Agree but slight modification - goal should always be for the users to be able to do their main functional tasks in-application and maintain it as the system of record.

But there will always be a use for Excel as a tool for informal data-monkeying and analysis - exporting a table and doing some pivots to summarize or use a different view. Non-technical users will always expect this capability and flock back to it. Not everyone's a programmer or has the interest to be - you'll have to pry excel out of most accountant's cold, dead hands for example