Specialist
Senior executive at State Street Corp
Agenda
- Key customer decision making criteria for RPA (robotic process automation) vendors
- UiPath's points of differentiation vs rivals, especially Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism (LON: PRSM)
- Customers scaling RPA deployments and outlook
- Threat from Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and wider automation tools such as BPM (business process management) as vendors expand RPA offerings
Questions
1.
What are your key decision-making criteria when assessing RPA [robotic process automation]? How does that feed through to your assessment of UiPath?
2.
How do you assess UiPath vs Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism? What do you rank RPA vendors against? Why do you think UiPath has most often won out?
3.
What is driving the shift towards web-based architecture from client-server architecture? You mentioned that Blue Prism uses client-server architecture and UiPath uses web-based. I understand that client-server architecture was previously perceived as more secure. Does the shift to web-based architecture increase any security issues?
4.
Could you elaborate on how you would compare UiPath to other RPA players?
5.
What differentiates UiPath? It sounds as though the company’s architecture differentiates it from Blue Prism, and its ease of deployment and use differentiates it from Automation Anywhere, given its heritage and low-to-no-code area. Are these the core differentiating factors beyond functionality or RPA bot quality?
6.
Where are a customer’s highest costs when implementing, using and scaling RPA? In which areas are UiPath’s costs lowest compared to its competitors, given you mentioned that UiPath has a significantly lower total cost of ownership compared to Blue Prism? Is this difference primarily on the price per bot, or is it on ancillary costs such as implementing, hosting, using and scaling?
7.
Would most RPA customers deploy multiple RPA vendors depending on the specific use case? You mentioned that each player has its own niche. Is it more likely that customers will opt for a single RPA vendor, given you mentioned 95% of use cases will be simple processes?
8.
I understand that RPA purchasing and decision-making can often be decentralised within a customer, and one business department may have different purchasing criteria from another. It seems there would likely be a multi-RPA-vendor strategy even within the same department. In that case, would wallet share be roughly split evenly across RPA vendors? Would customers have a preferred RPA vendor that’s capturing 70% of wallet share and then the second would have 30%?
9.
It seems that customers tend to have a preferred RPA vendor and then ancillary venders will capture a smaller proportion of wallet share. Would you be surprised if UiPath was capturing less wallet share than Blue Prism and Automation Anywhere, given the pros you highlighted vs those competitors?
10.
How would you assess UiPath’s TAM inside a financial services customer, given the processes it’s best suited for? What are the main departments or processes that RPA could be used in, and how many bots could this account for?
11.
Which departments or core use cases do you think RPA is particularly apt for and how penetrated is it within them? You mentioned that back office is where a lot of vendors’ opportunities are, especially in finance. How much of the addressable market in a customer is left for players such as UiPath to capture?
12.
Why do you think so many RPA implementations fail to pass an initial 5-10 bot deployment?
13.
You mentioned the energy barrier. How important is the RPA vendor’s role in implementation, especially in the initial phase? Is UiPath better and more hands-on with finding the right use cases and acquiring long term sustainable customers than its competitors?
14.
I understand UiPath has many free resources. Do you think UiPath is better at understanding its customers’ processes than competitors, given how it’s involved in customers’ initial RPA deployment across technological implementation, and how it guides them through that process? Could this potentially lower barriers to scaling for UiPath customers vs other RPA customers?
15.
Microsoft has an RPA tool offering and SAP is increasingly moving into RPA. Are these platforms building out compelling RPA for customers? Will there still be a need for RPA point vendors such as UiPath?
16.
I understand that Microsoft’s RPA offering is competitively priced. Do you think the RPA vendor’s understanding of customers’ processes is more relevant than the solution’s pricing? Why wouldn’t price be as relevant?
17.
How difficult would it be to switch out a UiPath installation for a competing RPA vendor’s?
