Ask HN: Automating with RPA vs. BPA

Curious to know the specific reasons why a standard small-medium sized business looking to automate routine admin would opt for RPA over BPA? (When it will usually cost a magnitude more?)

I get that it's the hot new tech but RPA isn’t offering anything radically new in terms of the kinds of processes it automates. Businesses are generally using it to handle the same repetitive processes that traditional BPA has been handling for years. Parsing emails, updating databases, sending triggered messages, processing documents, etc.

Granted, working on the interface level rather than relying on integrations is a lot slicker. But it's still a similar set-up time to traditional BPA. (Training bots vs writing 'if' rules). And practically speaking the trained bots are still just running rule-based actions.

Has anyone conducted a cost analysis of RPA vs BPA, considering the specific processes they need to automate? If so, what were your outcomes?