Sometimes you have to write software to make all the other option much more efficient. Let give an example, we at MobileWorks (https://premier.mobileworks.com) are in business of providing virtual temps to businesses. Since we are built to scale, the entire team has virtually unlimited supply of temporary labor and we use it A LOT.

However, in a lot of cases a little bit of code actually makes the temps much more efficient. That's the real value of code. Making the mundane much more efficient.