I frequently find that people are unaware of how much their workflow can be automated. Thus they simply don’t think of tools they might benefit from. Also, people are very quick to adapt a workaround for a rough spot in the workflow that is really just failures in the tools & pipeline. Sit with them an observe their workflow, have them teach you how to do it - that may expose to you areas for improvement.
In the words of Rob Galanakis “any task that does not require a human to make a judgment call not only can , but should be automated”
Look for the tedious stuff that may not be directly considered animation. Are there places where the animators have to carefully type in /select a file path? that can probably be automated. Are there fragile naming conventions to follow? that can be tooled up (or better: replaced with attributes ) Do the materials get messed up as you go from one software package to the next? probably could be managed with tools. Is there engine metadata they have to hook up? Maybe there are automation opportunities there.
The sort of stuff I mention usually falls on individual human responsibility in a small studio. People make human error mistakes and then fix them themselves, with out ever communicating the frictions they deal with. In my experience, once you tell them “I could make a button for that” They are very receptive.