M&A is 10% Finance and 90% being a glorified secretary. I’m building a workflow to fix this. Am I wasting my time?

I’m an M&A Analyst and I’ve realized that 70% of my week is spent being a glorified secretary. The process is completely broken:

1. Outreach: Finding LinkedIn profiles manually, guessing emails, and testing 4 different templates depending on the lead.
2. Follow-ups: Manually tracking who replied to the teaser and who needs a nudge. It’s a mess of spreadsheets and Outlook flags.
3. The Data Room Nightmare: When a client finally signs and sends hundreds of files, I’m the one manually organizing OneDrive folders, renaming files, and prepping the Due Diligence room.

I’ve started building a Python/AI-based workflow to automate this entire pipeline so we can actually focus on financial modeling and deal structuring.

I have two main questions for the community:

• How is it in the U.S. vs LatAm? I’m based in LatAm and feel like we are still living in the stone age compared to some U.S. firms. Are you guys using proprietary tools or is everyone globally still stuck in 2005?
• Do you see any other ugly issues or outdated tasks that keep us from doing what we are actually paid for (the finance stuff)? I want to know if there are other "bottlenecks" I’m missing that frustrate you daily.

I’m a finance guy learning to code. Is this too ambitious for a solo founder or should I be looking for a tech co-founder ASAP? Would love to hear your thoughts (or your rants).