OpenBots vs Traditional RPA Platforms

Both UiPath and OpenBots are robust enterprise grade platforms for automating business processes. They both provide tools that enable development of automation code and execution and management of this automation code executed by digital workforce (Robots). In addition to the core build, run and manage features, both also offer sophisticated components for human in the loop execution, Forms/Apps for data capture during execution, and cognitive execution for document classification and data extraction. There are also additional tools that help you measure your automation program metrics by building dashboards that provide process execution insights to operations and business teams.

The main difference between the two platforms is the cost. With its Zero Bot licensing model, OpenBots enables scalability of automation programs. Whereas, with UiPath your automation pipeline tends to be much smaller as the number of ROI positive automations is much lower. This is due to the expensive licensing cost which increases with every Robot you put in production resulting in significantly lower benefits from the program.

Both UiPath and OpenBots are very mature products that provides capabilities around all aspects of automation analysis, design, development, and delivery of automation projects. For most part they are at feature parity. There are some areas where UiPath offers additional capabilities for process discovery. They have add-on components for process mining and task mining which OpenBots currently offers as partnerships with other providers. On the other hand, OpenBots strength is their orchestration capabilities. With OpenBots you are not only able to orchestrate automations that are built using proprietary low code OBScript but also automations which are scripted using popular languages like C# and python. Additionally, the auto provisioning capabilities help dynamically increase the number of robots for higher concurrency to cater to higher transaction volumes. Other OpenBots differentiating features include a development SDK to build custom commands (Activities), business events, email gateway, rules engine (In development) etc.

UiPath has the largest market share and adoption rate today. They have the largest development network. OpenBots is built on similar technology stack and makes it very easy to learn for developers that are already familiar with UiPath. OpenBots also provides various enablement and training programs and has a mature product academy and certification program for self paced enablement.

Microsoft is emerging and has a powerful position with full Power Platform Suite but there are some areas that need to mature before Power Automate will offer a fully competitive RPA alternative.
Microsoft Power Automate provides several ready to use connectors and native integration with third party platforms making it the strongest RPA platform for integration. These are generally used in the cloud flows which are developed directly on the power automate portal. OpenBots has some native connectors for common applications like Salesforce, SAP and Encompass etc. but lacks broader coverage. However, OpenBots does provide out of the box commands to build automation using APIs which allows for custom extension of native integrations.

The areas where Power Automate lacks today is unattended desktop based automations and automation Orchestration. Microsoft currently provides basic capabilities where as OpenBots has very advanced features which include work queue management, assets, human in the loop, central email gateways, process execution tracking, auto provisioning, business events, out of the box credential vaults, Agents groups for concurrency and many more such features which makes OpenBots platform a robust full featured automation platform.

Another key difference is that Microsoft power automate licenses its platform on a per user or per flow basis. So, the as you build more automations the cost keeps increasing causing issues with automation scalability which is what OpenBots solves with its Zero Licensing cost for Robots.

OpenBots licensing model is very straightforward. Unlike other RPA Platforms, we do not charge for Robot Licenses. Both attended and un-attended robots are offered at no charge. We also do not charge for OpenBots Studio, which is a development IDE that your developers will need to build automations.

OpenBots Cloud Server consumption-based pricing calculates the monthly cost for orchestration based on actual runtime of robots. The run time is defined as the time the Agents are busy running the automations.

For example, if you have 10 automations that are scheduled to run daily and each automation runs for an hour every day, you can expect your total monthly run time to be 300 hours approximately.

You can opt for one of the many packaged plans we have for cloud server, that gives you different blocks of hours to use in a month. Any additional runtime is charged at additional hourly rate.

OpenBots makes it easy for enterprises to migrate their current legacy automations to OpenBots Platform. Our migration tool, OpenBots Ninja, automates code conversion reducing the total effort and cost for migration by up to 70%.

We also work with enterprises to create move plans and assist by providing expert services for seamless migration. Cost of migration to OpenBots is a one-time cost which results in a multi-year savings by removing the Digital workforce licensing cost.

Yes, OpenBots Studio is a low code development environment for authoring automation code. Studio provides over 1000 low code commands that automation builders can mix and match to easily build automation workflows. The commands are grouped in logical packages and comes with comprehensive usage documentation. In addition to the low code commands, technically advanced developers can also optionally use code to augment automation functionality. This makes the tool highly extensible.

We allow automation projects to be built in OB Script (OpenBots low code automation language) as well as partially or fully develop automations in C#, python, TagUI and Powershell scripts making OpenBots development IDE the most powerful and flexible automation authoring tool available in the market.

OpenBots has a sophisticated intelligent document processing tool called OpenBots Documents. The tool can be leveraged to automate processes where document data extraction is key. The tool leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning and works for both structured and un-structured documents classification and data extraction.

The tool also provides a data validation module which allows for any manual corrections that gets fed back into the machine learning models for auto learning and for improving accuracy of data extraction automation.

There are many document extraction models for mortgage, insurance, immigration and other commonly used document formats like ID, License, passport, invoices that are included out of the box with OpenBots Documents.

OpenBots Documents is offered as software as a service which provide APIs for connectivity with external systems and RPA platforms.

OpenBots Business Center enables human in the loop for automation of processes where a human intervention is required in the middle of the process execution.

With OpenBots business center you can have an effective bot-human-bot transition for tasks where a human being is required to provide inputs, decisions or take some steps before the bot execution can continue.

Business Center provides a low code App builder, which can be used to create and publish forms for user input. OpenBots Business center is also being extended to provide a rules engine for configuration of rules by business.

With Business center you can holistically automate the entire business function as opposed to automation just individual tasks.

OpenBots discovery is an online tool which helps in building your process pipeline for automation.

The tool takes a manual but more pragmatic approach to create a catalog of potential processes for automation by crowd sourcing ideas from business divisions. Once you have the list of potential automation candidates, the tool allows you to assess these candidates and determine automation complexity and help you quantify the business benefits and ROI from automation.

The result of this assessment is then used to prioritize these processes for automation based on a score for complexity, feasibility, and benefits.

For the processes that have been prioritized for automation, the tool provides features that allow process analysts to create the process definition and workflows in a visual format which can then be used to generate a process definition document.