I've build entire databases/management tools out of Excel with following of administrative file completion, warning of due payment and KPIs. It was a pain to build but it kinda worked. Then I learn to build actual relational database and I went on rebuilding them on PostgreSQL... as a back, using Acess as front that would allow Excel-like usage and Excel export of the request response.
We can say what we want about Excel but it is working really well and people are already formed to use it or at least they are enough familiar with it so they are not nearly as frighten by the idea of learning Excel as they are to learn to read a single-table SELECT SQL statement.