A well executed Excel model is much easier to explain to a non-technical person.

To be frank, for all the snobbery towards Excel, it has done a marvelous job at getting millions of people to think in more quantitative ways instead of "business acumen".

I haven't seen the code, but from what I read, it may well have been better to have done this in an Excel spreadsheet.

Of course we all would have been just as horrified at that.