I'll second this, before becoming a programmer I was a mechanical engineer in piping, we have tons of inefficiencies like this still. Partly it's that the people who run these industries are comfortable to keep using fax and e-mail, but another issue is that companies often don't have access to good technical knowledge to pick the right tool or develop better ones. Huge opportunity here.
I've looked into this issue specifically for piping, as it happens. From my perspective one of the issues with 'solving' this is basically: https://xkcd.com/927/
At the place I worked we had 3 different supplier databases, each one having been introduced to replace the last, which was never fully phased out.
Definitely an issue! We try half baked things and they just stick around. On the other end of the spectrum, once something works, it's kept around forever. It's interesting, this industry seems ripe for disruption, but it hasn't happened yet. I think maybe because we think any tool will do, when in reality we need a 10X tool like any other industry. Also, your customers are people who are far less computer savvy than other groups, so UI/UX issues are paramount.
