I have worked with many teams at large companies where clunky applications, usually just database facades / CRUD, have been in place. In almost every case thes

I have worked with many teams at large companies where clunky applications, usually just database facades / CRUD, have been in place. In almost every case these 'database interfaces' never fully satisfy the users' needs. Instead, I have found much success in slowly deprecating these applications and, instead, giving these users direct read-only access to the database and teaching them SQL. SQL is not a tool only for 'technical' people. Most of these users have mastered the 'dark arts' of Excel so they are capable of learning other tooling. These users can then query the data in any way they want and export it in any way they want. There is more to this, like ensuring to only give them access to reporting databases. The application then can focus on being an interface for updates / writes and not for data exploration.