For years, the mantra “Automate boring, repetitive tasks” has been somewhat of a dogma in the IT and software engineering world. Automate the boring. Automate the repetitive. An effective, catchy phrase that justifies budgets, license purchases, architectural changes, and internal reorganizations.
The premise is simple: if a machine can do in seconds what a person does in hours, savings are guaranteed. Less time. Fewer errors. Greater profitability.
But the reality, as so often in technology, is more complex. And more uncomfortable.
Automating is about understanding… deeply
When a task is performed by a person, many nuances remain implicit: they adapt to unforeseen circumstances, resolve ambiguities, and switch contexts. Automating requires formalizing all of that. Putting it into rules. Identifying exceptions. Anticipating failures. Designing emergency exits.
In other words: understanding the process better than is needed to simply execute it.
That’s why automating is not magic. It’s engineering. It requires investment, talent, and time. And above all, maintenance. Because once you automate, you can’t just take your hands off the wheel. Any subsequent change in the business, software, or environment creates a domino effect that someone has to review, adapt, and re-validate.
Automating doesn’t eliminate work; it displaces it (and makes it more expensive)
The outcome is paradoxical. Where there were once manual tasks performed by operational profiles, there are now pipelines supervised by qualified engineers. Costs do not disappear. They are transferred. And often they increase, because they now involve more technical, scarcer, and more expensive positions.
Yes, automation can reduce human error. But it introduces systemic fragility: processes that cannot step outside the script, that fail in the face of a simple unforeseen case, and that depend on a chain of interconnected tools that no one fully understands.
What if that process didn’t have to exist?
The truly transformative question is not how to automate better. It’s more radical:
What if that process wasn’t needed at all?
True disruptions come not from automating existing tasks, but from redesigning the business so that those tasks disappear completely. That’s where the difference between efficiency and reinvention is made.
- Instead of automating data entry from a form, can you avoid asking for it?
- Instead of scheduling the reconciliation of two systems, can you design one single system?
- Instead of optimizing an approval flow, can you rethink the policy that requires it?
Automating accelerates. Redesigning transforms.
Conclusion: it’s not enough to move faster
In an increasingly digital world, with more accessible tools and more complex processes, the temptation to automate everything is understandable. But it is also limited.
It’s not enough to do faster what you already do. The key question is different: Are you doing the right thing?
Technology should be a catalyst for change, not an excuse to perpetuate poorly designed processes. Because if you automate an inefficiency, all you achieve is to run it more quickly.
And that, ultimately, is not progress.