I think a better idea would be an easier way for those people who built a spreadsheet (that was supposed to be temporary but then became permanent, and then became critical) to transition to a database (that lives on your own machine) would be a better idea. More data lives on spreadsheets than databases in a typical office environment, and part of the reason why is data entry speed, but another part of the reason why is that it's hard to get people to transition to the database.
This could be a good approach. Let people figure out optimal workflow with their spreadsheets, and when those spreadsheets stabilize, then help them move to a database. Aside from data entry speed, part of the reason is flexibility, especially when you're just figuring out what's the best way to collect and process data for a particular task.
As a developer in a company that does custom integrations, I wholeheartedly agree. Let them pay us to convert their unstructured files, instead of letting some automated importer do the job.
I'm only half kidding; the margin on our Pentaho Kettle transformations is quite good.
