, we look at these tools one by one, gain some info on
all of these tools, and then we'll move on to comparing these tools. So, let's
start with automation anywhere. Now automation anywhere was originally
founded by Tethys Solutions in San Jose. The company rebranded itself as automation
anywhere incorporated in 2010. Automation anywhere is a tool which can automate
end-to-end business operations for many companies, and it is generally suited for
medium to large enterprises. It is a web-based management system which uses a
control room to run the automated tasks which basically means is you design it
at one place and use the control room to run your automated tasks. So now let's
look at the next tool on our hand which is UiPath. So UiPath was originally
founded in 2005 by Romanian entrepreneurs Daniel Dines and Marius Tirca.
This is a very flexible tool which uses your existing infrastructure
and processes to automate your tasks. The most interesting thing about UiPath is
its visual designer. It is basically somewhere where you design your
processes, and it has this intuitive drag-and-drop feature which helps you
easily design the processes as well as debug it. So the next tool is blueprism.
Now blueprism was founded in 2001 with a motivation to develop a technology
that could be used to improve the efficiency as well as effectiveness of
organizations. It is built on Microsoft's .net framework, as we discussed
that many RPA tools have this feature that they are built on the.net framework.
Blueprism has many robust features like load balancing, encryption, audit, and many
others. There are a lot of features and this is a very reliable tool which
works very well. So, let's now compare uipath, automation anywhere, and blueprism
on various parameters. Now, first let's look at the different parameters
on our hand. So, the parameters are whether or not it has a community
version, whether or not it has an evaluation version, third is the types of
robots that it gives you to work with, fourth is if it has a macro recorder or
not, fifth is accessibility, sixth is a process designer, seventh is the pricing, and
eighth is prerequisites. Finally, we check them on the differences of their
market trends right now. So, let's begin. Community version: So, community version
is basically a free version which is available to the community out there for
the individuals to learn and work with so that they understand the tool
better. Now Automation Anywhere does provide you with a community version and
so does UiPath, but blueprism does not provide you with any community version,
so you need to pay from the get-go if you want to learn blueprism. Now, let's
talk about the evaluation version. So, evaluation version is
like an Enterprise Edition, or trial version to the Enterprise Edition where
you can see the different features that the Enterprise Edition has. So, automation
anywhere does give you a 45-day trial of their Enterprise Edition, whereas uipath
gives you a 30-day trial, but as we mentioned before, for blueprism you have to
pay from the get-go; there is no trial version whatsoever. Even if you
want to learn the tool, you need to pay to learn. Now let's compare them on the
different types of robots that they offer. So, automation anywhere as well as
uipath both offers you front-end as well as back-office robots which will help
you automate both sides of the tasks, that is, the front office tasks and the
back-office tasks, whereas blue prism only offers back-office automation. The
next criteria is the macro recorders. Now macro recorder is basically a recorder
which a tool provides you where it records you doing the actions and then
it makes a logic out of itself. You don't have to make set of sequential actions,
the tool will do it for you based on the way you work on your system. So it
records your movements and then makes a logic out of it. So let's see which tools
give you this opportunity to use the macro recorders and make your life easy.
So, automation anywhere offers you a recorder which is very well working and
so does uipath. Both of these tools provide you with the macro recorder
which will record your actions and create a logic out of it. So, you don't
have to work very hard when it comes to making the logic.
However, blue prism does not offer any kind of macro recorder, so you need to
build your own logic. Next is the accessibility. Now what accessibility
basically refers is from there you can run your tasks. So automation anywhere is
application based you need to run it from your applications. with uipath, you
can use your mobile as well as your web browsers to access your Orchestrator
which is basically a central platform, and from there you can run your automated
task. You can also schedule and deploy robots from there. Blueprism again is an
application based platform, so if you want to run your automation you need
to be next to your applications. Now, let's talk about the process designer. So,
a process designer is basically
like a studio or a canvas where you
design your task that you want to run. I was telling you that we need to
have a set of sequential actions. This is where you design your set of sequential
actions. So automation anywhere gives you a script-based designer which
will have line by line showing you what the actions are and how
the commands are going, whereas UI path and blueprism both provide you with a visual
process designer. Now, a visual process designer has its own advantages because
it shows you the control is flowing from where to where, which tasks
come next; the basic advantage of using this is that your designing process is
completely changed. What happens is you are now working faster because you can
see what is happening and the debugging processes is extremely easy when it
comes to visual designer because you can directly see from the above as to where you
might be going wrong, whereas in script you have to go line by
line to check like where did you go wrong. So, the process designer wise, I'd say
UiPath and blue prism have the advantage. Now pricing. Now we will look at the
different pricing models after you have got licensing. So with automation
anywhere it's per bot, with UiPath it's per application, and with blueprism
again it's per bot. Now prerequisites. Now when we speak about prerequisites, we
basically mean is the knowledge that you already need to have before you start
learning the tools. So, you need to have some knowledge before working with
something. If so required, which tool requires what kind of knowledge
before you start working with it. So let's start with automation anywhere. So
the automation anywhere requires beginner-level programming skills. Now all
you need to know is basic programming fundamentals, and you are good to go with
automation anywhere, whereas with UiPath all you need is a basic visual
skills as I told you it has a visual designer which lets you see where the
control is flowing from where. So a little to no programming language skills
or programming knowledge is good enough for UiPath. You don't need any kind
of prerequisites. It's very easy to use, all you have to do is drag and drop and
the visual designer makes it very easy to use UiPath. Talking about blueprism,
you need moderate to medium level of programming skills as it requires you
to know basic programming concepts like typecasting and stuff like that. So, when
it comes to the ease of a user moving from a non-programming background, UiPath
is the easiest followed by automation anywhere
and then blueprism because of the coding knowledge that you need to have
or the programming knowledge that you need to have. Now let's talk about the
market trends. What I mean by market trends is which tools are having more
searches, what people are searching now, what people are working with right now
where are more jobs, and other things related to the market. So the market
trend right now, as you can see from the graph, is clear. So the automation
anywhere is the blue line, UiPath is the red line, and blueprism is the yellow
line. So, as you can see, the yellow line is above all of the rest, this is because
most of the companies prefer to have blueprism because of its extreme level
of scalability that it gives, it gives you a very good level of scalability and
it's a very trustworthy tool when it comes to performing on a large scale,
whereas automation anywhere and UiPaths are just reaching there, but if
you are a smaller size organization, would prefer UiPath
or automation anywhere because it is less costlier and you have a trial
version to work with to understand. So, if you are an individual you would prefer UiPath.
If yours is a small organization you prefer automation anywhere, if you move
on and you are a big enterprise then blueprism is the way to go, in my
opinion. So what do we conclude from this? So, as we mentioned before, we will be
trying to figure out which tool is the best for you. If you are an individual
and you are just trying to learn about RPA, then I'd say UiPath is the way
to go. It's very easy to learn. If you do not have any coding background, go for UiPath.
It's extremely easy to learn, and it has a lot of applications, lot of good
features, it's good to go. If you are a medium to a big organization or an
enterprise, then I would recommend you to use automation anywhere because it has a
lot of functionality and good scalability as compared to UiPath in my
opinion and basically it's better for medium to large scale organizations
because of the features it has. If you are a large organization, then
definitely go for blueprism because it has good scalable features which work
very well, and it is a very trustworthy tool and the reason behind these also
contain the fact of the pricing. So UiPath is free if you are an
individual you can work with it as much as you want, and you can also work with
automation anywhere as well with the presence of Community Edition, but if you
are not an individual you are a large-scale organization and you can pay,
then go for blueprism. It's a very good tool. In conclusion, it depends on
your personal preference of what you want. All of these tools are absolutely
amazing, all of these tools are market leaders, everybody in the world is using
right now, so you can go with any of these and you'll be good to go. It just
depends on the personal preference on things or the features that you want
which edges one tool over the other. Overall, all the tools are extremely good. So
now it's time for the quiz. The question is pretty simple: For which of these
tasks is RPA best suited for? Is it A. writing code, B. Designing, C. Data entry,
or D. None of these. Think about it and mention your answers in the comment
section below. So, this brings us to the end of this session. If you have any
queries, please do comment below and we'll reach out to you immediately.
Also guys, please subscribe to our channel to never miss an update from
Intellipaat. Thank you.