My question exactly. I would think there are millions of opportunities like this out there, but my gut feel is that any company that has any sort of a budget for a project would already have some sort of an IT department who would very carefully protect their "environment" (read: jobs) from any sort of an external entity who would introduce efficiency.

This may seem like a conspiracy theory to some, but it is extremely consistent with my observations from over 20 years in the industry. I see inefficiency and incompetence everywhere I look, I simply cannot believe this is mostly accidental, there must be forces acting to keep things this way.