Data Culture Strategy at Mercado Libre
Lee aquí el artículo en español.
At Mercado Libre we have a data-driven perspective: we value decisions based on data, the key to being more competitive, efficient and free from bias.
From the Data & Analytics team, our commitment is to actively collaborate so that each person in Mercado Libre can access the data to make the best decisions. Yet, making world-class tools available and democratizing data in all its forms is not enough; it is also necessary to accompany people with training and mentoring, to develop communities and metrics, and to become sponsors of each collaborator’s journey in making data-driven decisions. We said it then and we hold it now: after hundreds of projects and people, our story “How much do data matter to us?”, written a little more than two years ago, is still alive… So today I want to share with you how we’ve evolved and formalized this manifesto, giving birth to a new team, Data Culture.
So, what has changed since?
From 2019 to the end of 2021, while we all experienced so many changes (needless to describe) and evolved to develop new models of work, family and social relations, Mercado Libre too has grown significantly. Today, with a ratio of 30 purchases per second, we serve 17M sellers and 66M buyers in our marketplace. This last year, Mercado Pago registered more payment transactions than in the entire history of the company. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have seen staff tirelessly operating on-site from 95 logistics centers and 18 fulfillments, plus 17k people working remotely sharing virtual meetings and coffees. Given this context, it should not be surprising that in 2021 alone we created 6 jobs per hour, incorporating more than half of the staff that we are today, reaching the staggering figure of 33K employees!
More than ever, we continue to believe that in order to keep a firm footing as the greatest e-commerce and fintech platform in Latin America, it is paramount to develop an analytical culture, which entails intensive use of data to unify language, break silos and put subjectivities aside. Our new team takes care of this: Data Culture.
Data Culture Strategy
Data Culture stands on two great pillars: Learning and Community.
With Learning, we provide the appropriate training to ensure that the entire company has access to, knows and uses the data tools. Through Community, we focus on taking care of the health of our culture, disseminating, monitoring and evaluating the value and use of data. Let’s explore what we do for each of these initiatives.
Learning
The Data & Analytics Learning Path is a framework that configures different learning proposals, tailored for every need along the journey of developing a data-driven culture.
With Data Academy, a “self-service learning” platform developed in-house, we make video content available through courses that each person can take at their own pace and at any time. Then, to move from theory to practice through a “classroom experience” with synchronous sessions, we offer mentoring to teams that want to develop hands-on experience with data problems.
These data literacy programs are leveraged in our Way of Working, based on a 70–20–10 development model. This means that each person is expected to acquire 70 percent of their knowledge from job-related experiences, experiment and reflection, invest 20 percent of their time in learning through cross-team collaborations and mentoring, and the remaining 10 percent in formal training. For these last two training formats, we offer a broad selection of contents, prepared by and for Mercado Libre.
Self Service Learning
Data Academy is the place where anyone at Mercado Libre can take the first steps in our data ecosystem. Through asynchronous and self-paced learning, we have video content grouped in Data Explorer, Creator and Master according to the data skills to be acquired in each. Here, we include courses on the main sources, techniques and tools for data exploration and exploitation such as Tableau, Looker, BigQuery and Google Analytics, plus the definition of key business metrics and where to find them as well as concepts about machine learning and information security.
Classroom experience
Here you will find face-to-face synchronous proposals to complement what has been learned in Data Academy, putting knowledge into practice in a classroom experience:
- Data Lanes: speak the languages of data. Training in SQL and Python with customized material for each Business Unit (BU).
- Data Seeds: from laboratories to production. Through an incremental methodology, you will apply analytics and data science techniques to real and specific problems of your BU.
- Data Doctor: meet an expert. Clinic-type space to provide support in specific consultations on data models, queries, tools and other aspects of data.
- Data & Analytics Bootcamp *coming soon*: ramp up into D&A. If you enter Mercado Libre through the IT Bootcamp, you’ll learn the techniques and tools that we use in the team before facing the daily challenge!
With the Data & Analytics Learning Path, we seek to create the appropriate learning tools to cover different needs and expectations in the development of an analytical culture at MELI.
Community
To amplify our analytical culture, we host an active community of passionate, curious, committed people who collaborate seamlessly, share knowledge and challenge one another’s solutions and data products.
Also, as a data team, we aim to measure the penetration of our tools and the level of user experience in using data techniques. Therefore, we design and build metrics that will allow us to know how the analytical culture grows and evolves, and design action plans that guarantee its sustainability in a context of expansive growth.
External community
- LinkedIn: Through “influencers” from our team, we show and invite everyone to react and comment on the projects we develop and the events we participate in.
- Tech Blog: This blog! Here, the entire IT team shares stories about achievements, challenges and how our culture keeps us in continuous beta (#BetaContinuo) innovating and growing to accompany the business.
- Meetings: We regularly meet with technology companies that are experiencing scaling challenges as we do at Mercado Libre, to share industry practices, issues, and trends.
- Events: We actively participate in events at universities and other educational institutions that offer courses or careers in Analytics, Data Science, Business Intelligence and related disciplines. We share ways in which by means of different techniques, technologies and high-performance teams we develop data products and scale our data culture.
Internal Community
- Data Labs: It is a program open to the entire D&A team with the aim of promoting innovative ideas that create an impact. It begins with a pitch session where each participant presents their idea, which is evaluated in a challenge round and those who are selected receive coaching until their idea evolves to the form of a project. Thus, we promote the search for new ways to apply techniques and technology to data, developing leaders on our way, through practices that include presenting, designing, evaluating and planning a project from its conception to its feasibility.
- Data Champions: It is an interdisciplinary committee of experts from different BUs, who participate with a high degree of skills and who have a role as key users in their teams. In this weekly space, we debate, investigate and solve problems on data techniques, tools and technologies.
- Analytalks: It is a recurring weekly space with an agenda across Data & Analytics, in which more than 200 people meet to listen, share experiences and challenge each other in different technology projects and data products.
Data Driven Index
Finally, as a Data team, we cannot overlook the use of a metric to guide us on how we are performing in this mission. Many companies face this same challenge: how to measure the penetration and impact of analytical culture.
In Data & Analytics, we’ve proposed a Data Driven Index, a model that allows us to quantify, through a numerical index based on logs from our data tools, how data-driven we are across Mercado Libre. We devote a specific article exquisitely written by Camilo Ernesto Martínez to explaining everything about the context, the typical difficulties that come to light and how we are solving them. Want to know more about it? Find the article here!
Outro
Today, all of us who take part in the Data & Analytics team become ambassadors of our culture, generating, leading and actively participating in these initiatives for all Mercado Libre and inviting the rest of the community to join the discussion. Thus, we seek to develop more and more data-driven teams and people throughout the company.
At Mercado Libre, our DNA vibrates to the rhythm of each new challenge, and at Data & Analytics we live in a continuous beta driving with a clear mission: to democratize agile, easy and secure access to data.
Like what you read so far? Don’t forget to follow our blog! As with our Data Driven Index, we will go deep on many of these subjects in specific stories yet to come!
Want to join this quest? Find your next job opportunity at https://careers-meli.mercadolibre.com/
