> prefer to buy software that they can fit to their workflow rather than change the workflows of their profitable business

True - and this is why the huge software spend rarely produces productivity benefits. Because the software-enabled workflow should be different from the pre-software workflow.

But every organisation has two parallel workflows: the one written in the manual and the one everybody actually performs. The more rigid the organisation, the more likely these are to diverge. In a paper-and-humans system, the humans can make up for the deficiencies in the "official" workflow. In the automated system, it's baked in.

Lots of big failed deployments replace a human-judgement system that was working "unofficially" with a machine-implemented one that doesn't work at all, because the process as written didn't work. And of course it's impossible to tell management that the process doesn't work in that kind of environment.

(Hence the huge advantage of Kaizen - make the official process match the one that actually works for humans)