>> even when mine (that they had already approved) would save them 400K a year

You learn lessons over the years and this is one I learned at some point: you want to work in revenue centers, not cost centers. Aside from the fixed math (i.e. limit on savings vs. unlimited revenue growth) there's the psychological component of teams and management. I saw this in the energy sector where our company had two products: selling to the drilling side was focused on helping get more oil & gas; selling to the remediation side was fulfill their obligations as cheaply as possible. IT / dev at a non-software company is almost always a cost center.