Like the rest of the world.. I mean, we have companies like Microsoft, who basically live from staying compatible back till the beginning of time. Cooperate-world is strongly focused on stability and the ability to control your turf, everywhere.
> But it misses an additional layer of thinking, which is that not changing is even more costly sometimes.
Interesting how you completely missed the point. I was not talking about the change, but the way it happened, and the reasoning for it.
> it is that the process was clunky and required expensive humans in the middle.
Actually, we don't know that. We know nothing about the reasoning for the process, or the details, or the company.. We only know the story of a 3rd party, who stumbled over their own ignorance.
> If it could be easily automated in Python, it could also have been easily automated somehow else
Yes, unless the company has some inhouse-knowledge of using python, it should have been automated with something else, like VBA, which they already are using. And it should have been done by someone from the company, not some strange from outside. As a long-running company, it's nonsense to use technology for inhouse-task, where you have no expertise at hand. This is just harmful and an additional burden longterm.