S2 E7. Data Engineering Meets Excel: Building Explainable and Reliable Decision Models with River Solutions

Kris Peeters sits down with Amaury Anciaux, founder of River Solutions, to tackle a painful reality for data leaders: critical decisions still depend on fragile Excel models.

They explore why Excel won’t disappear, how River turns spreadsheets into visual, explainable and reliable decision models, and what happens when you bring data quality checks, testing and documentation into the analyst workflow.

Topics include:

• Why 99% of models in organisations are still built in Excel
• Silent errors, risk, and the real cost of debugging formulas
• Visual flow-based modelling and model maps inside Excel
• Built-in checks for missing data, duplicates and broken lookups
• How AI copilots helped build River, and why AI won’t replace transparent models
• The evolving role of analysts and managers in data-driven decisions

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Chapters:

00:00 – Intro & episode setup00:45 – Amaury’s background & consulting career02:00 – The hidden reality of Excel decision models04:00 – Why “just get it out of Excel” doesn’t scale05:10 – What River Solutions does in Excel06:40 – Visual model maps for explainable models08:40 – Removing formulas & adding data quality checks10:50 – Why Excel errors are so risky for big decisions13:15 – Who River is for: analysts, Excel gurus & managers16:05 – Why Amaury started River now & building with Copilot19:00 – Will AI copilots replace River and Excel modelling?22:51 – How River works as an Excel add-in (UX & interactivity)26:25 – How River changes the analyst role (less debugging, more thinking)28:10 – Roadmap: community, cloud, AI & connecting to data warehouses31:14 – Biggest lesson learned: software is easy, change is hard