There's a lot you can do with latex to automatically import data and update automatically from external sources, and while it might seem counter-intuitive it is much easier and less effort than Word's wysiwyg interface.
I'm jealous of how easy it is to import data when using a structured source code like format such as rst, markdown or latex. I'm sticking with word because I can easily do small layout adjustments like decreasing the margins of a table to make it fit on a page, or easily see when a paragraph is 1 or 2 words too long, causing it to shift all sorts of elements across pages.
You can do that with Latex as well? I use TexStudio which has a preview pane. Any time I make changes I hit f5 and it updates pretty quickly. It's not instantly but pretty close to it, and there are already less problems with things shifting around because it manages that better than Word does, by design.
