I have done a lot of line of business work over the years, and I would argue Excel is the perfect tool for prototyping processes.
Almost anybody can use it, it is simple and reasonably intuitive - and most importantly - extremely flexible, so you can change your processes and workflows without much cost.
Then once processes are figured out and reach a more stable state, you can turn that Excel process into something more smooth, custom software or a more advanced tool. And you have a pretty good starting point for a spec for the software.
Very very true, and yet I've often seen an excel workbook find its way as a permanent part of the process, even a fully automated one in some cases. Fortunately there are decent libraries for reading/creating workbooks in most languages.
> These administration and business management tasks can be easily done by developing custom software, and these are the reasons to ditch Excel.
Easily? Yeah, right, after you pay \d{5,} dollars, after years of development, you get something that hopefully enables to run your business more effective.
Of course, we also try to get from Excel in business processes that require data consistency and automation and stuff, but first of all: Someone was able to write that excel and show us actually what kind of data/calculations is important to them.
I think excel is here to stay along with the email. Article reads like: "use this instead of email" (and buy from us). Everything has their place under the sun, but excel is as good as it is bad.
This is essentially blogspam for the author's web development shop. It handily ignores the #1 advantage of spreadsheets - business users can develop and evolve them without outside help. It's a double-edge sword for sure, but that agency is super valuable. Problems have to be pretty big before a custom web application is a better choice... and before you get to THAT you have to blow through AirTable, Salesforce and Retool territory.
Excel mangles genetics data. Reason #1 to ditch that toy and set up a proper Ipython/Julia/R notebook with either a database or something usable with awk/bioperl/biopython.
Leave out Excel just for finances and then we will talk.
Almost anybody can use it, it is simple and reasonably intuitive - and most importantly - extremely flexible, so you can change your processes and workflows without much cost.
Then once processes are figured out and reach a more stable state, you can turn that Excel process into something more smooth, custom software or a more advanced tool. And you have a pretty good starting point for a spec for the software.