Python pour les métiers – What if Excel was not enough anymore?
Far from the flashy talk about a « digital revolution, » Erwan Delanne’s project grew out of a very practical frustration: endless Excel files, brittle macros, and manual calculations done over and over again. For more than a decade, he has worked inside business teams expected to track increasingly sophisticated KPIs using tools that were never designed for that purpose. Caught between rising demands and ill-suited software, he came to a simple conclusion : business teams need a language that mirrors how they actually think. For him, that language is Python. This insight led him to launch « Python for Business Teams », a training program aimed at bringing a tool long reserved for engineers into the hands of operational staff.
With degrees from both a business school and an engineering school, Erwan Delanne occupies an unusual position: a business-side professional embedded in day-to-day operations, close to real data and real decisions. Rather than joining a purely technical team, he deliberately chose to work within business functions, which he sees as more grounded and outcome-driven. Throughout his career, this choice has given him a hybrid role, wearing both a business hat and a data hat to support decision-making.
He started out in asset management at AXA, working on investment risk data. There, he built dashboards, wrote automation scripts, and took ownership of systems designed to make data more reliable and faster to process.
He later found the same kind of role at the startup Wedoogift, which later became Glady (acquired by Pluxee), where he set up the analytics function within the partnerships team. He then moved into the company’s data team to support multiple departments, before being entrusted with a large-scale mission: turning annual strategic objectives into concrete, team-level action plans.
His time in consulting also helped shape his trajectory. At KPMG, he took part in an audit engagement as a member of an IT and data team, where Python unexpectedly slashed the time needed to produce numerical results. That experience allowed him to demonstrate the business value of the language and to test its relevance in a non-technical environment.
After marrying a Polish national, he settled in Warsaw and joined Danone’s European shared services center. There, he was in charge of analytical reporting for France, including the social report used as a basis for negotiations with labor unions, as well as broader performance analysis.
Having lived in Warsaw for a year, Erwan now has a front-row seat to the economic shifts underway across Europe. An increasing number of French and European companies are relocating their back-office functions (accounting, HR, and reporting) to countries such as Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. In Warsaw, an entire district known as Mordor, made up almost exclusively of shared service centers, has developed into a major business hub comparable to La Défense.
Several factors explain this trend: one of the highest growth rates in the EU, a strong balance between workforce skills and labor costs, competitive taxation, and a high level of multilingualism. Most young Poles speak fluent English, and many also speak French or German, making it easier for them to work in international teams.
Entrepreneurship in Poland, however, comes with its own set of hurdles. From day one, business owners must pay monthly social contributions, even if the company generates no revenue. While the amounts are relatively modest, this requirement can still weigh heavily on early-stage projects.
From all these experiences, one conviction stands out: Excel, though everywhere in business, is no longer fit for modern analytical work. « Excel is great for presenting and sharing data, » he says, « but it’s far too often used as a Swiss Army knife, even though it was never meant to be one. » Lacking awareness of alternatives, many professionals still do all their data processing in spreadsheets, at the cost of efficiency and sometimes of accuracy.
To overcome these limits, Erwan turned to Python. The language makes it possible to work with large datasets and perform complex operations. While VBA, long used to automate Excel, relies on heavy, aging logic, Python offers clean syntax, extensive documentation, and the backing of a huge global community. It is already the standard in technical teams and is gaining traction in fields like asset management and finance. In Erwan’s view, this gradual shift toward Python is inevitable : analytical business teams will follow, even if the trend is still underestimated today.
This is precisely the transition he aims to support with « Python for Business Teams ». The program targets professionals whose jobs involve regular data analysis: management control, logistics, analytical HR roles, finance, and sales functions. It takes the form of a structured online platform built around progressive modules and themed courses using Jupyter notebooks.
Each module combines multiple learning formats : video lessons, hands-on exercises, detailed walkthroughs of solutions, and quizzes to reinforce key concepts. Jupyter notebooks allow learners to mix text and code, making both programming and documentation easier. Beginners can comment on their scripts, structure their thinking, and present results clearly. A final certification validates completion of the program.
What sets this pedagogy apart is its focus on business use cases. Practices specific to software engineering are deliberately left aside in favor of methods adapted to business constraints.
The training does not rely on a chatbot or constant AI assistance. Its goal is to make learners capable of understanding and controlling code, whether written by themselves or generated by an AI. When AI produces a script, the course teaches them how to read it, understand its logic, and adapt it, instead of blindly copy-pasting it. By the end of the program, participants are able to interpret any piece of code, even when they are not the ones who wrote it.
The project also reflects a long-standing passion for teaching. A lifelong math enthusiast, Erwan Delanne has always seen himself as an educator. Today, he draws on a teaching approach he aims to keep clear and accessible, already tested through in-house corporate training sessions.
Erwan Delanne is now preparing the commercial launch of the program, with the paid phase scheduled for the spring. This cautious rollout reflects both humility and confidence: the belief that Python will become, in the years ahead, a standard tool for analytical roles in business teams.
Through « Python for Business Teams », he does not claim to spark a dramatic break, but rather to guide a transition, from spreadsheet culture to scripting culture, from improvised workarounds to structured methods. A quiet shift, but one likely to fundamentally change how companies work with data.