Pivot tables are quite useful for quick ad-hoc exploration of various different group-by structures with immediate feedback, empowering end-users who wouldn't be able to make the queries themselves, and waiting for someone else to do it would make it not worth it for exploration.

If the data allows that, then a data export (usually requiring a bunch of aggregation and preprocessing) to a format suitable for excel pivot tables or some of the many business analytics tools often is quite useful to users who want to analyze the data.

However, it should be expected that a side-effect of such ad-hoc data analysis often is specific reports that become understood to be useful, and which can then be re-implemented "properly" i.e. as a sql query/report that gets run in an automated, tested, reliable way and delivered where needed without that manual analysis step.