# Art of Automation: Striking a Balance DevFeed: [Art of Automation: Striking a Balance]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Matt Zukowski Published: 2017-11-30T14:06:14Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Addepar]() Topics: [Automation](), [Finance](), [Transactions](), [data]() Tags: [automation](), [data](), [finance](), [fintech](), [reorganization](), [split](), [transactions]() ## AI overview This article argues that finance cannot be fully automated because corporate transactions are variable and shaped by human creativity, legal constraints, operational costs, and approval requirements. It describes Addepar's approach of combining automation with human judgment and introduces corporate reorganizations as a case study. ## Source excerpt As engineers, we want to automate everything. It's one of our core values at Addepar. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing a huge collection of data neatly line up exactly the way you want it to, with every edge case taken care of and every peculiarity accounted for. The tricky thing, though, is that we're solving the problems of the financial world -- a system that is inherently made up of and built by people. It's laden with incentives for creativity, and we see those sparks of innovation in new products and transactions. This ingenuity is what makes finance special. But the state of perpetual flux also makes full automation impossible. At Addepar, we've decided to embrace the mindset of the financial world. We want to allow people to flex their cognitive and deductive skills, while still using automation as a guiding mechanism. We want to stay flexible and yet harness the power of computers, just like the people-centered system we're trying to model. This approach lets us stay up-to-date. In this blog post, I'm going to dive into one of the most complex and variable financial transactions we encounter at Addepar -- corporate actions -- as well as some of the lessons we've learned about incorporating human insight into our technology. The Challenge of Automating Variations Corporate reorganizations occur often. They can be some of the most high-profile and financially impactful things you hear about: Microsoft purchasing LinkedIn, Amazon purchasing Whole Foods. While certain variations are quite common, these transactions can, and do, get arbitrarily complex. There's a great deal of variance from one to another and it's no mystery why -- the flexibility on what can be done is very high. Of course, you have certain legal constraints (based on the existing assets/liabilities of the company), operational constraints (the more complicated the transaction, the more costly), and then the hurdle of getting board approval. Beyond that, though, it's pretty much an open