I've used make as the basis for a system that works out the dependencies for nightly batch processing in an ERP system and coordinates the execution of the requ

I've used make as the basis for a system that works out the dependencies for nightly batch processing in an ERP system and coordinates the execution of the required processes across multiple applications that make up the system. There's some shell script to glue the pieces together, and a Python script for invoking processes within the ERP applications, but make is the secret sauce that figures out what order to run everything in.