Blue Prism is one of the most robust RPA tools. They are widely considered as the pioneers in RPA and even claim to have coined the term Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
Blue prism has an object-oriented architecture that helps manage reusable components better. Overall, it is a great tool if you have a developer but lacks a recorder if your team is less technically savvy and likes to get things moving quickly.
Blue Prism has an online RPA marketplace for pre-built Blue prism components that you can use in your automation. It is called the Blue Prism Digital Exchange (DX) and has reusable components built by Blue Prism and their partners.
RPA Blue Prism – Features and Ranking
| Development Environment |  |
A workflow configuration environment like Visio. Gartner rating for their development environment is high. |
| Recorder |  |
Blue Prism does not have a recorder. It is an object-oriented tool, unlike other scripting based RPA tools. |
| Bot Operations | |
Good support for Orchestration, Notifications, Logging, and Triggers. Can improve on Update & Upgrades, Backup & DR, and Monitoring. |
| Component Reuse |  |
With its Object-oriented architecture, you can build out a library of software objects that can be reused and accessed anytime. |
| Security framework | |
Good Encryption, Credential, and User management comparable to other tools. |
| Unstructured data/OCR |  |
Uses GoogleTesseract OCR engines which is not the most reliable. Also can integrate with other paid engines like ABBY and cloud services which is better but still not 100%. |
| VDI / Citrix | |
You need to use Surface automation for Citrix and other virtual environments which is unreliable. |
| AI/ML | |
Provides “out of the box” API integrations with AWS, Google, IBM, and Microsoft to enable operational AI
|
| Process Discovery |  |
Has recently launched a basic Process Discovery tool that is available through their portal. |
| Community Support |  |
Works mostly through partners directly with enterprises. Has a restricted forum on the portal. Does not have a Community edition |
Top 3 advantages of choosing Blue Prism
- Robust Solution: Blue prism is one of the most mature and secure solution that enables scalability.
- Reusability: Blue Prism Object studio enables users to create reusable objects as the building blocks for the business processes.
- Credibility: One of the earliest RPA providers, they have a strong enterprise user base and market recognition.
Top 3 challenges with Blue Prism you need to be aware of
- Virtual Environments: If your bot needs to work through Citrix of windows remote desktop, Blue prism will be a challenge.
- Developer Dependent: Because of its Object-oriented architecture, the tool is programmer heavy. It also lacks a recorder like other RPA tools.
- Community: Does not have a community edition of their tool or community support.
Licensing and approximate cost for Blue Prism
Around 12k to 16k per bot. Usually, must buy a set of 10 bots. These are the approximate costs as of November 2018. This pricing could be more complex and vary based on your agreement. For e.g., There may be volume discounts.