Automate and/or improve releases

I'd like to know the pain points around releases. They seem to come few and far between (roughly once a month). I'm wondering if this is due to the amount of effort it takes to release or some other problem. I'd like to try to remedy or at least relive some of that pain if possible. I just need to know what sucks about, what's hard, or what's time consuming.

The ultimate goal is to make releases easier, faster, and more frequent. Please let me know how I can help to get to that point.