A company fires a disgruntled network administrator. He leaves behind a laptop with five different .backup files, but no one knows the exact version or password. You need to audit the firewall rules to ensure no backdoors exist. Instead of restoring to a test router (risky), you extract the file offline.
If you only have a .backup file and need to retrieve settings without a physical router, you can use these community-developed "extractors": : mikrotik backup extractor