In my experience (which includes large companies from sectors like automotive and utilities) in most cases there is a large, RDBMS backed application doing something really critical... And then when you talk with actual users you discover a swarm of Excel files that either support or often second guess the corporate system.
And it is not just reporting. In some cases inputting large quantities of tabular data is just done by writing Excel macros that create CSV files to upload to the system (and sometimes, horrifingly, the data are just retyped...).
And it is not just reporting. In some cases inputting large quantities of tabular data is just done by writing Excel macros that create CSV files to upload to the system (and sometimes, horrifingly, the data are just retyped...).