It's important to keep in mind that automating tasks also improves quality. So even if it looks like time is wasted, preventing just a single mistake administer

It's important to keep in mind that automating tasks also improves quality. So even if it looks like time is wasted, preventing just a single mistake administering a customer's account can be worth a huge amount of earlier investment. Also the time spent building the first tool probably includes a quantity of "overhead" (auth, logging, etc.) which gets quickly amortised on subsequent tools.