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Are the spreadsheets doing real number crunching? Do they use XLLs and VBA, or just worksheet functions?

Very often yes, to a scary degree. The amount of data normalization, adjustments, aggregation, analysis, etc that happens in some poorly documented and ill maintained macro is mind-boggling (there is a term for it - a model/process being "offline", i.e. not properly source-controlled or auditable).

The real reason is because Excel is still by far the simplest, quickest way to get something done fast when the deadlines are always "yesterday!".

I was in finance as well as trading risk management at one of the largest physical commodities trading houses in the world ($100+ billion revenue) and orders, positions, PNL, inventory, inventory movements, market research and analysis, and general business reports... yes, very expensive systems backing them... and they had to be done on Excel manually and synced daily to make sure if the main systems (absurdly complex) got out of sync, either one could be repaired as a failsafe.

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