Report Automation: Refresh Existing Report, Convert Worksheet to PDF, then Email

Background
We built an Analytic Snapshot to capture Opportunity Pipeline data so we can report historical trends.  Now, we are interested in reporting on this data to do a period-on-period comparison between this week vs last week data (with an option to compare other periods e.g. Month-on-Month, Quarter-on-Quarter, Year-on-Year).  The problem is that the standard SFDC report output is not 'presentation ready', and produces a report with unsightly rows and columns.  Excel is much more flexible in terms of reordering/renaming headers, layout, and not including summary columns/rows.  For this reason, we are trying to find a solution for SFDC's rigidity.

In addition, we would like to automate this process to schedule the report to run at a specific time and deliver it to a user in a 'presentation ready' format such as an Excel or PDF file.  I am aware of the 'Schedule Report' feature in salesforce.com but as I mentioned we have abandoned salesforce.com's report builder.

We are evaluating several other solutions and work arounds.  I have successfully imported a data-set from the custom Analytic Snapshot object into a target excel worksheet using the Excel Connector and created a pivot table in another worksheet.  I would like to export only the pivot table report (and not the raw data-set worksheet) to a PDF and send it to an email recipient.  Ultimately, I would like to automate the refresh of this data-set (and pivot table) then automatically create a PDF and send it to a designated recipient via email every Friday at 5PM without ever opening the workbook.  Is this possible, how would I go about accomplishing this?

Considerations:

• Authenticating the Excel Connector with salesforce.com's login credentials and security token.
• Producing the PDF through an authoring plugin.
• Exporting and Emailing the PDF output to the designated recipient.

I am open to ANY suggestions and would appreciate any guidance.

Skills
Salesforce.com: Visual Force, APEX, Excel Connector
Excel: VBA, Macros