Data Engineering Meets Excel: Building Explainable and Reliable Decision Models with River Solutions
Nov 27, 2025
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Amaury Anciaux & Kris Peeters
How River Solutions turns messy Excel models into explainable, reliable decision tools for analysts and leaders.
In this episode of The Data Playbook, Kris Peeters talks with Amaury Anciaux, founder of River Solutions, about turning messy, error-prone Excel files into explainable and reliable decision models.
They dive into why Excel will never die, how River Solutions augments analysts instead of replacing them, and what happens when you bring engineering best practices (tests, data quality checks, documentation) into the world’s most abused business tool.
You’ll learn:
Why 99% of decision models are still built in Excel
How to make Excel models explainable to stakeholders
How River replaces fragile formulas with visual, flow-based modelling
Built-in data quality checks to kill “silent errors”
How AI copilots (like GitHub Copilot) accelerate both engineers and analysts
When to stay in Excel vs. when to move to production data platforms
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