The problem with SaaS alternatives to Excel business processes is the difficulty of linking data between apps. Let’s say you want to answer some topical questio

The problem with SaaS alternatives to Excel business processes is the difficulty of linking data between apps. Let’s say you want to answer some topical question, like “are code reviews for women and men written with a different tone?” You have a HR system that has people’s gender, and a code review system, and some Google API that measures tone. Good luck stitching this together between vendors. But dump it to Excel and make the API call from VBA and it’s easy. The problem of course is that this becomes an important business metric, making the spreadsheet a critical business application, but without any of the tooling used for successful software development (version control, code review, test automation)