Advanced Analytics in Tokopedia

Krishna Dermawan, (Head Of Data Analyst*) & Charlie Tjandra (Head Of Business Intelligence*) At Tokopedia

Krishna Dermawan, (Head Of Data Analyst*) & Charlie Tjandra (Head Of Business Intelligence*) At Tokopedia

Tokopedia lists 200 million products in its marketplace and has a varied business stream spanning from Digital Goods to Fintech, which serves 90 million users a month. Data Analytics here is operating to convert data into knowledge. As a company, we want to go beyond Data- Driven. We want to be Data First: the right data, in the right format, and at the right time to make strategic decisions.

Our team in Data Analytics enables this by creating what we call is “Advanced Data Platforms” that assist decision-makers in the organisation to self-serve. The idea is to provide selfservice analytics tools and giving data at your fingertips to make decisions. These self service tools come in two flavours: Data Interaction and Data Discovery.

Data interaction tools are designed to present information and confirm hypotheses about a particular subject (e.g. campaign performance). A common form of data exploration tool is a dashboard. Our team creates a layout such that information can be processed quickly and intuitively. Interactivity is available through formatting (by changing the chart type to show the signal more clearly) and slicing the information (to deep dive on explanatory variables).

Data discovery tools enable their users to access a broader scope and more granular forms of data in a secure environment. Exploring the data allows users to uncover tacit assumptions and expand their knowledge about the subject.

These tools are often created to support the launch of new business initiatives where sense-making needs to be done quickly, but specific requirements are still unknown. In creating these tools, we focus less on interactivity, and more on data integrity, data definitions, and ease of access.

Recent advancements in Analytics products enable us to provide knowledge and insights more quickly in more flexible formats to address a greater range of user requirements. For instance, our latest data interaction tools give their users the power to drag-anddrop attributes, effectively giving them the reins to create and test hypotheses in real-time through an interactive display.

We are launching a suite data discovery tools that enable promotion teams to discover user segments for each new campaign, essentially giving them an end-to-end control over campaign strategy and engagement.

Learning and Recommendations

We offer two learning for companies at any stage of their analytics journey.

Firstly, creating advanced data platforms that cater to increasing data access needs to be done in tandem with equally advanced data governance frameworks. In Tokopedia, we have a robust system to ensure data security through checks-and-balances and monitoring systems to ensure that our data stays in-house. The next challenge for us is to develop a deep data culture through our data governance to ensure absolutely clear data definitions and use cases when our platforms are being used.

Secondly and relatedly, making investments in advanced analytics need to be followed by investments in people just as much. In the end, it is the Data Professionals who create the analytics, and hence the greater their know-how, the greater the value of the data products they create. At Tokopedia, we significantly invest in their up skilling both in terms of hard skills and soft skills. As knowledge and contexts need to be shared across and within functional teams, we design workplaces that foster creativity, innovation, and collaboration. Creating a work environment in which people easily share knowledge, mental models, and experiences are our next frontier to enable even more advanced analytics that provide strategic value to the business.