Totally - I used to work as quant for a boutique asset manager and the whole business was running on spreadsheets.
Insane.
Ended up putting it all in a database and developing an excel add-in to pull it from the database as array formulae. Used a great library called Excel DNA to develop the add-in using C# if anyone is interested.
Only jumped on the python train after I left finance but the reason we used an add-in is because you can build dynamic sheets with calculations that update when the inputs change (where the inputs were pulling from the database).
So you could build a sheet that pulls in portfolio holdings for yesterday where yesterday updates each day and then compute performance and risk stats referencing the data cells in the sheet and it would all update.
In that context it was just an easy way to build reports pulling data from a database but same applies to quickly doing one-off analysis in Excel pulling dynamic data from the database - guys in finance tend to not be programmers but they're really good at Excel.
The add-in approach was really useful too because you could create function that returns the holdings of a portfolio to an array of cells (an array formula) and have a drop-down box with all portfolios that fed the input of the formula so that when you change the combo box, it changed the portfolio data and then everything recalculated off the back of that :)
Insane.
Ended up putting it all in a database and developing an excel add-in to pull it from the database as array formulae. Used a great library called Excel DNA to develop the add-in using C# if anyone is interested.