Software solutions require ongoing work: ongoing maintenance costs of a customised solution could easily be higher per year than 1 cheap FTE.
More than the # of hours involved, it's the error-prone nature of the work and the lag between when the data should be entered vs when it's actually entered.
These three factors -- hours saved, errors prevented, time lag avoided -- make me think that it's worth automating.
You're right, however, it's not clear cut it's the right way to go.
However, the cost of training staff and implementation is often out of reach for SMBs, still.
Facebook and Co. get a bad rap for many things, which I agree with. But I credit these social platforms in speeding up tech adoption rates for the average person, who can now use this knowledge at their job.
I work in a small, physical goods business in the Midwest (~30 employees), and the amount of time spent doing data entry is incredible.
Documents (often PDFs, sometimes excel) flow between buyers, shippers, freight forwarders and internally. These documents are often updated.
I'm looking into EDI for a solution, but there's so much value to be created from cutting out all this data entry. At least 1-1.5 full time employee's worth at our size.