I have seen many of these companies and potential "build a real database-backed web app" projects during my software consulting career. This seems like a good

I have seen many of these companies and potential "build a real database-backed web app" projects during my software consulting career. This seems like a good idea at first: automate manual processes, have a real database with one source of truth and consistency rules, multiple people can access it at the same time, etc. You can do it if the process is very well known and fixed. But most of the time a web app would cause more hassle for the companies than having a team of people doing the work "by hand" in Excel would be. * The process and desired data schema might change every few months - or even weekly when doing something like marketing reports. * Now they need regular maintenance - keeping servers up, doing and testing backups, applying security patches. * But the problem being solved is not big enough to justify hiring a full-time team of software developers to maintain it forever.