RPA - Topics for Bachelor Thesis

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#1

Dear Forum-Members,

in 6 weeks I am going to write my bachelor thesis. From my company, I got the topic “Robotic Process Automation”. So I searched and read a lot about RPA and I also played around with the UiPath Community Edition. After that, I was really fascinated about the RPA topic, so that I agreed on RPA as my thesis topic. What I found in literature was a lot of stuff about RPA in general, selection of RPA providers/implementations and selecting processes for RPA. Now I’m struggling a little bit in finding a research question for my own thesis, which has a scientific character. Has anybody of you ideas for research opportunities? Or is there anybody who is writing his thesis about the same topic, so that we can do a little discussion?

I am grateful for all of your suggestions and answers.
Best regards
Michael

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#3

Dear Michael,
I’m not sure if this is faith or not, but I’m on my way to prepare a presentation about RPA.
There are many sides of the RPA and I suggest you to focus on one of them, for example, RPA for marketing purposes. At least I’m going to work on that topic because in the same period I need to prepare my master thesis. I’m not sure if it will be about RPA, but I can use it.

If you want we can keep in touch each other and support somehow.
Andrey

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#4

Hello @MG1993 & @andreyrusev

Congrats for taking the challenge of building your thesis on RPA.

There are few academic research papers on RPA, but that gives you a lot of opportunities. I suggest you identify within your employer @MG1993 a tedious task or cohort of tasks within a department, document them and automate them through RPA. I’ve attached below some other Academic papers on RPA.

Btw, from which universities are you guys from?

Aalst2018_Article_RoboticProcessAutomation.pdf (349.9 KB) Impact of RPA (Germany - Leipzig).pdf (205.6 KB) RPA Applied to Education - A new kind of robot teacher (WhitePaper) (UNADE).pdf (443.0 KB)

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#5

Dear Andrey,

That sounds interesting. I also thought about analyzing RPA potential in a department, for example, marketing, controlling, procuring or accountancy department. Maybe a proof of concept with one or two selected processes can be done. My problem with that kind of idea is, which research method matches with this kind of doing.

It would be great if we keep in touch so that we can support each other.

Best regards
Michael

#6

Dear Vladimir,

Thank you for the interesting input.
That sounds really good, this way of doing is a good option, like I mentioned it in the answer to Andrey. A potential problem could be which research method can I use, how can I ensure that the used applications (for example ERP Dynamics NAV, legacy applications and so on) can be controlled by the RPA-software and how can I quantify my results.

I can also mention a research paper which is really interesting in this kind of topic: https://hanvanderaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/BPMDS2018-Identifying-Candidate-Tasks-for-Robotic-Process-Automation-in-Textual-Process-Descriptions.pdf

This paper is about validating textual work instructions automatically with the help of Machine Learning, to predict if a task is automatable with RPA.

Also, I can mention two experts in the field of RPA: Professor Leslie Willcocks and Professor Mary Lacity. Maybe this helps some of you.

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#7

Great paper quoted from VU Amsterdam. You can check this as well @andreyrusev https://www.uipath.com/blog/5-factors-in-choosing-which-processes-to-automate

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#8

Dear Vladimir,

Thank you for the academic researches. I will have a look at them and if I got some questions, or comments, will come back here.
I’m a student in the master program “Digital Marketing and Web design” at the Varna Free University in Bulgaria.

#9

Hi again, Michael,

AS much time I have for RPA learning, as much hard it become.

Look what I found - https://skemman.is/bitstream/1946/31385/1/MSc%20Thesis%20-%20GudrunLiljaSigurdardottir.pdf

You can check the Bibliography page as well.

As it is said, #When a number of
automated processes increases then RPA gets more complicated

So, when a number of RPA articles increases then RPA looks more and more complicated :slight_smile:

#10

Hi Andrey! Can you link me with one of your professors from the Master? I’ve been in touch with Prof. Dimitar Minchev recently regarding your school joining UiPath Academic Alliance.

Blagodarya!

1 Like
#16

Hello Michael,

i am currently also researching RPA to see if it would be a good topic for my bachelor thesis. Id like to thank you and everyone involved in the discussion for all the links that you have shared. Id be very interested to know which topic you ended up going with. I am also struggling with putting all my ideas into a clear agenda and focusing on a specific and scientific aspect of RPA.
Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards
Ina

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#17

Dear Ina,

I ended up building a prototypical process automation with Intelligent Process Automation, which is a combination of RPA and AI-based approaches (in my case a chatbot). With this prototype, I evaluated the use of Intelligent Process Automation for a company. Therefore I used the construction-oriented research method of Design Science. I also know the struggle with an agenda. If you need any help, literature, ideas, or feedback for your thesis/agenda, feel free to contact me. The topic of my thesis was also very well received by the reviewers. I want to thank Andrey and Vladimir also on this way, for giving me feedback in this thread :slight_smile:.

Best Regards
Michael

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#18

Hi @MG1993 and @andreyrusev thanks a lot, currently I’m working on my master thesis, can you share with me what topic you end up with? thanks!

#19

Dear @fauzanadhy,

like I mentioned in the post for @Ina_Dervishaj, I wrote my thesis about Intelligent Process Automation, which is the combination of RPA and AI. I ended up creating and evaluating an IPA-bot which supports clerks in standard processes (create documents in ERP-system, extract information from ERP-documents, …). The bot was a combination of a chatbot and specific RPA-recorded processes. So the users were able to communicate with the chatbot in natural language to solve their issues. I hope this gives you an idea.

Best Regards
Michael

#20

Hello dear UiPath Community,

first of all, I really appreciate every reply and all the info that has been already shared from you guys. I am also going to write about RPA in my Bachelor thesis. I am very interested in Web Scraping, Data Migration and PDF Extractor with the use of UiPath. My problem currently is to find a specific research question that has a scientific character.

Is there anyone who has the same struggle and would like to discuss and support each other? Or maybe there is someone who already wrote his/her thesis and would like to help?

Thank you very much in advance :slight_smile:

Best regards,
Erdem

#21

Dear Erdem,

I struggled also with my research question because I thought doing something practical isn’t “scientific” enough - for me, it helped to look for some written papers which are also in a practical manner:

https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/20517
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-66963-2_7

If you want to do sth. practical, it is important to generate a gain of knowledge. If you want to build a rpa-prototype for example, it is not enough to only build this prototype, you need to do an evaluation of the prototype also. Therefore Design Science is a good and established research paradigm:

I hope this helps, if you need more information or if you want to start a discussion feel free to do.

Best regards,
Michael

1 Like
#22

Dear Michael,

thank you very much for your response and your help. I have decided my thesis topic and now I am going to the academy courses and generate a basic knowledge about RPA.

Thank you for your support :slight_smile:

Best regards,
Erdem

#23

Dear Erdem,

Congratulations for taking this very interesting topic. Feel free to contact me, if you like to discuss or if you’ve questions.

Best regards,
Michael

1 Like
#24

Hi All,
I am also looking towards doing my master thesis on RPA, but I am looking towards RPA in ITSM. What do you think of it? I would love to hear if anyone has any ideas or might be even working in ITSM and has seen problems. Really would appreciate some help! thanks

#25

I am writing my thesis about RPA further the analysis and comparison between RPA softwares. What would you guys state as the benefits of UiPath compared to other RPA suppliers?

#26

Dear @RPA_439,

there is a very detailed analysis from Forrester about the RPA market: click here. Maybe this document helps you.

Regards
Michael