loris:
When people at work ask me why I do stuff in perl, I often show 'em a couple of the more convincing examples that I've encountered:
Query a database (DBI, DBD::ODBC), format the results into a spreadsheet (Spreadsheet::WriteExcel), and then EMail (I forgot which package I use here) the resulting file to a distribution list.
Query several different databases (DBI, DBD::ODBC), correlate the data (hash), and dump a simple report.
Rip through a text report and find anomalous records. Yeah this one is an easy awk script too, but the more I use perl the less often I reach for awk...
...roboticus
