Does VBA for Excel count? Because if it does then VBA for Excel has reached the"nuclear resistant cockroach" level in finance. You wouldn't believe what sort of processes in very big banks/financial institutions are built using 10 year old VBA macros. In fact, VBA consulting for finance is a very juicy cottage industry at least in Europe to this very day.
There is a book called: Professional Excel Development. If you want to get into it. You could probably use that book to build an OS in Excel. I'm not joking.
Currently working for a consulting company with a whole region's health system as the client. They use excel for lots, but it's all very basic stuff. I had one of my team members spend an hour whipping up an excel form for them that auto generates letters to different departments with all the necessary information. Even some basic standard work forms, let alone any sort of automation, would help them a lot as they rely on people to send certain information that gets missed every time. They described our excel sheet as a game changer for them.
Almost no-one has access to their ERP system which is safeguarded by a certain department which is ridiculous. I'm working on a spreadsheet for their HR team to calculate bonuses for certain employees based on a bunch of variables, then auto-generating letters to review and distribute. The data from their ERP software is such a mess, but I'm making up for it by cleaning up their reports in excel. I plan to get access to their ERP system to look at what kind of reporting I can do as HR only gets a report from the system once a month. I want to help them track real time stats for hiring, etc. And curious if I'm able to connect some spreadsheets to their ERP with an API or something (haven't done anything like that before).
Anyways, that professional development for excel book looks interesting. I see the second version is from 2009 and may not even be up to date with 2007 excel. I'm sure most of the concepts would stay the same though, so I'll definitely have to check it out.
I realize excel wouldn't be considered the most professional or robust way to build applications, but since microsoft 365 seems so standard and everyone uses excel, it makes sense to me why so many organizations use it. There seems to be a lot of potential to apply some excel automation in a lot of industries, especially ones that already rely on it as others have mentioned in this thread. I use it as a means to an end when helping clients, but I also see dollar signs as I find ways to build things that can be applied to so many industries.