It's harder to point to specific items in those areas and say, "this feature X saved us $Y", whereas the sales departments have easy figures to point to.
Sadly, this whole "cost center" versus "profit center" exists at all types of companies. I used to work in food manufacturing, and the incentives in play there were beyond strange. The sanitation budget was constantly being slashed, because Quality Assurance as a department doesn't bring in a profit (that they can see), whereas hordes of "process engineers" would come in and rearrange boxes and claim that they have just eliminated 10 steps out of the workflow and calculate this to be saving $92/day. They quickly get promoted before anyone can actually see if this made orders any faster. Another common tactic was to cut positions on the manufacturing line, claim the reduced headcount as a savings, and move on before the problems of fewer headcount (slower throughput) became apparent.
Sadly, this whole "cost center" versus "profit center" exists at all types of companies. I used to work in food manufacturing, and the incentives in play there were beyond strange. The sanitation budget was constantly being slashed, because Quality Assurance as a department doesn't bring in a profit (that they can see), whereas hordes of "process engineers" would come in and rearrange boxes and claim that they have just eliminated 10 steps out of the workflow and calculate this to be saving $92/day. They quickly get promoted before anyone can actually see if this made orders any faster. Another common tactic was to cut positions on the manufacturing line, claim the reduced headcount as a savings, and move on before the problems of fewer headcount (slower throughput) became apparent.