Cheeky response..

It would take a 1 year project and 5 devs to replace what one finance person created in a day.

Then when it didnt work complain the SME got the requirements wrong.

Im being silly but as a dev i hate the hate for excel, though i know from years of experience that its also a nightmare.

I think it's important to think of Excel as a tool for modelling reality and not a tool for changing it. IMO Excel should not be producing data feeds that other tools expect real time access to, nor should it make API calls that mutate state on other platforms.

At that point why not code something using the Interop APIs to programatically interface with the spreadsheet? It's a PITA to code but it works.

I'm sure they were glad they had you to fix their problems!

What year?