Honestly, I think the problem is people, not tools. Any time a company wants to create an exception-based vs a rules-based process, it screws things up royally

Honestly, I think the problem is people, not tools. Any time a company wants to create an exception-based vs a rules-based process, it screws things up royally from an efficiency POV. To give a stupid example, I was once responsible for all the enterprise apps at an F500 used by Finance, HR, and Supply Chain/Procurement. This included our internal travel request tool, which had embedded approval hierarchies based on HR hierarchies & levels -- as one would expect. In the 2008 recession, part of the belt tightening was a new policy that the CFO had to personally approve any international travel requests, no matter who submitted them. Theoretically it was a very easy change, but can you imagine how unpleasant it was to build that logic into the system in a non-destructive way ... but a way that also had exception-handling to deal with times the CFO wasn't personally available.