Thanks a lot for sharing those. I have found myself in the same position recently. And in order to overcome boredom, I started looking for broken things to fix in the area that I work in. I have been able to find a manual data entry process that goes into our Finance database. Talk about obvious!

I put a proposal together to the management with the $$$ impact ( and it comes to a million dollars!). The amount just broke down all barriers for me. Nobody questions why I am doing this now. I have full liberty on how to execute this. I even got another developer dedicated to work on the project with me.

This is going to be completed for testing in another 3 weeks. We will see how this turns out.

I totally agree with edw519's suggestions and examples. Your initiative will be rewarded.