You can't automate a mess.
The easiest automation to imagine is usually the worst one to build first.
It looks obvious because the task is painful. It happens every week. Everybody hates doing it. So the instinct is to point a tool at it and call that progress.
The pain is not always the process.
A messy process does not become clean because software touches it. It becomes faster, louder, and harder to inspect. The tool can repeat the steps, but it cannot decide which version of the work was the real one.
That is the part owners tend to skip. Before automation, the question is not whether a task takes too long. The question is whether the task happens the same way twice.
If the work changes depending on who is doing it, what mood the client is in, or which detail someone remembered to write down, there is no process yet. There is a habit with witnesses.
So before asking what AI can do, ask the less exciting question: could someone write down exactly how this work happens every time?