Your ERP is not automation
Every company I have walked through in the last twenty-five years has had some version of the same conversation. They have invested heavily in a system. The system is live. And the work still happens the way it always did, only now it is typed in twice.
Recording is not deciding
An ERP is a system of record. It tells you, accurately and expensively, what already occurred. That has value. It is not the same thing as a system that acts.
The gap shows up in the same place every time: the spreadsheet next to the ERP. If a department has one, that spreadsheet is where the actual decisions live, and it is the map of what should have been automated.
Digitalization gives you a screen to look at. Automation gives you a company that keeps working while you don't.
The test
Ask what happens overnight. If the answer is nothing — no orders placed, no replenishment triggered, no invoices matched, no customer answered — then you have a record, not an operation.
Working on this in your company?
Tell me what it does and I will tell you which parts can run themselves.