Late orders, biggest orders etc. etc. sure, those are all SQL queries.
However if you want to make statistical predictions or looks for the non obvious, these simple types of queries aren't going to do it. So it's an apples to oranges comparison.
There are a lot of cases where people don't know what they are after. And also lots of cases were orgs don't have a grasp on the simple things, but somehow think more complex things (especially buzzword things) are magically going to solve a lack of organization and insight.