The largest saving in one program cost nothing to build

A forty-page month-end pack. Three people, four days a month, for years.

Asked to automate it, someone first asked who read it. Nobody did; two recipients had left the company, the rest had a dashboard. The pack was stopped. Twelve person-days a month, gone, with no software.

This is why "automate" comes last in the order: stop, simplify, automate. It is not a philosophy. It is arithmetic. Stopping work is free. Simplifying is cheap. Automation is the expensive option and should be spent on the work that genuinely needs it. Any firm that opens with "what can we automate?" is starting at the most expensive end of the list.