Spreadsheets were the killer app for exactly that kind of problem.
Thanks to spreadsheets any low ranking peon can hack up a barely working, janky prototype of their idea for a tool over a few days, without having to deal with anyone else in the organisation.
Before spreadsheets, you had to convince higher ups to convince the IT department to take on your request. That would take at least three months. Then you'd need to wait another few quarters until they delivered you a barely working, janky implementation that didn't match your requirements written in something like Cobol or C.
And with Google App Scripts, you can augment your Google spreadsheets with JavaScript to write custom functions that can call remote services (and be called back as a service!).
Thanks to spreadsheets any low ranking peon can hack up a barely working, janky prototype of their idea for a tool over a few days, without having to deal with anyone else in the organisation.
Before spreadsheets, you had to convince higher ups to convince the IT department to take on your request. That would take at least three months. Then you'd need to wait another few quarters until they delivered you a barely working, janky implementation that didn't match your requirements written in something like Cobol or C.