Operations is the last handcrafted thing

Most of what keeps a company running is still done by hand, in the gaps between systems that were never meant to talk to each other. We think that is about to change, and what it changes.

Look closely at any working business and you find people acting as glue. They copy a number from one tool into another. They notice that an order looks wrong and chase it down. They translate between the language sales uses and the language finance uses. None of this is in anyone's job description, and all of it is load-bearing.

The glue was always the point

We have spent thirty years buying software that automates the easy, legible parts of operations and leaves the connective tissue to people. The connective tissue is where the judgement lives, so this felt safe. But most of that judgement is not deep — it is just context that no single system had.

When context stops being expensive to hold, the glue work changes character. The point is not to remove the people; it is to remove the part of their day that was only ever compensating for systems that could not talk to each other.