It appears the disruption was no worse than what would be experienced if a blizzard occurred in the Northeast.
I'm quite sure Southwest in no different than other airlines in its integration of web based scheduling and reservations. The amount of money saved by this method over the last ten years must be the hundreds of millions.
What is your proposed alternative? Going back to hand written tickets and boarding passes? Given Southwest's system wide >85% load factor, there isn't any other viable way to do business.