BPM, which has been around for quite some time, is focused on improving business processes. But it doesn't necessarily require automation; it could be as simple as improving an entirely manual process by streamlining it to remove unnecessary steps. In short, it's about using best practices to ensure processes are as effective and efficient as possible. Robotic process automation involves automating repetitive tasks to make a process less labor-intensive for humans. It works well with deterministic business processes that involve structured data; in other words, where the process is exactly the same every time and where data is in well-defined fields, such as a spreadsheet. The process also must not require any human judgment, working strictly on "if/then" scenarios. Example use cases for RPA include aggregating data for financial reports, such as at the end of a quarter. So long as you know where the reports' data has to come from, and where in the report it's located, RPA can automate the gathering and aggregation process and get it done far faster than a human.