Unfortunately, nothing beats Excel for "agility" and smoothness of the learning curve. You can whip up something that kinda-sorta-works, very quickly, without any software training.
Another thing to consider: we are conditioned to believe that the web browser is a "universal runtime", i.e. it's the thing that everyone has, so you should target it. But actually, it's not the only one. When considering Windows computers (which is all that matters in offices), Excel is a kind of dark-matter universal runtime, for dark-matter IT[1]. Better, it's one that doesn't require a persistent server, or logins, and it's peer-to-peer, in a sense. Everyone has Excel installed, everyone has an org email account, therefore everyone can email xlsm files back and forth, no extra setup required (try doing that with exes). No SaaS offering has that kind of caveman convenience. And you might think -- that's horrifying. But email is the way communication/collaboration actually happens in the median bureaucracy, so Excel's ubiquity and file-orientedness is an insurmountable strength.
Another thing to consider: we are conditioned to believe that the web browser is a "universal runtime", i.e. it's the thing that everyone has, so you should target it. But actually, it's not the only one. When considering Windows computers (which is all that matters in offices), Excel is a kind of dark-matter universal runtime, for dark-matter IT[1]. Better, it's one that doesn't require a persistent server, or logins, and it's peer-to-peer, in a sense. Everyone has Excel installed, everyone has an org email account, therefore everyone can email xlsm files back and forth, no extra setup required (try doing that with exes). No SaaS offering has that kind of caveman convenience. And you might think -- that's horrifying. But email is the way communication/collaboration actually happens in the median bureaucracy, so Excel's ubiquity and file-orientedness is an insurmountable strength.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_IT